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The Focus Group Podcast
S5 Ep24: Do the Next Right Thing, Change the World (with Heather Cox Richardson)
01:01:18
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- [00:00]
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Dennis Black
Notice your dog slowing down and having health issues and wonder what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add rough greens to your dog's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of rough greens here, and I invite you to give your pup the Ruff Greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch your dog a free Jumpstart trial bag today. Go to try rough greens.com use promo code try rough. That's T R Y R U F F. Go to try rough greens.com use promo code try rough. You discover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of rough greens.
- [01:37]
Sarah Longwell
Hello everyone and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we're asking ourselves, how is America going to get out of this mess? In the last couple weeks, we've seen political assassinations in Minnesota, Donald Trump sending the Marines into American streets, and ice roughing up elected Democrats. We've also seen American voters peacefully fighting back with some of the biggest protests in American history. If you're a listener of this show and believe, as I do, that American democracy is facing a tough time, you're going to have a lot in common with the voters we hear from today. They're not 100% sure this experiment we call America is going to endure. This is our last show for the summer. We'll be back after Labor Day. So I want to leave everyone with a bit of a pep talk. Because while America is imperiled right now, it is not the first time our experiment in freedom and self government has looked like it might be ending. And I've got a great co pep talker. Heather Cox Richardson, history professor at Boston College and author of the substack of Letters from an American, which I love. Heather, thanks for being here.
- [02:50]
Heather Cox Richardson
Oh, it's going to be such fun.
- [02:51]
Sarah Longwell
It is going to be such fun because I am a huge admirer of yours and I have found for myself and I talk about this with JVL sometimes when I feel really down. I actually some of our worst moments in American history have become a real sense of optimism for me. Like a place where I go to say, okay, how did they get through that? And, like, look at the things that changed. And I think it's maybe one of the reasons, besides the fact that you are both a prolific and dedicated writer. But I think you bringing history to bear in your writing is one of the reasons you've like, exploded in popularity is people are just like, tell me we've been here before and we've gotten through it.
- [03:30]
Heather Cox Richardson
But I also think one of the things about history is it helps to remind us that, you know, we're all just ordinary people trying to muddle through and trying to do the right thing. Not maybe all of us, some of us are trying to do the wrong thing. But when enough of us who are trying to do the right thing get together and, you know, we make mistakes and we things stupidly, and it's never a straight line. But when we work together, we generally manage to create a better country. And I always say to people, nobody wakes up in the morning and puts their feet in the ground and says, today I'm going to be a hero. They wake up and they say, oh, I'm exhausted. I got to get to work. But somewhere along the line, they do the next right thing. And if enough people do the next right thing, they change the world.
- [04:12]
Sarah Longwell
This is the kind of optimism that I feel like is going to fortify people when they're finding it difficult to live without this show on Saturday mornings for a few weeks. So you said back in the summer of 2020, so going back a long time ago that you were irritated by the raft of Internet comments that said the sky has fallen and we're all doomed. And you responded to the Internet with that, while it's possible that we're doomed, history shows us how much power regular people have to change things, which is basically what you've just said. But a lot has happened since that 2020 interview, including January 6th. And so how has your thinking evolved over the past few years on the threat to the American experiment. And then, like, what are regular people gonna do to save it?
- [04:54]
Heather Cox Richardson
The experiment's in trouble. We have a very small minority who have seized the nodes of power, and they are imposing their will or trying to impose their will on the vast majority of the American people. And you listed some of the things, you know, we have ICE agents in the streets grabbing people and throwing them into unmarked vans. We have people who are being rendered to third countries and put in really notorious prisons. We have the attempt of the administration to impound the funds that Congress has appropriated to do things for the American people. That is against both the Constitution and explicitly against the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. We had billionaire Elon Musk heading something called the Department of Government Efficiency and just without regard to the law or to the needs of the American people, willy nilly slashing jobs and so on and so forth. There's a lot of reasons to be really concerned right now about where our democracy is. But what I said in 2020 still holds. We're not done. We're not done yet. And the very fact you and I are having this conversation shows we are not done yet. This is a very big country, more than 334 million people in it. The people who are trying to control that huge number of people are a very small percentage of the population. And I maintain that if we continue to speak up for the values that we care about, that we will be able to regain control of our democracy. But it's never going to be an easy fix because we have had 40 years of the system being shifted to permit a very few people to run it. So, for example, we have voter suppression, we have gerrymandering, we have extraordinary money in politics. We have control of certain segments of the media by a far right fantasy system, if you will. There's a lot of things we're gonna have to overcome. But I do still get frustrated when people are like, that's it. We're now a fascist country. I'm done. And I'm like, I'm not in prison. I'm alive. And as long as those two things are true, I can anyway continue to speak up.
- [07:09]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, love that. So we've heard Democrats, which are the most anti Trump people out there, except for maybe those of us who are like, deep never Trumpers, because sometimes I feel like the edge to our disdain really goes to a different place. But they have some especially grave feelings about what Trump's recent actions portend for the future of the country. And so we asked Some of New York City's Democrats, which we used for last week's show that we did about the mayoral race. We asked them about the Los Angeles protests and Trump's use of the National Guard. So let's listen to what they said.
- [07:46]
Heather Cox Richardson
History tends to, it doesn't repeat itself.
- [07:49]
Sarah Longwell
It just can follow in certain patterns. And I've been fearful of this Trump term since, you know, learning about Hitler's Nazi Germany. And we are watching fascism in real time in America.
- [08:09]
Heather Cox Richardson
And so I was afraid of this.
- [08:12]
Sarah Longwell
Since November and here we are and.
- [08:17]
Heather Cox Richardson
I fear that it will get worse. But yeah, he was always going to use the National Guard in some way. It's the playbook for the 2026 and 2028 election. He tried to send them in before and Esper stopped him and was subsequently fired. But it's to see how far he can push this with voter suppression in the 26 and 28 elections. And it's to see how it plays out. And the military is now in charge of the Secretary of Defense who has no experience, high level experience, and I think his cabinet level appoint. He is a three star general who has no combat experience. So you have two, two generals who have no combat experience. So all of that is getting transferred to the domestic front where he will use the military to suppress whatever movements he feels like suppressing. So it's a playbook for the future.
