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- [00:02]
A
Guess what day it is. It's French Friday. It's French fry day. So grab your fries and say hooray. David French is here to play on French Friday. It's French fry day.
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B
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the sky pod. It is a French Friday episode, which means that David French is with us to play. Hi, David Sky.
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A
Great to see you.
- [00:25]
B
You too. Thanks for being back. All right, we're full disclosure. We are recording this on Monday, Monday the 22nd. Is that right?
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A
First.
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B
22nd. 22nd, yeah.
- [00:37]
A
22nd, yeah. So.
- [00:39]
B
And this won't come out till Friday, French Friday in a couple days. So it's always hard when who knows what's going to transpire in the next week when it comes to current events. So I was looking for things that are a little bit more evergreen that we could talk about. And what caught my attention is a piece you wrote earlier this month in the New York Times. What was the date on this one? June 14th. So not that long ago. About comparing lessons from Vichy France to Christian nationalists today.
- [01:05]
A
Yeah.
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B
And I'm a history geek. I love history, certainly love World War II history. I know you like all that stuff too. So I thought this is a great opportunity to talk about something historic and related to something contemporary. So let's talk about France and World War II.
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A
Yes.
- [01:20]
B
First, how did you get introduced to this and why did it inspire you to write a whole column on it?
- [01:25]
A
So, Sky, There is a time in which a man reaches a certain age where they have to decide, are you going to now exclusively read Roman Empire books? World War II books, World War I books, some combination thereof. And so I fell down the stereotypical middle aged male rabbit hole of alternating between World War I and World War II books, where I have been kind of over the last several years, I've been forcing myself to reincorporate fiction into there as well. But I think it was the first time I started to really get interested in Vichy France was several years ago where I read a book that wasn't focusing on the fall of France in France, but it was focusing on the effect of the fall of France on the United States, which was something that I had never thought about, never really reflected on. And the whole book was to talking about how this was the first great national security shock of World War II. The second one was, of course, Pearl harbor. Much greater, much bigger, but that the fall of France was a massive cataclysm in world affairs and that when we just can't inhabit the contemporary attitude towards it, which was for America, we had delegated an enormous amount of our national defense strategy to the French army and Navy. I mean, people forget that, that we essentially left the Eastern seaboard thinking between France and Britain and the Royal Navy and the French Navy, we don't have to invest. And it's one of the big reasons why America was kind of a world power afterthought in the run up to World War II. Then France falls. And there was this really interesting set of discussions in that book about Vichy that was essentially saying it's been cast as a collaborationist effort and that's there was collaboration, but that's fundamentally wrong. And it went on to describe it as an entity that was created essentially to fight the enemy within. And the enemy within was sort of that Marxist left wing world. And what brought them to it was a belief in the failure of liberal democracy, the failure of the Third Republic.
- [03:46]
B
Okay, let's pause though, because I want to get everybody up to speed. I just don't want to assume that my audience knows as much World War II history as two middle aged guys who read these books all the time.
- [03:57]
A
Exactly.
- [03:58]
B
So Nazi Germany goes on the march. They head both east and west, heading west. They eventually invade France. The assumption from the United States and from Great Britain was that the French would resist the Germans far more aggressively than it turns out they did. And France falls to the Nazis fairly quickly. I forget how long it took, but it was not a protracted fight. Not like it had been in World War I anyway. So the French fall fairly quickly to the Germans, to the Third Reich, which sends shockwaves through the United States and Great Britain, as you mentioned, and most importantly, France.
- [04:33]
A
Right, yeah.
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B
So there remained a resistance, a French resistance to the Nazi occupation, most famously led by Charles de Gaulle. Some people know if you've ever flown to Paris, usually flying to Charles de Gaulle airport. But there was some people considered it a puppet government, but a new French government was set up that was cooperating with the Nazis. And this French government is known. Is it Vichy or Vichy?
- [04:59]
A
Probably Vichy.
- [05:00]
B
Vichy. Okay. So the Vichy French government is the French government that cooperated with the Nazis. Yeah, but there's more to it than that, which is where your piece comes in and is really interesting. And you mentioned that part of what animated them was even prior to the Nazi invasion, there was a movement within France that was very suspicious of or antagonistic toward liberal democracy.
- [05:28]
A
Yeah. So, you know, not to go too deep into something you could really go deeply into, but you know, you had France at the French Revolution, but then France did Not go from the French Revolution straight to World War II uninterrupted as a liberal democracy. You had the revolutionary government that got very illiberal and totalitarian, all, you know, in the name of liberte, egalitae, fraternity. Then you have Napoleon, you have republics, you have emperors, you know, you have Napoleon iii, you have a republic. Again, it was back and forth. And the run up to this, to World War II, French society was really divided. It was in the hands of a republican form of government, a liberal democracy, but it was very, very divided. And the great liberal democracy, sort of think of the great liberal democracies at the time as the trio of the United States, Great Britain and France. Each of them failed in a very fundamental way in the lead up to World War II. The US failed by leaving the scene. We stepped forward, help win World War I, and then just completely step back. And then that left sort of France and Britain carrying the torch for liberal democracy, especially after the Weimar government in Germany falls, which was a liberal democracy that falls, you have rising fascism, communism, Imperial Japan. And the liberal democracies just didn't get ready for World War II fast enough. And so here comes Hitler, steamrolls through the French army. And it's a big misnomer that the French just sort of rolled over. No, the French army fought heroically. They were just outmatched. Better tactics, better equipment, poor leadership. And then Churchill is there saying, keep fighting, keep fighting, keep fighting. When the French. The French government at that time begin, thinks it's, that's crazy talk. We've lost, you're going to lose. We just have to accommodate ourselves to this new reality. And so they form this other government in Vichy France. That's why it's called the Vichy French. It's a. It's a resort town, town in the more. More southern part of France. And so France is then divided into an occupied zone and an unoccupied zone. And then there's Charles de Gaulle out there, basically a free agent initially, but he forms the Free French, and we'll leave that aside. Right. But here was the fundamental thing that caught my eye about Vichy. What thing that caught my eye about Vichy was that they were trying to recreate French society in a more traditionalist, religious, patriarchal way that literally sky reads like a Doug Wilson fever dream.
