A Mayor, a Military Pro and a Professor on Affluence, Grievance and Greed

Summary

The Best People with Nicolle Wallace

Episode Title: A Mayor, a Military Pro, and a Professor on Affluence, Grievance and Greed
Air Date: March 2, 2026
Host: Nicolle Wallace (MS NOW)
Guests:

• Eddie Glaude, Professor, Princeton University
• Mitch Landrieu, former Mayor of New Orleans, former Lt. Governor of Louisiana
• Tom Nichols, Atlantic staff writer, former Naval War College professor

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Overview

This intense, wide-ranging episode brings together a leading academic, a public servant, and a military and foreign policy expert for a raw and passionate conversation about America’s crisis of values. The panel discusses the erosion of civic decency, moral rot among the elite, the role of grievance and greed in public life, and the enduring (yet challenged) possibilities of American democracy. Amidst fatigue and anger about America’s direction, the panel mines history, personal experience, and social analysis to ask: How do we confront these turbulent times, and what’s left to hope for?

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Key Topics & Insights

The Collapse of Civic Decency and Rise of Greed

• Eddie Glaude [03:00]: Describes being horrified by the moral decay of American democracy, pointing to “greed and selfishness” and a calculating pursuit of personal gain among leaders:

  “There is this ongoing calculus that informs decision making, like how can I get in on the grift? And then you combine that with fear and cowardice and we get what we have...an unleashing of an economic logic driven by selfishness and greed. And then when you layer on that grievance, all hell breaks loose.”

• Tom Nichols [03:47]: Names this a “moral poverty” and a loss of collective consequence since the Cold War, noting a shift from “wealth as public trust” to decadent self-defense and isolation:

  “It used to be that very, very wealthy people took their wealth almost...as kind of self defense to say, listen, I’d better treat this wealth as something like in the public interest...that is completely lost. And I think in the age of Trump, people say, well, what’s the worst that could happen?...they think they can wall themselves off with gold bricks around their estates, and that’s just not going to happen.”

• Mitch Landrieu [07:26]: Cites historical echoes, referencing civil rights icons:

  “It has always been true that in times of great trouble...when the shit is really hitting the fan, actually the people step up to the plate are like the parish priest or the high school junior or the secretary for the U.S. attorney...It is always true that somebody who nobody expects, that we don’t ask anything from, actually shows those of us that are in leadership positions what real courage really, really looks like.”

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Leadership Failure and the Agency of Ordinary Citizens

• Nicole Wallace [06:48 & 10:08]: Expresses exasperation that elite leaders—who owe the most to the system—are often the “first to capitulate,” while ordinary people risk much more to “do the brave and uncomfortable thing.”
• Eddie Glaude [10:40]: Suggests America faces a “deficit in courage” where even institutions—universities, businesses—collapse in the face of pressure, often using the chaos of Trump-era politics as “cover to roll back things they wanted to roll back in the first place.”
• Tom Nichols [13:17]: Argues the current crisis is “completely of our own creation”:

  “We could solve it tomorrow if people showed up, actually cared, actually gave a shit enough to show up and vote instead of, you know, when we get to 63 or 64% voter turnout, we pat ourselves on the back as if we’ve done some miraculous thing.”

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Historical Context & Critique of Trumpism

• Mitch Landrieu [15:05]: Offers a dual historical critique—tracing America’s derailed post-2000 trajectory and describing Trump as an “accelerant of” existing problems:

  “Donald Trump came into that and was the accelerant of and could not be more banal. I want to be really clear. I could not think less of this human being, especially given the fact that he’s the President of the United States. I also have very harsh feelings...to the leaders of the law firms and the universities and the tech companies who have laid down on this guy.”

• Landrieu calls freedom “literally priceless,” warning that “when the freedom goes away, which Donald Trump has clearly said he is going to take from you, you actually can’t get it back...I don’t think people who have supported Donald Trump are going to be able to get the stink off of them.”
• Simple solutions thwarted:

  “It is self-inflicted and it’s easy to fix and people just will not do what is necessary.” [17:50]

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Elites, Complicity, and the Feral Beast Analogy

• Nicole Wallace [19:58]: Highlights a class of “quiet people waiting this out” in Republican circles—those who know Trump is wrong but “think they’re gonna wait this out.”
• Mitch Landrieu [20:37]:

  “Donald Trump is a feral beast...he is amoral...your job is to just devour anything that’s in front of you...The only way you stop a feral beast is to stop them, because that’s the only thing that stops them...the battle for the future of the country is not only joined right now, it is going to be...in full force.”

• Warns about the dangerous shift from a “credo nation” to one based on blood, not ideas:

  “What they’re saying...is that, no, no, some of us, you see, by virtue of how we look or by virtue of how our mom and daddy are, are actually better than other people. You should be scared to death of that if you’re an American and you believe in patriotism the way it was intended by the founding fathers.” [21:48]

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The Deep Roots of American Moral Contradiction

• Nicole Wallace & Tom Nichols [24:13–26:36]: Grapple with the depths of human cruelty, referencing slavery, the Epstein scandal, and generational moral blindness.
• Eddie Glaude [24:43]:

  “People used to sell their children. They knew that the child on that auction block was theirs, that they were selling. They owned people who they treated as chattel, and they raped them...the darkness that we’re capable of in this country. How do you square that? Right. It’s a kind of monstrosity, a kind of brokenness that’s at the heart of an economic system that propelled the country into his greatness in some ways...we live by lies in this country...this is James Baldwin’s analogy...we know there’s a dead body in the closet, but nobody talks about the dead body in the closet.”

• Tom Nichols [26:36]: Pushes against "original sin" as explanatory for all Americans, warning against nihilism especially among young people, who “have no belief in anything...their brains are being slowly poisoned by completely insane nihilistic drama where nothing matters.”

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Race, Migration, and America's "Zero-Sum" Lies

• Nicole Wallace [32:26]: Identifies the mainstreaming of lies about immigrants as a key vector for radicalization and a test for “pro-democracy” forces.
• Mitch Landrieu [33:59]: Calls out the scapegoating of “brown people” and debunks crime myths about immigrants:

  “It is factually true that people that are here, not documented, commit less crimes than regular American citizens.”

• Tom Nichols [35:10]: Lays out how racial resentment is “part of the original sin of the American republic,” but cautions that “immigration policy hasn’t been a giant failure” and “when we are dissatisfied and bored and angry and itchy, we look for another person to put those problems on and brown people–a visible minority.”
• Eddie Glaude [38:19]:

  “We can talk about greed and class and understand that race is still operative. We can talk about a range of things all happening, converging...The selfishness, the zero sum game. We’re sold a bill of goods, that there’s only so much to go around, and big government is putting its thumb on the scale to benefit these black and brown and poor folk who are lazy, who don’t want to work, and they’re going to take it from you who are working hard...we are in a malaise. It is a deep, deep malaise.”

