Raging Moderates: A Year of Trump 2.0; A Decade of the War on Truth (ft. Heather Cox Richardson)

Summary

The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway: Raging Moderates — A Year of Trump 2.0; A Decade of the War on Truth

Date: January 21, 2026
Host: Jessica Tarlov (co-hosting Raging Moderates)
Guest: Heather Cox Richardson (Historian; Author of "Letters from an American")

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Episode Overview

In this episode of "Raging Moderates", Jessica Tarlov is joined by esteemed historian Heather Cox Richardson to reflect on the first year of “Trump 2.0,” examining how his second term is reshaping American democracy, global alliances, and the war on truth. They offer insights into the current political and cultural climate, discuss the erosion of democratic norms, the resurgence of authoritarian rhetoric, and the challenge of motivating Americans to resist this paradigm shift. The conversation is marked by sharp historical perspective, centrist clarity, and worry about where the country is headed.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

Banter, Expertise, and Data vs. Vibes

Timestamps: 02:06–05:43

• Jessica and Heather share banter about prepping for debates and the importance of facts versus emotions in arguments.
• Heather lauds Jessica’s ability to have “exactly the statistics you need at exactly the right moment” (02:52), sparking discussion on the power of data, which becomes a throughline for issues discussed later in the episode.
• They both lament the lack of accountability when it comes to being wrong about economic consequences, like tariffs.
• Memorable moment:
  • Heather: “Part of me…would love there to be a weekly lavish apology section for all those people who told us we were idiots to say…American consumers and importers were going to pay tariffs…there doesn’t ever seem to be an accounting for that. And part of me…I await my lavish apologies.” (04:20)

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One Year into Trump 2.0: Reality vs. Narrative

Timestamps: 05:43–09:23

• Reflections on the first anniversary of Trump’s second inauguration amidst continued lies and a “war on the truth.”
• Conversation about how the current U.S. administration is walking away from the post-WWII international order, upending global alliances, and fostering instability.
• Heather highlights the shift of global power towards China, labeling this as “the China century,” with America “killing itself by suicide.”
• Quote:
  • Heather: “The United States of America under Donald Trump has walked away from the global stage or is actively trying to destroy that stage…that is the story of this moment.” (08:52)

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The Extra-Constitutional Presidency

Timestamps: 11:31–15:07

• Heather explains Trump’s governing style as “extra-constitutional,” acting as if the Constitution doesn’t exist, citing examples like using impoundment and arbitrary executive decisions.
• The danger isn’t just law-breaking but operating entirely outside constitutional norms, with an “idea that leadership acting as if there are no rules” and a disregard for government by consent.
• Despite all this, ordinary Americans are beginning to protest and push back, even as elected officials are often complicit or disengaged.
• Quote:
  • Heather: “The idea that that Constitution doesn't matter, doesn't exist, is, I think, the linchpin, not simply to undermining American democracy, but also undermining the entire idea of governments that are driven by the people...” (12:19)

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Resistance, Focus, and the Challenge of Free & Fair Elections

Timestamps: 15:07–20:00

• Jessica remarks that resistance has become more focused—mainly on ICE overreach and immigration, shaped by quotas set by Trump’s advisors like Stephen Miller.
• Ongoing threats and intimidation of officials who resist the administration’s demands.
• Question raised: Will the upcoming midterms be free and fair? Heather is skeptical but notes that “elections will happen,” though true fairness is hampered by systemic problems like gerrymandering, voter suppression, and money in politics.
• Quote:
  • Heather: “We haven’t had free and fair elections in this country for a long time because we have had voter support, we have had gerrymandering, we have had the flood of huge amounts of money into those elections.” (19:25)

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Authoritarian Rhetoric, Fascist Imagery, and Historical Echoes

Timestamps: 20:00–28:43

• Jessica questions the government's overt use of white supremacist and Nazi rhetoric, and Heather details how ICE is leveraging fascist imagery not just as intimidation for immigrants, but to “cow American citizens.”
• Heather places U.S. fascism within a longer domestic tradition, not just a German import, with historical precedent in American history.
• She draws parallels to the secrecy surrounding detention centers, warning of the risk of “concentration camp” conditions repeating.
• Memorable moment:
  • Heather: “It has been so easy for so long for people to say, ‘Oh, America’s never gonna go down the Nazi route. They’re never gonna become fascist.’ …We do have the elements of fascism in our DNA.” (23:36)

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The Media’s Role & Motivating Voters in an Authoritarian Era

Timestamps: 28:43–32:55

• Heather argues that media coverage, or lack thereof, shaped the public’s disengagement from threats to democracy and the failure to connect economic wellbeing to the health of democracy itself.
• She discusses how previous eras of oligarchy, like the 1850s, 1890s, and 1920s, were resisted successfully by politicians who didn’t separate economic and democratic issues.
• Her advice: “It’s not democracy versus eggs, it’s eggs are gonna be expensive unless you protect democracy.”
• Quote:
  • Heather: “Democracy kum egg—It’s the same story. And the advantage that you get when you talk about those larger concepts…is that it makes people understand that they’re part of a larger world, and it gives their lives meaning in a way that the Trump movement gave a lot of people’s lives meaning…” (31:01)

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The Global Stage: Davos, Chaos, and the China Century

Timestamps: 36:03–42:18

• Trump is welcomed at Davos, no longer as a disruptor but as the main event, even as issues like climate and inequality are sidelined.
• The international community is pivoting towards China as a new anchor, which Heather calls “mind-boggling,” given U.S. progress pre-Trump.
• She laments the sidelining of climate action and the Ukraine reconstruction, warning that Trump’s chaos is letting Russia escalate its invasion of Ukraine.
• Quote:
  • Heather: “Trump has taken attention away from Vladimir Putin and his assault on Ukraine…and also…to the Epstein files…By Trump simply being a chaos monkey, he is keeping us from discussing the things that really matter to world stability, to the world economy…” (40:30)

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Trump as a Vessel, International Fear, and Lessons from Brexit

Timestamps: 42:18–47:22

• Jessica shares anecdotes of European allies’ fears and draws comparison to the Brexit experience—the regret and loss of identity that followed.
• Heather warns against excusing Trump’s statements as “just trolling,” emphasizing that the unimaginable can and has happened: “You have to take him seriously at this point.” (45:16)

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Where Do We Go From Here? Pressure Points and the Republican Party

Timestamps: 47:22–48:49

• Jessica presses for solutions, and Heather insists on pressure from the American people to force electeds into action. She points out the Republican Party’s survival is at stake if unchecked.
• “We need four Republicans in the House and the Senate, and we could stop this.” (48:08)

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The Epstein Files and The Space Around the Elephant

Timestamps: 48:49–54:22

• Ongoing government law-breaking in failing to release the Epstein files; Heather speculates the administration’s panic reveals the files’ explosive nature.
• She encourages examining officials’ behavior—the “space around the elephant”—to discern what’s at stake, observing intense Republican anxiety about their own involvement.
• Quote:
  • Heather: “This is not just Trump, there has been poison within the Republican Party operating for a while now…it is not just a disease of Trump, this is a disease of American democracy.” (52:25)