- [09:18]
Sarah Longwell
I'm not surprised that he's like pushing the boundaries of what a US President can do and what public opinion might dictate.
- [09:26]
Heather Cox Richardson
But did I very specifically think that he would do this? No. There's a quote by Santa Mayar, those that do not learn from the past.
- [09:36]
Sarah Longwell
Are condemned to repeat it.
- [09:39]
Heather Cox Richardson
So he's doing tactics that are similar.
- [09:43]
Sarah Longwell
To 1930s Germany with Jews with oppressing.
- [09:49]
Heather Cox Richardson
People and a dictatorship. And I may be overstepping by saying.
- [09:54]
Dennis Black
That, but military parades, that's what they.
- [09:59]
Heather Cox Richardson
Do in North Korea. They do that in China. We don't do that here. All the opinion pieces and projections that I've heard, it's a push for authoritarian rule. You can silence the newspapers, the media.
- [10:10]
Sarah Longwell
Anybody watching things if you can get people comfortable with the military being in cities.
- [10:16]
Heather Cox Richardson
You know, if he could have used the military to guard dropboxes during the presidential election, he would have done that as well.
- [10:22]
Dennis Black
Any excuse he can get to, you.
- [10:24]
Heather Cox Richardson
Know, put militaries in cities and increase the funding, it's just a play towards authoritarianism. Donald Trump said that criticizing him is treason and that journalists should be executed for that treason. I think what we saw today is sort of a trickle down, a lighter version of that. But he is stupid enough where he actually said this and nothing is being done about it. I'm horrified. Our First Amendment right, that's what I'm talking about. And where is it? The Constitution has been just trampled all over. And what's happening in California when you look back on January 6th and what happened there, how dare you put in a military presence.
- [11:04]
Sarah Longwell
It's just so hypocritical and so concerning.
- [11:08]
Heather Cox Richardson
And I just can't believe that that monster has access to the military and that they're listening to.
- [11:14]
Dennis Black
So far he is following Hitler's playbook.
- [11:17]
Heather Cox Richardson
I'm not saying he's sending millions of.
- [11:19]
Dennis Black
People to the gas chamber, I didn't say that.
- [11:21]
Heather Cox Richardson
But he is following his playbook.
- [11:24]
Dennis Black
He's charismatic, he's reeling people in and.
- [11:27]
Heather Cox Richardson
He'S swift, concentrated and offensive. And remember, everybody loved Hitler the first year or two.
- [11:34]
Sarah Longwell
I would say that is not unusual for Democrats to invoke Hitler, to use the word fascism, to sort of talk in these pretty intense terms when they're talking about Donald Trump. And you've mentioned before that being a historian gives you a different perspective on news of the day. That some of the stuff people go nuts about isn't really going to matter decades from now. And some relatively under discussed things will end up in the history books and will really matter. What about the current moment? Do you think people are overreacting or under reacting to? And then I guess when you hear voters talk like that, do you think are they right to sort of feel that alarmed like early 1930s? Because I'll say that is a really consistent theme from Democratic voters, I don't think they're wrong.
- [12:23]
Heather Cox Richardson
You know, he is absolutely following a playbook. Whether he is doing so by literally following the playbook which we know about thanks to studies that were done after World War II into characters like Mussolini and Hitler is unclear to me. They are also the same patterns that one uses to gather a crowd. If you are a budding authoritarian. And you know, there's a bunch of people who study this. Hannah Arendt is the one who really everybody focuses on most her studies on totalitarianism. But Eric Hoffer does the American version of that in 1951 with his true believers. And if you don't even want to go that far, certainly we've got George Orwell from England and even J.K. rowling's Harry Potter books, you know, sort of demonstrate how somebody like Voldemort can get a lot of people to gather around him. So it simply be that Trump is acting instinctually because he has always been a salesman and he has always sold Donald Trump, or it may be that he actually knows what he's doing in a way that's immaterial. But here's the place where I would differ from them, and that is that while he is absolutely following a playbook, he's absolutely being called out for following that playbook. And people are saying, hey, look, we see what you're doing, and it's appalling. You know, people are trying to protect their neighbors now against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the ICE agents, and they are calling this out and saying, this is not the kind of country we want to have. So I don't think they're wrong at all. My criticism or complaint with looking at the world only that way is that While that is 100% true, there is still room to say that is not what we want in this moment. And you asked about what we are paying to little and too much attention to. One of the things that I think we are not paying enough attention to are the huge numbers of people who are resisting the American drift toward authoritarianism or toward fascism. They are actually slightly different. I'm sort of in the camp that we're headed toward authoritarianism. There is enormous pushback at the local level against the takeover of school boards, for example, and the overturning of book bans and the many different smaller local ways in which the right wing is managed to commandeer communities. But that there are also big national movements, both of organizations who organize over social media, for example, and who have been instrumental in turning people out to learn about issues and then to vote. That looks to me very much like the populace of the 1890s. And then there are also within that real movements to push back against the extremes of this administration and to force it to moderate, as it has on occasion. Again, that's not a solution. In the end, we're not done, but we're not talking about a lot of those things. So, for example, before the 2024 election, I was on social media, and somebody wrote that they had been on a call that had 4,300 people on it. And somebody else wrote and said, well, I was on a call that had 23,000 people on it. And they said, yeah, pictures or didn't happen. But the thing is, I was on that other call. I knew it had happened. And I thought, you know, you're just not paying attention to all of these grassroots movements that are out there because they're kind of flying under the radar screen. And again, as a historian looking back, we know this is exactly how the far right got started. After the 1964 election, Goldwater's people simply started organizing at the local level and organizing in small groups outside of the public eye. So I don't think people are paying enough attention to that. But the other real thing that I am every day astonished by and feel like we should be calling out far more fully are the real divisions in the Republican Party. Their inability to get anything through Congress, their apparent inability to even do their freaking jobs. It would be lovely to see a budget from any of the departments at this point for 2026, and a real reaction to the fact that the Senate Republicans could stop Donald Trump anytime they chose, and they are choosing not to do so. And when I think about this moment, that abdication, both of responsibility and power is really the story of this moment.
- [16:44]
Sarah Longwell
Oh boy, are you singing my song?
- [16:46]
Heather Cox Richardson
Doesn't it agree? It just, it just, you know.
