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- [00:00]
Jon Stewart
Foreign Ladies and gentlemen, once again, welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. I will be your host and guide through this week's episode. It is Wednesday, June 11th. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get through today's program, not necessarily with brevity, but I, I, if, if I sound like I've got things to do and places to go, I do. I, I've got to get, I've got to finish this podcast, get things ready, do some general house errands, those types of things, and, and make sure that I am prepared for as as many of you I know are celebrating. It's, it's Donald Trump's birthday weekend. I always celebrate that with a, some kind of military parade. It so happens this year he's also going to be throwing himself on. So obviously it's a confluence. But, but as whenever I can on his birthday, I try and line up our nation's defense armaments and capabilities and let them breeze by me just to get a sense of how comfortable I am with this man being in charge of all that ammunition. It's, and by the way, for those of you who are thinking of in any way holding up a sign that may be viewed negatively in the Trump military parade, please know that, that doing so is against America. The First Amendment being not in play on parade weekend, I think everybody understands that. And you will be considered an enemy of this great nation and you will be met with overwhelming force. And I don't know if you know this, they already have the tanks there, so we must resist. Unless you want a 50 California snapper going right through that bad boy, you'll mind your P's and Q's on Trump birthday weekend. Just so lovely that both the army and Donald Trump turned 250 years old this weekend. So I'll see you there. It's gonna be so exciting. Put whatever you want on your shoulders to watch the parade, but you must smile. And it is now illegal for you to have anything but a twinkle in your eye when you watch it go by. Maybe you can shed a tear, but that is all that will be permissible. You will do as I say. But we are delighted today to have a couple of folks that can give us some great context and perspective about what the fuck it is that we are living through. Folks delighted today with nothing going on in the news, to discuss things with people with a grand perspective on all things not happening, we've got Jill Lepore, professor of History and Law at Harvard, Kevin Cruz, professor of History at Princeton University, as of this taping, which is it is Wednesday. Both of those institutions still exist, but it airs Thursday. So. So we don't know. Kevin, for those of you at home who are listening in your cars, has just given the sign of Pope Leo. Listen, you guys are just going to go with flow. We're going to do, it's going to be very improvisational. We're going to work our way through a tremendous amount of issues. But the first issue that I want to discuss is, as I'm sure you're both aware, there were protests on campuses, probably Harvard, a little more extensively than Princeton. The National Guard and the Marines were not sent in. From what I can remember in Los Angeles, the National Guard and the Marines are being sent in. How unusual is this? Is this something throughout history that we have found quelling, as Trump called it, insurrections and rebellions? What kind of unusual waters are we swimming in right now? Let's start with Jill.
- [04:06]
Jill Lepore
Well, it is extremely unusual. I, I think it's almost difficult to use any kind of yardstick against the past to understand this moment. Not to sort of put Kevin and I out of business here in the sense that just not so sure. Someone has asked me what about Kent State? Okay. May 1970, Nixon announces on television the US is going to be bombing Cambodia just after kind of the anti war movement quieted down. End of the semester, I think he was thinking he sort of get away with it. And protests are up on campuses across the country. And in Ohio I think the ROTC building was burned down one night and, and the mayor of Kent calls in, asks the governor to bring in the National Guards. Isn't Nixon who's sending in the National Guard? And then of course, fatefully the guardsmen fire on the students and kill four. I think it was a terrible moment. I think we tend to forget how supportive Americans were of the decision to bring in the Guardsmen. I think a poor done right after that shooting, 58% of Americans blamed the students for the violence. So I think we would do well to consider moments like Kent State and the shooting on Jackson State, the historically black college in Mississippi where a shooting followed. And then recall that even after that in New York where there was a funeral for one of the students killed at Kent State there was the Hardhat riot where construction workers who were building the World Trade center attacked the students who'd come out to protest the war during the funeral for the Kent's state victims. So there has been a lot of violence around protests that have involved the use of the military in American history. But again, like, I just, I, I feel like that's such a lousy analogy. Like, what piece of that really helps us to understand what's going on in LA and what I think is likely to be going on in cities across the country over the weekend?
- [06:22]
Jon Stewart
Well, maybe what, you know, as I hear you discuss it, maybe the one theme that carries through it is that authoritarianism, for whatever myth we tell ourselves as Americans and is a relatively popular response when it's considered as being a lever against what, what some would say is disorder, others would say peaceful rights. Kevin, do you agree with that? Is, is this, you know, so much of this is about, well, is he allowed to invoke these. There's the Posy Comitatus act that keeps him from sending in the Guard, but then he can invoke the Insurrection act, which he hasn't done. Do you look at it through that prism or more what Jill is talking about?
- [07:03]
Kevin Cruz
More what Jill is talking about. And I think the examples Jill gave are two really good ones. And I'm really glad to see that she paired Kent State with the Hard Hat Riot, because I think we have to really think about both sides of this coin. Because it's not about simply putting down disorder, it's not about simply arresting people who are committing lawlessness. Because if it was the case, then you would have seen troops deployed to.
- [07:27]
Jon Stewart
New York City or on January 6th.
- [07:30]
Kevin Cruz
Or on January 6th. Those hardhat construction workers in 1970 didn't just beat up the protesters, they went into Pace College, into the library where students were studying, and started beating the crap out of them. Right? And the response wasn't, we need to hold these people responsible, we need to arrest them, we need to send them a law. Nixon welcomed the head of a union down to the White House where he took a hard hat as a, quote, ceremonial sign of what Americanism was all about. Right? So one protest gets the National Guard and gets people killed. A different kind of protest, a much more violent one that attacked innocent people, is instead treated as a celebration. Right? So it gives proof to the, to the fiction here. It makes the fiction clear that this isn't about bringing about law and order, it's about bringing about a certain political end. And that's what we're seeing in la. That's what's really remarkable about what's going on in Los Angeles is in the past few occasions when we've seen military forces like this deployed, it's been, as a very last resort, at a total breakdown of order, it's been Eisenhower very reluctantly sending in 101st Airborne to Little Rock in 1957. It's been George H.W. bush sending troops after the Los Angeles uprisings in 1992.
- [08:46]
Jon Stewart
And those were welcomed, those were requested.
- [08:48]
Kevin Cruz
Well, not by everybody, but, I mean, like, a lot of people thought. A lot of people thought, okay, things have got.
- [08:52]
Jon Stewart
Not Little Rock, right?
- [08:53]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah. But things have gotten out of control. And this is a good thing. Whereas what we're seeing here is things have been fine in Los Angeles. I mean, a couple of Waymo cars might disagree, but things have been fine in Los Angeles largely. And it's been something that local law enforcement even has said they don't need the outside help, and yet they've sent these troops there to provoke a reaction, to instigate a riot. Right. That's the ultimate goal, is Trump wants to be the law and order president, but to do that, he's got to have some excuse to lash out.
- [09:22]
Jon Stewart
Well, it almost seems like in America now, in Trump's America, anyway, law and order is the government kicking the. Out of the right people. The government. It's. It's not about a libertarian vision of the federal government staying out of things. It's not about states. Right. It's not about anything other than Trump decides who is the enemy and then can unleash all versions of hell and kick the shit out of him. And I want to ask you, is he exposing a loophole in the American experiment and the Constitution in that this isn't happenstance. He's not improvising. He has teams of lawyers and historians who comb through our nation's archives and they say, hey, here's something. The alien enemies act of 18. Pow. You could use that. Here's something they used in 1972 that allows the President full. So they're picking and choosing emergency acts that didn't have sunset clauses, that Congress hasn't unlegislated, and they're using them, and there's really no oversight. Has he found some sort of crack in the system that is allowing all this without any kind of repercussion?
