Speaker 1: Welcome to Pods of America. I'm Alex Wagner. On today's show,
Speaker 1: Historian Heathercox Richardson on America at two fifty. With the
Speaker 1: administration gearing up for July fourth celebrations and gearing down
Speaker 1: from celebrations of Trump's eightieth, I thought I'd check in
Speaker 1: with someone who can situate all of the pomp and
Speaker 1: circumstance in historical context. You likely know Heather from her
Speaker 1: insanely popular substack Letters from an American, where she writes
Speaker 1: every damn day about the history behind today's increasingly ahistorical politics.
Speaker 1: Heather has a new series out to celebrate America's two
Speaker 1: hundred and fiftieth. It is aptly named two fifty to
Speaker 1: two fifty, where she tells the story of the Amerrikins who,
Speaker 1: over the course of a quarter millennium, work to make
Speaker 1: real the founding ideals of this nation that all people
Speaker 1: are created equal. We're going to talk about that series
Speaker 1: and Trump's Fourth of July celebrations, as well as so
Speaker 1: much much more. Trump's efforts to make DC just as
Speaker 1: tacky as he is, JD Vance's Catholic faith, and how
Speaker 1: the lefts can embrace patriotism once again. It was a
Speaker 1: great conversation with Heather, and we're going to get to
Speaker 1: it in a minute. But before we do, guys, there's
Speaker 1: a new episode of Pod Save America Only Friends out
Speaker 1: now with me.
Speaker 2: And Hysteria's Aaron Ryan.
Speaker 1: Go check it out. Only Friends is the Friends of
Speaker 1: the Pods subscriber exclusive show where Pod Save America hosts
Speaker 1: and contributors dive into even more news stories from the week.
Speaker 1: In this episode, Aaron and I unpack the Justice Department's
Speaker 1: latest investigation into Gavin Newsom and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
Speaker 1: We check in on whatever was going on at the
Speaker 1: Turning Point Women's Leadership Summit. No, that is not an
Speaker 1: oxymoron and much more so. Hit pause and subscribe to
Speaker 1: Friends of the Pod at Crooked dot com slash friends. Also,
Speaker 1: please if you would check out my podcast Runaway Country,
Speaker 1: where I this week talk to California Attorney General Rob
Speaker 1: Bonta about JD Vance's war on Blue States, the other
Speaker 1: war that he's tasked with, and then graded the Vice's
Speaker 1: salesmanship efforts. This week on the Iran surrender with the
Speaker 1: Great Sam Cedar. All right, here is Heather Cox Richardson
Speaker 1: Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 1: today on Podday of America, and also preemptively thank you
Speaker 1: for offering wisdom and perspective on this insane American moment.
Speaker 3: Alex, It's always so much fun to be with you.
Speaker 1: Oh, we should do it more often anytime, literally you
Speaker 1: just say the word I'm here. Let's start first with
Speaker 1: the upcoming two hundred and fiftieth celebration the semi Quincentennial,
Speaker 1: and how the President has chosen to celebrate this moment
Speaker 1: mentus occasion. Last Sunday, he of course hosted a UFC
Speaker 1: fight on the South lawn of the White House, and
Speaker 1: then next week on the fourth, he is going to
Speaker 1: be hosting the self proclaimed most spectacular Trump rally of
Speaker 1: them all.
Speaker 2: On the National Mall.
Speaker 1: I don't have the same lens onto history as you do,
Speaker 1: but can you recall any sort of parallel to such
Speaker 1: a monstrous display of presidential ego in the name of
Speaker 1: patriotic celebration anytime in our history as a country.
Speaker 3: No, of course not.
Speaker 4: We're in a really different moment than ever before in
Speaker 4: American history with administration that's rejecting the basic principles of
Speaker 4: our democratic government. So one of the things that's interesting
Speaker 4: is how that's playing out not only in celebrations of
Speaker 4: the two hundred and fiftieth but also in the memorials
Speaker 4: in Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: But there's a larger story.
Speaker 4: I mean, everybody knows that I'm talking about the reflecting pool,
Speaker 4: which might be a really interesting dive, so to speak,
Speaker 4: for us to go into the Kennedy Center, the you know,
Speaker 4: the gilded horses behind the Lincoln Memorial, the art, you know,
Speaker 4: all the things we could the destruction of the Ben
Speaker 4: Shawn that proposed destruction of the Ben Shawn murals, all
Speaker 4: that stuff. But what's really interesting as you look over
Speaker 4: it when you think about democracy, is that if you
Speaker 4: think about our great presidents, the once we remember people
Speaker 4: like Lyndon Baines Johnson or Theodore Roosevelt or Eisenhower or
Speaker 4: you know, we could go on and on, they're the
Speaker 4: ones who carved their memory into the American people by
Speaker 4: making their lives better by having social security or healthcare,
Speaker 4: or by trying to eliminate poverty. By suggesting that the
Speaker 4: way you create a monument to yourself is by by
Speaker 4: changing the lives of the American people. For the better.
Speaker 4: And it's just really interesting when you think about legacies,
Speaker 4: the fact that Trump somehow thinks that slapping his name
Speaker 4: on stuff matters, but that doesn't matter at all. And similarly,
Speaker 4: if you think about our history, you know, you can
Speaker 4: write and people do write books celebrating the absolute genius
Speaker 4: of and I'm going to pull somebody here at random,
Speaker 4: Benjamin Harrison. But but it just doesn't stick if in fact,
Speaker 4: it's clear that all you're doing is trying to celebrate
Speaker 4: a certain kind of dominant lifestyle versus something that actually
Speaker 4: made the American people better. So I would suggest it
Speaker 4: right now in American history, for example, a lot more
Speaker 4: people have heard of the Wounded Knee massacre than have
Speaker 4: heard of Benjamin Harrison's great successes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, people can talk to the trail of tears,
Speaker 1: but they're not sure what Old Hickory did. In terms
Speaker 1: of interior decorations at the White House, maggot types have
Speaker 1: pointed to the fact that Teddy Roosevelt, I believe, hosted
Speaker 1: and fought in a boxing match at the White House
Speaker 1: during President This is.
Speaker 3: This is actually great.
Speaker 4: So if you want to talk about this, I would
Speaker 4: love to do this, because what happens in the Theodore
Speaker 4: Roosevelt presidency is this is coming. First of all, Teddy
Speaker 4: Roosevelt really jumps into some sort of American prominence in
Speaker 4: eighteen eighty four, which is an important year politically, because
Speaker 4: that's really when the younger Republicans are coming of age
Speaker 4: and they're looking at the corruption of the Republican Party
Speaker 4: and saying, we can't be democrats because of the Civil War,
Speaker 4: but we also can't be that kind of Republican. So
Speaker 4: one of the things that they are trying to do
Speaker 4: is figure out how to return America to its democratic,
Speaker 4: small deed democratic principles. And this is happening in a
Speaker 4: time of industrialization, and during that time of industrialization, the
Speaker 4: industrialists are essentially arranging the systems in the United States
Speaker 4: to create an undereducated, underpaid under class that will continue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, does it sound.
Speaker 2: Familiar And it's kind of familiar.
