Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy centralow.
Speaker 2: From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central is America's
Speaker 2: only source for new This is The Daily Show with
Speaker 2: your host Daisy Lighter.
Speaker 3: Welcome, I'm Debbie Lighter. We have got so much to
Speaker 3: talk about tonight. Trump's first one hundred days get certified,
Speaker 3: rotten and fresh, the Declaration of Independence dies of embarrassment,
Speaker 3: and we'll find out why America's GDP is shrinking. Oh sad, big,
Speaker 3: Let's get right into it.
Speaker 4: They'll be a little disturbance.
Speaker 3: Trump's been in office for one hundred days, or as
Speaker 3: he likes to call it, longer than any president in
Speaker 3: the history of the world. It should be a week
Speaker 3: of celebration. But tell that to the economy. Economic alarm bells.
Speaker 3: A US economy contracting by zero point three percent.
Speaker 5: The contraction in the economy first that we have seen
Speaker 5: in years.
Speaker 6: In fact, the America's economy is shrinking.
Speaker 3: Yes, the US economy is undergoing what economists refer to
Speaker 3: as a George Costanza. Now, obviously, the economy is a
Speaker 3: complex interaction of multiple markets, so it's difficult to point
Speaker 3: to any one factor. But it's all Trump. It's Trump
Speaker 3: it's Donald Trump. The fact is Trump just does not
Speaker 3: do well with the GDP unless GDP stands forget that pusse, which,
Speaker 3: sadly those numbers are also down. Milania doesn't live there anymore.
Speaker 3: But even though it's all his fault, this is a
Speaker 3: great opportunity for him to be a leader, to speak
Speaker 3: from the heart to Americans who are about to suffer
Speaker 3: real financial hardships because of his policies.
Speaker 4: Somebody said, all the shelves are going to be open. Well,
Speaker 4: maybe the children will have two dolls instead of thirty dollars,
Speaker 4: you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a
Speaker 4: couple of bucks more.
Speaker 3: Wow, check out mister Rogers over here. I can't believe
Speaker 3: in a span of one hundred days, we went from
Speaker 3: we will all be richer than we've ever imagined to
Speaker 3: everyone gets two dolls. All right, But if you're sad
Speaker 3: that playtime will soon be over for your children, take
Speaker 3: comfort that it's just beginning for the old commander and child.
Speaker 5: The President came out swinging and dancing to celebrate one
Speaker 5: hundred days in office.
Speaker 6: Comp had so much fun tonight. He had so much fun.
Speaker 1: He seems like he's enjoying himself. Clearly he was having
Speaker 1: a good time.
Speaker 3: And you can tell when he's on stage he's having
Speaker 3: so much fun.
Speaker 6: He's dancing for that famous YMC eight dance. It's danced on.
Speaker 6: They've worked hard and had fun. Isn't that the pursuit
Speaker 6: of happiness?
Speaker 3: No, no, Laura, it's not. We're not going to be
Speaker 3: eating cold beans huddled over a fire like Well, at
Speaker 3: least the president's happy. As long as he's back in
Speaker 3: that ass up, I think America is going to be
Speaker 3: a okay. By the way, that was the first time
Speaker 3: I've seen Trump dancing from behind, and I gotta say,
Speaker 3: don't do that ever again. Don't do that.
Speaker 6: I owe the.
Speaker 3: Front button apology. Anyway, it's no surprise that the main
Speaker 3: story on Fox News is that Trump is live, laugh,
Speaker 3: loving being president. But as we all know, the American
Speaker 3: media is just as divided as a country itself. So
Speaker 3: depending on which cable news network you watch, Trump's first
Speaker 3: one hundred days were either He's sick or I'm sick.
Speaker 3: One hundred days.
Speaker 5: Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president
Speaker 5: in the history of modern polling.
Speaker 3: Voters across America or weigh and saying yes, Trump, keep going.
Speaker 6: Give me an assessment of Trump's first one hundred days
Speaker 6: one to.
Speaker 1: Ten, well solid two nothing more.
Speaker 5: On a scale of one to ten, twenty, Donald Trump
Speaker 5: deserves an.
Speaker 3: F that would give President Trump an A, maybe even
Speaker 3: an A plus.
Speaker 5: Fear and pessimism, thrilled and excited, no disaster.
Speaker 3: It's awesome.
Speaker 7: One thousand, three hundred and sixty one days to go
Speaker 7: of this journey.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 5: I wish we could have ten thousand, you know, more
Speaker 5: days with President Trump.