- [10:43]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and this is the thing, is that he's predicating all this on emergency declarations. Right. And he wants to create the emergency where none exist. And I think we just need to step back. And this is where I think the historical comparisons are useful, because if we think about how other presidents, where these laws were still on the books, they could have used them, too. They could have invoked emergencies all the time. Did not do that. Right. George W. Bush, not a huge fan of his presidency. I'm sorry, John, but over eight years, over eight years, he issued 14 emergency declarations. And some stuff happened on George W. Bush's watch, right?
- [11:25]
Jon Stewart
Nine, 11, I believe. I remember that. Yeah.
- [11:27]
Kevin Cruz
I think you reported Katrina, the financial meltdown. Right. There were a lot of reasons then which you could plausibly say there are emergencies here. Right. He only did 14 in eight years. In less than six months, Donald Trump has done eight. And a lot of them are clearly not emergencies. Energy emergency, an energy emergency, southern border.
- [11:47]
Jon Stewart
Emergency, Energy emergency, southern border emergency, the.
- [11:49]
Kevin Cruz
Economic emergency, the economy was doing fine. Trade deficits. They're not anything new. We've had them for decades. Right. So these are, by any reasonable definition of what an emergency is, they don't fit the bill.
- [12:00]
Jon Stewart
But even though, Kevin, but think about, even with your example of Bush. So he got the authorization of force declaration, right? And he got that through Congress. That was a congressional act. But then we have since then used that authorization to bomb numerous countries with no declarations of war. What, what used to be the executive order was a way to kind of short circuit the system. That apparently is not good enough. Now it's the declaration of an emergency. Jill, are there, are there metrics for which one would decide.
- [12:35]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, there are. And I will say I disagree with Kevin a little bit on this point. And I do think you're right, John, that there's. The sort of escalation is from the executive Order to the declaration of emergency. And that's an important distinction, and we can measure that. It was FDR, of course, in 1933, who coined the expression 100 days to talk about the beginning of his administration, which was indeed an emergency. And he declared an emergency, the bank emergency, and closed the banks for a number of days. And then he proceeded to issue 99 executive orders in his first 100 days. But during those 100 days, Congress passed nearly 80 laws. So Congress was still functioning. And the bank emergency was one thing. And you know that, that was a, that was a temporary thing. That Trump declared eight national emergencies in his first 100 days and 143 executive orders, breaks all those records. But in those 100 days, how many laws did Congress pass? Five. And one of them did basically nothing. It just made the government not explode, like self destruct.
- [13:45]
Jon Stewart
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- [15:30]
Jill Lepore
So I think, you know, we, we can say like we are living in an era of an emergency presidency and broadly in an era of emergency politics. But I do think it's important to note that actually it's Democrats who first turned to the emergency powers of the presidency. It was, you know, the new powers really don't even exist until the late 1970s. Some. Some new set of powers.
- [15:53]
Jon Stewart
Oh, really? This is. Yeah, this is not a New Deal leftover. This is not a Civil war leftover.
- [15:58]
Jill Lepore
No. So, for instance, Carter declared one national emergency in his four years, Reagan six and eight years. But Clinton declared 17 national emergencies in his two terms. And that was not Bush's presidency with nine. 11. Right. So Obama 12. Biden declared nine in four years. Democrats have been very eager to use declarations of emergency, and not for different reasons in a way than Trump, which is to say the federal government is dysfunctional, Congress is feckless and impotent, and the Supreme Court has a disproportionate amount of power. But the presidency has become an entirely deformed office. I do think we should think about it as an emergency presidency, but I guess I just want to point out that I think we've been living under an emergency presidency for about 20 years now. And I think that's worth considering, which is not to suggest that there's anything harmless or ordinary about what's going on right now. It is extraordinary, and it is, I think, frankly, terrifying. But I do think we. We could appreciate its consequences better if we have that sense of chronological perspective.
- [17:14]
Jon Stewart
That was. That was kind of. The point is that it feels like we have been sleepwalking into this idea of an unaccountable executive through the use of these first executive orders and now emergency declarations. But, Kevin, you were going to say something.
- [17:28]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah. And just to follow up on Jill's point about the long history. Absolutely right here. And I think the point about Congress being involved is right, but the key point there is he declared these emergency powers, then immediately went to Congress, summoned Congress back into session to pass bills, and Congress did that.
- [17:47]
Jon Stewart
So.
- [17:47]
Kevin Cruz
So it wasn't that the emergency is declared by the president and that solves everything. The emergency declaration is meant to be a stopgap measure until Congress can get its act together. And Congress has. And this is Jill's absolutely right, over the last 20, 40 years, has really abdicated its role in government. And that's what's remarkable about this moment, is Trump has both houses of Congress. He hasn't by slim margins, but his allies are in control. He could get legislation to them and through them, probably, if he simply put his shoulder to it, but he doesn't want to. He simply wants to sit back and issue emergencies. And most baffling, Congress has agreed to neuter itself. Right. And has stepped back and said, whatever the president wants is fine with us.
- [18:30]
Jon Stewart
But see, that actually makes sense. It follows a certain logic there. No one has more control over the Republican Party than Donald Trump. And even these. You know, I keep hearing the news talk about the slimmest of margins in Congress. They won't be able to get anything passed. This will. Won't ever happen. They haven't had any defections. And as far as I can tell, the Republican Congress is overwhelmingly happy to abdicate to the president because he's not doing anything they disagree with, or if they do disagree with it, they're too afraid to speak out. Right now, honestly, the largest schism in the Republican Party is how big the salt tax deduction is going to be. That's. That's their civil war right now. We set a $40,000 deduction. They are afraid to speak against this president because he is the single most vindictive politician I think this country has ever seen. And so they understand what can happen within that they're neutered. And so they're more than happy to let him run roughshod. But I guarantee you, if there was a Democratic president in the White House right now doing the same thing and this exact Congress, there'd be holy hell to pay.
- [19:41]
Jill Lepore
Yeah. But I do think it's a little bit like, oh, like why we've never gotten rid of the Electoral College. Right. Like you need both parties to agree to that and it's going to in the short term always benefit one party to do it and so never gets done. Or why we still have the filibuster. Right. Like these people are just structurally unable to make decisions that have long term public benefits. Right. They're only interested in short term partisan benefits.
- [20:05]
Jon Stewart
You're talking about the big beautiful bill, Jill, Are you talking about the big bill?
- [20:08]
Jill Lepore
No, no, I'm talking about we could have dismantled a lot of these standing emergency declarations over the. Said that I was like, well, we're in power now, so half of us don't want to do that. We can't get that done. Right. Like the fecklessness is, is, is, is really structural and it keeps snowballing.
- [20:28]
Jon Stewart
Now, can I ask you guys, are there these emergencies, as consequential as they are to be declared, what are the metrics? Is it an eyeball test? Is this an art and not a science? Is it solely at the discretion of the President? What is your knowledge of how these declarations are put together and what the metrics are to measure whether they rise to that occasion? Kevin, let's start with you.
- [20:56]
Kevin Cruz
I'm not an expert on this topic, but I'll happily talk about it because I'm on a podcast.
- [21:00]
Jon Stewart
Yeah. By the way.
- [21:02]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah.
- [21:02]
Jon Stewart
I'm not an expert on anything. That's why you guys are here.
