← The Best People with Nicolle Wallace
The Best People with Nicolle Wallace
Heather Cox Richardson on America’s Vibe Shift
00:57:03
Heather Cox Richardson identifies a change in American politics. And it’s coming from the people.
Loading summary
Transcript101 lines
- [00:00]
Tina Anderson
Struggling with bloat or indigestion. You're not alone. Two out of three Americans suffer from poor gut health. I'm Tina Anderson, co founder of Just Thrive Probiotic. As a mom of three, when no Probiotic solved my family's tummy troubles, I created my own. Just Thrive Probiotic is the only probiotic that arrives 100% alive in your gut, supporting five star digestion, immunity and better sleep. We even have a formula for pets. Use code serious for 20% off@justthrivehealth.com serious
- [00:31]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
if you're the proud parent of a puppy or kitten, you know you can't pet proof your entire life. There simply isn't a sock drawer high enough or a couch cover thick enough. But you can pet proof your wallet with Lemonade Pet Insurance. Whether it's an unexpected accident or a routine checkup, Lemonade can cover up to 90% of the bill, plus they can handle claims in as little as two seconds. So before you turn into a complete helicopter pet parent, get a've@lemonade.com pet what
- [01:01]
Heather Cox Richardson
Americans really are doing in this moment is recovering their agency, remembering that, you know, they don't wanna just watch an image of what it means to be a president, that actually there is joy in the creation of a community that is safer. There's joy in the creation of getting your college degree. There's joy in the creation of a new business or of a stable family, or of health. And that joy of creation and creating a government that reflects those things, that's a vibe shift.
- [01:38]
Nicole Hemmer
Hi everyone. If you make a list of the people you admire most and then you ask those people who they admire most, chances are extremely high that this week's guest is at the top of that list. Heather Cox Richardson is the voice of of this moment. Not because of how loud she screams. She never screams about the excesses or the horrors, but because of the meticulous way she lays brick on top of brick on top of brick to remind us of our story, our history, our flaws, and our identity. At a time when Donald Trump is trying to erode and erase all three, I find her essential at every turn, but especially this one, in which Trump's base seems so hardened that his brazen corruption and theft from them and the American people doesn't seem to faze them. To say nothing of his audacious attempt to claim without evidence that his 2020 defeat was due to fraud and interference. So without any further ado, because I have a million questions for her, this is the best people. And this is our first ever back for a third conversation. Three peak guest Heather Cox Richardson, historian, podcaster and writer of one of the biggest substacks in the country ever. Hello my friend.
- [02:56]
Heather Cox Richardson
Such a pleasure to be with you again. And you're very generous. But the people who matter in this moment and the ones that I represent are just ordinary people, I promise you.
- [03:05]
Nicole Hemmer
But you ask 10 ordinary people what they read first and it's you.
- [03:10]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, I think that that is a reflection of the fact that my project is really different than many people who are out in the media in that I came to this from teaching. Like my agenda is to protect democracy. It's not any of the other agendas that you might find out there. And so I just reflect back to people, what they are shining on me.
- [03:30]
Nicole Hemmer
I want to ask you how you keep the faith and if you ever feel yours waver.
- [03:37]
Heather Cox Richardson
The way you keep the faith, I think, is by having a profound belief in American democracy. And I do. And I want to point you to the Declaration of Independence, because when the founders of what was going to become the United States of America produce that document, they start with the idea that they hold these truths to be self evident. And that's not simply a well phrased turn of an idea there. What they are saying is that they believe there are the laws of nature and of nature's God. They put those in that introduction as well, that say people have certain natural laws under which they function. And among those, not all of them, but among those are certain rights, including the right to have a say in your government and the right to determine your own future. And if you really believe that that's what humans gravitate toward, that in fact that is a natural law or the law of nature's God, it's a question of getting to it, not a question of whether or not it's a real thing. And I actually really believe that my experience in that what human beings want is the ability to determine their own future. Not all of them, but the vast majority of us. And if you believe that's what we're working toward, we are gonna win. The question is whether it's gonna be in an hour, you know, in five years, in 40 years, or in a new millennium.
- [05:03]
Nicole Hemmer
One of the things that I think I attached to as sort of a former political operative was that at that time, about a third of the country was with them, a third of the country was against them, and a third of the country didn't know how they felt about that idea exactly.
- [05:17]
Heather Cox Richardson
And those numbers are pretty Common, actually. And as you well know, that when you get a reactionary right wing movement, it does have a natural floor that is, it's never gonna drop below about 22%. That's about as low as it gets. Those people are always gonna be in the tank for the reactionary movement. But the people that need to get on board are those people in the middle who don't really know where they stand. And I can talk about times in American history where a very similar situation to where we are today, the rise of the Republican Party, came directly out of a moment such as this in the 1850s. But what you are really doing when you are participating in democracy or in politics right now, or really in any kind of an advocacy organization, is trying to get people who otherwise aren't involved in that movement. And part of doing that is creating this larger sense of self determination. And you see that around you all the time right now. I mean, how many people do you know said, well, I never paid attention to politics, but have you seen. And I get that all the time from people. And we're also seeing so many people saying, well, I'm also running for office, I'm getting involved now. It's really exciting and it's something we desperately need in order to adapt American democracy to the 21st century, which needs to happen.
- [06:39]
Nicole Hemmer
Yeah, I mean, some of this, right, is about your gaze, right? And I feel like so much of the gaze is focused on that floor that you're talking about. Just explain why that's an error. Because the hardened 22%, I think Trump's numbers are about 30%. So it's just a little bit above that number below which he'll probably never fall, is the subject of so much obsessive coverage. And it distorts the reality that the vast majority of Americans are in agreement that the Iran war is a bad idea, that ending democracy is a bad idea, that shooting people on the streets because of the color of their skin is a bad idea, and yet the vibes are all that. We're completely polarized.
