Donald Trump is Rewriting the Past. Plus, the Christian Groups Vying for Political Power

Summary

Podcast Summary: On the Media - "Donald Trump is Rewriting the Past. Plus, the Christian Groups Vying for Political Power"

Release Date: February 15, 2025
Hosts: Brooke Gladstone and Michael Loewinger
Produced by WNYC Studios

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Introduction

In this episode of On the Media, hosts Brooke Gladstone and Michael Loewinger delve into President Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to reshape historical narratives and the rising influence of Christian nationalist groups seeking political power. The discussion explores the intersection of media manipulation, authoritarian tactics, and religious movements within the current U.S. political landscape.

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Rewriting History: Trump's Policies

Deleting Online Content and Renaming Locations

President Trump has been actively involved in altering historical records and governmental data. This includes the removal of content from government websites and the renaming of significant geographical landmarks.

• Michael Loewinger highlights, "Trump is purging government websites, language, and history he doesn't like" (01:31).
• A notable change is the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, as discussed by Stacey Vanek Smith and Max Chafkin. Michael Loewinger states, "Google Map users now see Gulf of America, formerly known everywhere as Gulf of Mexico" (09:44).

Executive Orders and Content Removal

Through executive orders, the Trump administration has initiated the removal of specific terms and information from federal websites, aiming to control the narrative and eliminate dissenting perspectives.

• Jason Stanley observes, "We have big deficits with Canada like we do with all countries... Today we're ending the NAFTA nightmare" (05:16), illustrating Trump's approach to revising trade agreements and historical agreements.

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The Authoritarian Playbook: Insights from Jason Stanley

Controlling Language and Narrative

Authoritarian regimes often manipulate language to control public perception. President Trump's administration exemplifies this by redefining terms and restricting access to information.

• Jason Stanley explains, "It's characteristic of authoritarianism to represent politically neutral organizations as biased against you" (02:03), emphasizing the tactic of undermining institutions to consolidate power.

Removing Portraits and Altering Historical Records

The deletion of portraits of former officials and the manipulation of historical events are key strategies in erasing dissent and rewriting history.

• Jason Stanley notes, "Lenin's speech... the photo was later doctored... characteristic of authoritarian regimes" (23:51), drawing parallels between historical and current authoritarian practices.

Rewriting Events Like January 6th

The administration's efforts to reinterpret significant events are aimed at diminishing accountability and altering public memory.

• Matthew D. Taylor states, "The insurrection is now Donald Trump's day of love" (06:13), highlighting the reframing of the January 6th events to suit the administration's narrative.

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The Role of Christian Nationalism

Different Factions Seeking Power

Christian nationalist groups are reconfiguring their roles from being mere supporters of Trump to becoming his key instruments in policy implementation.

• Max Chafkin discusses the shift: "They started out that Trump was going to be their vehicle and now they're his vehicle" (02:09), indicating a transformation in the relationship between Trump and these groups.

Influence of Religious Advisors

Trump's religious advisory board, led by figures like Paula White Cain, plays a pivotal role in blending religious ideology with political agendas.

• Max Chafkin describes the advisors: "Almost all of them are Christian... from these more Pentecostal charismatic traditions" (44:26), illustrating the dominance of charismatic evangelicals in shaping policies.

Conflict Within Christian Factions

While united on core issues, different Christian nationalist factions exhibit theological and strategic disagreements that may lead to internal conflicts.

• Max Chafkin explains, "They have very different theological frameworks... they've come to see Trump... as an avatar" (54:05), pointing out the complexities within the Christian nationalist movement.

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Impact on Education and Historical Understanding

Patriotic Education and Erasure of History

The administration's push for "patriotic education" seeks to eliminate critical perspectives and historical truths, fostering a homogenized national narrative.

• Jason Stanley states, "Aiming the education system not at understanding the history of a country, but rather on venerating and worshiping it" (25:07), critiquing the objective of the education reforms.

Rewriting Reconstruction and Civil Rights History

Efforts to distort or minimize the significance of Reconstruction and civil rights history undermine the progress made toward racial equality.

• Jason Stanley warns, "They're saying any black person in power has gotten there because of these programs... exact same tactics again" (27:51), drawing parallels between past and present strategies to disenfranchise Black Americans.

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The Broader Implications for Democracy

Undermining Democratic Institutions

The administration's actions reflect classic authoritarian strategies that threaten the foundational pillars of democracy, such as free speech, transparency, and institutional integrity.

• Jason Stanley asserts, "They are going to see a lot of the media being threatened... the media is essentially bribing Trump" (30:00), highlighting the media's compromised role under authoritarian influence.

Erosion of Political Equality

By manipulating historical narratives and controlling information, the administration diminishes political equality, making it difficult for all voices to participate meaningfully in democracy.

• Jason Stanley explains, "Political equality is not just each of us having a vote... It's each of us being a participant in the national conversation" (34:17).

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Conclusion

This episode of On the Media paints a concerning picture of how authoritarian tactics are being employed in the United States to rewrite history and suppress dissenting voices. The intertwining of political power with Christian nationalist agendas further complicates the democratic landscape, posing significant challenges to transparency, free speech, and historical integrity. As President Trump continues to reshape narratives and empower certain religious factions, the implications for American democracy and societal cohesion remain profound and unsettling.

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Notable Quotes

• Jason Stanley: "It's characteristic of authoritarianism to represent politically neutral organizations as biased against you" (02:03).
• Matthew D. Taylor: "The insurrection is now Donald Trump's day of love" (06:13).
• Max Chafkin: "They started out that Trump was going to be their vehicle and now they're his vehicle" (02:09).
• Jason Stanley: "Aiming the education system not at understanding the history of a country, but rather on venerating and worshiping it" (25:07).
• Jason Stanley: "Political equality is not just each of us having a vote... It's each of us being a participant in the national conversation" (34:17).

