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The Best People with Nicolle Wallace
Heather Cox Richardson: "People are Starved for Facts"
00:50:40
Heather Cox Richardson sees an American realignment happening. And the return of human agency.
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- [00:00]
Heather Cox Richardson
It's time to save the Firestone Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale is on. Get 15% off all tires and $40 off a lifetime wheel alignment when you buy two or more eligible tires. Visit firestonecompleteautocare.com for details and more deals. We all take good care of the things that matter. Our homes, our pets, our cars. Are you doing the same for your brain? Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Studies have found that up to 45% of dementia may be prevented or delayed. By managing risk factors, you can change make brain health a priority. Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment. Learn more@brainhealthmatters.com Listen, there's two ways we could go. We could in fact embrace fascism fully, which is absolutely the direction that this government is going. Or we could do what Americans before us have done and say, hell no, we don't agree with each other about finance. We don't agree each other about immigration. We don't agree with each other about foreign affairs. But by God, we can agree. We don't want to be ruled by a handful of rich men who think they're better than the rest of us.
- [01:17]
Podcast Host
Welcome to the Best People podcast. This week's guest is one of my Northern Lights beacons, safe harbors in a storm. You pick your cliche. She's all those things to me. Chicken Soup for the Soul is one for the past week that I have really been feeling. And the point is she's that for a lot of people, I think she is the most subscribed to creator on Substack. She's the person former President Barack Obama sought out for one of his first interviews during Donald Trump's second presidency. Without any further ado or wind up, welcome to the Best People podcast to Heather Cox Richardson. Thank you.
- [01:52]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, thank you for having me. And I'm such a huge fan. It's a pleasure finally to meet you.
- [02:03]
Podcast Host
I had no idea if you would even know who I was because you're so the warm knife through cold butter. Like you're the person telling us where we are. And I look to you and look to your reactions and your framing around absolutely everything.
- [02:18]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, but isn't it really that we're doing the same enterprise in different ways?
- [02:23]
Podcast Host
That is, oh my God, I hope so.
- [02:24]
Heather Cox Richardson
You're catching the stuff that's breaking. And I couldn't do what I do without people like you. Because you're looking at the world and saying, oh, whoa, look at that's over there, and that's over there. And I can sit back from where I sit with a different kind of training and say, you know, I don't really care that much about that story, but oh boy, this one's big. And so, yeah, I follow you. I follow all kinds of people who are breaking the news from all kinds of different places to see what they think is important and what they've seen that I didn't.
- [02:52]
Podcast Host
Well, I feel like you see it all and around the corners and I went back and watched what you said before the elections and your frame was, even if Democrats lose all of them, there's something happening. And I just love like centering on what is happening in the country. And obviously Democrats ran the tables. They won everywhere and they won by these huge margins. But I want to come back to understanding what you see happening in the country right now.
- [03:23]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, so let's start right there. I'm not sure Democrats ran the tables. I think the American people ran the tables. Totally. Yes. And that's a really different kettle of fish if you think about it. Because if you look at the results in places like New Jersey, there was an election that people looked very closely in, at a district in New Jersey, and it was very clear from the numbers. But that was not just Democrats turning out. That was not just Democrats and Republicans turning out. That was not just Democrats, Republicans and Independents turning out, but that some of the people who crossed the aisle were maga vot. And I think that we are seeing the end of at least a 40 year era in American history. We are realigning in a lot of different ways. We're seeing dramatic changes in both political parties. And I don't predict the future. I predict the past, if you will. But where we are looks a great deal like the periods in our history when we have reclaimed democracy and built something more inclusive on the other side. And so what I said before that election Tuesday of the election is no matter what happened, the work was gonna continue the next day. And that work is ongoing for sure. But there is increasingly in it, I think, a joy in the idea of fixing some of the wrongs of the past two generations. And that's exciting.
- [04:45]
Podcast Host
I've had to really recenter myself around the idea that there are. That no one's coming to save us, that we are, we are the saviors, we are the fire men and women. And that is not anything. It's more of a confession, right, that like I was oriented around politics to look to politicians and leaders, but I wonder if you can just talk about the other side of that, which is that we haven't failed ourselves. We hold all the power. And maybe last week we rediscovered the potency of that power and that dynamic.