- [16:51]
Dennis Black
Ever notice your dog slowing down and having health issues and wonder what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add rough greens to your dog's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of ruffgreens here and I invite you to give your pup the Ruff Greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added added to their diet. And at 90 days, better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch your dog a free Jumpstart trial bag today. Go to try roughgreens.com use promo code Try rough. That's T R Y R U F F. Go to try roughgreens.com use promo code Try rough. You discover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of rough greens. Discover the life changing benefits of meow greens for your cat. Ever see your cat slowing down or having health issues and wonder what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add meow greens to your cat's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings. I'm naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of meow greens and I invite you to take the Meow Greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your cat will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, they're going to have better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch a free Jumpstart trial bag for your cat today. Go to trymeowgreens.com use promo code try meow. That's try meow. You discover the shipping. You don't have to change your cat's food to improve your cat's health. Just add a packet of Meow Greens.
- [18:53]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so this is something I think about a lot, and I guess I'll just pose it to you now at the risk of blowing up my itinerary here that we're going through, which is the founders were pretty clear about ambition, counteracting ambition as the way of setting up this government. And for the first time, I've really had to grapple with the fact it's like, what if one of the branches just stops being. Being ambitious, right? Like, doesn't care about their own power, relinquishes that power to the executive and the judiciary. Also, in terms of the Supreme Court, where they have been reining him in. And I actually think they bristle at the way Donald Trump is constantly sort of arguing in court, this is out of your domain. Like, this isn't for you to decide. So I wouldn't say he has control of the Supreme Court, but he's a pretty friendly Supreme Court. And then a total abdication of responsibility on the congressional side. And that's not how the balance of power is supposed to work. That is not the checks and balances. And so is there another moment in history in which the tension that existed for the ambition to counteract ambition, where that collapsed the way that it is.
- [19:58]
Heather Cox Richardson
Right now, not the way that it is right now. But the problem was that the framers did not believe in political parties. They did not think we would have political parties. They thought that we would break into small we. I'm sorry. That the people who were trying to write the laws for the United States would break into smaller groups. And it would be kind of like, you know, a faculty meeting where everybody agrees on. You get two kinds of divisions on one issue, but a completely different set of divisions on another issue. And when we got the rise of factionalism or of partisanship, you know, before 1800, people began to recognize that you could amass power through partisanship. And so it's not, I think, that the Senate has given up a desire for power. I mean, you look at somebody like Mitch McConnell, it seems to be all that ever drove him. But the way to get that power is through supporting the party. And so they have been putting party over country for a long time now. I think back just to 74, when the Republicans, led by Barry Goldwater, of all people, went to the White House and said, dude, we're gonna vote to convict you. You gotta resign. And that's how we got Nixon to resign. But there are moments in our history when the system not really breaks down, but. But power doesn't necessarily have a natural home. Power is its own thing. And different people can pick up power in different ways. And there have been times in our past when the power structure that the framers wrote into the Constitution is not, in fact, what's reflected in the government. And you see that really dramatically in the 1920s, when the Republican Party had been essentially spending the years since Woodrow Wilson is elected in 1912, he takes office in 1913, and they have essentially spent all their time standing against Woodrow Wilson and anything that Woodrow Wilson was going to do. So then in 1920, Harding wins in a landslide. It's a landslide election. And when Harding wins and the Republicans get control of the House and the Senate and the White House in this landslide, the Congressional Republicans don't know what to do. I mean, basically, they're really good at being opposition, but they're not really good at putting anything in place. So they keep arguing amongst themselves. And Harding just wants to drink and womanize. So he's upstairs in the White House with a spittoon and a brandy or whatever he drank. So there's all this power kind of sloshing around, and it gets picked up by the Commerce Secretary and the Secretary of the treasury, and that's Herbert Hoover and Andrew Mellon, and they're the ones essentially who create the agenda for the 1920s. Get it through Congress, get the system in place. And, you know, here's a news flash that didn't work out very well. So one of the things to think about in this moment is there is a lot of power in Washington, D.C. but it's not clear to me who has control over it. Clearly, Elon Musk had a lot of power for a while. That seems to be waning. I think Stephen Miller has a lot of power. I think Russell Vogt has a lot of power. It's not clear to me how those different relationships are going to play out because, you know, Trump is mentally losing it and he can command maga, but I don't think JD Vance is gonna be able to command maga. And one of the things that have expected to see and have not, so I was wrong, was that Congressional Republicans would say, hey, about that power, we're taking ours back. Because if they could recenter power among the Republicans in the Senate, they could in fact lift up one of their own to create at least an attempt at a pre Donald Trump Republican Party, which is sort of an oligarchic party. It's not the Eisenhower Party. But I tell you, if I were a Republican in the Senate, man, I'd be all over this.
- [23:42]
Sarah Longwell
Well, you just said that was certainly my expectation. I mean, I spent the early years of Trump going to every Republican I could of good faith back then or before people were too far gone and you still had your normies in there to try to get people to push back. And it was either one of two things happened. Either people slowly acquiesced and abdicated their power to Trump and threw in with him like a Lindsey Graham, or they stood up and were quickly defenestrated and people took that lesson like a Liz Cheney or Jeff Flake or whatever. They took the lesson, even Mitch McConnell to some degree. Right. Ultimately, he is sort of doing these now very impotent things where he votes against, you know, a lot of Trump's nominees or something. But he's too old at this point and I think he's in the wilderness. Right. Like people have thrown in with Trump and they say my power now derives from Trump because I believe Trump controls my voters. And so there's nobody left in the Republican Party now to object. And like, I mean, there's a couple people, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski. And to me, to your point about there's power and people could grab it, this is where go become an independent, Lisa Murkowski. Like, work with the Democrats and they'll let you be speaker, like negotiate with them, do something. Because the rest of these Republicans have decided that their power emanates from Trump. Same with Mike Johnson. Right. And so without Trump, they feel like they don't have power, even though that is structurally untrue. But that's what they've decided.