- [21:05]
Kevin Cruz
Fantastic. Great, great company. But my reading of them is it really does largely depend on, you know, it's whatever the President decides is an emergency. And it's one of the many ways in which Trump has exposed that for much of this country's history, we kind of operated on the honor system. We kind of assumed good people would be there. Or the genius of Madison was, maybe they're not all going to be good people, but everyone will be power hungry for their own position and we'll fight with each other and check each other's powers that way. And so Congress says neutered itself here and made themselves useless. But yeah, it really is up to, you know, it's in the eye of the President and unfortunately we have someone who's hallucinating.
- [21:49]
Jon Stewart
Jill, is there any recourse to this?
- [21:51]
Jill Lepore
You know, I think it's worse than that because I think we're basically like, we're in the mountain head dilemma at this point. Right.
- [21:59]
Jon Stewart
The problem with emergency hip reference, Jill, Poor throwing out some streaming references.
- [22:05]
Jill Lepore
I watch a lot of tv. I think that like the problem, one of the problems with the sirens are blaring all the time. Right. I think especially for people who are extremely online, which is a lot of, a lot of people, it's very difficult to know from your own vantage is there an emergency or not. So earlier Kevin said, everything's fine in la, there's no problem in la. Is that true? I'm not sure I know that that's true. Like, I've seen a lot of footage that's very concerning. If I were the convenience store owner or those guys went in and looted and dragged out all the stuff, it's not okay in la, right? Is it? Was it necessary to send in the Marines and a federated National Guard? I don't think so because my news sources are really downplaying the violence in the way that I would say the news sources I rely on really downplayed the violence in the summer of 2020 and also said, you know, although public health guidelines say you shouldn't be in large gatherings and you should always be masked, we'll make an exception for the George Floyd protests because those are so important. And there's no violence. No, there's no violence.
- [23:09]
Jon Stewart
Right.
- [23:09]
Jill Lepore
So it depends on that was wrong. So if you can't tell if there's an emergency, partly because everything's always an emergency and also because your news sources are gonna take a partisan position on whether there is one or it's not one, you know, do you believe Gavin Newsom or do you believe Donald Trump? Do you believe Fox News? Do you believe the New York Times?
- [23:33]
Kevin Cruz
Are those my only four choices?
- [23:35]
Jill Lepore
Those are your four choices.
- [23:36]
Jon Stewart
Is anybody litigating a sense of reality and, and can we live in a world where there are bad things happen at times that don't require full on federal responses? Because what, what strikes me is I think it's very clear that this new 3,000 person a day arrest quota has inflamed communities. I think it seems very targeted. It seems to be going into communities that are mainly blue strongholds, mainly immigrant communities where a lot of these folks are very tied, a lot of these workers are very tied into the community and it would cause great upsets. So that Seems purposefully designed to enrage and inflame different communities. So that seems kind of obvious. And then it allows them to come in and make that heavy handed response and turn this into the catastrophe that he had complained that it was. It's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy, is it not?
- [24:40]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think that's. They've kind of telegraphed this and they pitched this originally to their voters as we're just going to go after criminals, we're just going to go after the worst people out there. And then we see Stephen Miller behind the scenes saying, actually what I want you to do is go to Home Depot and get a bunch of day laborers. I want you to go to 711 and pick up anyone you see there looks suspicious. They're popping into elementary schools, they're doing all sorts of things where now to.
- [25:06]
Jon Stewart
Be fair to them, they did say there's 20 million illegals living in America and I want them all gone. Like he did say he was going to do the. I mean I remember them at Madison Square Garden very clearly going the Alien Illegal Enemies Act.
- [25:21]
Kevin Cruz
Massive partition.
- [25:22]
Jon Stewart
Yeah. I think it's been hard for people to realize how disruptive it might be, what the response might be. But to Jill's point, boy, is this going to play into the hands of people Forget that the 60s gave way to Nixon winning 49 states against McGovern or something along those lines. Like this is, I think the left can tell itself this is a political loser. He's really gonna run into trouble here. I'm not so sure that's the case. Jill, do you think that.
- [25:53]
Jill Lepore
No, I mean, you know, I was thinking. Well, two things. One, I was thinking about that slide that Trump showed at the 2024 rally in Butler right before he was shot. Do you remember? That's how he didn't get shot in the head. He got shot in the ear because he turned his head.
- [26:08]
Jon Stewart
That's right.
- [26:09]
Jill Lepore
Because he had on the Jumbotron there was a slide that was showing immigration rates and the, the sort of swelling immigration during the Biden administration. That is what he ran on and what he ran against. This was also kind of haunting me this morning. I was thinking about that. The 2020 Democratic presidential nomination field, there were 10 candidates really kind of across the spectrum. Like remember it was Sanders and Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren and they had the, like MSNBC debates and they were asked, they remember they did all those shows of hands.
- [26:43]
Jon Stewart
Yeah.
- [26:44]
Jill Lepore
The raise your hands and they asked them like raise your hand if you would provide Free medical coverage, health insurance to undocumented immigrants. And all 10 candidates raised their hands like that's the distance between the two. I mean, those little apples and oranges. Because one of those examples from 2021's from 2024, you know, they wouldn't raise their hands now. And Biden didn't. They wouldn't raise their hands now. But like the reading of the room on the part of the Democratic Party, which is your obligation as a candidate for office and as an elected official representing the people nationally, is to read the room. What's really troubling about that is that most Americans, the overwhelming majority of Americans, have views that are really in between those two positions. I don't want to deport 20 million people. That's unbelievably cruel. These people are families. They've made their lives here. They believe in American whatever. This is the country. That's not the country I want to belong to. But also Americans who are native born are suffering and there's joblessness and we have homelessness, we have a lot of problems. But where are the national political figures or even the national news organizations that are really speaking to that what the more in common organization calls the exhausted majority? And I think we just really, even in this moment, which is a terrible crisis, people are going to be dying. You know, like there's going to be deaths before we get through the next week. I can't imagine there aren't going to be people who are killed on the streets of the United States over this. I mean, we hope and pray not, but like over, you know, Trump's attempt to like, distract the press from his feud with Musk, or Trump's need to like, swagger or Trump's excitement about having protests at his military parade. Like, all the creepy horror, horrible vanity, like psychopathological problems of Trumpism are going to lead to people dying. And meanwhile, where is that? Where do we hear voices saying, okay, it actually looks kind of, some things look kind of bad in LA right now. That is tough.
- [28:51]
Jon Stewart
Well, the problem is it's. So if Trump is this sort of showman and using his authoritarian dressage to, to make his point, he, his foil now in Nome is a co actor, he's a co star. He's another guy that as soon as the camera turns on, he goes, you want a piece of meat, tough guy? Come to LA and I'll show you a taco. You taco. Trump always chickens out, hey, like now we've got two sort of characters going at it. And what we don't ever seem to have. And Kevin, I'll ask you if you've seen it, because maybe I've missed it, is what Jill's talking about, that macro view of I've yet to hear anybody make the case as to what this country can absorb in terms of immigration. What does this community provide to the United States? I hear a lot of very inflammatory they're coming in here and we're giving them welfare and Medicaid and all that, and yet the reality of it is very different than all that.
- [29:51]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah.
- [29:52]
Jon Stewart
Why hasn't anybody made the intellectual and political case, not the moral case, not the I am my brother's keeper look at the base of the Statue of Liberty? Because I think that falls on deaf ears at this point. Why doesn't anyone make the competent economic case for what this is in our country?
- [30:16]
Kevin Cruz
KEVIN well, I can't think of a name to this, but I have certainly seen this argument floating around that it's not just a matter of of morality or being the Good Samaritan and looking out for those in need, but certainly.
- [30:28]
Jon Stewart
Not well articulated on the news programs I've been watching.