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Nostalgia for 2016: Cultural Memory and Political What-Ifs

Timestamps: 56:36–65:32

• They poke fun at the current trend of reliving 2016, noting nostalgia for cultural touchstones like Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Pokémon Go.
• Heather reflects that turbulent eras still produce vibrant culture and new voices; history shows renaissance follows hardship.
• Both express longing for a period before politics overshadowed daily life, with Jess recalling her hopes for women’s leadership pre-2016.
• Quote:
  • Heather: “Every era has its benefits, and every era has its detriment, and nostalgia's normal. But let's move forward.” (61:55)
  • “What I am gonna be focusing on going forward is figuring out how to rebuild a better democracy than we had before…this is going to pass…we get to do a better job this time than we did in the past.” (64:12)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “I await my lavish apologies.” —Heather Cox Richardson (04:20)
• “The United States…is actively trying to destroy that stage. That is the story of this moment.” —Heather Cox Richardson (08:52)
• "Trump is not acting alone…he is not acting without a long history behind him." —Heather Cox Richardson (11:31)
• "It has been so easy for so long for people to say, ‘Oh, America’s never gonna go down the Nazi route...’” —Heather Cox Richardson (23:36)
• "It's eggs and democracy—if you let oligarchs take over our system and destroy democracy, you will end up in servitude to them for the rest of your lives.” —Heather Cox Richardson (30:19)
• "We need four Republicans...and we could stop this." —Heather Cox Richardson (48:08)
• "This is not just Trump, there has been poison within the Republican Party operating for a while now...this is a disease of American democracy." —Heather Cox Richardson (52:25)
• "Every era has its benefits...nostalgia's normal. But let's move forward." —Heather Cox Richardson (61:55)
• "We get to do a better job this time than we did in the past." —Heather Cox Richardson (64:12)

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Summary Takeaways

• Trump’s second term is perceived as a period of profound democratic backsliding and abandonment of constitutional norms, marked by escalating authoritarianism and open disdain for the rule of law.
• The global order is viewed as shifting away from U.S. leadership toward China, as America relinquishes its post-WWII anchor role.
• ICE’s open use of fascist language and imagery is not just about immigration, but a tool for intimidating Americans and eroding civil liberties.
• Media failure and public disconnection from policy realities have allowed the war on truth and apathy toward democratic decay to flourish.
• To counter this trajectory, the American populace must engage in direct and relentless pressure on elected officials, as only bipartisan resistance can restore stability.
• Even in dark historical moments, vibrant cultural and artistic renewal has followed periods of political and economic chaos—offering a note of hope and an imperative to build a better democracy.

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Episode Structure & Key Timestamps

• 02:06 – [Opening banter about data, debate prep, and the importance of facts in public discourse]
• 05:43 – [Reflections on Trump's legacy, tariffs, and the global order]
• 11:31 – [Analysis of Trump’s extra-constitutional governance]
• 15:07 – [Discussion of focused resistance, ICE, and midterms]
• 20:00 – [Deep dive into fascist language, ICE, and historical echoes]
• 28:43 – [Media’s role in the war on truth; linking democracy to economic justice]
• 36:03 – [Davos, shifting alliances, China, and distraction as strategy]
• 42:18 – [Trump as chaos—international fear, analogy to Brexit, risks of denial]
• 47:22 – [What next? Pressure, the Republican Party, the search for solutions]
• 48:49 – [Epstein files, metadata vs wiretapping, power dynamics]
• 56:36 – [2016 nostalgia, cultural memory, and optimism for the future]

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This episode blends historical context and present-day political analysis with personal reflection, underscoring the urgent need to confront the erosion of democratic norms while keeping faith in cultural and civic renewal.

Transcript

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[Heather Cox Richardson]

Heated rivalry is a massive hit. Everyone's talking about the sex, but it's just as much about the exquisite pain of having a crush.

[Jessica Tarlov]

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[Heather Cox Richardson]

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[Jessica Tarlov]

Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Jessica Tarlov and am so wildly excited to have Heather Cox Richardson with us, historian extraordinaire at the hugely popular substack Letters from an American that we're all subscribers to. Thank you for being here.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Thank you for having me. I'm quite excited about this conversation myself. Oh, great.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I love when that happens. Cause I, I was thinking before you got on, I was like, all right, what. What does my banter section with Heather Cox Richardson look like? I was like the weather. And then we're both 21 degrees, so that's not really that interesting. Um, I was watching a stream from a couple days ago that you ran over your mailbox, so I was like, maybe we talk mailbox.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

I did indeed run over My mailbox. Um, but can I. Can I give us a topic for a banter here?

[Jessica Tarlov]