- [25:12]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, I think Johnson is looking to the days after Trump is no longer president and hoping that he's gonna be able to pick up the MAGA voters because it's not clear who is going to be able to do that. But I mean, that's the other piece of this, is that Trump is not gonna live forever. And again, if I were a Republican senator or even just a rising person, I would look at this moment and think now is the time to lay the groundwork for a new kind of Republican. And, you know, I'm thinking a lot today because the Democrats in New York elected a 33 year old newcomer essentially as their nominee for the mayoral position in New York City. And one of the things about the late 19th century, which looks so much in so many ways, like where we are now, we get the period of the robber barons and they concentrate all the wealth and all the power and they take over the state legislatures and they take over, over the Congress, literally. Senators would call themselves, I'm the senator for the sugar Trust or whatever in that period. One of the things that makes a huge difference is it's very clear in both parties that there is enormous voter fury at what is happening to American democracy and what is happening to the distribution of wealth and what is happening to all the different things that we complain about still in the modern era in a very similar period, but within the Republican Party, especially because the Democratic Party changes somewhat differently by 1884. There are a group of younger Republicans who are watching this and they don't have power yet. I mean, people make fun of them, literally. They have articles making fun of these guys with their little glasses and everything. But they're watching and they recognize that there is this fury building. So that when they start to articulate that FURY in the 1890s, people start to listen to. And when the 1900 election comes around and then the 1904 election, they're the ones running the party, and that is Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt. And they dramatically change the party because they are a generational change. And I watched that mayoral primary in New York City and I thought, we're looking at generational change. And if you were a young person running in either party, now is the time to say, I don't want to throw my lot in with these people. I'm going to stay quiet and keep my powder dry for a cycle a little bit further along. And so you look at somebody like Liz Cheney, I mean, Jeff Flake, yeah, he's kind of walked away, but Liz Cheney is not. Adam Kinzinger has not. I don't know either one of them personally, but I wonder if they're just saying, I'm going to keep my powder dry till there's a Big Mac with Donald Trump's name on it. And then I'm gonna. And then I'm gonna come out of the woodwork.
- [27:59]
Sarah Longwell
Well, I do know them personally. And my theory on this, and part of this comes from listening to the voters all the time, is that, and Adam has said this publicly, he said this at the last bulwark show that if he ran for president, he wouldn't run as a Republican. And I think that Liz Cheney, you may be very well correct that maybe she's not done with politics. I don't know about thinking that she would come back to this Republican Party in part because of what voters now demand from Republicans. Like, Trump has changed the party so much that, like, Liz Cheney's not quite at home in this Republican Party with these voters. Not just with her colleagues, but like the voters see Liz Cheney not with somebody who's out of step policy wise, but they view her with. I guess I'm not sure I see a future in the Republican Party with anybody who hasn't come up with Trump in a Trumpy way. Like, he's just changed the party that much.
- [28:57]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah, but, you know, he's also corrupted all the email lists. He's also gotten rid of all the people who actually make the wheels of a party turn. He's turned it into his own little fiefdom. So if you did start outside the party, I mean, really, we're only talking about the name Republican. And that again, in the late 19th century, you get a dramatic change in both of the parties, both in their ideology and in their voters. And you get a dramatic change in the country. By 1912, all four major candidates running for president are all running as progressives. And it just feels like we're in that kind of a moment. And again, you ask things I don't think people are paying enough attention to. Trump is 79 years old and people have tied themselves to him because he can command these voters. But those voters have shown no inclination to go to anybody else. So the degree to which there is going to be at least the potential for a pretty major blow up on that side of the aisle, especially considering how factionalized it already is. It just kind of astonishes me when people are like, they're here forever. And I'm like, you know, I wouldn't be very comfortable if I were in that electoral mess.
- [30:09]
Sarah Longwell
Yes. So this part I really agree with where I think one of the reasons you don't hear Republicans push back against a Trump third term is a, they don't want to get into that fight with Trump. But also they don't really have any other ideas. It's not like they're rooted in ideology anymore. It's not like they're oriented around a unifying set of ideas. It's just Trump, the red hat is the big tent that currently comprises the Republican coalition. And so when he goes away, what are they like when their platform in, in 2020 was just whatever Donald Trump says, Like, that's our platform. Our platform is whatever Donald Trump says, which was an insane thing at the time. Now the party has changed so much and I agree with you, like, there's been so much political recalculations in terms of what the parties, quote, unquote, stand for, because I'm not sure I think the Republican Party stands for that much. But like tariffs, not part of the official Republican way of looking at the world. In fact, fact, this is, I think one of the difficulties for Democrats is that Republicans have moved into some of their territory. Trump's populism has taken on things like tariffs. He's not going to touch Social Security, he's not going to touch Medicaid, although that's a lie. But Trump has run as this sort of economic populist and that's created like an identity crisis a little bit for Democrats. But in the post Trump world, that identity crisis, I agree with you, I think really does shift to Republicans and.
- [31:30]
Dennis Black
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- [33:31]
Sarah Longwell
So that group we just listened to took place before Trump's military parade and before the no Kings protest and before the assassination of the former Minnesota House speaker. So we convened another group of Democrats who mobilized to attend the no Kings protest. And as people talked about their reasons for going and what they experienced during the protests, we found that people's hopes and fears were very closely intertwined. So let's listen to what the fear for their safety and for the country sounded like.
- [34:03]
Heather Cox Richardson
With this particular protest. I went because I've gotten so frustrated with the current president and his boldness about celebrating his birthday and his military celebration and just kind of blowing us off. And so that sort of empowered me to say, you know what? I gotta get out there and support no Kings. And here in Cleveland, we have a very active group of people who were, like, into, like, engaging in protests and things like that. It felt so important on this day when the President was having a military parade, ostensibly to celebrate his birthday, to show support in the opposite direction. Also because, you know, of course, in New York City, this is well attended. It was going to be packed even on a rainy day. But at the same time, he is someone who is so obsessed with numbers and with imagery and visuals that I nevertheless felt it was important to still be there on the avenue, like, making sure that it was as packed as possible. And for me, it also felt really important because my husband is an immigrant and what's been happening with ice lately is so horrifying. I Don't even know how to put it into words. It's something I never thought I would see in the United States. It echoes, you know, the Gestapo in Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Russia. And yet we're seeing it here in 2025 in the United States. My parents were Holocaust survivors, and I'm directly affected. And I'm very careful of what I post on social media, because in the back of my mind, everything can come back on you. And this is where my head is at Nazi Germany. And so going to something like this.