- [30:30]
Kevin Cruz
No, not on the news programs, but we have seen some not major politicians, some politicians, some academics, some commenters who have noted, hey, look, this attack on foreign students at universities, they're framing this as we're letting foreigners in and not letting good Americans get into Harvard like Baron Trump or whoever. But it ignores the fact that those foreign students pay a lot of money into those schools and students who are here pay lower tuition as a result, and that the universities as a whole who are bringing these foreign students in are a doing great things for American PR across the globe and educating global elites and instilling them with American values and sending them back out there. It's been a key tool of American soft power since World War II. But they're also not talking about the way in which these universities aren't just getting these federal grants for their own selfish needs, but are actually a source of outsourcing of scientific research, medical research, of making breakthroughs. Right.
- [31:29]
Jon Stewart
But these arguments, they have to be delivered forcefully and with like Jill, you're up at Harvard right now. I have been surprised, pleased that Harvard has stood up and said, look, we're not letting you take over our hiring practices or what we're going to teach. Surprised that they have not been more sophisticated in mounting what could be a very robust defense of everything that their research and their prowess has brought to the American experience over these last hundreds of years. That it's been in operation and I don't think people understand in this media environment, that argument has to be made with specifics and with a relentlessness and tenacity that I'm, that I'm not seeing, whether it's about research, whether it's about the economics of immigration, whether it's about foreign students. Everybody just seems to sit back and take this exploitative framing that Trump wants to dole out. Jill, why isn't that happening?
- [32:37]
Jill Lepore
That is a good question. I think there are.
- [32:40]
Jon Stewart
No, I wanted.
- [32:41]
Jill Lepore
Jill, there are fantastic stories that could be told and I think they would be incredibly powerful if told by people who have benefited from that largess, from the public mindedness of the research that is done at a place like Harvard. So if we heard from the woman in a town outside of Cleveland whose youngest child of four was saved by research that was conducted at Harvard Medical School and we had like, like I'd want to hire the PR firm that's going to go out and gather these stories and run a podcast and run a, you know, run a YouTube series about it because people do benefit tremendously. And there is that. That's on us, right. As the institutions of higher education, that we have not done that and work together, that it's entirely our fault. Right. Like what? Like we're just supposed to assume people think what we're doing is, is valuable? You know, I, no, so I agree with you why that's not being done. I think that, you know, faculty tried to do that in an individual way, but we're pretty busy just trying to help our students get through.
- [33:58]
Jon Stewart
There is a whole industry of consultants and commercial people who usually work sanding the edges and polishing the turds that are this nation's politicians that could be employed using some money from the 80 schools or whatever, 120 schools that are in a conglomerate to make these campaigns to relentlessly put to the, the, the, the Trump administration framing has to be fought.
- [34:25]
Kevin Cruz
Absolutely. Yeah.
- [34:26]
Jon Stewart
This type of authoritarian framing has to be fought with, with intelligence and tenacity. And the stories, either the stories are there or they're not there. Either this is valuable or not valuable, but its value has to be defended. And I guess I'm, I'm sort of flummoxed.
- [34:44]
Jill Lepore
And that's been the case for a long time. Right. I mean, the stories that came out about higher education for the last, I would say since 2010 have been about like, like, remember the Harvard placemat story? I don't want to like revise it. Or the Yale Halloween story. Like, they've all been these, like the Oberlin Bon Me scandal, the Oberland wine store. So. Right. So. But to just be like, okay, we.
- [35:09]
Jon Stewart
Just got to go viral.
- [35:10]
Jill Lepore
Pretend those things. Let's just go. Let's. Let's just go back to the library. That was never going to be the.
- [35:16]
Jon Stewart
Right approach, even back then. Like, my kids are in college. Like, all this about, like, it's a woke nightmare. Like, I'm telling you, 98% of those kids on college campuses have no. It's a place to, like, still try and drink and get laid and just get through your studies. Like, that's what a lot of it is. And their fear is not raising opinions in classrooms. It's generally social media shaming. It's really their peers that they're afraid of. Yeah. Having nothing to do with this sort of idea of. I think that's all been.
- [35:49]
Jill Lepore
I. I think it's both. I mean, I don't know. I really think there is a. I would say, like, from the front, there's been some crap going on, you know, that people are like, wow, this is really bad. Like, how are we going to stop this? This is crazy. And, you know, feeling kind of like, what could we do? But that doesn't also give fodder to the people that want to destroy this institution. I think that's a real challenge. But it does behoove higher education as a realm that is crucial to democratic life to do that work. And I think, I mean, I think that here's where a historical vantage is important.
- [36:27]
Jon Stewart
All right, Joe, come on.
- [36:28]
Jill Lepore
Because if you think about the conservative insurgency that dates, that Kevin will have a much better advantage on this than I. You know, that really begins in the 1950s, you know, with the John Birchers and William F. Buckley and their strange silent alliance. That what those. What that conservative insurgency determined was that in order to defeat the stranglehold that they believe liberals had on American politics and the constitutional order, they needed to defeat the arbiters of truth and knowledge. And that was the press, and that was the courts, and that was the university. And when you think about that, or how are we going to defeat these liberal institutions? Well, we can discredit them, we can make alternative versions, or we can just out and out destroy them. And they made an alternative press that took a long time, took decades. You don't really see that until 1980s with Limbaugh Era and Ailes, they took over the courts. You don't really see that happening to the federalist societies formed in 1982. But then Reagan makes those kind of devises his litmus test for the courts have completely transformed the federal judiciary. But what they couldn't really figure out because they tried finding an alternative to higher education, these various Christian and evangelical and other kind of right wingy kind of institutions of higher learning, but they weren't very successful. They didn't really have the talent and people didn't want to go to those schools over other schools. So the wrath which, with the Stephen Millers of the world or the tech right, the Peter Thiel's of the world, are so salivating at the opportunity to destroy, especially the Ivy League, comes from the Stan Patnis of higher education as the place where true truth will not die.
- [38:19]
Jon Stewart
But because they don't know they're in a war, that, that's the whole idea. That's the point of these institutions, whether they're the press or whether it's education or all of these other civil institutions, didn't realize they were in a war, that there was an enemy that was stalking them. Kevin, is, is, is the Ivy League, Is that the final boss battle of this conservative move from the 1950s on up? Because they have built parallel institutions. They have discredited, you know, whatever it was that had the authority in the country. Is that the final move?
- [38:55]
Kevin Cruz
I think so. I think Jill is the final boss. And they're coming for you. But I mean, what's.
- [39:00]
Jill Lepore
Kevin, no, they're coming for you.
- [39:02]
Kevin Cruz
No, no, no, no.
- [39:03]
Jon Stewart
Both of you.
- [39:04]
Kevin Cruz
No.
- [39:04]
Jon Stewart
The only thing that's left will be podcasters. We are the. We are the cockroaches of this new society.
- [39:11]
Kevin Cruz
Godspeed. Godspeed. Look, what Jill said is absolutely right. This has been decades in the making. And they've made no secret. Project 2025 wasn't the first time they released the script. Go back to the memo Lewis Powell wrote for the Chamber of Commerce in 1971, right before Nixon put him on the Supreme Court, basically saying, we have got to fight these other institutions and we've got to build up our own. And they've done both of that. Right. And so they built up, as she said, alternate media universe very successfully. And this comes out of Roger Ailes experiences with Nixon, who he said was, you know, looked like a kid who was 42.
- [39:48]
Jon Stewart
Never let them, we will never let them do that, what they did to Nixon again.