---

Timestamps Reference:

• 01:31 to [57:50] - Detailed content discussion.

(Note: Timestamps are indicative based on the provided transcript and may require adjustment for precise alignment.)

Transcript

[Brooke Gladstone]

On the Media is supported by Doubleday Books, publisher of Strangers in the Land. New Yorker writer Michael Woe traces the epic history of Chinese exclusion and their struggle to truly belong in America. Spanning from the 19th century to modern times, Strangers in the Land is a must read for anyone interested in American history and understanding the current anti immigrant moment. Available wherever books are sold on the.

[Michael Loewinger]

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[Stacey Vanek Smith]

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[Michael Loewinger]

Now see Gulf of America.

[Max Chafkin]

Several webpages, including those related to HIV and LGBTQ youth, went dark on Friday.

[Michael Loewinger]

President Trump is purging government websites, language and history he doesn't like. From WNYC in New York, this is on the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

And I'm Michael Ohinger. Meanwhile, agencies that could curb the power of the new administration and its friends are also in line for the quote unquote woodchipper.

[Jason Stanley]

It's characteristic of authoritarianism to represent politically neutral organizations as biased against you because the rule of law is biased against you if you're a criminal one.

[Michael Loewinger]

Specifically, Christian nationalists saw a partner in Trump, but now he's part of their iconography and their faith.

[Max Chafkin]

And I think in some ways it started out that Trump was going to be their vehicle and now they're his vehicle.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

It's all coming up after this.

[Brooke Gladstone]

WNYC Studios is supported by Ground News. Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news organizations and break free from algorithms. With Ground News you get details about the source of your information, empowering you to compare how different news sources from around the world cover the same story. With over 9 and a half thousand 5 star reviews of their app and website, Ground News is a top platform that allows you to discover how any news story is being covered, giving every perspective all in one place. Expand your view of the news. Sign up for your Ground News account today and get access to the mobile app or website, browser extension and exclusive newsletters so you can have a well rounded view of the world. Think critically about what you read and find common ground between perspectives. Go to groundnews.com wnyctoday to get 40% off the ground News Vantage Plan and get access to all of their news analysis features. That's groundnews.com WNYC for 40% off the ground News Vantage Plan for a limited time only.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

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[Max Chafkin]

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[Stacey Vanek Smith]

A lot of times big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Four days a week I would buy.

[Michael Loewinger]

Two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one.

[Jason Stanley]

Small but important ways from tech billionaires.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

To the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding.

[Jason Stanley]

If it's happening in business, our new.

[Max Chafkin]

Podcast is on it.

[Jason Stanley]

I'm Max Chafton.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And I'm Stacey Vanek Smith. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Michael Loewinger]

From. WNYC in New York. This is ON the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

And I'm Michael Olinger. The President doubled down this week on his threats to tax imports of steel, aluminum and other goods from Canada, speaking here at the Oval Office last Monday.

[Jason Stanley]

We have big deficits with Canada like we do with all countries. I mean, I look at some of the deals made, I say, who the hell made these deals are so bad?

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Hmm, good question. Who the hell made that deal?

[Jason Stanley]

Today we're finally ending the NAFTA nightmare and signing into law the brand new U.S. mexico Canada Agreement. Very special.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Whether Trump forgot that it was his deal or he thinks we forgot, the effect is the same. This administration seems to believe it can justify its current policies by rewriting the recent past. Sound familiar? Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell's 1984 I pardoned J6 people.

[Jason Stanley]

Who were assaulted by our government.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Trump last weekend arguing with a reporter about his pardons for rioters who had attacked police officers as his administration deletes online footage from January 6.

[Jason Stanley]

They were assaulted and what I did was a great thing for humanity.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

And there you go. The insurrection is now Donald Trump's day of love. For some of the same reasons, Trump is also relitigating South African apartheid, which officially ended 30 years ago, leaving three quarters of privately owned land in the hands of white Afrikaners who make up just 10% of the population.

[Max Chafkin]

An executive order he signed on Friday.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Provided for resettlement in the US of.

[Max Chafkin]

Quote, Afrikaners in South Africa who are.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Victims of unjust racial discrimination as refugees.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Who put that bug in his ear? On a related note, South African born billionaire Elon Musk, for all of his talk of, you know, waste and government efficiency, would like us to forget that his businesses have raked in some $18 billion in government contracts.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the government agency that may be headed to Elon Musk's wood chipper. Musk tweeted RIP to the agency over the weekend.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

The cfpb, which has saved American consumers billions of dollars, would have overseen the payment system Musk plans to roll out on his social media site just one of 11 regulatory agencies that have issued complaints, investigations or regulations affecting his companies.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Mr. Musk, the white House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts that you may have. What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?

[Michael Loewinger]

Well, we actually are trying to be.

[Jason Stanley]

As transparent as possible.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Elon Musk at an Oval Office press conference on Tuesday, we post our actions.

[Jason Stanley]

To the Doge handle on X and.

[Max Chafkin]

To the Doge website.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

He's referring to doge.gov, a site that shows you posts from X, featuring the information his team has chosen to share with us about its cuts. Trump placed DOGE under the Presidential Records act, which would shield it from foia, the most basic mechanism for journalists and citizens to request information about government action. Denying the basic definition of the word transparency is just one salvo in the war on language. A DOJ directive orders that undocumented immigrants should now be called aliens. The National Park Service's site honoring Stonewall, an important place for the LGBTQ movement, no longer references trans people terms like Hate speech, multiculturalism and oppression have been deleted from a host of federal websites. And then there's the executive order on the quote unquote weaponization of government.

[Max Chafkin]

Donald Trump has used executive orders to lay out the groundwork for his future plans for retribution via opening investigations into his perceived political enemies. One executive order in particular, titled Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government, stands out.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Up is down. Black is white. The day One executive order restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship apparently did not apply this week when the White House barred an Associated Press reporter from attending an event at the Oval Office.

