Anne Applebaum (4:39)

Thanks for having me.

Sarah Longwell (4:41)

Okay, so you're my favorite person to read when I'm trying to figure out, are we too freaked out? Like, are we? Because people have been throwing the word authoritarianism around when it comes to Trump for a long time. And I don't know if that makes it harder for us to know when we're like really there. And maybe it's not even a point in time where we say, oh, now we're an authoritarian regime versus we used to be in a democracy. But Maybe you could just lay out, because you study all these foreign authoritarians. Where are we now in terms of our Democratic slide?

Anne Applebaum (5:16)

So there's always a timeline. I mean, unless you have a coup d' etat and somebody gets in a tank and drives down the street and shoots up the presidential palace, which does happen, although less and less than it used to most of the time. Democratic decline is a process rather than a moment. And so, you know, I actually think that in our country, it began sometime back. I mean, I'd say a decade ago, if not more, as Congress became more and more ineffective, as people lost.

Robert Draper (5:53)

There.

Anne Applebaum (5:53)

Began to be more and more distrust in all kinds of institutions, not just government ones, but institutions that produced news and information and scientific research. And all that was. Those were the beginnings of the decline. I mean, I actually made a podcast last summer called Autocracy in America before the election, and it was about the things that were already declining. So it's a. It's been in play for a long time. I mean, and you have, like, a.

Sarah Longwell (6:18)

Quick diagnosis on that. Is that the Internet, is it post Obama? What, what, why, Why a decade ago?

Anne Applebaum (6:25)

It's profoundly connected to the Internet. It's connected to the way in which we get and process political information. But I think it's also. It's also connected to the speed and pace of change. So economic change, demographic change, social change, and then this change in the way we learn about things, I think it left a lot of people very disoriented. And one of the things that happens whenever you have the speed of change is you have some people becoming nostalgic. And so people say, we want to turn the clock back. We want to go back to a simpler time, whatever time it is that they have in their head, the 1950s, or usually it's their childhood, you know, some other moment when everything was simpler and we didn't have all this new stuff. And you can see it. I mean, it's not the first time in history this has happened. I mean, you can. There's a movement like this that happens in Germany at the end of the 19th century when people say, Gosh, things were better 100 years ago, before we had all this industrial development. I mean, you can. You know, there have been. There have been lots of other societies that have. That have gone through this, and I think it's connected to that. And then there were some fluky things that happened. I mean, there was Trump deciding to run for president and to run for president explicitly as someone who's nostalgic, you know, but Also as someone who was a conspiracy theorist, so he accelerated this questioning of institutions that was already coming from the press. I mean, the first really big, an important conspiracy theory that, that was mouthed by a, you know, about. About the presidency, I guess that was mouthed by a serious person was. Or more or less serious was Trump's conspiracy that Obama wasn't born in America. And that was something that we didn't maybe take seriously enough at the time, but something like 30% of Americans believed it. And if you take that seriously, you know, Obama's a fake president. You know, he's a. He's not really American. He's a, you know, that means if that was true and you believed that, that means that you also believed that every American institution, from Congress to the courts to the media, they're all lying and they've all created this fake president. And that's a. The fact that that was believed and that was. That was Trump. He pushed it well before he was even formally in politics, that once people began to believe that, you know, then you're, you know, then people are ripe for something different. You know, all the institutions are. Are misleading us. We're being taken down a path. And I think you can pinpoint that as a beginning. That's like. That goes back 15 years.

Sarah Longwell (9:01)

Yeah. And I know you listened to some of these focus groups and we're going to hear sound and we'll go through it all. But was there anything that struck you about these voters? Because I will say one of the things just in listening to people all the time, when you say the word disoriented, that is a word that lands really true with voters in that they oftentimes, maybe they feel strongly about things, but they also do a lot of. I'm not sure. I don't know what to believe I saw this here, but I don't really know because you have this historical perspective. Like you mentioned the fact that in Germany, this has happened before, just around the Industrial Revolution. And, you know, you talk to people and they say, well, during the time the printing press was invented, people also felt disoriented. Does that make you feel better about things that people, like, eventually adjust to that disorientation and find their footing and go back to making reasonable, like, informed choices. Or when you were listening to people, did you think, man, we're doomed?

Anne Applebaum (10:00)

I mean, the problem with the two examples that you just cited is that in, in both cases, people didn't go back to, you know, agreeing with each other and behaving sensibly until there were these horrific wars, you know, so.

Sarah Longwell (10:12)

Sure, yeah. Right. We killed a lot of people first. That's a great point.

Anne Applebaum (10:15)

That's right. I mean, the, you know, the printing press was invented. People began to argue about religion. What happened after that was, you know, many decades of religious wars in Europe that are only ended when they come up with this great idea called religious tolerance, you know, in the 17th and 18th centuries. And then it begins to subside. So, you know, there was a lot of chaos that before. Before people agreed not to. Not to be so angry at one another anymore. Yeah, I mean, I agree with the disorientation I also find disturbing the. The way in which people only know a part or a piece of the story. I mean, they've heard something about the man who, you know, whose name they might have heard, who was accidentally deported. But some people have heard that he's a gang member, and some people have heard that, you know, he was an illegal immigrant. And some people have heard one piece of the story, something about tattoos and, you know, but they don't seem to really know what happened. And the idea that someone who was someone was illegally sent out of the country and sent to a foreign camp where he's outside the jurisdiction of US Law, and that. That's just illegal. That doesn't seem clear to people. And maybe. And of course, I know how you run the group. You know, you're not giving people information. You're just asking them what they think. But I. I kept wondering, you know, what happens if someone says, well, here. Here's the truth, or, here's what happened? Do they. What happens then? Do they say, well, I don't believe that, Or, Or.

Sarah Longwell (11:43)

Or.

Anne Applebaum (11:43)

Or does the. Does the full story of the situation make them think differently? I just don't know.

Sarah Longwell (11:48)

Yeah, well, let's get into that, because you're right. We sort of started by asking about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador. Because what happened in the focus groups was kind of interesting. Right. So these are all Biden to Trump voters on the show today. Many of them were focused on whether or not he was a bad guy and exactly how bad, you know, he might be. So let's listen to the first wave of commentary we heard about Abrego Garcia.

Anne Applebaum (12:17)

People are saying we shouldn't have sent him there.

Sarah Longwell (12:19)

I feel like we should have.

Anne Applebaum (12:21)

He's a criminal. I understand.

Sarah Longwell (12:23)

He's part of a gang, and that's why he wasn't supposed to go there.

Anne Applebaum (12:26)

Whatever. I mean, if you're A criminal. I don't know what to tell you, but I'd rather him not be in America. So I don't.

Sarah Longwell (12:32)

I don't understand what the big deal is about it. But at the end of the day, you know, we don't really know what's going on. They tell us what they want us to hear.

Anne Applebaum (12:40)

Is it the truth? Who knows?

Robert Draper (12:43)

You watch like Fox News or you watch cnn. Everything on CNN is a father of.

Sarah Longwell (12:48)

Three, married, all these different things, and everything seems like the perfect human being on earth.

Robert Draper (12:53)

And you watch Fox News.

Sarah Longwell (12:55)

I tend to watch both of them.

Robert Draper (12:56)

Just to get two different perspectives on it.

Sarah Longwell (12:59)

Then you hear Fox News with, you know, he was a gang member, he.

Robert Draper (13:03)

Hung out with gang members, he beat his wife.

Sarah Longwell (13:05)

All these different things that are going.

Robert Draper (13:06)

On with this guy. So I have zero problems with him being shipped over back to El Salvador in that prison.

Sarah Longwell (13:13)

And then with that senator from.

Robert Draper (13:16)

Where is it?

Sarah Longwell (13:17)

Maryland, I think it is where he's originally from.

Robert Draper (13:19)

Looks like a complete going over there and expecting Venezuela to open up the prison to let him talk to him and bring him home, which is ridiculous.

Sarah Longwell (13:28)

So I think that's kind of funny. But it's just interesting how you see two different programs spinning it the way they want to spin it.

Robert Draper (13:36)

And I'm getting to the point now.

Sarah Longwell (13:37)

Where it has come out that he did beat his wife with the records that were shown. This was one of the things that's turning me off on Democrats. Who's this guy? James Carver. That's like a political grandstander, you know. James Carvel. Yeah. So he's saying that this should be the Democrats main focus. I mean, all the issues that we are going on in this country, and this should be your main focus. And it just makes me feel like it's production value. I've read reports this guy was busted. It's called a coyote. Something here in Arizona where they bring people across the border and they get paid. I mean, this guy obviously has ties to these gangs and. And then this is your main concern. I honestly, I don't think he should come back. Maybe they could look into it more. But this is not the main problem in America right now.

Focus Group Participant (14:28)

Actually, he was not here legally. He had two orders of deportation were entered by a judge and then was appealed and still had to leave. They had evidence he's part of the MS.13 gang. The only thing that they couldn't do was send him back to El Salvador because he was afraid of. Of being killed by a rival gang.

Sarah Longwell (14:45)

Right.

Focus Group Participant (14:45)

So that tells you something. Right there, that if he's not in a gang, why would this other gang be a rival? Right. That was the only thing that they did. And then even at that, once, once they determined that, that Ms. 13 was a terrorist group, then even that, that protection of not having to go to El Salvador kind of falls by the wayside. So the, there's a lot going on here with this, with this showman. Yes. They're holding it up as, as a breach of, of due process when, when really it was not. He was already, he already got his, his turn in court by two different judges and was ruled that he needed to leave. So it is, it is a distraction, another roadblock, another, another pitfall to try and trip things up and, and cast doubt on what's going on. Could things have been done better? Yes. Could they have been cleaner and not sent him to El Salvador to make sure that they were totally clear on that and avoided this? Yes. But now it's turned out that his, his wife, who is an American citizen, still doesn be here. There are two, two things that have come out in the courts where she had filed domestic abuse against him over the past several years. So, you know, this is not a good person.

Sarah Longwell (15:41)

So first of all, let me just say you heard people speaking who were, people who had heard about this case. So there were lots, plenty of people in the group who actually had not heard of this guy. They hadn't heard about Abrego Garcia. They weren't following it. For the people who had, they were steeped in essentially what has become the talking points from Trump, the administration and sort of the right wing media ecosystem because you study authoritarian in other countries isn't, I guess maybe talk about the way that the demagoguing of these out groups or unpopular groups get used as a way to make people decide that like, yeah, this is fine, like we don't have to abide by the rules that we used to abide by. When you hear the way that people talk about Abrego Garcia, how do you think about it?

Anne Applebaum (16:32)

So there are two things that strike me. I mean, one is the one that you've mentioned Trump creates or the people around him create a group that is legitimate to be, to attack and insult and smear and undermine and then deport to, you know, a prison that we know nothing about. You know, you know, that's, that's a tactic as old as humanity. I mean, you know, you, you know, you give people an out group to hate or you give them a minority to dislike, or you give them an enemy. And it's a way of unifying your side, you know, so then your side is unified by the knowledge that we are not them and they are to be expelled from our midst, and they are not subject to our rules and our laws. Those are only for us. I mean, that's kind of a classic thing. I mean, I was also struck in one of those responses by people expressing that they hear conflicting views and they don't know what's true. And there's another authoritarian tactic that Trump also uses, which is this constant repetitive lying. You know, he lies even when he doesn't have to lie. He lies, you know, about almost everything. All day long, he's lied about this guy, he's lied about other aspects of his policy, and he keeps lying and lying and lying. And one of the things that happens when you have that much lying is that people begin to ask, is anything true? You know, how do we know whether anything is ever true? And. And that's something. This is a, this is an old Russian tactic. And if nothing is true and you can't know anything, then why should you be involved in politics at all? I mean, you're better off staying home, you know, because it's all like a big fog out there and, you know, nothing's true. Actually, there's a Hannah Arendt quote that was the title of a friend of mine's book. Nothing is true and everything is possible. You know, nothing is true. You don't know what's, what's real. Might as well stay home. There's no such thing as a, as an informed citizen or as a political somebody who's politically active if you can't know anything. And so what they have successfully done around this guy, you know, and around so many other things, but this guy in particular is undermine any sense of reality. So there's. We're not even having a real conversation about it. And I think that that comes out in those comments as well.

Sarah Longwell (18:47)

There was always kind of a propaganda apparatus that would have these fights. What's interesting today is that, like, JD Vance is on Twitter saying that he's a convicted Ms. 13 gang member. That is a flat out lie. Now, I'm not. We do not know everything about this guy. And I think the question of whether or not he's a good guy or, you know that, because that was in their comments too, right? This idea of, well, they're trying to make him sound like he's a great father and he's a Maryland, but no, he's an illegal immigrant and he beats his wife and he's a Ms. 13 gang member. And I think that Van Holland, who has been out there, you know, after Senator Van Hollen, who went to El Salvador and met this guy, you know, when he came back, he said, look, this, this isn't about him really. This is about us. It's about our rules and whether or not we do these things the correct way. But, you know, I was, I always feel sorry for the voters in a way that people get mad at me for because they're like, you, you, you know, let these guys off the hook. And it's not that. When you have the vice president actively lying and saying that they're convicted gang members and then you have an entire media ecosystem that runs with that, every Fox News headline just calls him unequivocally an ms.13 gang member. When you have that, what are voters supposed to do? How are they supposed to figure out the truth? Because that line you said, where someone was like, I don't know what's true, that is a feature of focus groups of like, people who are trying to make sense of what you're asking them, but they just want to tell you, like, they don't really know. It's so hard to know.

Anne Applebaum (20:26)

But, but that's deliberate. I mean, Vance and Trump and others around them have deliberately created a world in which people don't know what's true. And that is a tactic. That's not an accident. And they're not doing it, you know, just because they, you know, for momentary gain. I mean, it's a, it's a repetitive, long term, permanent tactic. And it, you know, as I said, and it, and it pollutes the public sphere. So eventually, you know, people like that voter will say, well, I have no idea what's true. There's no way I can ever know, you know, get me away from here. You know, it's all dirty. Everyone's a crooked, you know, keep me away. And that's a, that is a tactic. It's not an accident. It's a, it's, you know, advanced lying, like that is on purpose.

