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- [00:01]
Jebron
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- [00:20]
Heather Cox Richardson
The views expressed should not be used for medical diagnosis or treatment as a substitute for professional medical advice.
- [00:24]
Pod Save America Host (possibly Jon Favreau or another host)
Individual circumstances may vary.
- [00:26]
Heather Cox Richardson
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- [01:20]
Alex Wagner
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Alex Wagner on today's show, historian Heather Cox Richardson on America at 250. With the administration gearing up for July 4th celebrations and gearing down from celebrations of Trump's 80th, I thought I'd check in with someone who can situate all of the pomp and circumstance in historical context. You likely know Heather from her insanely popular sub stack Letters from an American, where she writes every damn day about the history behind today's increasingly ahistorical politics. Heather has a new series out to celebrate America's 250th. It is aptly named 250 to 250, which is where she tells the story of the Americans who, over the course of a quarter millennium worked to make real the founding ideals of this nation that all people are created equal. We're gonna talk about that series and Trump's Fourth of July celebrations, as well as so much, much more Trump's efforts to make D.C. just as tacky as he is J.D. vance's Catholic faith and how the lefts can embrace patriotism once again. It was a great conversation with Heather and we're gonna get to it in a minute. But before we do, guys, there's a new episode of Pod SA Friends out now with me and Hysteria's Aaron Ryan. Go check it out. Only Friends is the Friends of the Pod subscriber exclusive show where Pod Save America hosts and contributors dive into even more news stories from the week. In this episode, Aaron and I unpack the Justice Department's latest investigation into Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. We check in on whatever was going on at the Turning Point Women's Leadership Summit. No, that is not an oxymoron and much more. So hit pause and subscribe to friends of the pod@crooked.com friends also, please, if you would, check out my podcast, Runaway country, where I this week talked to California Attorney General Rob Bonta about J.D. vance's war on blue States, the other war that he's tasked with, and then graded the vice's salesmanship efforts this week on the Iran surrender with the great Sam Cedar. All right, here is Heather Cox Richardson. Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for joining us today on pod Save America. And also preemptively thank you for offering wisdom and perspective on this insane American moment.
- [03:42]
Heather Cox Richardson
Alex, it's always so much fun to be with you. Oh, we should do it more often.
- [03:46]
Alex Wagner
Anytime, literally. You just say the word. I'm here. Let's start first with the upcoming 250th celebration, the semi quincentennial and how the President has chosen to celebrate this momentous occasion. Last Sunday, he of course, hosted a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House. And then next week on the 4th, he is going to be hosting the self proclaimed most spectacular Trump rally of them all on the National Mall. I don't have the same lens onto history as you do, but have you, can you recall any sort of parallel to such a monstrous display of presidential ego in the name of patriotic celebration anytime in our history as a country?
- [04:30]
Heather Cox Richardson
No, of course not. We're in a really different moment than ever before in American history with an administration that's rejecting the basic principles of our democratic government. So one of the things that's interesting is how that's playing out not only in celebrations of the 250th, but also in the memorials in Washington, D.C. but there's a larger story, I mean, everybody knows it, that I'm talking about the reflecting pool, which might be a really interesting dive, so to speak, for us to go into the Kennedy center, the gilded horses behind the Lincoln Memorial, the arch, you know, all the things we could the destruction of the Ben Shahn, the proposed destruction of the Ben Shahn murals, all that stuff. But what's really interesting as you look over it when you think about democracy is that if you think about our great presidents, the ones we remember, people like Lyndon Baines, John Johnson or Theodore Roosevelt or Eisenhower or, you know, we could go on and on. They're the ones who carved their memory into the American people by making their lives better, by having Social Security or health care or by trying to eliminate poverty by suggesting that the way you create a monument to yourself is by changing the lives of the American people for the better. And it's just really interesting when you think about legacies, the fact that Trump somehow thinks that slapping his name on stuff matters, but that doesn't matter at all. And similarly, if you think about our history, you can write, and people do write books celebrating the absolute genius of. And I'm going to pull somebody here at random, Benjamin Harrison, but it just doesn't stick if, in fact, it's clear that all you're doing is trying to celebrate a certain kind of dominant lifestyle versus something that actually made the American people better. So I would suggest that right now in American history, for example, a lot more people have heard of the Wounded Knee massacre than have heard of Benjamin Harrison's great successes.
- [06:41]
Alex Wagner
Yeah. I mean, people can talk to the Trail of Tears, but they're not sure what Old Hickory did in terms of interior decorations at the White House. MAGA types have pointed to the fact that Teddy Roosevelt, I believe, hosted and fought in a boxing match at the White House during President presidency.
- [06:58]
Heather Cox Richardson
This is actually great. So if you want to talk about this, I would love to do this, because what happens in the Theodore Roosevelt presidency is this is coming. First of all, Teddy Roosevelt really jumps into some sort of American prominence in 1884, which is an important year politically because that's really when the younger Republicans are coming of age and they're looking at the corruption of the Republican Party and saying, we can't be Democrats because of the Civil War, but we also can't be that kind of Repub. So one of the things that they are trying to do is figure out how to return America to its democratic, small D Democratic principles. And this is happening at a time of industrialization. And during that time of industrialization, the industrialists are essentially arranging the systems in the United States to create an undereducated, underpaid underclass that will continue. Yeah. Does it sound familiar in any way?
- [07:54]
Alex Wagner
It sounds kind of familiar, but.