[Max Chafkin]

The reason?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

The naming of the Gulf of Mexico. This is coming after President Trump's order to rename it the Gulf of America.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

AP executives say at time of recording, the ap, with its careful style guide and editorial policies, has not yet capitulated to the public president's lexicon. What about Google?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Google Map users now see Gulf of.

[Michael Loewinger]

America, formerly known here and everywhere as Gulf of Mexico.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Google says its policy is to change.

[Michael Loewinger]

Names when they have been updated by official government sources.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Across the Internet. The administration's crackdown on language has been used as a pretense to take thousands of government web pages offline.

[Jason Stanley]

Tonight, officials at the USDA have ordered.

[Max Chafkin]

The removal of climate change information from the department's public website. The USDA had included extensive resources on climate science and strategies for farmers.

[Michael Loewinger]

The NSA is about to hit delete.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

On a ton of websites and internal content just because they contain 27 banned words. Words like privilege bias, inclusion, and even confirmation bias. The NSA uses words like privilege in cybersecurity. Privilege escalation is a hacking term.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Even reliable information on policies that the Trump administration supports is hard to come by. Take the mass deportation effort from Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ice.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

One of the big questions I think a lot of reporters have right now is actually how many arrests have there been?

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Dara Kerr is a tech reporter at the Guardian. She recently wrote about something very strange happening on Google. When she typed in search terms like Georgia ICE raid or Maryland ICE arrests.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

The very top Google search results will be an ICE press release talking about some major arrest or raid in that area. I did it for Louisiana and I got a hit saying 123 people arrested in New Orleans, Colorado. There's a press release for 85 people who are arrested. Wisconsin ICE arrests 83 criminal aliens was the headline.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

The press release headlines appear to be from 2025. But if you actually click on the.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Search results, you'll see that that operation in Colorado, which took place over four days happened in November 2010. And those 123 people targeted in New Orleans, that was a year ago in February last year. And the 83 people arrested in Wisconsin September 2018. And you can do this anywhere, every state, every major city, even small C. A lot of times people will see that headline they may not click through. And even if they do click through, they might not actually look at the original date that it was published because of all these press releases were updated to 2025. That would give them another boost to the top of the algorithm.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Search engine optimization, or SEO is a common technique to make links show up higher in Google results. Dara could not confirm that ICE did this intentionally to trick people, since it didn't respond to her request for comment.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So the Trump administration is getting credit for all of these arrests and raids that Obama's administration had done, and Biden also. But it's kind of like a flipping, rewriting history on its head, grabbing old history and making it new again.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

I want to leave you with one more example of the current war on good, timely information. Right wing attacks on another source that also ranks near the top on Google search Wikipedia the richest person in the.

[Max Chafkin]

World, Elon Musk, has made himself an enemy of Wikipedia, and he claims it's because he's opposed to the Woke the Woke mind virus.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Much of his early concerns about Wikipedia centered around articles that spoke about him or his companies where he didn't feel he was being portrayed fairly.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Molly White is an independent journalist and author of the Citation Needed Newsletter. She's also a Wikipedia editor.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Whether it was articles not describing him as a founder of Tesla, but instead as an early investor, or articles describing him as prone to repeating conspiracy theories, he was clearly very angry at how he was being described on the website.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Last month after Musk's article was updated to include information about how far right figures were celebrating what they perceived to be his Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration, he posted on X writing defund Wikipedia until balance is restored. Before that, he shared a conspiracy theory video alleging a cover up of Bill Clinton's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

[Jason Stanley]

They're deleting Epstein connections off of Wikipedia right now. I was working on something for a little documentary today and went to go and look at Bill Clinton's Wikipedia page to get the number of times he flew on Epstein's plane and it turns out that Epstein is only mentioned one time on Bill Clinton's Wikipedia page.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

They have taken an event in which an editor moved a portion of the very long article about Bill Clinton to a related article about Bill Clinton's sexual assault and misconduct allegations, and also to post presidency of Bill Clinton, both of which are linked from the primary page about Bill Clinton. And this is very common on Wikipedia, where extremely long articles are split into sub articles to try to make them more readable and accessible to readers.

[Jason Stanley]

I went to the Wayback Machine and found out when did they delete all of this. There used to be a whole section about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Elon Musk has reposted this claim repeatedly, even though far before Elon Musk reshared this video, the content was actually restored to the primary article.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

More recently, the Forward, a Jewish American outlet, reported on leaked PowerPoint slides from the Heritage foundation, the architects of Project 2020, demonstrating its plan to target Wikipedia editors for alleged anti Semitism.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It seems that the Heritage foundation is attempting to both intimidate Wikipedia editors to be less likely to edit and also to actively go after Wikipedia editors who they would like to see facing real world consequences for their volunteer activities.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

What do you think is at stake for the free and open Internet if they succeed in bullying the Wikimedia community into submission?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I think a lot is at stake. I think it's very clear that the Trump administration, including Elon Musk, are very keen on rewriting history, on limiting access to information to people that they disagree with, to really controlling the narrative in the media. And I think they see Wikipedia as a threat to that effort. And I think that as we're seeing the quality of information that was once available from the US Government degrade, and as we're seeing more media organizations bow to pressure and legal threats and other threats from the administration, right now, projects like Wikipedia are going to be only more important.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Molly, thank you very much.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Thanks for having me.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Molly White is author of the newsletter Citation Needed and an editor at Wikipedia.

[Michael Loewinger]

Coming up, a look at reality bending for political power in times past.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

This is on the media.

