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We are just weeks away from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in the United States. It's supposed to be a moment of great national unity and celebration, but instead,
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the legacy of 1776 has become one of the most fierce battlegrounds in modern politics. It's a fight not over a document written 250 years ago, but over the very DNA of the United States.
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So today we're doing another episode looking at some of the legacies of the Declaration of Independence and of the arguments about the control of the narrative about where the United States has come from, which of course means where the United States is and where it's going to be going. Does the American story begin with world changing ideals of liberty and freedom, or is it fundamentally rooted in the brutal economics of human exploitation and inequality?
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We are exploring how this historical debate has been weaponized into a massive culture war with politicians banning curricula and fighting over the source code of modern American and I would argue, global identities.
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And we're also going to look at how the Declaration is being remixed and claimed today. I love when historians sound like they're DJs. So from the musical Hamilton rebranding the founding fathers as founding Hustlers, Peter, I
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feel like you are trying to mislead our listeners from realizing that you actually dj, but anyway, we'll come back to that.
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You've got to be, you've got to be, you've got to be. Subscribing to Legacy. Plus I'll drop some of my tunes on there. History with a. With a bunch of decks. I don't think it's going to get us any extra listeners from Hamilton and
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the founding hustlers to the battle over who owns the ip, the intellectual property of the revolution. Because whether it's Black Lives Matter activists in the summer of 2020 or the rioters storming the US Capitol on January 6 promoting Donald Trump, everyone thinks they are the true sons of liberty.
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Well, as it turned out, history has got a long duration and the American Revolution has never really ended.
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So the question is now, 250 years later, do these so called enlightenment values just need a redraft or are they fundamentally unfit for purpose?
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Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Frankopan.
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I'm AFWA Hash.
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And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
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This is America 250. What does the culture have to say?
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Thanks for joining us on Legacy today to support the show and to listen to me DJing, sign up to Legacy Plus.
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Please sign up, subscribe and support us. And in return, you'll get early access, fewer ads, bonus episodes, Q&As, and bonus content like our live show in Oxford and live Q and A with an incredible audience.
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So sign up at Legacy supportingcast fm. So we did, as one of our founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, we talked a little bit about the extraordinary legacy. I mean, he's probably got the greatest name recognition, certainly in the United Kingdom, with anybody under the age of 30, you've been to see Lin Manuel Miranda's musical. Why do you think that Hamilton the musical has proved so successful? Is it because of Hamilton's character? Is it because of the genius of the staging? Is it this? Is the timing? What's made this become such a global phenomenon?
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B
Well, it's definitely not because of Hamilton's character. I mean, it's actually, you know, if you kind of study the story of the Founding fathers, it's actually fascinating that he was the one that Lin Manuel Miranda chose to center his musical. And it's worth just saying that since 2015, when Hamilton first premiered, it has become a sensation. One of the most successful musicals in history. I remember when it came to London, and I think that was several years later, just euphoria. Everyone went to see it. People went to see it multiple times. When I went with my daughter, who I think she was then maybe 11, she already knew all of the lyrics to all of the songs, and it was this kind of sing along at the. I think it was the Palladium. So it was just so interesting to see how much it had reached especially young people. And they listened to the soundtrack on repeat, and they're singing about these basically old white men in the 18th century who fought a war to break away from Britain, but to protect slavery. And yet they felt this connection to the story. So I don't think it's because of Alexander Hamilton. I think it's in large part because of the genius of Lin Manuel Miranda and anyone listening to this who doesn't know who he is. He also wrote Moana, which is one of my favorite Disney films. I actually don't love musicals and I don't always love Disney musicals. That's another conversation. Let's not go there. I'm not a big musical fan, and I did enjoy Hamilton because his music is so good and he's just. He's a genius. I mean, it's not a. It's not a stretch at all to call him that, an incredible artist.