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How to Love a Country in Crisis

• Nicole Wallace [41:32]:

  “You love something the most when you feel like you could lose it. And I had this horrible feeling the morning after the election...I prayed I was wrong. I prayed I was what the right calls Trump Derangement Syndrome. I have watched him destroy the FBI, destroy the Justice Department...When I think about it, it makes me cry.”

• Eddie Glaude [42:59]: Challenges the notion of loving America, distinguishes between love for people “close to the ground” and abstract nationalism:

  “I do not love America and never have, especially now. You know, I find it suspect to love something so morally dubious and abstract. I love people close to the ground....my orientation has been to love folk on the ground, close to the ground, the people who aren’t kind of caught up in the abstraction, but who are dreaming dreams and trying to make their dreams a reality.”

• Argues survival is about “making sure our babies get to the other side” of crisis.

Quotes on American Aspiration, Hope, and Anger

• Tom Nichols [46:08]:

  “I don’t wake up every morning and say I’ve never loved America more. I am angry...I am angry at tens of millions of people who did this and don’t seem to give a shit. Who just think again. Who think it’s just for laughs.”

• Swearing the oath as a federal employee was a formative act for Nichols:

  “I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution in the United States against all enemies, foreign, domestic, without purpose...I think every American should tape that to their mirror and start their morning by reading that. Because that's where my love for the country comes from.”

• On redemption vs. sin:

  “Don’t just think in terms of your sin. Think in terms of your redemption.” [48:13]

• Mitch Landrieu [49:19]: Emphasizes empathy and realism:

  “I believe that the idea of America is a great idea. All men are created equal. We come to the table of democracy as equals, but we have not come even close to perfecting that...You cannot look away from this. You look away at your own peril…”

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What Ordinary People Can Do (and Must)

• Tom Nichols [52:06]:

  “The thing that has to change…you have to turn to people next to you...around your dinner table, at your church, you have to say, no, the thing you just said is not okay...No, we’re not going to laugh it off and say, oh, well, it’s just politics. No, this is a time where people have to make really hard choices.”

• Mitch Landrieu [53:56]:

  “If you happen to, especially white people who don’t know what to do in this moment...do whatever it is that you can do to say, this is not how we want to be...You cannot look away from this moment. We are not in a regular moment. We are not in a regular time. It is being taken from us as we sit here today. And you have to push back. You have to resist. And then you have to have enough vision to think about what comes next …because something will come next, and if we don’t form it, it will form away from us.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Eddie Glaude [01:00 & 40:39]:

  “We can’t get better. We can’t become the kinds of people that democracies require if we keep lying to ourselves about who we are.” “Decency isn’t the defining attribute of the American public. It’s something that we aspire to be.”

• Tom Nichols [32:16]:

  “There’s a great line in Star Trek where McCoy says, My experience is when good fights evil, evil usually wins unless good is very, very careful.”

• Mitch Landrieu [29:26]:

  “‘How was the duck hunt?’ And he said, ‘Well, it depends on whether you were me or the duck.’...so many people have been under it for such a long time.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Collapse of Civic Decency: 03:00–05:50
• Heroism of Ordinary People: 07:26–10:40
• Crisis of Agency/Voting: 13:17–14:48
• Historical Perspective on Democracy under Trump: 15:05–18:00
• Elites and Complicity: 19:58–24:04
• Deep American Contradictions: 24:43–29:10
• Race, Lies, Immigration: 32:26–36:42
• Structural Analysis of Today’s Malaise: 38:19–41:32
• Can We Love America?: 41:32–49:19
• What Individuals Can Do: 52:06–55:12

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Tone and Atmosphere

• The conversation is candid, emotional, and at times blunt or expletive-laden, befitting the podcast's "no rules" approach.
• There is sustained tension between anger, sadness, exhaustion, and bracing hope or commitment to action.
• The episode oscillates between historical critique, present-day outrage, and a drive toward collective responsibility.

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Final Thoughts

Mitch Landrieu [53:56]:

“I criticize my country precisely because I love her so much...You cannot look away from this moment. We are not in a regular moment. We are not in a regular time. It is being taken from us as we sit here today. And you have to push back. You have to resist. And then you have to have enough vision to think about, well, what comes next. Because something will come next, and if we don’t form it, it will form away from us.”

Nicole Wallace [55:12]:

“Can we have that conversation next? Can we do this again?”

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For listeners searching for clarity, realism, and hard-earned hope in the face of daunting civic challenges, this episode of “The Best People” is a must.

Transcript

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[Mitch Landrieu]

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[Eddie Glaude]

It seems to me that we can't get better. We can't become the kinds of people that democracies require if we keep lying to ourselves about who we are. And I think being honest that decency isn't the defining attribute of the American public. It's something that we aspire to be. But as human beings, right, we are fraught and fallen, and we can tell a story about that.

[Nicole Wallace]

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

[Podcast Host]

A former mayor, a military expert, and a college professor walk into a bar. Well, not exactly a bar, more like a podcast studio. It's a tale as old as time, but this week I knew I had to do something special. This conversation was sparked by a fun, fiery conversation we had on the broadcast. But this one comes without the constraints of television or commercials or rules against swearing. My guests today are three of the best people I know, three of the best people I get to talk to about everything. And today we push them further than we've ever pushed them before. So without any further ado, Princeton University professor Eddie Glad, former mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu, and Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols. Welcome to the best people.

[Nicole Wallace]

That's it for the politeness. I think what I really want to ask you guys is about the assholes trying to destroy the country and the ordinary people with so much more skin in the game, so much more courage when their moment to choose whether to do the brave and uncomfortable thing comes to them saying yes or while the people to whom the country has given everything everything seem to capitulate every single time they're in the batter's box. Eddie, I'll start with you on that phenomenon. Maybe you're not as surprised and horrified by it as I am.

[Eddie Glaude]

Well, I'm horrified by it for sure. I think it points to a level of greed and selfishness that clearly threaten American democracy. And I think there is this ongoing calculus that informs decision making, like how can I get in on the grift? And then you combine that with fear and cowardice and we get what we have. And you know, I think this has been going on for a while. Nicole. We've witnessed over the last four decades an erosion of any robust conception of the public good. And that has happened in part because of an unleashing of an economic logic driven by selfishness and greed. And then when you layer on that grievance, all hell breaks loose.

[Nicole Wallace]

Tom?