- [05:16]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, one of the things that really interested me when we looked at the ways in which the radical right was trying to rework school curricula, not only in history, but also in. And social studies and economics in a lot of different ways, especially in places like Florida and Oklahoma, was a lot of people focused on the people who were getting erased from that story. And that was very important. But the thing that really jumped out to me if you read that curricula is what was entirely erased was human agency, the idea that everyday people could change their world. And that's one thing, as a historian that always really jumps out to me is that nobody wakes up in the morning and says, hey, today I'm gonna be a hero. You today I'm gonna save that plane of people coming down on the Hudson. Or today I'm gonna be the person who stops a war. They get out of bed and they go about their daily business doing the best they can. One of my favorite stories is of the women who became what were known as the angels of the underground in the Philippines. And, you know, they were not trying to be heroes. They were trying to find their husbands, they were trying to get food. They were trying to do whatever it took to get through their days. And because of where they were and the circumstances, they became heroes. So that era of agency for everyday Americans, I think, has been pernicious and has been incredibly dangerous for our democracy. And you said lots of nice things about me, sort of helping people through this period in many ways. And I am a really ordinary person who has been extremely well trained in my profession, and more power to the teachers who did that. But I often think of what I do as simply being to remind people that they have control over their lives to the degree that they are willing to take that control. And that, I think, is what we are seeing, as I say, not just among Democrats, but among a lot of people who have been taking direction from leadership that is more interested in staying in power than they are in doing what's good for the country. And that retaking on of human agency has enormous potential. It also has great danger, which is important not to forget in this really fraught period. But I find it really exciting and that refocusing on democracy as being the work of everyday people as opposed to us being told what we're gonna do Is the whole ball game really?
- [07:44]
Podcast Host
What is the danger?
- [07:46]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, one of the things that I look at in this moment, and it is worth pointing out that I am born and bred a historian. Like my river is very different than today. And it's one of the reasons I have a hard time associating with a party, because, you know, I'm much more interested in the longer trend of American history. But one of the things I worry about in this moment is that, as I've said a number of times, all the cards are in the air. Like we are all madly trying to grab the cards and bring them down into a pattern that is to our liking. But I really am urging people to think about what comes next, because the ways in which American society is currently unsettled. And I don't just mean culturally and I don't just mean politically, I am extremely concerned about what seems to me to be extraordinary economic instability and instability in foreign affairs that can, in a society lead to a situation where people are like, well, it's all burned down. We need somebody to bring order back to it. And then they turn to a real strong man. The converse of that is when you have all the cards in the air and real instability is having an institutionalist with new vision come forward and say, oh, yeah, we're in real trouble here, but here are the ways in which it will protect our democracy and be good for people to have it come down. So somebody like fdr, for example, and I'm not suggesting who that needs to be in this moment, but I really want people to be thinking, this is what I think things should look like. And here's a coalition that will help me get, for example, universal healthcare or a better foreign policy or whatever, because you want those roads to be laid out, at least in part. When everything comes crashing down, it seems.
- [09:42]
Podcast Host
Like it's the two, right? So one of it is agency and the other is vision. And I wonder how you maintain the public's confidence or belief in the power of their agency to even have a vision.
- [09:55]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, the belief in agency I think you're seeing. I think you're seeing it in the no Kings rallies. I think you're seeing it obviously in the voting, but I think you're also seeing it in something that not many people are talking about, and that is the degree to which there is organizing going in places that are not visible to a lot of, especially mainstream media. So I think you're seeing that the question is the vision. And to me, that's a really interesting theoretical question. And it's one that I do have an answer to, because this is what I do. Right. But that's a real question, like, what is the relationship between people on the ground, people just going about their days and elected leadership in a democracy? And by the way, this has been a long issue for America, because if you think about the way that the framers wrote the Constitution, they wrote what people talked about much later as a machine that would go of itself. And then they were all high on the idea that people got to have a say. And of course, they define people in a very limited way, but the people got to have a say in the government, but they didn't find a way to put those two things together. I mean, if you think about it, you had the Constitution, this great machine. You had the people. That was supposed to be great, but there was no interface between the two, really. And it's not really till you get to the early Republic that we get the rise of popular political parties that marry those two things. So that question of the relationship between individuals and leadership, you know, has been an issue throughout American history. But I have come to believe, you know, I was writing one of my books, and my whole thing has always been sort of the zeitgeist, what does the country feel? And there's a lot of ways to get into that. But I'm writing this book on the Republicans, and there was an entire chapter on a dinner party which changed the course of American history. And I'm like, oh, because either all my other work is wrong or this is wrong. Like, how can this dinner party have been a game changer if in fact, what really matters are the people? And I actually. It was a real crisis for me working on that. So I took a number of months off and actually really dug into the way I thought about the relationship between individuals and leadership. And I came to believe that, you know, if the country seems like it's going okay, lots of people just don't speak up about it. You know, there might be one or two people who are complaining, but everyone's like, oh, yeah, have some cheese dip. You know, and the more that things are not going right, the more people start to speak up and they start to find each other and they start to complain. And that starts to get into the press, for example, maybe into popular music, maybe into the churches. People start to say, we got an issue here. And politicians, usually ones who are trying to get into politics, not the ones who are already there because they have established constituencies, but politicians who want to become elected start to recognize that those constituencies are not being represented, and they begin to say, I can do those things for you. And the link between those two things are the people who tell the stories about the way society should work. And so when I think about vision in this moment, I think about the way people, ordinary people around the country, are articulating their frustration with ice, with the fact you can't afford to buy a house, with all the things that they're unhappy about. And the way those things are becoming a certain kind of story about the United States that our electeds then reflect back to us. And so when I think about vision, I always talk about the idea that, you know, everybody thinks Abraham Lincoln sort of spread out of, you know, jumped out of the head of zeus. But in 1855, he was a corporate lawyer who had had one undistinguished term in the House of Representatives. We created Abraham Lincoln, and he listened to what people were unhappy about. And in 1859, he articulated a new vision for the country. And I feel like that's the period we're in. We don't have somebody doing that yet. We got a lot of people talking about. But all these people who are trying to find the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate for 2028, I don't think we've created them yet. I don't know who it's gonna be. But I think the creation part is where we come in.