- [07:19]
Heather Cox Richardson
You know, that always jumps out to me as well, because again, if you think about the things that people on the Democratic side are calling for, they're wildly popular. So, you know, every time I see this idea that somebody is far left when they're talking about universal healthcare, when like 80% of Americans want that, that sounds pretty centrist to me. Similarly, common sense gun safety measures, you know, wildly popular, over 75%, I think, you know, you look at those things and you see them described in the media as the far left. That kind of makes my head explode because the actual left is not interested in the preservation of liberal democracy because they think that it is too corrupt, either because of racism or sexism or classism ever to have a fair society. And I look at the people who are operating even in the Democratic Party, across the spectrum, nobody's calling for that. In fact, the things that they are calling for are less dramatic in terms of economic fairness than Eisenhower did. And Eisenhower was a Republican, so Interesting.
- [08:23]
Nicole Hemmer
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:24]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, think about the 1956 Republican platform, which is far more dramatically weighted toward the consumer workers, women working, disabled people working than the farthest left Democrat operating right now. And look at the fact that in the 1950s, the top income tax bracket was 91%. You know, unless I've missed something dramatic, I'm not seeing anybody calling for those sorts of numbers right now or anything. So there is this weird thing in the media where we have gotten skewed toward the idea that a far right presentation of our common experience is the norm. And I do think that that has been a political project, and it's been a political project since at least the 1950s. When you get in 1954, for example, the book McCarthy and His Enemies by William F. Buckley, Jr. And Albrint Bazell, suggesting that the only real Americans are those people they call conservatives with a capital C, even though they're actually qu. Quite radical. And everybody else, Republicans, Independents, Democrats, everybody else is what they call a capital L, liberal. To make it look as if it is some sort of a branch of communism or socialism. And that insistence that they are the only true Americans, really became part of the project of those movement because they were a political movement movement, conservatives. And gradually, over the course of the 1980s, with the end of the Fairness Doctrine, or even before that, with the 1971 Powell memo, suggesting that those people who thought that way had to take over the American media as well as universities. And then with the end of the Fairness Doctrine in the late 1980s, and then, of course, with the rise of the Fox News Channel in 1996, you get this concentrated propaganda, really, that has so skewed our understanding of what it is to represent the American middle or American liberal democracy, you can see it has skewed what is expected behavior. And what I mean by that is look at the way that the media has covered Donald Trump's evident lack of mental acuity versus how they covered Joe Biden, who was a gaffe machine from the moment he first set foot in the Senate. And even before that, anything that he said that was even vaguely out of line, they jumped all over. Trump is a walking word salad and they're acting as if he is simply, well, that's Trump. Because there is this bias suggesting that Republicans naturally have the right to govern and the Democrats have to overcome all sorts of pieces that the Republicans don't. And that's something I think the independent media is being pretty good at pushing back on, not because they have an agenda in so much as the fact that we are so badly skewed. Now to this weird right wing look at what's actually happening in the United States.
- [11:26]
Nicole Hemmer
I do want to drill down on two things you just said. One, I led with Trump's and I know you talked about it as well, comments at NATO.
- [11:36]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
Is the ceasefire done?
- [11:37]
Heather Cox Richardson
Is the MoU dead? It's a very interesting question to me. I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. I told this story Yesterday. We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan. You have a question for President Putin? You have a question for President Putin.
- [12:06]
Nicole Hemmer
I guess we're both old enough to remember when an American president's words didn't just move markets, which seems to be Donald Trump's only concern, but used to change borders. It used to change how a country protected itself militarily. It used to change alliances. He literally described Japan as an Islamic republic. He confused while sitting next to him Zelenskyy with Putin. He spoke in ways that were so deeply alarming. I sort of joked that you needed Rubio next to him, like translating with a feed at the bottom to say what he really meant was, but. But they've either diminished his import so much or downgraded his words so much that people seem to wake up the next day, as you said, unfazed.
- [12:52]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yes. And that is a reflection, I think, of America's falling standing in the international community, which is something we could absolutely talk about. But I will say that certainly presidents have misspoken in the past or they have made mistakes in the past, because they're people. Right. But one of the things that you can do is overlook those things if the policies behind them are solid. You look at the policy, at least that's what a historian does. You listen to what people say, but you watch what they do. And one of the things about the way that Trump is appearing on the international stage is there is no there there. It is entirely like one of those balls in pinball machine. He's absolutely all over the place. So if you look at what's happening in Iran right now, for example, he's clearly finally discovered that the Memorandum of Understanding he signed on June 17 at Versailles, which I don't think you can walk away from that in terms of our international standing. The fact that he signed it at Versailles, where the Germans surrendered basically everything and agreed to pay reparations after World War I, he didn't understand the significance of that. But I would lay money that Macron, the leader of France, did. So he clearly has figured out that that Memorandum of Understanding pretty clearly gave Iran room to run with the idea that they had the right to control the Strait of Hormuz. And most of us called it out the night of, saying, wait a minute here, this doesn't look real good for us. So now he's declared that that is off. And yesterday I got up in the morning and there was his tweets saying that that was off. We were gonna blockade Iranian ports again, which is an act of war. And the United States was going to defend the Strait of Hormuz, but everybody had to pay us 20% of their
- [14:46]
Nicole Hemmer
cargoes, which is off already. I saw that too, and I think that's since been called off.