- [07:56]
Heather Cox Richardson
So one of the things that is driving Theodore Roosevelt is he's very concerned about the terrible conditions in the urban areas, especially in the East. Remember, he loses both his mother and his wife on the same day to diseases that have come out of that sort of urban soup before we really understood germ theory. And he wants to clean up the cities, but he also wants to return the country to a place where we can actually create good citizens. And so he's going to support cleaning up the cities. He's going to support education and he's going to support the wide open spaces that he's going to try and protect through conservation. But he is also going to try to reclaim a kind of American masculinity that says we're not just cogs in a machine of a larger system. And that speaks to his own sort of rediscovering his ability, his physical abilities from his youthful asthma through boxing. So this is when you get. And he also protects football. Football. Somebody had actually died playing a college football game. It was such a rough sp. So he actually manages to also sound familiar. This is also the same period when we get indigenous names attached to sports teams. Because the idea was that you wanted men to be savage, and I'm going to put that in air quotes, but only on the football field, for example. But you think about what Teddy Roosevelt was trying to do, and a lot of people looked down on it because of all the bare knuckle fighting and all that. And this is sort of an era of cockfighting and prize fighting and so on in the C. It was not considered higher level entertainment. But there are some really big differences, I think between. And maybe at the time people would not have said so. There's one really major difference between Teddy Roosevelt and boxing and his exhibition boxing, which was not the same bloody stuff that was going on in Five Points in New York and what happened at the White House. And the really big difference, two really big differences, is one, taxpayer money didn't go into Teddy Roosevelt's fighting and it was not a branding opportunity. And for sure it was not the corruption opportunity that the UFC fight in the White House has been. So even though it both involved flying fists, the systems that they are either accepting or critiquing were virtually opposite.
- [10:22]
Alex Wagner
Very important distinction. There was no cryptocurrency, sponsorship and Paramount plus requirement to see the match. You could just be human being there on the white. Do you have any idea how many people attended that White House match that Roosevelt fought in?
- [10:35]
Heather Cox Richardson
Oh, oh, there wouldn't have been. I don't have any idea. But it would not have been huge. Cause remember, what makes things huge is the ability to get places quickly and to know that they're happening. Neither of which would have happened. It would have been written up in the newspapers afterward. And I'm sorry to have gone on so long about that, but literally nobody has ever asked me about it.
- [10:55]
Alex Wagner
No, I.
- [10:55]
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- [10:56]
Alex Wagner
I love this.
- [10:57]
Heather Cox Richardson
And just so you know, Lincoln was also a fighter, which again, nobody's ever
- [11:01]
Alex Wagner
asked me about like a Boxing fighter?
- [11:03]
Heather Cox Richardson
Oh, no, worse. Lincoln. I mean, worse. If you're not into kind of Krav Maga. He was. Remember, he was from the frontier, and he was quite a big man and he had quite long arms and legs, and that made him a really good guy in a fight and in those days. And there's an argument about how deeply he went into this. This was the era of eye gouging and ear biting and so on. And there's big fights about whether or not he did that. Lots of people want to say, oh, he would have done that. Maybe, maybe not. But remember, he gets his political start in Illinois, and he is backed in a bipartisan basis because there's a gang who supports him, and they're actually from the opposite party. He's a Whig and they're Democrats, and they support him because he's such a great fighter. He has fought with them before.
- [11:49]
Alex Wagner
Did he bite ears? Do we know if he bits? We don't know.
- [11:51]
Heather Cox Richardson
We don't know the answer to that. And people who listen to this podcast now are gonna write, you and me probably hate mail from both sides saying, of course he did or, no, he didn't. But he came up through that era because you had to to survive on the frontier. And it turned out, in his case, to be a springboard into politics.
- [12:11]
Alex Wagner
Well, I mean, yeah, Trump was a public. Was a fight promoter, basically through much of his career in the 80s. So here we are, and he's promoting fights to enrich himself and line the pockets of his allies on the White House grounds with taxpayer money. You mentioned Lincoln, and I'm kind of interested in asking you whether this moment. There's a lot that's reminiscent. History tells us the future as much as it is a detail of the past. But he, Trump has other plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary, including the indie drag race around the streets of Washington, D.C. and the Great American State Fair, which several states we already know, Heather, Are skipping. At least eight states. Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Maine, Oregon, Washington and Pennsylvania, all blue states, have said they will not take part in the fair. Maybe they don't have any. Any like, but butter sculptures that they want to send in. But I feel like it's a little bit more political than that. Is this what it felt like in the summer of 1860 when you had states just opting out of, like, Fourth of July celebrations because they just did not see themselves as part of the union? I mean, I'm not saying that that's what's happening right now, but the division, the steep division, in a moment of that is supposed to be about national pride, but obviously Trump is insured is not.
- [13:26]
Heather Cox Richardson
So in the 1860s and before, Fourth of July would have been celebrated at a state level, and there really wouldn't. There are Fourth of July speeches in a lot of places, but you wouldn't have been able to make a statement like that. And in fact, everybody would have harked back to the framers and the founders, the framers of the Constitution and the founders of the Declaration of independence. So 1860 is a little bit too early to go. But what is interesting is if you popped forward to something like 1876, and in 1876, there is real concern that the United States is going to fall apart. Remember, this is the year before 1877, and the American south taking back control of the states from the governments that were trying to protect civil rights in the Southern states. And that idea that we are celebrating different histories is actually part of a lot of our celebrations. But I would say something different in this moment, and that's that what really jumps out to me is far less that different states are saying, we're not going to play with Trump, then that Trump is saying, this is my holiday. This is about me, and this is about me dictating the state of Washington and also the state of our history. And he's been tripping up over history right and left lately as he's been trying to dictate how we remember it. And one of the things I love about that is that as that happens, people are stepping up and saying, wait a minute, I want to know the real history. Tell me the real history. So one of the things that you are seeing as freedom. 250. Trump's group has basically taken almost all of the money from the bipartisan, congressionally backed America 250, is that Americans themselves are finding their own ways to celebrate. So if you look on June 18th at the Nick's celebration in New York City, oh, my God, that was a Fourth of July celebration. Except they weren't actually talking about the Fourth.
- [15:29]
Alex Wagner
Absolutely.