- [14:22]
Podcast Host
I think that's so comforting. I asked Joan Baez for this podcast about how this moment was different from the 60s, and she said, well, we had each other. And I felt despair. I thought, oh, my God. And now everybody's sort of feels, you know, what Trump and MAGA wants people to feel is that they are isolated from one another. No Kings has come along, and more people right now identify themselves as part of the no Kings movement than maga. And what I admire and what I've tried to learn from you is looking at MAGA as dynamic, not static. And to your point about Tuesday's election results, there are people inside the MAGA coalition that went out and voted against it because it's not serving them. I wonder if you can just. Just talk about the pros and cons of the dynamic attachments to any party or movement, because I'm not even sure maga's a party. It's more of a movement. Right?
- [15:11]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, I think you just identified something really important there, and that is connections. One of the things I was really interested in in MAGA in both periods, but certainly in the second run up to the 2024 election is how many people appeared to be following Donald Trump, rather, as if he were Fish or the Grateful Dead. And, you know, you don't. I mean, but think about it like, if you know Deadheads. Yeah, if you know Deadheads or, you know, you're not going to those concerts because you suddenly expected that Jerry Garcia was gonna do something new and brilliant, right? You're there for the community. You're there for the people you see all the time. And if you listen to the people talking about maga, that's how they talked about it. They saw their friends from a number of different states or whatever. You went and you were part of this community. And one of the things that I think the lack of agency that I was talking about has done to Americans for a long time now is it's destroyed the community, it's destroyed the churches, it's destroyed this, it's destroyed that. But one of the things that we are seeing, I think, among no kings and other people trying to protect our democracy are these new communities. And the thing is, as I say, they're not necessarily the ones that when people talk about the loss of community, they identify. You know, you and I aren't meeting in the Oddfellows hall down the street from me, where everybody would have met 20 years enough, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, but we have all these new spaces. And, you know, it's a funny thing because, you know, I just did a podcast the other day with somebody that I do quite a lot of work with now, and we realized we've never been in the same room together. Right. But that's a community that is an entirely new kind of thing. And I just think perhaps those of us who care about democracy were a little bit slow off the starting blocks compared to those who were really directed by electeds who had a long period of turning people out based in fear and anger. And they took perhaps more naturally to the weaponization of social spaces in a way that people like us did not. But you see how that. That political impulse is growing, I think, into something much broader than that.
- [17:37]
Podcast Host
We are going to take a quick break right here. Next up, much more, my conversation with historian and Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson. Don't go anywhere.
- [17:55]
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- [17:57]
Heather Cox Richardson
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Heather Cox Richardson
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- [19:31]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I mean I, I think about these things all the time because it was really hard to sort of get up and anchor two hours after Trump won a second time, right? Because it made me question, well, are we spitting into the void? Does nobody care that he's going to destroy the rule of law? Does no one believe the pro democracy side? And the answers to those questions don't seem to matter as much as people seeing that when Jimmy Kimmel was yanked off the air, they had the power in hours and days to affect change immediately. That angered Donald Trump, that angered the fcc, that probably angered the people in charge of the corporation that employs Jimmy Kimmel. But they won. And it felt just psychically so monumental. And I wonder if you can just, just talk about sort of reframing success and failure on a larger sort of playing board than a presidential election.
- [20:26]
Heather Cox Richardson
I think the Jimmy Kimmel thing was huge for exactly. The reason you say is that it certainly seemed like another occasion on which there was nothing the American people could do in the face of this juggernaut of the second Trump administration. And in fact that was not the case. That turned around really quickly. I also think that one of the things we are seeing is lots more people who thought that politics didn't matter to them that it was like a basketball game and they didn't care about basketball. Recognizing that, in fact, it's everything. And a lot of people who turned out in 2024. Well, it is, though, you know, a lot of people who turned out in 2024 didn't really get it. I think it was kind of a team thing. And, you know, watching it and watching that come closer, I agree with you. It was a horror show. But I kept saying, he can't do this. I mean, you can't be. He's promising everything to everybody. You cannot be both wet and dry at the same time. And that's what he is promising everybody. And now, of course, we're watching it all fall apart. And that, I mean, again, when I said, I feel like we're at the end of an era, could we have had a more dramatic collapse of the principles that that Ronald Reagan articulated in the 1970s and then took into the White House in 1981 than to watch this, you know, where this guy is taking pieces of companies and he's throwing out immigrants and, you know, the whole list. So maybe you had to touch the stove for people to get involved. But what has it been like for you? I mean, you know, nobody ever interviews you about this stuff, and that's really interesting.