Sarah Longwell (21:10)

The America I used to know, a vice president would feel shame about doing that. Like Trump does it. And, but, and it was sort of new when Trump did it, like the brazen lying. And now it is a feature of Trump and his minions, right? You say if Trump says they're eating the dogs and cats, Vance says they're eating the dogs and cats in Springfield, even when there's no truth to it. So what are in these other countries where you have these demagogues or these authoritarians who lie. They use social media to lie. They have their own sort of controlled media apparatuses that will repeat the lies. What are voters supposed to do? What do they do in that environment?

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Robert Draper (22:52)

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Focus Group Participant (23:13)

What went through your head on the last shot?

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Anne Applebaum (23:21)

Well, I mean, in, in a lot of those environments, I mean, in Russia, for example, what happens is that people become apathetic and they leave. They stay away and they don't. Not only do they not vote, I mean, not that voting matters who you vote for in Russia, but they just, they don't, they stop reading the news, they check out. You know, they, they, they leave. I mean, that's, that and that's what the authoritarians want. That's the goal, you know, get people to stay home. You know, so the, the, the opposite, the thing that voters should do is make efforts to find out what's true and what's not. And I, you know, I concede, I agree with you that it's very difficult now. You know, people, people look for trusted sources. If the vice president's not one of them and Fox News isn't one of them, then what are they supposed to do? I mean, the answer is to try to understand what makes a good source. You know, is it. Is it a newspaper that fact checks? Is it somebody who has a background in the subject? Is it somebody whose record on telling the truth goes back a long way? Is it someone who, when they mistakes, makes mistakes, correct them? I mean, there's a. You know, there's a series of things you can do to ask whether the sources you're looking at are good. But, you know, most people either don't have the time for that or they don't care enough about it, you know, or they've checked out already. I mean, some large percentage of Americans don't get their news anymore from journalism. And by that, I mean any journalism, good journalism, bad journalism, Fox News or cnn, they just don't read any journalism. They get their information from, you know, vibes and entertainment shows, and, you know, they watch weightlifting shows, and the podcast guide says something about Trump or Biden or Vance or whatever. So a lot of people just don't get any information. And if you want to be a responsible citizen, you need to be informed. And I don't have a better solution than that. I mean, the reason why authoritarians do this, why do they lie? Why do they create their own media? Why do they try to destroy independent media? Why do they. Do they all do it? Why do they do it? They do it because it works. If you can get a sufficient number of people living in an alternate reality where the only things that are true are the things that Trump says, then they win, you know? You know, you know, Trump, you. You started this program by asking, you know, what is Trumpism? You know, is it just corruption? Is it authoritarian? You know, there. These are often the same thing. I mean, you can be corrupt if you live in a political system where no one holds you to account because there is no media and there are no government ethics offices, and the courts, you know, aren't able to hold you to account. And then you can steal a lot of money. I mean, there's a. There's an absolutely, you know, 100% compatibility between corruption and authoritarianism. So that's a, you know. You know, so the reason to do that is both to stay in power and to be able to steal down the road.

Sarah Longwell (26:18)

Obviously, I think it's a. It's a mixture of all three of the things that I was listing. Sort of we're in a, we're sliding into autocracy and kleptocracy, and those things can exist together. And also, he's an incompetent. He can also be an incompetent clown who makes things so bad that, that maybe people don't want him there. But it may be too late at that point. He may have consolidated so much power. But here's the thing. You mentioned the court. And so one of the things, and it is to this point, of trusted messengers. All right, so you think, okay, well, won't these Trump voters respect, like, if you tell them that the Supreme Court just ruled nine against Trump on the Abrego Garcia case, will they take that as valid? And let's listen to what they said. I don't even understand why they are.

Anne Applebaum (27:05)

Like, intervening with this. Honestly, it doesn't make any sense to me. Like, I don't even know why we're.

Sarah Longwell (27:11)

Wasting money on this stuff. I mean, we're spending a fortune on.

Anne Applebaum (27:16)

All of this, and it's like, the guy's a criminal.

Sarah Longwell (27:19)

What do you want? So I don't understand why they're trying.

Anne Applebaum (27:22)

To intervene with all this stuff or.

Sarah Longwell (27:23)

Why they're even involved. Honestly, I think the reason we have these branches for checks and balances, just to make sure one person doesn't take advantage of, like, their authority. And I think the way that Trump expects everyone to follow the law and he's doing the stuff so that he can help decrease the amount of people who might be doing things illegally, but he can't maybe kind of go against that himself and not take into account the Supreme Court's say. Like, he is enforcing all these things, trying to get people on track and to follow it. But that also goes for him as well. And I don't think that he should be taking advantage of that just to kind of get what he wants, even if it is for a good purpose.

Focus Group Participant (28:11)

No, it is a little bit disturbing. Like the, I guess the lack of administration, respect for the court system or the Supreme Court. So, you know, I mean, there's a reason that we have these, like, checks and balance system. And if we don't listen to the courts, you know, I think it just sets a bad precedent. And yes, it was this time it was not a great person. But they scooped him up because they saw his tattoo. I mean, there could be somebody who used to be a gang member and is now change their lives and come here legally, and can we scoop them up and send them away just because they have this tattoo? There needs to be more of a, a better process for this. I think it's a little bit scary that it happened in this country. The Supreme Court is, has the highest say. So to just ignore that, I think sets a bad precedent. I think if they disagree with it, I think you bring him back and then you can jail him and you can put him through the process the correct way. But I think, you know, just ignoring the Supreme Court should not be an option.

Focus Group Participant (29:17)

You turn to cnn, he's this great family guy. He turned to Fox, he's this criminal. So we don't know what is the truth. And that's the case of middle school sickness. Class says, we all have due process by the law. So I'm like, he does not deserve that. And then another question I was going to say too, is I really think everyone deserves, you know, due process, regardless of what we think.

Sarah Longwell (29:35)

Fox says that the Supreme Court said, you need to facilitate taking him back. Okay, I'll facilitate it. I'm not going to do anything. They didn't tell me to bring him back. They didn't say physically go there and.

Robert Draper (29:47)

Bring him back, facilitate it. And then you got CNN saying the complete opposite.

Sarah Longwell (29:52)

So the first couple days, I had no idea what was right or what.

Robert Draper (29:55)

What was the Supreme Court was saying. But it's just, who's spinning what?

Sarah Longwell (29:59)

Okay, so here's what was interesting to me about asking about the Supreme Court. So we had to raise it, and when we raised it, like, hey, you know, the Supreme Court said, I know he has to return this guy. Some people were like, hey, who cares what the Supreme Court says? Or I don't even know why they're getting involved in this. But there were a few other people when they heard it went, oh, yeah, he shouldn't ignore the Supreme Court. We are in this moment of a showdown between Trump and the Supreme Court. And whether or not this administration is going to listen to the Supreme Court when it comes to authoritarian countries. I guess I wonder how big of a moment you think it is when, or if Trump outright defies the Supreme Court.

Anne Applebaum (30:44)

A Supreme Court order, if he does, It's a huge moment. I mean, in American history, specifically, the role of the Supreme Court, which I think is actually, it's even different from in many other parts of the world, is something that you heard even those voters saying. It's something people remember from middle school. When you learn American history. Part of learning American history is learning various big Supreme Court cases. Brown v. Board of Education, Marbury, Madison. They're kind of part of the curriculum and the court in the United States, partly because of the political battles over it, is well known and its role is well understood in a way that, for example, the equivalent constitutional court in Poland, which was attacked some years back or was undermined, and there was a, there was a successful, actually attempt to pack the court that wasn't as well understood because the court just wasn't something people had ever talked about or thought about before. So I do think that that, first of all, not, I mean, absolutely refusing the court or refusing to obey a court order or court directive will be a really important and very major legal break. And it will cause, you know, a lot of, you know, an enormous ripple effect in the entire legal community and in the entire judicial community. The whole federal bench will know it. I mean, it will be a, it will be a major thing. I also think it is something that Americans will understand. Maybe not every single American will, you know, a lot of them have checked out or don't care or so on, but the, you know, that will be a thing that is a. Makes sense to them, you know, that this is a, you know, the court is supposed to have the last word and how, you know, and the President has always done what the court says. How come he's not doing it this time? So I think that would be a really important break. It seems to me that it's one of the reasons why Trump himself, I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong, but he does undermine courts and he insults judges and so on. But he also has said a couple of times, I'll always do what the Supreme Court says. I mean, he's, he, he's gone out of ways because I think he may instinctively understand that, that an open and outward break with the court would be a, would be a crisis for his administration and for how he's perceived. And, you know, I think that's also why they were playing this game with the word facilitate, because they were deciding that we're going to interpret it in a way that it doesn't mean what the judge meant it to mean, because that, you know, that's one way of getting around it. But they didn't want to say outright we're not going to obey it.

Sarah Longwell (33:16)

I think that's 100% right. I do think Trump is, is nervous about the idea of outright defying them in part because he nominated three of them and everybody knows he's got a 6:3 majority in terms of conservatives versus liberals on the Supreme Court. And, But I don't know if he's nervous about it, because it provokes a constitutional crisis. So much as if he gets them, if they, if they start to consistently rule against him, that's going to create, because there's, everything is being litigated now. So that would, that would create a lot of shutdowns. Even now, getting into this fight over the facilitate versus, you know, not. What does that word even mean to me, seems a little bit like a slap in their face. And, you know, they gave him a 7:2 ruling on the Venezuelans too. And so, like, he is now in a moment where he's going to have to decide whether he's going to abide by the Supreme Court or not. But anyway, you brought up, just because you brought up, you know, he's waging war against the law in general. We did ask these voters about sort of the punishment tour that Trump has been exacting on the law firms, like the, the executive orders against the law firms who are connected specifically to his political enemies. Right. He went and he signed orders pulling security clearances, limiting these lawyers contacts with the government and generally threatening their ability to do business. Some of the law firms are fighting these orders in court, but others immediately gave in and agreed to do a bunch of pro bono work on behalf of Trump and to make other concessions to him in exchange for Trump repealing the orders. So we asked about this, and what was interesting is most of them had not heard about the attacks on the law firms. So let's listen to what people said who had heard about it.

Heather Cox Richardson (35:03)

Well, I think it's being overblown because.

Sarah Longwell (35:07)

You know, when you think of everything.

Heather Cox Richardson (35:10)

That was done during the Biden administration to, you know, I won't say innocent.

Sarah Longwell (35:16)

People, because I don't think any of them are innocent people.

Heather Cox Richardson (35:20)

But oh, my gosh, you know, if.

Sarah Longwell (35:22)

I were Trump in the administration, I.

Heather Cox Richardson (35:24)

Wouldn'T want those people in or around or doing anything. I wouldn't want their hands in anything. Because look at everything that came out.

Sarah Longwell (35:32)

Like with, even with, you know, Director.

Heather Cox Richardson (35:34)

Comey, like he went in and, you.

Sarah Longwell (35:37)

Know, right after Trump was inaugurated the.

Heather Cox Richardson (35:40)

First time, because, you know, he knew that they didn't know the steps or whatever. And he could get something that normally he couldn't get. You know, if you knew better, like, there were so many dirty tricks and dirty things done. Not that I think Trump should be doing it or the administration, but I wouldn't want those people in my business and sticking their nose in things. God only knows what trouble they cause.

Sarah Longwell (36:04)

This is news to me, too. So still processing here, I would say.

Robert Draper (36:08)

But Think executive orders, they're.

Sarah Longwell (36:10)

It's just like a cheat code in general, just to get whatever you want. So it's interesting how they're utilized between administrations. Trump was getting back at the people that were going after him.

Robert Draper (36:24)

I. I can't remember exactly why those law firms were going against him, but.

Sarah Longwell (36:28)

Everyone'S spinning it that he's taking revenge.

Robert Draper (36:31)

On those law firms.

Sarah Longwell (36:33)

That's all I really heard.

Robert Draper (36:34)

I don't know, I forgot the specific.

Sarah Longwell (36:36)

Of why he was going after them.

Robert Draper (36:37)

If he thought he was mistreated and.

Sarah Longwell (36:40)

Even the way he was treated on his first term, he deserves some of it. And then the second term, the stuff that he's doing there, I think they're.

Robert Draper (36:47)

Kind of doing a lot of stuff.

Sarah Longwell (36:48)

To fight against him on everything, and I think him doing that as a.

Robert Draper (36:53)

Way of maybe trying to correct the.

Sarah Longwell (36:55)

System so they don't go after people in the future. Now, I know what you're talking about, and I think in total, there's like, maybe five that have agreed to do $125 million pro bono to kind of like, keep them from losing out on contracts and their ability to work. Like William said, it is good to get your payback, but he's the President of the United States. He really, like, come on, man, you proved your point. You didn't get sued. It's nice to get your lick back. But, like, when you're, like, in charge of the whole country, and I know he was saying that he was going to come after these people, I think that once he won the presidency, he approved his point. So in my opinion, I think it's just kind of like, like I said, I'm hoping the coast level stays, but it might drop back.

Focus Group Participant (37:39)

When the Biden administration took Trump's own clearance away shortly after, after, after he took over, I think that opened the door to a lot of ugly things. Right? And I think that it was downhill. And of that, in and of itself isn't enough to try and just counteract and do the same thing on the other side. However, with all of the lawfare and everything that happened subsequent to that, I think there is. I'm partially of a mind where now it's like, you know, if you're going to do this stuff, then it's going to come back and bite you again.

Sarah Longwell (38:03)

I wasn't as entrenched in this as I was the, the guy that got deported, but what he just said is perfect. Like, you know, and I know these guys did a lot of unethical things during the Biden administration. So, I mean, I can understand, you know, taking the security clearance, especially if they're not, you know, doing work in the government right now. Anyways, so you were talking before about the kind of apathy that runs through people or the. Or the way that sort of the authoritarianism can be built on that apathy. So, for example. Right. You know, yeah, sure, Russia's bad, but, you know, Ukraine's not that great either. There's also, though, this deflection that. And I hear this. We call it what about ism, Colloquially, from. From them. But it is, you know, that you can sort of defend the ruling party's corruption because of the real or perceived sins of the opposition. Is that something you see often in other countries to sort of justify this death spiral?