Speaker 4: But so one of the things that is driving Theodore
Speaker 4: Roosevelt is he's very concerned about the terrible conditions in
Speaker 4: the urban areas, especially in the East. Remember, he loses
Speaker 4: both his mother and his wife on the same day
Speaker 4: to diseases that have come out of that sort of
Speaker 4: urban soup before we really understood germ theory. And he
Speaker 4: wants to clean up the cities, but he also wants
Speaker 4: to return the country to a place where we can
Speaker 4: actually create good citizens. And so he's going to support
Speaker 4: cleaning up the cities. He's going to support education, and
Speaker 4: he's going to support the wide open spaces that he's
Speaker 4: going to try and protect through conservation. But he is
Speaker 4: also going to try to reclaim a kind of American
Speaker 4: masculinity that says, you know, we're not just cogs in
Speaker 4: a machine of a larger system. And that speaks to
Speaker 4: his own sort of rediscovering his ability, his physical abilities
Speaker 4: from his youthful asthma through boxing. So this is when
Speaker 4: you get and he also protects football football. Somebody had
Speaker 4: actually died playing a college football game. It was such
Speaker 4: a rough sport, so he actually managed to recover there.
Speaker 3: This is also the same.
Speaker 4: Period when we get indigenous names attached to sports teams,
Speaker 4: because the idea was that you wanted men to be
Speaker 4: savage and I'm going to put that in air quotes,
Speaker 4: but only on the football field, for example. But you
Speaker 4: think about what Teddy Roosevelt was trying to do, and
Speaker 4: a lot of people look down on it because you know,
Speaker 4: of all the bare knuckle fighting and all that, and
Speaker 4: there's all this is sort of an air of cock
Speaker 4: fighting and prize fighting and so on. In the cities.
Speaker 4: It was not considered higher level entertainment. But there's some
Speaker 4: really big differences I think between and maybe at the
Speaker 4: time people would not have said.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: There's one really major difference between Teddy Roosevelt and boxing
Speaker 4: and his exhibition boxing, which was not the same bloody
Speaker 4: stuff that was going on in Five Points in New
Speaker 4: York and what happened at.
Speaker 3: The White House.
Speaker 4: And the really big difference, two really big differences is one,
Speaker 4: taxpayer money didn't go into Teddy Roosevelt's fighting, and it
Speaker 4: was not a branding opportunity, and for sure it was
Speaker 4: not the corruption opportunity that the UFC fight on the
Speaker 4: White in the White House has been. So even though
Speaker 4: it both involved flying fists, the systems that they are
Speaker 4: either accepting or critiquing were virtually opposite.
Speaker 2: Very important distinction.
Speaker 1: There was no cryptocurrency, a sponsorship, and a paramount plus
Speaker 1: requirement to see the match. You could just be a
Speaker 1: human being there on the white Do you have any
Speaker 1: idea how many people attended that White House match that
Speaker 1: Roosevelt vought.
Speaker 4: In Oh, oh, there wouldn't have been I don't have
Speaker 4: any idea, but it would not have been huge because remember,
Speaker 4: what makes things huge is the ability to get place
Speaker 4: as quickly and to know that they're happening, neither of
Speaker 4: which would have happened.
Speaker 3: It would have been written up in the newspapers afterwards.
Speaker 4: And I'm sorry to have gone on so long about that,
Speaker 4: but literally nobody has ever asked.
Speaker 2: Me, no, I am this is I love this.
Speaker 4: And just so you know, Lincoln was also a fighter,
Speaker 4: which again nobody he's ever asked.
Speaker 2: Me about like a boxing fighter.
Speaker 4: Oh no, worse, Lincoln, I mean worse if you're not
Speaker 4: into kind of grabs your he was. Remember, he was
Speaker 4: from the frontier, and he was quite a big man,
Speaker 4: and he had quite long arms and legs, and that
Speaker 4: made him a really good guy in a fight and
Speaker 4: in those days, and there's an argument about how deeply
Speaker 4: he went into this. This was the era of eye
Speaker 4: gouging and ear biting and so on, and there's big
Speaker 4: fights about whether or not he did that. Lots of
Speaker 4: people want to say, oh, he would never have done that.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 4: But remember he gets his political start in Illinois, and
Speaker 4: he is backed in a bipartisan basis because there's a
Speaker 4: gang who supports him and they're actually from the opposite party.
Speaker 4: He's a wig in their Democrats, and they support him
Speaker 4: because he's such a great fighter. He has fought with
Speaker 4: them before.
Speaker 2: Did he light ears? Do we know if he bought ears?
Speaker 3: We don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 4: And people who listen to this podcast now are going
Speaker 4: to write you and me, probably hate mail from both
Speaker 4: sides saying of course he did or no he didn't.
Speaker 4: But he came up through that era because she had
Speaker 4: to to survive on the frontier, and it turned out
Speaker 4: in his case to be of springboard into politics.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, yeah, Trump was a public it was
Speaker 1: a fight promoter basically through much of his career in
Speaker 1: the eighties. So here we are, and he's promoting fights
Speaker 1: to enrich himself and line the pockets of his allies
Speaker 1: on the White House grounds with tax pair money. You
Speaker 1: mentioned Lincoln, and I'm kind of interested in asking you
Speaker 1: whether this moment there's a lot that's reminiscent history tells
Speaker 1: us the future as much as it is a detail
Speaker 1: of the past, but he Trump has other plans to
Speaker 1: celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, including the Indie
Speaker 1: Drag Race around the streets of Washington, DC and the
Speaker 1: Great American State Fair, which several states.
Speaker 2: We already know how there are skipping.
Speaker 1: At least eight states Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Maine, Oregon, Washington,
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania, all blue states, have said they will not
Speaker 1: take part in the fair. Maybe they don't have any
Speaker 1: like a butter sculptures that they want to send in,
Speaker 1: But I feel like it's a little bit more political
Speaker 1: than that. Is this what it felt like in the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen sixty when you had states just opting
Speaker 1: out of like Fourth of July celebrations because they just
Speaker 1: did not see themselves as part of the union. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that that's what's happening right now, but
Speaker 1: the division, the steep division in a moment of that
Speaker 1: is supposed to be about national pride, but obviously Trump
Speaker 1: is insured is.
Speaker 4: Not so In the eighteen sixties and before Fourth of
Speaker 4: July would have been celebrated at a state level, and
Speaker 4: there really wouldn't there are Fourth of July speeches in
Speaker 4: a lot of places, but you wouldn't have been able
Speaker 4: to make a statement like that, and in fact, everybody
Speaker 4: would have harked back to the framers and the founders,
Speaker 4: the framers of the Constitution and the founders of the
Speaker 4: Declaration of Independence. So eighteen sixty is a little bit
Speaker 4: too early to go. But what is interesting is if
Speaker 4: you popped forward to something like eighteen seventy six, and
Speaker 4: in eighteen seventy six there is real concern that the
Speaker 4: United States is going to fall apart. Remember this is
Speaker 4: the year before eighteen seventy seven and the American South
Speaker 4: taking back control of the states from the governments. That
Speaker 4: we're trying to protect civil rights in the Southern States,
Speaker 4: and that idea that we are celebrating different histories is
Speaker 4: actually part of a lot of our celebrations. But I
Speaker 4: would say something different in this moment, and that's what
Speaker 4: really jumps out to me, is far less that different
Speaker 4: states are saying we're not going to play with Trump,
Speaker 4: then that Trump is saying this is my holiday, this
Speaker 4: is about me, and this is about me dictating the
Speaker 4: state of Washington and also the state of our history.
Speaker 4: And he's been tripping up over history right and left lately,
Speaker 4: as he's been trying to dictate.
Speaker 3: How we remember it.
Speaker 4: And one of the things I love about that is
Speaker 4: that as that happens, people are stepping up and saying,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, I want to know the real history.
Speaker 3: Tell me the real history. So one of the things
Speaker 3: that you are seeing as.