- [15:29]
Heather Cox Richardson
And the opening of the Obama Presidential center in Chicago on the same day, people were actually putting on social media. Happy Fourth of July. Yeah.
- [15:41]
Alex Wagner
Yeah. And I actually spent last week, I did a substack live with Joy Reid, and we were talking about Juneteenth, which I think this year, more than any year that I can remember, has become kind of an alternative Fourth of July for a lot of people who feel completely excluded from Trump's malignant narcissism. That's cast Apollo over the fourth of July. And Juneteenth in many ways represents kind of our reconciliation with our very, very troubled and dark past on slavery or not reconciliation, but acknowledges it and also moves the ball forward and reminds us that we are living in a. We are in communion with one another. We are part of the fabric of democracy. In some ways, I feel like, to your point, Americans have been sort of a forced to reckon with their history in a way that they haven't before and also find ways to plant a flag, pardon the metaphor, in patriotism, in a way that feels authentic and honest. And that is like a weird downstream effect that is kind of positive, I think, from all of the Trump nonsense and garbage.
- [16:42]
Heather Cox Richardson
I think that's right. And I had the same observation about Juneteenth myself this year, that it felt much more like an American celebration of recognizing what one does when the system is designed to strip away your freedom. And one of the things that the Trump administration has done, I think, is it has made people realize that the. I'm sorry, but the villains we found in our past that seem somehow as if they were overdone, like, truly, nobody could really do X are around us even still. And while you could always say that because, you know, human nature, watching some of these people take positions of power in the same sorts of ways that the segregationists did in the 18. I'm sorry, 1960s and 1860s as well, but 1960s and 1970s, I mean, bull Connor still walks among us. And for those people who were not old enough to remember those days, watching somebody like Greg Bevino giving Nazi salutes and talking about ethnic cleansing and recognizing he really was running our immigration policy is an eye opener. I think that reminds people we must act in solidarity against those who are trying to destroy American democracy. Not by party, not by any of the other divisions that people tend to emphasize or have tended to emphasize since the 1980s, but really, this is an existential struggle for the survival of American democracy, and we could actually get it right this time.
- [18:20]
Alex Wagner
Fingers crossed. The mere existence of Stephen Miller is a reminder that we can indeed go back to our very, very violent racist roots.
- [18:38]
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- [20:04]
Pod Save America Host (possibly Jon Favreau or another host)
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- [21:16]
Alex Wagner
you mentioned the way other ways in which Trump is celebrating America 250 and one of them is remaking recasting the city in the image of, I guess Mar a Lago or perhaps Trump Tower, gilding horses with a. A half an inch thick gold plating and trying to dye the reflecting pool blue to no avail. We'll talk about that in a second. But when we talk about the actual architecture of all of this. Right. DC was designed to be a piece of civic art. And it is what the New York Times recently called an accumulation of carefully arranged details, many quietly referencing one another. There. I grew up there. There is a through line in many of the buildings, even though they're different sty. And now Trump wants to like install a mammoth arch. He's trying to do something to the Lincoln Memorial as well. There's been a lot of pushback. There have been some lawsuits. I see Trump's push for monuments as inextricably linked to a male obsession with phallic objects. But maybe you have a less Freudian interpretation of what's going on here, Heather.
- [22:22]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, I actually don't do a lot of work with Freud. I was always more young person.
- [22:27]
Alex Wagner
Sure.
- [22:28]
Heather Cox Richardson
I actually, I gotta do a shout out here. I think the New York Times has done a really excellent job of popularizing understandings of the architecture in Washington D.C. they've had a couple of really good issues lately where they set out what it will mean to have these changes to the landscape and what it looks like. And so that's just, you know, we don't talk necessarily enough about when the media really gets something right. But I think that's exactly right. I mean, one of the things I've always loved about D.C. is the degree to which when it was laid out, it was supposed to reflect the American government, the three separate nodes of power and so on. And one of the things about the proposed ballroom is that it actually breaks the line of sight between the. Yeah. Which you grew up with. Right down Pennsylvania Avenue, I think it is that you could look all the way down and see the White House. And. And similarly, the arch goes from having that bridge between Washington D.C. and Virginia, which is really important, to the Civil War and the fact that the Arlington National Cemetery sits on General Lee's former plantation. And that itself is a really interesting story. And if you look at how that is laid out at Least according to the renderings by the New York Times. What it does is the arch will frame Robert E. Lee's house. And again, somebody said we should tear the house down. I fervently disagree with that. The Robert E. Lee house has a different name as well, is a really interesting and important historical document itself. The people who've lived there. It's actually got very much biracial history and so on. But I think what you are seeing is somebody who doesn't understand the concept of the people or the majesty, the true majesty of the concept of a government that is controlled by the people who are governed, which is in our Declaration of Independence. So plopping yourself down in the middle of strikes me that that kind of mirrors when he shows up at foreign dignitary events like the G7 last week or any one of them and basically walks in and says, well, well, I'm here now, the boss is here.
- [24:52]
Alex Wagner
And gets laughs. Is literally that, that statements like that are greeted with laughter because what a joke.
- [25:00]
Heather Cox Richardson
I gotta ask, except it's our taxpayers at this point putting up those jokes. Well, and that's the other piece of this that I don't think we, we have yet grappled with is how much of our money is going into those vanity projects. And mind you, I love the idea of upkeep on the gilded horses and all that that needs to be done. But this isn't his money, it's our money. And you look at the number of people who have been thrown off snap, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and I'm like, listen, I love a gilded horse as much as the next person, but I would very much rather my neighbors can eat.