- [22:09]
Podcast Host
You know, I think it's finding the things that make your reality not just survivable, but thrivable. And having been on the other side, Republicans used to really thrive when their party was out of power because they felt the opportunity to make all these contrasts. And I also think that Trump proved the pro democracy side right out of the gate. I mean, he seemed to be trying so hard to be his worst or maybe truest self that it felt like credibility of the pro democracy side came back almost overnight. And then, you know, to all the questions that you pose, what do we do with it? And I think it's very healthy. I interviewed Carol lennig at the 92nd Street Y Sunday night, and someone asked her, you know, how depressing is it that people don't care about facts? And she gave a really thoughtful answer. And I said, I actually don't agree with the premise. I think we're just redefining who's a disseminator of facts. Every person around an ice raid that holds up their camera and films them is a reporter. And people are voracious for reporting and for facts. Those clips circulate around the world almost instantly. So I've just become excited about the changes and I realize that I'm now, you know, just a sort of democracy Hawk. And I love that the people are taking back the power and anyone scared by that is on the wrong side. I mean, I think that that's some of the lessons of history. Right, Right.
- [23:40]
Heather Cox Richardson
And it doesn't mean that everybody's gonna be right. You know, we'll pick people up and we will decide those aren't ideas we want. And that's the way it works. But you're killing me. Cause there's a bunch of questions I wanna ask you. And I know that's not we're supposed to do. Maybe we can do another one like that. But definitely. But you just said something that has been very much on my mind lately and have. You know, I've never talked about this elsewhere, but one of the things that really jumps out to me in this moment is I agree with you. I think people are starved for facts. And. And you know, you mentioned the success of my substack. That's heavy lifting, that substack, you know.
- [24:14]
Podcast Host
Totally. I had a thesaurus once. I mean it's like really wonky and smart and I love that it's the most subscribed thing on substack. I think that says something so good about us, the country.
- [24:26]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, it's so funny. Cause people will say to me, you know, well, I just, I don't know much about this stuff and I don't read a lot about it. And the truth is that if you put together the number of words I rate in a year, it's about five 350 page books on pretty wonky politics, economics. You know, sometimes I just laugh and I think you don't think you're into this. You've just read five 350 page books on it on one topic this year. But the reason I mention that is because, you know, I read Paul Krugman religiously now, like every day. I wanna see what he has to say. I didn't read him when he was at the Times because it was so stripped down and so it just felt so sterile and on some topic that I just didn't feel like I cared that much about. Now that he's got his own route into informing people. I have learned so much and not just about what's going on around the world today, but about like he will say, and this has to do with the principle of blah, blah, blah. And the next thing you know you're three charts in going, oh yeah, that's really cool. And then I got thinking about it and I also religiously read Some data scientists and I read a health guide and I thought, you know, I am better informed on all of these topics today than I was a decade ago when everybody said we were paying attention to the news. And it strikes me that the lack of guardrails now on so many different ways to reach people. Certainly there's been a downside to it, but it has also permitted the rise again of public intellectuals and true public intellectuals in a way that we kind of lost after the 1970s for a long time. And that's a major cultural change, at least that I feel like I'm seeing. And I really haven't seen a lot of people commenting on it because it does reflect a major change in our media ecosystem.
- [26:20]
Podcast Host
Well, and I think it's about like letting go to survive, right? Which is such a counter instinctual thing for the human race, right? You let go of the Titanic, but you float on the raft, you know, whatever it is. And the more you love the Titanic or the thing you have to. You know, for me, the first thing was a Republican. I at a time believed in it. And so to let go of that was sort of my first heartbreak. But to see Republicans become a threat to democracy felt like such an obvious betrayal. And so this whole idea that Republicans are hanging onto something that is so far gone, it used to break my heart. Then it enraged me and I was so angry. Now I just, I find it pathetic and sad. And I became curious again. So this whole like letting go and recentering yourself, and I became curious about the manosphere. But what's interesting, if you become curious again and I think your following is more than curiosity and intellect. It's your leadership and it's your clarity and things are gonna be okay, but not because you're sugarcoating anything.
- [27:22]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, wait, you can't just drop the manosphere there. So you start to listen to it. You.