Speaker 4: Freedom Too fifty Trump's group has basically taken almost all
Speaker 4: of the money from the bipartisan, congressionally backed America to
Speaker 4: fifty is that Americans themselves are finding their own ways
Speaker 4: to celebrate. So if you look on June eighteenth at
Speaker 4: the NIXT celebration in New York City, oh my god,
Speaker 4: that was a Fourth of July celebration, except they weren't
Speaker 4: actually talking about the fourth absolutely and the opening of
Speaker 4: the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on the same day,
Speaker 4: people were actually putting on social media happy Fourth of July.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I actually spent i last week.
Speaker 1: I did a Substack Live with Joy Reid and we
Speaker 1: were talking about Juneteenth, which I think this year, more
Speaker 1: than any year that I can remember, has become kind
Speaker 1: of an alternative Fourth of July for a lot of
Speaker 1: people who feel completely excluded from Trump's you know, malignant
Speaker 1: narcissism that's cast a pallor over the Fourth of Jaly,
Speaker 1: and Juneteenth in many ways represents kind of our reconciliation
Speaker 1: with our very very troubled and dark past on slavery,
Speaker 1: or not reconciliation, but acknowledges it, and also moves the
Speaker 1: ball forward and reminds us that we are living in
Speaker 1: a we are in communion with one another, we are
Speaker 1: part of, you know, the fabric of democracy. In some ways,
Speaker 1: I feel like to your point, Americans have been sort
Speaker 1: of a forced to reckon with their history in a
Speaker 1: way that they haven't before and also find ways to
Speaker 1: plant a flag, pardon the metaphor in patriotism in a
Speaker 1: way that feels authentic and honest, and that is like
Speaker 1: a weird downstream effect that is kind of positive, I think,
Speaker 1: from all of the Trump nonsense and garbage, I.
Speaker 3: Think that's right.
Speaker 4: And I had the same observation about Juneteenth myself this
Speaker 4: year that it felt much more like an American celebration
Speaker 4: of recognizing what one does when the system is designed
Speaker 4: to strip away your freedom. And one of the things
Speaker 4: that the Trump administration has done, I think is it
Speaker 4: has made people realize that the I'm sorry, but the
Speaker 4: villains we found in our past, that seems somehow as
Speaker 4: if they were overdone, like truly nobody could really do
Speaker 4: X are around us even still. And while you could
Speaker 4: always say that, because you know human nature, watching some
Speaker 4: of these people take positions of power in the same
Speaker 4: sorts of ways that the segregationists did in the eighteen
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, nineteen sixties and eighteen sixties as well, But
Speaker 4: nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, I mean, Bull Connor still
Speaker 4: walks among us. And for those people who were not
Speaker 4: old enough to remember those days, you know, watching somebody
Speaker 4: like Greg Bavino giving Nazi salutes and talking about ethnic
Speaker 4: cleansing and recognizing he really was running our immigration policy
Speaker 4: is an eye opener. I think that reminds people we
Speaker 4: must act in solidarity against those who are trying to
Speaker 4: destroy American democracy. Not by party, not by any of
Speaker 4: the other divisions that people tend to emphasize or have
Speaker 4: tended to emphasize since the nineteen eighties. But really, this
Speaker 4: is an existential struggle for the survival of American democracy,
Speaker 4: and we could actually get it right this time.
Speaker 1: Fingers crossed the mere existence of Stephen Miller is a
Speaker 1: reminder that we can indeed go back to our very
Speaker 1: very violent, racist roots.
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Speaker 1: You mentioned the way other ways in which Trump is
Speaker 1: celebrating America two fifteen. One of them is remaking, recasting
Speaker 1: the city in the image of I guess mar A
Speaker 1: Lago or perhaps Trump Tower, gilding horses with a half
Speaker 1: an inch thick gold plating and trying to die their
Speaker 1: reflecting pool blue to no avail. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: in a second, but when we talk about the actual
Speaker 1: architecture of all of this, right, DC was designed to
Speaker 1: be a piece of civic art, and it is what
Speaker 1: The New York Times recently called an accumulation of carefully
Speaker 1: arranged details, many quietly referencing one another.
Speaker 2: There I grew up there.
Speaker 1: There is a through line in many of the buildings,
Speaker 1: even though they're different styles. And now Trump wants to
Speaker 1: like install a mammoth arch. He's trying to do something
Speaker 1: to the Lincoln Memorial as well. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of pushback, there have been some lawsuits. I see Trump's
Speaker 1: push for monuments as inextricably linked to a male obsession
Speaker 1: with phallic objects. But maybe you have a less Freudian
Speaker 1: interpretation of what's going on here, Heather.
Speaker 4: Well, I actually don't do a lot of work with
Speaker 4: Freud that was always more young person. But I actually
Speaker 4: I got to do a shout out here. I think
Speaker 4: the New York Times has done a really excellent job
Speaker 4: of popularizing understandings of the architecture in Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: They've had a couple of really good issues lately where
Speaker 4: they set out what it will mean to have these
Speaker 4: changes to the landscape and what it looks like. And
Speaker 4: so that's just, you know, we don't talk necessarily enough
Speaker 4: about when the media really gets something right.
Speaker 3: But I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 4: I mean, one of the things I've always loved about
Speaker 4: d C is the degree to which, when it was
Speaker 4: laid out, it was supposed to reflect the American government,
Speaker 4: the three separate you know, the three separate nodes of
Speaker 4: power and so on.
Speaker 3: And one of the things about the.
Speaker 4: Proposed ballroom is that it actually breaks the line of
Speaker 4: sight between the which you grew up with right down
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania Avenue. I think it is that you can look
Speaker 4: all the way down and see the White House. And similarly,
Speaker 4: the arch goes from having that bridge between Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: And Virginia, which is really important to the Civil War,
Speaker 4: and the.
Speaker 3: Fact that the.
Speaker 4: Arlington National Cemetery sits on General Lee's former plantation, and
Speaker 4: that itself is a really interesting story. And if you
Speaker 4: look at how that is laid out, at least according
Speaker 4: to the renderings by the New York Times, what it
Speaker 4: does is the arch will frame Roberty Lee's house, which
Speaker 4: and again somebody said we should tear the house down.
Speaker 4: I fervently disagree with that. The Roberty Lee House has
Speaker 4: a different name as well, is a really interesting and
Speaker 4: important historical document itself, the people who've lived there. It's
Speaker 4: actually got very much biracial history and so on. But
Speaker 4: I think what you are seeing as somebody who doesn't
Speaker 4: understand the concept of the people or the majesty, the
Speaker 4: true majesty of the concept of a government that is
Speaker 4: controlled by the people who are governed, which is in
Speaker 4: our Declaration of Independence. So plopping yourself down in the
Speaker 4: middle of it, you know, it strikes me that that
Speaker 4: kind of mirrors when he shows up at foreign dignitary
Speaker 4: events like the G seven last week or any one
Speaker 4: of them and basically walks in and says, well, I'm
Speaker 4: here now.
Speaker 2: The boss is here and gets laughs.
Speaker 1: Is literally that statements like that are greeted with laughter
Speaker 1: because what a joke.
Speaker 4: Except it's our taxpayers at this point putting up those jokes.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's the other.
Speaker 4: Piece of this that I don't think we have yet
Speaker 4: grappled with, is how much of our money is going
Speaker 4: into those vanity projects. And mind you, I love the
Speaker 4: idea of up keep on the gilded horses and all
Speaker 4: that that needs to be done, but this isn't his money.
Speaker 3: It's our money.
Speaker 4: And you know, you look at the number of people
Speaker 4: who have been thrown off SNAP the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, listen, I love a gilded horse horse
Speaker 4: as much as the next person, but I would very
Speaker 4: much rather my neighbors can eat.
