Raging Moderates: A Year of Trump 2.0; A Decade of the War on Truth (ft. Heather Cox Richardson)

27:07I'm thinking back to how ineffective it was from a political strategy point of view to argue that, you know, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. We all saw January 6th and a majority of people just decided they didn't really care that much. right? Whether they thought it was a day of love and a bunch of tourists, like they moved on and they thought my grocery prices are too high. And so I'm going to take this guy back and we'll see what he can do about it. And I feel like a similar challenge is mounting, I guess, in the national consciousness and for the Democratic Party to be able to acknowledge reality and the things that you're saying and that history repeats itself, but to not seem like, you know, out on an island talking about issues that don't relate to people's everyday lives and get them actually motivated to go to the polls.

27:53So let's go back a second there. You know, I always feel like we must put the role of the media into our American political system because I'm not at all convinced that Americans walked away from the idea of a threat to democracy. What I do think is that the media, as it existed until very recently, has really not presented to the American people what was really happening and the stakes of that happening. And rather than going and looking at Trump, let's look a little bit at the Biden administration, which I covered really closely. And it just would floor me that they would work on something huge for a really long time, like Lena Kahn, making sure that for the first time since the 1980s, when we looked at antitrust in the United States, that rather than simply saying, oh, so long as it makes people get cheaper products in the short run, we don't care how many different organizations make themselves into one giant conglomerate.

28:51What she did is she recovered the older version of antitrust that said, we're going to look at what matters to workers and to the environment and to the community, the way that antitrust laws were supposed to be. And that got almost no coverage at all. And then on the other side of it, people are sort of waking up and going, hey, wait a minute, all these things are consolidating and all these are consolidating, and that's a problem. Americans should have had access to what was going on then. And certainly back to the 1980s when Robert Bork was the person who said, we got to change the way we look at antitrust laws.

29:23There was so much that people did not have access to. And I do think that that is changing. I think a lot of independent media is getting real traction because people honestly want to learn what the world looks like around them. You know, people want to learn. They want to know what the world looks like. But in terms of going forward, you know, the Democrats, of course, are the opposition party right now. But I don't think this is about Democrats or Republicans. I think this is about democracy versus authoritarianism. And those things right now are represented largely by the Democrats. but we have an awful lot of independents running around there and by the Republican Party.

30:02And that looks very much like the 1850s. So once you've got that out of the way, one of the things that I always look at is moments when we have had the rise of oligarchs who tried to take over our system and destroy democracy. And what really jumps out is the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s slash early 30s. And in all of those moments, yes, ordinary Americans were getting screwed. They were getting screwed economically, they were getting screwed culturally, and so on. But the politicians that managed to harness that in positive ways were the ones who did not divorce that economic need on the part of the majority of Americans from the concept of democracy.

30:41So you look, for example, at FDR, but you also could look at Lincoln or at Theodore Roosevelt or, I'm sorry, Grover Cleveland. All of them said, if you let oligarchs take over our system and destroy democracy, you will end up in servitude to them for the rest of your lives. It's the same story. It's not democracy versus eggs. It's eggs are going to be expensive unless you protect democracy. And that's something I feel like it's an opportunity that democratic electeds, many of them, not all of them, but many of them are missing because they think it's one or the other. but it's the same story. And the advantage that you get when you talk about those larger concepts of democracy or of systems of government is that it makes people understand that they're part of a larger world and it gives their lives meaning in a way that the Trump movement gave a lot of people's lives meaning by saying, you know, here we are, we're 1776.

31:38Remember Lauren Boebert the morning of January 6th, 2021. We're going to take back America. Well, here's a newsflash. Those of us who are interested in protecting American democracy are actually on the side of our great American heroes. And we, too, can say it's time for us to take back democracy. It's time for us to defend this system of government that people are fighting for all over the world. And by the way, if we do that, your egg prices are going to come down, which is the reality. I love that. And some Democratic politicians listen to this. So I hope that they heed your advice because I would love a democracy coom egg slogan that we could fit on a bumper sticker.

32:17We're going to take a quick break. Stay with us.

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33:26Support for the show comes from Harvey AI. Laws craft forged through repetition, sharpened by judgment, perfected in the details most people never see. Practice made perfect is Harvey's belief in relentless refinement, in turning complexity into clarity, pressure into precision, and experience into advantage. Legal work isn't just about knowing the law, it's about applying it carefully, consistently, and under real stakes. Harvey is an AI platform built specifically for legal practice, helping teams analyze large volumes of documents, draft with precision, and collaborate securely across complex matters.