- [27:26]
Podcast Host
Okay, so what I realized about the manosphere, and this is how I sort of softened around all of it, is not to be mad at them for standing next to Donald Trump and helping him win, but to wonder one, why, right? Like why did they feel comfortable standing next to Donald Trump? And I think that the answer lies not in deficiencies or flaws of the Democrats, but in this thing that we started talking about community, that young men are there, but they're not there for Trump. If you listen to those guys, it's all the conspiracy theories and it's why Trump can't get out of his own way on Epstein. They were, weren't with Trump. For Epstein they were there for Epstein. Right. They were there for the transparency. They believed in the broad conspiracy theory, and he rode them. He misreads it in thinking that they were his voters who also thought they were going to get the files. They were there for the transparency of the broader cabal, and he benefited from it. And the fact that I figured that out by listening to enough podcasts, it's amazing to me that they're still bungling their own handling of that story. But, I mean, the broader point about the manosphere was that you really do have to become curious of why people are associating with a movement. And it's basic politics. When you work on campaigns, you have to respect the opponent to defeat the opponent. I had to become more curious about the MAGA coalition to really understand it and try to see where people were peeling away from it. And you helped me do that. And watching all of the attachment to no Kings is just such an affirmation that it's this desire to belong to something. And I think I can talk about this in the past tense. MAGA was a juggernaut. I don't see it that way anymore.
- [29:04]
Heather Cox Richardson
There is also a tendency, I think, in I will only talk about America, certainly in American society, to want things fixed now.
- [29:14]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [29:15]
Heather Cox Richardson
And democracy, the whole point of it is it's about process, and that is enormously frustrating. And you see this all the time. But in terms of the people who turned out from what you're calling the manosphere for the 2024 election, a lot of them were like, well, this is just stupid. We should be able to fix this. And I think, you know, I won't lie. There's a lot of things that I think I could fix in a heartbeat. And you certainly see it when people are like, well, why didn't they just do it? And it's like, well, because they didn't have the votes or because, you know, somebody died at a critical moment or whatever. And one of the things that Trump has always promised is, I can fix this tomorrow. And he couldn't. I mean, that's the whole point. He couldn't. That's not the way the world works. But, boy, is that attractive. Totally.
- [30:05]
Podcast Host
With everything, with diets, with renovation, you know, you wanted to, like, fix a bathroom. You know, you hire the contractor that tells you you can do it in six weeks, not the one that tells you six months in permits. And, you know, everyone wants everything immediately.
- [30:20]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah. I am 63 years old, and one of the things that I struggle with every freaking day is I Want it now. Like I'm writing a book, I want it done today. There's no reason I can't have it done today. I mean, I have 300 pages to write, but in my mind, I could do it today. And when I was a kid, I come from a very small town and we all knew each other and, you know, we are like brothers and sisters even still. And I still remember one of the guys I grew up with, you know, sort of like a litter, as a friend of mine said, used to just shake his head and say, heather, you have got to trust to time. Time is gonna help this situation. And I never. At 63, every time, at the end of every day, I get really frustrated. Cause I didn't get done whatever I wanted to do that day. The book's not done, the bookshelves aren't painted. You know, I always think of him saying, you have got to learn to trust to time. And honest to God, he said that to me 55 years ago. And every day I have to repeat it. But I get the frustration. And I think Trump capitalized on that.
- [31:18]
Podcast Host
Yeah, totally. What's the antidote to it? If it's something that even you and I are drawn to at a gut level, when we can intellectualize the fact that good things take time, I can.
- [31:30]
Heather Cox Richardson
Only say what works for me. And I do think that there are ways in which this reflects where the country is. One of the things that really strikes me as having been lost in American society. And mind you, I do not study this. This is not one of my areas of expertise. This is completely anecdotal, is for many people, we have lost the concept of the joy of work, the joy of creation. And one of the reframing things that I always try and do in my own life, but I think that this country is in the process of doing, is saying, the joy is not in the having, the joy is in the doing. And I don't wanna overstate that. I could hear somebody's head exploding, going, I need to have food on my table. And I don't disagree with that at all. But that concept that it's not the end, it's the journey, is one that certainly helps. If you're saying, why the hell haven't I finished this book yet? The answer is, come on, Richardson, you like sitting down with a manuscript. And that idea of reclaiming as a society, the idea that we should honor people who are putting in the work, which, by the way, we do in some fields. Athletes, for example. But the lionization of people Like Elon Musk, because he's got gazillions of dollars. Like, that's a problem to have a gazillion dollars. It's not something we should be honoring. We should be saying, dude, what's wrong with you, that you're hoarding all that stuff and that change is important.
- [32:55]
Podcast Host
Yeah. And I wonder how you lay that over all of the capitulation that helped wake people up. I mean, it feels like a lot of the early sensation of Trump's dominance came from the capitulation of other wealthy people and industries. How do you disentangle all of the elites, all the people with so much. All the people who benefited so much from America capitulating so quickly and so publicly?