Speaker 1: Children getting free lunches at school, or hot lunches, children
Speaker 1: getting sometimes the only meal they're going to eat, Medicaid
Speaker 1: recipients having you know, urgent and life threatening health conditions
Speaker 1: dealt with. I mean, this is all stuff that has
Speaker 1: been slashed in the name of putting an extra few
Speaker 1: centimeters of gold on the horses by the Lincoln Memorial.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the.
Speaker 1: Cost of the taxpayers. This week, we have new report
Speaker 1: from the Washington Post the cost of the ballroom that
Speaker 1: monstrosity is going to cost six hundred million dollars, with
Speaker 1: approximately half of that coming from taxpayer wallets.
Speaker 4: Heather Well and worse, they knew that the whole if
Speaker 4: you that that was a fabulous article. By the way,
Speaker 4: The Washington Post just had some great exclusives lately too.
Speaker 4: But when he was out there saying private funds are
Speaker 4: going to pay for this, which by the way, is
Speaker 4: not okay either. They already had cut checks off the
Speaker 4: public treasury. And you know, I just again when I
Speaker 4: see these people out there talking about waste, fraud, and abuse,
Speaker 4: and what they mean by that is we're tossing people
Speaker 4: off Medicaid and then they're turning around and spending I
Speaker 4: believe the number I believe, don't quote me on this
Speaker 4: is three hundred and fifty two million dollars of taxpayer
Speaker 4: money on this without and lying to us. I guess
Speaker 4: for me that that that's sort of the overall I mean,
Speaker 4: it's all part of democracy, right. You either have a
Speaker 4: demoiocracy that is responsible, where the government is responsible to
Speaker 4: the people, or you have an authoritarian government where everything
Speaker 4: we have belongs to them and they can spend it
Speaker 4: however they wish. And those two things should be firmly
Speaker 4: in front of the American people. But don't lie to
Speaker 4: me and tell me that you're protecting my money while
Speaker 4: you are literally picking my pocket.
Speaker 3: I mean that to me.
Speaker 4: And the same thing back to the UFC fight. Don't
Speaker 4: tell me you're having a party for the American people
Speaker 4: when you're making bank off it and I can't see
Speaker 4: it unless I belong to Paramount Ploss.
Speaker 1: I would just say, this is the stuff that we
Speaker 1: know about too. We on Runaway Country had an episode
Speaker 1: last week talking about the ways in which the Trump
Speaker 1: family is basically stealing money from the Department of Defense,
Speaker 1: lining the pockets of friends and stooges through government contracts
Speaker 1: or no bid government contracts or government loans. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: Junior sits on the board of a company that just
Speaker 1: got a six hundred over seas one hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: in a federal loan to scale up its rare earth
Speaker 1: mining or to scale up its rare earth magnet manufacture.
Speaker 1: This is a company that like didn't exist several years ago.
Speaker 1: There level of corruption will make your eyes not just
Speaker 1: water but bleed. And that's the stuff you know. The government,
Speaker 1: the Department of defense. These government agencies have deep pockets
Speaker 1: because we appropriate a lot of money towards them. And
Speaker 1: the Trump administration learned something between Trump one point zero
Speaker 1: and two point zero, like, if you're going to go corrupt,
Speaker 1: go big or go home. It makes the Trump Hotel
Speaker 1: emolument's clause debate look like child's play compared to what's
Speaker 1: happening inside the guts of the federal government. We see
Speaker 1: what's happening the corruption on the outside with you know,
Speaker 1: just gargantuan to betrayals like the destruction of the East
Speaker 1: Wing and the the you know, attempted construction of the ballroom,
Speaker 1: which actually I wanted to ask you about, Heather. Do
Speaker 1: you think that this thing's actually going to be constructed
Speaker 1: before Trump's out of office?
Speaker 3: Personally?
Speaker 4: No, And the reason I say that is I don't.
Speaker 4: I never assume anything's going to happen the next day.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's one of the perks of being a historian,
Speaker 4: you know that you get really weird things happening, and
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, some bed is off. But there's
Speaker 4: legal challenges, there's financial challenges. Trump is falling apart. Nobody
Speaker 4: likes that ballroom, maybe, but you know, if you think
Speaker 4: about any construction project you have ever done yourself, Yes,
Speaker 4: like all the planets in the universe have to be
Speaker 4: lined up correctly to get it done on time, and
Speaker 4: it's almost never on or under budget. And that's when
Speaker 4: you're not under pressure. So I look at that and
Speaker 4: I think maybe, I mean maybe if you throw enough
Speaker 4: money at it. But it's it's I don't know, just
Speaker 4: my personal experience, says.
Speaker 3: Doubtful.
Speaker 1: Personally, Yeah, I mean I just was struck by it.
Speaker 1: You know, the UFC match in the background is the
Speaker 1: rubble of the East wing, and it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: still very much.
Speaker 2: A construction site. It's an open it's a gaping wound.
Speaker 2: If you ask me. Has there ever been a parallel
Speaker 2: I mean, when Truman.
Speaker 1: Installed balcony like and obviously not on the scale of
Speaker 1: malignant narcissism that Trump is operating on, but just when
Speaker 1: presidents have done renovations to the White House, significant ones
Speaker 1: that the public can see, has there ever been any
Speaker 1: sort of flutter of outcry that would presage something like this.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, and no.
Speaker 4: That is Americans complained about change all the time, all
Speaker 4: the time. There is never a change where somebody goes, who, boy,
Speaker 4: that was a great idea. I mean, even when we
Speaker 4: went to the moon, there were people who said, it's
Speaker 4: actually total waste of money.
Speaker 3: Why are we doing this?
Speaker 4: You know, so you're always going to get pushed back,
Speaker 4: and basically that's human nature, right, So there's always pushback
Speaker 4: about everything.
Speaker 3: But there are only two.
Speaker 4: Occasions that I can think of when there were when
Speaker 4: there was a really big pushback. And one was interesting
Speaker 4: because it was during the Civil War, when the Lincoln's
Speaker 4: moved into the White House. It's falling apart, and Mary
Speaker 4: Todd Lincoln, Lincoln's wife, was actually probably a better political
Speaker 4: instincts than he did, which is saying something because he
Speaker 4: was a political animal, and she recognized in a way
Speaker 4: that he didn't the power of women in Washington to
Speaker 4: determine what politics we're going to end up being the
Speaker 4: most powerful. So she recognizes that the White House is
Speaker 4: totally shabby, and she undertakes the redecorating of it. Because
Speaker 4: the guy who desperately wants to be president is the
Speaker 4: man that Lincoln makes Treasury Secretary's name is Samon P.
Speaker 3: Chase.
Speaker 4: He's from Ohio and he thinks everything should revolve around him.
Speaker 4: And so he comes to Washington and the woman who
Speaker 4: is in charge of his house is his daughter, Kate Chase,
Speaker 4: who's beautiful and who is you know, sort of a
Speaker 4: very much a socialite, and she redecorates Sam and p
Speaker 4: Chase's house to the nines. And then Jay Cook, who's
Speaker 4: a banker out of Philadelphia, picks up all the tab
Speaker 4: for it, and yeah, exactly, and then he goes on
Speaker 4: to do a lot of work with the Treasury, which
Speaker 4: was corrupt, would be considered corrupt now is considered corrup then, right.
Speaker 4: But so Mary Todd Lincoln looks at this and recognizes
Speaker 4: that Kate Chase is the one who's going to be
Speaker 4: having all the fancy parties.
Speaker 3: Because she's the one who has the beautiful home.
Speaker 4: And this is going to mean that her husband's presidency
Speaker 4: is going to be undermined and that Chase will probably
Speaker 4: get the sixty four four years out nomination. Wow, So
Speaker 4: she redoes the White House and then she goes to
Speaker 4: the Congress and says, this is how much it costs.
