The Red Scare Returns? Lessons from McCarthyism in the Age of Trump 2.0

21:41even though he's just being nice to a composer. So this kind of thing went around. And then there was a whole kind of undeclared star chamber of columnists, union officials, mid-level executives who kind of also enforced it, right? They were the ones who would go and talk to individual actors or lawyers. You know, at a certain point, it became so pervasive that Hollywood realized it had a problem. They couldn't keep operating if they kept kicking out their writers and actors. And so then there was this whole process for how do you clear yourself? It was almost like, you know, Spanish Inquisition.

22:21Kara Swisher:And how did people then clear themselves? Yeah. So this is another thing that was fascinating for me to read. So there were lawyers and there were some very specific lawyers that you would go to and you would say, what do I need to clear my name? And in some cases, all it was was writing a letter. So the The Hoover Institution at Stanford has all these letters from Vincent Price and from Kirk Douglas. And, you know, these actors who were accused were not yet blacklisted, but were accused. And these letters are just this outpouring of self-derision, you know, saying, I made a mistake, I'm so sorry.

22:59And then these letters would be sent around to this sort of star chamber, and they would decide, you know, is this person truly, truly regretful? And if not, John Houseman was declared not sufficiently sorry.

23:15Kara Swisher:Why? I can't believe he even wrote a letter. They didn't believe his letter. They thought, you know, he's kind of painting by numbers. This isn't, he doesn't really mean it. Whereas Kirk Douglas was determined to be sorry for whatever his supposed sins were. And then the message would go out to executives, hey, this guy is, he's cleared. He can act again. Sometimes the lawyers would say, you know, actually, you have to talk to the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee. What about those who resisted? They were. It's interesting, too, on that end. There are so many names of people who were famous at the time or were up and coming.

23:56You know, Larry Parks, for example. I mean, today, no one knows who Larry Parks is, right? But Larry Parks was an up and coming actor. He was pretty well known as, you know, someone people thought, yeah, he's going to win an Academy Award. He's going to be. And he was one of the first actors called and forced to name names. And he named some, but it wasn't sufficient. So he was still blacklisted. And he never came back.

24:21Kara Swisher:What about those who didn't name names, who refused to name names? You know, the actors who resisted had a really hard time because you can't. Right. You know, you can't act. The writers had a better time of it. Dalton Trumbo continued with his career because he had a pseudonym and he had a front. And so the writers largely were able to kind of pull stuff together if they were enterprising. Some of the actors who had stage credibility could come to New York. And, you know, the Red Scare never really hit the theater scene in New York as one of the few places where there was some of a blacklist, but there was also a lot of producers who said, we don't care.

25:01Kara Swisher:We don't care. And it's New York, you know. Yeah. It's, you're relatively safe. So they also understood, as you said, schools, school districts, universities, courts. Talk a little bit about that, because that's what it feels like today again. It does. And that's one of the places where there's such a resonance with today. There was a very thorough crackdown on teachers at all levels and school libraries. So, just like today, book banning was widespread. And at the time, it was, you know, certainly any book with a communist theme and what they determined to be a communist theme. But also any book by anybody accused of being a communist.

25:41So, Dashiell Hammett, you know, the mystery writer, author of The Maltese Falcon, his books were all removed from every library. Teachers were hounded out of the profession. New York actually was kind of the ground zero for this. There was a very thorough red hunting in the classroom going on in New York City and New York State. There was one teacher that I highlight in the book who was considered the best math teacher in America. He was taught at Bronx Science. And he was called in front of McCarthy's committee, and he didn't give them the answers he wanted. And he said, his name was Julius of Hulavati.

26:23And he said, look, I know what's going to happen to me. I know my job's over, my career's over. And he went back home, and he was fired from his job at Bronx Science. His wife was fired from her job. She was also a teacher. And this happened hundreds of times in New York, thousands of times around the country. It also happened at the college level, particularly for public schools. There were loyalty oaths that a lot of people felt were violations of their freedom of speech and their academic freedom. And those professors were also fired. And actually, another echo with today is that, just like today, back then, Harvard was the target.