I would love it.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

So when I watch you, I cannot believe how good you are at having exactly the statistics you need at exactly the right moment. And I wanna know how you do that. Do you like, go in, having prepped a whole bunch of different stuff and work it in, or do you just have a mind that says, oh, that statistic is slightly wrong? And so I'm just gonna whip this out from a book I read 15.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Years ago to I wish 15 years ago I could still remember those stats. I do a lot of prep, so I get the rundown of the topics that we're gonna discuss at 11am and then I prep until 5pm So I kind of like hone in on the core points that I want to make. And I'm a bit of, you know, what is it like a dog with a bone that I know that I want to get to certain things, but you know how it is, like when you talk about these things all the time, you're just building on the information that's already in the reservoir. And I have pretty good recall for past stats, I guess, that I've used. But that's such a wonderful question. And actually I'm writing a book about that very question and that point and why it's so important to talk to people that you disagree with and to be armed with database set of points to make sure that you can make it as strongly as possible and as unemotionally as possible. Which is, you know, dangerous places for women to be. I think when you get into the kind of the feelings arguments.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Well, in a way, you and I are both engaged in the exact same enterprise, which is beyond politics, it's beyond America. It is really, I think, the human enterprise of recovering sort of the good ideals of the Enlightenment. The idea that if you are actually operating in reality, that you can make good decisions. And when you talk about sort of emotions versus the statistics or versus the reality on the ground, it always astonishes me, the number of people in positions of power who seem to act based on what I would call image, but what other people call vibes. And you're sitting there saying, like, you know, I don't care what you think a tariff does, right? Here's what a tariff actually does. And part of me, I guess, if we're still in the banter phase, would love there to be like a weekly lavish apology section for all those people who told us we were idiots to say, for example, that in fact, American consumers and importers were going to pay tariffs. And you know, you remember Trump sitting there in Chicago before the election, literally saying to economists, well, you're right, wrong, you're stupid, and I'm right. And now we're sort of blowing on by that, like, oh, yeah. In fact, American consumers and American importers did in fact pick up 96% of the tariffs. And there doesn't ever seem to be an accounting for that. And part of me, I mean, it's just a little fantasy. But as I say, I await my lavish apologies.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah, I don't think you're gonna get the apology. I also have a list of apologies that I would like to get. So they, they come for things like that. But then also just when people have been rude to me and I would like an apology for them. But it is one of the main sources of frustration and it does link nicely into what we're gonna talk about. Because Today is the one year anniversary of Trump being inaugurated, so we're only 25% into Trump 2.0. And there have been so many lies or things that they told us were going to happen or weren't going to happen that just objective reality dictates has to happen. And it's interesting, you know, it's Davos week where there are a bunch of people over there who are concerned about the tariffs, what's going on in the global economy. We're seeing a scrambling of the world alliances, everyone cozying up to China because we are not a reliable partner any longer. And the point that you make is a really important one. Not just the I want an apology, but the tariffs are going to be the main plot line of the next year, depending, I guess, a bit on what the Supreme Court does. Do you feel like their ruling is going to make a massive difference in this? Cause it's not gonna be all the tariffs that would come off.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Right. I do think the Supreme Court decision is going to matter, but I'm gonna disagree that it's the tariffs that are gonna be the main through line for the next year coming up. I think we are in the middle of watching Trump and his loyalists tear up the entire post World War II global order. And that is certainly about the economy. And a lot of Americans simply were able to live again in that fantasy world because they didn't have to look at the reality of the fact that freedom of was central to making sure that American standards of living as well as standards of living around the world have been improving since World War II. But at the same time, there is also the defensive capabilities of NATO and of our other alliances that have really managed to stave off another world war. And again, Trump is quite gleefully ripping that up. And this whole business of tearing all that up. It certainly seemed to me when Trump took office the second time that Vladimir Putin in Russia, of course, has been egging him on because he wants to get rid of that post World War II order so he can take over countries like Ukraine, or at least its eastern industrial regions. But it seemed to me that in Trump 2.0 that people really didn't realize the degree to which there was sort of this background reality that was holding things together, and that Trump was going to rip that up and destroy that. And I think that Putin made the calculation that if you pulled the US out of that international order, that everything would collapse and have to reorganize with the US as the anchor, or at least with a different set of anchors than we'd had in the past. And what we've discovered is, in fact, the world is moving on without the United States of America. And, you know, I saw the other day a statement about the China century, which a lot of people might have missed the reference to that was a reference to a post World War II article in Time magazine called the American century, in which 1945-2045 was supposed to be the American century. And now this was essentially somebody saying, now America just walked away from the table. This is gonna be the China century. And, you know, the United States of America under Donald Trump has walked away from the global stage or is actively trying to destroy that stage. And, you know, that is the story of this moment and going forward is what somebody has called, you know, the world's greatest superpower dying by suicide.

[Jessica Tarlov]

You just did banter better than anybody else, and also the intro to the episode better than anyone else, because that's exactly what I want to talk about. So I'm just going to kind of frame it up. In today's episode of Raging Moderates, we're discussing how history will remember the first year of Trump 2.0, Trump's turn from anti globalist to guest of honor in Davos, and why people are nostalgic about 2016 and what we're really missing, you know, building off of what you were just saying, like how you see this first year of Trump's presidency. And I was thinking back to a comment that I made on the 5 a few months ago where I said that I thought that Trump's lasting legacy was going to be his war on the truth. And that Americans and a lot of people internationally, but mostly us, of course, have a much harder time distinguishing objective reality. And this links back to our data conversation right from right off the bat, from what people who are in charge of their political parties or in their communities are telling them is actually going on. And I have felt like while that still carries a lot of weight, and I believe that strongly going, you know, to the big lie that over 60% of Republicans still think that Biden didn't legitimately win that election, that something has shifted even in just the last few months. And it's different from Doge and kind of taking a wrecking ball to the federal government, but kind of watching the unraveling of everything with ICE and what's going on in Minneapolis. And I know that you were talking about this as well on your show since the killing of Renee Nicole Good, that his lasting legacy might be destroying American democracy. I don't, I don't want to go too far. I know that's kind of an extreme.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

You can go there.

[Podcast Producer/Host]

Okay.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I'd like to go there because that's how it feels to me right now. And I have, you know, been heartened to see so many people out in the streets peacefully protesting. I'm scared for a lot of people who are not peacefully protesting, though. Sometimes it seems like ICE doesn't even care. But we're in a full spiral where this feels like a country that I don't recognize. And I'm curious as to what you think about that.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Let me start by saying that Trump is not acting alone and he is not acting without a long history behind him, that we could talk about the ways in which the radical right has used image versus reality in order to destroy American democracy, as you say. But I think the thing that jumped out to me about Trump 2.0, if you will, is that from the beginning, it seemed as if he was operating extra constitutionally. That's not that he was simply breaking laws or challenging the Constitution, which other presidents have done in the past, but simply that he and the people around him were acting as if there weren't a Constitution. So even before he took office, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, which I am still not convinced was ever any kind of a legal entity, started using impoundment. The idea of simply saying, we don't care how Congress gathered money from the taxpayers, we don't care what the law says, we don't care that our job, according to the Constitution, is to make that happen. We're just gonna do whatever we wanna do with that money. And that, to me, was like flashing red lights saying, oh, we're in trouble now. And similarly, when you think about the. The law really has worked very hard to hold Trump in check, especially at the low. But they're not even operating within the law. They will say, oh, we're in the wrong venue. Oh, we don't know who's in charge. Oh, maybe somebody signed this, maybe somebody didn't. It's sort of this cat and mouse game with the law and that extra constitutionality. The idea that that Constitution doesn't matter, doesn't exist, is, I think, the linchpin, not simply to undermining American democracy, but also undermining the entire idea of governments that are driven by the people who vote them in, you know, that consent to that government. So there is that overarching thing, but that actually, if you think about this moment as being an extra constitutional moment, that is a moment in which there is not a United States Constitution. And mind you, there is. Most of us adhere to it. But if you think about the idea of leadership acting as if there are no rules, as if simply one person's whim is what runs things, that does have echoes of the American Revolution. So when you talk about this moment as being the destruction of American democracy, that is a thing, I think, incontrovertibly, what Trump and the different factions of his coalition would like to see. But the thing that has happened is that what you're seeing in places like, well, I was gonna single out Minneapolis St. Paul, but in fact, all over this country are ordinary Americans, everyday Americans, stepping up and saying, hey, just a minute here. These are my tax dollars. These are the laws. Why aren't you doing this? And that delta between Americans saying, hey, wait a minute, this actually is our government. And the reality that the leadership is not adhering to that at all has in it those electeds, the elected officials who are, you know, many of them are not taking their oaths seriously. Many of them also seem disengaged in the constitutional process. And so it seems to me that we are now, as Trump has completely gone off the rails, is openly trying to isolate us from our former allies or our, I guess, currently allies, but people who are actually sending troops to Greenland to protect it against us. I think we're in this moment where many of us are trying to figure out how do we get the pressure of the American people to get those electeds to put our will into place as our system says they should? And That's a bit of a conundrum in this moment.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah, it definitely feels like the quote unquote, resistance has a direction at this moment instead of kind of the amorphous, you know, And I, I like the no Kings idea and I get it that people wanna show up and make their voices heard. But when you went to the no Kings protest, there were people with signs about 50 different issues. Right. Whatever was something that was motivating them. But it feels at this moment like there is a focus. Right. Like there is an immigration focus. An overreach of ICE agency, 3,000 people a day, quotas from Stephen Miller. Immigration is kind of the signal, the spidey sense. Everyone is going in that direction. But you bring up the importance of getting elected officials to reflect the will of the people, which is how this is supposed to work. Right. Like we put you in office and then you listen to us and you do things that we say within reason. Right. And you mentioned the courts which have been standing up to him, say for the Supreme Court in some very key instances. And you have like Indiana Republicans who didn't go for the map that he wanted. Right. He wanted to gerrymander that up and they got bomb threats, you know, doxing, et cetera, and they still held back on it and really upset J.D. vance, which is always a good day for me when I see that he's so angry. But you say we're in a conundrum. How do you think this plays out? Because there is an election coming. So I guess two parted one. Do you think that we are going to have a free and fair election for the midterms in November? And how do you think this conundrum is going to play out as Americans continue to make their voices heard?