33:57It doesn't replace expertise, it strengthens it, making teams faster, more exacting, more certain. Today, more than half of the AM Law 100 use Harvey as part of their workflow. Learn more at Harvey.ai.

34:14Support for the show comes from Harvey.ai. Law is craft, forged through repetition, sharpened by judgment, perfected in the details most people never see. Practice made perfect is Harvey's belief in relentless refinement, in turning complexity into clarity, pressure into precision, and experience into advantage. Legal work isn't just about knowing the law, it's about applying it carefully, consistently, and under real stakes. Harvey is an AI platform built specifically for legal practice, helping teams analyze large volumes of documents, draft with precision, and collaborate securely across complex matters.

34:46It doesn't replace expertise, it strengthens it, making teams faster, more exacting, more certain. Today, more than half of the AM Law 100 use Harvey as part of their workflow. Learn more at Harvey.ai.

35:03Welcome back. I want to go global now. It's Davos week. Donald Trump is there. He's not crashing the party. He's the party this time around the World Economic Forum. Once the temple of climate pledges and global cooperation is rolling out the red carpet for Trump and his inner circle as AI growth and dealmaking replace talk of equity and sustainability. I've been looking through the programs. You cannot find any of the words that we were used to seeing for these conversations at Davos. You know, people are not talking about sustainability. They're not even talking about income inequality. It's just like, where is Scott Besant?

35:39And, you know, what is Donald Trump going to do with his board of peace? Trump is really upending the global order, and that's where I want to start. And you had already mentioned this in our elongated and awesome banter section. But what is your perspective on—I don't want to just make this about Davos—but, like, where are we in terms of the world order? I was listening to Emmanuel Macron this morning cozying up to China. That was his opening statement, basically. This is after Donald Trump published private text messages between him and the NATO secretary general. And with Macron, who were very flattering as usual, though Macron did say, I have no idea what you're doing with Greenland.

36:19But what do you make of how Davos is handling Trump? Well, you know, they always say in dysfunctional families that it's the loose cannon in the family that gets all the attention because you simply don't know what that person is going to do. And you have to find a way to neutralize that person. And I think that's what you're seeing there. I do think he is upending the world order and forcing the world to center around China, which is sort of mind-boggling when you think of the fact that under the Biden administration, the U.S. stepped up to challenge China with the Chips and Science Act and with the Inflation Reduction Act, and we were on track to do it.

36:54And of course, he's just gutted all of that, essentially forcing people who are interested in climate sustainability to go to China, which is producing things like cars and appliances and different ways of harnessing renewable energy, which will make them the well, it'll become the Chinese century because everybody's appliances will have to work on the system that the Chinese invent rather than the U.S. and or Europe, but especially the U.S. invents. I mean, it's really, it is just astonishing to look at. And again, I play out in my head a lot of what that might look like for the next several generations.

37:27You know, I always try to put a positive spin on it, but it is mind-boggling that we got here in this amount of time. So there is that. There is the fact that Trump is, as I say, I don't think he knows if he's a foot or horseback, and he is thinking like it's all kind of a joke that he's got this big army and he can do whatever he wants. publishing those text messages was, you know, that was like a fifth grader. You know, it was just maybe not even fifth grade. I mean, it was just bizarre. The photographs he posted with Greenland as an American flag, I mean, it was just trolling. It was just childish trolling, which I think reflects the sort of feedback loop that he is in among those people who think the United States of America is kind of a joke and his play thing.

38:09And it is profoundly, profoundly disturbing. One of the things that is also missing from Davos in its incarnation now is it was supposed to be signing, was on the program to sign an agreement for rebuilding Ukraine. And no one's talking about Ukraine. That got taken off the program. And I don't believe right now that Volodymyr Zelensky is planning to go any longer. And when you think about what Trump is doing, the absolute chaos that he is sowing, one of the things that it has done is it has opened the way for Russian President Vladimir Putin to increase dramatically his assaults on Ukraine. That war is now going into its fourth year, as in February.

38:52They have been fighting there longer than the Soviets fought in World War II. That, I think, is worth noting that by making all the attention come on to him. Trump has taken attention away from Vladimir Putin and his assault on Ukraine. And also he has reduced attention in the United States to the Epstein files, for which his Department of Justice is in absolute disregard of the law. They're breaking the law. It's been more than 30 days since by law they had to release those in full and they've released less than 1%. And then, of course, we also have the fact that, you know, I actually was up very late last night reading through a number of transcripts and reports and so on.