- [14:51]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yes, he called that off, saying that leaders in the Middle east had told him they were gonna invest in the US So that wouldn't happen. This is crazy pants stuff. It really is. And so today we've got people out there saying that we're now in our fifth day of rebomb. And now some Republicans on Trump's list of loyalist allies are saying we're gonna go after civilian infrastructure, which is usually a war crime, like an international war crime. And the bottom line is Trump can't get out of this war. And so we're ping ponging all over the place here. And it is a sign, I think, of the degradation not only of our international standing, but also of our presidency and his determination to take over the system for himself. And you can see this again with the Iran war, the fact that Trump's people simply informed Congress again that they had started a new set of strikes against Iran, therefore, in their minds, restarting the 60 day clock that they have under the 1973 War Powers act, which says that after 60 days, you either have to get the approval of Congress, you have to withdraw your troops. Well, the first 60 days expired on May 1st. And they did some machinations to try and say, no, no, no, no, we're not actually at war now. He's Declared it's a whole new war, so he doesn't have to include Congress. I mean, this is just. I mean, I'm speechless.
- [16:16]
Nicole Hemmer
What do you think the lack of people in the streets protesting our involvement in this war means?
- [16:26]
Heather Cox Richardson
I think that if you are at home, the Iran war is kind of at a low boil. What you see from it is, although it's not popular at all, but what you see from it is rising prices and those rising prices of gasoline and especially of things in the grocery store that you cannot look away from, that is everywhere. So you're seeing an awful lot of that. And now that ICE and Border Patrol have been funded again, the arrival of ICE into different areas across the country and the subsequent shooting and killing of people from the those communities, that's something that's getting people in the street in a way that I can get all upset about the War Powers act because I really care about the separation of powers and the following explicitly of the laws. But it's easier, I think, for somebody who's working a couple of jobs and got a couple of kids running around and so on, to be much more concerned about the cost of fresh produce than it is to be concerned about whether or not the President has followed the War Powers Act. Oh, and let's not forget the outbreak of this foodborne illness that's causing explosive diarrhea across the country. I mean, as somebody said, Brian Butler, I think said, if Obama or Biden had turned the country into, and this is not his term, a flying poop factory, you can believe it would have been headline news in every possible place. And here it's like, oh, yeah, we got several thousand people with this terrible foodborne illness in part because the administration stopped tracking the spread of that disease last July. You know, no one is making it headline news.
- [18:10]
Nicole Hemmer
People are talking about what they should do about salad, like, is it safe to eat salad? Is it safe to give their kids fruits and vegetables? And I think, like, you don't even have to wonder what they would do to Biden when there was a shortage of baby formula. It was all that was on the news. And you now have, as you said, a diarrhea causing bacteria in produce. So there's stories in. I always check what's in local papers and it is in every local paper how to safely eat produce this summer. Why do you think people aren't tying the destruction of the federal government, which they bragged about and did in front of the cameras, with the inability of the government to tell us where the diarrhea causing bacteria is coming from your
- [18:53]
Heather Cox Richardson
identification, not just of the problem with produce or wherever this is coming from, but also with things like the vitamin K shots that without which newborns run an 81% higher chance of having catastrophic bleeding, which finally certain members of the administration have come out to say, yeah, you should get your vitamin K shots in your newborn. But you're seeing a lot of places where the federal government used to protect American families and are no longer. And people are speaking up about that and they are having results from doing that. But that being said, one of the things that is really interesting about this moment and I think presents a dilemma for Democrats, by the way, is that the cuts that the administration has made are the cuts that the Democrats have been warning about for a very long time. And we kept hearing things like, well, they'll never do that. You're fear mongering. That's not going to happen. Well, it's happening.
- [19:51]
Nicole Hemmer
Yeah, we're like post fear mongered America.
- [19:53]
Heather Cox Richardson
But if you think about how we got the Progressive Era and how we got the New Deal, we didn't get it from people like me saying, hey, you know, I really think that we're not following such and such a law. We got it from women saying they're adulterating our milk with formaldehyde and chalk. One of my favorite examples of why we get the regulations we do during the Progressive Era is that when, you know, you always hear that thing, don't take candy from a stranger. And if you are post 1950, you think about, you know, the guy in the van, right, they're gonna take you off and do horrible things to you. We actually get that during the Progressive Era because candy sellers that you didn't know would paint their candy with lead paint. And so you didn't take candy from a stranger because you needed to know that the pretty decorations were not lead paint on the candy suckers.
- [20:45]
Nicole Hemmer
Oh, that's fascinating. I didn't know that. That's amazing.
- [20:48]
Heather Cox Richardson
So this, this need of ordinary Americans to protect their families in ways that the federal government did until Trump 2.0, I think is creating a different kind of politics where again, people are saying, perhaps I don't care whether or not the administration is doing something untoward in Venezuela as it is, but I do care about the fact that I don't have health care anymore, that I can't buy gasoline to get my kid to a soccer game, that I can't buy food, that I don't know how I'm gonna pay my rent. You know, those sorts of things are a different kind of politics. And as I say, I think presents a problem for Democrats because certainly at the state level, Democratic legislatures and Democratic leaders wanna protect their, the people within them from the cuts to snap, from the cuts to Medicaid and so on. But the more they protect people from that, the more people can say, yeah, it was just fear mongering, they weren't really gonna do it. See, my snap has come back, even though that's not gonna happen. So I think we're in that moment where we're trying to figure out what the politics of the next era looks like. And part of it's gonna come from ordinary people at home going, hey, wait a minute, I used to be able to trust the food that was in the grocery store and I can't.
- [22:09]
Nicole Hemmer
We'll pause right here for a quick break. When we come back, much more of my conversation with historian, professor and author of the Indispensable Notes from an American Substack, Heather Cox Richardson. Stay right here.