- [25:38]
Alex Wagner
Children getting free lunches at school or hot lunches, children getting sometimes the only meal they're going to eat. Medicaid recipients having urgent and life threatening health conditions dealt with. I mean, this is all stuff that has been slashed in the name of putting an extra few centimeters of gold on the horses by the Lincoln Memorial. You mentioned the cost to the taxpayers. This week we have new reporting from the Washington Post. The cost of the ballroom, that monstrosity is going to cost $600 million with approximately half of that coming from taxpayer wallets. Heather.
- [26:12]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, and worse, they knew that that was a fabulous article. By the way, the Washington Post has had some great exclusives lately too. But when he was out there saying private funds are going to pay for this, which by the way, is not okay either, they already had cut checks off the public treasury. And you know, I just again, when I see these people out there talking about waste, fraud and abuse, and what they mean by that is we're tossing people off Medicaid and then they're turning around and spending. I believe the number, I believe. Don't quote me on this, is $352 million of taxpayer money on that and lying to us. I guess for me, that that's sort of the overall. I mean, it's all part of democracy, right? You either have a democracy that is responsive, where the government is responsible to the people, or you have an authoritarian government where everything we have belongs to them and they can spend it however they wish. And those two things should be firmly in front of the American people. But don't lie to me and tell me that you're protecting my money while you are literally picking my pocket. I mean that to me. And the same thing. Back to the UFC fight. Don't tell me you're having a party for the American people when you're making bank off it. And I can't see it unless I belong to Paramount.
- [27:34]
Alex Wagner
Plus, I would just say this is the stuff that we know about, too. We on Runaway country had an episode last week talking about the ways in which the Trump family is basically stealing money from the Department of Defense. Lining the pockets of friends and stooges through government contracts or no bid. No bid government contracts or government loans. Donald Trump Jr. Sits on the board of a company that just got a 600 over. Over $600 million in a federal loan to scale up its rare earth mining or to scale up its rare earth magnet manufacturer. This is a company that, like, didn't exist several years ago. The level of COR will make your eyes not just water, but bleed. And that's the stuff, you know, the government, the, the. The Department of Defense, these government agencies have deep pockets because we appropriate a lot of money towards them. And the Trump administration learned something between Trump 1.0 and 2.0. Like, if you're going to go corrupt, go big or go home. It makes the Trump Hotel emoluments clause debate look like child's play compared to what's happening inside the guts of the federal government. Government. We see what's happening. The corruption on the outside with, you know, just gargantuan betrayals, like the destruction of the east wing and the, you know, attempted construction of the ballroom, which actually, I wanted to ask you about, Heather, do you think that this thing's actually going to be constructed before Trump's out of office?
- [29:01]
Heather Cox Richardson
Personally, no. And the reason I say that is I Don't I never assume anything's going to happen the next day. I mean, that's one of the perks of being a historian. You know, that you get really weird things happening, and all of a sudden some bet is off. But there's legal challenges, there's financial challenges. Trump is falling apart. Nobody likes that ballroom, maybe. But, you know, if you think about any construction project you have ever done yourself, like, all the planets in the universe have to be lined up correctly to get it done on time, and it's almost never on or under budget, and that's when you're not under pressure. So I look at that and I think maybe, I mean, maybe if you throw enough money at it. But it's. I don't know. Just my personal experience says doubtful personality. Personally?
- [29:58]
Alex Wagner
Yeah. I mean, I just was struck by it. That, you know, the UFC match in the background is the rubble of the East Wing. And it's. I mean, it's still very much a construction site. It's an open. It's a gaping wound, if you ask me. Has there ever been a parallel? I mean, when Truman installed the balcony, like, and obviously not on the scale of malignant narcissism that Trump is operating on, but just when. When presidents have done renovations to the White House, significant ones that the public can see, has there ever been any sort of flutter of outcry that would presage something like this?
- [30:34]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, yes and no. That is. Americans complain about change all the time. All the time. There is never a change where somebody goes, who? Boy, that was a great idea. I mean, even when we went to the moon, there were people who said, that's a total waste of money. Why are we doing this? So you're always gonna get pushback, and basically that's human nature, right? So there's always pushback about everything. But there are only two occasions that I can think of when there was a really big pushback. And one was interesting because it was during the Civil War, when the Lincolns move into the White House, it's falling apart. And Mary Todd Lincoln, Lincoln's wife, was actually probably a better political instincts than he did, which is saying something because he was a political animal and she recognized, in a way that he didn't, the power of women in Washington to determine what politics were going to end up being the most powerful. So she recognizes that the White House is totally shabby, and she undertakes the redecorating of it. Because the guy who desperately wants to be president is the man that Lincoln makes Treasury Secretary, his Name is Salmon P. Chase. He's from Ohio and he thinks everything should revolve around him. And so. So he comes to Washington and his. The woman who is in charge of his house is his daughter, Kate Chase, who's beautiful and who is sort of a very much a socialite. And she redecorates Sam and P. Chase's house to the nines. And then Jay Cook, who's a banker out of Philadelphia, picks up all the tab for it. Yeah, exactly. And then he goes on to do a lot of work with the treasury, which was correct, would be considered corrupt now is considered corrupt then. Right, but. So Mary Todd Lincoln looks at this and recognizes that Kate Chase is the one who's going to be having all the fancy parties because she's the one who has the beautiful home. And that this is gonna mean that her husband's presidency is gonna be undermined and that Chase will probably get the 64 four years out nomination.
- [32:40]
Alex Wagner
Wow.
- [32:41]
Heather Cox Richardson
So she redoes the White House and then she goes to the Congress and says, this is how much it cost. And it was a lot. I mean in dollar terms. But also they're in a fight. Survival of the Union. And Congress goes ballistic and says, we are not paying this. And Lincoln ended up picking up the tab for it himself. And it was a major sum of money at the time.
- [33:03]
Kiana (Shopify user testimonial)
Wow.
