It’s been an eventful summer for the second Trump administration. Last month, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids picking up, President Donald Trump defied the antiwar members of the MAGA coalition and sent American bombers to destroy three nuclear weapons sites in Iran before, weeks later, passing the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a shameless giveaway to the rich along with historical cuts to America’s already threadbare welfare state.

In a recent episode of the Jacobin Radio podcast Confronting Capitalism, Paul Prescod sat down with Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber to discuss whether the so-called populist, antiestablishment President Trump — with his Big Beautiful Bill and even bigger bombs falling on Iran — has really just turned into yet another garden-variety Republican president.

Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and published by Jacobin. You can listen to the full episode here. This transcript has been edited for clarity.