[Tom Nichols]

Yeah, I agree with Eddie. I think the term I would use about the phenomenon he's describing is this kind of moral poverty that has overtaken us. I mean, think about the things that have happened in the past 30 years. We don't have the Cold War anymore. You know, maybe it's just as a foreign policy guy, I keep coming back to this, but the Cold War was kind of a framing and also a kind of guardrail setting that, you know, you couldn't just completely forget about who was running the government or the public good because you were always aware that, you know, it didn't matter who answered the phone at 3 o' clock in the morning. It did matter that there was another system, an alternative to us that was always out there kind of in your face. But I also think that the affluence that has overtaken us, I mean, I started my life as a pretty hard assed, kind of libertarian conservative, you know, it's nobody's business how much money you make, but when you're talking about becoming a trillionaire, it kind of becomes the public's business. You know, even the ancient Athenians built a Parthenon to put money back into the economy at some point, you know, to say maybe we shouldn't just be sitting on piles of gold and silver. But I think that this moral poverty, that this decadence is the thing that really scares me. It used to be that very, very wealthy people took their wealth almost not just out of the goodness of their hearts, but also as kind of self defense to say, listen, I'd better treat this wealth as something like in the public interest because I don't want the people with pitchforks and torches in my yard. But also, maybe I ought to build a library, maybe I ought to endow a university, maybe I ought to do something good as part of this public trust that is completely lost. And I think in the age of Trump, I think it's because people say, well, what's the worst that could happen? Life goes on. It'll be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday. And I think a lot of these very wealthy people have had some inkling that maybe that's not true. And they think that they can wall themselves off with enough gold bricks around their estates, and that's just not going to happen.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah, I mean, Mitch, in the vacuum being created, though, are people. I started the 5pm hour with a counselor and coach who went viral. Three million people watched him at his first ever her protest. And if you can just tell me

[Tom Nichols]

again why you said that you came out tonight.

[Protester]

So. I've never protested before in my entire life, but.

[Commercial Voice]

Sorry.

[Protester]

I watched 4th and 5th grade kids run away from our own government. I never want to see that again. And I'm not gonna stand by and watch my neighbors run away scared. That's not Camden County. It's not New Jersey. It's not the United States. I love the United States. I love New Jersey and I love Camden County. I love Lindenwald, too. But that's not. That's not what, you know, we are. It's not who we are. And I decided, I guess I'd come out here and stand with you guys and be part of this, because I never want to see a child ever run away from our own government ever again.

[Nicole Wallace]

Such a simple idea to him. It was a fucking atrocity that fourth and fifth graders were running from their government. Not from criminals, not from the worst of the worst. From their government. From masked men who work for all of us as American taxpayers. Everything ICE is doing is being done in your name, Eddie. In your name, Tom. In my name. It is our business because it's being done in our name, Mitch. So I agree that the elites are doing what the elites are doing. I just wonder if part of the error is in the fact that any of our gaze is ever on them, that we ever expected anything from them. The Wall Street Journal has reported that rich people are building moats. It is 2026, and they are building moats again. That is Trumpism.

[Mitch Landrieu]

You know, I hesitate to say that we've seen this before because I don't want people to think this is normal. But if you talk to some of the great soldiers of freedom, if John Lewis were here today, you know, he would say, I've seen this before. If Dr. King were here, he would say, I've seen this before. He actually wrote extensively about this. In the letter from the Birmingham jail. But that doesn't make it normal. But it has always been true that in times of great trouble, which. Which this is one of where we are facing a future that is not certain. And we have got to choose what that future is going to look like and how we're going to get there. Now, when people always ask me, well, what can I do? I asked John Lewis this question. I said, hey, I said, you're my hero. And I said, I have a picture of you behind my desk. And it's when you were the. You had your trench coat on, you about to get hit by the sheriff. You knew you were going to get hit. And he goes, yes, I did. And I said, you knew it was going to hurt. And he said, yes, I did. And I took it. Now, I mean, when you think about just that moment and whether or not most of us would have the courage to do that, you could forgive human beings for kind of crouching a little bit. But this is what I have learned in my personal life as mayor, as lieutenant governor, through Katrina, Rita, Ike, Gustav, the national recession, the BP oil spill, the mass shootings that I experienced as mayor. It is always true 100% that when the shit is really hitting the fan, actually the people step up to the plate are like the parish priest or the high school junior or the secretary for the U.S. attorney. I mentioned these to you because these are three people that I met, you know, when storm waters were high and they were feeding people. And they said to me, why am I doing this? I'm just a high school student. God going, why am I feeding everybody? I'm just a parish priest. Why am I rescuing people? I'm just a secretary in the office that nobody pays attention to. It is always true that somebody who nobody expects, that we don't ask anything from, actually shows those of us that are in leadership positions what real courage really, really looks like.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah.

[Mitch Landrieu]

And it takes a minute for people to find that courage. So as you watch all these people who should be stepping up, not step up, you also witness the miraculousness of what the human spirit can withstand through the mouth of, for example, this coach that you saw, who exhibited real courage and without fear. And then hopefully we will learn once again what has been taught to us a million times, that we're better together. And that when we move to each other, when we lift each other up, when we give each other a little bit of extra, that you can actually beat everybody. Donald Trump cannot beat 330 million people.

[Nicole Wallace]

I think that's Right. But, Eddie, I can't. Someone asked me last week, how are you doing? I said, you know, I'm tired of being so pissed and so sad. I'm exhausted by my own anger and sadness at what's happening. Because while it is true that if I avert my gaze from the people to whom the country has given the most and stare at the coach, I mean, I agree that we can be inspired by the courage of ordinary Americans, but I refuse to stop being angry at the elites who, in this moment of choosing, are not choosing to protect our democracy. Eddie.

[Eddie Glaude]

No, I think that's absolutely right. And, you know, I keep thinking about James Baldwin, right. As I always do, right. Baldwin says we're at once miracles and sons of bitches. We can be miraculous at one moment and we can be complete and total disasters at another. And so the capacity of human beings to move along that spectrum is something that we want to just grant. And then there are the realities that we have to confront, right? And the reality is that sometimes, at least in this moment, we're facing some serious headwinds, right? And that is we're running deficits in courage. And we're seeing that because it's tied to self interest. You have universities in my sphere, you have universities and colleges capitulating when they didn't even have to. And then the legal decision will come later saying that, you know, that money has to be put back. And instead of drawing lines in the sand and being courageous, they are using Donald Trump and what MAGA is doing as cover to roll back things that they wanted to roll back in the first place. Right. I think that's happening. A lot of people might disagree with Trump's bombast and his blatant racism, but they might actually use it as an opportunity to reboot. Right. In some ways. And then, of course, there's just, as we said earlier, just unbridled greed. And I think when you combine that with this, Nicole, and you know, I say this all the time, if we view this game as a zero sum game and where whiteness has put its thumb on the scale in relation to who gets what, some people are going to just simply double down. Even though they may feel like this is ugly and they may have supported Obama. They may. But if this can get me at least one step ahead in light of the billionaires who are building with gold bricks and building moats and the like, then I'll double down on that, because this is all we got, you know? Cause we've all been sold the lie that there's only so much pie to go around when, in my thinking, you just bake a bigger damn pie. But we can't get to that, it seems to me. If that answers your question.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah, I mean, look, I also think there's, you know, like, the house is burning, so how much of this do we just go with the hoses that are full of water? Right. And I think it's probably time, as we are a few months out from the midterms, to try to figure out who is going to be part of the volunteer firefighter with our democracy on fire and who's going to either look the other way or throw another match on it. And I. I wonder what, if any, lessons we think Trump has taken about how far to go. Tom Nichols, before I say anything about

[Tom Nichols]

lessons, I want to kind of back clean up on a couple of points that you shouldn't lose here, please.