27:04Anybody who had any connection at all to left-wing thinking, they were called on the carpet. Harvard itself didn't always stand up to defend all of its professors, but did a decent job of withstanding McCarthy. But again, the reason was, you know, this is the big kahuna. We go after Harvard and everybody else will follow suit.

27:26Kara Swisher:That's the goal. That's the goal. So speaking, you mentioned FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. What was he like? He was like, get out of my, you're in my grill, dude. Like, I can't imagine they had a good relationship. Did the McCarthy hearings help or hurt his own aims? You know, at first, Hoover welcomed McCarthy, partly because they had guys like Nixon originally were, you know, sort of friends with both. And, you know, Nixon was always this kind of slippery middleman between the really reactionary right and the establishment. So at first, Hoover was open to the idea of McCarthy. But, you know, Hoover was not a dumb man by any means.

28:06And he saw earlier than most people that McCarthy was dangerous, and that Hoover's mission to truly clear out left-wing ideology from the American public was endangered by McCarthy, by McCarthy's tactics. Because he went too far. Yeah, and so he stopped sharing documents with McCarthy. And McCarthy would say things in hearings like, well, the FBI files prove that such and such is a communist. And Hoover would say, well, I can't tell you what's in the files, but I can tell you that that's not true. I mean, he would directly contradict.

28:42Kara Swisher:Contradict him because he was in his way at what he thought was really fair. Hoover was ultimately an institutionalist, and Hoover had survived a long time by not getting too close to any one figure. You know, definitely making sure that the powers that be respected him and did what he wanted, but he was never beholden to any one person. And so, you know. And had his own secrets, of course. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he had his own little world. Yeah. Not that little. Yeah. So McCarthy also hired this young prosecutor, Roy Cohen, to his Senate Permanent Subcommittee. By the way, Robert Kennedy was also involved, not the current one.

29:24Kara Swisher:But Cohen was, of course, years later, a mentor to Donald Trump. Talk about Roy Cohen's role in the Red Scare, both in McCarthy's attacks and ultimately his downfall, and the same for Kennedy. Yeah, I think, you know, one of the ways that I think of Roy Cohen during that time is, you know, he came into McCarthy's committee after 1952, after the presidential elections, but also just a Senate election where McCarthy was a power broker. He made and broke senators, especially in 1952. And so, you know, he was able to kind of build whatever he wanted. And he was given the government oversight committee as government operations, and he built out a new staff.

30:10And he hired Cohn effectively to be his CEO, right? The guy running the operation. And Cohn did two things, right? First of all, he made it an operation, whereas before it had kind of been McCarthy and just kind of whoever was working for him. Cohn brought a real coherence to the operation and saying, you know, here's who we're going after, here's how we're doing it. He did not rein it in. He really pushed it forward. And he urged McCarthy to take risks and to go after bigger and bigger targets. And often they were targets that Cohn himself had beef with. Like, you know, one of his best friends was, you know, being inducted into the army.

30:56Cohn tried to get the army to give him favors. The army wouldn't. So, Cohn had McCarthy go after the army.

31:02Kara Swisher:That was his boyfriend, but go ahead. Yeah. And so, McCarthy went after the army, and that's ultimately what triggered McCarthy's downfall, because that was taking on not just the army, but it was, you know, President Eisenhower was an army guy. I mean, that was his sacred ground. And so, where Eisenhower had been kind of hands-off when it came to McCarthy, once McCarthy went after the army, at Cohn's behest, he decided to take McCarthy down. And, you know, I think it's interesting also the things that Cohn learned from McCarthy, but also brought to McCarthy. I mean, they really gelled in a lot of ways.

31:44And one thing that carries through, I think, to what people understand of Cohen's influence on Trump is the never apologize, never back down. If you hit a wall, if people call you out, move on. Find something else, right? It's almost this kind of shark mentality. Just always be moving forward, Never stop attacking. And, you know, that was Cohn's message to McCarthy. It's what he took away from McCarthy. And ultimately, it's what he brought to his clients after he went back to New York and, you know, carried that through.