39:34On the 22nd of January, which is this Thursday, Special Counsel Jack Smith will be testifying in public about his investigation, primarily the one of Trump's attempt to overturn the election in 2020, because he's sort of been silenced over the investigation of the retention of classified documents. But, you know, by Trump simply being a chaos monkey, he is keeping us from discussing the things that really matter to world stability, to the world economy, to the United States of America in terms of its economy. Today, the stock market has plummeted after his attacks on Greenland, his verbal attacks so far on Greenland, and the attacks on American democracy.

40:19So, you know, What's happening in Davos, it just sort of, I guess, chaos monkey is the way I think about what Trump is doing over there. And again, I think at some level it's worth saying I find this profoundly sad. You know, I've spent my whole life studying the United States of America because I believe in the mission. I believe in the power of the people who have built what they have built. And that's not to say that it has been without flaws by any stretch of the imagination. That's what I tend to write about is the flaws in my books. But the idea that we are tearing down 300 years of Americans of all stripes trying to build a world in which people have a say in their government, have the right to consent to their government, have the right to be treated equally before the law, and have a right to equal access to resources at the hands of this one man is just, aside from everything else, profoundly sad to me.

41:15And I guess I never say that enough. It's heartbreaking. It is, absolutely. And that so many people with these kinds of evil aspirations found their vessel in Trump because, I mean, so many of his beliefs that he held for his whole pre-political life are just wiped away, right? And he was this blank-ish canvas that bad actors could write all over. And I think that it's how we've ended up in a lot of this mess. And I was particularly struck. A colleague of mine was telling an anecdote about Trump that he asked him, you know, like, what's going on with the ballroom, right? You know, and the auto pen portraits on the walls and all this stuff.

41:57And he said Trump responded something like, well, if I don't do it, nobody will. And it's the same attitude about the Nobel Peace Prize, right? Like if I don't scream from the rooftops that I deserve this thing, I'm never going to get it. And I don't want to reduce it just to a petulant child because he's the leader of the free world. But as the mother of a four-year-old and a 21-month-old, I recognize a lot of this behavior and it's so disturbing. and you rightly say always trolling about Greenland, but I got a message overnight from an old colleague of mine from my PhD program in London, who's Danish, and a clip of The Five, the show that I'm on, made it over to them, was on their show, and they were talking about the cavalier attitude towards the European project and our NATO allies, and he said, we're really scared.

42:50And so people who wipe this away as just a troll, people we're frightening millions of people with what we're doing right now and how many people are maybe not rubber stamping it but just kind of letting it go or saying in a gaggle oh i didn't you know i didn't see what he said which republicans love to do and i was in london for six years i did my grad school work there and i remember how hard the news about brexit actually happening hit me where i said this can't be i get it and it had similar elements right a big propaganda campaign was blaming, you know, dark-skinned people. Do you remember those images of people like running through the forests?

43:30They're taking your jobs, they're taking your health care, making up this huge scandal about the NHS, for instance. And then, you know, it only took months for there to be a huge amount of regret on the part of the Brits for what they had done, that they had siphoned themselves off from Europe, not just because of money and jobs and things like that, but because of their spirit and their vibe, right? They're Europeans, and now they don't have access to it, and they're not part of it in the same way. And I don't want to feel that from the post-World War II order. I don't want to sit here and say, oh, we're not in the same camp with the French and the German and the Swedes and the Danes and all the good guys.

44:13I'm not going to argue with you. Yeah. It's just my sad story, I guess. No, the one thing about that is I think you have to be careful. All these people saying he doesn't really mean it, he's joking, he's just trolling. This is how he tests out ideas. And this has been a hallmark. The number of people who keep saying, oh, he'd never do that, and here we are. And this worries me terribly when you see electeds, like you say, saying, oh, he doesn't really mean that. That's a negotiating tactic. You know, no, you have to take him seriously at this point. You have to believe that he's testing out these ideas.

44:48because, again, you know, when you think about where we were 10 years ago, if you had said to any American, even those who have voted for Trump three times, that we were going to have troops in the streets going after Americans, they would have said, I want no part of that. And yet here we are down the road where it's actually happened. So I think we do have to take those things seriously. There is this tendency of Americans, especially perhaps, to say, oh, we'd never really do that. Right. But we are doing that. And I don't think people want to be where we are. I certainly don't think they want to be where we're going.