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Do you think the story matters, though, with Hamilton? Do you think if Lin Manuel Miranda set the Battle of Hastings to hip hop? Or is it that people want to see familiar stories but told in different ways, you know, so is it in fact a sort of bit of a red herring that in fact it doesn't really tell you anything about independence because people don't really remember what Hamilton was about, apart from he's got to give his best. He's got to give his best shot. And Aaron Burr is the guy who
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gets no, I think so this is the thing about Hamilton. Lin Manuel Miranda does create this very R and B hip hop infused music and it's brilliant. And he also does this casting that cast lots of black and Latinx actors. So actually a really good friend of mine who's mixed race, Nigerian, Irish, British, mixed race man, played George Washington in the London version of Hamilton. His name's Obioma Uguala. Look him up. Incredible actor. He also played Kristoff in Frozen, the musical. I said, I don't like musicals, but I'll watch anything he's in. He's brilliant. So, you know, it was really thrilling to see my friend who, you know, looks a bit like me playing George Washington. But. But I think this is also where the controversy starts because maybe this is one of the reasons Lin Manuel Miranda chose Alexander Hamilton. He was born in the Caribbean. He has this identity that has proximity to black stories, even though he was not black or an abolitionist. In fact, he married into the Schuyler family who were slave owners. Right. And so I think what made some people uncomfortable was kind of appropriating this Caribbean story and turning it into this kind of story of resistance and revolution, using the music that black revolutionaries have created. Because hip hop has its roots in revolution, in rebellion, in subverting racist, oppressive power and deploying all that to sanitize a story about somebody who was part of a movement that enslaved black people. And that's what makes people uncomfortable. And I think if it was telling the story of Hastings, 1066, you know, there was oppression there, injustice, there was violence. If you put black actors and hip hop onto that, there's clearly no connection between the people and events in 1066 and that those cultural ideas, but Hamilton fuses them in a way that made people uncomfortable because it made, you know, especially for the young people watching it, I think got the impression that Alexander Hamilton was kind of like Tupac. He was like a revolutionary hip hop kind of guy talking about independence and freedom and revolution. And actually that is not what Alexander Hamilton, and as we've been discussing at length, the founding fathers stood for. And I actually went to see Hamilton with a friend of mine who I had to physically restrain from walking out. He was so angry and upset that this musical had appropriated these black radical cultural ideas, especially hip hop, to tell a story that was sanitizing a racist history. Basically, that was how he saw it. And I have to say I completely, much as I loved the music and enjoyed the musical, I also completely understand where he was coming from.
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But I wonder whether you think that, I mean, it's. Whether, I mean, is it, is Hamilton, is it subversive because it puts black actors on the stage and Latinx actors on the stage and uses hip hop and other kinds of musical sources that are non classic, traditionally Western? Is that subversive? Is that liberating? I mean, or is it. It depends on the eye of the beholder. Like your friend who was angry about it, felt this was appropriation and monetizing and telling stories that deserve to be treated with a different interpretation. How do you, how do you square those circles?
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B
I think it's great that it created jobs for black actors. That's also the reality that it's really, really difficult still. 2026, my friends, I have so many friends who are black mixed race actors, they still struggle to get roles compared to their white peers. There are so few roles for black actors. You know, a lot of casting is for plays and musicals that are on films and TV that are written about white characters who are played by white actors. And there are very few opportunities for them. And so there's one level just stripping everything else away, where it was really great that this was a musical that gave so many roles to black actors. And it was also, I have to say, as an audience member, just such a joy to go to one of London's most prestigious theaters and see this black and diverse cast. And you know, and because of that, partly because of that, it attracted such diverse audiences, people who often don't go to the theater, don't feel included. And so that's great. It's not radical though, right? Because it's not creating lasting change. Like once Hamilton finished, it didn't leave an industry that was more likely to tell black stories and give roles for black actors. And worse than that, as its critics say, it was actually contributing or being complicit in this kind of rewriting of histories of oppression to make them seem progressive and erasing. Because we've Just done, Peter. Several episodes, for example, on the Founding mothers, the black women who had such an important role in shaping what independence meant in America. They're not part of the Hamilton story. They're completely erased, just like Most tellings of 1776 erase. The. The black people, the. The black women as well. So is it.
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You're sort of dabbed if you do and you're damned if you don't. I mean, it's all the things, like you said, lots of jobs, opportunities. Showcasing is great for the music. It's great for. It shows that people will come and see it. And therefore the chances are other things that will be as good as Hamilton or nearly as good or better will get shown to get commissioned. I mean, or is it the kind of, well, everyone should know their place. And if you're going to upset the apple cart, so you can't win, so why bother trying? And again, the academic world can feel quite familiar like that. If the wrong person says the wrong thing the wrong way, then. Then you shouldn't have a platform. I mean, surely, despite all the critiques, presumably the good outweighs the bad.