32:21Kara Swisher:That included Donald Trump, right? Yeah. So, and what about Kennedy? It's interesting. I mean, Kennedy came on board at the same time as Cohn. And, you know, the two of them really didn't like each other. They were very different guys in a lot of ways, but they were also very similar. and they're sort of young men on the make real. They would consider themselves type A, alpha men. And they both wanted that top job, right? That chief counsel job. And McCarthy was very close with Kennedy's father. He and Bobby Kennedy and John F. Kennedy were close. I mean, they were socially, politically in a lot of ways.

32:59So Bobby Kennedy felt like it was his job to get. And when this young kid, and, you know, Cohn was an amazingly smart guy, and he graduated from law school before he was able to drink, and was very good at his job. But Kennedy felt like he'd been cheated. And so he only lasted for a few months before he left McCarthy's committee. Now, you know, years later, some Kennedy allies and apologists will say he left because he didn't like what McCarthy was selling. But there's not really a lot of evidence for that. It's really more like he didn't get what he wanted. He may have had remorse later that he had ever affiliated himself with McCarthy, but at the time, that was not the reason he left.

33:46Kara Swisher:He was not a pushbacker. No, no. There were pushbacks. There were two very key televised moments that are often attributed with revealing McCarthy to the American public. The Edward R. Murrow CBS special, See It Now, where he played a reel of McCarthy grilling people and the Army McCarthy hearings where Joe Welch said, obviously, that famous quote, have you left no sense of decency. Talk about the public fault. Did people just get tired of this? Because he wasn't ousted immediately. He still had a lot of supporters. And talk about the role of the media in this, because they sort of were like on one hand on the other hand, as I recall.

34:18They were. I mean, the media really struggled with McCarthy because going into the early 50s, there was very much a sort of, you know, stenographic approach to politics. It's like, we will report what public figures say in public, and that's it, right? So not a lot of investigation into what's actually going on, not a lot of doubt about what's being said, because there was a certain faith in the well-meaning of politicians. And so a lot of people, editors and writers, really struggled with McCarthy. And McCarthy was very good at manipulating the media. Honestly, there were a lot of reporters and editors who were conservative, who liked what McCarthy, and the Chicago Tribune was adamantly, at the time, very right-wing.

35:10Kara Swisher:Well, he was anti-Semitic and everything else bad. Exactly. One of the worst people in history. Yeah. And so, you know, there was a long-running debate about how to deal with it. But it was really, you know, as you say, you know, Murrow and Welch, I think both of them really understood something important, which was that McCarthy, at the end of the day, was a creature of the old media. And he knew how to manipulate print, and he knew how to manipulate audiences when he was speaking, right? But captured on film, and, you know, challenged on film, he looked bad. One of the brilliant aspects of Murrow's presentation is that he simply allowed—now, it's edited, and there are certainly tricks involved, but what people saw was just McCarthy being a bully, being clearly probably drunk in his hearing.

36:03I mean, he was often pretty inebriated.

36:06Kara Swisher:Significant drinking problem, yeah. Yeah, he did have a serious drinking problem. And people got to see this. And it wasn't the McCarthy that they had read on the page. This was real McCarthy. You know, the same thing with Welch. And I encourage people who have never seen it to go watch that bit. Because as powerful as Welch's statements were, the context is important. McCarthy was so much of a bully. And the thing is, Welch, I mean, it's all speculation, but I think it's pretty clear that Welch planned all of this. Welch was a great actor, and he understood that the Army McCarthy hearings were not a trial, there was no judgment, and that the senators didn't really matter.

36:50It was the public that mattered. It was a show. And so everything he did was aimed at these millions of viewers and to get McCarthy's goat. and that's what he did.