- [35:55]
Sarah Longwell
You can easily be.
- [35:57]
Heather Cox Richardson
I don't know the technical term, but I'm just going to say spotted as a protester and being of a certain religion. So that's all in the back of my mind, you know, never say it can't happen again. It can. So that's just the fear that I have. A friend was taking me out to breakfast, and so she said, oh, let's go check it out. So that's why I went. I was in her car. Anyway, he's going buck wild and going off the rails. You kind of have to be a little concerned about, okay, I get out here and something may happen with, you know, the J6ers and the proud boys, you know, infiltrating in the crowds. I was in the back of my mind when I went to this protest. You know, me living in New York City for 30 years, you know, you sort of learn your wits, kind of get that sixth sense about, you know, what's going to go down and what's not. So I had that confidence behind me. If you look at the groundswell that.
- [36:51]
Dennis Black
Evolved and developed around the Vietnam War.
- [36:54]
Heather Cox Richardson
And Nixon, the will of the people really, ultimately was pretty effective. And I think if we can keep this, again, momentum up and even build it, I think the will of the people can be very effective. The 2026 elections, you know, I think a lot of the GOP politicians who are so cowardly now, I think potentially they're on thin ice now. They're not holding town halls, et cetera, et cetera. So in that respect, I'm still hopeful.
- [37:24]
Sarah Longwell
So I wanted to play some of the sound of people expressing their fear, just because that is also a through line now, where I think that for a long time in the first Trump term, I heard a lot about fear, but it tended to come from electeds or people who were vocal, but it wasn't really average citizens, like, they were alarmed by Trump, but they didn't feel like a personal sense of fear for their safety. And I think the fact that a lot of them did feel that way made it all the more potent and in some ways moving. That so many people showed up to the no Kings protests in the past, you've talked about the mass mobilization and getting people in the streets is one of the main ways to impact change. I guess when people have done this before, certainly during the civil rights movement and other places, they also feared for their safety and maybe even with more evidence of why they should be afraid. So what do you make of just sort of the protests in general and their effectiveness?
- [38:26]
Heather Cox Richardson
Certainly we've done this before, and certainly people have put their lives on the line, and it's important to remember that that's the way terrorism works, is that you don't have to hurt many people to make sure that a lot of people have heard of it. That's a method for keeping people under control, to really badly hurt some people so that everybody else says, I don't want that to be me, and they don't dare to speak up. So that's overlaying this entire moment, I think, and has overlaid certain parts of our history. But one of the things that really jumps out to me and I think reflects what you just said about Trump's first term versus this one, is that. But the truth is, when democracy, or when our country anyway, is working okay, you don't necessarily have to be involved in it. I mean, I wish everybody were paying attention to politics all the time and to paying attention to the government all the time. But I have a lot of friends who like, it's hard to get them even to vote. It's not on their radar screen, and they don't pay a lot of attention. That is not new. That we've been doing for a very long time, and that when we get periods in which an authoritarian or an oligarchical cabal tries to take over our government, all of a sudden the government really matters. It's really obviously hurting you or hurting your neighbors. So, for example, the people who were in Northern cities after 1850 kidnapping Black Americans to sell them into slavery with the idea that they were returning them to slavery. But in fact, in fact, it's more likely that more free people were sold into slavery than runaways were returned to enslavement. That was really in your face in cities or in towns, I mean, we'd call them towns nowadays where people had previously been like, yeah, I don't really have to think about the government at all. I don't have to worry about it. So What I think we are seeing now, not just with ice, although ICE is an amazing example of it because it can be seen everywhere when you get these videos of people being snatched off the streets and so on. Also, the things that the Department of Government Efficiency did, those extraordinary cuts to services that a lot of Americans didn't realize could be cut, they just kind of thought they were always gonna be there. The National Weather Service, Social Security offices, the things that when the Republicans were saying, oh, this is all socialism, this is all waste, fraud and abuse and so on, it was great. So long as you could sit there and say, well, that's not me. Those are not things I care about. And when they started to cut those very basics of American society where people are like, wait a min, Medicaid, which is now, of course, on the table with the budget reconciliation bill, you cut Medicaid, that's covering most of the home health care and nursing homes for the people in my town. And if we lose that, we're going to lose our hospital. So people are paying attention to politics in a way that they haven't for a very long time. And you saw a similar mobilization during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, which, by the way, also included the Chicana movement, which we don't talk enough about, I don't think. But you see the same thing in the late 19th century, and you certainly see the same thing in the 1850s. Now, one of the pieces, though, I listened to some of those interviews that you did, one of the things that always shows up in those periods in our history and is showing up again today is that people stop focusing quite so much on the minutiae of politics. You know, I don't think we should have a bond for $32 million. I think it should be for $30 million, and instead start to say we should be treated equally before the law. That's in the Declaration of Independence. You know, the Constitution says that it's Congress that levies tariffs. You know, they start to look at the really big picture issues in American democracy, and they start to use that as a lens for what they want out of their government. And. And the fact that the Trump administration is quite openly embracing the idea of an all powerful president, as you said, through the Congress, but also through the Supreme Court, people look at that and they say, no kings. Somebody asked, what would I use as a slogan for that protest? And I'm like, I think they nailed it with no kings. What more do you need? And the more we see that resurrection of the tenets of democracy and the language of democracy. I think the more the protests will grow because they are not partisan. This is about government. And we have examples before us of people like Abraham Lincoln, who, when he was faced again and again and again with the Southern Democrats in Southern Illinois, for example, during the Lincoln Douglas debates, and they would come out screaming racist stuff, and he would just say, do you believe in the Declaration of Independence or not? Because if we're not going to honor the Declaration of Independence, we should tear it up. He literally says that in a couple of the speeches for the Senate he gives in the Lincoln Douglas Debates of 1858. He says we should go to the statute book, which is interesting because it's not in a statute book. He says we should go to a statute book and we should tear it out. And even in the Dixiecrat parts of Illinois, they're screaming, no, no, that's our declaration. And that kind of touchstone moment, or the touchstones of democracy are really important in reminding people that this is not about your team winning an election. It's about preserving the right, the birthright of Americans to have a say in their government and to be treated equally before the law. It's really hard to think that's a bad idea.