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B
Yeah.
- [08:18]
A
And that's what was so interesting about it. It wasn't just, hey, let's collaborate with the Nazis and get along. It was much more, right, we need to remake French society because liberal democracy failed us and now we need something else. We need to return to something older and deeper, stronger, with thicker roots, with thicker cultural connections. And that was this very patriarchal, authoritarian, deeply connected, sort of deeply connected with the French Catholic Church and the traditions of French Catholicism there. And patriarchal is nativist. So immigrants, women, both of these were forces that were undermining sort of women in authority, immigrants in society were undermining French culture. And public enemy number one was the left. It wasn't the right, it wasn't fascism, it was Marxism. It was communism.
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B
Okay, so let me play this out and try to build some of the parallels to what we're seeing in the United States today. The Vichy French movement is watching what's happening. This is prior to World War II, watching what's happening to France. It's becoming more libertine, more post Christian, more open to immigrants and diversity. It's the values of the French Revolution. Liberty, equality, fraternity. But they're watching the traditional way of French society and culture change and adapt and lose some of what it considers to be the core of what it means to be French. And they're lamenting this, and they're blaming it on democracy, they're blaming it on liberal values. And in marches, Adolf Hitler and I think, I don't want to speak like I know more than I do, but I wouldn't say they were super excited about Hitler himself, Right?
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A
No. Deeply humiliated by the loss.
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B
They saw in Hitler an opportunity because Hitler destroyed the French government. It destroyed the liberal democracy that they had also feared. And they saw in Hitler, in the rise of the Nazis, in the ruling of France, an opportunity. This is a chance for us to take back power and return France to the way we want it to be, which is, as you put it, authoritarian, patriarchal, traditional, anti immigrant, anti Semitic. So they did cooperate with the Nazis on shipping off all kinds of Jews to the concentration camps. And so they basically viewed it, the Nazis, as an opportunity that they were going to leverage to make France into what they want it to be. And the parallel I think you're trying to draw in your piece and that maybe I'm making more connections than you were. I think there are a lot of Christian nationalists in America today who would say, yeah, we're not exactly huge fans of Donald Trump, and I'm not trying to make the Trump Hitler comparison at all.
- [11:06]
A
No, no, no, no. We're not doing that.
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B
Right. We're not doing that. They're not huge fans of Donald Trump for all kinds of reasons, but they did see him as an opportunity. Yes, Because Trump was rolling into town and, and sticking it to the progressive woke liberals on the left that they also didn't like and saw in him and his administration a chance to remake America in more of the image they wanted, which was also more authoritarian, more patriarchal, more at least historically or culturally Christian and anti immigrant. And so they latched onto him because he's an opportunity and we're going to ride him as long as we can to build America the way we want it.
- [11:44]
A
So, put it this way, their point was liberal democracy has failed. Its excessive individualism has, has fostered decadence, hedonism, selfishness. A decadent, hedonistic, selfish society is not one that's built to withstand the great contest of nations, as evidenced by the collapse of the French army in 1940. So therefore, you know, to use sort of a tech metaphor, we're going to reboot and install a new operating system.
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B
I like that metaphor.
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A
So we're rebooting and we're installing this new operating system not for the purpose of being collaborating with the Nazis, but really for the purpose of replacing what was ailing French society. And to the extent there was collaboration, yes, there were people who were fascist and sympathetic to fascist in this administration, but a lot of it was just them sort of bowing to reality as they saw it. This is the new superpower. We have been defeated. We're going to have to rebuild in their shadow. They thought early on that continued British resistance was idiotic and foolish. It had no hope. And so they were really much more, much less sort of saying, yay fascism, Yay German fascism. And much more just sort of saying, well, they won and now we need to rebuild.
- [13:05]
B
You've written a lot about this in the American context, but is it fair to say they were, they viewed the Nazis rolling into Paris sort of the lesser of two evils.
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A
That's a, that's an interesting. I would say, they would say, I don't want to choose between the Soviets rolling in and the Nazis rolling in. But the Nazis have rolled in like and what now?
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B
But the greater evil being a continuation of liberal democracy, which is destroying France,
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A
is what put them in that position. Right.
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B
And so to again, make a parallel to what's going on in some of the Republicans or MAGA people I've talked to, their view was, well, Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, the woke progressive liberals on the left, they're evil. We don't like Donald Trump either, but he's the lesser evil and he's an opportunity for us because he likes us, that we can have more influence in American society from the Christian nationalist right.
- [13:55]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think it, without question, there was less concern about right wing authoritarianism than left wing communism. And then the other thing, so the thing that's really interesting about the parallels is if you've been reading the post liberals, if you've been reading like Deneen and Vermeule and you've been reading some of these other folks, and if you've been listening to like the Doug Wilson world and the world of, of Protestant sort of theonomists and dominionists, you're going to hear in their speech about women, about liberal democracy and in their speech about immigrants, remarkably similar rhetoric. So let me, you know, don't, don't just trust me on this. Let me, let me read a couple of things here real fast. So here, here's one, Here's a Vichy writer. We must never tire of repeating this. Woman, wife and mother is made for man, for the home, for the child. As long as the young wives of France do not understand this, do not live out this truth of nature, nothing can be achieved. And so look at that. Hearth, home, mother, wife, that is who you are. Women. And then Vichy, you know, went, when I tell you, it's like this is a, this is a sort of a Doug Wilson fever dream. It was illegal to employ married women in the public sector. There were tightening down of divorce regulations, for example. All of this was really designed to try to put women back into this very domestic place. And in addition, you know, when you got to, when you got to immigrants, for example, here, here's a, a quote from a right wing Frenchman lead in the, in, as part of these debates leading up to the, the invasion of and leading up to the fall of France. So this is, this is from a French writer in right before, a guy named Jean Girardot. He talked about France had become an invaded country. And that's the exact phrase, an invaded country that was facing a continuous infiltration of barbarians. And this is speaking of, you know, black and brown immigrants, many of them coming from sort of the larger French empire. And to such an extent that, you know, again, here you had, France began to put in place legal measures that said, for example, you had to be a son of a friend, your father had to be a French citizen. So you had to be a child of a French citizen that was to, to work in all kinds of different professions, work in the public, in the civil service. So again, you see nativist, you see, you see misogynist, and then also you see anti Semitic. And this sort of the unholy trinity of right wing patriarchal authoritarianism is. The unholy trinity is anti Semitic, misogynist and xenophobic. And so all three of these things are there because it was the infiltration of, you know, the anti Semitic part was the influence of Jews. The xenophobic part was the immigration from. Of the quote, unquote, barbarians, and the misogynist part was the rise of women's rights, all undermining society. And again, each one of those three things. Now, thankfully, there are some Christian nationalists in America who are still very much against anti Semitism, but you see it springing out everywhere in that Christian nationalist community. Yeah.