- [39:52]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah, and he hated Nixon, was a horrible client. He said Nixon looked like he was 42 years old the day he was born. Right. He was, you know, you know, other kids got a football For Christmas, Nixon got a briefcase. Alex is funny about Nixon, but he knew he had a crap product and went about find a way to sell it. So it's not about improving the products, about improving the sales anyway. But these alternative institutions have been built up. But as Jill said, education was the one that they couldn't do. So what do they do? They tried to tear it down. And it's been subtler before this, it used to be back in the 60s when all these college kids were protesting the conclusion of the right was, hey, you know what? This excellent free public education we've been giving to young people is actually a bad thing. These are educated minds that are going off in new directions, and that's a troubling new thing. And so you start to see, and they're very explicit about this.
- [40:40]
Jon Stewart
These are indoctrination centers. These are not educational centers.
- [40:44]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah, they're indoctrination centers. Yeah. And so you start to see a real pushback against what used to be fairly cheap and widely available quality public education. And they jacked up the prices on that and made it much more expensive, which then led to a lot of more expectations on the part of people who saw themselves not as students, but as customers. Right. Who were paying for a service that they could expect to be tailored back to them. Right. And so that has chipped away.
- [41:11]
Jon Stewart
Expense went up way faster than.
- [41:13]
Kevin Cruz
And expense went up way faster.
- [41:14]
Jon Stewart
It did explode.
- [41:15]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah, yeah. And so that. And so that set up, you know, a problem with a lot of universities. But of course, the Ivy League has been largely immune to this. Right. I mean, the kind of people who go there, either through their own means or through scholarship, don't have to worry about the funding issue. And so they've largely been immune from this. And through their endowments, they haven't been relying on state legislatures. So, yeah, I think private institutions writ large. But the Ivy League in general is a big target for Trump and his cronies.
- [41:39]
Jon Stewart
Now, let me ask you, Jill, you brought up earlier about executive orders and national emergencies and sort of being pioneered in some ways by Democrats and now being flipped around. Let's take the. The reverse of that as far as Trump's punishing of institutions that won't bend down to his whims and the ways that he's doing it. So he'll go after maybe your tax exempt status, or he'll cancel your federal. Or he's threatened California with federal funding that's not going to go out, or their educational funding, or going to put people in jail or he's going to do these things. Is that also opening up a can of worms? As I watched that happen, I thought, oh, shit, is that what we're, Is that what we're doing now that the people get to say, I'm not comfortable with my tax dollars going to a state that I don't agree with? Oh, I didn't know that was on the table. So maybe when someone who agrees with me gets in, they go, I'm not comfortable with my tax dollars going to a state that gets a block grant and uses it to build a volleyball stadium. I'm not comfortable with any tax breaks that right wing media gets. I'm not comfortable with tax exemptions for religious groups. Are we now in? Okay, great. Tit for tat, baby. That's the new world order.
- [43:01]
Jill Lepore
Yes, we are there. And it's hard to see how you turn back from that. But I do think, you know, a nice. This is what people say who study authoritarianism, that you know, that you're in a state that is moving toward authoritarianism of things that you once did without thinking twice about it. You think about not doing because you consider the consequences and you are afraid. So if you are thinking of going out, there's this no More Kings rally this weekend across the country. If you are thinking of going out and it occurs to you, maybe I won't because I don't know if they're going to have those rubber bullets or I don't know if there's going to be facial recognition and then I'm going to get my visa revoked. Like if you're second guessing, ordinary political activity, ordinary daily activity, what store you.
- [43:57]
Jon Stewart
Might go to, being punished for writing.
- [43:59]
Jill Lepore
An op ed, what you might do in your student newspaper, who you might employ in your Home Depot, if you're rethinking what you might do, which is perfectly lawful activity, and deciding maybe you're not going to do it even if you still do it. If you have thought twice about it, that is a concern. And I would suggest that I don't know anybody who, who is not fearful of that kind of thing right now.
- [44:22]
Jon Stewart
Right. You know, it's so interesting because the Musk Trump fight in my mind and the rights reaction to it was the first time they had to live in the world that the rest of us are living in. In other words, they saw Trump and Musk go at each other based on personal slights and they each. It was like watching two bad wizards.
- [44:48]
Jill Lepore
No, it's Mothra and Godzilla.
- [44:50]
Jon Stewart
It was Mothra and Godzilla. I was going to go and Godzilla, but I thought I'd switch it up to, to, to wizard.
- [44:54]
Jill Lepore
All right. No, no, we got to be accurate.
- [44:56]
Jon Stewart
Exactly. Be accurate. The, the, the point being that they both start threatening the vindictive consequences based on having their feelings hurt. Musk throws out, I'm going to pull my rockets from the International Space Station. Trump says, I'm pulling away your contract. And you suddenly realize, don't you get that's how the rest of us have been living? That any minor offense that might trigger the mercurial and vindictive nature of these two man babies means you will suffer the full consequences of their power. And for the right, they were like, I hate this. I hate seeing these guys do this. Yeah, welcome to our fucking world. That's what everybody's been dealing with.
- [45:46]
Jill Lepore
But I think now I, if there were a conservative on this call with us, this person might point out it's me. That call out culture of the kind of high me too era and slightly before and after had a lot of people in terror about what did I say to that woman that I work with? What did I, you know that. And some of which was, okay, maybe I should think about what I said to her. But maybe like maybe that was crazy time. Do you know what I mean? Like that we have been living in a culture of personal vindictiveness, of social media mobbing.
- [46:24]
Jon Stewart
Right?
- [46:24]
Jill Lepore
But that is, that is different than the President of the United States.
- [46:28]
Jon Stewart
Here's the difference.
- [46:28]
Jill Lepore
Lutely.
- [46:29]
Jon Stewart
That is a social media algorithmically driven phenomenon. That is not a top down governmental with the full force and weight of the United States army and budget behind it. It's a complete, it's, you're, you're absolutely right. But the same shit would happen if I said something bad about Taylor Swift. I think that is an, an absolutely not essential argument about what's happening today. I say that with obviously great respect because you.
- [47:00]
Jill Lepore
No, that's fair, that's fair. I'll take that. I just, I just think that, I.
- [47:04]
Jon Stewart
Know that it was unpleasant, but that unpleasantness is from social media.
- [47:07]
Jill Lepore
You're right, you're right, it really is. But the style of vindictiveness, like that's a pervasive political style. So I just think that's worth putting out there. But you, But I entirely take your point.
- [47:19]
Jon Stewart
Oh my God. I just gave a Harvard professor a B minus. That's right, you heard me. B minus.
- [47:27]
Jill Lepore
Look, we got great inflation here, John.
- [47:30]
Kevin Cruz
I was going to say, I'm going to say a B, A B minus. My God.
- [47:34]
Jill Lepore
Office hours. I'm going to change my grade to pass fail unless you commit to an A minus.
- [47:38]
Jon Stewart
All right, you know what? A minus.
- [47:39]
Jill Lepore
That's how we do.
- [47:40]
Jon Stewart
It's done. And we're going to get you into that business school that you wanted so desperately to be the finance pro. Kevin. Do you understand, though, my, My point being those things when. When it's the mob, and I agree with Jill wholeheartedly that social media is villagers with torches looking for monsters and they find them wherever they look. And those monsters can be actual monsters or they can just be people who spoke immodestly for a moment and they attack with the same viciousness. But this is different.