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B
The best thing I can say for Hamilton, apart from the fact that I do think Linda Manuel Rand is a genius, the cast are incredible. It's such a compelling show to watch. The best thing I can say about it is that the right hated it. They were super triggered. So, like, whereas, you know, people who have my lens were triggered by the appropriation of hip hop and the sanitization of the founding stories. People on the right were furious that black actors were playing figures like George Washington. They actually tried to start a boycott Hamilton movement. And Lin Manuel Miranda does have progressive politics. You know, there were lines in Hamilton like, immigrants, we get the job done. And I remember really clearly, I think it was 2016, 2017. Mike Pence, who was then the vice president under Donald Trump, went to see the show, I think, on Broadway. And the cast at the end of the show directly addressed him and urged him to stop being hostile to immigrants, to protect all Americans. And, you know, that was really controversial. People on the right said it's so inappropriate to single out the vice president. He was just enjoying a musical. But it's, I thought, completely valid. You go to see a musical that's created by someone descended from immigration, cast with people who are black and Latinx and enjoying the music and the talent and the genius of all of these people who your policies are currently penalizing. You can't. You can't do that and expect for it. Not to be called out. So, you know, I think I've done
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something that I know that you haven't done. I don't know. None of my. No listener would have done. And pretty much no one in the rest of the world, which is. I went to the cinema to go and see the Melania movie.
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Wow.
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A mutual friend of ours gave us tickets.
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Talk to me about that. What made you want to see it and what was it?
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Friends of ours gave us tickets. We thought long and hard about whether we should say that we'd been. Whether it would be rude to do that, whether we shouldn't go. But anyway, we went. We were literally the only people in a cinema with a thousand seats, and we sat and watched it. And because I've seen it, I can talk with authority about what actually happens
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in the film, which I can't. Yeah, I definitely didn't.
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One of the things that is reasonably subversive is Melania Trump just picking out a single line is she turns the camera at one point and says, what I love most about this country is the opportunities it gives to immigrants, to people like me.
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Wow.
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Because no one has seen it and because it has its challenges of interpretation, too, should say, you know, that's quite a powerful thing for the first lady to be saying. She might not mean not all immigrants, that's a whole other story. But the fact it's this deeply sanitized version of what. What her truth and what her story is, it's quite telling. So these discussions, I think, about immigrants, immigration, whatever that, that you can find voices in strange quarters sometimes and sometimes even advocates. It depends what you want, what you want to take about Melania Trump. But because I sat through two hours of movie, I have. I feel I've got more of a right to opinion than people who never heard her talk. But it was a very telling moment where she talked about how she'd grown up in. In Slovenia, the United States had been a land of opportunity and how important it was to. To focus on that. Anyway, when we come back, afwa. Rather than talk about Melania, I like to talk about fashion, art, film, politics, a bit of all of that, too, about the legacies of the Declaration of independence in the 21st century. Right. How about fashion and art? Afra, I know that there's something that you know more about than me, in the same way that I know more about Melania Trump and her movie than you, at least for now. Maybe you're going to settle in with a glass of red wine and watch it tonight. But how do you. How do you see the legacy of costume clothing, the visual symbols of American independence today?
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America has become a meme in culture. I mean, in so many ways. You know, the Stars and Stripes, everybody knows the American flag is the Stars and Stripes. Everybody knows that the American anthem is the Star Spangled Banner. People walk around with, like, New York Knicks baseball caps or American College apparel. My. My daughter, you know, will kind of casually wear a, like, University of Boston T shirt. Her favorite clothing store sells these kind of, like, preppy New England love merch. Yeah. And it's so interesting how that is appealing to them. And she's never been to University of Boston, Boston. She's never even been to Massachusetts. It's got no connection to her life. It's just like. It's just fashion. It's just style. America's become integrated into so much of our culture and fashion. And then there are also specific designers who have, I guess, done the fashion equivalent of maybe what Nicole Hannah Jones has done in journalism and narrative nonfiction by redefining American patriotism through the black lens and through the founding moment of the African American arrival in America. Designers like Pierre Moss, for example, which is founded by Kirby Jean Raymond, which is really kind of bringing these traditional elements of rock and roll, cowboy, for example, back to the what if American patriotism looks like me as a black person? It's actually interesting thinking about Beyonce's Cowboy Carter tour. You know, Beyonce trying to reclaim cowboy culture from this kind of white American patriotism to its black roots, because the cowboy culture has so has so much of its roots in African culture, in indigenous culture.