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B
This whole article of yours, and I will link to it and encourage people to read it, it does fit that quote that's often attributed to Mark Twain, though there's no evidence he said it. That history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It also strikes me we were talking about, on a recent Holy Post episode, the UFC fight that Trump hosted on the South Lawn of the White House, and we got into a broader discussion about all of his authoritarian tendencies, his aesthetic authoritarian tendencies, from cage matches to gold gilded West Wing to the huge statues and putting his name and everything. Like, why is it that there doesn't seem to be much imagination anymore? Like there's this. These Platonic forms that just repeat over and over and over again, whether it's authoritarianism as embodied by Donald Trump and many others throughout history, or in this case, comparing the nativism of Vichy France with Christian nativism and Christian nationalism, like they're almost identical. What do you attribute that to? Why do we keep kind of going back to these same errors over and over again?
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A
Well, I mean, this is something that more than 2,000 years ago, Solomon, I guess the presumed writer of Ecclesiastes says there's nothing new under the sun.
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B
Exactly.
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A
And one of the reasons. Guy and I want to go ahead and issue a public apology to Ronald Reagan for a second, because I've long considered myself a Reagan conservative, but there was one thing that he said that I thought, no, no. And that was he would say that freedom is always one generation away from extinction. And I kind of think that I got into this mindset where I thought of in a weird way, because of the advances, particularly in my lifetime. So I think of it this way. I'm born in 69. Civil Rights act is 64. Soviet Union falls around 91. You know, Berlin Wall comes down in 89. I came of age in a time period of radical social change in some very positive ways. So, you know, the eradication of Jim Crow domestically, the eradication of Soviet Communism internationally, those are two seismic events in American and human history, Both of them quite positive. So you could forgive me for thinking that we're on a good upward path as people, right? And, you know, the. What is it? The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
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B
Well, mlk.
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A
Yeah, mlk. Well, okay. It also has a lot of regressions and setbacks and force three steps forward, three and a half steps back, you know, and so it. And so I realize now that I was coming of age at a very particular time in history. And then as I get older, I'm beginning to see the truth of, you know, these. These kind of. And we talked about this a little bit before. The. The truth of the idea that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. And also, you combine that with Churchill's aphorism that liberal democracy or democracy is the worst system of government in the world, except for every other system that when you have generations of America arise who knew not communism and knew not fascism, in other words, they have no experience with either one of these two brutal, brutal systems of government. But they do know with exquisite detail all of the failures and inefficiencies and problems of democracy, you can start to see how some of these older ideas reinject into the bloodstream. Because, you know, if you go back to the 20th century, that was the great contest, liberal democracy versus these competing systems. Liberal democracy wins. Francis Fukuyama nails it at the end of the end of History where he says, once you remove this sort of great cause of fighting tyranny from these liberal democracies, these liberal democracies may even fight liberal democracy because people want a cause, they want something to fight. And so what has happened, sadly, Fukuyama was ridiculously prescient on this point, is a lot of us have fallen in on our own system, have begun to attack our own system, not for the standpoint of reforming it to make it better, which it definitely needs, but from the standpoint of destroying it and replacing it. And, and, and some of this stuff is getting scary. I mean, 34% of young Americans express a fondness for communism. There's a dedication to fascism on the young right. Anti Semitism is breaking out everywhere. I mean, all of this stuff isn't. I would call it old, but it's not even that old.
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B
Right?
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A
It's not even that old.
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B
We've just done such a poor job of teaching history oh, gosh.
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A
Okay, Before.
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B
Before we leave this topic, though, I want to wrap up the lessons to take from Vichy France. Obviously, that government falls when the Allies invade Normandy, land at Normandy, and then slowly liberate France from the Nazis, and the Vichy government is overthrown, Charles de Gaulle is put into place, and eventually France re. Establishes itself as a liberal democracy as it remains today. But what are the lessons we are to take? Because it's not like the Vichy government failed under its own weight. It failed because it had aligned itself with Nazi Germany, and Nazi Germany was defeated, and therefore the Vichy government failed as well. But what are the lessons to take from its brief exercise in power over France that we could apply to where we are?
- [23:16]
A
But it was already even failing under its own terms. So it was not like, if you looked at the unoccupied portions of France, that some sort of patriarchal utopia was emerging, as is so often the case when you have authoritarian governments, they're often just shot through with corruption. Why? Because authoritarianism relieves. Authoritarianism removes accountability from the governing class. And it's just a mathematical equation. It is power minus accountability equals corruption. I mean, it's just like clockwork. So you have corruption, and then you also have. This other inherent problem is if you replace liberal democracy with something else, you are replacing a chosen form of government with an imposed form of government, even if very briefly, for one, say, one election or one election cycle, people choose. Like a small plurality of. Of Germans in the 1930s voted to put the regime that ultimately became the Nazi regime in power. So it gave it a sort of. That veneer of respectability at first, but there wasn't a lot of accountability for Hitler after that, obviously. But what you're doing is you're replacing a chosen form of government with an imposed form of government. And if you try to do that on top of a nation that has a culture that is a culture of liberal democracy, and as imperfect as Francis was, it was a culture of liberal democracy, you're creating another element of instability. And so the more that you come into a society that is sort of based on a concept, this contract theory of government, you lead with the consent of the government governed, and then you remove that consent, and you start to take away rights from people that they've already gained, you're creating an inherent degree of instability, and you're. And you're inherently authoritarianism. So going back to inherently authoritarian.