- [33:04]
Heather Cox Richardson
So there was that. But she was right. Then Washington, I mean, the White House became the centerpiece as opposed to Kate Chase's house. And that's actually what led to her bad marriage. And I could go on at great length. I'm actually writing a book book. And I am back in history. And I can't tell you how much
- [33:20]
Alex Wagner
I love it anyway, I'm so jealous.
- [33:23]
Heather Cox Richardson
So then there's another time, though, that is much more applicable. And that is, and I hate to have mentioned him twice today during Benjamin Harrison's administration. He has this ne' er do well son, which I know you can't imagine would happen to a president, a president
- [33:40]
Alex Wagner
with a ne' er do well son.
- [33:42]
Heather Cox Richardson
His name is Russell. And when Benjamin Harrison becomes president, Russell Harrison and his wife and children move into the White House house. And they promptly begin to say, this is way too small for a president to live in. And they come up with plans dramatically to redo the White House to add a greenhouse. I'm not sure if there was a ballroom or not, but they did this. They were going to redo it in this huge way because this was fitting for the US President. And again, the White House has always Been humble because theoretically, the President represents the people, and it's supposed to be humble, not that gold stuff everywhere. It's supposed to be plain. And he was absolutely eaten alive in the press. And people were like, if it's too small, why did you move in? We didn't elect you. And in fact, that renovation never goes forward. It dies.
- [34:33]
Alex Wagner
Okay, so they didn't go around hand gluing coins and memorabilia to the walls to spruce up the place like Trump appears to be doing. We have new reporting last week that Trump's literally going around. I guess it's in Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book, Regime Change. But Trump literally, like, is it a glue gun? It's some kind of gorilla glue or crazy glue that he's, like, using it to apply, I guess, more gold objects to the mantelpieces and the walls of the White House, which they said surprised no one in the White House, but should really astound the rest of us, because that is not what presidents do.
- [35:10]
Heather Cox Richardson
You know, it's actually interesting. Again, not a psychologist, but like. Like, if you were crumbling, at least. If I were crumbling. I can't think of a single instance in my life I have ever turned to a coin or that kind of a decoration. Yeah, like, I'll buy pens is what I'll do. And notebooks. Like, they're gonna have to take away my wallet.
- [35:33]
Alex Wagner
They're gonna pry your notebooks from your hands. He has a very specific psychology.
- [35:39]
Heather Cox Richardson
Look at you.
- [35:40]
Alex Wagner
God bless pen and paper. I'm with you, sister. What do you think should happen to this stuff? Like, assuming. Let's assume he does get the ballroom built. There's a raging debate about whether it should be torn down, whether it should be reappropriated to be something else. What's your opinion on that?
- [35:54]
Heather Cox Richardson
I'm afraid right now I don't have an opinion. That is. I would very much love to see all the sight lines back and have the White House restored. The ballroom, the way he is talking about it is huge. It dwarfs the original building. And yet I am not going to rule out the possibility that somebody says a great representation of the American people would be to put here. And I don't know what comes next in that space, but certainly it is possible to think of the American people being able to turn a symbol of authoritarianism into a symbol of popular power. Other countries have done it, and somebody who is good at architecture, unlike me, would.
- [36:37]
Kiana (Shopify user testimonial)
Would.
- [36:37]
Heather Cox Richardson
Would probably be able to say, here's what we really need to do. You know, the Same way they have repurposed places in. In other countries to reaffirm popular power.
- [36:50]
Alex Wagner
So I'm going to reconciliation. Yeah, yeah.
- [36:53]
Heather Cox Richardson
Maybe that's where you have the reconciliation trials. I. I just have no idea.
- [36:56]
Kiana (Shopify user testimonial)
God.
- [36:57]
Alex Wagner
The reconciliation trial.
- [37:07]
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- [39:11]
Alex Wagner
It is essential that we mention as we talk about the ways in which Americans are trying to reclaim their own history and think of patriotism in a way that feels authentic and honest. You have embarked on a project because you're not busy enough. Honestly, I think of myself and I'm like, like. But Heather Cox Richardson is writing today, you have launched a project 250 to 250, which highlights, quote, the people, places and events that have helped to move us forward toward a more perfect union. First of all, thank you for doing this great American. And did you intend for that to be a balm on the self aggrandizing, staged patriotism that Trump is offering us?
- [39:51]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, first of all, thank you for mentioning them. They have turned out, and I will tell you more about the working of them, because they have turned out to be a much bigger deal than I think I anyway foresaw. We came up with this idea before Trump had done anything, because it's not really an answer to him as it is an answer to American democracy. I firmly believe that the meaning of American democracy is that it has always been contested and that it has been the story of marginalized peoples demanding inclusion in the principles that were laid out in the Declaration of Independence. So it's never done, but it' about what the American people are willing to do. And one of the things that is central to that is it puts in the middle of that principle marginalized people. If you've got those rights, you're not the one fighting for them. So it's people like Fannie Lou Hamer, for example. And what we wanted to do was center the American people in history again, because what I have observed really since the 1980s, but you see it in a lot of the curriculum and certainly in the things that Trump is trying to put up in national parks, for example, the idea that change simply sort of comes from on high, like all of a sudden, Rosa Parks just decides not to stand up. Rosa Parks had been working for the NAACP doing really deep dives into statistics on rape, especially in the American south, for literally decades by the time that she works to challenge segregation. So in that way. So we wanted to regain what was missing from that curricula and center the American people and say, if you want change, this is how you do it. Even in times when people didn't have rights. We started it. And it's been really interesting because first of all, we only have a maximum of 250 stories, which is nothing to a historian. I mean, we could do 250 stories on one year of the Revolution along.
- [41:59]
Alex Wagner
To a podcaster, it's a lot.
- [42:01]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah. But for a historian, it's killing. It is killing me. And many people have given us great suggestions we simply can't do. But what's been interesting about it is that we have a maximum of 124 words, because we wanted to get them in a minute. A maximum of 124 words, which means that what we've done is we've got narrator. Fabulous narrators for them.