- [44:08]
Sarah Longwell
You know, it's funny. I do this a lot, actually, to illustrate sometimes how much things have changed. I just have stacks of these pocket Constitutions that I've been mailed by libertarian and conservative organizations my entire sort of time in conservative Inc. Like all the think tanks and the things that I went and did. And they're always mailing you pocket Constitutions. And yet today, watching Republicans ignore the Constitution has been one of those deeply demoralizing, but also very unmooring elements because it was so ingrained in me as a young conservative about how important fidelity to the Constitution was. Even it's, like, rooted in originalism around Supreme Court philosophies. And of course, to watch the abandon it so thoroughly for Trump. It does require some Republicans, I think, to really rediscover their commitment to those founding documents.
- [44:56]
Heather Cox Richardson
We should do another one of these where we talk about originalism and how the Constitution fit into that project of power that I was talking about before, because it's really the 1830s where we start to develop this idea that the Constitution actually protects states rights versus a federal system. And I have never been convinced that from the beginning, it wasn't simply about guaranteeing power to a very small group of people. And if that's the case, there is poison ingrained in this particular moment. Where, as you say, the people who previously would have celebrated the Constitution have just simply tossed it overboard in favor of power. But one of the things that I come back to as you are watching the gyrations that Republicans are going through, to say, oh, no, it's okay for Trump to take all our power and to do all this stuff is people like those in your focus groups who are like, now hang on just a moment here, that's not what I read in the Constitution. And that resurgence of the common sense of American people to say, stop it with all the machinations you're going through, it's really simple. The same way that Lincoln said, either we're equal or we're not. And that's not negotiable as far as we're concerned. And when that happens, and one of the things I find so exciting in this moment is when that happens, people invent new ways of incorporating democracy into the extraordinary changes that the society faces. We're looking at AI, we're looking at climate change, we're looking at disease, we're looking at migration, and all the things that the 21st century is bringing to us. How does democracy see, incorporate those things? While the Republicans are saying, well, it doesn't. We got to get rid of it, some of the tech bros are saying the same thing. But when we had to do it in the 1850s and the 1890s and the 1930s and the 1960s, the American people figured out a way to make it happen. And I look at these young people in New York saying, we don't want to do it your way anymore. We're going to do it our way. And I think I can't wait to see what they come up with.
- [47:04]
Dennis Black
Ever notice your dog slowing down and having health issues and wondering, wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add rough greens to your dog's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of ruffgreens here. And I invite you to give your pup the Ruffgreens 90 Day Challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch your dog a free Jumpstart trial bag today. Go to try roughgreens.com. use promo code, try rough. That's T R Y R U F f. Go to try roughgreens.com use promo code, try rough. You just cover the shipping. You don't have have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of rough greens.
- [48:06]
Sarah Longwell
Well, to keep the hope rolling after that answer, I want to listen to how these voters talked about how they felt after they went to the streets and participated in these protests.
- [48:20]
Heather Cox Richardson
I felt it was a national catharsis that the people in 100 or 200 or 400 cities in this country took to the streets to say, I don't like what's going on. The scary thing would be if the no Kings was not well attended, like we were all sheep. I took great pleasure in seeing it as a counter protest. You know, Trump and his family are celebrating the military on the streets of Washington, D.C. like Stalin, like Hitler with military might. And isn't this great? And this is all under my command. And average people like us in this focus group said, you know what? I'm taking to the streets to say, I don't believe in this man. I don't like what he's doing. I think it spoke volumes as to what his true. I went not only because of the.
- [49:20]
Sarah Longwell
Birthday thing, but just because I marched.
- [49:23]
Heather Cox Richardson
In Black Lives Matter protests, you know, other protests. So I want to, in the future, someday, if I ever have grandchildren and we're still here as a country, I want to be able to say I participated, I played a part and I was there. I was here in Philadelphia. It was a very big event and I wanted to act, I wanted to do something. I wanted to, to see and be.
- [49:45]
Dennis Black
Seen and to get my voice out there.
- [49:47]
Heather Cox Richardson
But I was also encouraged by the fact that it was a nationwide event and that it was very large. I think it's a good start. I think it needs to swell and.
- [49:58]
Dennis Black
Continue and get larger, actually, you know.
- [50:01]
Heather Cox Richardson
Whether Trump liked it or not, I think it caught his attention and also that it was peaceful. I think that's a huge thing. So I really wanted to, to be part of the bodies if ICE were to be in that neighborhood on that day. And I wanted to be part of the bodies, blocking access for them. But some of my takeaways were one, it was joyful and it was peaceful. And that's exactly what people are saying of joy. We've got to hold joy. One of the rules of thumb I've.
- [50:32]
Sarah Longwell
Been seeing a lot of it takes three and a half percent of the.
- [50:36]
Heather Cox Richardson
Population to really start to move an issue. And, and the protest counts across not only the US but across the world. Blew that number away of 3.5% of.
- [50:47]
Sarah Longwell
The US voting population, which does give me a little hope that there's enough muscle growing behind this movement.
- [50:56]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, this was the first protest that I've gone to, and actually, I really wasn't planning on going, but I had a friend with me and so. Well, let's, let's check it out. I was a little nervous because there's a lot of crazies out there, and it wouldn't take much for someone with a gun or a car just to drive through, you know, you just don't know. So we stayed for a little while, but then when they started playing the guitar and singing, I thought Kumbaya. And I thought, nah, I mean, it was good that people showed and tried to make an impact and showed not just people in the U.S. but people in other countries that we don't agree with this administration. As far as Trump, I mean, he saw, but he doesn't care. So what? As pissed as I am at the Democrats, I also understand they're terrified what happened in Minnesota a couple weekends ago. The state legislator, I know, public officials that don't support Trump are terrified for their safety.
- [52:06]
Sarah Longwell
And I do think even if these.
- [52:09]
Heather Cox Richardson
Mass crowds can't change policy, they give.
- [52:13]
Sarah Longwell
Democrats, I hope, an understanding that we've got their back.
- [52:17]
Heather Cox Richardson
What really concerns me about him and this cult like following that he's built is that they are not going to go away. We see that they didn't go away in the four years of the Biden administration. And I don't think that, you know, even if he can manage not to get elected again, that this is just going to disappear. There has to be a showing both to Democrats and to Republicans, that there is a huge groundswell of support against this, that we are never going to agree with these kind of policies or this behavior.