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Well, I'm a prophet of the past, not of the future, first of all. But we do have some patterns we can look at. And I do wanna point out that this is not to say none of the electeds are trying to right the ship here. And one of the things that if you study politics, you see is that it's always a chessboard and people are moving a little piece here in order ultimately to move a big piece over there. And it's always worth stepping and taking a look to see what in fact they're doing. So over the weekend, Trump has threatened a number of European countries and so on. And there was real Alarm on Monday, January 19, over a number of missives he had sent or said to leadership in other countries that basically said, you didn't give me The Nobel Prize. I'm gonna take Greenland. And a lot of people who have been trying to keep their hands off the idea of the President sort of being cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs sort of jumped in and said, we. We got a real issue here. And so Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina came out and said, well, I don't blame Donald Trump for this. I blame his advisors. Really interesting moment, because a lot of people are interpreting that as he's just a weenie and he's not actually gonna go after the problem here. It is also possible, and I'm not gonna take a stand on which this is, but this is an illustration of the different way you look at politics. It is also possible that he has recognized what a lot of other people have recognized, and that's that it's always hard to go after the head of an organization because people feel personal loyalty to that person, but the people around him are fair game. So you think of example for Musk being pulled out of the equation, and it may simply be that people like Tillis are looking to pull Stephen Miller away from that organization, a man that many of us recognize as being a real bad actor in the administration. So the political game is always going on. And I don't want to suggest that none of the electeds are working toward the ends that I think most of us need to work at totally. But how this plays out, I think the answer is we absolutely have no idea. Some of the factors are the fact that we must take into consideration that Donald Trump is not okay. And we have never before had a president who was, A, not okay and B, not surrounded by people who were guaranteeing he didn't make crazy decisions. So, for example, when Nixon was paranoid and deep into alcohol at the end of his term, you know, Henry Kissinger said to people, don't do anything he says without coming to me first. I mean, there were some guardrails around him. We don't have that right. And again, I think that's why we're seeing him tear everything apart. But the crunch is now, in terms of the elections coming up, we're gonna have elections. I have absolutely no doubt about that, because everybody has elections. You look at the fact North Korea has elections. Your question about free and fair is a more complicated one in the sense that I would argue that we haven't had free and fair elections in this country for a long time because we have had voter support, we have had gerrymandering, we have had the flood of huge amounts of money into those elections. Will they Happen, absolutely. But the degree to which we will be able to change the course of the country then, if we don't change it now, I think is very much open for debate.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I want to pick up on something you mentioned. You said, Stephen Miller, which everyone basically knows is a real bad actor. And because you are a prophet of the past, you're someone that I have wanted to ask about the government, its formal channels and accounts, using white supremacists and echoing Nazi rhetoric. So just a few examples, you know, one homeland, one people, one heritage. Defend the homeland. We will have our home again. Greg Bevino, who is in charge of these big ICE operations, I don't know if you saw him. He's wearing this coat that looks like he is an SS commander. And everybody could recognize that. It's not the normal ICE garb. I don't know if it's a custom fit to look that way or what's going on there. What do you make of the fact that they are doing this all the time? And they. I won't even say that they play dumb about it because to your earlier comment where they say, I don't care, they don't care about the Constitution. I get the this sometimes from my colleagues who just say, I don't care. You can present a fact, right, Or a set of arguments and say, well, Biden did X, Y or Z thing and we don't care. We are past giving a shit. Right, about anything that you have to say. And it feels like when they're posting things like this, where people can directly tie back to 1930s Germany, that we're not being paranoid and it's part of, of what is making me feel so helpless, I guess, in this particular moment. So have you been paying attention to that theme and what do you think about it?

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Oh, yeah. And that theme's been going on for a while. You know, back in Trump 1.0, there were certainly big calls back to fascist imagery. I mean, his second convention, when he got the nomination in 2020, was just a fascist spectacle. I mean, if you know anything about history, you couldn't miss the cameras from down below and the classic columns, the flags everywhere. I mean, it was really, really notable then. And that actually I mentioned because at the time when people called it out, including people like me, but not exclusively me, Parker Malloy was all over this. I mean, quite literally. Some people complained to my employer saying how dare she? And of course, now here we are all these years later, where in fact they are openly using Nazi imagery and openly using Nazi speeches. And I think there's a bunch of things going on with that. One is that it's a whistle, not a dog whistle anymore, but a bullhorn to those extreme right wing, especially young men, to join their standard basically saying, here we are, boys, come join us. So there is that. But I also think one of the things about ICE right now is, you know, you have to remember that they have more money than most militaries, that they seem certainly to be backed by Stephen Miller with the idea that there are no limits to how they can behave, which they is not true, by the way. But that's certainly the image and the words that he is projecting onto them. You're seeing truly horrific attacks on everybody in the United States, from undocumented migrants through to US citizens from this group of people. And it's worth remembering that while you said that what they are talking about is immigration, and that's our point of focus, that in fact they are using the issue of immigration to cow American citizens, that this ICE is not about immigration any longer. It's about making sure that American citizens do not stand up to the power of the state. And that is fascism. It's also worth remembering that right now there's only about 20,000 members of immigration and Customs Enforcement. There are other members of the Homeland Security Department that can be used as law enforcement officers. But the point here is there aren't that many of them. I mean, it sounds a lot in a town the size of mine, but in this country that has more than 340 million people, that is not enough people to put down all those American citizens that they are trying to cow. And this is one of the reasons you're seeing them rush people from city to city. They don't have enough people to be in all these cities. And this is the other reason they're going for smaller cities. Minneapolis, St. Paul, now they're talking about Lewiston, Maine. Lewiston, Maine has 37,000 people in it. You know, this is not some great triumph of taking over New York City, right? So one of the things I think they're really trying to do is to project the idea that they are unbeatable, that they are unsinkable, that nobody can possibly stop this juggernaut. And in part to pull behind them that imagery of, you know, the marching troops down the roadways in Nazi Germany to try and convince people that they are more powerful than they actually are. But I do think it's important that people do not mistake this moment. That is, it has been so easy for so long. For people to say, oh, America's never gonna go down the Nazi route. They're never gonna become fascist. And one of the things that scholars have noted and the US government noted during World War II is that fascism is a political ideology that Benito Mussolini developed in the 1920s. But the idea that some people are better than others and have the right to rule is deeply embedded in the United States and was deeply embedded in the United States before Benito Musso even born. So we do have the elements of fascism in our DNA. And the idea that we won't go that direction is simply belied by the fact we have in the past in the American south, from 1874, for example, to about 1965. And now, one of the things that really horrifies me is the umbrella of secrecy over the detention centers run by ice. Now, we know people are dying in the. We know as of this morning, thanks to Judd Legum, that people who are being held in those detention centers are not getting medical care. You look at that, and for somebody like me, I remember the first. I mean, I wasn't alive then. I've read them the first articles in the New York Times about Hitler's concentration camps. And there's a difference between a death camp and a concentration camp, right? But the first about the concentration camps were about how they're clean. Nobody's complaining about anything. If you're in them, you don't complain. If you work hard, you're gonna get out in a year. I mean, real propaganda and real misrepresentation of what those things actually were. And right now I'm looking at what we're not seeing in those detention centers. And soon we'll be saying to the American people, I read a letter about this. We're there. We are there, and we must stop it. We know where it goes, and we know that that's not who we wanna be.