- [22:28]
Tina Anderson
Struggling with bloat or indigestion? You're not alone. Two out of three Americans suffer from poor gut health. I'm Tina Anderson, co founder of Justice Just Thrive Probiotic. As a mom of three, when no probiotic solved my family's tummy troubles, I created my own. Just Thrive Probiotic is the only probiotic that arrives 100% alive in your gut, supporting five star digestion, immunity and better sleep. We even have a formula for pets Use code serious for 20% off@justthrivehealth.com serious
- [23:00]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
if you're the proud parent of a puppy or kitten, you know you can't pet proof your entire life. There simply isn't a sock drawer high enough or a couch cover thick enough. But you can pet proof your wallet with lemonade. Pet insurance Whether it's an unexpected accident or a routine checkup, Lemonade can cover up to 90% of the bill. Plus they can handle claims in as little as two seconds. So before you turn into a complete helicopter pet parent, get a@lemonade.com Pet hi, it's Sierra Miller. I can't wait for you to check out my new collection of shoes and
- [23:32]
Heather Cox Richardson
accessories at Designer Shoe Warehouse. If you love shoes as much as I do, then trust me, I got you.
- [23:39]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
From cute sneakerinas to the perfect flip
- [23:41]
Heather Cox Richardson
flops to stunning heels, these shoes are
- [23:44]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
all style, no drama.
- [23:46]
Heather Cox Richardson
It's a girls girl summer.
- [23:48]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
And DSW has just the shoes. Shop the Sierra Miller Collection right now at your DSW store or dsw.com.
- [24:04]
Heather Cox Richardson
Here's one for you, though. One of the things that really jumps out to me, and I don't entirely know how to think about it, is the degree to which the Trump administration has absolutely destroyed the credibility of the American government. So that in the past, when officer of the government said something, you know, I was always of the opinion of trust but verify, right? You would see what they said and then you would go find the documents and see if they lined up. And every, every leader always puts spin on it. Sometimes there's such spin that it's absolutely disingenuous. But I really realized the other day when that picture of Mitch McConnell came out, my first reaction was not trust but verify. My first reaction was it's gotta be fake. And then I went to learn about it, you know, and that idea that we can't trust anything the government says anymore, I'm just shocked at how fast that has fallen apart. But there are a couple of interesting things that come out of that. And one of them I think is when I was thinking about why felt that way, just as a human being, not as somebody who knows Mitch McConnell or studies or anything, there's like some smell tests, right, where you use your common sense to say, is this plausible or is this not plausible? And in a way, because the administration has become so untrustworthy, a lot of people seem to be applying the smell test to a lot of areas where we might not otherwise have done it. And with luck, that will become part of our larger conversation about really big policies opposed to whether or not Mitch McConnell is functional. I don't think Mitch McConnell is dead. I think that that would be representing that he is alive when he is not, I assume, breaks at least some laws of fraud. I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. But I also thought the timing was really interesting because it was right after the sudden death of Lindsey Graham. And it struck me that the Republican leadership was trying desperately to say, hey, we still got people over here. So I think that, that at some level his heart is still beating, but I'm not expecting him to show up at my doorstep and invite me out dancing anytime soon.
- [26:10]
Nicole Hemmer
Yeah, I mean, look, I saw Scott Jennings, the MAGA guy over on CNN, post about a 20 minute conversation he had with Mitch McConnell. It was the first time I became suspicious about his health. Until then, I just, I was sort of willing to go along and accept that he was convalescing somewhere. I became suspicious when Scott Jennings posted about a 20 minute in depth policy conversation he'd had with Mitch McConnell, because I thought if it was what Scott Jennings said it was, why didn't he call into Fox News and have the conversation in a way that would show him able to talk about all those things? And so I think even to the degree that you think you can wall yourself off from this post truth moment, this is one of the parts of my brain that is now suspicious of just about everything that the real MAGA propagandists say, especially, as you point out, their motives are so clearly to prop up having more power than they do.
- [27:05]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, so I actually find this really interesting because one of the big ways you change American politics is sort of by changing the bigger conversation. Like, what are we talking about? Which side looks like the winning side? And when you think about the way that I think you and I both reacted to Scott Jennings or to that photograph, you can see people being like, ah, we don't believe that stuff anymore. And it reminds me of the Republican Party after the great crash, when President Herbert Hoover is in office and the leadership keeps feeding material to the American people, but also to the American media going, you know, our numbers are fine. There's really not a problem. There isn't a depression. Everything's great. And every time they do that, people push back so strongly that finally a member of the administration grouses publicly. You know, every time we say anything positive, the stock market drops another two points. And as if that this is somehow a plot against them. And the New York Times responds by saying, listen, if you think people are reacting negatively to you talking, what you should do then is to shut up. They're literally saying, you guys are done. And when I think about that, in this moment, what we are struggling over going forward into the midterm elections, but also beyond that is which side looks to the American people like a winner. And I'm watching the many things that the administration is doing right now to try and assert their dominance. And it just feels like you're watching one of those cartoons where the claws are going down the side of the cliff.
- [28:40]
Nicole Hemmer
Yeah. The cats hit the mirror. Yeah. And it's sliding down the glass. That's perfect.
- [28:45]
Heather Cox Richardson
I'm not saying they're not still incredibly dangerous, but they. But the minute the American people turn and say, why don't you just shut up? That's the minute all the momentum in the country changes. And we saw it with Herbert Hoover. We saw it in the late 19th century. There's no reason to think we couldn't see it now.
- [29:05]
Nicole Hemmer
Do you think we're near It.
- [29:07]
Heather Cox Richardson
Oh, I've given up trying to guess what the American people are going to do. I will tell you, we're a lot nearer than we were at, you know, before the 2024 election when, you know, as you and I both commented, Trump was promising everything to everybody. And I can't tell you how many interviews I did where I was saying, you know, you can't be both wet and dry at the same time. And that's what he's promising people, and they're falling for it. They now realize you can't be both wet and dry at the same time. And a lot of them are really tired of what they got rather than what they voted for. The question will be whether or not they can paper that over until at least the midterms or whether they will simply stop our ability to vote them out of power. And that's clearly the struggle. The race that we're on now between now and November 3rd.