- [48:10]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah, yeah. Look, I mean, if, you know, if Oreo Lover 420 yells at me on Blue sky, that's fine. If the world's most powerful narcissist and the world's richest narcissist are throwing haymakers at each other, in which there are stock market fluctuations, in which there are world health crises, in which there are, you know, all kinds of things that come out of us, you know, international affairs, trembling as these two children trade insults on their individual social media platforms, which I'm told is how alpha males apparently fight. Now, sure, that is really disturbing. Right. And that is, I think, what is really alarming because what we. Again, this goes back to our. Something that are. Something that they're going to be at least nominal grownups in charge has really been undercut.
- [49:03]
Jon Stewart
See, I don't. I don't care if they fight each other, to be quite frank. What I care about is what it says to me is, as it is in monarchies, you serve at the pleasure of the king.
- [49:16]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah.
- [49:17]
Jon Stewart
And that is not the American culture. It cannot be that. We all serve at the pleasure of the king. And that's why I always find it fascinating that this form of the right steeps itself in such patriotic regalia. You know, they've got the buses with the airbrush. Constitution and we the people. And this is meant. You want to love your. Your leader, Donald Trump. Love him. But this sure as shit isn't the Constitution and it's not we the people.
- [49:55]
Kevin Cruz
Trump is a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the Oval Office. He's got it framed. Little. Little curtains around it, I think.
- [50:02]
Jon Stewart
Right.
- [50:03]
Kevin Cruz
He has clearly not read it because he is speed running through the list of complaints that the founders made him. Declaration of Independence about King George iii.
- [50:13]
Jon Stewart
Right.
- [50:13]
Kevin Cruz
Sending people to prisons abroad, stationing troops in our presence. All go down the list. Right. And so he's read it.
- [50:19]
Jill Lepore
It's his instruction manual.
- [50:21]
Kevin Cruz
Someone has read it to him.
- [50:22]
Jill Lepore
It's his project 1776.
- [50:25]
Jon Stewart
Jill, isn't that this is like, throughout America's history, there have been moments where we have overstepped into. And we've considered those moments somewhat shameful, whether it's Jim Crow or slavery or the internment of the Japanese. Is it that Trump is in some ways, and I don't want to suggest that it's to the same extent, but he's condensing our timeline of those types of overreaches into a kind of anti constitutional resin. And so we're just being fed it in a, like, it's just happening in such concentrated form. Is that what I'm reacting to? Is that what I'm feeling, Jill?
- [51:05]
Jill Lepore
You know, I went back and I read the coverage of, you know, sort of mid to late November 2016, how people reacted to his election. I don't remember. Andrew Sullivan sort of faithfully wrote this article. This is Trump's America now. A country built to end tyranny and thwart tyranny is now obligated itself to. We have erected a new king. And a lot of people are like, wow, that's the beginning of Trump derangement syndrome. And he was sort of mocked for that. And it turned out he was just premature. Right. Like those four years passed.
- [51:33]
Jon Stewart
An early adopter of technology.
- [51:37]
Jill Lepore
Not that there weren't crises in the first Trump administration, but of course, indeed, the constitutional order held and he was indeed thwarted. And I think a lot utterly.
- [51:46]
Jon Stewart
Jill.
- [51:47]
Jill Lepore
Right. But compared to these few months. Right. So I mean, my favorite line from there was an Atlantic piece that came out a bit ago where Trump guy said, you know, watching him in his second term, the first hundred days was like the part of Jurassic park when the velociraptors learn how to turn the doorknobs. And that's what it is. Right? Like that's, that's the. Okay, you're like, where are the loopholes in federal law and statutes in the Constitution? Well, like, that's like, that's where we are. But you know what? The thing that really blows my mind with the musk Trump thing.
- [52:26]
Jon Stewart
Yes.
- [52:27]
Jill Lepore
I would say as a historian, as much as I have read about and thought about it and written about it, I don't think I ever, in a visceral way, have understood how hard it was to end monarchy. Like, how hard it is to bring down someone with that power, like, even musk for, you know, whatever. Like, okay, you can have my rockets back, sir. Please, sir. This guy's brought to heal now. He's on his little leash. And, and not that you wanted him to be out there. He's not going to be fighting for American democracy, whatever he says. But, like, you know, if not, like, if not Harvard, if not la, if not, like, what can actually do it?
- [53:07]
Jon Stewart
It's collective, and that's collective.
- [53:09]
Jill Lepore
It is a real opportunity for us to think about on the eve of our 250th anniversary.
- [53:15]
Jon Stewart
Let me play some music. Get a fight.
- [53:17]
Jill Lepore
What do you have to do? You have to be willing to stand with the people that you disagree with and say, I disagree with you about everything. But the one thing we agree about is that we get to decide how to govern ourselves. Some guy doesn't just come in here and pay everybody off and throw his army around and say what he wants to say and tell everybody else to shut up and watch him and admire him and look at his new self portraits that will be all over the country. We shall bow before them with this fierce, like, we can't do that. Like, that's, that's, that's going to take a lot of work. Like, the amount of work that takes is phenomenal. People have to, like, get off their asses.
- [53:59]
Jon Stewart
And it's not even monarchy. It's hard to get rid of monarchy. Think of how hard it was to get rid of the Gilded Age robber barons. The confluence of, you know, the one thing about government that is not given enough thing, government does the things that business won't because there's not or shouldn't. And it's the only thing strong enough to stand up to a corporate tyranny as well. And so you saw the Gilded Age, man, that thing happened until the fucking bottom dropped out. And then it was a catastrophe. And you worry that only catastrophes are what wake people from these kinds of slumbers. And I'll tell you, and this circles around to sort of our whole conversation, you know, in thinking of the history of the United States and the various kinds of emergency levers and loopholes that have been pulled by various presidents, when Trump does little things like that, like fires the inspector generals or uses the alien to deport it, never quite triggered for me what this really was. I'm telling you, January 6th was the one moment. Because if there is a red line for me in this country, it's that, is that transfer of power. We're a democracy until the transfer of power. We may be a more authoritarian style. We may be a Slightly less. We may be a more chaotic, but it all fits into this system till that one day. And that day wasn't a day of impulsive explosion of emotional anger and upset. It was planned. They tried every avenue, whether It's, I need 13,000 votes. Whether he. And it was strategic. And they talked to people and they said, look, this day is your last shot. Our only hope here is to get this thing not certified and thrown into the House of Representatives. So the events of that day, the chaos and the violence, were a strategically planned effort to move that. And that, for me, was it. That was the moment. Whatever happens after that doesn't matter because of that. Kevin, you go first. Jill, you go.
- [56:16]
Kevin Cruz
Am I supposed to provide hope here? I mean, there's no. I'm an historian, man. That's not what we do.
- [56:21]
Jon Stewart
Come on.
- [56:22]
Kevin Cruz
We depress people for a living.
- [56:23]
Jon Stewart
Talk about our resilience in overcoming these. Talk about the perspective of that. This time isn't.
- [56:29]
Kevin Cruz
I mean, resilience comes through accountability. It comes through both personal and holding them accountable. And there was a moment after January 6th, there's on January 6th where Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy and most of Congress, Democrat or Republican, was actually saying, this is an insurrection. This is Trump's fault. We need to hold him responsible. And then they blinked, and the Republicans went back into kind of the partisan mindset, and Democrats refused to P over. And that's where we were left. And then Biden came in, and we didn't get Merrick Garland. Holding a lot of these people accountable, they kind of slow rolled that. They slow rolled the cases. There wasn't a sense of urgency here. And so there's. I think in America, we often have. We saw this after Watergate, kind of the system worked, and it barely worked in Watergate. And then the bad guys figured out a way to work around all those of the ways in which they got caught in Watergate. Don't say stuff on tape. You know, have your alternative. You know, all these sorts of things.
- [57:31]
Jon Stewart
Have the Supreme Court say there's no such thing as corruption.