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We're going to do an episode of that. I mean, that's not. Has its root, has some of it. Literally, the first cowboys in the United States are from black. From West Africa. Yeah.
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And I think a lot of people don't know that. A lot of Americans don't know that. But the culture has been playing with that, expressing that. And it's interesting actually, how people consume that without really changing their narrative of what America is. So I think, you know, you can trace American culture as a global consumer goods to 1776 and the way ideas of America are bound up in liberty, pursuit of happiness, opportunity, wealth. Importantly, as America kind of became the main driver of this, like, globalized capitalism that we have. Fashion has always had something to say about that. And art. I don't know if you got a chance in London, Peter, to go to the Royal Academy to see Kerry James Marshall, incredible African American painter, the first, I think, black painter to have a solo major exhibition at the Royal Academy is, you know, the most kind of successful in commercial terms. Male painter, African American male painter. And he creates these incredible paintings that center black joy in a way that. That sounds so simple, but it's actually quite simple, subversive. It's. It's taking very American scenes and then using black figurative art to put black people at the center and. And to show black people enjoying themselves in ways that we think of as quite American. You know, kind of like at the pier. I'm in Picnic on the Fourth of July. And it's interesting how that's received as provocative because people aren't used to seeing black people in that position. And he's also recently done a series that's explained exploring slavery and African complicity in slavery, what slavery's meant for the African American identity. It's always been a fixation, especially of black artists because it speaks to their own ancestral memory and identity. The roots of hip hop, I mean, that was, you know, as we were saying with Hamilton, one of the reasons that's that some black people didn't thought Hamilton was exploitative of black culture was because black culture has been about resistance from 1619, because Black people were enslaved and wanted freedom, wanted the. The principles of independence to apply to them, and have been using music, literature, art, performance to articulate and demand that which has given us so much of the American culture that we enjoy, including in some art forms that people also, you know, like you were saying, cowboy, also rock and roll, which people don't think of as black, but have its roots in people like sister Rosetta Tharp, an incredible African American electric guitar pioneer who people like Mick Jagger actually acknowledge is kind of the mother of rock and roll, but who still don't get acknowledged but sticking with.
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With independence. Alpha. I mean, we talked a little bit about it when we were in auction for the live show just, just before. Before we went on stage. And if I didn't really talk about because of time, but, you know, when you think about American sort of culture, particularly in the 20th century, you've got things like the Vietnam War that spurred a huge amount of influence of the cinema with music, the counterculture, the counter, you know, et cetera. But there's. There's not much when you think about Declaration of Independence, beyond the kind of everything that's all American, whether, you know, jazz, hip hop, you know, stuff that is just us. But there's no kind of obvious imprint. If you kind of go, what's the sound of 1776 or what are. You know, what's the. No one really sings about it. You don't get Taylor Swift or Beyonce singing about the importance of independence. I mean, I suppose one reason is because it's a long time ago in. So many people don't really make music about the Elizabethans or about the Georgians. But in Britain, for example, Jane Austen or the 19th, 20th centuries, there's a kind of. There's a route that goes back, a thread that goes back. But I wonder whether you think that the legacies of independence and the Declaration of Independence are much lower than you might think. I mean, I can't think of a single important or good film about the American War of Independence. I mean, do you think about the Civil War, for example? You think about Gone with the Wind. You could see these massive epics, but 1776 has been slightly left to one side. Maybe. Maybe it's because of the wigs and the breaches, maybe it's because of slavery, because there's no, you know, it's harder. But. But why do you think that it's. There's that gap.