[Jessica Tarlov]

So. So CBS did end up airing the C cot piece that got pulled a few weeks ago this past Sunday evening. And I'm thinking, based on what you're saying about Kristi Noem doing that promo video, essentially, like, in a tight white T shirt in front of a bunch of caged men who weren't actually even the prisoners that we had sent there. It was actually the bad hombres who I won't say were supposed to be there, but that was El Salvador's decision, or the tours that they were giving through Alligator Alcatraz in Miami that were apparently, you know, not reflective of the conditions that are going on there. Where it was A swamp. No one was getting that medical care and the American people had seeped into consciousness. Right. ICE is extremely unpopular. Donald Trump is underwater on every single metric. And he took immigration, which was his best issue, and it's, you know, anywhere from minus 6 to minus 12, depending on the survey. How do you, as someone who is so clear headed about the threat and the risk of this moment that we're in, speak about that in a way that doesn't make people. I'm thinking back to how ineffective it was from a political strategy point of view to argue that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. We all saw January 6th and a majority of people just decided they didn't really care that much whether they thought it was a day of love and of a bunch, bunch of tourists. Like they moved on and they thought my grocery prices are too high. And so I'm going to take this guy back and we'll see what he can do about it. And I feel like a similar challenge is mounting, I guess, in the national consciousness and for the Democratic Party to be able to acknowledge reality and the things that you're saying and that history repeats itself, but to not seem like, you know, out on an island talking about issues that don't relate to people everyday lives and get them actually motivated to go to the polls.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

So let's go back a second there. You know, I always feel like we must put the role of the media into our American political system, because I'm not at all convinced that Americans walked away from the idea of a threat to democracy. What I do think is that the media, as it existed until very recently, has really not presented to the American people what was really happening and the stakes of that happening. And rather than going and looking at Trump, let's look a little bit at the Biden administration, which I covered really closely. And it just would, would floor me that they would work on something huge for a really long time, like Lina Khan, making sure that for the first time since the 1980s, when we looked at antitrust in the United States, that rather than simply saying, oh, so long as it makes people get cheaper products in the short run, we don't care how many different organizations make themselves into one giant conglomerate. What she did, she recovered the older version of antitrust that said, we're gonna look at what matters to workers and to the environment and to the community the way that antitrust laws were supposed to be. And that got almost no coverage at all. And then on the other side of it, people are sort of waking up and going hey, wait a minute. All these things are consolidating, and all these are consolidating, and that's a problem. Americans should have had access to what was going on then. And certainly back to the 1980s, when Robert Bork was the person who said, we gotta change the way we look at antitrust law. There was so much that people did not have access to. And I do think that that is changing. I think a lot of independent media is getting real traction because people honestly want to learn what the world looks like around them. You know, people wanna learn. They wanna know what the world looks like. But in terms of going forward, you know, the Democrats, of course, are the opposition party right now, but I don't think this is about Democrats or Republicans. I think this is about democracy versus authoritarianism. And those things right now are represented largely by the Democrats. But we have an awful lot of independence running around there and by the Republican Party. And that looks very much like the 1850s. So once you've got that out of the way. One of the things that I always look at is moments when we have had the rise of oligarchs who tried to take over our system and destroy democracy. And what really jumps out is the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s slash early 30s. And in all of those moments, yes, ordinary Americans were getting screwed. They were getting screwed economically, they were getting screwed culturally and so on. But the politicians that managed to harness that in positive ways were the ones who did not divorce that economic need on the part of the majority of Americans from the concept of democracy. So you look, for example, at fdr, but you also could look at Lincoln or at Theodore Roosevelt, or, I'm sorry, Grover Cleaves, all of them said, if you let oligarchs take over our system and destroy democracy, you will end up in servitude to them for the rest of your lives. It's the same story. It's not democracy versus eggs. It's eggs are gonna be expensive unless you protect democracy. And that's something I feel like it's an opportunity that Democratic electeds, many of them, not all of them, but many of them, are missing because they think it's one or the other, but it's the same story. And the advantage that you get when you talk about those larger concepts of democracy or of systems of government is that it makes people understand that they're part of a larger world, and it gives their lives meaning in a way that the Trump movement gave a lot of people's lives meaning by saying here we are, we're 1776. Remember Lauren Boebert the morning of January 6th, 2021. We're gonna take back America. Well, here's a news flash. Those of us who are interested in protecting American democracy are actually on the side of our great American heroes. And we too can say it's time for us to take back democracy. It's time for us to defend this system of government that people are fighting for all over the world. And by the way, if we do that, your egg prices are gonna come down, which is the reality.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I love that. And some Democratic politicians listen to this. So I hope that they heed your advice cause I would love to a democracy kum egg slogan that we could fit on a bumper sticker. We're going to take a quick break. Stay with us.

[Podcast Producer/Host]

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[Jessica Tarlov]

I love it.

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[Jessica Tarlov]

Welcome back. I want to go global now. It's Davos Week. Donald Trump is there. He's not crashing the party. He's the party this time around. The World Economic Forum, once the temple of climate pledges and global cooperation, is rolling out the red carpet for Trump and his inner circle as AI growth and deal making replace talk of equity and sustainability. I've been looking through the programs. You cannot find any of the words that we were used to seeing for these conversations at Davos. You know, people are not talking about sustainability. They're not even talking about income inequality. It's just like, where is Scott Besant? And you know, what is Donald Trump gonna do with his Board of peace? Trump is really upending the global order and that's where I wanna start. And you had already mentioned this in our elongated and awesome banter section, but what is your perspective on. I don't wanna just make this about Davos, but like, where are we in terms of. Of the world order? I was listening to Emmanuel Macron this morning cozying up to China. That was his opening statement. Basically, this is after Donald Trump published private text messages between him and the NATO Secretary General and with Macron, who were very flattering as usual. Though Macron did say, I have no idea what you're doing with Greenland, but what do you make of how Davos is handling Trump?