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B
Going back to your agreement disagreement with Ronald Reagan on the idea that democracy, what is. What was it again, only lasts one generation from Extinction. Would you argue, despite what we might be seeing in our country right now, that the United States has the antibodies in our own culture to ward off authoritarianism and that maybe it can persist for more than one generation because those antibodies have been built into this place for 250 years.
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A
Yeah, you know, we have antibodies and the antibodies go back to the, you know, as we approach 250, this is probably. This is going to be the last French Friday before 250.
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B
Yeah, so.
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A
So, so as we approach 250, we do have a very strong set of antibodies in our system that breeds like this. We're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And we have an advantage over France in the sense that France existed for more than a thousand years before the French Revolution. So the French Revolution was not the starting point of the French nation. It was a late injection into a very long French bloodstream of royalty and monarchy and hierarchy, etc. We were born. We were born out of that. That sentence. Right. And so that's why, one of the reasons why, as we have had many illiberal tendencies throughout American history, I mean, going back to the founding, slavery is about as illiberal as it gets. Jim Crow, the way we treated Native Americans, we've always had embedded in the DNA of the country an automatic white blood cell count that spikes in response to brutal oppression. Doesn't mean that the oppression doesn't happen, but it does mean that those who dissent against it have a powerful ally in the founding creed. And so this is why liberation movement after liberation movement in American history has not rejected the founding, but instead called the nation's leaders to live up to the founding. And so to me, that's even more of a reason why the post liberal world has less of a chance of taking hold here in America even than in France, because France had still done this dance back and forth between royalty, empire, et cetera, even after the revolution.
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B
They have a Napoleon and the establishment of Napoleon.
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A
They have a Napoleon iii. Yeah, exact. And so they had three different republics. It was the third Republic that fell by the time. And so they were more unstable. And so I think that the Christian nationalists who are hoping to impose some sort of patriarchal hegemony on the United States are even more fantastical and bizarre in their belief system than, say, the Vichy authoritarians in France. But it is very interesting to see this historical parallel. And it's also very interesting that the Christian nationalists never bring it up. They'll talk about a. We need a Baptist Pinochet, or they'll say, we need a Protestant Franco or a red Caesar. A red Caesar. They won't ever say we need a Presbyterian Patein. And why is that? I mean. And he's actually matches really well with their project. Yeah, pretty obvious reasons.
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B
To wrap this up, going back to your point about our antibodies, a couple years ago, I read that wonderful biography of Frederick Douglass and getting into the depths of the controversy and debate that was happening among abolitionists in the 1850s. And like Garrison, for example, believed that America was founded and its founding documents, particularly the Constitution, basically endorsed slavery.
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A
And.
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B
And he believed to really undo that, you had to start over and get rid of the Constitution and completely build a new government that was rooted in something other than slavery. And along comes Frederick Douglass, a freed slave or slave who had found his freedom by escaping, who became the most famous order in America and this great voice for abolition. And he actually disagreed with Garrison. The white abolitionists say, no, no, no, no. Our founding documents are the best thing the slave could possibly have because embedded in them are the seeds of equality and liberty. It's the Declaration of Independence that you quoted. All men are created equal. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So he argued to actually persuade Americans, based on their own founding and their own founding documents, against the evil of slavery. And you've seen this repeated in numerous other movements, including the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. Same thing. There was one America was founded on this evil of racism. And the other side saying, yeah, it's always been there, but in our founding documents are also the antibodies that we need to draw from. It's a little bit the difference between Malcolm X and mlk. So it's always been there. And I feel like we're in that moment a bit again, where there's one side. Everyone's looking at the shortcomings of liberal democracy, and there are many. And one side is saying we need to overthrow the whole thing and go to some kind of theocracy. And the other side saying, no, it's just fine. Don't worry about it at all. And then there needs to be this reform movement in the middle that draws from the best of American history and our founding to say, we can still be better. We can still form a more perfect union and overcome some of these shortcomings with proper reform. But let's not throw the Democratic liberal baby out with the bathwater.
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A
Yeah, and one last thing. Your comments raise a very interesting point about American Christian nationalism, which is American Christian nationalists as a General matter. Really hate the idea of this being called a creedal nation.
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B
Right.
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A
They're the ones who are coming up with the idea of heritage Americans.
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B
It sounds very Vichy when you're saying that only if your father is a French citizen can you have certain rights and jobs. It's exactly.
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A
Exactly.
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B
Same thing. Exactly.
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A
Right, exactly. So they, they're bringing up this idea of the heritage American. They're talking about sort of this blood and soil nationality that a nation is, you know, a particular people in a particular place, whereas the United States. You know, I interviewed Justice Gorsuch and I, and during our interview, I was thinking, man, the, the Christian nationalist right is going to hate every word of this because Justice Gorsuch says we're not a nation of a certain ethnicity, we're not a nation of a certain religion, We're a nation of a certain creed. And so the reason why the Christian nationalists hate that idea is because the creed itself contradicts everything that they're saying. So, you know, on the one hand, they claim to be extremely patriotic often and. But the. Found the creedal core of America is all men are created equal and endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights. But Christian nationalism really does stand opposed to that. Yeah, it really does. And so that's why a Christian nationalist ultimately is about redefining the, the nation itself. And, and they cannot possibly succeed unless they succeed in redefining what this nation is. Which is why you hear so much about, like, if you're in these, if you're familiar with these ideological and theological battles. That's why you hear so much about, like, heritage Americans and whatever. Nonsense.