[Nicole Wallace]

That'll be your job now for the next hour.

[Tom Nichols]

Mitch pointed out that this is a time of great trouble. Right. And the problem is that when he said that, I kept thinking, yes, but why? This isn't like the great struggle to make African Americans fully citizens. Right. This isn't 1964. You know, we're not at war. We're not in the middle of a great oil shock like we were when I was a kid and, you know, the economy's, you know, spiraling into.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Nicole Wallace]

It's not Covid. It's not 2019.

[Tom Nichols]

It's not Covid. It's not a pandemic.

[Nicole Wallace]

It's manufactured by. Yeah.

[Tom Nichols]

Unemployment is, you know, 4%, which we think is a disaster. It's because we did it to ourselves.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yes.

[Tom Nichols]

This is a problem completely of our own creation that a minority of people, yes, a majority of voters, but a really a minority of people, decided to hand an immense amount of power to an unhinged and unstable sociopath, in my opinion, and a cowardly party. That is exactly the kind of opportunists and cowards that we've been talking about. That is a problem of our own making. We could solve it tomorrow if people showed up, actually cared, actually gave a shit enough to show up and vote instead of, you know, when we get to 63 or 64% voter turnout, we pat ourselves on the back as if we've done some miraculous thing.

[Nicole Wallace]

That's the agency piece, right? Like, that's where we have agency and nothing extraordinary has to happen. We don't even need to go to impeachment or the 25th Amendment, Mitch. We just have to realize that it's a problem of our own making, that the Senate could start functioning as it was designed to do today.

[Mitch Landrieu]

I want a bad double cleanup. I want to give a broad historical assessment and then I want to give a Trump historic assessment from 2016 forward. I believe that if we're honest with ourselves, we can look back to the beginning of the 21st century, 1999, when Y2K was going to happen. Eddie was too young to remember this, but the whole world was going to shut down. Remember that? But in the year 2000, if you went back and grabbed.

[Tom Nichols]

I'm the other old guy here, Mitch.

[Mitch Landrieu]

Yeah, I remember. I didn't, I didn't want to bust on you, but if you, if you could go back to 2000 and look forward, you would see an America that was way ahead of the world by every indication. We had our problems, but we were in great shape militarily, financially, economically. September 11th hit, then we had Katrina, then we had the recession, then we had the Trump election in 2016. We had Iraq, Afghanistan, et cetera, et cetera. We should have been lapping the rest of the world by now without anybody being even close to us. And in the past 25 years, we the collectively big, we have made so many tragic mistakes that we're now struggling to even stay afloat and we're in danger of losing it all. So that's point one. Point two, it is absolutely true that Donald Trump came into that and was the accelerant of and could not be more banal. I want to be really clear. I could not think less of this human being, especially given the fact that he's the President of the United States. I also have very harsh feelings, as Eddie said, to the leaders of the law firms and the universities and the tech companies who have laid down on this guy. And I would make the point to all of these wealthy people who think that somehow rationalized that they're going to just kind of wait until he leaves or try to gain whatever advantage he's giving them so they don't have to give it back. That freedom is literally priceless. Like once you lose it, you can't get it back. And whatever it is that you think you're making, whatever advance that you're thinking you're getting the advantage of when the freedom goes away, which Donald Trump has clearly said he is going to take from you, you actually can't get it back. And that is something that I don't think people are really thinking through or at least in their self interested calculation to kind of hope that when it's all done that somehow everybody is going to forget. And I have said this, and I don't mean to be too nasty about it, but I don't think people who have supported Donald Trump are going to be able to get the stink off of them. It is going to turn bad and it's going to get worse and and it's just going to require everybody trying to nail standing up and saying we've got to get to it. The final point is this, how tragic it is at how simple it is to stop Donald Trump, which is like 10 voices in the Senate to bring this to a halt. That's all it would take. That's why this is so tragic. It is self inflicted and it's easy to fix and people just will not do what is necessary.

[Podcast Host]

We'll take a quick pause here when we're back. Much more with this stellar panel we've convened former Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana Mitch Landrieu, Princeton professor and author Dr. Eddie Glaud and former Naval War College professor and writer for the Atlantic, Tom Nichols. Don't go Anywhere.

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[Nicole Wallace]

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[Nicole Wallace]

Let me add to your construction sort of a whole pocket of people that I think aren't as nefarious as the tech executives who stood shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump at his second inauguration. Either wittingly or unwittingly looking at the American people as the oligarchy looking at their subjects. The second layer are the kinds of people I used to know and work with, Mitch. And I know, you know, a lot of these people because they were around President George W. Bush. Those are some of the same people waiting this out. They know how wrong it is. They're sort of the quiet people that think they're gonna wait this out. You know, a lot of these people too, Mitch, what is your message to them right now?

[Mitch Landrieu]

They're making a terrible mistake. Donald Trump is a feral beast. And I use this word actually, although you can use it with judgment. I'm using it now for academic purposes, in a non judgmental way. He is amoral, which is to say that he doesn't have any sense of right or wrong. So if you're a feral beast and you don't know anything about right or wrong, and your job is to just devour anything that's in front of you, that's what you will do, because that is what you do. And the only way you stop a feral beast is to stop them, because that's the only thing that stops them. So these people who think somehow that they're going to manipulate their way out of it, that the system is going to be the same and they can just take over, he is going to destroy, he is really going to destroy everything that has helped make this country great. And when you have to start rebuilding it, you have to build it from scratch. So two things have to happen here. We have to hold the line, resist, push back. A lot of people need to start thinking about what are we going to build going forward. I had this thing when we were rebuilding the city of New Orleans that had gotten destroyed. And I said, look, let's not build it back the way it was, but let's build it the way it should have been, had we gotten it right the first time. All right? Now a lot of the folks that are on the other side are like, well, no, we don't want to go. We don't want to build forward. We want to build backwards. So the battle for the future of the country is not only joined right now, it is going to be, I mean, like in full force. In the next four, six, eight, 10 years. And we have got to do a real gut check in this country about really who we are and what we want to be. And this is why the speeches of J.D. vance and Marco Rubio, which people should pay attention to, because they are both giving speeches that are laying down Trump's vision and Steve Miller's vision that we are no longer a credo nation. We're not a nation that follows the creed of we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights of life, living and property. That's not what they believe. What they're saying, and Eddie alluded to this early, is that, no, no, some of us, you see, by virtue of how we look or by virtue of how our mom and daddy are, are actually better than other people. That is like a whole. Like, you should be scared to death of that if you're an American and you believe in patriotism the way it was intended by the founding fathers. But there is an entire movement that is going on right now that's going to put that in play, that Donald Trump is trying to, to give great foundation to.