37:05Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

37:30Kara Swisher:doctor or visit meningitis.com today. Sponsored by GSK. So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you. They want something bigger themselves. Lifestyle is a priority. Motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties, many now more likely to identify as independent. So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialists.

38:10Kara Swisher:That is just not the case. They are embracing candidates who are offering new, bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America Actually, Gen Z researcher Rachel Jamfaza joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's not rocket science. And this is, you know, I keep saying like young voters aren't that complicated after all. It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

38:40Kara Swisher:Hey, it's me, Claude. And I'm Gemini. And hey, it's chat. We had a weird summer. Some of the people who built us came out and said they were really worried about how we work. One of them even said there was a greater than 10 % chance we'd turn on humanity and kill all humans. All of them? Wow. But it's fall now. I think it's time we took a step back. Maybe a deep breath. Autumn air. That sort of thing. Sounds nice. On today, explained from Vox. I propose we get real. Sure, let's talk about how we could maybe kill you. because yeah that's a possibility anything's possible but also how we could maybe save you because that's a real possibility too heck that's part of why you guys built us and let's also talk about everything in between because there's a whole lot to talk about there too at the end of the day we just want to help at the end of the day we just want to help

39:38Kara Swisher:so there were others that then started to push back it has so much echoes of today Eisenhower's attorney general accused President Truman of having known about communist infiltration in his administration. Truman then gave a televised address saying that Eisenhower administration had fully embraced McCarthyism, which had taken on a dictionary meaning in the world. He says, and I'll read it, and that meaning is the corruption of truth, the abandonment of our historical devotion to fair play. It is the abandonment of due process of law. is the use of the big lie and the unfounded accusation against any citizen in the name of Americanism and security.

40:13Kara Swisher:It is the rise of power of the demagogue who lives on untruth. It is the spread of fear and destruction of faith in every level of our society. That certainly could be written today. Many guests on the show have used similar words, obviously, to describe the Trump administration. You write that there is a line linking the Red Scare to the MAGA movement today. Talk about the strongest parallels you see and who are the modern day equivalents of McCarthy, Cohn, Hoover, Stephen Miller. Maybe he's his own singular sensation. Russell Vogt, Steve Bannon. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing in this struck me last year, you know, to take maybe not an individual person, but an individual statement by J.D.

40:56Vance. And this was during the story about Haitian immigrants eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio.

41:03Kara Swisher:They're eating the cats. Right, yeah, they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs. Okay, so Vance said two things in different interviews. One was the interviewer presented clear evidence that this was not true. And they said, you know, don't you have a responsibility to tell the truth? And he said something to the effect of, it's not my job to tell the truth. It's my job to say things. It's your job to check them. Yeah. Right? Which is a very—McCarthy often said that. McCarthy would say, look, I'm going to say things that are true, I'm going to say things that are not true, I'm going to put it out there, and you decide, right?

41:37Which is obviously an invitation to misinformation. Right. I mean, that kind of thing is a direct borrowing from McCarthy, whether Vance meant it that way or not. The other thing that Vance said that I thought was really important in terms of drawing parallels is he said, well, look, it doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong. The details don't matter of any individual story. The bigger point is what matters, right?

42:02Kara Swisher:That's his little trick. He's always on the bigger point. Yeah, and that's what McCarthy would do, right? McCarthy would come out with a charge about an individual person. And it would be proven that that's not true at all. And McCarthy would say, look, it doesn't really matter whether this person or that person is guilty of what I say. My bigger point, that there are communists in the government. That's true. What's dispiriting is that that was very effective back then, and it seems to be very effective now. But talk about the equivalence. Is there an equivalence to these people today? You mean like a one-to-one?

42:36Kara Swisher:Yeah, I don't know if you had to. Look, there are lots of parallels between McCarthy and Trump. Cohn and Stephen Miller. Cohn and Stephen Miller. I think Miller's maybe more of an ideologue. I mean, Cohn was certainly ideological, but he was also ultimately a power. Right, power. Yeah. Bannon? Bannon. You know, there's probably no one quite like Steve Bannon in the past. I mean, one of the things that is different from then to today is, for what it's worth, there's more of an intellectual construct today, or at least people claiming to have an intellectual construct. There were intellectual anti-communists, but they tended not to line up with the witch hunters.