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B
Yeah. And J.D. vance has made this a major plank in his rhetoric about America's not a creed, it's a people. And it's, you know, because his grandparents or great grandparents are buried in Kentucky or fought in the Civil War or whatever, that they have more. He has more right to a say in this nation than. It's exactly the repeat of this thing. And it's not. It's ultimately not going to work. Okay, let's transition to the other thing I really wanted to talk about. And that's not looking back at history, but it's looking ahead a little bit at the midterm elections coming in November. Here's what I hoped would have happened in 2024 to go back to that previous election. I'm not alone in this. I think a lot of people had hoped that, I don't know, a year earlier, year and a half earlier, President Biden would have gone to the microphones and said, listen, I always said I was going to be a bridge to the future. I'm 82 years old, whatever it was. I want to give a new generation of leaders a chance to take the country forward. I am not going to run for the nomination of my party in 2024. And it became an open contest among Democrats to see who could that party select to be a counterweight to MAGA and Donald Trump and all the stuff that was still happening on the right. Well, that did not happen in 2024. We all know what did happen. But it's shaping up that, like 2026, these midterm elections, we're seeing a lot of experimentation going on among Democrats in the different candidates that are now being chosen in their pr, especially for Senate seats. And so I wanted to kind of do a roundup of your thinking on what you perceive these different candidates represent. And could any one of them be the future of the Democratic Party? Or more broadly, could any of them represent America's response to the past 10 years of Trump and MAGA? So let's begin with Graham Platner, because you've written about him in some of your pieces over the last month. I know you're not a fan, but I do think he represents one strategy that some Democrats are experimenting with to see is this the right way that we ought to respond to Trump and maga. So explain for those who aren't following these races as closely as you or I, who's Graham Platner? What do you think he represents about that stream of the Democratic Party?
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A
So who is Grant Platner? Well, that's a great question, Sky. Who is Grant Platner? He's a guy from Maine. Oyster, oyster farmer, fisherman, whatever.
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B
You would say that oysters are farmed, but other fish are fished. Why?
- [35:26]
A
Yeah.
- [35:27]
B
Yeah. Okay.
- [35:28]
A
Not a lot of. Yeah. Anyway, he, he catches and sells oysters, however you want to describe that profession. You know, blue collar guy, but with, from a pretty privileged background, went to kind of a swanky private high school, joined the military after 9 11, was a, I believe, a Blackwater contractor after he's in the military. Really edgy guy, I think it's safe to say, like, for a long time he got a. A Nazi tattoo. Not just any Nazi tattoo, but a tattoo of the ss, a particular SS unit. And the tattoo is called the Totenkopf. And this was the tattoo of the concentration camp guards guy. So it's really bad. Like, if there's any Nazi, there's no such thing as a good Nazi tattoo. But this is, like, Nazi.
- [36:21]
B
It's extreme.
- [36:22]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And. And so he also has just this really awful record of, like, he was a kind of a. A troll on Reddit, where, you know, he would do everything from sort of like defending urine, urinating on dead Taliban, really weird and gross comments about the problem of sexual assault in the military. He has a history of sexting women who are not his wife. He. He was recently found to be on not just. Not just a dating site, he's a married guy, but a very predatory dating site that is that a lot of very bad characters hang out on. His story about he didn't know that the tattoo was a Nazi tattoo has been contradicted by former girlfriends. Another former girlfriend came forward and accused him of what is really criminal activity, manhandling her, throwing into a room, holding her against her will in a room after he manhandled her.
- [37:28]
B
So it's safe to say other than that, if this guy came in to apply for a job at your hardware store, you'd be like, not, not, not sure I want to hire this guy.
- [37:35]
A
Totally. Yeah. And when you lay it all out, and I didn't even get into everything. Not a good guy, Sky. Not a good guy. But he won the Democratic primary with about 70% of the vote, to be fair. His main competitor, Janet Mills, the sitting governor of Maine, had kind of dropped out weeks before, and now he's going to challenge Susan Collins, who is the probably. Probably the most moderate Republican in the Senate. She voted to convict Donald Trump, one of seven senators to vote to convict Donald Trump. She's voted against the Iran war. She's voted against a number of Trump's appointees. And so she is. She was probably like, if she's the kind of Republican that a lot of Democrats say they miss. In other words, what happened to the Republicans who had their own point of view? Well, that's Susan Collins.
- [38:25]
B
Okay, so I've heard some Democrats, including some of your colleagues from the New York Times, talk about Graham Platner. And the vibe I've picked up from them is, yeah, I'm not excited. I'm not thrilled with this guy. But. But he hasn't done anything, quote, unquote, disqualifying, not enough to the point where they would say, we cannot support this guy because winning back the Senate for Democrats, in their mind, is the only way to have a check on Donald Trump. Therefore, they're going to hold their nose and vote for him. But what do you think is the theory behind Graham Platner, other than he's got a D next to his name, and he helps move the ball towards winning the Senate back. Does he represent a posture the Democrats? I mean, my read would be he's kind of odious, a lot like Trump, and his candidates tend to be very odious. But are they kind of taking a let's fight fire with fire approach? Maybe we need somebody who's as kind of rough and unsavory as Trump, but with one of, with, with a blue label instead of a red one. Is that what they're trying to test here?
- [39:37]
A
Yeah. So the word is sky. Authenticity. So in other words, the, the view is that he's lived this messy life. Lots of voters have lived a messy life. Donald Trump has lived a messy life. And by just not pretending that everyone's perfect and also by being really pugilistic and aggressive, you actually connect with a group of voters that the more polished politician doesn't connect with. Like the politician who's going to spit out the talking points and the consultant, poll driven consultants speak that they just don't connect. There's a certain segment of people who connect with, quote, unquote, authenticity and are repulsed by consultant speak, which.
- [40:25]
B
Go ahead. Sorry.