- [42:24]
Alex Wagner
And they're great narrators.
- [42:25]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah, well, because everybody suddenly wanted in, which was great. And we wanted to match the narrators to the stories. And what that means is that if you're going to get what it is, who did it, and why it mattered, you've got to really condense the material. So it turns out that they're actually really good teaching documents as well. Like the one in the Erie Canal, which Pete Buttigieg, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, narrated, is like, that's like my entire lecture on the Earth.
- [43:04]
Alex Wagner
That's amazing.
- [43:05]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah. And then there's some that are just really heart wrenching that are not. The one I'm thinking of is not out yet, so I won't drop it on you. We didn't do live people unless there was some important reason. 2. And there was one that I did not know who they had gotten to do it. And he's talking and I'm like, well, this is fine, but, like, why did they get. Who is this guy? And then he says who he is now.
- [43:34]
Alex Wagner
I want to know. Yeah, it's coming. When's it dropping? Do you have a date?
- [43:38]
Heather Cox Richardson
I don't know. I don't know about. I'm not in charge of the calendar. But I got to tell you, when he said his name, I started to cry. Oh, my gosh. Because I didn't know who he was. I don't. I don't think anybody probably knows what this person looks like, but it's a really important story.
- [43:50]
Alex Wagner
I was gonna ask if his name rhymed with Smarak Tobama, but no.
- [43:54]
Heather Cox Richardson
No.
- [43:55]
Alex Wagner
You also pick places, right? I mean, not living people, but it's not just figures from history. You also have, like, the Everglades and Yellowstone are part of this compendium. It's really like thinking of the country both as a land and people.
- [44:08]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yes, people. Places and events. And so we just did one on the New Mad Madrid. It's not New Madrid. Who knew? It's the New Madrid. Earthquakes, which happened in the early 1800s in sort of the Missouri area of the country and moved the Mississippi river and forced indigenous tribes to go west, which, I mean, I'd heard of them, but I had no idea they were so important. And everybody in that part of the country is like, yeah, we grew up on this stuff. Similarly, we did some where I didn't like, I. I mean, I obviously wasn't alone in coming up with the topics. We wanted to make sure there were at least two from every state and territory. Oh, cool. And so that also means people. Rita Moreno was an early one we did. And Ariana Dubose read that one for us. Like, did you know that there was one 24 hour period when the flags of three different countries flew over St. Louis? No, like, I sort of knew, but. But like it's all involved.
- [45:08]
Alex Wagner
I feel like one of us would maybe know that, and that person is not me.
- [45:11]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, but you know, it's like it has to do with the Louisiana Purchase, and first France has a territory, then Spain has it, but then France has it, then the US has it, and so on. But like, I was like, let's figure this out. So there's a lot of really fabulous stuff.
- [45:26]
Alex Wagner
What a great project.
- [45:27]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, but the theme was always that we wanted to center the American people. And in many ways, to me it felt like, like people have been so good to me. You know, everything I do is available for free, but people pay willingly for the substack and so on. And you know, as I say, Trump walked away with all the funding for so much stuff. And I was like, you know what? This can be my gift back to all the people who gave me the funding to do it.
- [45:55]
Alex Wagner
So righteous.
- [45:57]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah. So I love it. So I'm pleased. It's killing us. But. But we're really all good things do with it.
- [46:03]
Alex Wagner
All good things do. I mean, it does get back at that. The thing we've been talking about throughout this conversation is how do we celebrate this country and what sort of lessons do we need to remember? I want to ask you a specifically kind of like socio political question, which is Jerusalem Demsas, who is the founder of the argument, recently was a really provocative piece arguing that the left basically has abandoned patriotism and needs to recapture its sense of, or reclaim its sense of patriotism in order for democracy to function. To protect democracy, we must reclaim, I think, a form of patriotism that is authentic, but patriotism nonetheless. Does the left seem historically unpatriotic to you? I guess I should ask.
- [46:51]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, so let me Start by making it very clear that that one of the great successes of the radical right has been to take everybody who doesn't adhere to their political ideology and call them of the left. The left has a specific definition. It is an ideological position that critiques liberal democracy by saying that it doesn't work either because it's too racist or sexist or classist, and it needs to be taken down and rebuilt. And that's a really interesting story, just FYI here, that I'm not going to go into, because I think what that argument does is it identifies that really since the Vietnam War, people who are not part of the radical right, who are either Democrats or centrists, have tended to cede the idea of patriotism to that radical right. And so if you take that as a premise for what I'm going to say, one of the things that Honest to God has jumped off the charts for me for. For many years now, really, since you started to see veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, especially female veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, running for office, because their advertising was very different than any kind of advertising, political advertising I had seen before, but especially taking off in the last two years, let's say, with the insertion into especially the House of Representatives, but also the Senate, of so many veterans of wars and intelligence agencies on the Democratic side. What I think you are seeing is the claiming of patriotism by people who are not of the radical right and redefining it, and redefining it as the protection of the United States, of course, but also of protection of the people who have defended the country for us now for many years. And you think about things like. Like the idea that veterans who came back from the Vietnam War were spat on. There is no documented instance of that happening. That was a construction of the radical right. Then it gets picked up by Rambo because it went on to live in film, as in the 1980s. So much of patriotism lived in film with things like Top Gun and like Red dawn and so on. But I actually think that what you have identified is central. Central to a new political ideology for those that are not part of the radical right and perhaps not part of the left, although the left certainly is closer to the goals of centrists and more left leaning, you can call them progressives. I think that much of what the progressive wing of the Democratic Party wants right now is, to my mind, very centrist. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was talking about universal health care, right? But those people are redefining a new kind of approach to what it means to Be an American right now. And in a way that has not happened, I think, since World War II. The Democrats are getting in on that. And I think it is central. I did an event with Jason Crow at Harvard a month or so ago, and his understanding of, of the protection of veterans is very much tied up in his idea that the government should be working for ordinary people. Because he says, you know, who's out there fighting in Afghanistan, but people like me. And he tells the story of being on the front lines and he was a, you know, he was a paratrooper and being on the front lines and coming back to the. I don't know if they still call it the Met hall, but coming back to eat. And he said, the kid putting mashed potatoes on his tray, they got talking and the guy was making like four times what he made in terms of money. And he said, this is not the way it should be and this is not patriotism. And that kind of marriage of politics that talks about the ordinary people, people and talks about our military as those people who are protecting our way of life and are part of that is a really different way than saying we'll just wave the flag and claim we love veterans while we're slashing all the funding for the va. So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right and I think it's central and I don't think people recognize it enough. So thank you for that.