Speaker 4: And it was a lot, I mean in dollar terms,
Speaker 4: but also they're in a fight literally for the survival
Speaker 4: of the Union, and Congress goes ballistic and says, we
Speaker 4: are not paying this, and Lincoln ended up picking up
Speaker 4: the tab for it himself and it was a was
Speaker 4: a major sum of money at the time.
Speaker 2: Wow, So there was that.
Speaker 4: But she was right then then Washington, I mean, the
Speaker 4: White House became the centerpiece, as opposed to Kate Chase's house,
Speaker 4: and that's actually what led to her bad marriage.
Speaker 3: And I could go on at great length.
Speaker 4: I'm actually writing a book and I am back in
Speaker 4: history and I can't tell you how much I love it.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I'm so jealous.
Speaker 4: So then there's another time, though, that is much more applicable,
Speaker 4: and that is and I hate to have mentioned him
Speaker 4: twice today. During Benjamin Harrison's administration, he has this near
Speaker 4: do well Son, which I know you can't imagine what
Speaker 4: happened to a.
Speaker 1: Well Well president with anir dowell Son.
Speaker 3: Huh. His name is Russell.
Speaker 4: And when Benjamin Harrison becomes president, Russell Harrison and his
Speaker 4: wife and children move into the White House and they
Speaker 4: probably begin to say this is way too small for
Speaker 4: a president to live in, and they come up with
Speaker 4: plans dramatically to redo the White House to add a
Speaker 4: green a greenhouse. I don't sure if there was a
Speaker 4: ballroom or not, but.
Speaker 3: They did this.
Speaker 4: They were going to redo it in this huge way
Speaker 4: because this was fitting for the US president. And again,
Speaker 4: the White House has always been humble because theoretically the
Speaker 4: president represents the people and it's supposed to be humble,
Speaker 4: not that gold stuff everywhere.
Speaker 3: It's supposed to be plain.
Speaker 4: And he was absolutely eaten alive in the press and
Speaker 4: people were like, if it's too small, why did you
Speaker 4: move in?
Speaker 3: We didn't elect you.
Speaker 4: And in fact that that renovation never goes forward, it dies.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they didn't go around hand gluing coins and
Speaker 1: memorabilia to the walls to spruce up the place like
Speaker 1: Trump appears to be doing. A new reporting last week
Speaker 1: that Trump's literally going around I guess it's in Maggie
Speaker 1: Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book, Regime Change, but Trump
Speaker 1: literally has like is it a glue gun, it's some kind.
Speaker 2: Of gorilla glue or crazy glue that he's like.
Speaker 1: Using it to apply I guess more gold objects to
Speaker 1: the man pieces and the walls of the White House,
Speaker 1: which they said surprise no one in the White House,
Speaker 1: but should really astound the rest of us because that
Speaker 1: is not what presidents do.
Speaker 3: You know, it's actually interesting.
Speaker 4: I mean, again, not a psychologist, but like if you
Speaker 4: were crumbling, at least if I were crumbling. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: can't think of a single instance in my life I
Speaker 4: have ever turned to a coin or that kind of
Speaker 4: a decoration. Yeah, like I'll buy pens, is what I'll do.
Speaker 4: And notebooks like they're going to have to take away
Speaker 4: my wallet.
Speaker 1: They're going to deprive your notebooks from your hands. He
Speaker 1: has a very specific psychology. Look at you, a blessed
Speaker 1: pen and paper. I'm with you, sister. Do you what
Speaker 1: do you think should happen to this stuff? Like, assuming
Speaker 1: let's assume he does get the ballroom built, there's a
Speaker 1: raging debate about whether it should be torn down, whether
Speaker 1: it should be reappropriated to be something else.
Speaker 2: What's your opinion on that?
Speaker 3: I'm afraid right now I don't have an opinion.
Speaker 4: That is, I would very much love to see all
Speaker 4: the site lines back and have the White has restored
Speaker 4: the ball room. The way he is talking about it
Speaker 4: is huge. It dwarfs the original building. And yet I
Speaker 4: am not going to rule out the possibility that somebody
Speaker 4: says a great representation of the American people would be
Speaker 4: to put here. And I don't know what comes next
Speaker 4: in that space, but certainly it is possible to think
Speaker 4: of the American people being able to turn a symbol
Speaker 4: of authoritarianism into a symbol of popular power. And other
Speaker 4: countries have done it, and somebody who is good at architecture,
Speaker 4: unlike me, would probably be able to say, here's what
Speaker 4: we really need to do, you know, the same way
Speaker 4: they have repurposed places in other countries to reaffirm popular power.
Speaker 4: So I'm an anociation. Yeah, maybe that's where you have
Speaker 4: the reconciliation trials.
Speaker 2: I just have no idea the reconciliation trials.
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Speaker 1: It is essential that we mentioned as we talk about
Speaker 1: the ways in which Americans are trying to reclaim their
Speaker 1: own history and think of patriotism in a way that
Speaker 1: feels authentic and honest. You have embarked on a project
Speaker 1: because you're not busy enough honestly I think of myself
Speaker 1: and I'm like, But Heather Cox Richardson is writing today
Speaker 1: you have launched a project two fifty to two fifty
Speaker 1: which highlights quote the people, places and events that have
Speaker 1: helped to move us forward toward a more perfect union.
Speaker 1: First of all, thank you for doing this, great American
Speaker 1: and did you intend for that to be a bomb
Speaker 1: on the self aggrandizing, staged patriotism that Trump is offering us.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, thank you for mentioning them. They
Speaker 4: have turned out and I will tell you more about
Speaker 4: the working of them, because they have turned out to
Speaker 4: be a much bigger deal than I think I anyway foresaw.
Speaker 4: We came up with this idea before Trump had done anything,
Speaker 4: because it's not really an answer to him, as it
Speaker 4: is an answer to American democracy. I firmly believe that
Speaker 4: the meaning of American democracy is that it has always
Speaker 4: been contested, and that it has been the story of
Speaker 4: marginalized people's demanding inclusion in the principles that were laid
Speaker 4: out in the Declaration of Independence. So it's never done,
Speaker 4: but it's always about what the American people are willing
Speaker 4: to do. And one of the things that is central
Speaker 4: to that is it puts in the middle of that
Speaker 4: principle marginalized people.
Speaker 3: You know, if you've.
Speaker 4: Got those rights, you're not the one fighting for them.
Speaker 4: So it's people like Vanni Luhamer, for example. And what
Speaker 4: we wanted to do was make was center the American
Speaker 4: people in history again because what I have observed really
Speaker 4: since the nineteen eighties, but you see in a lot
Speaker 4: of the curriculum, and certainly in the things that Trump
Speaker 4: is trying to put up in national parks, for example,
Speaker 4: the idea that change simply sort of comes from on high,
Speaker 4: like all the sudden, Rosa Parks just decides not to
Speaker 4: stand up. Rosa Parks had been working for the NAACP
Speaker 4: doing really deep dives into statistics on rape, especially in
Speaker 4: the American South, for literally decades by the time that
Speaker 4: she works to challenge segregations. So in that way, so
Speaker 4: we wanted to regain what was missing from that curricula
Speaker 4: and center the American people and say, you know, if
Speaker 4: you want change, this is how you do it, even
Speaker 4: in times when people didn't have rights.
Speaker 3: And so we.
Speaker 4: Started it and it's been really interesting because first of all,
Speaker 4: we only have a maximum of two hundred and fifty stories,
Speaker 4: which is nothing to a historian. I mean, we could
Speaker 4: do two hundred and fifty stories on one year of
Speaker 4: the rebelution alone.