- [40:26]
A
I mean, to which I would say, well, isn't there something in between automaton and rogue? You know, like, those aren't the only two models of humanity like we're dealing with here. Ambitious automaton and vicious rogue are not the two poles of human behavior here. And so what. But what we're seeing is sort of this idea that a lot of folks have on the left, that essentially Trump won in part because he was deeply flawed and very aggressive, and that if they're going to beat Trump, they need a similar person. But while I would say that Trump's flaws became an asset to a lot of Republicans over time, they're missing the thing that even made Trump a part of the conversation to begin with, which was he was a colossally successful, especially as perceived in the eyes of the public, billionaire.
- [41:28]
B
Right. He wasn't an oyster farmer.
- [41:30]
A
He wasn't an oyster farmer. And so, you know, I, what I'm very worried about sky is, is so this is a cycle in which Susan Collins would likely lose under almost any circumstance. It is. But she's a political survivor. She survived in the past in tough circuit cycles. And I have a, I'm worried that they're, they're going to win in Maine not because of Graham Platner, but in spite of Graham Platner. And yet the call will still go up around the country amongst Democrats who will be overjoyed that a Graham Platner beats Susan Collins. Get me more Graham Platners. In the same way that we've seen this call, like, go up throughout, you know, the. Right. Get me more MAGA people, more, you know, more people like Donald Trump. And if we're going to be heading that direct down that direction where authenticity really is in a particular kind of authenticity, because people don't say authenticity about people who are authentically humble. Right. Authentically honest.
- [42:29]
B
That's the part that is, I find. And this applied to Donald Trump, certainly in his election. And now with Graham Platner, why is it that we have made authenticity synonymous with assholery? Seriously, that's always the. When someone is really odious, we just go, well, they're being authentic. But when somebody is genuinely thoughtful, kind, intelligent, nuanced, well spoken, humble, that's not authentic.
- [42:56]
A
Faker. You're plastic.
- [42:59]
B
To be fair, there are plenty of politicians out there that just read off the talking points and come off as very inauthentic.
- [43:06]
A
I agree.
- [43:07]
B
But there are also politicians out there who I think are genuinely intelligent, thoughtful, nuanced, careful in their rhetoric, mindful of their opponents, humanity and dignity, and that somehow never gets labeled authentic. So it's only when you're really gross and terrible and people kind of cringe that you're met with, hey, hey, he's just being authentic.
- [43:29]
A
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. And I know people are authentically kind and authentically humble and authentically, authentically honest. You know, so this sort of idea that you're only real if you're bad.
- [43:42]
B
Right.
- [43:43]
A
Is absurd. It's absurd. And. And by the way, can. Can. Let's just talk for a minute. This is an important point in it. What is a representative democracy supposed to be? What. What are. When you elect a representative, are you trying to elect a person who's just a reflection of the community? Are you trying to elect somebody who represents the best of your community? And a lot of people are saying, well, we want people who are like us there. Really?
- [44:17]
B
I remember back in 2008 when Barack Obama was running against John McCain, and John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. And I had a conversation with a woman who was very excited about Sarah Palin, and I remember talking to her, asking her like, well, what about Sarah Palin? At the time, John McCain would have been the oldest person ever elected to the presidency. So who he picked as his vice president, I think was pretty, pretty darn important. I Said, well, what is it about Sarah Palin that you like so much? Like, what do you find in her resume and her abilities that you think qualifies her to be president? And this woman really couldn't identify anything, but she finally said, she's so much like me. And I just said that she's just like me. And I said, no offense, but I don't think you're qualified to be President of the United States.
- [45:06]
A
Exactly.
- [45:06]
B
She paused and said, actually, you're right, I'm not. I said, well, maybe we should bring different qualifications to our vote than just they're just like me. I would hope that whoever's running for that office has greater intelligence, understanding and wisdom than I do.
- [45:22]
A
And look, I get the pitfalls. And the pitfalls are you end up with a whole bunch of box checking, ambitious try hards who. But, you know, if. If the alternative is between box checking ambitious try hards and, and dissolute, corrupt, try nots, you know, I give me the try hard. You know, I mean, at least, you know, even somebody like that has at least like one idea, like one eye on the history books, and they're, they're wanting to do something that will, you know, that, that will be positively consequential. It, it really, we have reached a standpoint. We've reached a point where, and also, we just can't forget this. The bases of the parties are very radicalized against each other. And so if you had the same Platner profile and he wasn't sort of a lefty political radical, I don't think he goes anywhere.
- [46:20]
B
Sure.
- [46:21]
A
But the fact that he's sort of a lefty political radical, well, hey, look, he's got all the authenticity of Donald Trump. He's got all the pugilism of Donald Trump. Oh, and he box checks all of our most radical issue sets that we're looking for. And then that becomes sort of like the trifecta for these highly polarized bases.
- [46:40]
B
I find it just. We'll move on from Graham Platner after this. But the left made a big deal out of the fact that Pete Hegseth has a Jerusalem cross tattoo on his chest.
- [46:50]
A
Right.
- [46:50]
B
Which in some circles is associated with white supremacy or various crusader kind of
- [46:57]
A
post liberal Catholic integralism.
- [47:00]
B
Yeah, all that. And they found it to be a sign that he's unfit to be Secretary of Defense. Graham Platner, as you noted, has a Nazi SS tattoo on his chest. And that gets a pass. Right.
- [47:12]
A
He didn't know what it was. He's a history buff. But he didn't know what it was.
- [47:15]
B
The tendency to give a pass to whoever's on our side and. And magnify the. The evils or shortcomings or perceived interpretive shortcomings of the other side is just so obvious to me that, like, if you believe it's a problem for one of these guys to have this tattoo, then it's a problem for both. And.
- [47:32]
A
And let me just be unequivocally clear. I do not believe for a second that he did not know what that tattoo was like. I just.
- [47:41]
B
Yeah, he's. He's changed it or he's covered it up now or something.