- [51:34]
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- [52:38]
Alex Wagner
I think that there's probably. When you talk about how the left articulates a patriotism that's both urgent and needed, we. We talk about what patriotism means to the right, what identity that under Undergird's patriotism means to the right. And I, I always return in moments like that, and particularly moments like this when we're talking about the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth of July and all the rest to a speech. And I know you listened to this speech that J.D. vance gave at Claremont, the Claremont Institute, and I believe it was last year, it was in 2025, where he basically laid out the MAGA worldview, the nativist worldview that animates, I think, all of the Trump administration's policies, if there is such an evidence, elegance like that, insofar as thought does undergird anything that they're doing. This kind of idea about blood and soil nationalism is the essence of Trump, and I think in some ways, the Trump appeal. At one point in the speech, Vance critiques what he calls the creedal principles of the country as not enough on their own. He names the Declaration of Independence as an example of a document that is both, both way over inclusive and under inclusive in terms of defining what it means to be an American. And he basically goes on to give an alternative vision of what citizenship and being an American ought to be. He's like, it's not an idea. It's a place and a people. And it's really, specifically, I'm paraphrasing people who fought the Civil War and maybe against the North. What in that seems to be most dangerous to you in terms of what Vance is arguing?
- [54:11]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, first of all, I'm amused by being able to say, here's the marker you had to fight in the Civil War. Like, there goes Trump's family, right? And why fight in the Civil War? And just, I mean, again, not that it matters, and I really don't think it matters at all. My ancestors on both sides were here from, like, the very beginning. And I'm looking at that, and I'm like, I shouldn't even, like, why pick that? Why not be like. Like, the date was April 30th of 1834.
- [54:44]
Alex Wagner
Just an arbitrary date.
- [54:45]
Heather Cox Richardson
Exactly, exactly. And you know why. And you know why. And that's because you actually had. When you had. If you identify something like that you can say exactly that we're looking to fight for a white culture like that of the old South. And the real thing about the switch that he is making, and make no mistake, that is a real switch that is from the founders of the country, which is what we identify the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence. That's the name we use as the founders, the framers of the Constitution from that time, they were literally saying, we are creating a nation built on these ideas. We hold these truths to be self evident. And tucked within that, I think is another, bigger piece that I'll come back to. But, but they literally say that America is about this idea. Now, the people who have tried to say, no, no, no, no, it's about race, were people like before the Civil War, like the old southern elite enslavers who wanted to say, no, no, no, no, we're a white country. And when they did that, people like Abraham Lincoln said, you know, why don't we just tear up the Declaration of Independence then? But this idea of blood and soil is actually one that comes out of Europe. Europe. It's not one that fits naturally at all over North America. Because of course, if you're going to talk about soil and the origins of the United States of America, you're really looking at 13 colonies. And those 13 colonies were never white. I mean, they were never a bunch of Europeans. That is such a. I mean, that actually comes from a document from the early 20th century, the 1920s in the US that tried to say, well, they're
- [56:30]
Kiana (Shopify user testimonial)
all normal
- [56:32]
Heather Cox Richardson
and the Nordics went to England and it's all just about garnering political power with an appeal to racism and sexism. What we don't talk enough about here is the degree to which this idea of you had to fight for your country in the Civil War basically says most women didn't fight. Now they contributed in other ways and some actually cross dressed and fought. But that's really an attempt to put white wealthy men in charge. But even more profoundly, I think it is an attack on what America means. So what the founders say in the Declaration is that it is possible for human beings to accept a series of natural laws, not divine laws, but natural laws that say we can observe the universe around us. And we can say because of our observations that there are natural laws, like all men are created equal. Now again, there's all kinds of caveats they have around that. But the natural laws, the laws that actually rule this planet say people are the same and they have certain rights. And among those are the right to have a say in how they are governed when they come together as societies and, and that they have a right to equal access to resources, and that we as human beings can observe the natural world and we can construct social systems that reflect that. And that's what American democracy was always supposed to be. And when you have somebody like J.D. vance coming in and saying, no, no, no, this is all about what God says or what race says, or any of these systems that are based not in natural law, but rather in human prejudices or divine inspiration, that is not only a rejection of sort of the surface level of these are our rights, it's a rejection of the entire enterprise of human self determination. And people ask me why I think we're going to come out of this, and I won't say, okay, because we've already lost so many people and so much. But the answer to that is I believe in those natural laws and I believe in the human capacity to say, hey, if we destroy our environment, we're all going to die, so maybe we shouldn't do that. And to reject that and say, no, no, no, no, I get to dictate stuff seems to me to be a position that eventually is going to run headlong up against reality, rather as Trump's war in Iran has run up against reality. And that at the end of the day, we are, I think, living in the world that the founders outlined as being part of a series of natural laws. And we do have the capacity those and to act accordingly.
- [59:29]
Alex Wagner
Yeah, it's just when you talk about reality coming crashing through the front door, J.D. vance's version of America excludes his own children and his wife.