- [29:57]
Nicole Hemmer
Well, so they've sort of previewed a speech that Donald Trump will deliver to the country that will include this logic that the election in 2016 in which I won was real. The election in 2024 in which I won was real. The election 2020 in which I lost was fake. I mean, what is your sense of how much the country will accept in terms of this lie that may become the backbone of making it impossible for people to have their votes counted in the midterms.
- [30:34]
Heather Cox Richardson
So, first of all, I'm a prophet of the past, not of the future, which makes my job really easy, because I can always tell you what happened, but obviously not so much what's going to happen. But one of the things I always do in a situation like this is what I call playing the other side of the table. Like, I know I can make guesses about what I think is going on with the rest of the people, but one of the things to watch is what Trump and his loyalists think is happening and the fact that he is giving a primetime address on Thursday. Now, remember, the reason that he feels the need to do this is that that from the minute he got into office, he has been calling for major changes to the American voting system, including the federal takeover of the state voter rolls. And I believe he's lost well over 10 times.
- [31:21]
Nicole Hemmer
I think it's 15. Yeah.
- [31:22]
Heather Cox Richardson
Repeatedly, he has lost on that in front of judges on occasion that he appointed. Right. So he hasn't been able to get his hands on those voter rolls, which clearly is a huge problem for him. So then he's gotten rid of certain Members of committees that protected the vote. I mean, he's trying one thing after another. And the fact that he is now going for a national address to the American people to say, oh look, it looks like there's been this terrible fraud and I'm gonna have to do something huge in order to combat that happening in 2026, which is the whole point after all, that suggests to me that he is desperate. And the question is how much people will put up with how much will state. It's Republicans at the state level pushing back against him as well as Democrats. And I'm always looking for the pressure points. The pressure points right now for the American people are how do you pressure elected officials to do the right thing, to stand by the laws? And one of the ways you do that is by saying, look, Trump's making bank off his time in office, he's corrupt as can be. The reason he wants to win the midterms is cuz he does not want there to be any investigation into what he and his people have done. Do you really wanna be on the side of those people who have given us every indication they're breaking the law with things like that corollary or addendum to the slush fund that said that neither Trump, his sons, the Trump Organization or any of their associates could be liable, could be held criminally liable for any audits from the IRS happening before. I think it was May of this year. You don't do that if you don't think you're in real trouble. Right? So the thing to do is to really out those people who haven't yet broken from him, but might like to have a future political life who ought to recognize that hitching yourself to the Donald Trump star right now is not politically astute. Because the minute that he ceases to have his enablers around him, it's not gonna be pretty for them or for the people around them.
- [33:31]
Nicole Hemmer
Why do you think the corruption which registers so negatively with the American people, the account that he's made $2 billion, he has made more money as president than he ever made as a private citizen. Why do you think that doesn't repel more Republicans?
- [33:49]
Heather Cox Richardson
You tell me why you think Republicans are still sticking with him. Because I think you can say there are those people who have committed crimes and we could make perhaps a list of some of those who don't want those looked into, but that's a small minority. So a lot of his sycophants around him stay because they know they would never have another chance with anybody in an administration that was merit based. You know, Pete Hegseth was never gonna be Secretary of Defense under an actual merit based system. But then there are a lot of people who seem to be simply hoping that all this is gonna pass and go away. And I do not understand. I feel like watching American history, if you were a Republican right now, who wasn't dirty and who was smart, you would step up at this moment and say, they have corrupted the Republican Party. I'm going to take it back to its noble roots, because it has quite noble roots. And I'm going to call for the things that Republicans called for in the past that nowadays have an 80% approval rating. I mean, it's Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower who really put in the hard work for universal health care before the Democrats picked it up and made it happen. So to me, that's like an express train to the presidency and to future power. And I do not understand why they're not doing it. What do you think?
- [35:13]
Nicole Hemmer
Well, I think the last time we talked, Trump had had a party at Mar a Lago where they were like in martini glasses and the opulence and the aesthetic was so. Was so over the top. And I remember really digging in and trying to understand why he kept saying this sentence, the country's so hot right now. And the reason he kept saying that was because he's only around the members of the Mar a Lago, you know, private club, who are people that may feel that way. Now, what has changed between those displays of opulence and what we understand now are two things. One, the Iran war has made everything expensive for everyone. People are pissed off about gas prices. Even if they're not particularly price sensitive to the amount that it costs to fill up their gas tank. They're just mad. They see it, they fill up, they pay more, they're mad. Same with groceries. But the theft and the grift. There is no appetite anywhere in the history of this country for people being sucker punched and to know they're being sucker punched. So I have never seen the Republican, modern Republican Party stick around for brazen corruption and criminality. And so I don't have an answer to why they stay for this.
- [36:32]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, so I wonder if it's worth thinking about. The Republican Party has an ideology that is deeply ingrained in Americans DNA at this point. And that's never gonna go away. But I was thinking about this as I was working through a project where I was trying to be politically inclusive and recognized that I didn't have any and would not have Any MAGA supporters working with me. And then I looked at the list and realized that some of the people on that list were quite staunch former Republicans who are now, funnily enough, to the left of a number of people in the Democratic Party. And what it reminds me of is, again, the 1850s, what happens is as the Democratic, in that case party becomes more and more beholden to a very small group of elite slave owners, less than 1% of the American population, as that happens. The Democrats who were involved in the party for other reasons, and there were a number of reasons that people joined the Democratic Party in that period left, they formed their own organizations, they come up with all these different ways of engaging with politics, but they leave behind the extremists. And so what you end up finally getting, and I think we are not at this point yet in the United States states, is they make the connection between a very small group of people running the country, running the government, and the fact that they are losing economic prosperity and economic mobility. And one of the things that Democrats really have not done yet, or those of us who are articulating the problems with our country right now, is linking that corruption to the price of lettuce, because they really are the same story. And that same story is also the story of democracy. If you have a country that works for the good of an authoritarian or of an oligarchy, they're gonna concentrate wealth and power among themselves, and they're gonna charge you more for the products that they produce that you need. And at the same time, you're gonna lose clean water and clean air and healthcare and the ability to. To make rent and educate your kids and so on. But you're also going to be watching them revel in extraordinary corruption because they have all the wealth and the power, and they've gotten rid of the rule of law. And one of the things that was so genius about Abraham Lincoln was, and the people around him, not just him, but the people who were articulating a vision in the late 1850s was they brought all these things together and said, if you want to be able to get a job or to be able to work your way up in the new state of Illinois, you need to make sure that the enslavers don't come in and buy up all the great property. And then you're just gonna have to work for them, and you're gonna work for pennies, and you're not gonna be able to have a say in your government because you're gonna have to do what they say and as you do that, all of your hard work is gonna go into their pockets. And that's what they articulated in such a way that, you know, the majority of Americans got behind the idea of getting rid of the elite enslavers. They had other issues amongst themselves, but that was really what inspired people to take a stand against what they called the slave power.