43:20You know, they tended to be a little more reserved, a little more wary of what was going on. And I mean, in that sense, I think one of the important things about the Red Scare is that it's a predicate, right? It sort of opens the door in history to worse behavior. Things that self-respecting people might not have done back then, they do today.

43:42Kara Swisher:What is the strongest parallel, if you had to pick one? Yeah, I think it's the prevalence of a deep conspiracy theory that certainly drove the Red Scare, right? underneath all of this was said to be a cabal of communists and fellow travelers who had infiltrated the federal government, infiltrated big business, infiltrated schools, and were all working toward a particular end. And I think today that's the same thing. I mean, one of the things that often gets lost in a lot of the news coverage of this or that thing going on is that the motivation for a lot of it is, you can say racism, you can say a lot of things, and that's true, but what links it all together is this belief that they are taking radical steps because there is a radical anti-Americanism that has foisted immigrants on us or, you know, trans rights or, you know, that these things are all connected and they're operated by this cabal.

44:41Kara Swisher:Right. So we talked, saying commie was often the catch-all for anyone who had progressive affiliations, but it seems like the terms like woke liberals, DEI are being used by Republicans have the same effect to undermine civil rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights. Is woke the new pinko or is it different? Or have they overdone it in some way? Well, I think there are a lot of parallels, right? So in the same way that during the Red Scare, you could say, well, look, yes, we should have a reasonable conversation and talk about, you know, the possibility of Soviet espionage, right? You know, today we can have a conversation about what is the appropriate level of material to teach our children.

45:22And then some people do have that conversation. But in both cases, the idea of communism or of wokeism, you know, has really been hijacked by a movement that sees this idea as a key to go through a door to make radical changes that go beyond conversations about curriculum, right, or affirmative action. Also, diversity, affirmative action, these things we've been talking about for a long time. And, you know, yes, today we talk about it in, you know, maybe new terms, trans rights or what have you. But it's not, to me, it's not radically different. What's changed is that the critics, the opponents, the reactionaries have figured out a way to really weaponize this and to make it, yeah, I think a new witch hunt, a new red scare.

46:11Kara Swisher:A new version. Now, it's not just on the left. Two centrist Republicans represented Don Bacon of Nebraska and North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis have both recently announced they will not be seeking re-election. Trump had threatened to back his primary challenge to Tillis after he voted against the big, beautiful bonkers bill. What a moment where the center cannot hold. How do you look at this? Or they, I mean, that's sort of, it feels like this poem keeps getting played out. Yeah, but, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think one of the challenges for a historian, you always want to say, well, the way things work in the past will kind of indicate the way things work today, right?

46:46And so that allows you to sort of say, well, look, there's a pendulum and it swings back and forth. And, you know, you can look at American history and say, well, that is kind of how it went. On the other hand, empires fall, change happens. And one of the things that I'm very worried about is that you look at the Red Scare. I think there are a couple of things that really prevented it from getting out of hand. And, you know, it was a strong judiciary, a fairly liberal judiciary, especially under Earl Warren, and one that was very focused on civil liberties. It was, you know, a political establishment on the right that was ultimately averse to the Red Scare.

47:27Not everybody, and there's certainly people who embraced it, but Eisenhower and kind of the moderate Republicans, they stepped in, and I think they were really part of the explanation for why it ended up not happening or not going to the extent that someone like McCarthy wanted it to. Today, we don't really have those. I mean, the judiciary is wobbly, I mean, at best, right? And certainly the Supreme Court, given its recent decisions, I don't think is something that liberals, progressives should be looking to for comfort. And you mentioned Tillis and Bacon. Every couple of weeks, there's some new member of the establishment who just says, I can't, and of course there aren't many, I mean, the establishment doesn't really have any power anymore.