Speaker 2: To a podcaster, it's a lot, yeah, but.
Speaker 4: For a historian it's killing It is killing me. And
Speaker 4: many people have given us great suggestions we simply can't do.
Speaker 4: But what's been interesting about it is that we have
Speaker 4: a maximum of one hundred and twenty four words because
Speaker 4: we wanted to get them in in a minute, a
Speaker 4: maximum of one hundred and twenty four words, which means
Speaker 4: that what we've done is we've gotten narrator, fabulous narrators
Speaker 4: for them and they'retors.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, because everybody suddenly wanted in, which was great, and
Speaker 4: we wanted to match the narrators to the to the stories.
Speaker 4: And what that means is that if you're going to
Speaker 4: get what it is, who did it, and why it mattered,
Speaker 4: you've got a really condensed the material. So it turns
Speaker 4: out that they're actually really good teaching documents as well,
Speaker 4: like the one on the Erie Canal, which Pete Budhaget,
Speaker 4: former Secretary of Transpissions to Pete budhajid Uh narrated is
Speaker 4: like that's like my entire lecture on.
Speaker 2: The that's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then there's some that are just really heart
Speaker 4: wrenching that are not. The one I'm thinking of is
Speaker 4: not out yet, so I won't drop it on you.
Speaker 4: But we we didn't do live people, yes, unless there
Speaker 4: was some important reason too. And there was one that
Speaker 4: I did not know who they had gotten to do it.
Speaker 4: And he's talking and I'm like, well, this is fine,
Speaker 4: but like, why did they get who is this guy?
Speaker 3: And then he says who he is?
Speaker 2: Oh, now I want to know. Yeah, it's coming. When's
Speaker 2: it dropping? Do you have a date?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know a calend. I'm not in charge of
Speaker 4: the calendar. But I got to tell you. When he
Speaker 4: said his name, I started to cry, Oh my god, because.
Speaker 3: I didn't know who he was. I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody probably knows what this person looks like.
Speaker 3: But it's a really important.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask if his name rhymed with
Speaker 1: smart oc to Obama, but no, no, you also picked places, right,
Speaker 1: It's I mean, you not living people. But it's not
Speaker 1: just you know figure from history. You also have like that.
Speaker 1: Everglades and Yellowstone are part of this compendium. It's really
Speaker 1: like thinking of the country both as a land and people.
Speaker 4: Yes, people, places and events. And so we just did
Speaker 4: one on the New Madrid. It's not New Madrid. Who knew,
Speaker 4: it's the New Madrid earthquakes, which happened in the early
Speaker 4: eighteen hundreds in sort of the Missouri area of the
Speaker 4: country and moved the Mississippi River and forced indigenous tribes
Speaker 4: to go west, which I mean, I'd heard of them,
Speaker 4: but I had no idea they were so important, and
Speaker 4: everybody in that part of the country is like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we grew up on this stuff. Similarly, we did somewhere
Speaker 4: I didn't, Like I didn't. I mean, I obviously wasn't
Speaker 4: alone in coming up with the topics. We wanted to
Speaker 4: make sure there were at least two from every state
Speaker 4: and territory. Oh cool, and so that also means people.
Speaker 4: Rita Marino was an early one we did, and Ariana
Speaker 4: Dubos read that one for us, like, did you know
Speaker 4: that that there was one twenty four hour period when
Speaker 4: the flags of three different countries flew over Saint Louis. No,
Speaker 4: like I sort of knew, but like it's all involved.
Speaker 1: I feel like one of us would maybe know that
Speaker 1: and that person is not well.
Speaker 4: But you know, it's like it's the it has to
Speaker 4: do with the Louisiana purchase, and first France has a territory,
Speaker 4: that Spain has it, but then France has it, then
Speaker 4: the US has it and so on. But like I
Speaker 4: was like, let's figure this out. So there's a lot
Speaker 4: of really faguline stuff.
Speaker 2: What a great project.
Speaker 4: Well, but the theme was always that we wanted to
Speaker 4: center the American people, and in many ways, to me
Speaker 4: it felt like people have been so good to me.
Speaker 4: You know, everything I do is available for free, but
Speaker 4: people pay willingly for the sub stack and so on.
Speaker 4: And you know, as I say, Trump walked away with
Speaker 4: all the funding for so much stuff, and I was like,
Speaker 4: you know what, this can be my gift back to
Speaker 4: all the people who gave me the funding to do it.
Speaker 4: So right, Yes, yeah, so I love it.
Speaker 3: So I'm pleased it's killing us. But we're really all
Speaker 3: good things.
Speaker 1: All good things do I mean, it does get back
Speaker 1: at that. The thing we've been talking about throughout this
Speaker 1: conversation is how do we celebrate this country and what
Speaker 1: sort of lessons do we need to remember? I want
Speaker 1: to ask you a specifically kind of like socio political question,
Speaker 1: which is Jerusalem demsis who is the founder of the argument?
Speaker 1: Recently was a really provocative piece arguing that the left
Speaker 1: basically has abandoned patriotism and needs to recapture its sense
Speaker 1: of or reclaim its sense of patriotism in order for
Speaker 1: democracy to function. To protect democracy, we must reclaim I
Speaker 1: think a form of patriotism is authentic. But patriotism, nonetheless,
Speaker 1: does a left seem historically unpatriotic to you? I guess
Speaker 1: I should should ask.
Speaker 3: Well, So let me start.
Speaker 4: Let me start by making it very clear that when
Speaker 4: one of the great successes of the radic right has
Speaker 4: been to take everybody who doesn't adhere to their political
Speaker 4: ideology and call them of the left, the left has
Speaker 4: a specific definition. It is an ideological position that critiques
Speaker 4: liberal democracy by saying that it doesn't work either because
Speaker 4: it's too racist or sexist or classist, and it needs
Speaker 4: to be taken down and rebuilt. And that's a really
Speaker 4: interesting story. Just FYI hear that I'm not going to
Speaker 4: go into because I think what that argument does is
Speaker 4: it identifies that, really, since the Vietnam War, people who
Speaker 4: are not part of the radical right, who are either
Speaker 4: Democrats or Centrists, have tended to seed the idea of
Speaker 4: patriotism to that radical right. And so if you take
Speaker 4: that as a premise for what I'm going to say,
Speaker 4: one of the things that, honest to God, has jumped
Speaker 4: off the charts for me for many years now, really
Speaker 4: since you started to see veterans of Iraqan Afghanistan, especially
Speaker 4: female veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan running for office, because
Speaker 4: their advertising was very different than any kind of advertising
Speaker 4: political advertising I had seen before, but especially taking off
Speaker 4: in the last two years, let's say, with the insertion
Speaker 4: into especially the House of Representatives, but also the Senate
Speaker 4: of so many veterans of wars and intelligence agencies. On
Speaker 4: the democratic side, what I think you are seeing is
Speaker 4: the claiming of patriotism by people who are not of
Speaker 4: the radical right and redefining it and redefining it as
Speaker 4: the protection of the United States, of course, but also
Speaker 4: of protection of the people who have defended the country
Speaker 4: for US now for many years. And you know, you
Speaker 4: think about things like the idea that veterans who came
Speaker 4: back from the Vietnam War were spat on. There is
Speaker 4: no documented instance of that happening. That was a construction
Speaker 4: of the radical right, and it gets picked up by
Speaker 4: Rambo because it went on to live in film as
Speaker 4: in the nineteen eighties, so much of patriotism lived in film,
Speaker 4: with things like Top Gun and like Red Dawn.
Speaker 3: And so on.