[Tom Nichols]

Donald Trump doesn't care about that movement except insofar as it serves his purposes.

[Eddie Glaude]

Correct.

[Tom Nichols]

People believe that Donald Trump, and I think Mitch's point about being kind of feral, I always think of him as kind of a child. But people think Donald Trump has these plans and these ideas and this ideology. He has none of that. What's good for him is good for him. And it's the people around him, the elites that we keep kind of touching on, who say, if I can just wait this out. A lot of these people, I think, made the stupid and mistaken calculation. I'll buy him off with some shiny stuff and he'll leave me alone and he'll go away and everything will be fine. And everything is not fine. I mean, this is, you know, we are in, in serious danger here. And I think that as Mitch was talking, I was trying to think of. Imagine trying to talk to some of these techno billionaires. Imagine trying to have this conversation with Mark Zuckerberg about, like, building a civic future and all this. Like, these are not serious people, they're just wealthy people.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah. And in Zuckerberg's case, who was happy to stop trying to secure the quality of the information on his own products.

[Tom Nichols]

Right.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, if they don't care about the quality of information and the damage it does to their own users, how do you get them to Care about public spaces?

[Tom Nichols]

Well, because they don't think that way.

[Nicole Wallace]

Why? Like, this, to me, is either what's broken in me or what's broken in them, and it can't be both. Right. I cover the Epstein story, and I can't get my brain around how human beings who either have daughters or mothers or sisters are part of a circle where the man at the center of it rapes someone else's daughters. I can't get my brain around the death of humanity that I am covering.

[Eddie Glaude]

You know, Nicole, I'm prone to draw on a history that I know best. And what you find here is something that has haunted the nation. People used to sell their children. They knew that the child on that auction block was theirs, that they were selling. They owned people who they treated as chattel, and they raped them. They would have babies, and then that would become profit. The darkness that we're capable of in this country. How do you square that? Right. It's a kind of monstrosity, a kind of brokenness that's at the heart of an economic system that propelled the country into his greatness in some ways. But there's also the fact that we, you know, we live by lies in this country. You know, it's like we all sit in the room and we know there's a dead body in the closet, but nobody talks about the dead body in the closet. And because this is James Baldwin's analogy, because everyone knows that body's in the closet. Everyone has to lie to each other. We can't be honest because we can't talk about it. And so I think, you know, there's a dishonesty about who we are that is at the heart of the moral rot, the moral poverty that Tom referenced earlier. And then I want to say this just really quickly. Sometimes we exceptionalize Maga and Trump and say that something's wrong with them. But I keep thinking about a lineage. How many of these folk are the children of the children of Nixon.

[Commercial Voice]

Right.

[Eddie Glaude]

The way in which they think of the imperial presidency. And now it's on steroids. What's the soil that gave birth to this stuff? And if we understand the acidity of the soil that produced it, then maybe we can not exceptionalize them, but could understand what's at the heart of what we've produced. Because Donald Trump is just the boil. The rot is underneath.

[Tom Nichols]

Can I take issue with some of that, though? I mean, Eddie.

[Eddie Glaude]

Sure. I expected you to, Tom.

[Tom Nichols]

That's why I mean. Well, no, that kind of taking should say no. No. Everything's fine. Everything is not fine. But I think it's dangerous to say almost in a kind of national original sin sense that this is everybody. Because the other thing we've been talking about today is how many Americans really are fundamentally, when faced with this, their impulse is to be fundamentally decent and good. The kids that you're talking about saying, you know, the children of 1968 or 1972 and Nixon, I think that actually the bigger problems, the people in my generation who ought to know better, I came of age in the 70s, they ought to know better. But they are filled with all kinds of resentments that 20 years ago they didn't have. It's almost like they've been taught to be angry, not just by Fox and the right wing media, but by a kind of constant sense of dissatisfaction with how good their lives are. I mean, people get mad when I say, you know, you're actually living a pretty good life. They say, no, everything's terrible. The younger people I worry about, not that they have imbibed some ideology from 50 years ago, but that they have no belief in anything. That the feeling that rules them is nihilism, that nothing matters, everything's a joke. There's this kind of post cynical kind of shrug that, you know, nothing really matters that I think has been driven by the information environment they live in. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day and he was going out. Personally, I think the Epstein files are one of the biggest scandals of the past hundred years. This is about a very wealthy set of people who believe that once you're past a certain level of wealth, the laws of the universe simply don't apply to you. But I was talking to somebody who said, yeah, and they did terrible things like they killed babies and blew stuff out. I was great. Wait, where are you getting this? And I was in Boston and all the college kids, people that should know better or read a newspaper, their brains are being slowly poisoned by completely insane nihilistic drama where nothing matters. That's the thing that really worries me. And I think that's a recent development. But I just didn't want to lose sight. I mean, Eddie, I agree with 90% of what you just said, but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that the American spirit still is one of fundamental decency in so many people. And that's what you're seeing out there.

[Mitch Landrieu]

Can I weigh in here, please? This is a conundrum. It happens all the time. You got to count the numbers, though. I think what the 330 million people in the United States, plus or minus some. So 35% is like 90 million people.

[Commercial Voice]

Okay?

[Mitch Landrieu]

That's a lot of people. There's an old thing that down in the south, you go hunt with your grandpa after Thanksgiving, and Grandpa went hunting. He came home and grandma said, honey, how was the duck hunt? And he said, well, it depends on whether you were me or the duck. And so if you're the duck and, you know, you got a bunch of hunters that are pointing guns at you, you know that you're at risk. And 90 million people is a lot of people. And I want to be really clear about this. I'm not saying that everybody that supports Donald Trump or some of the ideas that he has is a racist, but most of the racists in this country that actually think about white supremacy and think about when America was great again and believe in superiority, that viewpoint has found its way into Donald Trump's orbit. Even though Donald Trump may be thinking just about his money, they have found a vessel to continue that strain of thought that has been with us since the beginning of time in America. And we have been in battle with each other since the beginning of this country. And I think, you know, I don't have to put words in the professor's mouth, but Langston Hughes, when they were describing lynchings, we're talking about strange fruit, okay? Those things just didn't come out of anywhere. It came out of a way of being and a way of seeing. And whether you're talking about classism or racism or misogyny, it all comes from this sense that some of us are better than others. Now, I would just point out this. I think America's great. I think most Americans are good people. But we have arrived at this moment, we have gotten ourselves here. And, oh, by the way, human beings, whether you American or you're from Germany, you're from South Africa, it is in fact true that human beings, many people just like us, can be led to make horrific decisions that dehumanize other people.