- [47:44]
A
Right? He's covered it up now. But I find it absurd. Like, I. Look, I wasn't a Marine, but I served in the Army. I served in the army with a bunch of guys who are very heavily tattooed. And let me tell you, one of the more entertaining conversations you can have is with a super heavily tattooed soldier who can tell you everything that they mean. This is from my last year of high school football. This is for my teammates. This is for my mom. This is a Chinese signal symbol, meaning strength and power. This barcode on the back of my neck is my Social Security number. I mean, like, you. You can go through. And these are actual conversations I've had. And the idea that, like, one buddy would look at a very prominent tattoo in their chest and go, oh, I. No clue.
- [48:28]
B
It just looked really cool. Yeah, look cool.
- [48:30]
A
Right?
- [48:31]
B
Okay. So if Graham Platner represents one tactic that the Democrats are experimenting with to see if this is the way to combat Trump, James Talarico in Texas may well represent another. And maybe I'd put Jon Ossoff in this as well. He's the senator running for reelection in Georgia. But Talarico, who's been on the show, we've talked about him and to him a number of times. He's running now against. What's his name? I'm totally blanking. Paxton.
- [49:00]
A
Paxton.
- [49:00]
B
Ken Paxton, who was impeached by his own party. Corrupt as can be. And down in Texas, it feels like they're running decency versus depravity.
- [49:10]
A
Right.
- [49:10]
B
And James Tellarico, he's a seminary student. He talks about his Christian faith all the time. He's a fairly progressive mainline Christian, but he does talk about his faith regularly as a motivating force in his politics and in his public life. I don't think anyone could ever accuse him of being anything like Graham Platner. There's been no scandals. There's been no Tattoos. There's been no women coming out of the woodwork talking about abuse or sexting. Like he, he seems like a clean as a whistle choir boy, former school teacher, kind, soft spoken, intelligent, thoughtful. All those things against Paxton, who has got like all the boss hog of Texas, like just all this corruption and he's endorsed by Donald Trump. Is that the other sort of test that the Democrats are running going? Well, maybe it's the anti Trump. Instead of fighting fire with fire, let's try to fight fire with water and let's see what telo can do.
- [50:08]
A
Yeah, I do think that there, there is part of this because the Democrats had a very interesting choice in the primary. They had a choice between a very populist pugilist, Jasmine Crockett, congresswoman from Texas, and James Talarico, who is squeaky clean, says things like, I believe pro life. You know, on Holy Post, he said, I think pro lifers can have a place in the party. He has disclaimed a lot of the radicalism of the Democratic Party. He has said that Biden fumbled on the border. He's been opposed to surgical transition for minor. You know, he, so he's running. He's a liberal guy who's moderating, but also, for lack of a better word, he just seems like a gentleman. Like he doesn't hate his opponents. He, he doesn't lie. He is, he treats people with decency. And then you have Graham Platner, who's all the things that Toleriko's not. He's more radical ideologically. He has an extraordinarily checkered past. He can be extremely vicious. You know, so all of these things are. And, and the sad thing is, Guy here would be my nature is healing outcome of the election. My nature is healing outcome would be that the really bad guy in Maine loses and the corrupt guy in Texas loses. And the message is that whether it's a Democrat named James Talarico or a Republican named Susan Collins, decency is going to prevail over indecency. Honesty is going to prevail over corruption. At the very least. These have to be the threshold qualifiers for office. You have to be a decent and honest human being as a threshold qualifier. And what's interesting to me, sky, is as we talk about Talarico, look, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that 99.9% of conservative evangelicals are not going to vote for James Talarico. But that's not who he's going for, right? He is not going for conservative evangelicals. Now, I Also know that the vast majority of conservative evangelicals will vote for Ken Paxton. And that's gross. That's awful. This is gross.
- [52:19]
B
We've been down this road before in other elections. Isn't the thought though, if I don't vote for Paxton, if I just stay home, for example, not voting for Telarico, but if I just don't vote for Paxton, it's essentially voting for Telorico because it's more likely a Democrat than ends up in the Senate. And Democrats are evil. Therefore I have to vote for tax. I have to hold my nose and vote for them. I have no choice.
- [52:41]
A
If your entire sort of, you know, at some point you do get down to this notion that an enormous amount of the evangelical public has been indoctrinated into a falsehood. And that falsehood is that it is evil to be a Democrat. And so that by being indoctrinated in the falsehood that it is evil to be a Democrat. That is where corruption thrives because it
- [53:05]
B
gives the Republicans license to do anything they want.
- [53:08]
A
You can do whatever you want. You can have an affair with a married woman who has many children. You can have another affair. You can be so corrupt that most of your office quits. You can be so corrupt that a Republican led House impeaches you. You can be so dishonest that you shamelessly promote one of the most dishonest lawsuits I've ever seen, which is trying to overturn the 2020 election. But you're not.
- [53:30]
B
This is all Paxton.
- [53:31]
A
This is all Ken Paxton.
- [53:32]
B
The fact that his own defense attorney said that he's gonna vote for Telarico is I think, fairly entertaining. Okay, before we wrap up though, there's this other final third. This is an oversimplification, but a third stream of the Democratic Party right now. And I don't think it's embodied by any one senatorial candidate right now. It's probably best embodied by the mayor of New York, Mondame, where there is a strong flirtation with Democratic socialism and Bernie Sanders, AOC Mamdani. There's some people within the Democratic Party say, hey, hey, hey. We can't fight Trump with Trumpism. We can't fight fire with fire. The whole decency, kindness, thoughtfulness of Telarico or NASA. If that's not the right Obama tried that, he got destroyed in the aftermath of his presidency. What we need is a radical upheaval and a pivot towards socialism. That's what will win us the masses. Because people are so upset about their economic prosperity or lack thereof. Inflation, access to housing, healthcare costs, all this stuff that Americans are grumbling about. And socialism is the answer. And that's what will give the party its rejuvenation. What do you make of that possible Lane for the Democratic Party to move in?
- [54:51]
A
So that's a little bit of the Platner lane.
- [54:53]
B
A little.
- [54:53]
A
He's a Bernie and aoc, you know, very much in that Lane Mamdani. Although the interesting thing is Mamdani has, he's like the politics of the radicalism of Platinum or maybe even more so of his politics. But he also presents as a pretty sunny, upbeat guy.