- [57:34]
Kevin Cruz
Correct.
- [57:35]
Jon Stewart
Yeah. And you're allowed to have slush funds as long as you pretend like you're not coordinated.
- [57:39]
Kevin Cruz
Huge win. Huge win. Yeah. And so all that has radically changed the game, but we don't have to accept it. Right. And so there's got to be a will to hold people accountable. Right. And there's a. I think, a craving on the part of voters. And if Democrats are looking for a message, it's. They could do something to show that they actually have principles and are willing to act on them and will hold people accountable. And that's what I think voters are dying to see is they. I think Joe's right. Both, both sides have gotten into this kind of ossified politics where they are content with the status quo. They don't want to rock the boat too much because the power might come back to them. They don't want to ban, you know, stock trading from congressmen. There's all kinds of things that they could do to show that they actually have skin in the game and that they know that we are invested in what they do. Right. And we are looking to them to truly represent and lead us. Right. And rather than taking a back seat and Democrats constantly poll testing and seeing what might float. Well, no, take a stand, put your feet in the ground.
- [58:33]
Jon Stewart
Believe in principles.
- [58:35]
Kevin Cruz
Believe in something.
- [58:35]
Jon Stewart
Believe in something including competence. Jill?
- [58:38]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, I don't think there's a path forward that is a return to power of the Democrats as a corrective. I think the path forward is actually, I mean, meanwhile there is the day to day emergency and people have to deal with that. I don't mean to slight that, but I think there needs to be a sense of a longer view of what lies ahead. Wherein. I mean, I love in the 1930s, these federal forums. Well, they weren't initially federal. There was a school teacher, a school superintendent in Detroit who started. People were really like not believing in democracy anymore. Some people wanted FDR to take on more like dictatorial powers. There are a lot of American fascists. There were a lot of American technocrats. They belong to this movement that Elon Musk's grandfather was the national leader of in Canada. There are a lot of people.
- [59:23]
Jon Stewart
We'll talk about that in a little bit. Finish your thing. And then I want to talk about, I want to talk about Haldeman and, and, and, and the technocracy.
- [59:30]
Jill Lepore
Americans were drawn to a lot of different kind of views other than, than democracy. It's like maybe democracy is not going to get out of, out of, out of this depression, right? And this guy, the school teacher, school superintendent was like, you know what? I had a lot of empty buildings. My buildings are empty every weeknight. And he started having he poll neighborhoods and say what did you guys like to talk about? And they would open up the building. People would come by and be like, what kind of country do you want? Do you want, do you think the Supreme Court should be, that the president should be able to veto Supreme Court decisions? Do you think that we should have national health insurance. Do you think that the Communist Party should be outlawed? And they would have these neighborhood debates and they, you know, they're bringing people to talk and it got to be this huge thing all over. Like, huge percentage of people in Detroit like, went. And so Eleanor Rose was like, this is a genius idea and give some, you know, New Deal funding to it. And then they were sort of held all over the country. And I think that until you can have institutions that really cultivate civic renewal and democratic values, that all the shifting of power, like, oh, who has the ball now? Like, are we in the 10 yard line? Or. I don't know, I can't do the fricking sports metaphor. But like, like, we can't just be like.
- [60:42]
Jon Stewart
That worked for me.
- [60:43]
Jill Lepore
We can't just be like, who's got the ball? Thank you, thank you.
- [60:46]
Jon Stewart
10 yard line ball. I was, I was all in. I'm all in.
- [60:49]
Kevin Cruz
A slam dunk into the net, Kevin.
- [60:51]
Jon Stewart
Well done, well done.
- [60:52]
Jill Lepore
But, you know, you really need to bring people together. And there are a ton of these organizations like Bridge USA or, you know, they're just trying to like, have gatherings. And I. It seems hokey. It's like, who's bringing the gingham tablecloth for the picnic? Or whatever. But. But it's, it's really crucial.
- [61:09]
Jon Stewart
It's. I don't think it's hokey at all. I think it's. It's necessary and it's how the Tea Party did. The thing, though, that people have to understand is there is a class of people who have weaponized all the tools of communication against that very idea that you just spoke about, Jill. The idea that we would get together to shore up civic institutions and the ability to carry on discourse. Those avenues are weaponized almost immediately there. There is a whole class of people whose entire livelihoods rely on the fact of bomb throwing on the Internet and all those other things that they do so that they can obscure the fact that we as a people have a lot more in common than different. They obscure that fact. And until we. I honestly think, you know, we talked about it earlier and this brings it around, this 50 to 60 year project to change that. Unless something is put up with the same financial backing and tenacity and principle to reverse that trend, I think we'll find ourselves on the back end.
- [62:24]
Kevin Cruz
And it's important to remember that it's not just that the media or social media or individuals are siloed. Our politics are too right. And I think we make too much out of polarization. Giving equal weight to left and right. It's mostly the right that I think has gone hyper partisan. But both sides really are hidebound by a system in which districts are increasingly gerrymandered. Money is increasingly sent to the people who scream the loudest. The media hits are given to the people who fill the partisan slots on news shows, pro or con. And so all the incentives are there for politicians. Right.
- [62:56]
Jon Stewart
And corruption has been legalized.
- [62:59]
Kevin Cruz
Yeah. And any Republican is not worried about, you know, their general election opponent. They're worried about getting primaried. Right. That's where the real threat comes. And then they skate through to the general.
- [63:07]
Jon Stewart
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [63:08]
Jill Lepore
But I think isn't this always an opportunity to shame the lack of philanthropy among the tech elite? Because if we go back to the robber barons, like what did those robber barons do? They had a sense of what, what is now fashionably called long termerism. Right. But they, they exercise that faith. They were just trying to get into heaven of the future by you know, Carnegie starting the libraries and Rockefeller endowing foundations that would grant fund that grant funds to institutions of higher learning. And what's our long term arisen? Well, let's talk about existential risk and let's go to the moon and then let's go to Mars. Like some of these people could have a different sense of the public wheel. And I don't think it's too late. I really don't think I. Some of these people like on their little, you know, mountaintop of mountain head can say oh shit and they can decide to use their great wealth to a different end. I mean I honestly wish they didn't have it, but they can use it.
- [64:02]
Jon Stewart
Musk did that, but he decided to use it for the weaponized purpose of power and politics. And to that end, and I just want to get this in quickly because it's so fascinating. Musk's grandfather and you know a lot about this, this guy Haldeman, the, what is it? The Flying Haldeman.
- [64:18]
Jill Lepore
The Flying Haldeman.
- [64:20]
Jon Stewart
The Flying Haldeman was a technocrat and he's, his philosophy is sort of the one that you say still is pervasive within Musk's worldview.
- [64:29]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, so in the 1930s, technocracy, the technocracy movement, it was Technocracy Incorporated, Nice little corporate touch. There was a North American movement, it was led in Canada by Musk, Musk's grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, who was a kind of amateur aviator, an anti vaxxer and a chiropractor. And they believed that Democracy had failed, that there shouldn't be elections anymore, that people should not have the vote. The only people who could be trusted in industrial society to determine the direction of politics and government were scientists and engineers. And they should rule. There should be no money, no banks. Most people shouldn't work. These great men would just figure things out.
- [65:11]
Jon Stewart
Were these Objectivists, were these people like working off of Objectivism or were they different than that?