- [39:50]
Nicole Hemmer
Well, you see Ossoff trying to tie the two together.
- [39:52]
Heather Cox Richardson
Ossoff's doing it very well.
- [39:54]
Nicole Hemmer
He ties together the personal corruption of Trump and his family and the economic anxiety slash despair of the American people. Do you watch politicians and have a sense as to who understands history better than others and who knows how to deploy those lessons better than others?
- [40:12]
Heather Cox Richardson
I do, but I actually don't think it's necessarily the history so much as their connection to the people, because it's not like Lincoln invented this out of whole cloth. The people invented Lincoln. The people invented William Henry Seward. And similarly, the people and his advisors, including his wife, made fdr. I mean, literally, FDR was, you know, socially conscious, but the son of a very wealthy family. He reflects what people shine onto him. So if you've watched Jon Ossoff, the senator from Georgia, for a long time, as I have, you can see that his language has changed a lot. Another person to watch is Governor of Illinois J.B. pritzker, who is. You're watching them change, and you can see it in people who change and make an overstep and then back away. So if you watch somebody like Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, there are times when he has gotten out over his skis and you can watch him pull back, because these are politicians. They're watching what people respond to. And that being said, the lessons of the past really matter. I mean, this is literally what historians study. How do you change society? Where are the pressure points that change society? And if you look at somebody like Lincoln or FDR or whomever, and you watch what they said and how they conveyed to people what the problems in their society were, and crucially, when they did it, you can't come out too far in advance of the vast majority of people. You can get them there, but only in small increments. What the radical right calls the Overton Window, right? If you watch them and you watch them as they are doing it, the people who manage to wrap all that together are becoming really good speakers. And as they do that, you watch people gravitate toward them. And that's exactly how it should be. That's the way a democracy should work. And I Actually find it very exciting to watch the new voices coming up. We're in a profoundly important moment in American history and everything appears to be proceeding as it does in a moment like that.
- [42:23]
Nicole Hemmer
Is it moving in a direction to get us out of this moment?
- [42:27]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, Nicole, I'm going to go back there to what I started with. If you believe that humans really are wired, if you will, to want to achieve human self determination, then sure, I mean, we got a lot of things going on. We got the fact that with modern medicine and modern transportation, the people who are in Congress, many of them were born before the Declaration of Independence. I'm sorry, I'm being flippant, but come on. You know, we got a lot of mechanics of our democracy that don't work anymore because they were frozen in a different time. I mean, there's a lot of things we will have to overcome. But can we do it? You know, we've always done it. In the past, American democracy had to adjust to the westward movement movement of the country in the 19th century. It had to grapple with industrialization. Does somebody like Andrew Carnegie really act as if he is equal to one of his workers in his factory? We had to deal with that. We had to deal with globalization. That brought us to the Great Crash and the Great Depression and that was not an easy thing to come out of and to figure out. And then after the war, we had to deal with the idea of a world that now had nuclear weapons. Now we've got to deal with climate change and with the rise of AI and the Internet. I mean, that's a huge, huge change in human history. Are we going to be able to do it? Well, we've always done it in the past, so it looks pretty good from where I sit. We could just as easily fail. Democracies are on the ropes right now and that's what we're working so hard to push back on. But I will tell you, I gotta get up in the morning tomorrow and do something. And if my options are to throw my hands up and say, well yeah, I'm gonna let Elon Musk run everybody's lives for eternity, or I'm going to work to defend those laws of nature and nature's God, that humans have the right and the self evident principles behind that, I'm going to get up and be on that side rather than on the former.
- [44:29]
Nicole Hemmer
My conversation with Heather Cox Richardson continues right after the break. Stick around.
- [44:33]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
Down.
- [44:34]
Nicole Hemmer
We'll be right back.
- [44:44]
Tina Anderson
Struggling with bloat or indigestion? You're not alone, two out of three Americans suffer from poor gut health. I'm Tina Anderson, co founder of Just Thrive Probiotic. As a mom of three, when no probiotics solve my family's tummy troubles, I created my own. Just Thrive Probiotic is the only probiotic that arrives 100% alive in your gut, supporting five star digestion, immunity and better sleep. We even have a formula for pets. Use code serious for 20% off@justthrivehealth.com serious
- [45:15]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
if you're the proud parent of a puppy or kitten, you know you can't pet proof your entire life. There simply isn't a sock drawer high enough or a couch cover thick enough. But you can pet proof your wallet with Lemonade Pet Insurance. Whether it's an unexpected accident or a routine checkup, Lemonade can cover up to 90% of the bill. Plus they can handle claims in as little as two seconds. So before you turn into a complete helicopter pet parent, get a'@lemonade.com pet. You know that thing where you get
- [45:46]
Nicole Hemmer
an amazing pair of shoes at a
- [45:48]
Heather Cox Richardson
really great price and want to tell everyone about it? Yeah. So do we. Here at Designer Shoe Warehouse. We'll give you something to brag about,
- [45:56]
Nicole Hemmer
like the latest styles from brands you
- [45:58]
Heather Cox Richardson
love or the trends everyone's obsessing over, or shoes that make you feel like, well, you. So go ahead, show off a little, buying shoes that get you at prices
- [46:07]
Nicole Hemmer
that get your budget. Head to your DSW store or dsw.com today.