[Brooke Gladstone]

WNYC Studios is supported by Ground News. Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news organizations and break free from algorithms. With Ground News, you get details about the source of your information, empowering you to compare how different news sources from around the world cover the same story. With over 9 and a half thousand 5 star reviews of their app and website, Ground News is a top platform that allows you to discover how any news story is being covered, giving every perspective all in one place. Expand your view of the news. Sign up for your Ground News account today and get access to the mobile app, website, browser extension and exclusive newsletters so you can have a well rounded view of the world. Think critically about what you read and find common ground between perspectives. Go to groundnews.com wnyctoday to get 40% off the ground News Vantage plan and get access to all of their news analysis features. That's groundnews.com WNYC for 40% off the ground News Vantage Plan for a limited time only.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

You know where your business would be without you. Imagine where it could go with more of you. Well, with wix you can create a website with more of your vision, your voice, your expertise. Wix gives you the freedom to truly own your brand and do it on your own with full customization and advanced AI tools that help turn your ideas into reality. Grow your business into your online brand because without you, your business is just business as usual. Go to Wix.com with Chewy get the.

[Michael Loewinger]

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[Brooke Gladstone]

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[Jason Stanley]

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[Michael Loewinger]

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[Jason Stanley]

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[Stacey Vanek Smith]

A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Four days a week, I would buy.

[Michael Loewinger]

Two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one small.

[Jason Stanley]

But important ways from tech billionaires to.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

The bond market to yeah, banana pudding.

[Jason Stanley]

If it's happening in business, our new.

[Max Chafkin]

Podcast is on it.

[Michael Loewinger]

I'm Max Chavkin.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And I'm Stacey Vanek Smith. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

This is on the media. I'm Michael Loewinger.

[Michael Loewinger]

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. In the third week of the Trump administration's ongoing endeavor to revise history, the focus stays fixed on government corruption. This week in the Oval Office, Elon Musk again claimed, without evidence that Doge was finding malfeasance all over the place, that some federal workers were just rolling.

[Max Chafkin]

In dull but just there seems to.

[Jason Stanley]

Be mysteriously they get wealthy. We don't know why. Where does it come from? And I think the reality is that they're getting wealthy at the taxpayer expense. That's, that's the, that's the honest truth of it.

[Michael Loewinger]

Meanwhile, Musk's companies are being investigated by the Departments of Defense, Justice, Transportation, Agriculture, the Interior and a heap of agencies, many of which have gone under his doge knife even as he continues to enrich himself through numerous government contracts. Also this week, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors to drop the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams without judging the merits of the case. So the prosecution could proceed later if, and this has been pretty explicit, Adams isn't tough enough in the pursuit of undocumented immigrants, thus holding him essentially hostage by the White House. Many lawyers quit, including the top attorney in the case, Trump appointee Danielle Sassoon, an avowed conservative, a member of the Federalist Society, no less, who refused to dismiss the case because it would set a, quote, breathtaking and dangerous precedent. All this while the president, apparently still sore about all those felonies on his record, continues to reverse laws against corruption like the one that prevents American businessmen from bribing foreign governments and expunge the records of criminals with the scritch, scritch, scritch of the presidential sharpie.

[Jason Stanley]

Good. It's my honor to do it.

[Michael Loewinger]

Notably exonerated this week was former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who'd served eight years of a 14 year sentence for trying to to sell the Senate seat held by Barack Obama prior to his election as president.

[Jason Stanley]

I watched him. He was set up by a lot of bad people, some of the same people that I had to deal with. It was a sort of a terrible injustice. They just were after him.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

I mean, I've got this thing and.

[Michael Loewinger]

It'S Golden Blagojevich on the phone bragging about his scheme to sell the Senate seat.

[Jason Stanley]

And I'm just not giving it up for nothing.

[Max Chafkin]

I'm not gonna do it.

[Jason Stanley]

And I can always parachute use it.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

And so I could parachute me there.

[Michael Loewinger]

I thought to Fred about that, you.

[Jason Stanley]

Know, there's life after that if I do it.

[Michael Loewinger]

Blago, as he was called, was also convicted of shaking down a Children's hospital exec for campaign contributions, installing a bill involving the horse racing industry in search of same. In between trials, NBC News reminds us Blagojevich was a contestant on the Celebrity Apprentice.

[Jason Stanley]

So, Governor, you have a hell of a lot of guts. I have to tell you that. I have friends where things have happened to him. They crawl into a corner, they die. You're out there punching. So I respect that. I appreciate that.

[Michael Loewinger]

History shows that making the dirty clean and the clean dirty is standard procedure for authoritarians on the rise. Another tactic involves getting rid of inconvenient images. Soon after Trump took office last month, the Pentagon removed portraits of previous Trump appointees. Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Newly appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi removed big portraits of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Merrick Garland from Doj Walls, which she has every right to do. But just wondering. Jason Stanley is a Yale philosophy professor who studied the authoritarian playbook. Jason, does this ring any bells?

[Jason Stanley]

Well, famously, Lenin's speech on May 5, 1920, in Moscow to Soviet troops had Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenov in the foreground. The photo was later doctored. Trotsky and Kamenov were removed. So this altering of history is characteristic of authoritarian regimes, and particularly the removal of photos is an iconic image from the Soviet era.

[Michael Loewinger]

Stalin did that constantly. He also put himself in pictures. Sometimes I just wonder, what does it mean? Is it just, you're starting year one.

[Jason Stanley]

An authoritarian regiment has to construct a mythical past that glorifies its struggles to gain power, glorifies reversals, and then represents them as ultimately a path to success.

[Michael Loewinger]

Last year, you published a book called Erasing How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. Let's lay aside the F word for now and just talk about the history of rewriting history. I mean, not every incident needs to set your hair on fire, right?