45:25If you just look at what will happen to this country if we continue down this road, I mean, the legal immigration will plummet dramatically, which is a huge issue for a country whose population is aging as it is. In every way, he is, as Jarrett Graff, the journalist, said, killing this nation by suicide. And I don't think people want to be there, but I still don't think people take it seriously enough. I mean, I shouldn't say that. Many, many, many people take it seriously enough. But the number of people who need to be engaged in getting rid of this president are not there yet. And again, we were talking early about the midterm elections, and I have seen people say, oh, we can vote them out in the midterms.

46:07Well, think of the damage that has already happened in a year. And it seems to me they are dramatically ramping up that damage as his popularity drops and as his mental stability deteriorates. I think we got to figure out a way out before next November. What does a way out look like? Well, I don't know. If I had it, believe me, I would be doing it and not talking to you. I was like, oh my God, maybe she has it. Well, I mean, you know, I always come back to the American people. The American people have to pressure their electeds enough that they actually do their jobs. That's what I come to. But for me, where are those pressure points?

46:43To really make them understand that they are not just talking about losing their own jobs. They're not just talking about the destruction of the United States. That we are talking about the destruction of the Republican Party forever. Because it seems to me that's the only way you can convince the— We need to step up right now. The Republicans, the Democrats are there. We need four, four Republicans in the House and the Senate. And we could stop this. So one pressure point that cuts across partisan lines is the Epstein files, which you mentioned. So now they've broken the law. They had 30 days to release the millions of documents.

47:21So far, I think only over a million have been released. the survivors are regularly speaking out about how ridiculous this is and how re-traumatizing it is for this to be drawn out in this way. What do you think the impact of the Epstein files is going to be? Do you think we will ever see them? And do you give credence to the idea that it is what motivates Donald Trump to make almost every decision, that he is just running from whatever it is that's in these pages? So I don't give a lot of thought to what is making Trump do anything. That's healthier. Yeah, I mean, it's just, what's the point?

47:57Like, you know, people say to me all the time, do you think he's a Russian agent? I'm like, I don't care. Like, I care what he does. And I don't see how his behavior would be all that different if, you know, we had a big report card coming for Donald Trump from Putin. So I don't know what is motivating him. And I don't need to know what's in those Epstein files to know that the administration considers them so explosive that they are doing everything they can to discredit them. To me, like one of the things that I find fascinating about studying history and especially politics is that often you don't have the elephant, you have the space around the elephant.

48:36So rather than looking at what's happening, you know, why is Trump worried about the Epstein files? I'm interested in looking at how are people reacting to the Epstein files? Can we tell anything by the way they're reacting? And there is absolutely no doubt this administration is completely panicked over the idea of the release of any more of those files. And what they have released is absolutely damning. So you have to assume that whatever else is in there, and we know there are many things in there. There are videotapes, there are photographs, there's testimony, there's, you know, the investigation.

49:11And by the way, there's also crap in that. A lot of that is raw material that hasn't been properly vetted. People are making the mistake of seeing the worst stuff that they're throwing out there trolling us with and thinking that that's it so that when that gets discredited they can say the whole thing they will be able to say that's right so i think you have to assume that whatever is in there is extraordinarily bad but one of the things that i did quite late last night was reading the jack smith's deposition from december 17th he was speaking before the house judiciary committee and again reading for the space around the elephant rather than the elephant.

49:47What is interesting to me about that is the degree to which the Republican majority of the House Judiciary Committee, and this is public, by the way, anybody can read this, is focused almost exclusively on the fact that the investigation into Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election got the toll records of the members of Congress that Trump called. And they didn't get the content. That's not what the toll records are. It's who made the call and how long the call lasted. And they used almost all of their time in a multi-hour deposition, essentially trying to suss out how much Smith knew about the Republican members of Congress.

50:32And do with that what you will, but oh my God, does it jump out at you that this is what they are tying themselves in knots over, not what Trump did, not, you know, what other people did. This is what they are concerned about. Well, I look at that and I think, as a historian, why? I can certainly see saying, hey, we want to make sure there's actual guard rails around the procedure, which there obviously were. Jack Smith was very much within the law and got all the right paperwork and everything to do that. But why was that their overwhelming focus. And those sorts of questions, I think, will expose the idea that, you know, this is not just Trump, that there has been poison within the Republican Party operating for a while now.