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B
It's so true. There aren't. Apart from Hamilton as a musical, there haven't been anywhere near, you know, like, Abraham Lincoln, how many films, TV series, vam, Abraham Lincoln, vampire, whatever it's called, you know, Abraham Lincoln is the kind of constantly popping up in the culture. But 1776 is not. The only film I can think of, really, that was really critically acclaimed and widely watched was Last of the Mohicans, which is actually, I think, set during the Seven Years War and the run up to American independence, not actually about American independence. I guess it was complicated. Right. And it was problematic. And it's easier to celebrate it as a kind of idea rather than to delve into the story. Once you get into the story, you start to see how imperfect.
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Even though the story's about heroism and noble ideals, you know, it should be. It should be Hollywood ready, blockbuster ready. Of these men surviving, is it because they are, as we've explored in our different episodes, they're too elite, they're too complicated. The enslavement is a challenge everywhere. They're not particularly nice people, a lot of them. Some of them are boring, some of them are.
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B
I would be really surprised if someone hasn't tried to tell, for example, the story of George Washington and owner judge. And I think it would be hard. You know, I work in film, scripted film and tv. I can just imagine the conversations with streamers trying to pitch that as a movie. I don't think America's ready for the true story of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or even Alexander Hamilton. They were ready for the celebratory version of Alexander Hamilton, the kind of hip hop dude. They're not ready for the story about his involvement in enslavement and the Schuyler sisters and, you know, the things that get glossed over. And that is a legacy of 1776, that America is fragile. It's fragile. It does not want to confront the true story. It wants to celebrate the simple version that makes it feel good. Not all Americans, African Americans from the day they landed on American soil, have been telling the true story. But, you know, the machinery of Hollywood or even the music industry often penalizes that. I will say, though, that my favorite Independence Day movie is not actually about 1776. It's about will Smith fighting some aliens. And that is brilliant. I love that film.
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A
I, I love that film. But also I love that I was in the States when it came out. And I, I, you know, it's, it's a long time ago now. So I, I, I'm thinking that I saw on Independence Day itself, it was certainly warm, so it should have been around that time. And I imagine it was released then. And it's a great film, it's a great blockbuster, Will Smith's great, etc. Etc. But the bit that was amazing was when the White House gets blown up, the entire cinema started cheering and in America. Yeah. And that was a time when Clinton was president at the time. So I don't think it was, you know, particularly, it wasn't particularly divisive. I suspect that Americans would, would cheer no matter who was in the White House, about blowing up. Because there's this deep streak that independence, that the president should be allowed to have too much power and authority too. When we come back for the break, Alfred, let's have a chat about the no Kings movement. I also want to throw in my two kings as well. But to think about what the Declaration of Independence, how it looks to us 250 years on.
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B
So it's really interesting to hear Peter, about how when you went to see Independence Day, the Will Smith movie, the audience cheered at the blowing up of the White House. I'm kind of surprised. I guess it's like such a spectacle. But also I wonder if it does speak to one of the Spirits of 1776, which is, and I think we forget this, the Founding Fathers were obsessed with not having a king anymore. That's literally what they fought for. But also creating a constitution and this was the work after independence that limited executive power and how much that is such a foundational idea politically for modern America, that actually the constitutional arrangement is not just separation of powers and checks and balances, although that's really important. It's all designed to make sure you never have an omnipotent executive. And actually the executive, in its conception was supposed to be the weakest branch.
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A
And how's that going, by the way, at the moment?
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B
Right. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't know how many. And I've never taught law in America or constitutional. I've taught it here in the UK but not in America. I don't know how much the average American knows about the nuances of the constitutional, Constitutional law. But I do know that Americans know that they don't want a king. And it was so interesting to me, when these anti Trump protests get mobilized, they don't call themselves anti Trump, they call themselves no kings. And that I think speaks to the cultural residue of that as part of the American identity, that Americans are know they fought and won a war to not have a king. They have a constitution that's supposed to prevent a king. And they don't like it when a president starts accumulating so much executive power. He starts to look like a king. And that has become one of the most powerful movements resisting against this encroachment. Trump is attempting to try and weaken the protections against executive power.
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A
Okay, so I got two questions right. One is, we'll do Trump in a second. The election in 2024 was the first time there hadn't been a Bush or Biden on the ticket in a presidential election since 1980.
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B
That's crazy.
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A
We might think this is all Trump and he's somebody new. These dynasties that control power.