- [33:22]
Heather Cox Richardson
Now, that was really interesting. So, obviously, it would have been nice to see some spine in a number of places, not only among the law firms, especially among the law firms, because of the oath that they take when they become lawyers, but also a number of universities. One of the things that I thought was interesting about that, though, is that it certainly appeared to me, and again, absolutely could be wrong, that a lot of those people who were capitulating early on, they seemed to me to be kicking the can down the road. You know, they were trying to buy time. And certainly from the outside, it looked horrific. But if you think about what they did, even with, say, Jimmy Kimmel, they didn't fire him the next day. They suspended him, or I forget what the word was. Similarly, they didn't fire Stephen Colbert the next day. They said they weren't gonna renew his contract. Contract in 10 months, which, of course, basically turned them both into meteors heading directly at the White House because they had nothing to lose. But it always seemed to me that a lot of those people were essentially begging for space to see what was gonna happen. And that's where the American people came in to say, this is what we care about. And this is why it was really dicey early on when it wasn't clear what people were going to do. I think that there was a lot of, let's see what happens here. And this is one of the reasons that I continue my extraordinary frustration with the Republicans in the Senate, because had they been willing to signal earlier that they were going to stand against Trump, I think there would have been a lot less of that, because I think it would have signaled which direction things were going. And at the end of the day. And we're not at the end of the day, of course, but perhaps it's been a good thing that the American people have realized that we're the only people who are gonna do anything. But to me, the huge disappointment here was always the Republicans in the Senate. You expected the House Republicans to be maga, but the Senate Republicans weren't. They had a pretty small MAGA faction and they just went underground like a bunch of freaking moles. And anyway, I think that you look at that and you're basically seeing people who were trying to buy time in contrast to the people like Musk and so on, who were simply trying to get government contracts and who have grabbed as much as they possibly could grab.
- [35:55]
Podcast Host
My conversation with Heather Cox Richardson continues right after the break. We'll be back in one minute.
- [36:14]
Heather Cox Richardson
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Heather Cox Richardson
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- [38:05]
Heather Cox Richardson
I don't know if you want to get into it, but I am absolutely fascinated right now. And what seems to me to be real panic on the part of the administration at the idea that the Supreme Court might say that, in fact, a number of Trump's tariffs were unconstitutional, forcing an audit of money in the administration.
- [38:27]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I mean, the idea that everyone was capitulating was, I understand, sort of wrapped up in thinking that the Supreme Court would just hand him all the these wins. I mean, how do you see the Supreme Court's role in expediting his consolidation of power over the last 10 months?
- [38:44]
Heather Cox Richardson
So I think you need to step back a little bit with the Supreme Court and recognize that there has been an ongoing project since at least the 1980s to stack the Supreme Court with far right justices. And the reason I say that as a prelude to what you just asked is because if you read the Donald J. Trump versus Us, which was the decision that the Supreme Court handed down in July of 2024, which gives immunity to the President from prosecution for crimes committed as part of his official Duties under Article 2 of the Constitution and gives him a presumption of innocence for other official duties, there was in that something really interesting that a lot of people didn't pick up. And a lot, you know, I of kind got tons of emails saying, well, that's it. Biden should go for it. Because remember, Biden's still in office at the time, but that's not exactly the free pass that people often think it is. What they went on to say is that because we have never made a declaration like this, which I identified at the time as the most important event in American history, because it changed the entire concept of our government. They said, because we've never done this before, the courts will have to decide what is legitimate. And of course, that means essentially the Supreme Court was gonna have the final word. It was an extraordinary power grab by the Supreme Court.
- [40:11]
Podcast Host
For them.
- [40:12]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah, for them and for people who are very far out of step with mainstream America. So when you think about what they're doing now, I think that they have embraced this idea of executive authority, this extraordinary executive authority that really is a Fring theory until the 1980s and becomes embraced during the Reagan administration's Justice Department, in part thanks to people like Samuel Alito, who was in that Justice Department. And they embrace that idea of a president who can't be checked by either the courts or by the Congress, in part because they didn't like the idea that the American people could weigh in on issues of both culture, but also economics that they were entrenching in that Supreme Court. But what they've discovered is they have empowered somebody who has declared he doesn't need Congress and he doesn't need the courts. So if that's the case, if I'm right about the idea they were aggregating power to themselves, what do you do when you get a president who says, you know what, I don't care what the courts think? And I think you're seeing that. One of the reasons I'm so interested in tariffs, aside from the fact that I love to, I mean, I love the concept of tariffs, is that he started tweeting not. Yeah, not whatever it's called on Truth social at about 2 o' clock in the morning a couple of nights ago. And he has said it before as well, when it looks as if the Supreme Court was going to overturn the legality of those tariffs, which to my historical eye, are completely unconstitutional. He started to say this is a matter of national security, which would fall under the definition that the Supreme Court gave him in Trump vs US, but which is a hell of a leap. And it suggests that he is setting up the idea, as he said again, at 2 o' clock in the morning or shortly after 2 o' clock the other day, he said this would destroy our country. This is an attack on the country to have to get rid of these tariffs, which certainly suggests he is setting up the idea that he is not going to pay attention to a Supreme Court decision which throws the ball back in that court. Are they going then to cave with the hope that he will never directly challenge them them, or are they finally going to say, hey, wait a second here, we were setting up our own power, not yours, and take that back.