- [55:15]
B
He's very media savvy.
- [55:16]
A
Yeah, very media savvy. He has that very sunny. Did you see his speech after the Knicks one? Very well done. Also has this, I mean, a lot of what he says about Israel really strikes me as going beyond the criticism, just criticism of Israel. I, I'm so there's Momdani is this interesting stew that is, you know, I'm, I, you would be tempted to say he's like a more radical than Platner, but also sunny like Talarico. But then there's the, the question of anti Semitism hovering over him in a way that it's not. Doesn't hover over like a Talarico and
- [56:02]
B
yet he gets elected in the most Jewish city in America.
- [56:05]
A
Right, Right, exactly. Like there's. So I think, I think the thing that is very safe to say right now, Scott, is the Democrats don't necessarily have a type of person or a plan for defeating maga, that I think what's happening is they're hoping in essence that MAGA defeats itself in the off year election or I mean, in the midterms and then they're going to fight out over who's going to be the standard bearer for 2028. And the as we've seen from Republicans, then the entire party starts to take on the temperament of the standard bearer.
- [56:40]
B
Right.
- [56:41]
A
And so, you know, one of the reasons why I really want Platner to lose, quite frankly, is I do not want the Platner type of person to be part of the argument for Democrats going into 2028. And so, you know, in my view, you know, if you end up with a world in which you have a Talarico could defeat a Paxton in Texas, which is a heavy lift under the best of circumstances. I mean, Talarico is an underdog here.
- [57:07]
B
Yeah.
- [57:08]
A
And then if you have a Platinum or lose in Maine where he's an overdog, like he is the he would be the favorite right now. But if he. If the favorite loses because his temperament and the underdog wins in part because of his temperament, then I think we might be. We might have a united lesson going forward that says maybe this is the moment of decency, and then we can fight about our ideologies and we can fight about our policies, but the one thing we're united on is decency. And if we can get there, we're going to go a long way towards turning the corner from this miserable age.
- [57:42]
B
Okay, David, I. Obviously, I agree with you here, but. But I can imagine a critic listening to this is going, oh, David is on team decency, which is what makes you a squish. You're not willing to do what's necessary
- [57:56]
A
to defeat, like violate the Ten Commandments or the Beatitude. Yeah, right. Okay, but that is the mindset, right? It is a. No, I know, I know.
- [58:03]
B
It's a very utilitarian mindset that we have to do what we have to do to win because the other side is so evil. And decency is usually the first thing that's sacrificed.
- [58:13]
A
It's absolutely the first thing, because we have spent a generation or more teaching people that in politics, unlike in almost any other area of our lives, only outcomes matter.
- [58:26]
B
Right?
- [58:27]
A
But we do not treat any other area of our lives like that. You know, the. How many CEOs, for example, have been dismissed from their jobs because they are sexual harassers even though the stock price is doing pretty darn well? How many pastors lose their positions because of adultery even though the church is growing? You know, you have character tests because in every other context, in every other area of life, we know intuitively that institutions take on the character of their leaders. And if you do not want institutions to go bad, one of the absolutely most important things that you can do is police the character of the leader of the institution. And then we go to the presidency or Congress. Well, that doesn't apply. It's just what, you know, what. Whatever you want your. Your immigration policy to be or your defense budget or whatever. When the reality is, as we're seeing every moment of every day right now, the character of the leader matters. Not just in this ephemeral way, like, oh, can't we all just get along? But in a very concrete way, because people who are authoritarian and corrupt. Let me put it this way. It is very difficult to look through history and to find an authoritarian regime that was good for the people of the country as opposed to being good for the authoritarians. And there's reason for that. And our founders saw it. It was plain as a nose on your face as to why. And, and the reason is that institutions take on the character of their leaders. And when you put Donald Trump as the head of an institution or you put Graham Platner as a key member of an institution, you name it, you're going to have all of that vice, all of that sin is going to filter through in the way that poison will course through a water supply when you put it in. And then you, you are left with a poisonous public square, poisonous public institutions. And then everyone says, how did this happen? When it's as plain as the nose on your face is exactly how this happened, because you willed it into being, because you believe the ends justify the means and you believe that virtue is optional for the most powerful people in the world. And I cannot for the life of me wrap my mind around the logic of that position. Sky.
- [60:51]
B
Well, I think that's a good place to end. As we think about America 250 coming up and where we've been, where we're going. Lessons from Vichy France for the Christian nationalists and lessons from the founders about the importance of character in public office. David, thank you for being here. I hope you have a wonderful Fourth of July holiday break. And we'll be back hopefully next month to talk about whatever crazy new things have emerged in the four weeks between our conversations.
- [61:18]
A
Sky, it's always great to chat. Happy 4th. And at some point, we need a good superhero movie to discuss.
- [61:25]
B
I know. Well, are you going to go see Supergirl?
- [61:28]
A
Of course. Yeah, absolutely.
- [61:30]
B
I'm not super energized by that, but I'll probably go see it at some point. Have you seen the Michael Jackson documentary?
- [61:37]
A
No.
- [61:38]
B
The biopic?
- [61:39]
A
No. No, I have not. And I refuse.
- [61:41]
B
Okay. I saw it streaming at home the other day and I combined it with watching the Netflix documentary about his trial in 2005. And these are competing visions of Michael Jackson right now.
- [61:53]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [61:54]
B
Maybe we can have a conversation next month about the renewed interest in 80s pop culture that's going on and why that's happening. This guy.
- [62:03]
A
Yeah, let's do that.
- [62:05]
B
All right. Well, let's hope for a slow news month and then we'll do that. We'll do that. All right, David, have a good one. French Friday is a production of Holy Post Media featuring David French and me, Sky Jatani. Music and theme song by Phil Vischer. This show is made possible by Holy Post patrons to find out how you can become a Holy Post patron and to find more common good Christian content, go to holypost.
- [62:31]
A
Com.