Anne Applebaum (39:04)

Yeah. I mean, I was struck by another thing, which is that almost, well, nobody said, oh, everybody has the right to a lawyer. You know, in other words, you know, of course. Of course lawyers represent other people. Of course they represent people who sue Trump and people who are sued by Trump and, you know, they've represented the Trump administration, the Biden. So that's what lawyers do. They're there to represent everybody. Not one person said that, you know, that that's the function of law in our society and that the president going after private law firms is undermining that principle. So that was very striking. I mean, that was kind of completely absent, you know. But, but, but, but your point about what about ism? I mean, this is, again, I mean, Putin's whole kind of modus operandi for the last two decades really has been just. I mean, he doesn't say it like this, but more or less, his argument to the Russian people has been, okay, I'm really corrupt, and our billionaires have stolen a lot of money, and they live a lot better than you do. But look how bad things are in Europe and look how terrible everything is in America, and look how degenerate and declining and sad those places are. Would you want to be over there? No. So you better just, you know, stick, you know, suck it up and live here, because it's not like there's anything better anywhere else. And that is a. You know, that's a way of whatever they've done that's evil or bad or what, you know, they. And this, of course, is something that they do, but it's a. It's also a way of, for voters who support them or for anybody who supports them, of saying, you know, of. Of explaining to themselves why I don't object. I mean, I actually have a friend who falls into this category who's, who became very worked up about Hunter Biden and so on and became very angry about her, the perceived bad doings of the Biden administration. And I gradually realized that in her case, it was because she wanted to support Trump for various reasons and she needed to explain to herself and to me why she was going to do it. I mean, I think her real reasons lay elsewhere. But it's a, yeah, of course, it's, it's, it's a tactic for justifying yourself. I mean, if you've, you know, if you, if you, if you are supporting something that's clearly bad. In the case of Trump, it's corruption. How do you make yourself. Everybody wants to feel like they're a good person. So they don't want to say I'm pro corruption. And so in order to justify it, they say, well, look how bad Biden was. And so that's a, that's classic. I mean, that's in, you know, everywhere.

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Robert Draper (42:40)

Honey, this is it. Shot clock winding down, trailing by two.

Focus Group Participant (42:45)

When you can't miss the last shot. And neither can he. Don't take slow for an answer.

Focus Group Participant (42:49)

If Esprello shoots, switch.

Sarah Longwell (42:52)

Good to see it, Charlie.

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Focus Group Participant (43:02)

What went through your head on the last shot?

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Sarah Longwell (43:10)

I think about how you deal with this all the time, just in terms of there were things that Biden did, including how he handled Hunter Biden, especially at the end, that I thought were really terrible and that I wouldn't have supported at all. But I also can't ever understand how somebody could sort of compare the two, because a lot of people do this, right? They're like, well, but the libs are worse. And I'm like, no, they're not. Like, just as a, I'm sorry, just as an objective matter, they're not. And like, what we are living through right now with Trump, there is not an analogous thing that the left has done or that Biden has done. Like, if you want to go cherry pick one bad thing that one Democrat said somewhere, but in terms of a, having a Democratic administration behave the way this administration, it's just absolutely untrue. But not only do voters believe it, but a lot of elites, because it's interesting you talk about your friend. This is where I live in terms of the people I know, the, the people that I used to run around with in sort of conservative circles where they, nothing that Trump can, does on this front makes them say, like, oh, yeah, you know what? Literally any Democrat like Kamala Harris would have been just fine. She would not be doing this right now.

Anne Applebaum (44:30)

There's also another thing that happens which is that once people have made a morally wrong choice, I mean, once they've chosen corruption or they've chosen authoritarianism, once they've made that decision, you know, and for thinking people, it was often a pretty big decision. You know, they had to, they had to absorb a lot of information and reject it or justify it or something. It's, I find that it's pretty rare for them to change their minds.

Sarah Longwell (44:56)

It's a sunk cost.

Anne Applebaum (44:57)

It's a sunk cost. And then they have to defend it.

Sarah Longwell (45:00)

Right?

Anne Applebaum (45:00)

You know, and to defend it, and they will, you know, you know, read Bill Ackman's Twitter feed, you know what, you know, to defend it, they will have to contort themselves in various directions. They'll have to say, you know, this is okay because of that, they'll have to find a reason. You know, I, I there, there are just amazingly few, particularly, I mean, the more intelligent and the better informed and better educated the Trump supporter is, it seems to me, the less likely that they'll, they'll, they'll back down because the more they've put into it and the more they're going to need to find explanations for why it's good. I mean, actually, funny enough, I would think it's more, the less informed voters for whom this matters less, you know, for whom it was not such a big decision. They're the ones who might say, well, I don't like the fact that he's done these tariffs and screwed up the economy and they might switch sides. But, yes, but, but the, but the better educated voters, I think they made a choice and they're going to stick with it. I mean, we'll see. But that would be my guess.

Sarah Longwell (45:58)

Yeah. You know, it's funny, I would love to not know what Bill Ackman thinks about anything, but the Elon algorithm feeds him to me constantly, so I do see him. But, you know, here's another really good example of what we're talking about for these thinking people. Donald Trump is now talking about, like they've frozen Harvard's federal funding and they're talking about revoking their 501 C3 tax exempt status. This is an interesting one for me because I remember and immediately went and just like dug up 100 clips of Marco Rubio and JD Vance and every Republican talking about how it was literally the end of America if you could target people based on their politics or what they thought and go after their tax exempt status. Because of course, they accused the Obama administration's IRS of doing this to some of the Tea Party groups. And so, and I, you know, I remember not being able to conclusively know at the time whether or not they had actually definitely done it. But I certainly thought if they had done it, people should be punished for that. That was like a really bad thing and you shouldn't do it. And Republicans believed that right up until the point that Trump said he was going to go after Harvard. So we asked these voters about it and let's listen to what they said. I get where they're coming from and why they're wanting to do that, but there's a lot of things that Harvard does when it comes to research, especially with medicine. That funding is really critical. And having that tax exempt status helps them be able to invest more in research and studies and things like that. So I get what they're trying to do. And I don't necessarily agree with what Harvard is doing, but at the same time, I don't agree with pulling all their funding and pulling their tax exemption status. Harvard has $60 billion in assets sitting off to the side in cash. Why we're subsidizing that school in the first place, I don't get it. You know, tax exempt status is where they're, they're funneling all this money through their foundations and things, through other ways. I don't think they need the money. I think they're. Well, here we are paying off people's tuitions and then we're giving the colleges money. I mean, where does it all end? I mean, there are for profit companies. They should be paying taxes.

Heather Cox Richardson (48:19)

I think that if you want to continue getting money from the government, then.

Sarah Longwell (48:24)

You should be following their specifications.

Heather Cox Richardson (48:28)

If you don't want to, that's great. Don't take the money, go off on your own.

Sarah Longwell (48:33)

That's my way of thinking. Whether it's Harvard, Columbia, whether it's a state, you know, no matter who it is, I think everyone should be treated fairly.

Heather Cox Richardson (48:42)

And I think the administration and the staff at any college should certainly not be promoting ill will against any ethnic group, period. Any nationality.

Focus Group Participant (48:56)

And we saw that testimony during the campus riots where they couldn't even, they couldn't even say when if it would be a bad thing to have anti Semitic behavior happening on their campus. They just couldn't, couldn't say that that was a bad thing. Just flat outright. It depends on the context and I don't think so. So I think it shows the shift and I think it's, it's only fair that if, you know, you don't have a fair feel for everybody, then then really you don't need to be taking government money.

Focus Group Participant (49:19)

The amount of money some of these universities are getting from the government is insane and seems, you know, ridiculous with, you know, the amount of money they're charging, tuition, whatnot. But as far as auditing the viewpoints, I'm kind of torn on this because I do see where, especially with the going on recently, there's a lot of Jewish students are even afraid to be on campus and some of these more. And a lot of universities tend to be more liberal. Like Julie said, it's like that's the environment a lot of time in higher education. But alternatively, I do think, you know, we have free speech, we have the right to feel how, you know, we feel and make up our own minds. So auditing to make sure that there's people that, you know, have a diverse. I don't know when we have a government who's saying DEI is not right and fair and we can't hire whatever or certain people because of their, you know, their gender or their sex or whatever, but then we have to audit and make sure, you have a viewpoint variation seems a little backwards to me.

Focus Group Participant (50:20)

I think that comes from the viewpoint being tilted too far in one direction and not in the other. I think that what we tend to overlook how the shift has happened. I think what it's almost 70% of all university faculty say that they lean liberal, with the 30% being. And only in STEM, where all the other disciplines are, are on the other side. I think that the fact is that when we, when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, we tend to not apply that to different thoughts.

Sarah Longwell (50:47)

So a surprising number of the people in the focus groups had heard about the Harvard stuff for whatever reason. But when we've talked about the various ways Trump is punishing his enemies, we just heard that people kind of flatten it into, well, that's the other side did to him last time, especially with the law firms. But you've drawn a parallel between Trump and Orban, Viktor Orban in Hungary, who's also made academia a major target. Tease those parallels out for us. In light of what we've seen for.

Anne Applebaum (51:17)

The last couple months, what Orban understood was that academia could be made unpopular because these are smart, clever people. They were the people who were annoying in school and they got A's. And if you're from a provincial part, if you're from a provincial town, they probably left your town and went to a bigger one to go to university, and then they didn't come back. And there's a. They don't. They, they, they, our universities in particular have done a really bad job of explaining themselves to ordinary Americans and explaining what it is that they do. Why do they need this money? What do they use it for? Of course, most of it is for scientific research. It has nothing to do with DEI or the history department or the English department doesn't need billions of dollars of government money, but actually biomedical research does. And they've done a poor job of excelling that and explaining it. I hope they have worked out now that that's something that they need to do. But as I said, going back to Orban, he understood that they were a useful target and that they were, you know that when you, because what authoritarians do is they look at each issue and they say, can. If we, we want to divide people, we want to polarize them, but we want to polarize them in such a way that the majority are on our side. And so if you. So every issue that Trump picks, whether it's immigration or whether it's universities, it's over an issue that they reckon they have the majority. So the larger number of people probably don't like Harvard or don't like universities. And so we can attack universities, and of course there'll be resistance, but the majority are with us. And I'm guessing that, I mean, that was the decision that Orban made, and I'm guessing that's the decision that that Trump administration is making, too. There is another thing going on which also, in both cases, both in Hungary and in the US the leaders around Orban, and also some of the people around Trump have understood that they're most, you know, that what they're really at war with, they're at war with education, they're at war with knowledge, they're at war with the kinds of things, things that universities do and teach people, quite apart from politics, just critical thinking. And so they've understood that if they can undermine those institutions and I think, preferably replace them with new ones, I mean, with, you know, ideally what they would have liked to do. And that was what that letter to Harvard said. You know, they'd like to decide who was on the faculty and decide what courses are taught. If they can do that, then over the long term, they can make Americans more malleable and more likely to go along with what they want. I mean, I think there's a. There's a. There's an aspect of real cultural revolution in, in their thinking, you know, that they want to change the culture, they want to alter the nature of America, they want to change who. Who are the elites. They want to have, you know, alter that forever. And that requires getting rid of the professoriate, which, by the way, is not just what Orban did, it's what, you know, Mao did in China. Except that Mao used violence and he sent the professors to concentration camps in Mongolia. And presumably we're not going to get to that. But. But the instinct and the impulse is the same. You know, we want a revolution. We need to replace the elites, you know, carry out the march through the institutions. As Gram, she said, you know, this is a.

Sarah Longwell (54:32)

It's.

Anne Applebaum (54:32)

I mean, it's actually a Bolshevik idea, too. It's a communist idea. We need to transform society. And so we need to get rid of people who know things, things and people who are educated in the old system. I don't know whether they can achieve that. Probably not. But in trying to do so, they can do a lot of damage.

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Sarah Longwell (55:51)

Shot clock winding down, trailing by two.

Focus Group Participant (55:54)

When you can't miss the last shot and neither can he. Don't take slow for an answer.

Robert Draper (56:02)

Good to see you Charlie.

Focus Group Participant (56:03)

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Focus Group Participant (56:11)

What went through your head on the last shot?

Focus Group Participant (56:13)

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Sarah Longwell (56:19)

Finally, we asked these voters about Trump's revenge tour more broadly, whether this administration wants to treat its opponents fairly like we asked people, do you think they want to? And there were plenty of people in the group who were clear eyed about this administration not wanting to treat his enemies fairly. Then there were others who think he is just evening the score. So let's listen to people to how people talked about revenge. It's retaliatory, I guess a little bit because they didn't treat Trump right. But I was worried that he was going to do stuff, something like that and, and I don't agree with it, but I don't have to agree with everything.

Focus Group Participant (56:55)

I'm of two minds of this kind of thing. But I think at some point the tables turned and then it'll kind of come back to middle.

Focus Group Participant (57:02)

He turned on people pretty quickly in his first administration that were really close to him. If you defy him and it gets a little bit scary that I feel like a lot of time and effort in our government is spent on retaliating on our opponents I mean, and it goes both ways. It's like the first term of Trump. The whole time all the Democrats were worried about was trying to impeach him and trying to, you know, show that he was corrupt or he had some issue, issue with the Russians and, you know, and, and then all the efforts to pursue convictions against him, you know, so that he couldn't run again. And it's just. And so, you know, I feel like he's kind of doing the same backwards. So I don't know, it just seems kind of like a waste of resources to me.

Heather Cox Richardson (57:41)

I don't think that any administration is.

Focus Group Participant (57:44)

Fair with their political opponents, which is.

Heather Cox Richardson (57:46)

Like what has driven thing.

Sarah Longwell (57:48)

It's escalated over time to get where.

Robert Draper (57:50)

It is now, which is why there's such a deep divide on everything, because it's always retaliatory and tit for tat.

Focus Group Participant (57:56)

Every single time with social media and everything. I think these things come to the forefront. We see them more so than we did in the past, but I think it's always happened. To Drew's point, it's always happened. We just haven't been privy to it as much as we are now.

Sarah Longwell (58:07)

He doesn't seem to have a tolerance for anything that goes against him. And sometimes it seems like he refuses to listen to the other side. A lot of the times he's right about the things he believes in and what he wants to get done. But the way that he goes about it or just anyone goes about it, I feel like, because the country's so divided and will never have a candidate that pleases most people, you know, his lawsuits he's been convicted of and been charged with.

Robert Draper (58:41)

I think it's only natural to hold.

Sarah Longwell (58:43)

Resentments for all that and to, I.

Focus Group Participant (58:47)

Don'T know if I'd use the word.