- [52:50]
Sarah Longwell
So when you hear these people's descriptions, what people driven moments throughout history give you the most hope right now? And is there anything like, what can history teach us about how we fight back in this moment?
- [53:05]
Heather Cox Richardson
In the United States, we have a lot of these moments. You know, I always go to the 1850s, which is the era in which I am by far the most comfortable for this comparison. But the 1890s and certainly the civil rights movement, remember in the United states, between about 1874 and 1965 and the voting Rights act, we had what was essentially what, what Zeblatt calls competitive Authoritarianism, that is. They held elections, but everybody knew who was gonna win. And there was no equality before the law. Not only for black Americans who were in huge trouble of assault, murder, and so on by their white neighbors, but also, if you weren't in the right clique in the white towns, you didn't have any rights as a white person either. It was up to whoever was on the good side of the sheriff. So we have done this before, and the Civil Rights movement that. That manages so relatively quickly after World War II to get a real foothold in Congress and then the presidency and then in the law is a great example. But, you know, the thing that always jumps out to me is the 1850s, for the simple reason that in the 1850s, only white men could vote. And in 1853, if you looked at the United States in 1853, it sure looked like the elite Southern enslavers had gotten everything. Because people sometimes forget that enslavement, while it was widespread in the American south, the people who were really profiting off of it were a very small number of extraordinarily wealthy people. People like Wade Hampton iii, for example. I mean, just rich beyond belief. And they controlled the Democratic Party. And through the Democratic Party, they controlled the national government. And they had control of the White House, the Supreme Court and the senate. And in 1854, they got control of the House of Representatives. Under pressure from the president, the House of Representatives passes a law, the Kansas Nebraska act, that allows the large enslavers to move their system of enslavement into the western territories. And that matters a lot because in addition to the lives of the people who are going to be moved out there and their lives being ruined, it's going to mean that the western states that form out of the western territories are going to become slave states. And those slave states can work together with the southern slave states to overawe the northern free states in the House of Representatives. And they will make enslavement. National democracy is going to be gone. And after the passage of the Kansas Nebraska act, you actually get the formation of the Republican Party, which forms in Washington, D.C. after the passage through the House of the Kansas Nebraska Act. And a bunch of representatives come together and they come from all parties and they say, listen, we don't agree with each other about immigration or about finances or about internal improvements, but by God, we can agree that we do not want to lose our democracy to an oligarchy. And they spread out over the summer of 54, and they begin to talk to People in their districts and say, you know, are you aware this is going on in 1855 and 1856? The Anti Nebraska. It's not a Republican party yet. The anti Nebraska party switches, sweeps the districts in the north and becomes a viable, powerful party. So that by 1856, we have the rise of the Republican party, which is still simply a. We don't want that party. But by 1858, they have Abraham Lincoln paying attention to all this. He at the time is like kind of a nobody. He's had one unsuccessful term in the House of Representatives, and he's a corporate lawyer, but he listens to all this agitation about what the country should be. And in 1859, he articulates a new ideology for this new party that says, hey, maybe instead of just protecting property, the government should actually work for ordinary Americans. 1860, those white male voters elect Lincoln on that platform with the idea that human enslavement should not spread to the American west. And with the recognition that he honors the Declaration of Independence. And By January of 1863, he has signed the Emancipation Proclamation, ending human enslavement in the districts that are covered by the Confederacy. And By November of 1863, he has given the Gettysburg Address, dedicating the country to a new birth of freedom and a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. So in the space of nine freaking years, voters took a system that gave everything to a very few rich guys who thought they were better than everybody else and had the right to rule and created a nation based in the idea that the government should work for ordinary. And they did that with only white male votes. So I look at that, and I think, you know, if they could do it, then when the only people voting to end human enslavement and to achieve rights for black Americans, black American men were white guys who were actually, most of them, profoundly racist. We can do a lot better in the 21st century with coalitions that are made up of of all races, all genders, all abilities, all religions, and get it righter this time.
- [58:24]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, get it, writer. I love that. More. Perfect. Maybe someone might say, you might. Okay, that was great. I got some chills now. I'm gonna swerve hard on you and close on a potentially thorny subject. So one of the things that's come up a lot in groups since the election of Democrats that I've been both a little surprised by and also worried by is how many Democrats are questioning the 2024 elections results. And they sound frustratingly similar to me. To many Republicans in 2020, which I just listened to ad nauseam back then. And so I want to play for you what it sounded like and then talk about it with you on the other side.
- [59:09]
Heather Cox Richardson
So let's at.
- [59:09]
Sarah Longwell
Look, listen, I'm usually not one like to believe in conspiracy theories, so at.
- [59:15]
Heather Cox Richardson
First I figured like, you know, it.
- [59:16]
Sarah Longwell
Was disappointing, but I figured okay. But the more and more Elon Musk got involved in this administration, that made me start to think that maybe there was something else going on, that he put his money somewhere to rig this.
- [59:31]
Heather Cox Richardson
I also try not to believe in conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to things like this. But I think that Trump is very shady and I think he'll do whatever he needs to do to make something happen. And from the way like that things were going, like, especially with the ballots and all the counting and stuff, I really don't think we got like the full story. Well, first thing that really caught my eye was the fact that they called it so quickly, you know what I mean? It's like seven o' clock, polls are closed. Seven, ten, Donald Trump wins. It was like, hello. You know, it just didn't make sense to me. And then they were so quick to sweep everything under the rug. All he won, move on. Boom. And again, like I said, now they're starting to come out with stuff Upstate New York. I think they're looking at votes that are, you know, Camelot parents getting zero votes in one county or two counties. It just doesn't make sense. I think I just saw something on either 60 Minutes or John Oliver. They're talking about how the machines that they use for the elections, there was like some kind of a software issue that leads to the fact that it might have been suspect. I'm kind of on the fence because, I mean, I'm so tired of hearing about him talking about the fact that.
- [60:38]
Dennis Black
The 2020 election was stolen and there's been no proof.
- [60:41]
Heather Cox Richardson
I feel that way, but I mean, I want to see evidence, you know, I mean, because I don't want to be like a sore loser, you know.