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B
And let's not forget about the Kennedys, because we've got a Kennedy in this administration. And we've also just had this series, this TV series about Carolyn Bassett and Jeffrey Jr. But that, I guess, and people often do say the Kennedys are kind of the closest thing that America has to a.
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A
They say no kings, but actually that. That elite capture or we'll have a. Have a generous orange, you want to call it. There is a tendency towards this long range, you know, idea about, about who should call the shots. And, you know, we'll see if Don Jr. Runs, as I suspect he might do, maybe not next time, but whoever gets appointed is gifted, usually their position by the incumbent beforehand or is sabotaged by them. I mean, that can happen too as presidents undermine who they don't want to take over. So this idea of no kings is hugely visible. It's very valuable. Lots of Americans feel themselves deeply Republican, with a little R. It's a republic which is modeled on non imperial power, both from ancient Rome, but also in today's world. And yet, actually, there's a pretty big blind spot about how executive authority gets used, and not just by Trump. Even presidents like Obama use executive authority far, far more than the previous presidents ever had done, too. So is this just that we're judging Trump harshly because of how Trump is himself, or do we need to look a bit deeper into how the US Actually functions?
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B
I think it's a very valid critique, actually. Obama, it's just a fact, used executive power, some would say abused executive power to push through many policies that he would not have been able to pass through Congress. And I think he might be the president who has issued the most executive orders in history during his presidency. So.
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A
Until Trump, too.
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B
Yeah, until Trump, too, who has taken it to a different level. And, you know, someone like me is going to be much less critical of Obama's use of executive power because he was using it to create expanded healthcare for people on low income, you know, through Obamacare. He was using it to advance policies that attempted remedial measures for the extreme level of inequality in America, which I think is.
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A
Sure, but it's a royal authority. It's a royal authority by riding a coach through the.
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B
You know, as a constitutional principle, it is precarious, because, yes, then you're setting a precedent that when you have a nefarious actor like Trump can use the same technique to advance his own agenda. And so those protections exist for a reason. And I think it's true. There's been a kind of gradual decline in. In their effectiveness. And it does raise the question back to 1776 and the work that came after in shaping the Constitution. Like, how effective was that Constitution? How fit for purpose is that Constitution? Is it succeeding? And Trump is really testing the answer to that question. And then I would add a point about constitutional originalism. So I was a judge last year on the Cundill Prize, which is this Canadian Prize at McGill University in Montreal for historical nonfiction books that reach a wide audience. And one of the books that was in contention was the book about constitutional originalism. And I wasn't very familiar with the constitutional originalism movement. I'd heard of it, but when I read this very detailed book, really goes into detail. And what that movement is, basically, is a group of constitutional lawyers and scholars who are arguing that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the letter, not the spirit of the founding fathers. So that there should be no interpretations that take into account the context of modern rights and attitudes towards race and gender. A class that it's, it's almost like a kind of fundamentalist biblical interpretation. You know, that Genesis is literal, that God made the world in seven days and fashioned Eve out of Adam's rib, you know, and most Christians take especially the Old Testament stories as kind of metaphors or symbolic rather than literal.
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A
But, but there's a lot of that going around.
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B
Yeah, creation Creationists, you know, advocate this view that is everything that's written the Bible should be taken literally. Constitutional originalism is a similar idea. And it's gaining traction among Americans who want to roll back some of the more innovative they would see as judicial activism of judges who've interpreted the Constitution in a way that's more in insight, sync with modern values and culture. And it's one of the perils of having a written constitution is that it has to evolve to survive because the world changes and that when you've got this text, there's always this temptation to try and keep it pristine. Whereas actually that's just not how texts work. They evolve as we evolve. And that's another kind of area of culture war that's playing out, albeit the more rarefied world of kind of Harvard Law. But it has real consequences because that's where the justices for the Supreme Court are educated and currently being socialized and exposed to new ideas. You know, the future generation of judges are passing through these educational institutions where constitutional originalists are getting much more airtime than they have ever before in living memory.