Sarah Longwell (58:48)

Punish my enemies, but, you know, make sure that they couldn't do it to them again. But I'm kind of torn. I mean, I don't hate Donald Trump, but I'm not as big a fan either.

Focus Group Participant (59:02)

I just, this is really why I.

Robert Draper (59:04)

Try to steer clear of politics, because it's so complicated for me to put my, how I feel into it, into words.

Sarah Longwell (59:11)

I think the way what approaches things may make him seem like he is more vindictive than he is, because with him he's always, I mean, you know, what's going through his mind. I mean, he's got to come out of his mouth. It's like a five year old kid, you know, it's got to come out. And so if he's going after somebody, they know it. Whereas I think previous presidents, maybe they're more under the table type, getting back or getting even.

Focus Group Participant (59:41)

As someone said earlier, Trump is going to be Trump. We all kind of knew that going in. So I kind of prepared myself. The guy was like, it's going to be a revenge to or anybody that made him mad. He is going to get his lick back, so to speak. So it doesn't help that we elected a lame duck president so he does not have to earn our vote again. So he's really going to run a book. So Trump being Trump, I knew he was going to go for revenge.

Sarah Longwell (60:02)

Okay, so I'm going to end us kind of where we began. Which is one of the things that's interesting to me as I listen to voters, not just these groups, but all of them. And these are swing voters. I mean, these are people who voted for Biden last time and Trump this time. They don't care. They do not think we are in an existential crisis. They don't use words like authoritarianism. They think we're in a politics as usual. Tit for tat. Dems do it, Trump does it. But maybe Trump's a little more overt about it. So to end in terms of where we are in the progression, you say it started 10 years ago, but where are we now? 100 days in, Trump's move fast and has broken a lot of things in the, in the first hundred days, issued a lot of executive orders. He's going after the law firms, he's going after judges. Like, on a scale of one to Orban, where are we?

Anne Applebaum (61:03)

It's funny because we are moving faster than Orban did in some ways. I mean, Orban never had teams of people who went into government ministries and changed the, you know, got into the computer systems and, you know, reoriented programs. He never actually went after law firms in the way that this has happened. I mean, there are a lot of things that Trump is doing in a full frontal way. You know, the, you know, in your face are things that Orban did over many years and very slowly. But I think your point that people don't recognize it because they're already used to this level of political chaos and they're already used to the way that Trump talks, and they're already used to the lying and the fact that they don't know anything. I mean, I think that puts us pretty far along. I mean, I don't know what number we are, you know, six, seven. I mean, but, but the, you know, the fact that people are already prepared to accept stuff that would have shocked them a decade ago because of everything that's happened over the last, you know, in the last several years. You know, I think that's, I think that's, that's already, that's already an authoritarian sign.

Sarah Longwell (62:13)

I think that is both true and also it remains difficult to absorb. But, man, having done focus groups now for a lot of years straight, I have watched people normalize this, people who would have. And I'll tell you, sometimes we get repeat people. And there was one in this group who we saw way back during, you know, before the last election. And you watch people change. You watch people get used to it. You watch them become accustomed to it. And they are not as shocked now as they were back in 2017, 2018, when I was talking to them about what was going on. All right. And Apple Bomb, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening to the focus group podcast. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the Bulwark on YouTube and become a Bulwark plus member at the Bulwark.com and we will see you next week. Bye. All right, now I'm going to bring you my conversation with Heather Cox Richardson. This show was a real fan favorite. We did this one back in June around the time of the first no Kings protest. So we talked to Democrats who'd gone to those protests. It was also our last show before we went on a bit of a summer hiatus. So I wanted to play some of the voices of dejected Democrats which I've been listening to all year. That is how Democrats have sounded until sort of just recently. And Heather had a lot to say about how the American experiment can endure from here, even if it sometimes feels like it won't. And I think this conversation with really bucked a lot of people up and I think you're going to enjoy relistening to it. Now, this show is sponsored by One Skin. If you're like me, your skin needs a little extra care this time of year. Between colder weather and the rush of the holidays, it is easy for your skin to feel dry, dull or stressed. I know I get that itchy, you know, dry skin feeling. And that's why I've been sticking with One Skin. You know how much I love OS One Face. And it's been so great to have my daily routine continue to deliver the powerful skin care and longevity benefits and that I cannot live without during this busy season. At the core is their patented OS1 peptide, the first ingredient proven to target senescent cells, the root cause of wrinkles, creepiness and loss of elasticity, all key signs of skin aging and these results have now been validated in five different clinical studies. One Skin also just launched their limited edition holiday sets, including the Nightly Rewind Gift set, which adds the picture perfect touch of luxury to your gift list. It's the ultimate upgrade to any nightly ritual, featuring their bestselling face moisturizer, their brand new peptide lip mask and a sculpting Gua Sha tool. Each element is designed to work together as your body enters its natural nightly repair mode, helping renew skin at the cellular level for a stronger, smoother and more youthful looking complexion. For a limited time, try one skin for 15% off using code the focus group at OneSkin Co TheFocusGroup. Don't forget the the after you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. 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 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, you know, 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 Letters from an American, which I love. Heather, thanks for being here.

Heather Cox Richardson (66:36)

Oh, it's going to be such fun.

Sarah Longwell (66:37)

It is going to be such fun because I am a huge admirer of yours and I believe I have found for myself and I talk about this with JVL sometimes that 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, it's a place where I go to say, okay, how did they get through that? And, like, look at the things that changed, and look how it allowed us to move forward in certain ways. And so I just. I feel like history can be a place, 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. Is it? What do you think?

Heather Cox Richardson (67:29)

I think that's right.

Anne Applebaum (67:30)

But.

Heather Cox Richardson (67:30)

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 do things stupidly, and, you know, it's never a straight line. But when we work together, we generally manage to create a better country. And that, you know, 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. You know, they wake up and they say, oh, I'm exhausted. I got to get to work. And, you know, but somewhere along the line, they do the next right thing. And if enough people do the next right thing, they change the world.

Sarah Longwell (68:12)

This is the kind of optimism that I feel like is gonna. Is gonna fortify people when it. When they're finding it difficult to live without this show on Saturday mornings for a few weeks. So I just. Actually, I'm gonna set this up because 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 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?

Heather Cox Richardson (68:59)

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. That's true. And you listed some of the things. You know what? We have agents, apparently 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. 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 going to 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. You know, I'm alive. And as long as those two things are true, I can anyway, continue to speak up.

Sarah Longwell (71:20)

Yeah, love that. Okay, so we've heard Democrats, which are, you know, 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 just 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, 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. History tends to, it doesn't repeat itself. 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. And so I was afraid of this since November and here we are and I fear that it will get worse. But yeah, he was always going to use the National Guard in some way.

Heather Cox Richardson (72:38)

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.

Anne Applebaum (72:52)

Can push this with voter suppression in.

Heather Cox Richardson (72:55)

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.

Anne Applebaum (73:27)

He feels like suppressing. So it's a playbook for the future.

Sarah Longwell (73:31)

I'm not surprised that he's like pushing the boundaries of what a US President can do and what public opinion might dictate. But did I very specifically think that he would do this? No.

Robert Draper (73:45)

There's a quote by Santa Mayar, those.

Sarah Longwell (73:47)

That do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it. So he's doing tactics that are similar to 1930s Germany with Jews, with oppressing.

Robert Draper (74:03)

People and a dictatorship.

Sarah Longwell (74:06)

And I may be overstepping by saying.

Robert Draper (74:08)

That, but military parades, that's what they.

Sarah Longwell (74:12)

Do in North Korea. They do that in China.

Robert Draper (74:15)

We don't do that here. All the opinion pieces and projections that.

Focus Group Participant (74:19)

I've heard, it's a push for authoritarian rule. You can silence the newspapers, the media.

Robert Draper (74:24)

Anybody watching things if you can get.

Sarah Longwell (74:26)

People comfortable with the military being in cities. You know, if he could have used.

Robert Draper (74:30)

The military to guard dropboxes during the.

Focus Group Participant (74:33)

Presidential election, he would have done that as well.

Robert Draper (74:35)

Any excuse you can get to put.

Sarah Longwell (74:37)

Militaries in cities and increase the funding.

Focus Group Participant (74:41)

It's just a play towards authoritarianism.

Anne Applebaum (74:43)

Donald Trump said that criticizing him is treason and that journalists should be executed for that.

Sarah Longwell (74:49)

Treason. I think what we saw today is.

Anne Applebaum (74:52)

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.

Sarah Longwell (75:02)

Our First Amendment right, that's what I'm talking about. And where is it?

Anne Applebaum (75:06)

The Constitution has been just trampled all over. And what's happening in California when you.

Sarah Longwell (75:12)

Look back on January 6th and what.

Anne Applebaum (75:14)

Happened there, how dare you put in a military presence. It's just so hypocritical and so concerning and I just can't believe that that monster has access to the military and that they're listening to him.

Sarah Longwell (75:28)

So far he is following Hitler's playbook. I'm not saying he's, he's sending millions.

Robert Draper (75:32)

Of people to the gas chamber.

Sarah Longwell (75:33)

I didn't say that.

Anne Applebaum (75:35)

But he is following his playbook.

Focus Group Participant (75:37)

He's charismatic, he's reeling people in and he's swift, concentrated and offensive.

Robert Draper (75:43)

And remember, everybody loved Hitler the first year or two.

Sarah Longwell (75:45)

Okay? So I would say that is not, it's not unusual for Democrats to invoke Hitler to talk in, you know, 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 book books and will really matter. So what about the current moment? Do you think people are overreacting or under reacting to. And then I guess I'm interested in 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, from Democratic voters, I.

Heather Cox Richardson (76:46)

Don'T think they're wrong. 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 or 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 sort of demonstrate how somebody like Voldemort can get a lot of people to gather around him. So it may 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 is also, or are also within that real movements to push back against the extremes of this administration and to force it to multitude 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. Like, 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 it 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. But Goldwater's people simply started organizing at the local level and organizing in small groups outside of the public 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 of range 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.

Sarah Longwell (81:19)

Oh boy, are you singing my song?

Heather Cox Richardson (81:22)

Doesn't it. It just, it just, you know, the holidays are expensive.

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Robert Draper (82:27)

Honey, this is it.

Sarah Longwell (82:29)

Shot clock winding down, trailing by two.

Focus Group Participant (82:31)

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Robert Draper (82:39)

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Focus Group Participant (82:48)

What went through your head on the last shot?

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Sarah Longwell (82:56)

Well, actually, since, you know, 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, 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 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 not all of them, and they have been reining him in. And I actually think they bristle at the way Donald Trump is constantly, constantly sort of arguing in court. This is out of your domain. Like, this isn't for you to decide. But like, 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 like, that's not how the balance of power is supposed to work. That is not the checks and balances. And so I guess, have you. Is there another moment in history in which the tension that existed or was meant to exist, where the system was constructed for the ambition to counteract ambition, where that collapsed the way that it is right now?

Heather Cox Richardson (84:13)

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 in the, you know, as early as, 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 begun to put party. Not begun, 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 going to vote to convict you. You got to 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 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 the 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, 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 Vote 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 going to be able to come to command maga. And one of the things that I 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.

Sarah Longwell (88:12)

Well, this is, I mean, to me, this is what's unique about this moment among Republicans is I have watched like what 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 a, he is sort of doing these now very impotent kind of 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 just people, 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 there's no better example. 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. They'll give you, they'll let you be speaker if you get there, like negotiate with them, do something, because otherwise the rest of these Republicans have decided that their power emanates from Trump. Same with Mike Johnson. Right. And so without Trump, they, they feel like they don't have power, even though that is structurally untrue. But that's what they've decided.

Heather Cox Richardson (89:59)

Well, I think Johnson is looking to the days after Trump is no longer president and hoping that he's going to be able to, to pick up the mega 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 going to 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, you know, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, this because it's not going to show up for a while, but last night 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, over the state legislatures and they take 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, 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. They're, you know, 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. 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 thing last night and I thought, but 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. And I, you know, I don't know either one of them personally, but I wonder if they're just saying, I'm gonna keep my powder dry for you know, 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.

Sarah Longwell (92:58)

Well, I do know them personally. And I guess 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. Publicly, so there's nothing. 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 the, the reason. And I think that Liz Cheney, you may be very well correct this. I have no sense of. I think you're 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 is not quite at home in this Republican Party with these voters. Not just with her colleagues, but like, the voters see Liz Cheney, they view her. Not with, not with somebody who's out of step policy wise, but they view her with enmity, Enmity. You know, like, they, they, they don't like her because they view her like, 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.

Heather Cox Richardson (94:13)

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 that, you know, it just feels like we're in that kind of a moment.

Sarah Longwell (94:52)

And.

Heather Cox Richardson (94:55)

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, in that electoral mess.

Sarah Longwell (95:32)

Yes.

Focus Group Participant (95:33)

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Robert Draper (96:36)

Shot clock winding down, trailing by two.

Focus Group Participant (96:38)

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Focus Group Participant (96:55)

What went through your head on the last shot?

Focus Group Participant (96:57)

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Sarah Longwell (97:03)

Well, there's 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're not 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 his is the big tent that currently comprises the Republican coalition. And so when he goes away, what are they like when their platform 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. They still now the party has changed so much and I agree with you. Like, there's been so much, I don't know, I guess political recalculation 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, it was. 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. 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. Okay, hold on. Now we really have derailed ourselves, and I've got to get back on track. So you brought up before that group we just listened to took place before Trump's military parade, and so. And before the no Kings protests 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, you know, 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.

Focus Group Participant (99:12)

Sounded like with this particular protest. I went because I've gotten so frustrated with the current president and his, you know, boldness about celebrating his birthday and this military celebration and just kind of blowing us off. And so that sort of empowered me to say, you know what? I got to get out there and support no Kings. And here in Cleveland, we have a very active group of people who are, like, into, like, engaging in protests and things like that.

Heather Cox Richardson (99:44)

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 thought 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.

Sarah Longwell (100:43)

My parents were Holocaust survivors, so. And I'm, 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, you could easily be, 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.

Focus Group Participant (101:32)

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 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.

Sarah Longwell (102:00)

If you look at the groundswell that evolved and developed around the Vietnam War.

Heather Cox Richardson (102:04)

And Nixon, the will of the people.

Sarah Longwell (102:07)

Really ultimately was pretty effective. And I think if we can keep this, again, momentum up and even build.