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Well, you know, they always say in dysfunctional families that it's the Loose cannon in the family that gets all the attention because you simply don't know what that person is going to do. And you have to find a way to neutralize that person. And I think that's what you're seeing there. I do think he is upending the world order and forcing the world to center around China, which is sort of mind boggling when you think of the fact that under the Biden administration, the U.S. stepped up to challenge China with the Chips and Science act and with the Inflation Reduction act, and we were on track to do it. And of course, he's just gutted all of that, essentially forcing people who are interested in climate sustainability to go to China, which is producing like cars and appliances and different ways of harnessing renewable energy which will make them the. Well, it'll become the Chinese century because everybody's appliances will have to work on the system that the Chinese invent rather than the US and, or Europe, but especially the US invents. I mean, it's really, it is just astonishing to look at. And again, I play out in my head a lot of what that might look like for the next several generations. You know, I always try to put a positive spin on it, but it is mind boggling that we got here in this amount of time. So there is that. There is the fact that Trump is, as I say, I don't think he knows if he's afoot or horseback and he is thinking like it's all kind of a joke, that he's got this big army and he can do whatever he wants. Publishing those text messages was, you know, that was like a fifth grader. You know, it was just maybe not even a fifth grader. I mean, it was just bizarre. The photographs he posted with Greenland as an American flag. I mean, it was just trolling. It was just childish trolling, which I think reflects the sort of feedback loop that he is in among those people who think the United States of America is kind of a joke and his plaything. And it is profoundly, profoundly disturbing. One of the things that is also missing from Davos in its incarnation now is it was supposed to be signing, was on the program to sign an agreement for rebuilding Ukraine. And no one's talking about Ukraine that got taken off the program. And I don't believe right now that Volodymyr is. Zelensky is planning to go any longer. And when you think about what Trump is doing, the absolute chaos that he is sowing, one of the things that it has done is it has opened the way for Russian President Vladimir Putin to increase dramatically his assaults on Ukraine. That war is now going into its fourth year, as in February. They have been fighting there longer than the Soviets fought in World War II. That, I think, is worth noting, that by making all the attention come on to him, Trump has taken attention away from Vladimir Putin and his assault on Ukraine. And also he has reduced attention in the United States to the Epstein files, for which his Department of Justice is in absolute disregard of the law. They're breaking the law. It's been more than 30 days since, by law, they had to release those in full, and they've released less than 1%. And then, of course, we also have the fact that I actually was up very late last night reading through a number of transcripts and reports and so on. On the 22nd of January, which is this Thursday, special counsel Jack Smith will be testifying in public about his investigation, primarily the one of Trump's attempt to overturn the election in 2020, because he's sort of been silenced over the investigation of the retention of classified documents. But by Trump simply being a chaos monkey, he is keeping us from discussing the things that really matter to world stability, to the world economy, to the United States of America in terms of its economy today. The stock market has plummeted after his attacks on Greenland, his verbal attacks so far on Greenland, and the attacks on American democracy. So what's happening in Davos, it just sort of, I guess, chaos monkey is the way I think about what Trump is doing over there. Again, I think at some level, it's worth saying I find this profoundly sad. You know, I've spent my whole life studying the United States of America because I believe in the mission. I believe in the power of the people who have built what they have built. And that's not to say that it has been without flaws by any stretch of the imagination. That's what I tend to write about, is the flaws in my books. But the idea that we are tearing down 300 years of Americans of all stripes, trying to build a world in which people have a say in their government, have the right to consent to their government, have the right to be treated equally before the law, and have a right to equal access to resources at the hands of this one man is just, aside from everything else, profoundly sad to me. And I guess I never say that enough. It's heartbreaking.

[Jessica Tarlov]

It is, absolutely. And that. That so many people with these kinds of evil aspirations found their vessel in Trump because, I mean, so many of his beliefs that he held for his whole pre Political life are just wiped away, right? And he was this blank ish canvas that bad actors could write all over. And I think that it's how we've ended up in a lot of this mess. And I was particularly struck, a colleague of mine was telling an anecdote about Trump that he asked him, you know, like, what's going on with the ballroom, right, you know, and the auto pen portraits on the walls and all this stuff. And he said, Trump responded something like, well, if I don't do it, nobody will. And it's the same attitude about the Nobel Peace Prize, right? Like if I don't scream from the rooftops that I deserve this thing, I'm never going to get it. And I don't want to reduce it just to a petulant child because he's the leader of the free world. But as the mother of a 4 year old and a 21 month old, I recognize a lot of this behavior and it's so disturbing. And you rightly say always trolling about Greenland, but I got a message overnight from an old colleague of mine from my PhD program in London who's Danish, and a clip of the Five, the show that I'm on made it over to them, was on their show and they were talking about the cavalier attitude towards the European project and our NATO allies. And he said, we're really scared. And so people who wipe this away as just a troll, we're frightening millions of people with what we're doing right now and how many people are maybe not rubber stamping it but just kind of letting it go or saying in a gaggle, oh, I didn't, you know, I didn't see what he said, which Republicans love to do. And I was in London for six years. I did my grad school work there. And I remember how hard heard the news about Brexit actually happening hit me where I said, this can't be. I get it. And it had similar elements, right? A big propaganda campaign was blaming, you know, dark skinned people. Do you remember those images of people like running through the forests, they're taking your jobs, they're taking your health care, making up this huge scandal about the nhs, for instance. And then, you know, it only took months for there to be huge amount of requests regret on the part of the Brits for what they had done, that they had siphoned themselves off from Europe not just because of money and jobs and things like that, but because of their spirit and their vibe, right? They're Europeans and now they don't have access to it, and they're not part of it in the same way. And I don't want to feel that from the post World War II order. I don't want to sit here and say, oh, we're not in the same camp with the French and the German and the Swedes and the Danes and all the good guys.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

I'm not gonna argue with you.