- [46:12]
Heather Cox Richardson
DSW. Let us surprise you.
- [46:20]
Nicole Hemmer
That answer is why a lot of people hoped that you would throw your hat into the ring and run for Senate in Maine.
- [46:26]
Heather Cox Richardson
And that answer is why I wouldn't do it. Because if you believe, as I do, that the way you change American democracy or American politics is by adhering really closely to those Enlightenment ideals of reasoned argument and a nonpartisan attention to what those details are, the minute that I become a candidate for office, I lose all that. So there was a lot of pressure to join the race. But there are many people who have that skill set that I don't have. I've never run for office, but that position I have. As somebody who has been extraordinarily well trained in what I do in research, people forget this, but that was actually what I was known for, was my research and the incredible training I've had to enable me to convey that research to people who don't otherwise do it. In order to put me in that Senate race, you would lose the skills that I do have and that I actually think are upstream from politics rather than downstream. And to me, it was just never a question that. I love the state of Maine and I love our political system, but to me, it just was never a fit. It was just never a fit.
- [47:49]
Nicole Hemmer
I want to ask you about one more Maine question. ICE's abuses have taken hold in your state and taken the life of one of your neighbors. And I wonder what you can tell me about how you think the people of Maine will respond and how they are responding.
- [48:04]
Heather Cox Richardson
What we have seen so far is really interesting because people who are still MAGA are saying horrible things. And it's always worth remembering that Maine has a long history of radical reactionary politics, but those people who were MAGA are really still maga and really cheering on the policies of the Trump administration without any sense that. What I keep hammering on is, once you have said that there are certain people in this country who are not covered by the rule of law, it's only a question of time until you get included in that. You don't get to say those people aren't included, but all these other people are, because once you've admitted the principle, then anybody is game. And I learned that from Abraham Lincoln. That literally. That's where I learned that concept. And he was right. That's why he made the arguments he did. And people, even virulent racists in the north, came around to back him politically because they got. They might not have liked black Americans, but they understood that once you gave up that principle, people were gonna come for them as well. So you see that, but you are also seeing the other side of, I suspect, people anywhere coming out and saying, these were our neighbors. And that's the same impulse that forced an Aryan compound in Maine to give up a year or so ago, because they thought because Maine is such a white state, they'd be welcome here. And they were.
- [49:38]
Tina Anderson
Weren't.
- [49:39]
Heather Cox Richardson
Because there is that sense that if you are in here, you are one of our neighbors. And it is maybe exaggerated, perhaps, because every year Maine has such an influx of tourists, so that we do have this sense of being from here, and if you're not from here, you're literally, we call it from away. And that outpouring of support is there as well. One of the things that I did think was interesting, though, is in some of the reports I saw the number of people saying, you know, we just never thought it would happen here. It doesn't happen in Maine. And what was interesting about that was first this idea that somehow Maine was gonna be protected, but Coming from here, I thought that was really interesting because, in fact, many of us know people who have died from gun violence. And I am one of them. I have known a couple of people who have died from gun violence. But I just thought it was interesting because what I heard in that was, is not the guns. We're kind of accustomed to guns, as any rural place would be. And as I say, I think a lot of us have known people who died from gun violence. But the idea that guns coming from the government, that's a whole different kettle of fish. And that, I think, is maybe a nuance that might have been lost on people who weren't from here.
- [51:01]
Nicole Hemmer
I wanna thank you for being so generous with your time. I wanna ask. I mean, what you wrote about the parks. I'm from Cal, and Yosemite is my place. And I just cried reading that. Just. Will you say something about the parks?
- [51:14]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, what do you think about this, though, is like, why do people watch this happening?
- [51:19]
Nicole Hemmer
I don't know.
- [51:19]
Heather Cox Richardson
And still like Trump?
- [51:21]
Nicole Hemmer
I mean, it's where my despair comes from, I think. I don't understand. Feels like a cult. It feels like covering a cult.
- [51:28]
Heather Cox Richardson
I think that's right. I think you look at the many ways in which this administration is taking away from us things that we think that we thought we had, but also think that we deserve this part of our heritage. That's, I think, what I find the most heartbreaking, because we can claw back a lot of what this administration has done, but you can't claw back everything. And some of what they are doing is irretrievable. And a piece about the lands that I did not put in the piece you're referring to, people tend to forget that. During his confirmation hearings, Doug Burgum, who is now the Secretary of the Interior, kept talking about the national debt and how people keep looking at the national debt. But that's only one half of the ledger. So the other half of the ledger are all our untouched public lands, and that those can be used to raise money to cover the national debt. And many of the fights over drilling in the west are really fights over the fact that a lot of the state budgets of the Western states are underwritten essentially by fees over drilling in those lands. And if you take that land out of drilling, you hurt the bottom line of those state budgets. And because of the capital, intense industries in those states, what you're saying is it would cost people who have a lot of money and corporations in those states a lot of tax dollars. And I think people miss that. Connection. But when I think about the fact that we are dramatically cutting taxes for the wealthy in corporations through measures like the one big beautiful Bill act of last July, through those Trump tax cuts and then also through the George W. Bush tax cuts, when I think of that and think that essentially they're saying let's take, take Americans birthright, let's take the lands from indigenous people and turn them into cash so that some rich people don't have to pay taxes. I just think that that, I mean, maybe it's a metaphor for the entire idea that they're taking our science and research base that we have built Since World War II, the finest in the world, and turning that into cash for people's rich people's pockets. And I look at that and it just seem just sort of the almost Shakespearean or even biblical, the idea of selling your birthright for a mess of pottage. And it breaks my heart. But that's what we're doing here, is trying to make people understand that once that stuff is gone, some of it can never be found again.