[Jason Stanley]

No, but if you think about what your sort of cartoon vision of an authoritarian society is, it's a certain path through history. It's what we might call a patriotic path, one that venerates the nation as singular and great. In Mein Kampf, Hitler speaks a lot about patriotic education, and he says Germans have forgotten the art of picking the great men from their past and showing that they represent the greatness of the German nation, Aiming the education system not at understanding the history of a country, but rather on venerating and worshiping it. This is authoritarian education. This is how you transform your education system. That will lead people to regard critical voices as unpatriotic and threats. Today in Russia, there's actually a film about this called Mr. Nobody. You see the transition to the extreme patriotic education now centered in Russian schools. Vladimir Putin said, and it's shown in this film, wars are won by teachers.

[Michael Loewinger]

You wrote that for wannabe authoritarians, history, the courts, and education are all necessary conquests. So let's talk about how authoritarian regimes, you say, find history profoundly threatening, even when it's not about them. Because if we look at a Russian organization known as Memorial, they're gathering history together, they're collecting documents, and Putin put a stop to it. But it wasn't about Putin.

[Jason Stanley]

It was about Stalin's crimes. And he completely smashed the organization, put its leaders in prison. What Putin wants to do is represent Russia as great and the Soviet Union is part of that narrative of greatness. Under the Soviet Union, Ukraine was a part of the empire. And so Putin wants to reach back to the previous czars and leaders of the empire who conquered the places he wants to conquer and place them on a pedestal. So if you're going around documenting Stalin's crimes, that, by the way, look to some in many respects, like the crimes Putin is committing and wants to commit, that is threatening to anyone who wants to imitate Stalin.

[Michael Loewinger]

And you've argued that this impulse to delete inconvenient history isn't exactly a new reflex in the United States.

[Jason Stanley]

We really need to understand the history of the rewriting of Reconstruction because we're seeing those same tactics again. So Reconstruction was that brief era after the Civil War when black Americans in the south were allowed to vote and hold political office. So, for instance, when I went to school in the 70s and 80s, you would always talk about the first black congressperson from the south since Reconstruction. That was a standard thing to say. Those of us of my age will remember that Reconstruction ended because they said black politicians were corrupt and incompetent. The attacks on DEI are extremely evocative of that. They're saying any black person in power has gotten there because of these programs. This is exactly the narrative that ended the black vote in the south in the 1870s. And it's extremely concerning that we're seeing the exact same tactics again.

[Michael Loewinger]

Maybe back up a little, because listeners may have a gut reaction from comparisons of America today to Nazi Germany or even Jim Crow.

[Jason Stanley]

Still. Brooke, come on. Given that we ourselves had a society in which large swaths of us were not allowed to vote, and that not voting and prevention of black Americans from holding positions of power was held in place by the erasure of history and making up myths, we don't need to look abroad for these strategies and tactics. They held in place a white racial regime in the south until the mid-1960s, when most other countries had given up those kinds of things, including Germany.

[Michael Loewinger]

You've spent a lot of time studying not just authoritarianism, but the descent into it. Where do you think America as it is now stands compared to, say, Putin's Russia or Hungary under Victor Orban?

[Jason Stanley]

They're explicitly imitating Viktor Orban. He's venerated by the people now in power. So we know to expect a lot of of what has happened in Hungary. And we're seeing it already. We're seeing the media being threatened, seeing the organs of the state being used against the media. So the media is essentially Bribing Trump, like with the 60 Minutes Harris interview, where Trump claimed that they were harming his election chances and it was a completely spurious lawsuit, but it looks like they're gonna settle with him, essentially a bribe. So that kind of thing is very. Hungary using the organs of the state to bring the universities to heal, to target the education system. Patriotic education system is now the rule in Hungary. The elementary schools and high schools have classes that are just basically nonsense. So we are now in a situation probably close to where Hungary is, not anywhere near where Putin's Russia is, where they're actually putting people in prison and murdering them just for being in the opposition or just for being critical voices.

[Michael Loewinger]

You were warning last year of the effects of a Trump White House on education. On January 29, he signed an executive order on ending radical indoctrination in K through 12 schooling. And he demanded that patriotic education be taught to kids.

[Jason Stanley]

The patriotic education move is a classic authoritarian move. What's meant here is erasing the nation's sins. Look at Alternatief for Deutschland, the German far right party that's gaining ground. Their goal is to, as it were, make Germany great again, to remove the focus on Nazi evil from the schools. So people think of what the Nazis did not, not in uniformly bad terms, nor as particularly significant in German history. As Musk said when he spoke to the Avde, the German people are sort of really an ancient nation, goes back thousands of years.

[Max Chafkin]

Julius Caesar's like, first encountering the German.

[Jason Stanley]

Tribes in the Gallic campaigns. And he was like, wow, very impressive.

[Michael Loewinger]

These are very, very powerful warriors.

[Jason Stanley]

Obviously, those German tribes didn't include Jews. So that is an explicit hearkening back to a kind of Aryan. And what we have is something similar here. A call to cease teaching about the horrors of chattel slavery, to cease teaching about the end of Reconstruction and Jim Crow America, to cease teaching, certainly about its downstream effects, like the large racial wealth gap that persists and school segregation and residential segregation that persists from our nation's past. The idea is to say we are the greatest nation in history. We didn't make terrible mistakes. Any mistakes we made, we quickly solved. And then there are these critical voices, call them the Democrats, who want us to sort of apologize and make up for things we supposedly did in the past. They're, in fact, traitors.

[Michael Loewinger]

You wrote that to resist the slide into cruelty is perhaps the most important educational goal of a people. What forms of education would be appropriate for such an endeavor?

[Jason Stanley]

We have to learn about each other's perspectives, a Democracy is not a system simply where everyone votes. A democracy is a system where we vote informed by the perspectives of our fellow citizens. If a democracy was just everyone voting without an education about our country, then the majority would be a tyranny. They would simply impose their vision of the country again and again on anyone who wasn't in the majority. So a democratic education system gives us a window into the past and present of our fellow citizens. That's why if you want to attack democracy, you remove other perspectives and then you can represent minority groups as threatening rather than understandable.