Speaker 4: But I actually think that what you have identified is
Speaker 4: central to a new political ideology for those that are
Speaker 4: not part of the radical right, and perhaps not part
Speaker 4: of the left. Although the left certainly is closer to
Speaker 4: the goals of centrists and more left leaning well you
Speaker 4: can call them progressives. I think that much of what
Speaker 4: the progressive wing of the Democratic Party wants right now
Speaker 4: is to my mind very centrist. I mean Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 4: was talking about you versal health care, right, yes, But
Speaker 4: those people are redefining a new kind of approach to
Speaker 4: what it means to be an American right now, and
Speaker 4: in a way that has not happened I think since
Speaker 4: World War Two. The Democrats are getting in on that,
Speaker 4: and I think it is central. I did an event
Speaker 4: with Jason Crowe at Harvard a month or so ago,
Speaker 4: and his understanding of the protection of veterans is very
Speaker 4: much tied up in his idea that the government should
Speaker 4: be working for ordinary people, because he says, you know
Speaker 4: who's out there fighting in Afghanistan, but people like me.
Speaker 4: And he tells the story of being on the front
Speaker 4: lines and he was a you know, he was a
Speaker 4: paratrooper and being on the front lines and coming back
Speaker 4: to the I don't know if they still call it
Speaker 4: the mess hall, but coming back to eat, and he said,
Speaker 4: the kid putting mashed potatoes on his tray. They got
Speaker 4: talking and the guy was making like four times what
Speaker 4: he made in terms of money, and he said, this
Speaker 4: is not the way it should be, and this is
Speaker 4: not patriotism. And that kind of marriage of politics that
Speaker 4: talks about the ordinary people and talks about our military
Speaker 4: as those people who are protecting our way of life
Speaker 4: and are part of that is a really different way
Speaker 4: than saying we'll just wave the flag and claim we
Speaker 4: love veterans while we're slashing all the funding.
Speaker 3: For the VA.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right, and I think
Speaker 4: it's central and I don't think people recognize it enough.
Speaker 3: So thank you for that.
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Speaker 1: I think that there's probably when you talk about how
Speaker 1: the left articulates of patriotism that's both urgent and needed.
Speaker 1: We talk about what patriotism means to the right, what
Speaker 1: identity that undergirds patriotism means to the right. And I
Speaker 1: always return in moments like that, and particularly moments like
Speaker 1: this when we're talking about the declaration of independence in
Speaker 1: the fourth of July and all the rest to a speech.
Speaker 1: And I know you listen to this speech that jd.
Speaker 1: Vance gave at Claremont, the Claremont Institute, and I believe
Speaker 1: it was last year, it was in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: where he basically laid out the MAGA worldview, the nativist
Speaker 1: worldview that animates I think all of the Trump administration's policies,
Speaker 1: if there is such an elegance like that, in so
Speaker 1: far as thought does undergird anything that they're doing, This
Speaker 1: kind of idea about blood and soil nationalism is the
Speaker 1: essence of Trump, and I think in some ways the
Speaker 1: Trump appeal. At one point in the speech Vance critiques
Speaker 1: what he calls the credal principles of the country as
Speaker 1: not enough on their own. He names the Declaration of
Speaker 1: Independence as an example of a document that is both
Speaker 1: way over inclusive and under inclusive in terms of defining
Speaker 1: what it means to be an American, and he basically
Speaker 1: goes on to give an alternativision of what citizenship and
Speaker 1: being an American ought to be. He's like, it's not
Speaker 1: an idea, it's a place and a people, and it's
Speaker 1: really specifically I'm paraphrasing people who fought the Civil War
Speaker 1: and maybe against the North. What in that seems to
Speaker 1: be most dangerous to you in terms of what Vance
Speaker 1: is arguing.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I'm amused by being able to say,
Speaker 4: here's the marker you had to fight in the Civil War,
Speaker 4: Like there goes Trump's family, right, and why fight in
Speaker 4: the Civil War? And just I mean again, not that
Speaker 4: it matters, And I really don't think it matters at all.
Speaker 4: My ancestors on both sides were here from like the
Speaker 4: very beginning, and I'm looking at that and I'm like,
Speaker 4: I shouldn't even know, Like why pick that? Why not
Speaker 4: be like the date was April thirty thirtieth of eighteen
Speaker 4: thirty four.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is an arbitrary date that.
Speaker 4: Exactly exactly, and you know why, and you know why,
Speaker 4: and that's because you actually had when you had. If
Speaker 4: you identify something like that, you can say exactly that
Speaker 4: we're looking to fight for a white culture like that
Speaker 4: of the old South. And the real thing about the
Speaker 4: switch that he is making, and make no mistake, that
Speaker 4: is a real switch. That is from the founders of
Speaker 4: the country, which is what we identify, the people who
Speaker 4: wrote the Declaration of Independence, that's the name we use
Speaker 4: as the founders, the framers of the Constitution. From that time,
Speaker 4: they were literally saying, we are creating a nation built
Speaker 4: on these ideas. We hold these truths to be self
Speaker 4: evident and talked within that I think is another bigger
Speaker 4: piece that I'll come back to. But they literally say
Speaker 4: that America is about this idea. Now, the people who
Speaker 4: have tried to say no, no, no, no, it's about race
Speaker 4: were people like before the Civil War, like the old
Speaker 4: Southern elite enslavers, who wanted to say no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: we're a white country. And when they did that, people
Speaker 4: like Abraham Lincoln said, you know, why don't we just
Speaker 4: tear up the Declaration of Independence? Then this idea of
Speaker 4: blood and soil is actually one that comes out of Europe.
Speaker 4: It's not one that fits naturally at all over North America. Because,
Speaker 4: of course, if you're going to talk about soil and
Speaker 4: the origins of the United States of America, you're really
Speaker 4: looking at thirteen colonies. And those thirteen colonies were never white.
Speaker 4: I mean, they were never a bunch of Europeans. That
Speaker 4: is such a I mean that actually comes from nineteen
Speaker 4: a document from the early twentieth century, of the nineteen
Speaker 4: twenties in the US that tried to say, well, well,
Speaker 4: they're all Nordic, you know which, and the Nordics went
Speaker 4: to England, and you know, it's all just about it's
Speaker 4: all just about garnering political power with an appeal to
Speaker 4: racism and sexism. I mean, what we don't talk enough
Speaker 4: about here is the degree to which this idea of
Speaker 4: you had to fight for your country in the Civil
Speaker 4: War basically says most women didn't fight. Now, they contributed
Speaker 4: in other ways, and some actually cross dressed fought. But
Speaker 4: that's really an attempt to put white wealthy men in charge.
Speaker 4: But even more profoundly. I think it is an attack
Speaker 4: on what America means. So what the founders say in
Speaker 4: the declaration is that it is possible for human beings
Speaker 4: to accept a series of natural laws, not divine laws,
Speaker 4: but natural laws that say we can observe the universe
Speaker 4: around us, and we can say, because of our observations
Speaker 4: that there are natural laws, like all men are created equal.
Speaker 4: Now again there's all kinds of caveats they have around that,
Speaker 4: but the natural laws, the laws that actually rule this planet,
Speaker 4: say people are the same and they have certain rights,
Speaker 4: and among those are the right to have a say
Speaker 4: in how they are governed when they come together as societies,
Speaker 4: and that they have a right to equal access to resources,
Speaker 4: and that we as humans beings can observe the natural
Speaker 4: world and we can construct social systems.
Speaker 3: That reflect that.
Speaker 4: And that's what American democracy was always supposed to be.