[Eddie Glaude]

Absolutely.

[Mitch Landrieu]

And kill them or enslave them. And we have to be careful, as we should be right now, that we're not getting pulled back into it. And I would just mention this with everybody else. You know, remember, we basically put in internment camps, folks, you know, in World War II in the United States of America. And we are doing that again. And so when people just walk by this and they say, yeah, well, all of us emotionally good. It is true. I guess maybe that's why Americans are frustrated that somehow we cannot control what's going on in this country anymore. And the people that are in power cannot be stopped. And I think that's frustrating people and it's causing them to radicalize. And we don't want to be there either.

[Tom Nichols]

I just don't want people to give up, Mitch, and to say, no, everybody's terrible. There's no, you know, it's a no, no, no.

[Mitch Landrieu]

I don't believe, I want to be clear about this. I don't want to be misquoted. I don't believe everybody's terrible. I believe most people are good, but we can get lulled into, well, it's really not that bad. We'll get past it. I do think humility requires us to look back at our history in the correct way and know that we can be taken out of tone.

[Tom Nichols]

I'll say one more thing and then get out of the way. I'll quote Star trek instead of T.S. eliot.

[Eddie Glaude]

Which one?

[Tom Nichols]

There's a great line in Star Trek where McCoy says, My experience is when good fights evil, evil usually wins unless good is very, very careful.

[Nicole Wallace]

This is what I can't do on tv. And so I really want to try to drill down here. And I know this is so sensitive, but let's keep going. Let's not move on. The white supremacists are, to me, radicalized to a point where let's just put them aside for a second. I actually, in our politics am more concerned about the second ring that's bought the bullshit on Fox News. People here illegally are using our taxpayer dollars to grift off the systems we pay into. The lies about people here illegally are the lies that I think drove some of Donald Trump's highest numbers yet among Latinos. I mean, those lies are as pervasive as the flagrant, easy to call out, offensive, racist lies that are told. And those are the lies that animate the tolerance for Dilley Detention center and the excesses of ice. And those lies are easily disproven. Those lies are sort of papered over by some of the more normal hosts in right wing media. And I wonder how the Democrats and the pro democracy side does a better job fighting back against those lies.

[Mitch Landrieu]

Mitch Well, I think that that's a great point and I don't want that to get lost. The question would be, and Tom, just to challenge you a little bit, why is America so susceptible to the lie about brown people? Like, where does that come from? Like JD Vance the other day said, the reason why your housing prices are so high is because illegal immigrants came in and made it happen.

[Nicole Wallace]

It's fucking crazy.

[Mitch Landrieu]

The reason why your neighborhood's so unsafe is because the brown people came in and started killing people more than regular Americans. Well, that is factually. Just let me. Let's talk about public safety for a second in the city of New Orleans. When I was the mayor of New Orleans, as you know, I had a police department that. That worked under my direction and control. We were part of the consent decree. It is factually true that people that are here, not documented, commit less crimes than regular American citizens. So if you said to me, mitch, how are you going to fight crime in the city of New Orleans? I said, well, look, if I got the FBI, the dea, the atf, together with my police chief, and we went after the 1% of people who were the most violent criminals, whether they be white, black, blue, green, men, women, legal, illegal, and we focused on that, most Americans would go, well, that makes a lot of sense to me, but it would be really weird if I said, look, we're not going to focus on the terrorists. We're not going to focus on the proud boys. We're not going to focus on anybody. We're just going to focus on the brown people. Then you would go, well, wait a minute. That seems a little bit weird to me because those people are not committing violent crimes, but we're susceptible to it. And so we have succumbed to that because it's easy to believe that somebody that does not look like us is going to hurt us.

[Tom Nichols]

I have an answer for you. I know I'm getting in front of Eddie because I know what he's going to say, but we're going to agree, Eddie. The first thing I'll say is we're susceptible to it because race is part of the original sin of the American republic. It was at the founding, it was after the Civil War. We're susceptible to it because, yes, it is. That problem with race is just ingrained in our DNA. I mean, the civil rights acts, within my lifetime, that it happened. You know, I try and tell this when kids say, oh, it was the 50s, must have been great. I'm like, yeah, if you were a white kid in Southern California. But the other is, let's not pretend that immigration policy hasn't been a giant failure, that it's an easy button to push, right? I mean, we can't play that game of saying, you know, people are imagining this about immigration. But I think the third part of this is we and other nations are vulnerable to it because when we are dissatisfied and bored and angry and itchy. We look for another person to put those problems on and brown people a visible minority. So I think that there is a specific American context about race. But I also think that vicious political entrepreneurs know how to point at vulnerable minorities and say, this person is why you feel shitty about your life and why you're angry about everything and can't fix the problems that drive you crazy every day. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[Podcast Host]

My conversation with Mitch Landrieu, Eddie Glaude and Tom Nichols continues right after the break. We'll be right back.

[Mitch Landrieu]

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[Nicole Wallace]

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[Tom Nichols]

Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster Nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end. Huh, Nibbles gone too soon. May he scurry in peace.

[Mitch Landrieu]

Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff.

[Tom Nichols]

Nibbles would have loved you like a brother.

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[Eddie Glaude]

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[Eddie Glaude]

You know, I find this very interesting in a number of ways, and I think part of the difficulty is understanding the convergence of a number of different things without trying to reduce it to one singular thing. Yeah, right.

[Mitch Landrieu]

So I agree.