- [42:40]
Podcast Host
So what do you think is more.
- [42:42]
Heather Cox Richardson
Likely with this court? Who knows? I mean, I will tell you, historically, Supreme Court justices care about their legacy. And John Roberts big thing has always been getting rid of the Voting Rights act of 1965. That's always been his thing. But he has also been an expert at hollowing out laws without actually overturning them, which is, I think, one of the reasons we saw the leaking of the Dobbs decision ahead of time and Hobby Lobby as well, because they were trying to lock him into an extreme position because it was much more likely he would simply hollow it out. So will he finally be able to assert control over the court and back away from the extreme positions it's taken? I don't know. I will say we don't pay enough Attention. I think in this moment, I can't believe I just set this up this way, but to the Melville Fuller Court of the late 19th, early 20th century, which was. Was very pro business to the point that it was a caricature of itself. And they handed down all these major, major decisions, including Plessy v. Ferguson, by the way, but all these major decisions really basically saying business needs to own this country. And all but the insular cases have been overturned either by constitutional amendment or by the Congress since then. So once the damage is done, it is not impossible to fix it. It would just be nice not to have it. Have to.
- [44:05]
Podcast Host
What is the danger, more broadly, of having a Supreme Court that is so in its rulings and the consequences of its rulings at a step with the majority of Americans? I mean, you look at how all of the abortion amendments in the reddest corners of our country have gone down when they make it to voters. I mean, the Supreme Court is so out of step with where the country is and so insulated from many accountability or conduct and so hostile to even press coverage. What does that do to a society to have the most powerful sort of nine people so hostile to scrutiny and accountability and public sentiment?
- [44:45]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, I think you run the very real risk of delegitimizing the courts of people just saying, you know, we don't care what you think. And, you know, this is what we got after the Dred Scott decision of 1857, when the one of the major editorial columns in the country said that the weight of a Supreme Court decision should have no more effect than the opinion of 10 men in a Washington bar room. And that's not a good thing. If we lose the ability to have an arbiter of the constitutionality of our laws and the way the country runs, that's a real problem. Now, one of the things that really strikes me, and I started all this conversation today by saying I thought we were at the end of an era. And, and the reason I say that is not because Trump has tapioca for brains at this point or whatever, although that's true, but because I think what you are seeing in a number of different spheres is the deliberate rejection of American democracy. And you're certainly seeing it in the Supreme Court with its decision of July 2024 that Trump cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed. I mean, we don't even have to go any further than that. It is crazy. And the reason we've never done it before is no president has ever asked.
- [46:01]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [46:01]
Heather Cox Richardson
Because they recognize that that's Contrary to the very concept that we are a nation of laws. Right? That is literally what we are. So the Supreme Court is doing that, but so are a lot of other people. And look, for example, at the Senate, the use by Mitch McConnell, who at the time was Senate Minority Leader, and then he took it into power the way he managed the majority, the use of the filibuster so that nothing can go through. I mean, the filibuster has been around forever. It basically means you can't stop talking. You can't force a senator to stop talking. We changed the rules for the filibuster. So now instead of talking, you can simply say you're gonna keep talking, which means that, you know, a very small minority, which the Senate is already controlled by, can stop anything from happening, you know, by saying, I'm gonna filibuster any positive legislation. You're seeing it in the gerrymandering of the House of Representatives really dramatically. You're certainly seeing it through the use of the Electoral College to put people in office who don't actually win the popular vote, which, again, is part of our history, but it's really taken off of late. But then you're also seeing it in the rhetoric of the people who are currently in power. And this I find absolutely fascinating, because, of course, you're seeing it with people like Curtis Yarvin, who is one of the authors of the Dark Enlightenment, who talks, you know, somebody nobody would have heard of, or did he not have the ear of people like J.D. vance and Peter Thiel? But you can also see it in. There was a recent article in the Washington Post about this man who is the head of an organization of both business and electeds who articulated the idea that the United States needs an aristocracy to move it forward. And you see with Peter Thiel saying that democracy is not compatible with capitalism. And you've seen this building for a while, but you literally have a major story in the Washington Post about this guy saying, we need an aristocracy. And the thing about that is. And the reason that this has been really very much on my mind is because literally, you could take what this man said and put it in a speech from 1858. The speech we know as the cotton is king speech, but also as the mudsill speech, in which he said, listen, all democracy means is that people get to vote for the people who are gonna rule over them. Because the way society works is most people are what he calls mudsills. They're not very smart. They're the ones who produce the capital who make