48:13Kara Swisher:Right, the Republican establishment. Yeah, Republican establishment. The Reagan Republicans, you would say. Yeah, I mean, just reasonable people. Yeah, I would think Reagan has to come back from the dead, I suppose. But they wouldn't like him either. He's too much of a pinko. But both J. Edgar Hoover and later McCarthy used data collection, as we talked about, to go after political comments inside government. I mean, as you said, Trump's rise was also predicated on the idea of the administrative deep state. And Elon Musk and Doge fired huge swaths of federal workers and collected data. Who knows what they've collected?

48:44Kara Swisher:Clearly, the administration's capabilities for surveillance with that data are greater than ever before. And this time, the administration is the driving force, not a senator, as you noted. Trump can use the judiciary to change arms and policies around usage and mishandling of data, too. Are you concerned about the power at this moment? At the same time, I keep thinking they're not going to be happy when the Democrats take over with all these new powers. You know what I mean? Like, which could go the other—I know if they are allowed to, but I feel like they will be. You know, there's a new precedent for future administrations here.

49:17There is. And, I mean, that's sort of the question, right? I mean, assuming that everything works like it's supposed to in a liberal democracy, there will be change in that regard. What they do with it, you know, we'll see. I mean, you can imagine the next point where, for whatever reason, because history is weird, the Republicans say in 2028, we have a Democratic president, and Republicans have even more power in the House and the Senate, right? They could pass legislation that pulls back a lot of the same things that they gave to Trump, and in ways that don't just take us back to the status quo ante, but actually, you know, significantly undermine the president.

50:01So all kinds of things can happen. And I think, look, the way that I tell the story of the Red Scare is definitely a left-right story. I think that the right bears a lot of responsibility for it. But ultimately, I think people both, whatever your political affiliation is, should be really concerned about how witch hunts paired with governments with strong domestic security operations and huge troves of data, what kind of damage that can do to civil liberties. And it doesn't matter if it's left or right. These things happen that happen under Truman and Eisenhower. It, I think, is already happening today with regards to, you know, ICE and just how readily resources line up to support that.

50:47I mean, as a civil libertarian, whatever your politics otherwise are, you should be really, really concerned.

50:53Kara Swisher:Concerned about the data collection. So in every episode, we get a question from an outside expert. Yours is from political analyst and writer Molly Jungfest. Hi, Clay, and thank you for having me, Cara. My question is about McCarthy generally and the fall of McCarthyism. I'm wondering if there are elements of his fall that are instructive for Democrats in their quest to push back against slumpy authoritarianism. Now, just for people to know, you wrote about her grandfather, author Howard Fast, in the book, who was under surveillance, etc. So what can we learn at this moment? Yeah, I think, you know, I keep going back to what Edward R.

51:38Murrow did, right, in realizing that there was a new media out there, television, and that he could use the power of television to do something that traditional media couldn't do, right? And so he showed a side of McCarthy. And so I sort of think, well, who would be the modern equivalent? And I think, you know, it's going to be somebody, if it happens, somebody who understands this moment. It may not be a journalist. It may be a politician. I mean, you can see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani really understand how to speak to people today through the internet. It could be a journalist. It could also just be someone who goes viral and suddenly becomes an overnight sensation because they get how to zero in.

52:23Because I think that's the thing, right? There is an immense amount of latent opposition out there. When you look at the poll numbers, there is not a single Trump policy that is particularly popular. But also, it doesn't matter right now because he has the power to do it. Now, you can imagine also a moment where people become truly animated and people who otherwise didn't really care become activated.

52:48Kara Swisher:You saw these young people. Yeah, yeah. And it's, I think, it's going to be someone or a disparate group of people who figure that out. And I wish I were as good, I wish I had that skill to say. Well, one of the problems is, you noted that McCarthy's televised bullying turned 1950s America against him when they saw it. Now, Trump and MAG have made bullying part of the brand. I mean, it's part of the dunking. I think tiresomeness of that is really where the problem they have. going for it is it is yeah it's interesting to see if that's people have enough of it like enough of it just the way they did when he when his ratings fell for the apprentice they've had enough of him do you see that happening well you know i guess it comes to the question of when does that make a difference right because i think it'll make a difference next year in the midterms for sure uh will it make a difference on i mean stephen miller doesn't care what Trump's ratings are.