- [65:18]
Jill Lepore
No, they worked on John. They were kooks. You know, they drove. They wore. They wore identical gray uniforms, unlike the Objectivists. Yes, they drove identical gray cars. And when things. When Canada outlawed the technocracy movement on the fear that it was danger to civil society and to the government, Musk's grandfather went to jail. He was denied entry into the US and then in 1950, he moved to South Africa where he became a pamphleteer in support of the apartheid regime. So in a famous anti Semite, really kind of important influence in the kind of global anti Semitism movement of the 1960s. So it's a. It's a troubling family history. Now just to be clear, you know, this guy died when Musk was a toddler. Like this is not a personal handoff, but there are a lot of similarities between the. The politics of technocracy and of techno libertarianism.
- [66:17]
Jon Stewart
Well, listen, guys, I can't thank you enough for taking the time. Please tell your universities to do my idea and get together with all the universities and fight. Let's just, just get it out there in, in a very powerful and tenacious way. All the good things. Jill Lepore, professor of history and law at Harvard. Kevin Cruz, a professor of history at Princeton University. Both incredibly hopeful about the future of this country and the people. Guys, that's the last one. Come on. I got it.
- [66:50]
Kevin Cruz
Take it again. I won't laugh. I won't laugh. Take it again.
- [66:52]
Jon Stewart
Son of a bitch. Guys, thank you so much and I hope to get a chance to talk to you again soon.
- [66:57]
Jill Lepore
Thanks, John.
- [66:57]
Kevin Cruz
Awesome. Thanks for having us.
- [67:03]
Jon Stewart
Wow. Let me say this, guys, and you can tell me what you think. I thought that was going to be more optimistic.
- [67:09]
Producer
To be perfectly frank, we always do. We always do.
- [67:13]
Jon Stewart
What?
- [67:15]
Producer
I'm so sad.
- [67:16]
Jon Stewart
I kept thinking that they would say something. You don't understand. There was a battle at Antietam that was the most. We're not anywhere near. And they're both like, I don't know how we get out of this. Yeah, this doom loop.
- [67:28]
Producer
Jill saying that, like she had never really thought about how hard it was to Topple a monarchy before it really, really didn't make me feel great. I'm being honest.
- [67:40]
Jon Stewart
And how. And how easily it seems you can hack the operating code of our Constitution for a more like unitary executive purpose. I think that was surprising to me.
- [67:54]
Producer
I know you can look at the situation and just see so many absurdities. Like, I was thinking about, okay, so we have the parade coming up. That's going to take up X amount of money. We have the National Guard and the Marines being sent to la. That's X amount of money. And then Trump announces, you know what? We need to wean the States off fema. Even though natural disasters are occurring more frequently. You know, like, it just. None of it makes any logical sense. Yet here we are.
- [68:21]
Jon Stewart
You'd almost think it was an emergency that we could declare. Yeah, too bad. Too bad we have no emergency powers. I will say this, though, about both professors.
- [68:31]
Jill Lepore
Now.
- [68:31]
Jon Stewart
I, you know, didn't necessarily pay such attention in school, but I would like to have professors of that spirit. They seem very engaged and like, that.
- [68:42]
Producer
Would be lovely and have all the topical references.
- [68:45]
Jon Stewart
Right?
- [68:46]
Producer
Yeah.
- [68:46]
Jon Stewart
She was throwing down mountain hedge. Like, she's throwing down shit that just started streaming on Matt. Whatever.
- [68:52]
Producer
Like, oh, yeah, she's up to date. She's a historian, but she's also in the moment, the history of today. She does it all.
- [68:57]
Jon Stewart
I was surprised she didn't tell me that I ate and left no crumbs.
- [69:01]
Producer
Oh, I could see she was on the verge of that.
- [69:06]
Jon Stewart
Brittany, what do we got from our. Our vaunted listeners?
- [69:10]
Producer
We got two doozies this week.
- [69:12]
Jon Stewart
Oh, really? All right. Oh, boy.
- [69:14]
Producer
John, do you think ABC should have fired Terry Moran over his Stephen Miller tweet?
- [69:20]
Jon Stewart
Of course not. So stupid. No. For God's sakes. Should they have fired him? They shouldn't have paid the $15 million. They shouldn't have fired him. They're literally every day on Fox News. They're taking stuff out of context. Or their people are saying utterly vicious things about Democratic politicians and all kinds of other things. The entire thing is, is because ABC clings to this facade that they somehow exist in a bubble outside of, of all of this. It's. It's a joke. They're a fucking joke.
- [69:51]
Producer
And Stephen Miller, by the way, would wear that like a badge of honor. He's a sick fuck. He's got it printed out, probably, and hung in his office.
- [69:58]
Jon Stewart
Sick fuck is exactly right. And I think, like, like, exactly like you say, like, as I said, when he comes, he shouts. Shouts to port and I, and I stand by that.
- [70:13]
Producer
You know, I was thinking, who is left at ABC that is acceptable to Trump to interview him? Because Stephanopoulos had to say sorry. Now Terry Moran's out. Muir and Davis held him accountable at a debate like, who will be left?
- [70:28]
Jon Stewart
There's no. And the problem with it all is there's no level of fealty that is enough. You've seen him attack Fox News. That is literally like a 24 hour Trump ball polishing machine. And so the idea that somehow there is a level of fealty that these journalists. What does he always say whenever he has a question? That's a terrible question. Why don't you ever just thank me? Oh, in other words, like just another one of your fucking cabinet members.
- [70:52]
Jill Lepore
Yep.
- [70:53]
Jon Stewart
Jesus. All right, what else we got now, Mad? All right, what do you got?
- [70:56]
Producer
We like Mad John better than sad.
- [70:59]
Jill Lepore
True.
- [70:59]
Jon Stewart
That's that too. Yeah.
- [71:02]
Producer
Elon now says he, quote, went too far with tweets about Trump. Is that an apology or a business decision?
- [71:09]
Jon Stewart
Oh, I think it's for sure. He's now he's, he doesn't get to sit at that table anymore in the lunchroom and nobody else wants to sit with him. And so he's, he's crawling back. But you know, I'll wait until they say I went too far with taking away HIV medicine from fucking orphans in, in Africa to, to think that there's been any kind of reflection in, in this person or I went too far in calling civil service workers parasites and people that I want to shame and give trauma to. It's, it's, I, I, nah, I'm now I'm having a bad day.
- [71:47]
Producer
And on that note, on that note.
- [71:50]
Jon Stewart
No, I don't, it's all self preservation and everything. Listening. These guys know that with the billions of dollars that are on the line that they still can help each other sit on their prospective thrones and they will continue to do so with no. Anybody who says the biggest problem in the Western world right now is empathy, I really don't have a ton of hope for as far as having an epiphany about what's going on. So, yeah, I'm not, I'm not buying it. Brittany.
- [72:21]
Producer
Yes, John?
- [72:22]
Jon Stewart
How can people get in touch with us and not make us sad?
- [72:26]
Jill Lepore
Twitter.
- [72:27]
Producer
We are weekly show pod. Instagram threads, TikTok, Blue Sky. We are weekly show podcast and you can like subscribe and comment on our YouTube channel. The weekly show with Jon Stewart.
- [72:37]
Jon Stewart
Boom. Thank you guys very much. Fantastic. Happy to be back. It's June, baby. Let's keep this bad boy going. Thanks again. Lead producer Lauren Walker. Producer Brittany Mic, video editor and engineer Rob Votola. Audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer Jillian Spear. And our executive producers, Mr. Chris McShane, Ms. Katie Gray. All right, guys, that was fun.
- [73:00]
Producer
Always.
- [73:04]
Jill Lepore
LOL.
- [73:06]
Jon Stewart
All right, talk to you guys. Bye. The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.
- [73:33]
Jill Lepore
Paramount Podcasts.