[Michael Loewinger]

You said that political equality, which is what you want in a democracy, requires those bodies of knowledge.

[Jason Stanley]

Political equality is not just each of us having a vote. Political equality is each of us being a participant in the national conversation. You can see what's central to democracy by what they're targeting. If you go after, if you diminish women's voices and agency, you're diminishing the voices of half the country. You're halfway there to diminishing voices to just a few. Authoritarianism is all about eliminating equality and freedom. Democracy is the practice of realizing equality and freedom. And what critical race theory does, what gender studies does, what labor history does, is they say, look at all of this inequality in the past and in the present that democratic practice needs to address. If you erase that history, then you remove the impetus for the practice of democracy.

[Michael Loewinger]

What is the good of examining all this history on the antithesis of democracy when democracy will still vote it into power?

[Jason Stanley]

This is the paradox of democracy. Democracy gives the very weapons to destroy it to those who wish its end, as Goebbels pointed out. So this is not new. I think what happened in the run up to the election is there was a lot of scoffing at so called alarmism. Scoffing came from some of the biggest media organizations, including the New York Times. And it came from unexpected sources like the Left. Now, all that anti alarmism, that attack on calling it fascism, I think that now looks antiquated.

[Michael Loewinger]

But is it true? I mean, now, at this time, is it true?

[Jason Stanley]

Yes, it's almost comically fascist. I mean, the reinventing the past, the rewriting of January 6th, the rewriting history, the use of government to just simply enrich the people who support it. Corruption is the rule. The idea is that anyone who's not a follower of the leader, they're the corrupt ones. And if you are a follower of the leader, you get whatever you want. That's Putin's Russia, that's Orban's Hungary. That's just how authoritarianism works.

[Michael Loewinger]

And the firing of the inspectors general.

[Jason Stanley]

It's characteristic of a number of kinds of authoritarianism to represent politically neutral organizations as biased against you because the rule of law is biased against you if you're a criminal. So what you do is you say, hey, those courts that were holding me accountable for the things that I did, the bad business dealings, the overthrow of the government, whatever you did that was clearly criminal, they're biased against me. And so we have to get rid of them because the only rule of law from now on is me.

[Michael Loewinger]

Jason, thank you very much.

[Jason Stanley]

Thank you, Brooke.

[Michael Loewinger]

Jason Stanley is the author of Erasing How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Coming up, the President says Christians are suffering in America. A durable narrative that, lacking evidence, seems to rest entirely on faith.

[Michael Loewinger]

This is on the media.

[Brooke Gladstone]

WNYC Studios is supported by Ground News. Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news organizations and break free from algorithms. With Ground News, you get details about the source of your information, empowering you to compare how different news sources from around the world cover the same story. With over 9 and a half thousand 5 star reviews of their app and website, Ground News is a top platform that allows you to discover how any news story is being covered, giving every perspective all in one place. Expand your view of the news. Sign up for your Ground News account today and get access to the mobile app, website, browser extension and exclusive newsletters so you can have a well rounded view of the world. Think critically about what you read and find common ground between perspectives. Go to groundnews.com wnyctoday to get 40% off the ground News Vantage plan and get access to all of their news analysis features. That's groundnews.com WNYC for 40% off the ground News Vantage plan for a limited time only.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

This is on the Media. I'm Michael Loewinger.

[Michael Loewinger]

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. We end our episode on the rewriting of history with a narrative that has drawn far less attention than it deserves given its great political heft. And that is the story of Christianity under siege, fighting for its very life in these United States. President Donald Trump says he wants to root out, quote, anti Christian BIAs in the U.S. the mission of this task.

[Jason Stanley]

Force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DM doj, which was absolutely terrible, the irs, the FBI terrible and other agencies.

[Michael Loewinger]

The fact is Christians are persecuted in places like Afghanistan and India. But on these hallowed shores. They are relatively footloose and fancy free.

[Max Chafkin]

We've just seen a surge in anti Semitic and Islamophobic hate crime incidences.

[Michael Loewinger]

Matthew D. Taylor is a scholar at the University Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore.

[Max Chafkin]

And we don't note Trump arguing that we need to have a task force on eradicating anti Semitism or Islamophobia. So this is a way of enshrining a certain form of Christian privilege and Christian power in the U.S. but the.

[Michael Loewinger]

Story of Christian victimhood is hardly new. Quite the contrary, it's been putting a righteous gloss on less than saintly behavior for at least a thousand years.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

After the Roman Empire has been effectively Christianized, Christians start using the history of persecution to justify their violence against those who are not members of their own religious groups.

[Michael Loewinger]

Candida Moss, theology professor at the University of Birmingham, is author of the Myth of How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

As an outsider looking at it, one.

[Michael Loewinger]

Might say, how can one both be.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

The most dominant religious group and also victims? But in a way, this is how.

[Michael Loewinger]

Christianity flourished from the early church onwards.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

When Christianity succeeded and converted the Roman emperor, that was a sign that they.

[Michael Loewinger]

Were protected by God.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

But when Christians were persecuted, which some.

[Michael Loewinger]

Really were, that was also a sign of their virtue.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

And that's really what's being invoked when someone like President Trump says that he's the greatest president ever, but also that he's a victim.

[Michael Loewinger]

Matthew D. Taylor is familiar with the different kinds of Christians represented in the new administration and what lies behind the president's frequent claim that his faith is.

[Max Chafkin]

Under threat in the U.S. i think it's a bit of a stretch to claim that there's any sort of widespread anti Christian bias, given that Christians make up two thirds of the population.

[Michael Loewinger]

Do the Christians around Trump really believe that they're under fire?