51:14I think based on, again, that idea that if Democrats ever took office, they couldn't do it legitimately and that their governance would somehow be illegitimate. And that, I think, when we get to the other side of this, and we will because time moves forward, we're going to have to do a pretty big reckoning of how the United States got to such a place that we could have people defending a president who is clearly not up to the game of the presidency and who was destroying the United States of America's power on the global stage and economy at home and nodded at it. Because this is not just a disease of Trump.

51:53This is a disease of American democracy. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I remember when this first leaked out about So they were calling it wiretapping. So Senator Ron Johnson and Josh Hawley, but it was metadata, which is completely different. And they were just going to friendly faces in the media and telling them, you know, I was wiretapped by Jack Smith. And this is such an outrage. And because the story was moving quickly, some people didn't notice the difference between just knowing who you called and how long you were talking to them versus actually having a wiretap, which would go through a whole different procedure to get.

52:28But it will be interesting. And now we have Jack Smith to be watching as well. And he's opening up his own law firm with some other good guys, which should be interesting. Well, what is interesting about the Jack Smith thing, though, aside from everything else, is Trump knows what happened that day. Yeah. I mean, he knows it. I mean, whatever he's got access to in his mind still. And he knows that Jack Smith knows it. So aside from everything you and I could speculate on or whatever, he is not behaving as a man who feels like more knowledge about his behavior is going to in any number of fields.

53:01Epstein, the Mar-a-Lago retained documents, January 20th, you know, the cryptocurrency stuff, you know, any of that stuff. He's not acting like a man who wants full transparency because it will clear his name. And, you know, there's an awful lot of people who have access to an awful lot of information. And at some point, somebody starts to spill. Yeah. We'll wait to see who that is. I want to take one more quick break. Stay with us.

53:33This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed-sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once.

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54:51Legal work isn't just about knowing the law. It's about applying it carefully, consistently, and under real stakes. Harvey is an AI platform built specifically for legal practice, helping teams analyze large volumes of documents, draft with precision, and collaborate securely across complex matters. It doesn't replace expertise, it strengthens it, making teams faster, more exacting, and more certain. Today, more than half of the Amlaw 100 use Harvey as part of their workflow. Learn more at harvey.ai.

55:30And welcome back. Before we go, so 2026, we're only, what is it, three weeks in. it sucks. And so there is a new viral trend all over social media where people are reliving 2016 again, which is a political obsessive, isn't necessarily the happiest time in my life. But folks on the Internet seem pretty joyful. Beyonce's Lemonade came out. We had Pokemon Go, which was a huge deal. Well, remember Pokemon to the polls? I don't know who created Pokemon Go. but i'm trying to figure out how we get them to have pokemon go to the polls and then we lost um you know chokers it was like a lot of lighter cultural fare was happening in 2016 and as a historian what do you make of this desperate pursuit of nostalgia looking back to a happier time.

56:30And do you think there's anything specific about 2016 or it's just kind of neat and tidy to say, where were you 10 years ago? I'm laughing about the Pokemon Go thing because what I remember about that is my friends in public history in the National Park Service, for example, were beside themselves because... Oh, because everyone was hunting all over? Yes. That's awesome. Yes. And so people kept trying to break in and they're like, we really don't want to have you guys arrested, but you can't do this because we have to call the cops when you leap the fence to find your Pokemon Go. And I just remember people tearing their hair out, being like, put the stupid things outside the fence.

57:08It's so good. Well, you know, I don't think it is unreasonable for people to be nostalgic for a time when we felt more secure in so many ways. You know, for so long, Americans could argue about the edges of politics because we had the sense of stability in the world and sense of stability in the economy. Even people like me were screaming about how this economy is not fair and all that. Lots of people felt that the world was like it had been for their parents and for the people before that, right back to World War II. You know, I'm older than you. I remember people, a lot of them, including my own parents, who lived through the Depression.

57:45And believe me, they were never calm about what could happen. They had seen the rise of the Depression. They had seen World War II. They had seen the rise of communism and the American reaction to that. They always knew that the world could be unpredictable. I think a lot of Americans didn't believe it could be. And when we think back to 2016, we think of a period in which things felt stable, even if, again, people like me kept saying, well, they really aren't yet. But within that, you just said something really important. You mentioned Beyonce there. And in the late 19th century, for example, which we tend to think of certainly the last years of Reconstruction in that period as being really horrific years.