- [54:14]
Nicole Hemmer
What do you make of the way that that side has changed the vibes? There was a lot of talk of a vibe shift of the manosphere and the vibes of MAGA being the better party. Do you feel like the vibes shift has moved toward the pro democracy side?
- [54:33]
Heather Cox Richardson
So you know what's really interesting about that? One of the things that you See in the 1950s in the United States is the argument from somebody like William F. Buckley Jr. Who in 1951 wrote a book called God and Man at Yale, in which he tried to argue that Yale, just saying Yale in 1950, which is when he was there, was what he would call a liberal institution that was destroying American identity. Well, what he meant by that was that the professors at Yale were embracing the idea of reason based argument, which is after all what the Enlightenment and the United States is based on. And what that meant was they were looking at economics, for example, coming out of the New Deal and saying, yeah, we actually need to have business regulation. We need to have a basic social safety net. It actually is good for the economy if we invest in infrastructure. We need to have equality before the law. And they like the idea of a rules based international order to stabilize the world so we wouldn't have World War Three. And he insisted that this was indoctrination. And by the way, they were also secular. They believed that people should choose their own religions or not, that that was not something that the government should be involved in. And the position Buckley takes is that we have to start from the premise that the government should not do any of those things and that we must be a Christian organization, a Christian government. And because we keep putting this proposition in front of the voters and they keep voting for that stuff that the Yale professors talk about, we need to push back on that. Not by engaging in the Enlightenment, by saying, here's our reasoning and our reasoning's better than theirs. We need simply to push these ideas by whatever means necessary that we need to spread this ideology. It is not a reasoned ideology. It is a set of beliefs. It is a set of fundamental truths, he believes, that simply have to be embraced from the beginning. You can't argue about them. And I've always thought of that as being the sort of beginning of that movement conservative project that says we're gonna push our agenda not with the use of facts and not with the use of any kind of real argument, but rather by creating a worldview that makes people feel comfortable and noble and makes them wanna be on our team. And you can see this with the rise of Reagan, when he springs to power in California media, people laugh at him because he makes stuff up and they think it's really funny. And they don't get that he's creating this worldview. One of the things that Trump was always was a sale. And in many ways, he was the culmination of that worldview that was based in image and not in reality. I mean, his whole identity was based, when he went into public office was based in the Apprentice. And the guy who created the Apprentice said, you know, we made that up. And the reason that we put him in the centerpiece of that was because we tried to get real businessmen, and they actually were attending to business, so they didn't want to do anything with us. They didn't have time. And he was the only guy. Guy who was free. And, you know, that idea that he created and embraced.
- [57:48]
Nicole Hemmer
Crazy.
- [57:48]
Heather Cox Richardson
A TV show, really?
- [57:50]
Nicole Hemmer
Yeah.
- [57:50]
Heather Cox Richardson
And Susie Wiles, you know, people have identified her as. Who's the chief of staff? As producing a reality show every day in which Trump has to win at the end of every day. You know, people loved that people got on board that as late as 2024. And now we are watching what happens when you have this hologram realistic take over aspects of our lives that really matter. And you're watching the end of the freedom of the seas in Iran, which means that the free exchange of goods, which has made America so wealthy and kept our prices so low. That sure looks like it's going away. And now we're seeing the rollback of health care, the rollback of abortion care. And so women are dying. You're seeing, you know, children who are unable to eat. You're watching reality crash into image. And some people, I think, will never let go of that image. They love what that looks like. They loved who they were during it. But governance and life is actually a lot of hard work and that, you know, have the vibe shifted so that people are souring on that image. A, I think yes, but B, I would suggest that what Americans really are doing in this moment is recovering their agency, remembering that they don't want to just watch an image of what it means to be a president, that actually there is joy in the creation of a community that is safer. There's joy in the creation of getting your college degree. There's joy in the creation of a new business or of a stable family or of health. And that joy of creation and creating a government that reflects, reflects those things. That's a vibe shift. When you think about that and you think about what we could create, all of a sudden the world looks a lot brighter.
- [59:45]
Nicole Hemmer
I think you are one of my favorite people. You are definitely my favorite person to talk to. You've been more than generous with your time at a time when you've got a lot going on at home and at work. So thank you so much.
- [59:58]
Heather Cox Richardson
Thank you. It's always a pleasure. Nicole,
- [60:04]
Nicole Hemmer
Thank you so much for listening to the Best People. All episodes of the podcast are also available on YouTube. You visit Ms. Now. The best People to Watch the Best People is produced by Vicky Vergelina and I am Chatterjee. Our associate producer is Nico Vinuela Yodar with additional production support from Rana Shabazzi. The audio engineers for this episode episode are Bob Mallory 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 Senior VP in charge of audio, digital and long form. Search for the best people wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to follow follow the series.
- [61:04]
Heather Cox Richardson
Real talent is defined by what people
- [61:06]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
can do, not where they learn to do it.
- [61:09]
Heather Cox Richardson
So by stopping at the education section of a resume, you might throw away the perfect hire skills first.
- [61:14]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
Hiring helps you see talent others miss,
- [61:16]
Heather Cox Richardson
like more than 70 million.
- [61:17]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
And stars skilled through alternative routes let
- [61:20]
Heather Cox Richardson
their story unfold and gain a competitive advantage. Because hiring managers who start with skills are 60% more likely to find a successful hire.
- [61:28]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
Hire skills first learn why at tearthepaperceiling. Org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work
- [61:33]
Heather Cox Richardson
and the Ad Council.