[Max Chafkin]

Yes, many Christians believe that Christianity is under fire. In the United States, we'll sometimes talk about this as the problem of vulnerable majorities. And up until 1990, 90% or more of Americans were identifying as Christian. That's down to about 66% today. So when, when majorities perceive that their power is slipping away, you can very easily have a backlash. And we see this in places like India today, where close to 80% of the population is Hindu. But there's all kinds of discourse about Hindu phobia used rhetorically and in propaganda to justify attacks on Muslim minorities that often go unpunished by the government. And so when you have a religious majority that claims persecution, that's often the setup for them to actually persecute other people.

[Michael Loewinger]

Let's talk about the task force. The president seems to have laid the foundation stone of what you call the new Christian nationalist infrastructure.

[Max Chafkin]

This is something that Trump was promising throughout the campaign, especially when he spoke in front of particularly Christian audiences. He would promise Christians more power. He would promise them vengeance, he would promise them retribution. So this is a way of enshrining a certain form of Christian privilege and Christian power. And that is the agenda of Christian nationalism, to blend the identity of the United States with Christian identity.

[Michael Loewinger]

So let's talk about what's going on inside Trump's wheelhouse. You've pointed to a series of photos he's taken since he first ran for President in 2015, being prayed over by a group of faith leaders. There was just another one earlier this month. Tell me what he's trying to convey.

[Max Chafkin]

By now, there are dozens of these photos. They often are set in the Cabinet Room or the Oval Office. Almost always, Trump is seated and you have the leaders arrayed around him in a sort of semicircle. It's very clearly posed. Right. And it has become part of the iconography of Christian Trumpism, a way of baptizing his agenda.

[Michael Loewinger]

And these Christians are on Trump's religious advisory board, right? Yeah.

[Max Chafkin]

There have been different iterations of these boards. They've all been led by Paula White Cain, and she is what we would call an independent charismatic or non denominational charismatic megachurch pastor. She's a televangelist. That was actually how she got to know Trump. He saw her preaching on Television in 2002. And she has been the ringleader of the spiritual and religious advisors who surround Trump. Almost all of them are Christian. I think there has been one Chabad rabbi who has gotten linked into there over the last 10 years. And the lion's share of them do come out of these more Pentecostal charismatic traditions.

[Michael Loewinger]

And it's also the sect that originated the Cyrus prophecy about Trump, that he is the flawed but chosen leader by God.

[Max Chafkin]

This was one of the first of these charismatic prophecies that presents him as this figure of destiny who has come to save the United States. And I'll just note that within the 2024 campaign, especially, Trump really leaned into it in his acceptance speech on election night.

[Jason Stanley]

Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason.

[Max Chafkin]

And.

[Jason Stanley]

That reason was to save our country and to restore.

[Michael Loewinger]

So this independent charismatic Christian sect makes up one branch of the Christian nationalists who seem to be jockeying for power around Trump. But You've named other groups that want influence. One of them is a faction of Christian nationalists that the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth belongs to.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah, this is a group of Calvinist theologians and pastors. They're from a very kind of hardline form of evangelical Protestantism. They're often called the Theobros.

[Michael Loewinger]

They're bros because this is a very mal driven movement.

[Max Chafkin]

Yes. Extremely male driven, very patriarchal. In fact, they're almost all young, in their 30s, 40s, 50s. They almost all have big beards. And some of these pastors have come out arguing that the 19th Amendment needs to be repealed and that women should no longer have the right to vote. They often have more of an enclave sensibility where they want to incubate their vision of a Christian society in particular localities. One of the major ones today is in Moscow, Idaho, under one of the real figureheads of this movement today, a guy named Doug Wilson, who actually helps co lead the church that Pete Hegseth belongs to. And Pete Hegseth getting elevated to the position that he's in, I think was a surprising opportunity for them. They have access to Trump in many ways for the first time, and I think they are trying to exploit that as much as they possibly can.

[Michael Loewinger]

You've called them the antithesis of the separation of church and state.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah. They would even venture to probably say that the state should be subordinate to the church, or at least that they should be equal powers in coordination in Christianizing society. And they often will talk about the idea of the Christian magistrate or the Christian prince, where there's one strong ruler who implements this Christian vision from the top.

[Michael Loewinger]

So tell me a little bit about what JD Vance is up to. He's a Catholic convert, a trad Catholic. What does that mean?

[Max Chafkin]

There was a massive change that occurred in the life of the Roman Catholic church in the 1960s. It was called the Second Vatican Council, often called Vatican II. And the radical traditionalist Catholics are a diverse group, but they're united in their broad sweep rejection of the reforms of Vatican ii. They also tend to really rely heavily on the theology and philosophy of this medieval theologian named Thomas Aquinas.

[Michael Loewinger]

It's a powerful movement, even though much more under the radar. You have Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who's been carefully placing judges and officials in state governments. You have Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech bro, I guess, who is one of Vance's strong supporters.

[Max Chafkin]

They don't have much role in the circle of his religious advisors. Their real entry point into the administration right now is especially through J.D. vance. And if you've noticed, within the last few weeks, JD Vance has gotten into some theological arguments publicly. He has seemingly embraced the role of court theologian for maga.

[Michael Loewinger]

Yeah, he just got into a public spat with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, not exactly known for being a left wing bunch. Tell me what happened.

[Max Chafkin]

So, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, who, yes, tend to be fairly conservative in their cultural and theological outlook, but who are also informed by the broad Catholic tradition and Catholic social, social teaching, and concern for the poor. They started, I would say, mildly pushing back on the Trump administration, arguing that we need to show compassion to migrants, that the broad, sweeping cuts through USAID are taking money out of many of these NGOs and charitable organizations around the world that are serving the poor. And J.D. vance clapped back at them.

[Jason Stanley]

I think that the U.S. conference of.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns, or are they actually worried about their bottom line, which.

[Max Chafkin]

Is a remarkably cynical thing for a Catholic to say about the entire American hierarchy.