- [31:13]
A
Yeah, look, I think that there's, there's a lot to be said for that. And what's, what's interesting, and you're quite right, Alfu, is that the Constitution in the US has the, has the stages of a kind of sacred document that needs to be observed. So the right to bear arms, for example, which was created in the context of the 1770s and about breaking off from Great Britain, it obviously didn't have semi automatic weapons as a precursor. And yet because it's written down 250 years ago, it can't therefore be changed. And in a way, how some Americans want to see their Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as documents that can't be touched because they're done by people who are wise and that they are delivered from us from on high. And that, that does, as you say, Creates a kind of prison as well, because you can't move on from them and anybody who tries to challenge it, you're doing something that's fundamentally unamerican. So these things, they, they can sometimes, you know, here in Britain, we don't have a constitution. We should be grateful for what, what we don't have, as well, as well as what we do, because they can become very divisive. The last question I wanted to ask Afro is, you know, forget about just the executive orders and the rule by law. You know, it's about Trump. You know, you mentioned the no Kings. You know, when King Charles went over to Washington at the US at the end of April this year, 2026, he had lots of photos taken with Trump. Trump is a big fan of the British monarchy and the White House official press account posted on social media. Two kings. A picture of Trump standing next to King Charles. I mean, that's a very. Subversive isn't the right word. It's a very aggressive positioning of Trump literally as a king. You know, someone who spends time in the U.S. how does that come across? I mean, that could just be quite funny, right? Sometimes we probably should give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Some of the things he says are intended to be funnier than they are taken very literally and always sort of with hot water poured down them. Maybe these things, there should be a bit of, bit of opportunity, a bit of leeway. Do you think that that kind of statement is a kind of literal statement, that Trump sees himself as an all powerful monarch, doesn't need to pay attention to any of the branches of the judiciary, executive or legislature, that he's a king in all but name. How do you understand that from Trump
- [33:27]
B
asking me to offer a rational analysis for Trump's choices? It's a pretty tough ask, Peter. It's a tough ask. I mean,
- [33:40]
A
Trump's legal claims, I love
- [33:43]
B
that you have that high opinion of my ability to morph into any intellectual shape. I think it is so interesting, given that no Kings is such a part of the American psyche, that Trump chose to do that. Maybe he's testing the appetite for that. Among all the other precedents he's broken and taboos that he's explained exploded. You know, somebody who's got a criminal conviction, somebody who openly profits financially from his position in the White House, somebody who openly enriches his children through his office, somebody who openly violates international law and brags about it.
- [34:20]
A
We've all got a friend or two who could start a fight with themselves.
- [34:24]
B
Maybe he's like, if I can do that, I can get rid of the no kings thing, right? Maybe he's testing it. I don't know. It's, it's really strange. It's really strange to me that people on the right who are very conservative about the ethos of 1776 are busy attacking Nicole Hannah Jones, a black woman who did a great job of doing her work and are completely fine with a president who is literally ripping up the work of the Founding Fathers in real time and kind of like throwing it in their face. And that's apparently okay. So it's just a completely upside down world. And it shows you actually that the kind of faux outrage over anything that challenges 1776 is not really that. It's just wanting to protect a power structure that is okay with Trump being genuinely radical in ripping up the rulebook, but doesn't still in 2026, doesn't want African Americans to have the right to tell their own story and insert themselves meaningfully, rightfully at the center of the American story. That's how contested 1776 is.
- [35:26]
A
Afraid. Look, we've done a mega series on founding fathers, Declaration of Independence, legacies, excluded women, Melania, the movie, you know, you name it. And so much to think about. And I think, and hopefully all our listeners will feel better informed. These things are complicated, they're difficult. There isn't a single set narrative. But the fact that they're contested tells its own interesting story, whatever your views are about that. So thank you very much for joining us on our 250 epic mega series. Let us know if you've enjoyed doing lots of episodes on something like this and we'll maybe come back with, with something more. We tend to think that, we think two or three per topic is about right, but, but we'd love to hear from you, particularly if you're a Legacy plus subscriber. But thank you for listening to Legacy.
- [36:11]
B
Please support the show. You will get to go even deeper into our topics. Get bonus episodes, early access, fewer ads, Q&As and so much more. Go to Legacy Supportingcast.
- [36:24]
A
And don't forget, you can watch all our episodes on Spotify and YouTube too. And for everything else, including our substacks and updates on TikTok and Instagram, just check out the show notes or search Legacy Podcast. I'm Peter Frank.
- [36:36]
B
I'm Afra Hersh and we'll see you on the next episode of Legacy.