58:26I mean, you have the lynchings and you have the rise of the robber barons and you have the strikes and you have people dying of disease and you have, you know, the incredible horrific wars against indigenous Americans and so on. But we do tend to forget that when people lived through it, they were also seeing, you know, the rise of ragtime and a whole kind of new fashion. You get the idea of women actually being able to work outside the home in really important ways, teaching and trying to reform society. You get new music. You get new languages. You get Anzia Yezierska is writing in that period.

59:02You have all these new immigrant voices and indigenous voices. We have hundreds, literally hundreds of Black newspapers. And I would make the argument that in these periods of real political fear and instability, the flower that grows from them, if you will, is new voices, new ways of looking at the world, new art, new literature, new people. and when people think back in 2016 and what they see as Beyonce, that's really important because when people look back at this period, this Trump period, absolutely, they're going to read people like me and they're going to see, you know, all the terrible stuff that I record because I've studied politics and economics.

59:47But, you know, they're also going to see that Bad Bunny is doing the Super Bowl. And if you're thinking culturally what matters, the last two Super Bowl shows are probably as important as some of the stuff that I write about. And that's what people remember. They remember the art. They remember the music. They remember that new fashion style. They remember a new artist rising. And that, I think, is a testament to the spirit not only of Americans, but also of humanity. And that's happening right now, as well as everything else in our country, from Minneapolis-St. Paul, of course, where people are sort of reenacting the Minutemen in a modern way to, you know, across the entire country.

1:00:35So when I think back about nostalgia for 2016, truthfully, I can't remember 2016. I can't remember a thing about 2016 except the attack that Charlie Kirk launched on me. I remember that pretty vividly. But otherwise, you know what? Every era has its benefits and every era has its detriment. And nostalgia is normal, but let's move forward. I like it. And I think, I mean, for me personally, because I'm kind of, I'm an elder millennial, so core in this demo that's obsessed with this trend, even though I've not posted about it. But I was thinking about the picture that I would post if I did of what 2016 meant for me.

1:01:16And I was back in the States, finished my PhD abroad. I was working in polling. I had just started doing TV in earnest. feminist and I took this picture wearing a tank top that said a woman's place is in the White House and I'm so excited and it's the summer so you know there were a lot of stories to be written and Comey hadn't said boo yet and you know it seemed like the country was on course to elect its first female president and I happen to like Hillary Clinton a lot and I was thinking about that picture in context of what the last 10 years have looked like. And politics meant a lot to me, but I know that I would be a bit of an outlier of those that would post a political picture.

1:02:03But if you did it now, like for 2026, if we were doing this in 2036, I think people would be reflecting back on how politics has been dominating far too much of our lives and has become such a cultural touchstone. And some of that is intentional. And Donald Trump did that very well, right? Making UFC fights and comedy shows and everything kind of part of the ethos of whatever the modern Republican Party is or MAGA, however you want to say it. But 2016 has some purity to it, I think, still for people where they could say, I didn't wake up every day going like, oh my God, what did he do now, right?

1:02:40Or what am I afraid about? It was like, let's sing Lemonade and, you know, listen to Drake. And that seems like a better life to a large degree. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Of course, that was a period when a lot of us thought we would have women leaders and good ones. I mean, both Clinton and Kamala Harris were among the most qualified candidates we've ever had for president. And the fact that the American people, again, I would maintain with the help of social media and the media chose the least qualified president, and by the way, vice president that we have now, instead of choosing actual expertise.

1:03:23Yeah, that's a, that, you know, maybe you could even say that's really the beginning of, well, it's certainly the beginning of MAGA, the idea we're going to throw out everything that we have worked for for the last century for a carnival barker. But you know what? We've touched the stove, we've embraced it, and what I am going to be focusing on going forward is figuring out how to rebuild a better democracy than we had before. Because, you know, I will reiterate, this is going to pass. How it's going to pass, we don't have any idea, and it's not going to be easy. But on the other side of that, there still will be the North American continent here.

1:04:02And with luck, we will still have a United States of America. We got to figure out how to take the best of the past and build a better future from it. And that, speaking of creativity and art and literature and new voices and so on, that's exactly what we got in the 1850s, 1860s, 1890s, 1930s, and now with luck, the present, that we get to do a better job this time than we did in the past. Cheers to a better job than we've done in the past. Heather, this was a thrill. I loved our conversation. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. It was great fun.

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