Heather Cox Richardson (102:13)

It, I think the will of the.

Robert Draper (102:15)

People can be, can be very effective. The 2026 elections, you know, I think.

Heather Cox Richardson (102:21)

A lot of the GOP politicians who.

Sarah Longwell (102:23)

Were so cowardly now, I think potentially they're on thin ice, they're not holding town halls, etc.

Heather Cox Richardson (102:30)

Etc.

Robert Draper (102:30)

So in that respect, I'm still hoping helpful.

Sarah Longwell (102:33)

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 like people because it. Or people who were vocal, but it wasn't really average citizens that sort of felt 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. So I guess my question for you would be, 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?

Heather Cox Richardson (103:45)

Certainly, we've done this before, and certainly people have put their lives on the line. And it's important, 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, you know, 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. They just. 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 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, it's more likely that more of them were sold. 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, but when you see that, but 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 going to be there. The National Weather Service, you know, the Social Security offices, the things that, you know, when the Republicans were saying, oh, you know, 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 minute, you cut 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 and a similar, which by the way, also included the church 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 or mechanics in American democracy, and they start to use that as a lens for what they want out of their government. 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 me to do, 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 Senate speeches he gives or 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, you know, the really 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 of 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.

Sarah Longwell (109:52)

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. And meeting Conservatism Incorporated. 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 original around Supreme Court philosophies. And of course, to watch them abandon it so thoroughly for Trump. It does require some Republicans, I think, to really rediscover their commitment to those founding documents.

Heather Cox Richardson (110:45)

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 protect 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 board 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. I mean, we're looking at AI, we're looking at climate change, we're looking at disease, we're looking at all migration and all the things that the 21st century is bringing to us. How does democracy incorporate those things? Well, 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 that and I think, you know, you look at this, 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.

Sarah Longwell (113:01)

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. I felt it was a national catharsis that people in 100 or 200 or.

Robert Draper (113:25)

400 cities in this country took to.

Sarah Longwell (113:28)

The streets to say, I don't like what's going on.

Robert Draper (113:32)

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.

Sarah Longwell (114:02)

Focus group said, you know what? I'm taking to the streets to say.

Robert Draper (114:07)

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.

Sarah Longwell (114:15)

I went not only because of the birthday thing, but just because I marched 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.

Heather Cox Richardson (114:30)

Want to be able to see, say.

Sarah Longwell (114:31)

I participated, I played a part, and I was there.

Robert Draper (114:34)

I was here in Philadelphia.

Sarah Longwell (114:35)

It was a very big event, and.

Robert Draper (114:39)

I wanted to act, I wanted to do something. I wanted to see and be seen and to get my voice out there.

Sarah Longwell (114:44)

But I was also encouraged by the.

Heather Cox Richardson (114:47)

Fact that it was a nationwide event.

Sarah Longwell (114:49)

And that it was very large.

Robert Draper (114:51)

I think it's a good start.

Sarah Longwell (114:52)

I think it needs to swell and continue and get larger, actually, you know.

Robert Draper (114:58)

Whether Trump liked it or not, I.

Heather Cox Richardson (115:00)

Think it caught his attention and also.

Robert Draper (115:02)

That it was peaceful.

Heather Cox Richardson (115:03)

I think that's a huge thing.

Sarah Longwell (115:05)

So I really wanted 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 been seeing a lot of. It takes three and a half percent of the population to really start to move an issue. And the protest counts across not only the US but across the world. Blew that number away of 3.5% of the US voting population, which does give me a little hope that there's enough muscle growing behind this movement. 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 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, agree with this administration. As far as Trump, I mean, he saw, but he doesn't care. So what is 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. And I do think even if these mass crowds can't change policy, they give Democrats, I hope, an understanding that we've got their back.

Heather Cox Richardson (117:15)

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.

Sarah Longwell (117:40)

This, that we are never going to.

Heather Cox Richardson (117:43)

Agree with these kind of policies or this behavior.

Sarah Longwell (117:46)

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, like, what can history teach us about how we fight back in this moment in the United States?

Heather Cox Richardson (118:02)

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 in the voting Rights act, we had what was essentially what, what Zeiblatt calls competitive authoritarianism. That is, they held elections, but everybody knew who was going to win. And there was no equality before the law. Not only for black Americans who were, you know, in, 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. You know, you, you, it was up to whoever was, was on the good side of the sheriff. So we have done this before. And the civil rights movement 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 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 nation, 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 that, 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 sweeps the district of 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 1850, 59, 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 people. 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 all races, all genders, all abilities, all religions, and get it righter this time.

Sarah Longwell (123:33)

Get it righter. I love that. More perfect. Maybe someone might say, you might. Okay, that was great. I got some chills. All right, so I want to close now. I'm going to. I'm going to 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 sound like, what it sounded like, and then talk about it with you on the other side. So let's listen. I'm usually not one like to believe in conspiracy theories, so at first I figured like, you know, it 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.

Heather Cox Richardson (124:45)

I also try not to believe in.

Sarah Longwell (124:46)

Conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to things like this.

Heather Cox Richardson (124:49)

But I think that Trump is very shady, and I think he'll do whatever he needs to do to make something happen.

Sarah Longwell (124:55)

And from the way like, that things.

Heather Cox Richardson (124:57)

Were going, like, especially with the ballots and all the counting and stuff, I really don't think we got, like, the full story.

Focus Group Participant (125:03)

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. 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. Oh, he won. Let's move on.

Sarah Longwell (125:20)

Boom.

Focus Group Participant (125:21)

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 there's, you know, Camelot, parents getting zero votes in one county or two counties. It just doesn't make sense.

Robert Draper (125:31)

I think I just saw something on.

Focus Group Participant (125:33)

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.

Sarah Longwell (125:47)

I'm kind of on the fence because, I mean, I'm so tired of hearing about him talking about the fact that if the 2020 election was still and there's been no proof, I feel that.

Robert Draper (125:55)

Way, but, I mean, I want to.

Sarah Longwell (125:56)

See evidence, you know, I mean, because I don't want to be, like a.

Robert Draper (125:59)

Sore loser, you know what I mean?

Sarah Longwell (126:00)

Like, so she may have lost, right? You know, rightfully so. I mean, they had big hurdles to overcome with inflation. She may have lost, but it just. Something seems suspect to me.

Focus Group Participant (126:08)

And it wouldn't surprise me if you.

Robert Draper (126:10)

Got help from the Russians or some.

Sarah Longwell (126:12)

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, just to be blunt with just a bunch of pussies, you know, makes me mad because we.

Ad (126:45)

Just don't stand up.

Sarah Longwell (126:46)

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. If you pull it out of the box, it was a snake. It's still going to be a snake. So I feel like he's gotten away with too much, and he knows how to get away with it. So at this point, he's, like, advanced, just doing stuff under everybody's noses. It's going to be hard to catch him on TikTok. And being on TikTok, I'm feeling very hopeful because there's a 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 that we might have some hope.

Robert Draper (127:30)

What are you hearing there that has you hopeful?

Sarah Longwell (127:32)

That in Rockland county, they are uncovering a lot of voter 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 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. And I don't hear any of this on the mainstream media, but all over TikTok, 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. 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. It is like it is. And it's been there since the election, and it's. It hasn't quite gone away. Like, if you. If you ask people, 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? Like, I heard it on one of those two places, or somebody. Somebody saying, it's all over Tik Tok 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, how do we, how do we help Americans? Like one of 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?

Heather Cox Richardson (129:49)

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, you know, people are starving for. My brother's an educator and he always says, you know, 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. And I see more and more emphasis on people. You know, one of the things about those focus groups that you just played in the course of this, 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 where people, 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. The bulwark has rocketed to popularity because you guys actually provide content. And I think the same is TR 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 decisions, 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.

Sarah Longwell (132:50)

Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for 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. Go subscribe to the Bulwark on YouTube, become a Bulwark plus member at the Bulwark.com and I will see you all soon. Bye bye. This last show is a conversation I had with Robert Draper of the New York Times just a month and a half ago. He is very deeply sourced on the right and we focused on what I've started calling the MAGA versus America first schism going on in the Republican Party. It was around the time Marjorie Taylor Greene was making a lot of noise but before she had resigned from Congress. So we heard from a lot of voters on her and talked about the rise of anti Semitism on the right which has really reared its head as Candace Owens has made herself the right wing infotainment main character over the last couple of months. Enjoy this one guys. We will see you in 2026 for for even more focus group content. Can't wait to catch you on the other side. I think 2026 is going to be a good year. What if sports were traded like markets? Now you can put your sports IQ to work in real time. With Robinhood Prediction Markets. It's not you against the House. It's you participating in a live market. You can buy or sell your positions live all game long. Use your sports knowledge in the moments that matter. Robinhood Prediction Markets changes the game. It's people moving the action so when momentum shifts, you can move with it. I always knew the game but never had a dynamic way to apply that knowledge. Now I can actually take part live in a market powered by people. You are no longer just a spectator. Play by play, you decide. Trade every play with Robinhood now available across the U.S. download the Robinhood app now to begin futures and Cleared swaps trading involve a significant risk and is not appropriate for everyone. Event contracts are offered by Robin Hood Derivatives, llc, a registered Futures Commission merchant and swap firm. Hello everyone and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark and this week we're covering some of the internal divisions that are surfacing within the Republican Party and the MAGA movement, movement more generally. Now, these are not the kinds of divisions we saw during Trump 1.0 where there was a cabal of secret adults who were willing to vent to reporters behind the scenes but weren't willing to speak out. Those characters have largely self deported from today's Republican Party. These days the internal dissension is coming from, should we call them the crazier Republicans? I'm going to go ahead and do that. The crazier Republicans, if they even are Republicans in any sense of the word. So we talked to some Republican voters about some of the big disagreements going on, from Trump running for a third term to the filibuster to the mainstreaming of anti Semitism on the right and the recent Tucker Carlson Nick Fuentes debacle. Everyone you're going to hear from today voted for Trump in 2020 and in 2024. But there are some tensions that they're wrestling with below the surface. My guest today is Robert Draper, staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of Weapons of Mass Delusion when the Republican Party Lost Its Mind. Hey, Robert.

Robert Draper (136:16)

Hey there, Sarah.

Sarah Longwell (136:18)

So tell me this just as a level set, because you've written a lot about this, what are the fault lines within the GOP that you like when you're exploring this? How do you like, what do you think are the most interesting and what do you think are going to matter the most as we move toward 2028?

Robert Draper (136:33)

Well, the one that has become the most prominent, Sarah, is over Israel. And, and you know, and that causes a kind of conflation between people who are anti Semites and, and avowedly so, and people who might call themselves anti Zionists or something or who believe it's not in America's best interest to be, in their view, led by the nose from Israeli interests. And, and that has caused all sorts of fractures as I'm sure, sure we'll talk about. There have been others. I mean, you know, by and large there is, there is still a striking unity around Trump. But, but it's not entirely unanimous. I mean, Nick Fuentes being the notable exception, the white nationalist Fuentes, who used to be on board with Trump and No longer is and. And seldom misses an opportunity to savage Trump on his own show. Fuentes has a following that's difficult to quantify, but it's real and it's growing. The people who see themselves as custodians of the conservative movement, and Charlie Kirk, for example, when he was alive, would have been at the top of this list, do all that they can to keep everyone on the right corralled together and mainly unified in their antipathy of the left and trying to focus on the left as a common enemy. Which is why the apostasy of Fuentes towards Trump and. And the just big mess that has been created regarding Israel has made that task a great deal more difficult.

Sarah Longwell (138:17)

So if the Israel fault line is sort of the one you're watching the most, tell me, is it different than the fault line on the left? Because the left also has this fault line. Right. The Democrats had this fault line. It was very prominent in 2024. Does this mirror that same fault line or is it substantively different in some way?

Robert Draper (138:39)

It seems. It seems to me substantively different. Now, there certainly are anti Semites on both sides, right. But you don't find that many people on the right who are pronouncedly anti Israel, who are pro Palestinian. You will find some. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been a very, very notable person in this regard who have expressed the view that what's taken place in Gaza constitutes a genocide. Tucker Carlson falls in that category as well. Here and there you'll find some real sympathy towards the plight of Gazans, maybe towards where it's Palestinians writ large, but that's usually not where it is. It's on the right. It's mainly America first dictates that we take care of our business at home. Why are we spending so much money over there, where on the left? I do think that there is a very hardened view against the Israeli government and certainly in some areas, bigotry towards Jewish people.

Sarah Longwell (139:41)

And you don't think that that same bigotry towards Jewish people exists on the right? Because I got to say, the anti Semite on the right feel like they got a real home these days.

Robert Draper (139:50)

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, don't. Yeah, yeah. Don't get me wrong. There certainly are tons of those on the right, and I'd say, if anything, they feel more comfortable expressing that outwardly without. Without mincing any words then on the left. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest.

Sarah Longwell (140:09)

No, no, I'm just. I'm trying to. This is like. Because people are very interested. Interested. And I'm Very interested. It's. I, I have watched these fault lines sort of emerge because pre October 7th, you know, it wasn't as on people's radar nearly as much. And now it has become this defining issue in both parties and it has sort of, it shines a light on sort of the, the roach of antisemitism. And what is interesting about the right is I would say push back if you think this is wrong. But I would say on the left they try very hard to say this is not about being anti Semitic, this is about, you know, being anti Zionist and the role that Israel plays in the world. And we're anti Israel's government and much more sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, as you sort of lay out. That is like this is a humanitarian crisis and America should not be funding it. And I know you're right that the America first element, and sometimes I think people don't always realize that America first isn't just a slogan. Right. As is a statement of prioritization. And a big part of that prioritization is isolationism. Like it's that why would we send. Although somehow we've managed to send a lot of money to Argentina recently, which some on the right are mad about. Because their whole point, the whole animating feature from these folks is anything that draws our attention away from what we are dealing with here at home is a distraction, is bad for us and we shouldn't be doing it. And it's weird though, how that then blends with what has been a very active sort of groiper subculture that kind of tinges with the darkest corners of the manosphere. The incel culture, the Andrew Tate woman hating culture, like anti Semitism is also in there. And it's all kind of baked into this weird stew that Trump has allowed to become a not just welcome sort of part of the coalition, but sort of a more and more a sturdy part of the coalition, like a necessary part. Which is why the Heritage foundation thing blew up, because it called into stark relief. Are we letting these people into the coalition or aren't we? And Heritage's answer was, yeah, we're letting these people into the coalition. And obviously there's been some pushback to that from what remains of the vaguely responsible. Right. Do you think that sounds right?