stuff. And that capital needs to concentrate among that small group of people who have the connections and the education, and they're just better than everybody else to run things. Which is, of course, exactly what Trump said. And, by the way, a rabbit hole. I won't go into the same concept that backs fascism and what became things like Nazism, but you're seeing that argument from the 1850s in the present. It's the same argument that Andrew Carnegie made in the Gospel of Wealth. That document from 1889, 1890, was published in a magazine first and then came out as a book in which he says, you know, it's a good thing that us robber barons have everything. Cause we're the stewards of the nation's wealth. You see it again in the 1920s when you get the guy who did the bribing at Teapot Dome, for example, saying, you know, this is the way society should work, business should run society. If you let workers have a seat, say, they're all communists, they're all going to destroy the country. So when I look at all those things coming together again, listen, there's two ways we could go. We could, in fact, embrace fascism fully, which is absolutely the direction that this government is going with. It's taking a stake in American companies, for example, with its language, with what the Department of Homeland Security is doing, and so on. Or we could do what Americans before us have done and say, hell, no, we don't agree with each other about finance. We don't agree with each other about immigration. We don't agree with each other about internal improvements. We don't agree with each other about foreign affairs. But by God, we can agree. We don't want to be ruled by a handful of rich men who think they're better than the rest of us. And it certainly feels to me like that's the direction we're going. And again, joy in the creation. It's not going to happen tomorrow. It's going to be a really hard slogan. But when I think of the Supreme Court and the stuff that it's doing right now, I see it as a much larger pattern of the attempt to overrule democracy in favor of oligarchy or dictatorship.
- [50:29]
Podcast Host
It's such an interesting deepening of why, right? Like, why do they have a Great Gatsby Party after they cut off food stamps? Why is he gilding the Oval Office with actual gold? Why did he knock down the East Wing and say out loud from the podium, it's the administration's top priority? Because they don't view themselves as being of the people. They're not embarrassed because they don't think that voters had any expectation that he would be a common person. Do you think people see the stakes in their day to day life in a way that connects and is meaningful with everything else going on?
- [51:05]
Heather Cox Richardson
I do. And I think more people are gonna have to get involved for sure. But I do think people see it. And you know, I could tell you anecdotally why I say that, but I think you can see it in that Tuesday vote. We're so, so many people turned out. Highest turnout in New York City since 1969.
- [51:21]
Podcast Host
Amazing.
- [51:22]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah, people are engaged. Again. Just one quick thing about the Gatsby party. Well, first of all, it may or may not be real gold in that white, in that Oval Office. And second of all, that ballroom hasn't been built yet, so let's not count our eggs before they chicken there. But I do like to point out that people forget who Gatsby was. And I think this is really important going forward. Gatsby was a criminal. I mean, yeah, he's the hero of the book in many ways. He's a sympathetic character in the book, but he was a bootlegger during prohibition. People were dying in that. And he was an acquaintance of the man who in the book reflected the real life version of the man who was alleged to have fixed the 1919 World Series. And they had that party on World Series week. So perhaps it was just coincidence that Trump threw a Gatsby party on that weekend. But it certainly seemed to me like if you put that in a novel, the lesson that people were supposed to take from it was that Trump is a gangster. And that considering all the information that is coming out about the way money has been used, about the Epstein files, as I say, if that was an accurate, it was a hell of an accident. But it certainly seemed to be a message saying, yeah, I'm not just the dictator doing things for you little people. I'm a criminal.
- [52:53]
Podcast Host
It's amazing. You're amazing. I'm such a fan. I hope this is the first of many conversations. I just, I could talk to you for 12 more hours. Thank you so much.
- [53:02]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Let's do it again.
- [53:04]
Podcast Host
Thank you so much. Let's do it it again. Thank you so much for listening to the best people. Before we wrap up, we want to mention you may have noticed that MSNBC is becoming Ms. Now. This is our new name, but with the same mission, same great coverage, same amazing people. So please continue to follow us at msnow for all the news and perspectives that you've come to love and depend on. And you can continue to subscribe to our premium service on Apple Podcasts to get this and other Ms. Now podcast ad free. You'll also get early access and exclusive bonus content like the recent conversation on Andrew Weissman and Mary McCord's main justice podcast with Carol Lennig and Aaron Davis on their amazing new book, How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department. All all episodes of this podcast are also available on YouTube. The best people is produced by Vicki Vergelina. Our Associate producer is Rana Shavazi, with additional production support from Querri Robinson and Alison Stewart. Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory, Greg Devins II and Hazik bin Ahmad Fared. Katie Lau is our Senior Manager of Audio production, Pat Berkey 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.
- [54:43]
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