[Jessica Tarlov]

It's just my sad story, I guess.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

No, the one thing about that is I think you have to be careful. All these people saying, he doesn't really mean it. He's joking, he's just trolling. This is how he tests out ideas. And this has been a hallmark, the number of people who keep saying, oh, he'd never do that. And here we are. And this worries me terribly. When you see electeds like you say, saying, oh, he doesn't really mean that. That's a negotiating tactic. No, you have to take him seriously at this point. You have to believe that he's testing out these ideas. Because again, when you think about where we were 10 years ago, if you had said to any American, even those who have voted for Trump three times that we were going to have troops in the streets going after Americans, they would have said, I want no part of that. And yet here we are down the road where it's actually happened. So I think we do have to take those things seriously. There is this tendency of Americans, especially perhaps, to say, oh, we'd never really do that.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Right.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

But we are doing that. And I don't think people want to be where we are. I certainly don't think they want to be where we're going. If you just look at what will happen to this country if we continue down this road. I mean, the legal immigration will plummet dramatically, which is a huge, huge issue for a country whose population is aging as it is, in every way. He is, as Jarrett Graf, the journalist said, killing this nation by suicide. And I don't think people want to be there, but I still don't think people take it seriously enough. I mean, I shouldn't say that many, many, many people take it seriously enough. But the number of people who need to be engaged in getting rid of this president are not there yet. And again, we were talking earlier about the midterm elections, and I have seen people say, oh, we can vote them out of the midterms. Well, think of the damage that has already happened in a year, and it seems to me they are dramatically ramping up that damage as his popularity drops and as his mental stability deteriorates. I think we gotta figure out a way out before next November.

[Jessica Tarlov]

What does a way out look like?

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Well, I don't know. If I had it, believe me, I would be doing it and not talking to you.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I was like, oh, my God, maybe she has it.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Well, I mean, you know, I always come back to the American people. The American people have to pressure their electeds enough that they actually do their jobs. That's what I come to. But for me, where are those pressure points to really make them understand that they are not just talking about losing their own jobs, they're not just talking about the destruction of the United States, that we are talking about the destruction of the Republican Party forever. Because it seems to me that's the only way you can convince the. We need to step up right now. The Republicans, the Democrats are there. We need four, four Republicans in the House and the Senate, and we could stop this.

[Jessica Tarlov]

So one pressure point that cuts across partisan lines is the Epstein files, which you mentioned. So now they've broken the law. They had 30 days to release, release the millions of documents. So far, I think only over a million have been released. The survivors are regularly speaking out about how ridiculous this is and how re traumatizing it is for this to be drawn out in this way. What do you think the impact of the Epstein files is going to be? Do you think we will ever see them? And do you give credence to the idea that it is what motivates Donald Trump to make almost every decision, that he is just running, learning from whatever it is that's in these pages?

[Heather Cox Richardson]

So I don't give a lot of thought to what is making Trump do anything that's healthier. Yeah, I mean, it's just what's the point? People say to me all the time, do you think he's a Russian agent? I'm like, I don't care. I care what he does. And I don't see how his behavior would be all that different if we had a big report card coming for Donald Trump from Putin. So I don't know what is motivating him, and I don't need to know what's in those Epstein files to know that the administration considers them so explosive that they are doing everything they can to discredit them. To me, like, one of the things that I find fascinating about studying history and especially politics is that often you don't have the elephant, you have the space around the elephant. So rather than looking at what's happening, why is Trump worried about the Epstein files? I'm Interested in looking at how are people reacting to the Epstein files? Can we tell anything by the way they're reacting? And there is absolutely no doubt this administration is completely panicked over the idea of the release of any more of those files. And what they have released is absolutely damning. So you have to assume that whatever else is in there, and we know there are many things in there, there are videotapes, there are photographs, there's testimony, there's the investigation. And by the way, there's also crap in that. A lot of that is raw material that hasn't been properly vetted. And people are making the mistake of seeing the worst stuff that they're throwing out there, trolling us with and thinking that that's it, so that when that.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Gets discredited, they can say the whole thing.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

They will be able to say, that's right. So I think you have to assume that whatever is in there is extraordinarily bad. But one of the things that I did quite late last night was reading the Jack Smith's deposition from December 17th. He was speaking before the House Judiciary Committee and again reading for the space around the elephant rather than the elephant. What is interesting to me about that is the degree to which the Republican majority of the House Judiciary Committee and this is public, by the way, anybody can read this, is focused almost exclusively on the fact that the investigation into Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election got the toll records of the members of Congress that Trump called and they didn't get the content. That's not what the toll records are. It's who made the call and how long the call lasted. And they used almost all of their time in a multi hour deposition, essentially trying to suss out how much Smith knew about the Republican members of Congress and do with that what you will. But oh my God, does it jump out at you that this is what they are tying themselves in knots over, not what Trump did, not what other people did. This is what they are concerned about? Well, I look at that and I think as a historian, why, I can certainly see saying, hey, we wanna make sure there's actual guardrails around the procedure, which there obviously were. Jack Smith was very much within the law and got all the right paperwork and everything to do that. But why was that at their overwhelming focus? And those sorts of questions I think will expose the idea that this is not just Trump, that there has been poison within the Republican Party operating for a while now. I think based on again, that idea that if Democrats ever took office, they couldn't do it legitimately and their governance would somehow be illegitimate. And that I think when we get to the other side of this, and we will, because time moves forward, forward, we're going to have to do a pretty big reckoning of how the United States got to such a place that we could have people defending a president who is clearly not up to the game of the presidency and who is destroying the United States of America's power on the global stage and economy at home. And nodded at it because this is not just a disease of Trump, this is a disease of American democracy.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because I remember when this first leaked out about the they were calling it wiretapping. So Senator Ron Johnson and Josh Hawley, but it was metadata, which is completely different. And they were just going to friendly faces in the media and telling them, no, I was wiretapped by Jack Smith. And this is such an outrage. And because the story was moving quickly, some people didn't notice the difference between just knowing who you called and how long you were talking to them versus actually having a wiretap, which would go through a whole different procedure to get. But it will be interesting. And now we have Jack Smith to be watching as well. And he's opening up his own law firm with some other good guys, which should be interesting.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Well, what is interesting about the Jack Smith thing, though, aside from everything else, is Trump knows what happened that day.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

I mean, he knows it. I mean, whatever he's got access to in his mind still, and he knows that Jack Smith knows, knows it. So aside from everything you and I could speculate on or whatever, he is not behaving as a man who feels like more knowledge about his behavior is going to in any number of fields. Epstein, the Mar A Lago retained documents the January 20, you know, the cryptocurrency stuff, you know, any of that stuff, he's not acting like a man who wants full transparency because it will clear his name. And, you know, there's an awful lot of people who have access to an awful lot of information. And at some point somebody starts to spill.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah, we'll wait to see who that is. I want to take one more quick break. Stay with us.

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Two years ago, Apple showed off a version of Siri that used AI to be more helpful, more intelligent, and just generally more awesome. And two years, two years later, it hasn't shipped a bit. And Siri is still terrible. But this week on the Vergecast, we're talking about how a new deal with Google could mean a totally new way of thinking about AI for Apple and that we might actually get good Siri. That plus the latest on what's going on with Grok and what's going on inside the metaverse, how you can be more productive in 2026 and the surprisingly sci fi future of Lego. All that on the Vergecast. Wherever you get podcasts.