Robert Draper (142:33)

I think that sounds right, yeah. And certainly the groiper subculture, and for your listeners, corpers or the, the group of, of sort of white disaffected conservative males of which Nick Fuentes is the, is the leader, that there's like a an undisguised antipathy not just towards Israel, but towards Jews as a problem in the United States, as of as people who control the culture, who control so much of industry and so unfairly and at the direct expense of the sort of white Europeans. And, and, and yes, it's certainly, you know, you know, America first is, I think, a distinct ideology, albeit one whose chief protagonist, one would think Donald Trump continually confounds with, with things like his $20 billion bail out of Argentina, leaving people, you know, to sort of assume a kind of pretzel logic, you know, of, of all this. But there are a number of people I've talked to, and I'm sure you have two Sarah, you know, sort of thought leaders in the conservative movement who said, well, you not only can be America first and be pro Israel, the two are very compatible with each other because it's an Israel is this great strategic ally of the United States and does all this dirty work and in the Middle east saving us the trouble for having done so. There are others, Tucker Carlson among them, who, who say Israel is actually a net liability strategically and is, is a drain. And you do see online in Groiper subculture, that particular view being elevated. And you know, Fuentes has said that now everyone has come to him, has come to his side. And, and of course, that is a classic conflation of anti Semitism and an arguable suspicion about just how supportive Americans should be of the Israeli government, given what's going on in Gaza and giving our limited resources at home. But circumstances have enabled Fuentes to pull that one off.

Sarah Longwell (144:35)

I want to start with the focus groups by talking about the Trump 2028 question, because this, like, question mark is going to hang over our politics in a very stupid way until probably until 2028, until everybody's like, sure, he's going to leave. And it's not really something, I think it's not really something Trump can attempt without the buy in of a critical mass of Republican voters, which I think.

Heather Cox Richardson (145:02)

People assume he has.

Sarah Longwell (145:04)

But I'm pretty skeptical of that, in part because so far the bulk of those we've talked to have been less than enthusiastic about the idea. So let's listen to how this sounded in our most recent groups of Trump voters.

Focus Group Participant (145:17)

I think the purpose of a term is to represent the population.

Sarah Longwell (145:21)

You know, eight years is sufficient to.

Focus Group Participant (145:23)

Kind of get your agenda out there.

Focus Group Participant (145:25)

And give the next person up their time. We don't want to create a system and go back to 1700s.

Robert Draper (145:32)

No, eight years is enough.

Sarah Longwell (145:34)

Whether I like the guy or don't like and you know, whether it's male.

Robert Draper (145:37)

Or female in office, if I like.

Sarah Longwell (145:39)

The person or not, it's, it's not relevant.

Robert Draper (145:41)

I don't want to be stuck with somebody I don't like for longer than eight years. I see where Nancy Pelosi is going to be retiring after what, 40 years. I wish we had term limits and.

Sarah Longwell (145:52)

In the House and Senate too. But that's just the first.

Focus Group Participant (145:55)

I just think that, you know, with this second term, he comes in to do what he has to do. I think that, to make sure that he still stays moving quickly to get the things done. But I also think that again, I, I'm a big J.D. vance supporter. If you take that off the table, it puts, I won't even say pressure, but it makes it so that within that same amount of time he really has to sort of mentor in ideas, get J.D. vance on board. Because I do think that he is a good bridge between the young people and the people in power. I mean, I just had a funny conversation with my father in law and basically it was about how between the generations, like the slang words that are used for the kids in the skibidi and the 6, 7, like at his age he's like, I have no clue what these kids are talking about. I mean, martial law would have to be it.

Sarah Longwell (146:44)

From what I understand from my limited.

Focus Group Participant (146:47)

Pea brain, you know, I hope that the country is not in anywhere near.

Robert Draper (146:53)

That shape where martial law needs to be declared at all. So no, I think he needs to.

Sarah Longwell (146:58)

Go enjoy his money and his retirement.

Robert Draper (147:00)

And his kids and grandkids.

Sarah Longwell (147:02)

So that last guy was responding to whether there were any circumstances because the moderator was asking this a war terrorist attack where the group wanted to see Trump do an end run around the Constitution. And so basically this guy was like, I guess if he had to declare martial law because something was terrible is happening. Although I would like to just point out that that is maybe exactly what Trump would do, right, like declare martial law, although for no good reason, much like the way that the, the National Guard is currently in our, our streets. So there have been a couple polls on this and the third term idea is usually underwater among Republicans in the 35% to 40% support range. There is something though that is that like a certain corner of the MAGA ecosystem, like Steve Bannon, whatever, that they're taking very seriously and that some elected Republicans, including Trump himself, are sort of unseriously promoting and going along with. So for example, giving out Trump 2028 hats, selling them in the White House gift store. So how seriously do you take this third term prospect? And how seriously do you think the people around Trump take it? And what would make Trump pursuing this more or less likely?

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Robert Draper (149:19)

Shot clock winding down, trailing by two.

Focus Group Participant (149:22)

When you can't miss the last shot and neither can he. Don't take slow for an answer.

Focus Group Participant (149:26)

If Osprelo shoots, switch.

Sarah Longwell (149:29)

Good to see it, Charlie.

Focus Group Participant (149:30)

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Focus Group Participant (149:39)

What went through your head on the last shot?

Focus Group Participant (149:41)

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Robert Draper (149:47)

Yeah, I took it seriously enough to look, to look deeply into doing it as a long magazine story. And I've, I've since tabled the idea because I'm, I'm not convinced that there is a whole lot of locomotion behind the idea, apart from Steve Bannon talking incessantly about it on his War Room show. And, you know, I've heard Bannon's arguments for it, the necessity of it in his view, et cetera. I think it's really striking, frankly, Sarah, to hear how opposed every one of you know, the people you had in your focus group were to this. You couldn't find any sort of, you know, sympathetic voice in that regard. However, a caveat does come with that and that's that if Trump tells people to change their minds in his base, they are likely to change their minds. I mean, you, you heard your one listener mention the one circumstance, you know, a state of emergency, the need for martial law. And you're exactly right, Sarah, to say, as you did before, that, that, that is, of course, the circumstance that, that one could see Trump paving the way for right now. You know, already talking, he's, he's used the word war that we're at war with, this war with, you know, the Venezuelan drug cartel, cartels that he's, he's, you know, ceded distrust in our electoral process. And so if he believed that, that we could not have fair and honest elections in 2026 and then maybe 2028, he could suspend them. And if he were to do so, would the base really turn on him? Well, they haven't yet. You know, thus far, having listened to, you know, one of the focus groups in its entirety, you know, I, I was struck by how they always, so many of them repeated what we've heard so often from Trump supporters that he's a man who tells it like it is. And, and, and they tend to go along with him. They tend to trust him because they believe that he is transparent. Another word that I heard used a lot of. So if Trump turns on a dime and said, actually, I think this is necessary, you know, I think it's necessary for me to run again, I think I can do it again. I think the Constitution allows me to. But regardless of that, I think the emergency that the Times warranted, I think the base will be with him.

Sarah Longwell (152:03)

Yeah. Can I just say, I do think sometimes we get ourselves wrapped up around, like, oh, well, Trump's going to run again. And I just think that's very unlikely. I don't think that he can't run again. Constitutionally, voters don't want him to do it. The question is, though, will he leave? Like, and I just think that's a different question. And, and it's really highly based on, I think, does he feel like staying at the time, like, by the time he gets there, is he, whatever age he is, does he think something bad will happen to him if he leaves? Will he get prosecuted for something? You know, like, how, how much control, like, would he start? Like, I don't think that there's any question. Now, having seen what we've seen with the, the National Guard, the bombings of the Venezuelan boats, like, would Trump declare war to stay in power? I mean, probably, maybe.

Robert Draper (152:51)

Yeah, sure. Yeah. And by the way, I mean, while I think that you're right to focus more on will he leave rather than could he run again, there is actually an argument about the how one interprets the 22nd amendment, which I won't bore you or your listeners with.

Sarah Longwell (153:06)

I'm familiar with it. Yeah.

Robert Draper (153:08)

And scholars, including some who are serious, have advanced that argument. But I think even Trump himself has said that he feels that's a little too cute. And to try to turn the 22nd Amendment into something other than what the standard interpretation of it tells us.

Sarah Longwell (153:23)

The idea that he could run like as the vice president with J.D. vance and then, you know, he's still in control, puppeteering, whatever.

Robert Draper (153:30)

That's one. Yeah. Yes. He'd be the Putin to, you know, Medvedev, basically.

Sarah Longwell (153:35)

Right, exactly.

Robert Draper (153:36)

The even cuter one is that a Vance and Rubio could run as a ticket and then they would stand down after they're elected. The Republican controlled House would make Trump the Speaker. Trump would then elevate Speaker Trump all the way. He would ascend as next in line. So there's that as well. Super clever.

Sarah Longwell (153:57)

Super clever. So the focus groups that we did that we are discussing today of these two time Trump voters, they took place against the backdrop of the government shutdown. So the, the government, it looks like as of this taping, they will have a deal by the time this airs and government will be back up and running. But there was a real divide in one of our focus groups over whether Republicans should act on their own to eliminate the filibuster. Because if we were going to get out of the shutdown, there were really only two ways. Dems caving or Trump and Republicans nuking the filibuster so that they can pass it themselves. And so we asked them about this and there was some trepidation. The other thing we asked about the shutdown was just sort of what they thought the electoral impact would be like, you know, who did they blame? Just kind of the normal pundit stuff. And there was some trepidation about how the shutdown was going to play come election time. So let's listen to how this tension sounded.

Heather Cox Richardson (154:52)

We need to open it up per se, we need to make this happen.

Sarah Longwell (154:56)

And since we've already got the influence.

Heather Cox Richardson (154:59)

We just need to move forward. So if we need the filibuster to just get the votes, then that needs.

Sarah Longwell (155:04)

To happen so we can get the.

Heather Cox Richardson (155:07)

Lights on for the folks that need it. The biggest thing I think for that is that this government shutdown is just.

Sarah Longwell (155:13)

A huge black eye on the Republican Party. And the Democrats are going to use.

Heather Cox Richardson (155:16)

That against us in the future. And the longer this takes for us to get the government open, the more. Even though it's their fault per se, it's not going to look like that.

Focus Group Participant (155:28)

I think they need to vote for the filibuster, to eliminate the filibuster and.

Sarah Longwell (155:32)

Go forward because that would have been.

Focus Group Participant (155:34)

Done by the Democrats but for Manson.

Sarah Longwell (155:38)

And Senator Chief Marizona too. She's no longer Kirsten Sinema. Thank you.

Focus Group Participant (155:44)

If it wasn't for them, the filibuster.

Sarah Longwell (155:46)

Would have already been broken during Biden's term.

Focus Group Participant (155:49)

So it's going to happen anyway.

Sarah Longwell (155:52)

So let's just get it done and.

Focus Group Participant (155:54)

Then let's move forward with the next few years.

Sarah Longwell (155:57)

I mean, they can do it if they get in. Hopefully that won't happen in the future.

Anne Applebaum (156:02)

But of course we know that's a possibility.

Sarah Longwell (156:04)

And so I don't, I don't want them to get that opportunity to do it. So I just, I'm not sure I want this done. I want it passed for us, but I don't know, I'm just not sure. We don't need no filibuster. I mean, 60 votes. I mean, we need that.

Anne Applebaum (156:22)

We need the majority, not just a barely one.

Sarah Longwell (156:24)

One vote over.

Focus Group Participant (156:25)

Because if you just get that one.

Anne Applebaum (156:26)

Vote over, it's going to keep switching everybody's. The laws are going to keep changing over and over every administration. It should be the majority and hopefully it'd be a Republican majority.

Sarah Longwell (156:34)

And I don't see that happening in.

Anne Applebaum (156:37)

The future, especially the way this, the last elections went, Democrats got the majority and I think the shutdowns were.

Sarah Longwell (156:44)

It's doing that.

Anne Applebaum (156:45)

More people are jumping on the Democratic bandwagon because the shutdowns like bringing the economy down. So we need to get rid of that. Right.

Sarah Longwell (156:53)

When you keep the filibuster there and it's a good thing for this country, got to keep everybody equal. So, number of things going on there. One was sort of the implicit assumption that the shutdown was hurting Republicans. Right. From these Republican.

Robert Draper (157:09)

Well, I mean, look, Sarah, I mean, that's what President Trump has said. I mean, he said, you know, didn't think it's fair, but that it clearly blew back against, against the Republicans.

Sarah Longwell (157:18)

Why do you think Mitch McConnell was so sort of precious about the filibuster when it's, it's funny to listen to these Republican voters because on one hand, on the 2028 question, they're sort of natural Republican conservative instincts rear their heads. They're like, term limits. Term limits matter. And then on the filibuster, though, pretty mixed. And there was a bunch of them.

Heather Cox Richardson (157:40)

Was like, no, blow it up.

Sarah Longwell (157:41)

And like, let's do, let's get our agenda through while Trump is in there. Because this is one of the things people love about Trump, even the ones that don't love everything that he's doing.

Heather Cox Richardson (157:49)

They love that he is doing something.

Sarah Longwell (157:51)

That it feels like he is advancing things through sort of the sclerotic, can't get anything done Congress, whatever. Trump's just doing stuff, and voters like that. But. So why was McConnell so protective of the filibuster? And why do you think Thune is following suit in a world where they want to give Trump basically everything he wants?

Robert Draper (158:10)

Yeah, I mean, I do think that McConnell is a believer in the Senate as a deliberative body, which distinguishes it from the House, and that the implication that flows from that is that if you eliminate the filibuster, you bring the Senate one step closer to the sort of, of everyday chaos that is the House. And, you know, the filibuster has worked for him in the past. It's, it's worked for him when Harry Reid thwarted it with the nuclear option. You know, he's, he's held that over the head of Democrats. But I also just think that. So to me, the question isn't so much. I, I guess as someone who grew up covering institutionalists, you know, like McConnell, it surprises me less that someone like him, you know, at his age of 80 or whatever, still believes that. And it's more striking to me how anti institutional so many MAGA voters are. And they may not articulate as such with, I think that they basically believe in a strong, you know, unitary executive. I think your focus groups indicated that they, they see a practical limitation to the executives, executive authority, which is that Trump has done all this stuff by executive order, and that doesn't last, which I thought showed a certain amount of sophistication on the part of, you know, the, the focus groups for them to recognize that and to say that this stuff needs to be codified into law. But I think that, that there's nothing about the performance in the Senate over the last several years that has imbued and people in the focus group with any kind of confidence that the Senate as an institution and all of its subsidiary parts are worth preserving. And I think that their distrust or dismissiveness of the filibuster flows from that.