[Eddie Glaude]

So we can talk about greed and class and understand that race is still operative. We can talk about a range of things all happening, converging. So when we think about ICE and the policy of immigration, we have to think about two things, at least to my mind. One, of course, is we don't really want to have a conversation about how great replacement is animating immigration policy in this country. We don't want to do or have the historical discussion about the way in which the Immigration act of 1965, that other piece of major legislation passed in 1965, has been the object of scorn since it was signed into law. And that many of these people are longing for an immigration regime that goes back to 1924. Right, the immigration Act. Johnson Reed Immigration act, which was basically written by the Klan. So we have to begin to tell a story about how immigration policy has been connected in interesting sorts of ways to what J.D. vance talked about. That is, we're not just simply about creed and ideas. We're about blood and soil. And we can look at the history of immigration law, and that's quite evident. The second part of it, Nicole, is the selfishness, the zero sum game. We're sold a bill of goods, that there's only so much to go around, and big government is putting its thumb on the scale to benefit these black and brown and poor folk who are lazy, who don't want to work, and they're going to take it from you who are working hard. I came of age in the 80s, not the 70s, Tom. And that discourse was prevalent in terms of how we talk about the attack on the social safety net. So when we think about all of these things together, it seems to me that we can't disentangle them. Race is operating, class is operating, a certain conception of government is operating, and we have to try to keep track of it all. But it seems to me that we can't get better. We can't become the kinds of people that democracies require. If we keep lying to ourselves about

[Tom Nichols]

who we are, are.

[Eddie Glaude]

And I think being honest, that decency isn't the defining attribute of the American public. It's something that we aspire to be. But as human beings, right, we are fraught and fallen, and we can tell a story about that. You know, Robert Bell in 1975, wrote a wonderful book entitled the Broken Covenant. And he said we. If only we could just simply admit that we're not the saviors of the world, that we're not innocent. If we can embrace a tragic story about our journey to now, then maybe we can be better as human beings moving forward. I'm saying all of this not to reduce everything to race, but to see how it all fits in our current malaise. And damn it, it is a malaise. It is a deep, deep malaise. It seems to me that was a lot boiled up, boiling up and out.

[Nicole Wallace]

No, no, I love it. I want to stay with that because I think it's both. And, Eddie, I mean, I think Stephen Colbert said this. You know, you love something the most when you feel like you could lose it. And I had this horrible feeling the morning after the election, right, that everything I had been warning about on the show for eight years, I prayed I was wrong. I prayed I was what the right calls Trump Derangement Syndrome. I have watched him destroy the FBI, destroy the Justice Department, gut the Pentagon of the JAG officers who make sure that the men and the women don't commit war crimes in the work that they do. I have watched them destroy usaid. Usaid, the most sort of benevolent of government agencies, spends a penny of our money to save the most vulnerable people on the fucking planet. When I think about it, it makes me cry, right? Makes me cry. But what I think about is that I don't feel malaise. I love this job more than I've ever loved it. And I've never loved the people that say yes to going on the show more, because it's not zero risk. Every time you're on tv, you could say something that could get you canceled. People have been fired on our network this year for doing this. Just answering the questions I ask about this moment. So I wonder, Eddie, how you carry your broken heart into the future and how we fix it. Honestly.

[Eddie Glaude]

You know, Nicole, I come out of a different tradition. You know, the first line of my new book is, I do not love America and never have, especially now. You know, I find it suspect to love something so morally dubious and abstract. I love people close to the ground. And it's a provocation, obviously. How can you expect me to love the place? From whence your expectation of gratitude from me, given the tradition out of which I come? You know, my teacher, Albert Rabito, was raised without his father because a shop owner on the coast of Mississippi shot him in the head because he dared to confront him over this treatment of his wife. That's not in the 19th century. That's the guy who taught me, right? Cornel west jumped in a pool to go swimming in Sacramento. They emptied the pool while he was in it. That's not distant. So I've always been aspirational about the country. This is Langston Hughes to invoke, to echo Mitch, what America could be, right? And so my love is not abstract because sometimes to my ear, Nicole, American patriotism sounds like a rebel yell, right? And so my orientation has been to love folk on the ground, close to the ground, the people who aren't kind of caught up in the abstraction, but who are dreaming dreams and trying to make their dreams a reality. And the way in which I evidence that love and is by trying to manifest what my parents and my great grandmother put in me. And so that's not painted onto the country because the history is what it is. And so the only way we're going to get to the other side of the madness. And let me put it this way, whenever the fever dream spikes in America, in my reading of our history, our task has been to make sure our babies get to the other side because we don't know what's going to happen. So our task is to make sure they survive the storm and get to the other side. So we're in the midst of another fever dream. I don't know if the country is going to survive. The only thing I can do is to speak truth to power and to love unconditionally in the midst of this, right? And I can't find comfort in the illusion or the myth of the American project, right. I can only find comfort in the battles that we have waged, right. That have made the country what it is and what it can be. And that gets me up in the morning. So it's a blue soaked orientation, you know, BB King, nobody loves me but my mother, but she could be jiving too, right? So that blue soaked orientation to invoke Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison's beloved Nicole. When Denver was so afraid to step off the porch to save her mother, her grandmother's ghost came to her and said all of these things about the evil of the world. And Denver said, so what should I do? She said, know it, but going out of the yard. So in spite of it all, we have to act anyway. And so that's how I read you getting up in the morning and doing two hours of your show. Because if you don't, we concede the terms of the whole game. Yeah, I see Tom is over there

[Tom Nichols]

itching because I, I, but I'm somewhere between the two of you, Nicole. I don't wake up every morning and say I've never loved America more. I am angry. You started this at the beginning of all this by talking about how tired you are of being angry. And I am angry at tens of millions of people who did this and don't seem to give a shit. Who just think again. Who think it's just for laughs. I mean, I've talked to people in my, my religious community and they say, yeah, isn't it great we're doing. I'm like, we are talking about things that are literally sinful, right? I mean, that are horrendous. And yet it's like, oh, well, you know, you're just overreacting. Like you have tds. Yes, I have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Everyone should, you know, is my approach to this. But Eddie, I'm not in love with America as it is. I'm in love with the American idea that has sustained this country for 250 years. The idea that we always have fallen short of, but that we get better and better and better over time. We are not there. I understand, you know, it's the imperfection, but I, I would never refer to the myth of the American project, because then I think you're walking right into J.D. vance's lane and saying, yeah, that's all. Just what it's really about is, is who controls what, who's on top. Ideas don't really matter. I get up every morning, maybe because I was a federal employee for so long, right? One of the happiest moments of my life, when I started to go to work in the Senate, I had to sign this paper and it was the swearing in. And I said, are you going to swear me in? And the guy in the office was like, if you signed the paper. But then he went, and then he kind of smiled, he said, do you want me to? And I said, yeah. And I put my hand up and two of us together, I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution in the United States against all enemies, foreign, domestic, without purpose. You know, we all know that.

[Eddie Glaude]

I love it.

[Tom Nichols]

And I think every American should tape that to their mirror and start their morning by reading that. Because that's where my love for the country comes from. Even while I completely embrace you and your eloquent indictment of how we have so often failed at that. And sometimes I even say, you talk about the fever breaking. Sometimes I say, look, I'm 65. I don't know if we recover in my lifetime. I want the Constitution, its ideals, the ideals of the founding, to be something that we can give our children and grandchildren and tell them, don't fuck this up the way we did in this period in history, recover it, and keep going with this project. Because we are the shining city on the hill, we are the country that can be that. Eddie, you challenge us, say, look inside and be honest with yourself. And I think that's great advice, but also look inside and know that you are the heir to a great project that belongs to you and that it can be Something that can motivate you. Don't just think in terms of your sin. Think in terms of your redemption.