Speaker 4: And when you have somebody like JD. Vance coming in
Speaker 4: and saying no, no, no, this is all about what
Speaker 4: God says, or what race says, or any of these
Speaker 4: systems that are based not in natural law, but rather
Speaker 4: in human prejudices or divine inspiration, that is not only
Speaker 4: a rejection of sort of the surface level of these
Speaker 4: are our rights. It's a rejection of the entire enterprise
Speaker 4: of human self determination. And people ask me why I
Speaker 4: think we're going to come out of this, and I
Speaker 4: won't say, okay, because we've already lost so many people
Speaker 4: and so much. But the answer to that is I
Speaker 4: believe in those natural laws, and I believe in the
Speaker 4: human capacity to say, hey, you know, if we destroy
Speaker 4: our environment, we're all going to die, so maybe we
Speaker 4: shouldn't do that. And to reject that and say no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I get to dictate stuff seems to me to be
Speaker 4: a position that eventually is going to run headlong up
Speaker 4: against reality, rather as Trump's war in Iran has run
Speaker 4: up against reality, and that at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: we are, I think, living in the world that the
Speaker 4: Founders outlined as being part of a series of natural laws,
Speaker 4: and we do have the capacity to discover those and
Speaker 4: to act accordingly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just when you talk about reality coming crashing
Speaker 1: through the front door. Ja d Vance's version of America
Speaker 1: excludes his own children and his wife.
Speaker 3: And his wife. Yeah. Well, and he's just such an
Speaker 3: opportunity he'll say anything.
Speaker 1: Well, that's and that I think is actually one of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous things is that he is espousing a
Speaker 1: belief that's so at odds with what he fundamentally lives
Speaker 1: and himself, I think believes so well.
Speaker 4: He said that he told, you know, when the whole
Speaker 4: eating cats and dogs thing, he actually said that he
Speaker 4: was willing to make stuff up because it would call
Speaker 4: attention to the dire conditions under which people lived or something.
Speaker 4: And it's like, what you're saying is the ends justify
Speaker 4: the means, and so you can lie. And here's a
Speaker 4: news flash. The ends never justify the means because you
Speaker 4: never get to that history.
Speaker 1: If you are in any way a student of history,
Speaker 1: you know that to be true. But what is Jdvans
Speaker 1: a student of other than shameless shameless ambition, I guess, and.
Speaker 2: A lust for power.
Speaker 1: Heather, let me ask you one more question before we
Speaker 1: wrap up our your brilliant analysis of this moment and
Speaker 1: what patriotism means and how we should be thinking of
Speaker 1: America's two fiftieth if you, as a historian, had to
Speaker 1: pick another moment other than the signing of the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence to celebrate, to make a national holiday out of,
Speaker 1: and you can't say Juneteenth because it's already an actual.
Speaker 1: Is there another moment in American history that you think
Speaker 1: represents in many ways, either the establishment of the American
Speaker 1: ideal or a reaffirmation of American ideals? I know I'm
Speaker 1: asking you this like totally on the spot, but you're
Speaker 1: so good.
Speaker 2: I'm confident.
Speaker 3: Can I have two? Sure?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 3: Fourteenth Amendment?
Speaker 1: Right on?
Speaker 4: Fourteenth Amendment is my favorite amendment and it should be
Speaker 4: everybody's because it's the one that says, you know, that
Speaker 4: whole equality thing, we mean it, and that if in
Speaker 4: your states, you you know, you and I talked about
Speaker 4: how the you know, bull Connor walks among us. Still,
Speaker 4: if in your states you're run by bull Connors, or
Speaker 4: you have been bought by corporations that are that are
Speaker 4: willing to destroy your workers' rights or your women's rights,
Speaker 4: or your environmental rights or whatever, We're going to come
Speaker 4: in and we're going to change that and that. And
Speaker 4: it gave the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth or the first
Speaker 4: amendments that give power to the Congress rather than.
Speaker 3: Taking it away.
Speaker 1: When the do you know the date offhand of the ratification?
Speaker 1: What month would that be?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: Because I think it's all thirteenth.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a good time for a three day weekend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm in But and I should know that. The
Speaker 4: issue is it passes Congress and then it goes off
Speaker 4: to the States for ratification. And I don't remember all
Speaker 4: those individual dates. To say, August thirteen sticks in my mind,
Speaker 4: but don't quote me on that.
Speaker 3: I'm probably wrong.
Speaker 4: It's also written in eighteen sixty six, when it becomes
Speaker 4: clear the South is not going to permit black equality.
Speaker 4: They actually write in the Congress rights it in sixty six,
Speaker 4: and then it doesn't get ratified till sixty eight. But
Speaker 4: if I can have that, one is the biggie. The
Speaker 4: Voting Rights Act, the signing of the Voting Rights Act,
Speaker 4: which again aside from anything else that it does because
Speaker 4: it sets in motion a lot of things, including things
Speaker 4: like having our ballots in different languages, which you know
Speaker 4: has been an issue throughout our entire history. There's a
Speaker 4: wonderful journal from the colonial era in which a woman
Speaker 4: is traveling from the Little After that I guess is
Speaker 4: traveling from the coast to Ohio, and in it she says,
Speaker 4: you know, everyone thinks it's like JD. Vance thinks that
Speaker 4: this is an English based country. There were certainly English
Speaker 4: based government. She gets like almost there, and she's like,
Speaker 4: you know what I really want when I get to Ohio,
Speaker 4: I can't wait to hear the language of English spoken again.
Speaker 4: She hasn't met a single English speaker the whole way.
Speaker 3: She's going across that whole way.
Speaker 4: So we get from the Voting Rights Act the idea
Speaker 4: of ballots in different languages, but we also really put
Speaker 4: our money where our mouth is and say, yeah, everybody
Speaker 4: gets a say for the first time, everybody gets a say.
Speaker 3: In the government.
Speaker 4: And that, of course has been what the radical right
Speaker 4: has been working to dismantle ever since. And so in
Speaker 4: this era, I'd say both of those. But it's certainly
Speaker 4: worth celebrating the Voting Rights Act as well as the fourteenth.
Speaker 2: And for all of you.
Speaker 1: Crackerjack Googler's the a production team at the Podsive America
Speaker 1: tells me that the ratification of the fourteenth was July ninth,
Speaker 1: eight fixty eight. But it's so close to July fourth
Speaker 1: it all makes sense.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a really good We.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't really have to change our vacation schedule.
Speaker 4: That's a really good idea. Hey, next year, next year,
Speaker 4: we'll do Let's do that.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm in. Can we do a special episode
Speaker 2: about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Sure, patch your calendar, yeah, bly ninth, Yeah, because my
Speaker 1: ninth babies.
Speaker 4: I'll be right before the book comes out, so I'll
Speaker 4: be footloose and fancy free.
Speaker 1: Heather Cox Richardson, the most prolific, the most prolific person
Speaker 1: in this in this degraded America in which we live,
Speaker 1: where people have just been content to rest on their
Speaker 1: on their bums and do nothing that's been called to action,
Speaker 1: been called to action, have been engaged. And we applaud
Speaker 1: you if you're especially if you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: but most especially, we are so grateful Heather for all
Speaker 1: the things you do to keep us well, eyes and
Speaker 1: thinking and keep our front porch lights on. Mentally speaking,
Speaker 1: it's always just such a real pleasure and it's always
Speaker 1: so enlightening to talk with you. Thank you for reminding
Speaker 1: us of who we are and who we can be,
Speaker 1: and good luck. With two fifty to two fifty, everybody
Speaker 1: should download and watch the clips and always subscribe to
Speaker 1: Heather's substack. The great Heather Cox Richardson, Thank.
Speaker 3: You, Thank you, Alex. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: A huge thank you to Heather Cox Richardson for spending
Speaker 1: some time with me. The gents will be back in
Speaker 1: your feed on Tuesday.
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