Sarah Longwell (160:02)

I think you're 100%. Right. Okay. I could talk about the filibuster for a long time. But I want to move us on because I think I want to get in this very interesting character that you have spent a lot of time with. Marjorie Taylor Greene. She, during the past government shutdown, she's has behaved like a different person, like an alien has snatched the old Marjorie Taylor Greene that we know and replaced her with like a normal human kind of. And, you know, I've certainly speculated that her heel turn against the GOP establishment, you know, going on the view, trashing the GOP leadership and their last lack of a healthcare plan is, is probably a 2028 play. Like, I think that's what she's doing. Although it's interesting to me she's running to the normie side of things, given who she is. Let me tell you what. We asked the voters what they thought of it, and that act was not landing with them, at least in these groups that we fielded. Most hadn't really followed what she's been saying, but those who were, were not super impressed.

Robert Draper (161:07)

Let's. Let's.

Anne Applebaum (161:08)

She just all over the place.

Sarah Longwell (161:10)

I mean, she's a rhino.

Anne Applebaum (161:12)

I think she's a rhino right there. She's Republican when she wants to be Republican, but right now she's kind of.

Sarah Longwell (161:16)

Talking with the Democrats more, freaking trying to. Just trying to hold their hands more or something.

Anne Applebaum (161:21)

To me, it seems like she's just a rhino.

Sarah Longwell (161:23)

I don't know what's going on.

Heather Cox Richardson (161:25)

Just like you have John Fetterman sounding.

Sarah Longwell (161:28)

Like a Republican, you have Marjorie Taylor Greene sounding like a Democrat. There's some weird stuff going on. I can't explain it. I don't know if it's like these people put on acts just to get.

Heather Cox Richardson (161:40)

Into office to be here, but I'm really shocked at what I'm seeing coming from her.

Sarah Longwell (161:45)

And I'm really disappointed because I liked her a lot.

Robert Draper (161:49)

I don't follow it to a T, but I've never really liked her, honestly, so I never really took much of what she said seriously.

Heather Cox Richardson (161:58)

Seem like the Democrats have had consistent.

Sarah Longwell (162:01)

Infighting and now the Republicans are doing that.

Heather Cox Richardson (162:04)

And you just see this train wreck happening. You're like, I don't remember the name.

Sarah Longwell (162:08)

Or where the governor was elected, but.

Heather Cox Richardson (162:10)

Jay something who was calling for the.

Sarah Longwell (162:13)

Murder basically of people and their children, you know, and he won. And you just wonder like, holy crap. And then you see the Republican Party start to do this and those people are getting voted in. Now, let's not start destroying our party from within, because what's going to happen come 2028, you know, that's terrifying. And you just want to, like, don't zip. It just says, okay, so you've covered Marjorie Taylor Greene at length in your book, and we have forgotten how awful she is. Like, especially early in her congressional career, she was out there accosting David Hogg, yelling at transgender congressional staffers that they were really men, saying that Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason, speculating about the Rothschilds and their space lasers causing wildfires. Just nuts. And now she's on Caitlyn Collins talking about how Adelita Gralva, I'm, I'm sure. Did I get that? Okay. She is saying, oh, she should be sworn into Congress, and she's one of the most outspoken members of Congress in either party about releasing the Epstein files. What has gotten into her? We've had a great deal of speculation about that over here at the Bulwarks.

Anne Applebaum (163:26)

Yeah.

Sarah Longwell (163:27)

Is this, Are we.

Robert Draper (163:28)

I think I, I think I can put a lot of speculation to rest because I'm in frequent touch with her and I have a lot of insight and into what's going on with her and what isn't going on with her. As to 2028, I don't know. I think she's probably leaving open that possibility. But there are other things at play, too. But, but to start with this, she's not a Democrat. So for the people in the focus group who think that, like, she's. She worked with the Democrats very briefly with Rohana in an effort to open up the Epstein files, but otherwise, she has found no common cause with them and has nothing good to say about them. I do think that with Republicans, it is, it is a case of familiarity, breeding contempt, that the more she's gotten to know her Republican colleagues, the less she's liked them and the more she sees them as phony. And she had promised me that she would be doing this, that the next time the Republicans came into power and ran the table and yet did not get done what the America first constituency expected of them. She was going to be screaming from the rafters about it. And she hates Obamacare. She always has. But she also hates the fact that health care premiums have been rising. And she learned this from her own daughters who are now worried about their premiums due to the subsidy perhaps doubling. And so she's made a lot of noise about that. She also, you know, had told me that she's been, during the shutdown, she's been at home a lot like, you know, most of the members of Congress Are. She's talked to her constituents. She has heard constituents use the G word genocide in reference to Gaza. And, and, and I think that there's a lot of, why are we spending so much money over there killing children when there are people here who need the money more? And so I, I think she hasn't been untrue to her principles, but as to why she's being so outspoken about it, I think she feels, not getting this directly from her, but I, I think it's evident that she feels a certain sense of betrayal in terms of the loyalty she has shown the Trump administration and how it has gone largely unpaid. We've reported on this and stories about how Tony Fabrizio, the Republican pollster, dropped a poll saying basically that she'd get creamed in the Georgia Senate race. And so Greene is of the view that that was basically put in the air by certain people just to kneecap her chances. Trump did not lend any encouraging words when she was mulling over the possibility of running for governor of Georgia. She hasn't been offered any cabinet positions. And, and there are other reasons for her just to believe that she is kind of homeless. You know, she was booted out of the House Freedom Caucus for the sin of siding with Kevin McCarthy on some things. And, and so the one person she likes is a person who is very proudly homeless, and that's Thomas Massie. And Massie is this kind of libertarian Republican who's been very outspoken about releasing the Epstein files and a variety of other things that, that he has in common with Marjorie. And so, so, yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of where she's at. But it's, but it is interesting to see her, like, especially given how hostile she was towards the mainstream media now being on the View and on cnn. You know, she has indicated to me that she doesn't like it when mainstream outlets constantly refer to her QAnon past and the Jewish space lasers and all of that stuff. But, but that she feels increasingly comfortable with the possibility that she'll get a fair shake, or at least that her own viewpoints will be, you know, honestly aired.

Sarah Longwell (167:18)

You know, I saw some, some quotation from her to the effect of, like, I got it wrong on QAnon. Is that right? Has she sort of renounced?

Robert Draper (167:28)

Yes.

Sarah Longwell (167:28)

Like, what's the growth pattern been for her?

Robert Draper (167:30)

Yeah. And look, I do think that, though I said a couple of minutes ago that I think she's largely remained on track with her America first beliefs, I do think that behaviorally we've Seen a real evolution in her. I mean, she, those things that you were citing, which I also did in my book about her, like chasing David Hogg down hallways and harassing aoc, those were when she was a so called influencer in 2018 and 2019 and was, and was an avowed QAnon person. She, she doesn't do that kind of stuff now that she is an elected official, you know, since she was elected in November 2020. And, and she made clear to me that her QAnon views grew out of a distrust of the mainstream media and the permission structure given by people on the right to seek alternative information elsewhere. And then there formed this whole community, community of people who she knew, people who like, you know, did CrossFit gym like she did. You know, people who, she were friends of hers on Facebook who were starting to read these Q drops. It was kind of fun and, and sort of a, a parlor sport. But she said that it also, you know, it imposed a certain kind of logic on areas where there was a lot of lack of clarity. Now she's, since, no, no, I don't think that like she believes that, that Democrats are faces of baby corpses on their own faces or anything like that. You know, that's, I, I, she, she has been clear about how she got it wrong. She's defensive on the subject because she feels like, you know, why is it that every story that the New York Times writes about Elizabeth Warren doesn't include that she once claimed she was part Native American, you know, to them to get into Harvard? Or why is it that Senator Blumenthal isn't always mentioned that he was not honest about his military service? And, and yet every time a story is done about me, it's always, it always has the obligatory paragraph about being a conspiracy theorist. I, I hear her, you know, but it's, but it's a notable beginning point of a revolution and, and kind of hard to forget.

Sarah Longwell (169:38)

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the answers to that might be that she's just newer. Like those are more, it happened more recently that she was this person. Like what Elizabeth Warren did in college just probably doesn't bear as much on what Marjorie Taylor Greene was doing in 2018. But. Okay, but I take that point. I guess one of the things that I've been wondering about and something you're saying makes me think that this might be true because for me, as sort of a never trumper, what was astounding to me was learning that so many of the people who had, I had grown up and they had taught me what it meant to have conservative principles. Like they were the ones imbuing those on a younger generation. It turned out they had none of those principles. And it's a wild thing to suddenly be around a bunch of people who were, they were the ones sort of telling you you joined their side, whatever, and then you're like, you guys didn't mean this at all? Not even a little bit. Is that the experience that she's having in Congress where she's like, wait a minute.

Robert Draper (170:38)

Yes, yes. The answer is yes. I mean, is she principled, though?

Sarah Longwell (170:42)

Is she?

Robert Draper (170:42)

Yes, yes.

Sarah Longwell (170:43)

Look, I think that she's principled.

Robert Draper (170:44)

Yeah, No, I think that, I think that Green has always been principled. You could argue with her principles. You could say her principles are misguided. You can say that her, you know, views on immigration are really strident, that her views, you know, that she sees this kind of a zero sum proposition that everything that an immigrant gets is at the expense of, you know, some able bodied, working class white person or something. But, but no, I think that she does have principles and she is, she's certainly come to fall into the sadder but wiser category of people who recognize that Congress is increasingly a do nothing body. It's frustrating to her. Now, I've, I will say this, that I mentioned earlier that she's not a Democrat. Democrat. She has not made the slightest effort, as far as I know, to ever find any Democrat with whom she could see common cause in advancing certain legislation. There was a point in time, around the time of the J6ers being at the D.C. jail, that she was very interested in criminal injustices, you know, perpetrated. And since Trump pardoned all the J6ers, she's gone conspicuously silent, you know, on that particular subject, like so many other people in the Republican Party. But at least for a moment in time, it was, it was of interest to her, but she never spoke to any Democrats about it. Having said all that, though, yes, she's, she's become really disillusioned with leadership, with colleagues who seem much more interested in the performativeness which is, you know, of Congress, which is a bit ironic coming from her. But I, but I do think that, like, you know, she's the Doge subcommittee of which she was chairwoman, didn't have much teeth in it. But like, she actually really, it was, I went to a couple of hearings. It was interesting to see because, I mean, she, she really comported herself as a chair and she recognized the Democrats and wasn't insulting to them and, and ran an honest hearing. I think that, that she took seriously the, the notion that, okay, we Republicans are in charge, let's act like it. I think she's been very disappointed that a lot of her colleagues haven't found.

Sarah Longwell (172:42)

Fallen suit with that last Marjorie Taylor Greene question. It was funny to me to hear a voter call her a rhino, because this is what you get everybody, whether you're Liz Cheney or you're Mitt Romney. But if you Trump, you are suddenly a rhino, because Republican used to have, like, actual meaning. There used to be ideas behind it. Now there's just Trump. And so if you don't support Trump or you are perceived to not be supporting Trump, you're suddenly a rhino. Is that going to be tough for her? Like, does she get tossed or is her brand now kind of big enough to withstand her being somebody who goes against the grain? Like, does she need Trump at this point or does Trump need her? Or can they both just live in their own ecosystems? Like, what do you think?

Robert Draper (173:34)

Well, I think that the answer to that question is she herself is trying to find that out. That's why she's going on the View, for example. I think she's trying to find out just how does my brand play beyond Congress and beyond Georgia. She's not a party person. And so the idea that she's a rhino, while obviously that's meant to be a pejorative, is in a way not entirely in a, you know, inappropriate. Given that she has said recently, I'm not sure that I, you know, I'm not a Democrat, but I'm not sure that I'd call myself a Republican anymore. I mean, she really does have a hostile view towards her own party. And so I think she may come, as Massie does, to wear that independence as a badge of honor. Now, how far this gets all of her and whether she, she's been very careful, like every, you know, conservative leader not named Nick Fuentes, to not disassociate herself from Trump. You know, she has said in stories that we, the Times have reported that she feels like Trump has gotten bad advice from his staff. That's a very familiar one that we hear. But she has been loath to criticize Trump himself. And so I don't think we're going to see her step out the way Nick Fuentes did. And for the record, also, she loathes Nick Fuentes. So it's, I doubt she'd want to be in his camp, but I don't, I don't think see her like separating herself from Trump. But then again, we'll see. I mean, she's given the Trump administration some heartburn with some of the things that, that she's been saying and doing and may well be that, that she comes to figure out, you know, what the hell do I have to lose? You know, I might as well, you know, just staying by Trump's side has gotten me only so far and in fact has been at times a bitter pill to swallow. And, and so it we, we may see more independence from her, but I think she's, she's testing the waters on all this stuff now.

Sarah Longwell (175:30)

Well, it will be interesting to see where she goes from here. Okay. The last couple sets here are a bit contradictory in nature. We're going to focus on the rising anti Semitism on the right for a second. Even though we've talked about this in recent months, we've heard, especially with young people on the right, a rise in anti Israel sentiment sometimes related to the actual war in the Middle East. But it can also be there's like some obvious anti Semitic conspiracy theories. And this is the part that I really want to get to is just how many of the conspiracy theories on the right now end with the Jews. Like that's where we land. It's not something that our whole group was dabbling in, but we do occasionally hear a smattering of this from Trump voters. And in these recent groups, it came up when people were skeptical of how Charlie Kirk her actually died. So let's listen. I follow Candace Owens very closely. I have for years. A lot of people will, you know, the left wingers or even some people on the right say she's crazy. But if you listen to her, she's extremely articulate and she also investigates things. She doesn't just come up with her own theories. And she worked for Turning Point for years. She was on college campuses with Charlie for a long time. So she knows the ins and outs of that organization. So she's not going to stop until it's found out. Hopefully she's not next, honestly. But I think they're, you know, inside Turning Point, maybe even inside the government, inside, you know, some relations with Israel. There's just some things that we're not being told and it's just not adding up. And she's really the only one who's willing to ask those hard questions and to get to the bottom of it. And I want would think that our government, Trump included, would be like leading that force. So that's been a concern. I think Charlie Kirk was having such.