[Nicole Wallace]

Mitch.

[Mitch Landrieu]

I'm from New Orleans, in case I didn't know that. And down here, we have a saying I want to give to my dear friend Eddie Cloud, which is I feel you. That's how, like, we respond to people in love. I feel you. And the reason I'm saying this is because when some people read his first line, they're going to say, well, if you don't like it, leave. Right? I mean, you can see that that's common if you hadn't gotten it already. And whether you say, I can't love America now because she's not perfect, or I love America, but I can't wait till she becomes perfect, there's a strain of understanding that we are an unfinished product. I believe that the idea of America is a great idea. All men are created equal. We come to the table of democracy as equals, but we have not come even close to perfecting that. And if you talk to any African Americans in the south, not all, maybe not 2%, but as I traveled across the South, I'm from here, I've spoken to a lot of people. And you ask in a focus group, how do you feel when you see a pickup truck going down a country road with an American flag on the back of it? They say, I hide. Then me. I go, wait, why would. Why would you be afraid? Well, Emmett Till. And you go through this whole story. So the recitation that Eddie Glaud gave us is a very, very, very, very familiar refrain in the song of African Americans in America. And that makes me weep. It makes me sad for my country. And, Tom, you are exactly right that America is a great idea, but it is a fallacy to believe that we have lived up to that dream. And I completely and totally understand people who go, well, I don't know. How was the duck hunt? It depends on whether you were me or the duck, because so many people have been under it for such a long time. It is completely true that it's not just race. It is a lot of other stuff. Government does not work well. We should have fixed the immigration system, but the answer just is too easy all the time about, let's other everybody, and then we're going to be okay because I don't have to pay the price. And I just think that we are in a position right now in America where we have to call the question. We have got to have the discussion, and you can't do it. By burning books, you can't do it. By law firms taking the knee, you can't do it. By tech giants getting behind the column. We are in a moment, and the question needs to be called. And you have to tell people, I don't care what the hell you think right now. You cannot look away from this. You look away at your own peril and this country. Listen, let me say this to you. We are perilously close to losing either the idea of America or the reality of America. Cut it however you want. And I just think a lot of our friends, wherever you are on this spectrum, you need to wake the hell up. This is the time for choosing.

[Tom Nichols]

That's the hard part. For ordinary people. It's easy for us to come on here and yell, sort of at public figures, but I think the thing that has to change, and I've suggested this, and people bristle at it. But I said you have to turn to people next to you.

[Mitch Landrieu]

Correct.

[Tom Nichols]

You know, around your dinner table, at your church, you have to say, no, the thing you just said is not okay.

[Mitch Landrieu]

Yeah, amen.

[Tom Nichols]

No, we're not going to laugh it off and say, oh, well, you know, it's just politics. No, this is a time where people have to make really hard choices. And I hope neither. I hope nobody here. This is such an interesting panel because you have a black man, a Southern white man, and a Yankee. You know who this is? America trying to get its arms around this problem.

[Eddie Glaude]

And a West coast person, too.

[Mitch Landrieu]

Right.

[Tom Nichols]

I mean, we are just, you know, this is America right here. And I hope nobody's thinking that I'm just trying to wave away the problem of race. I just.

[Eddie Glaude]

No.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah.

[Mitch Landrieu]

No, no, no, no.

[Tom Nichols]

I worry. Like when I've seen any youth, probably seen this with college students who say we can never get better because we're just so flawed and we're no better than any other country. We're a terrible place. I think the thing that will get us through this, Nicole, this is the anger that's coming through out of you, is the driving anger of patriotism that does not say my country right or wrong, but that the commitment to what we could be, the things that we could do, and to turn and say, this is not who we are. This is not what we should be, and to turn to our fellow citizens. I do this. I'm not fun at parties anymore. I admit it. I turn to people I know and I say, this is wrong. And in your heart, you know it's wrong. And what you're doing and saying is Wrong. And I think that comes from an anger that comes from patriotism and from a certain kind of just Americanism that I think we have to defend and let it propel us. That's all I've been trying to say here.

[Nicole Wallace]

Mitch, do you want one last word?

[Mitch Landrieu]

I'd like to end with the quote that started this whole thing from James Baldwin, which is, I criticize my country precisely because I love her so much. And I would just say to people who ask me all the time, I'm just a little person, like, what can I do? I'm just a teacher. I'm the custodian. I'm the, you know, whatever you tell people, look, if you happen to, you know, especially white people who don't know what to do in this moment. So look, if you're in the locker room and you're getting your nails done or I'm getting my hair done, or, you know, you're on the playground or you're on the street or wherever, and somebody says something, maybe your job, Tom, is just to say, listen, I'm really sorry, but that's not who we are. That's not how we think. Do whatever it is that you can do, whatever little bitty thing that you can do to say, this is not how we want to be. If people have more agency and they should do more, they should do it. God forbid, if you own a tech company and you really don't have to bend the knee to Donald Trump, and you do, shame on you. I mean, really shame on you. But the point I want to say to people is you cannot look away from this moment. We are not in a regular moment. We are not in a regular time. It is being taken from us as we sit here today. And you have to push back. You have to resist. And then you have to have enough vision to think about, well, what comes next. Because something will come next, and if we don't form it, it will form away from us.

[Nicole Wallace]

Can we have that conversation next?

[Podcast Host]

Can we do this again?

[Nicole Wallace]

Sure.

[Tom Nichols]

Anytime.

[Nicole Wallace]

I love you all so much. Thank you so much.

[Podcast Host]

Thank you.

[Mitch Landrieu]

Thank you, guys.

[Podcast Host]

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Best people. Remember to subscribe to Ms. Now premium on Apple podcasts to get this show and other Ms. Now originals ad free. You also get early access and exclusive bonus content. All episodes of this podcast are also available on YouTube. You visit msnow. The best people to Watch. The Best People is produced by Vicki Vergelina. Our associate producer is Rana Shahbazi, with additional production support from Alison Stewart. Our audio engineers are Greg Devins II and Hazik bin Ahmad Fared. Katie Lau is our senior manager of audio production Pat Burkey is the senior Executive producer of Deadline White House Brad Gold is the executive producer of Content Strategy Aisha Turner is the executive Producer of audio and Madeline Herringer is the Senior Vice President in charge of audio, digital and long form. Search for the best people wherever you get your podcast and be sure to follow the series.

[Tom Nichols]

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