- [60:46]
Dennis Black
I mean, like, so she may have lost, right? You know, rightfully so.
- [60:49]
Heather Cox Richardson
I mean, they had big hurdles to overcome with inflation. She may have lost, but it just something seems suspect to me. And it wouldn't surprise me if you got help from the Russians or some other country, you know, But I remember watching msnbc, and I don't know if it was. Could have been Rachel Maddow. She's my girlfriend. And so I remember there was a blurb about the voting machines. And I don't. I can't say which state it was, but that just put a big explanation point above me. But you know what? The Democrats aren't going to say anything. They're not going to cry foul. You know, I mean, to be blunt with just a bunch of pussies, you know, makes me mad because we just don't stand up. Those Democrats don't stand up and say anything. They're just weak. I don't feel like it was secure enough. And I also feel like once a snake, always a snake.
- [61:42]
Sarah Longwell
If you pull it out of box.
- [61:43]
Heather Cox Richardson
It was a snake, it's still gonna be a snake. So I feel like he's gotten away with too much, and he knows how.
- [61:49]
Sarah Longwell
To get away with it.
- [61:50]
Heather Cox Richardson
So at this point, he's, like, advanced, just doing stuff under everybody's life. It's going to be hard to catch him. I'm on TikTok, and being on TikTok.
- [61:59]
Sarah Longwell
I'm feeling very hopeful because there's a.
- [62:01]
Heather Cox Richardson
Lot of stuff on there that I'm hearing about that the mainstream media is not reporting on. And if what I'm hearing about is accurate, I think things might start to tumble for Donald Trump, and I think.
- [62:14]
Sarah Longwell
That we might have some hope.
- [62:17]
Heather Cox Richardson
What are you hearing there that has you hopeful? That in Rockland county, they are uncovering a lot of voter fraud fraud, and they're doing a recount, and the Supreme Court has ordered a court case in September, and they're finding that Donald Trump won everything. Like Kamala Harris didn't get a single.
- [62:36]
Sarah Longwell
Vote, and that it's impossible. And so it's pretty clear that there was tampering, and other states are starting to look into their voter fraud.
- [62:49]
Heather Cox Richardson
And I don't hear any of this on the mainstream media. But all over TikTok Talk, many people are talking about it, and I'm researching what they're saying because I know a lot of things are not true. You know, I don't take things for granted that they're true, but anyway, I believe it.
- [63:04]
Sarah Longwell
Okay. Now, I want to be clear. This is not as pervasive in the Dem groups as it was in the Republican groups in 2020, but it's there, and it's been there since the election, and it hasn't quite gone away. Like, if you ask people if they think the last election was free and fair, you get a lot of pushback from Democrats. And I'm not sure if anything encapsulates what I hear from a lot of voters around information than somebody Saying, I'm not sure where I heard it. It could have been on the comedy politics show, or it could have been on 60 Minutes, who knows? Or somebody saying, it's all over TikTok and the mainstream media refuses to cover it. I know you've been very hopeful. I too am an optimist who is very hopeful about people. But I am watching people get caught in like this new information environment in which especially I think for older people who are not native to the Internet, there's just so much garbage out there. Like you brought up Hana rent before, and this idea of people not knowing what to believe is all over the place. And once you sort of obliterate truth, right, then you can convince people of all kinds of things. And so how do you stay optimistic knowing that the new information environment is really challenging for voters?
- [64:23]
Heather Cox Richardson
It is really challenging for voters. And there's a lot of work we need to do to make people understand how to operate in that environment. But that being said, I am enormously encouraged by the number of independent producers out there who are scrupulous about recreating not a partisan community, but a reality based community, which I think people are starving for. My brother's an educator and he always says everybody is wired to learn or we all would have ended up inside a saber toothed tiger. The question is, what do people learn? People are starving to learn things, to know something. One of the things about those focus groups that you just played in the course of this hour is how well informed those people are. Perhaps not about whether they're listening to things on TikTok or wherever, although I'm sure there's good material on TikTok as well as bad material. I don't know, I'm not on TikTok. But people are paying attention and they are trying, I think, to figure out what reality is, because especially now with the attacks on our reality from the Trump administration and their destruction, as I say, of the things we care about, the National Weather Service, the Medicaid, you know, things that people really depend on. People recognize it's not a game, that they have to understand what's happening or they're going to lose something that dramatically affects their lives. So how do we do it? I think that people like you and me keep talking to each other and trying to bring the best of what we can do. Because I will say one of the things that jumps out to me on podcasts and everything else is there is an unbelievable amount of just kind of like filler out there. There's huge amounts of oxygen being taken up by people who don't actually, at the end of the day say anything and the people who produce actual content. And the bulwark's a great example. You know, the bulwark has rocketed to popularity because you guys actually provide content. And I think the same is true of people like me. And people are hungry for that. So I think the more that we cross pollinate and try and remind people that there is, as Ron Susskind suggested to a member of the George W. Bush administration, a reality based community. People would rather be part of that reality based community as they make real life decisions about their lives. We want our fantasy to stay on the movie screen and our real life to be informed by reality. And we just keep plugging away at that. I think just since the 2024 election, the explosion of really good material available and the subscriptions to those things is pretty dramatic.
- [67:10]
Sarah Longwell
Attic Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for joining us. That was an incredibly hopeful episode. Sometimes people can find these a little bleak. And so that was wonderful. Thank you for bringing your historical expertise here. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus group. We will not be back next week. We'll be back around Labor Day. But in the meantime, go subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube, become a Bulwark plus member at TheBullork.com and I will see you all soon. Bye Bye.
- [67:49]
Heather Cox Richardson
If you work as a manufacturing facilities engineer, installing a new piece of equipment.
- [67:54]
Sarah Longwell
Can be as complex as the machinery itself.
- [67:56]
Heather Cox Richardson
From prep work to alignment and testing, it's your team's job to put it all together. That's why it's good to have Granger on your side. With industrial grade products and next day delivery, Granger helps ensure you have everything you need close at hand through every.
- [68:10]
Sarah Longwell
Step of the installation. Call 1-800-granger clickgranger.com or just stop by.
- [68:15]
Heather Cox Richardson
Granger for the ones who get it done.