- [59:37]
Heather Cox Richardson
And his wife.
- [59:38]
Shopify Advertiser
Yeah.
- [59:38]
Heather Cox Richardson
I mean, it's. Well, and he's just such an opportunity, he'll say anything.
- [59:42]
Alex Wagner
Well, that's. And that, I think, is actually one of the most dangerous things is that he is espousing a belief that's so at odds with what he fundamentally lives and, and himself. I, I think believing. So that's dangerous.
- [59:54]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, he said that he told, you know, when the whole eating cats and dogs thing, he actually said that he was willing to make stuff up because it would call attention to the dire conditions under which people lived or something. And it's like what you're saying is the ends justify the means and so you can lie. And here's a news flash, the ends never justify the means because you never
- [60:15]
Alex Wagner
get to the end of history. If you are in any way a student of history, you know that to be true. But what is JD Vance a Student of. Other than shameless. Shameless ambition, I guess, and lust for power. Heather, let me ask you one more question before we we wrap up our. Our I. Your brilliant analysis of this moment and. And what patriotism means and how we should be thinking of America's 250th. If you as a historian had to pick another moment other than the signing of the Declaration of Independence to celebrate, to make a national holiday out of. And you can't say Juneteenth because that's already a natural holiday. Is there another moment in American history that you think represents in many ways either the establishment of the American ideal or a reaffirmation of American ideals? I know I'm asking you this like totally on the spot, but you're saying that I'm confident.
- [61:06]
Heather Cox Richardson
Can I have two?
- [61:08]
Alex Wagner
Sure, why not?
- [61:09]
Heather Cox Richardson
14th amendment right on 14th amendment is my favorite amendment amendment and it should be everybody's because it's the one that says, you know, that whole equality thing, we mean it. And that if in your states you and I talked about how Bull Connor walks among us still. If in your states you're run by Bull Connors or you have been bought by corporations that are willing to destroy your workers rights or your women's rights or your environmental rights or whatever, we're gonna come in and we're gonna change that and that and it gave the 13th, 14th and 15th are the first amendments that give power to the Congress rather than taking it away.
- [61:51]
Alex Wagner
Do you know the date offhand of the ratification for the 14th? Like what month would that be?
- [61:56]
Heather Cox Richardson
No, because I think it's August 13th.
- [61:58]
Alex Wagner
Oh, it's a good time for a three day weekend.
- [62:00]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah, I'm in. And I should know that. The issue is it passes Congress and then it goes off to the states for ratification. And I don't remember all those individuals dates to say August 13th sticks in my mind, but don't quote me on that, I'm probably wrong. It's also written in 1866
- [62:19]
Kiana (Shopify user testimonial)
when it
- [62:19]
Heather Cox Richardson
becomes clear the south is not going to permit black equality. They actually write it. The Congress writes it in 66 and then it doesn't get ratified until 68. But if I can have that one is the biggie the Voting Rights Act. The signing of the Voting Rights act, which again, aside from anything else that it does, because it sets in motion a lot of things, including things like having our ballasts in different languages, which you know, has been an issue throughout our entire history. There's a wonderful journal from the colonial era in which a Woman is traveling from the. Or a little after that, I guess is traveling from the coast to Ohio. And in it she says, you know, everyone thinks it's like JD Vance thinks that this is an English based country. They're certainly English based government. She gets like, almost there and she's like, you know what I really want when I get to Ohio, I can't wait to hear the language of English spoken again. She hasn't met a single English speaker the whole way. She's going across that whole way. So we get from the Voting Rights act the idea of ballots in different languages, but we also really put our money where our mouth is and say, yeah, everybody gets a say. For the first time. Everybody gets a say in the government. And that, of course, has been what the radical right has been working to dismantle ever since. And so in this era, I'd say both of those. But it's certainly worth celebrating the Voting Rights act as well as the 14th.
- [63:53]
Alex Wagner
And for all of you crackers, Jack Googlers, the. The ace production team at Pod Save America tells me that the ratification of the 14th was July 9, 1868. But it's so close to July 4, it all makes sense.
- [64:10]
Heather Cox Richardson
Oh, that's a really good idea.
- [64:12]
Alex Wagner
We wouldn't really have to change our vacation schedules.
- [64:14]
Heather Cox Richardson
That's a really good idea. Hey, next year, next year we'll do. Let's do that. That's a great idea.
- [64:19]
Alex Wagner
I'm in. Can we do a special episode about it?
- [64:22]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah, sure. Patch on your calendar. Yeah.
- [64:24]
Alex Wagner
July 9th.
- [64:25]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah. Cause I'll be.
- [64:26]
Alex Wagner
July 9th, babies.
- [64:27]
Heather Cox Richardson
That'll be right before the book comes out. So I'll be footloose and fancy free.
- [64:31]
Alex Wagner
Heather Cox Richardson, the most prolific. The most prolific person in this degraded America in which we live, where people have just been content to rest on their bums and do nothing.
- [64:45]
Heather Cox Richardson
That's not true.
- [64:46]
Alex Wagner
Call to action. Been called to action. Have been engaged. And we applaud you, especially if you're listening to this podcast. But most especially, we are so grateful, Heather, for all the things you do to keep us wise and thinking and keep our front porch lights on. Mentally speaking. It's always just such a real pleasure. And it's always so enlightening to talk with you. Thank you for reminding us of who we are and who we can be. And Good luck with 250 to 250. Everybody should download and watch the clips and always subscribe to Heather Other Substack. The great Heather Cox Richardson. Thank you.
- [65:21]
Heather Cox Richardson
Thank you, Alex. It's always a pleasure.
- [65:23]
Alex Wagner
A huge thank you to Heather Cox Richardson for spending some time with me. The gents will be back in your feed on Tuesday.
- [65:31]
Strawberry Me Advertiser
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