[Preet Bharara]

Is the American Dream still possible? And it shouldn't be a wake up that if you work hard, play by the rules, we're going to make the American Dream accessible and affordable to you. You're not going to struggle, you're going to strive to achieve something. For those who think that the system is rigged, Breaking news. You're not paranoid. Paranoid. I'm Preet Bharara and this week former Chicago mayor and U.S. ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel joins me to break down the affordability crisis, education, why Trump supporters feel betrayed, and what a Rahm Emanuel presidential campaign might look like. The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.

[Home Depot Advertiser]

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[Jessica Tarlov]

And welcome back. Before we go, so 2026, we're only, what is it, three weeks in? It sucks. And so there is a new viral trend all over social media where people are reliving 2016 again, which as a political obsessive isn't necessarily the happiest time in my life. But folks on the Internet seem pretty joyful. Beyonce's Lemonade came out. We had Pokemon Go, which was a huge deal. Well, what? Remember Pokemon to the polls?

[Heather Cox Richardson]

I don't know who created Pokemon Go, but I'm trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokemon Go to the polls.

[Jessica Tarlov]

And then we lost, you know, chokers. It was like a lot of lighter cultural fare was happening in 2016. And as a historian, what do you make of this desperate pursuit of nostalgia? Looking back to a happier time and do you think there's anything specific about 2016? Or it's just kind of neat and tidy to say, where were you 10.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Years ago, I'm laughing about the Pokemon Go thing, because what I remember about that is my friends in public history in the National Park Service, for example, were beside themselves because.

[Podcast Producer/Host]

Oh.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Cause everyone was hunting all over.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Yes.

[Jessica Tarlov]

That's awesome.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Yes. And so people kept trying to break in, and they're like, we really don't wanna have you guys arrested, but you can't do this because we have to call the cops when you leap the fence to find your Pokemon Go. And I just remember people tearing their hair out, being like, put the stupid things outside the fence.

[Jessica Tarlov]

It's so good.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Well, you know, I don't think it is unreasonable for people to be nostalgic for a time when we felt more secure in so many ways. You know, for so long, Americans could argue about the edges of politics because we had the sense of stability in the world and sense of stability in the economy. Even when people like me were screaming about how this economy's not fair and all that, lots of people felt that the world was like it had been for their parents and for the people before that, right back to World War II. I'm older than you. I remember people, a lot of them, including my own parents, who live lived through the Depression. And believe me, they were never calm about what could happen. They had seen the rise of the Depression. They had seen World War II, they had seen the rise of communism and the American reaction to that. They always knew that the world could be unpredictable. I think a lot of Americans didn't believe it could be. And when we think back to 2016, we think of a period in which things felt stable, even if, again, people like me kept saying, well, they really aren't. But within that, you just said something really important. You mentioned Beyonce there, and in the late 19th century, for example, which we tend to think of certainly the last years of Reconstruction in that period as being really horrific years. I mean, you have the lynchings and you have the rise of the robber barons, and you have the strikes, and you have people dying of disease, and you have the incredible horrific wars against indigenous Americans and so on. But we do tend to forget that when people lived through it, they were also seeing the rise of ragtime and a whole kind of new fashion. You get the idea of women actually being able to work outside the home in really important ways, teaching and trying to reform society. You get new music, you get new languages. You go to Anzia Jeziirska is writing in that period. You have all these new immigrant voices and indigenous voices, which we have hundreds, literally hundreds of black Newspapers. And I would make the argument that in these periods of real political fear and instability, the flower that grows from them, if you will, is new voices, new ways of looking at the world, new art, new literature, new people. And when people think back in 2016 and what they see is beyond sexual, that's really important, because when people look back at this period, this Trump period, absolutely. They're gonna read people like me, and they're gonna see all the terrible stuff that I record because I study politics and economics, but they're also gonna see that Bad Bunny is doing the super bowl show. And if you're thinking culturally what matters, the last two super bowl shows are probably as important as some of the stuff that I write about. And that's what people remember. They remember the art. They remember the music. They remember that new fashion style. They remember a new artist rising. And that, I think, is a testament to the spirit not only of Americans, but also of humanity. And that's happening right now as well as everything else in our country, from Minneapolis St. Paul, of course, where people are sort of reenacting the Minutemen in a modern way to, you know, across the entire country. So when I think back about nostalgia for 2016, truthfully, I can't remember 2016. I can't remember a thing about 2016 except the attack that Charlie Kirk launched on me. I remember that pretty vividly. But otherwise, you know what? Every era has its benefits, and every era has its detriment, and nostalgia's normal. But let's move forward. Forward.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I like it. And I think. I mean, for me, personally, because I'm kind of. I'm an elder millennial, so core in this demo that's obsessed with this trend, even though I have not posted about it. But I. I was thinking about the picture that I would post, if I did, of what 2016 meant for me. And I was back in the States. I finished my PhD abroad. I was working in polling. I had just started doing TV and earned earnest. And I took this picture wearing a tank top that said, a woman's place is in the White House. And I'm so excited. And it's the summer, so, you know, there were a lot of stories to be written, and Comey hadn't said boo yet. And, you know, it seemed like the country was on course to elect its first female president. And I happened to like Hillary Clinton a lot. And I was thinking about that picture in context of what the last 10 years have looked like. And politics meant a lot to me. But I know that I would Be a bit of an outlier of those that would post a political picture. But if you did it now, like, for 2026, if we were doing this in 2036, I think people would be reflecting back on how politics has been dominating far too much of our lives and has become such a cultural touchstone. And some of that is intentional. And Donald Trump did that very well. Right. Making UFC fitness fights and comedy shows and everything. Kind of part of the ethos of whatever the modern Republican party is, or MAGA, however you want to say it. But 2016 has some purity to it, I think, still for people where they could say, I didn't wake up every day going like, oh, my God, what did he do now? Right. Or what? What am I afraid about? It was like, let's sing Lemonade and, you know, listen to Drake. And that seems like a better life to a large degree.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Of course, that was a period when a lot of us thought we would have women leaders and good ones. I mean, both Clinton and Kamala Harris were among the most qualified candidates we've ever had for president. And the fact that the American people, again, I would maintain, with the help of social media and the media, chose the least qualified president and, by the way, vice president president that we have now instead of choosing actual expertise. Yeah. That maybe you could even say that's really the beginning of. Well, it's certainly the beginning of maga, the idea we're gonna throw out everything that we have worked for for the last century for a carnival barker. But you know what? We've touched the stove. We've embraced it. And what I am gonna be focusing on going forward is figuring out how to rebuild a better democracy than we had before. Because I will reiterate, this is going to pass. How it's gonna pass, we don't have any idea, and it's not gonna be easy. But on the other side of that, there still will be the North American continent here. And with luck, we will still have a United States of America. We gotta figure out how to take the best of the past and build a better future from it. And that. That speaking of creativity and art and literature and new voices and so on, that's exactly what we got in the 1850s, 1860s, 1890s, 1930s, and now, with luck, the present, that we get to do a better job this time than we did in the past.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Well, cheers to a better job than we've done in the past. Heather, this was a thrill. I loved our conversation. Thank you for joining me.

[Heather Cox Richardson]

Thank you for having me. It was great fun.