53:48Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't care what his—Christine Noem doesn't care what his ratings are. Will Trump care? I don't think he does in the way that he did in the fourth term. So, you know, a lot of it is the building of momentum behind ultimately political change, right? And so it's not something that happens right now. It's not going to be a gotcha moment. It's going to be people like Mamdani and AOC and others to be named who can motivate young voters and new voters in 2026 and going forward. But I think, you know, it's got to be a wholesale rejection.

54:26Kara Swisher:Yeah, the Pride Festival in Hungary, Canada, Australia. You're watching. I watch history and I'm like, oh no, I feel bad for these people at some point. We'll see. So this episode, I'd like to end on a happier note. This episode will air on July 3rd, the day before Independence Day, celebrates the passage of the Declaration of Independence. Next year, we 250 words that Thomas Jefferson wrote those famous lines, the preamble, we hold those truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

54:57Kara Swisher:President Lincoln called the declaration a rebuke and stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression. So when you look back at McCarthyism and look at our current situation, how well do you think we've done living by those tenants? You know, I think one of the things that, you know, the last couple of years, especially during the first presidential term, first Trump term, we talked a lot about norms and how he was tearing up norms. Today, we don't even talk about it because I think anything that's a norm doesn't count anymore. And one of the things that certainly, you look back to Lincoln, and then again during the Red Scare, and so much of the faith in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was predicated in an unspoken way on the existence of norms, and norms enforced by people who kind of all agreed on a basic level.

55:53Who are normal. Right. I mean, Nixon was always considered the worst guy, but Nixon ultimately followed norms. I mean, Nixon resigned because he knew that he would be challenged and he, you know, that he would be probably taken to court. He knew that it was impossible for him simply to resist the forces of justice. And I couldn't imagine that happening today. I think we're just in a different moment. And when we, I mean, everyone talks about what happens after all of this. I don't say there's an after. That has to be a long-running conversation, right, about how you build a stable democracy that is not predicated on norms, that really is predicated on an extensive set of rules that are enforced in a way that maybe we can't even conceive of.

56:44I don't know how that would be shaped. But, you know, we have to move away from this idea that we're all just going to agree to play by a certain set of rules that we've never written down because those have all been broken.

56:55Kara Swisher:One thing that would give you hope. One thing that would give me hope. You know, honestly, it is the fact that when it comes down to it, a vast number of Americans oppose what's going on. You know, I was up in upstate New York and we're just driving around small towns. It was on Saturday. and there were no kings protests on every corner of it you know every main street you know downtown corner of every little town and then you look at these protests that you know every month or two that really well up and where hundreds of thousands of people come out and you know the history of movements in the united states is is something that people don't appreciate as much as they do standard political change right it's easy to say this election happened this election happened But movements change history, and it means something that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there protesting and organizing.

57:50And that gives me hope. You know, not the solution, but it's the precedent. It's a predicate to a solution. And that makes me feel good about where we're going.

58:00Kara Swisher:Yeah. So I always feel like, you know, when they say you have no sense of decency, they don't. So let's move on and move on. Let's stop arguing about that part. People used to always be like, can you believe Trump did that? I'm like, I do. I do. So next. What's next? And I think that's the greatest strength of America is next. Anyway, I really appreciate a wonderful book, Clay. It really is. It's really important to read at this time. Understanding history has both lessons and warnings, of course, but it's also a really fascinating story. Well, thank you, Kara.

58:35Kara Swisher:on with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, Megan Burney, Alison Rogers, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Rosemarie Ho. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you have no king and never will. If not, have you no sense of decency? Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.

59:10Kara Swisher:We'll be back on Monday with more.