[Michael Loewinger]

And the bishops followed up with a statement saying that, faithful to the teaching of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church has a long history of serving refugees. And then the Pope got involved.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Francis is so upset about the Trump administration's immigration policies that he wrote a letter to American bishops criticizing Vice President J.D. vance for using Catholic philosophy to defend their actions.

[Michael Loewinger]

Christopher White at the National Catholic Reporter said that the Pope's letter in directly addressing policy was the first of its kind by a pope for about a century. Pope Francis said what is built on the basis of force and not on the basis of truth about the equal dignity of every human being begins badly and will end badly.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah, I'm not Catholic, but for most of my friends who are Catholic, I think they would perceive a direct theological rebuke from the Pope as at least a. A moment to pause for reconsideration. I think that J.D. vance, given the circles he travels in, might well wear that as a badge of honor.

[Michael Loewinger]

And with regard to the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops, they were much more powerful in the era of George W. Bush, which was a Christian rite, but not like the one we have now.

[Max Chafkin]

I think if during the George W. Bush administration, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had publicly pushed back on something that was going on, the inclination, I imagine, would have been to bring them in and figure out what their concerns were, because they would have been seen as part of the coalition. Similarly, I think when Trump comes along and says that the US Is just going to take over Gaza, I think that the Christian right of old would have balked at that.

[Michael Loewinger]

Yeah. I was struck by how quickly Trump did away with the PEPFAR program that was created by George W. Bush, universally celebrated for saving countless lives in Africa. This is a program against aids.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah. Say what you will about George W. Bush, PEPFAR was an incredible act of humanitarian aid and concern, and their Christian advisors don't seem to call them out or challenge them at all on that.

[Michael Loewinger]

We know that there are many Christians who oppose these actions. 27 religious groups, mostly Christian, have filed a federal lawsuit over the overturning of a policy that broadly restricted ICE from making arrests at churches. Even conservative Christians like the ones we've mentioned are bristling, you know, evangelical groups that have lost funding for their aid organizations. To what extent do these Christian supremacist factions around Trump represent American Christians more broadly?

[Max Chafkin]

The Christian supremacists still represent a pretty narrow band of American Christians. If you went and pulled 100 Christians off the street, I would argue that many of the Christians who surround Donald Trump would be in the 98th or 99th percentile in terms of how hardline, aggressive, and extreme their theology is.

[Michael Loewinger]

There is a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute that found that Christian nationalism supporters are 3 in 10Americans. That strikes me as a big number.

[Max Chafkin]

It is. But again, when we talk about Christian nationalism, there's a spectrum there. There are people who will affirm certain points of Christian nationalism. Oh, yes. The United States should be a Christian nation. And when you ask them, follow up questions, okay, so you're saying that Congress should legislate biblical morality. Oh, no, no, no. We just want Christian values. And you're like, okay, well, which Christian values? You know, love and justice and service. Like, okay, I don't have a real problem with love and justice being part of our government. I think there are people who would even affirm versions of Christian nationalism who would look at some of the way that Trump is implementing these things and say, wow, that is going too far.

[Michael Loewinger]

Like encouraging ICE to make arrests at churches.

[Max Chafkin]

Yes. I mean, I am in touch with very conservative Christian leaders, many of whom know some of Trump's religious advisors. And they are messaging me and saying, how do we back channel, Try to get this to be more moderate and not to be targeting churches? Our people are afraid. And I respond to them and say, you have far more of a back channel than anyone I know. And they say, we tried. No one will listen.

[Michael Loewinger]

What about the potential conflicts between the independent charismatic evangelicals praying over Trump versus the Theobros, the Hegseth Christians keeping women in the kitchen, and Vance's trash Catholicism, which derives its power through lots of money and putting Christians in power. Is there any hint of conflict within Trump's Christian ranks?

[Max Chafkin]

All indications are that Trump's core Christian supporters are jubilant right now. They're all against abortion, they're all against LGBTQ rights, they're all against pornography. They all want more Christianity taught in public schools. Where the rubber is gonna meet the road is, once they get over the hurdle of Christianizing America, whose Christianity are they going to use? Right. Because underneath their unity around the things that they hate, they have very different theological frameworks. They have very different agendas.

[Michael Loewinger]

I know that you've said that they once saw Trump as a vehicle to enact their agenda, and today Trump is the agenda.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah, there's been a shift over the course of the last decade. The real low point for them came about a week after Donald Trump entered the presidential race when the Supreme Court handed down the Obergefell same sex marriage decision. They felt like they needed somebody who would be kind of a bare knuckle brawler, somebody who would fight on their behalf. And they saw Trump as a convenient vehicle. He was God's instrument of wrath. What has changed, though, over the last decade, and I think these prophecies about Trump have played a very important role in that, is they have come to see Trump not merely as a vehicle, but as an avatar. They've come to see him in quasi messianic terms. And as they have attached more and more of their spirituality to Trump, their religiosity has become very synchronized with the MAGA agenda in the first Trump administration. Some of his religious advisors, especially some of the Latino ones, started privately pushing back on Trump. Trump and saying, you're using all this anti immigrant rhetoric. These are human beings. Can we have some compassion here? Some of those same advisors don't say a peep. Even as Trump's rhetoric now has become far, far more aggressive and harsh. And I think it started out that Trump was going to be their vehicle, and now they're his vehicle.

[Michael Loewinger]

Thank you so much, Matt.

[Max Chafkin]

Thank you, Brooke.

[Michael Loewinger]

Matt. Matthew D. Taylor is a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. He's also the author of the book the Violent Take it by the Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

That's it for this week's show on the media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark Callender Candace Wong and Katerina Barton.

[Michael Loewinger]

Our technical director is Jennifer Munson. Our engineer is Brendan Dalton. Eloise Blondio is our senior producer. And our executive producer is Katya Rogers. On the Media is a production of WNYC Studios. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Matthew D. Taylor]

And I'm Michael Oinger.