Focus Group Participant (177:16)

A profound influence in the political arena and the religious arena that the radical left, and I mean the radical left.

Sarah Longwell (177:25)

Like people that are being socialist and heading toward communism are pushing.

Robert Draper (177:30)

So it's scary.

Sarah Longwell (177:31)

I don't know. I don't know what's truth anymore.

Focus Group Participant (177:34)

But I would be questioning on was it a young man that just got.

Sarah Longwell (177:38)

Radicalized from watching videos and being in chat rooms.

Focus Group Participant (177:41)

I'm questioning that there's not necessarily a distrust towards the overall picture. You know, I just think there's a lot of discrepancies that either could be cleared up that are not being cleared up. I think that if I step back from the thing that happened, which I feel like there's some discrepancies and how it's all being explained, I think that it was something that revealed certain things that are going on outside of the US Political system that are tied to other places that it shined a light on some other things going on. And so maybe that's why they're taking a little bit of time to really get into the meat and potatoes or the details of things of it. They're letting that. That light kind of show other things out. But I do think that they could have really gotten in and said, hey, this, this, this, and this, and this is. Doesn't seem like it adds up, but this is why, you know, and they didn't do that. So I think it shined a light on stuff that's going on with Israel and things that are tied to that. One thing that I. I've appreciated seeing Donald Trump do is like, he stands up to Netanyahu and says, like, that's not going to be okay. Don't do this thing where you see just about everybody else folding on, you know, this whole Israel thing, maybe I was not paying as close attention as I needed to be, but it seems like right around this time frame, Charlie Kirk got assassinated and you started seeing a lot more. So, like, the curtain came back and they're like, so much stuff was, like, tied to Israel. You saw a lot of political people going and doing all this stuff. But Donald Trump has stayed firm throughout that process of, like, he's doing something wrong. I'm gonna tell him not to do that thing.

Sarah Longwell (179:23)

So you've spent a lot of time reporting on Turning Point both before and after Charlie Kirk's death, and what is the way forward for them now without Charlie?

Robert Draper (179:35)

Sure. Let me first just say that that is a very commonly expressed sentiment on the right, that Charlie Kirk's assassination, that there's more to it than meets the eye. And that and a lot of insinuation that the Israeli government played a role in it. As to where Turning Point goes forward after this, it's more easy to say what won't happen than what will. I mean, you know, Erica Kirk is the CEO now, and she's greatly respected and beloved within the organization. And a lot of people on the right love her as well. She's not a polemicist like her husband. She's not going to go on college campuses and debate people. She has only campaigned at a grand total of one event, I believe, for Andy Biggs, and that was really just to introduce her husband, where Charlie did that all the time. So she's not going to be a political organizing force. She's not going to be a confidant to either President Trump or if he's followed by JD Vance, who was so close to Charlie Kirk or to him either. I don't see, you know, how then Turning Point USA remains the political force that it was, except insofar as it incubates, continues to incubate conservative ideology on high school and college campuses. I think there's every reason to believe that they'll remain formidable in that view. But, you know, the other way in which Kirk was so significant a force was that he provided, whether you or I agree with this, you know, version or not, he had, he, he provided a certain kind of role model for young conservative males and, and, you know, this very Christian oriented, very traditional family, very pro marriage. Kirk is gone now. And presumably those, you know, young males who are looking for a voice, looking for some kind of leadership, that maybe some of them will turn to the Tate brothers, maybe some of them will turn to Fuentes. This is where, you know, Kirk really was just such a dominant and irreplaceable personality. There's no one inside Turning Point USA who could be expected to fill that void.

Sarah Longwell (181:51)

All right. Well, we also talked to these groups about Tucker Carlson's interview with Nick Fuentes, which touched, touched off the firestorm, the Heritage foundation, which is this storied conservative think tank, which in my youth, or not even in my youth, I did lots that was like you always, they always had, like, talks there and events there. And so I've spent a lot of time in their atrium or whatever. We've heard from some Fuentes viewers in our groups before. So I've had like, we've, we've specifically had younger people where they talk about Fuentes a lot. In fact, my conversation with Will Summer a Couple months ago. If you want to listen to more of that. That's. We did that episode not that long ago. But these groups were largely not tracking this particular disillusion. And they weren't like Fuente's defenders, though they did defend Tucker's decision to have him on. Let's listen. What I've heard is that Tucker has really taken some heat for even interviewing him and kind of giving him a platform, you know, But I believe that just because he interviewed him doesn't mean he agrees with him or he's trying to promote him. You know, he's just trying to get the information out there. So he seems to be this Nick Fuentes, an up and coming leader of the socialist movement. He's pretty close to being a true communist. And like, he. He's said that Hitler was a good man. I mean, that's how far he is. So I didn't see the. The total interview, but just the fact that Tucker was sitting down with him to kind of get his viewpoints, he seems to be grabbing a big following of these nut jobs, really. So Tucker was just under a lot of heat for even bringing his name to the table. The thing that I respect about Tucker.

Heather Cox Richardson (183:28)

Is he pushes back.

Sarah Longwell (183:29)

He's not just giving this person this.

Heather Cox Richardson (183:31)

Platform to spew their crap.

Sarah Longwell (183:33)

I don't agree with Nick Fuentes, but I respect Tucker for not bending the.

Heather Cox Richardson (183:39)

Knee and staying true to himself and.

Sarah Longwell (183:43)

Covering all angles from everyone, because that's what we're lacking. You know, get. Let him show his true colors. I. A lot of people don't agree with what he says. Absolutely. I think he's not a very good person. But I think that when we talk.

Heather Cox Richardson (183:58)

More and like, when people stop talking.

Sarah Longwell (184:00)

That'S when bad things happen. So let's talk. You know, there's just this consistent division that will never go way if we.

Heather Cox Richardson (184:09)

Can'T even talk to each other about.

Sarah Longwell (184:11)

Things, even with our worst enemies. And Tucker made it very clear in the Dave Smith interview, after the Nick.

Heather Cox Richardson (184:17)

Fuentes interview, after he's getting all this.

Sarah Longwell (184:19)

Slack that, you know, like, this is the reason why. And it was. It's very Tucker of him. I absolutely agree. Free speech.

Heather Cox Richardson (184:28)

This is what America was founded upon.

Sarah Longwell (184:31)

If you want to be racist, it's your right to say and feel whatever.

Heather Cox Richardson (184:35)

You want to say and feel.

Sarah Longwell (184:36)

But I don't feel like people should be censored for how they believe.

Heather Cox Richardson (184:41)

If that's how you feel, speak your mind.

Sarah Longwell (184:44)

But the very little that I'm hearing, I'm hearing this. Adolph Fuentes Some remark he made about Stalin that's going viral, and I'm just.

Heather Cox Richardson (184:54)

Like, wow, like, that's terrible.

Sarah Longwell (184:57)

I, I don't know how true it.

Heather Cox Richardson (184:58)

Is because I didn't hear it directly, you know, myself.

Sarah Longwell (185:02)

It's just what's. What I'm hearing is going viral, but I'm like, you know, I didn't know much about Nick Fuentes at all prior to the Tucker Carlson interview.

Heather Cox Richardson (185:11)

Just I've heard of him and things about him. But honestly, I admire Tucker Carlson for even taking it there.

Sarah Longwell (185:18)

To let someone who I guess is controversial in the sense to come onto.

Heather Cox Richardson (185:23)

His platform and speak their mind, because he does push back.

Sarah Longwell (185:28)

I didn't know who Nick Fuentes really was. I mean, last year, in December, when the attempted assassination on him happened, I saw it in news, but I didn't know who he was. I didn't look into him until the Charlie Kirk situation happened. I see a lot of memes. I'm on social media a lot, and I saw a lot of people saying, like, oh, Nick Fuentes can be the next Charlie Kirk. And I didn't realize, like those messages were coming from probably Democratic liberal people. And I went and looked up Nick Fuentes and I watched a couple of his streams because I thought maybe, you know, maybe stuff that he's saying is being clipped out of context. I need to see this for myself. And I watched probably three of his two hour streams and I was dumbfounded by the stuff that he was saying. But like what everyone says, let him say what he wants. Let Tucker Carlson, let him come on the podcast, say what he wants, and.

Ad (186:19)

Let people, people be the judge of.

Sarah Longwell (186:21)

Whether they're gonna support him or dislike him. So Nick Fuentes now has around a million followers on Twitter. He's become sort of a household name, certainly just in, in politics. Maybe not a household name, you know, in, in every household, but like certainly on the right and certainly in, in people who follow politics. In fact, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who you said hates him, she was one of the early stars to go to one of his white nationalist compl conferences when he wasn't as big of a deal. But one of the historians you talked to, and I think this is really right and I want to dig into it as we, as like a closing conversation. He said, what we're seeing is Fuentes, Carlson, Vance and others. And I would throw like Candace Owens in there, Laura Loomer engaged in the battle to be the legitimate heir to Trumpism. Do you think that's a fair read of what kind of influence Fuentes wants to have on the right or like, do you think. Because we're watching just the crack up on the right right now and some of it is, as I've been watching it, I'm like, okay, is this partly trying to fill the void that Charlie Kirk was really, he was like a pretty larger than life figure. He was kind of a glue in the movement. And a lot of people been looking at Megyn Kelly lately. Is she the glue? And so she's basically taken this. I will not say anything negative about Dr. Or about anybody else. I'm keeping Mr. Johnny clean hands here. But like, is this what's happening? Is it, is it. Are we trying to be Trump's heir, Charlie Kirk's heir, lead the right? Is that how these people view themselves? Is that what they're fighting for?

Robert Draper (187:51)

I think to some degree. You know, Fuentes doesn't strike me. I've, you know, talked to him a few times as a terribly strategic person, but he has pretty good instincts and he knew, you know, he was a severe critic of Kirk when Charlie was alive. Immediately doubled back on the heels of Charlie's assassination. Devoted an entire program to really talking about what a giant Charlie Kirk was, and now is loath to say hardly anything about Kirk. Though he said a couple of unkind things about Kirk's widow, Erica. But I, but he's, he's very conscious of the fact that following is up for grabs, you know, and, and I don't know that Fuentes possesses no organizing skill of the type that Charlie Kirk once did. And he is, you know, a true unmade bed of a human being. And there's actually, I talked about it on the show, about how he slept on his couch for a day because he had put all of his freshly washed clothes on his bed and didn't feel like folding them. And so that's Fuentes shtick.

Sarah Longwell (188:53)

And honestly, that's relatable to me.

Robert Draper (188:56)

Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Yeah. No, I mean, again, I think he's very clever at describing in a self deprecating way the, the life of his own, you know, listeners, in addition to himself, the, you know what the focus groupers. It was interesting. I mean, a lot of them didn't know who he was, but I suspect that that's generational, that if they were 25 or under, they would have known. It was interesting how so many of them said Tucker was staying true to his brand by having, you know, anyone and everyone, on being a free speech absolutist and all. And, and Tucker pushed back. Well, the criticism Carlson is facing is that he really didn't push back that much. And especially given the fact that Fuentes was kind of on his Sunday school behavior with Carlson left a lot of his more virulent views at the doorstep, you know, on the way into to doing that interview. So for the uninitiated, that did not give anyone the crispest distillation of who Nick Fuentes is and what he believes. And so for those people who object to the interview, they, there are some who object to the just the fact that Carlson with his large following platforms Fuentes at all. But I think the more saliently he was criticized for not pushing back on Fuentes and allowing Fuentes basically to, to kind of command, you know, a very sanitized narrative of himself.

Sarah Longwell (190:22)

Yeah, it was a total like fluffball interview. But going back to this question of the jockeying for position on the future of the right, what do you. Because I sometimes get from a lot of people in the media when they ask me questions, whatever, they're like, well, you know, what would it take for the Republican Party to go back to the party of Mitt Romney? And then we could just argue about, you know, taxes. And I'm like, listen guys, there's no going back. That's never, it's never coming back. And let me tell you what it's going. When you would JD Vance and Marco Rubio would be the most normal ticket on a field against the, the Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker, Carl, like that is the future of the right. And what do you think? Like, what do you think the future. Because you watch this stuff really closely. Where do you think it's all going?

Robert Draper (191:11)

Yeah, I mean, well, I, look, I, I do think that there is still a Republican establishment. There is still a donor class with formidable energy and, and that has become increasingly across purposes with the MAGA small donor base. And so we'll see how that plays out because clearly JD Vance is trying to appeal to both. It is a conspicuous silence on Vance's part regarding Tucker Carlson and you know, his whole thing with, with Heritage and with Nick Fuentes. Vance is very close to Carlson and, and if he doesn't have to take a position, he won't. But it's hard for me to imagine. I'm with you, Sarah. It's hard for me to imagine that the Republican goes anywhere near anything resembling, you know, the, the, the days of Mitt Romney. And I think you're also right. That advance Rubio ticket would be looked back on as the most softball maga ticket imaginable. Which is exactly why, you know, Nick Fuentes speaks, you know, in, in the terms that he does, you know, towards J.D. vance and Marco Rubio and Steve Bannon too, for that matter. You know, not a fan of either of those. So, no, I think that where this is going is not wanting to sound like I'm, you know, idealizing Charlie Kirk or something, but that Kirk was so gifted at keeping the Republican Party focused on the common enemy, the left. And now we are clearly seeing a sentiment in which not just the Rhinos, but a broadly expansive definition of Republican apostates is our conservative apostates is going to really be the state of play. And I think we're going to see an increasingly fractured party, but one where as long as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson and increasingly Nick Fuentes have the traction that they do, the party's moving their way, not in the opposite direction.

Sarah Longwell (193:14)

Okay, Robert Draper, thanks for joining us, man. This was so good. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the focus group podcast. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, remember to rate and review us on Apple podcasts, subscribe to the bulwark on YouTube and become a bull work plus member at thebull work.com see you guys next week.

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