Speaker 3: Ten thousand more days. That is twenty seven years. I
Speaker 3: can't still be talking about Trump when I'm in my
Speaker 3: late forties. It's not that funny, but wild Cable News debated.
Speaker 3: Trump himself celebrated the big one hundred by inviting ABC
Speaker 3: News reporter Terry Moran to the White House for an interview,
Speaker 3: and Trump kicked things off by asking the same thing
Speaker 3: every kid does when a guest comes to the house.
Speaker 3: Want to see my room?
Speaker 1: Hello? Everybody? Hell are you?
Speaker 4: This is the Oval Office. This is an amazing space.
Speaker 4: I've added a lot to the space.
Speaker 1: In terms of.
Speaker 4: Beautification, in terms of modernization, modernization.
Speaker 3: This looks like my great grandmother decorated the mantlepiece with
Speaker 3: her great grandmother's ashes. And I know that beautification is
Speaker 3: in the eye of the beholdification. But we can all
Speaker 3: agree that the phone core Golf of America map is
Speaker 3: pulling focus? Right? Is the Gulf of America having a
Speaker 3: bridal shower in the banquet room of an Hilton garden
Speaker 3: in because if it's not, get it out of here.
Speaker 3: But okay, you know it showed me a few more
Speaker 3: things in your room. And then I got to go
Speaker 3: join the grownups.
Speaker 4: See Ronald Reagan. Here, you have Lincoln, you have Washington, Dellakove,
Speaker 4: that's Monroe, the Monroe doctrine.
Speaker 6: Why is he up there?
Speaker 4: I think the Monroe Doctrine was pretty important.
Speaker 1: You know, it was his claim to fame.
Speaker 3: Trump is always in the I forgot to do the
Speaker 3: reading mode.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: That Monroe doctrine so important. My favorite part probably the doctrine.
Speaker 3: And doctrine, as we all know, is a female doctor.
Speaker 3: But you know what, we can't expect Trump to know
Speaker 3: anything about a president whose picture he put up. It's
Speaker 3: not fair. So let's give him something easier. Donald, tell
Speaker 3: us what the Declaration of Independence is. And remember this
Speaker 3: is the document in which we declared independence.
Speaker 4: Of course, you have the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 8: What does it mean to you?
Speaker 4: Well, it means exactly what it says. It's a declaration.
Speaker 4: It's a declaration of unity and love and respect, and
Speaker 4: it means a lot, and it's something very special to
Speaker 4: to our country.
Speaker 3: Look at Terry Moran's face. He looks like a teacher
Speaker 3: about to call the school psychologist. This is a great
Speaker 3: drawing stay right here, But of course he'd make that face.
Speaker 3: Trump said that the Declaration of Independence meant unity. Unity
Speaker 3: is the opposite of independence. How did Trump find the
Speaker 3: one time that unity in love is the wrong answer.
Speaker 3: What makes us even more sad is that the Declaration
Speaker 3: of Independence is basically the colonies filing for divorce. It's
Speaker 3: the one thing Trump should absolutely recognize. And all of
Speaker 3: that was supposed to be the softball part of the interview.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until Moran pulled up his serious chair that
Speaker 3: the questions got hard.
Speaker 8: Now we have this trade war with China that Moody's
Speaker 8: and other analysts say it's going to cost American families
Speaker 8: thousands of more dollars per year, and there is a
Speaker 8: lot of concern out there. People are worried. Even some
Speaker 8: people who voted for you, saying I didn't sign up
Speaker 8: for this, So how do you answer those concerns?
Speaker 4: Well, they did sign up for it. I said all
Speaker 4: these things during my campaign. I said you're going to
Speaker 4: have a transition period.
Speaker 3: Really, that's what Trump said. Trump actually said that, can
Speaker 3: we just check the tape on that.
Speaker 4: When I win, I will immediately bring prices down starting
Speaker 4: on day one.
Speaker 2: Thousand and forty seven.
Speaker 9: But first prices will go so high you'll be sucking
Speaker 9: d for eggs.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, my bad, I misremembered. But the wildest part
Speaker 3: of the interview by far was when it turned to
Speaker 3: Trump's deportation of Kilmar Garcia, who Trump says doesn't need
Speaker 3: due process because anyone can tell that Garcia is in
Speaker 3: the gang MS thirteen just by looking at his tattoos, and.
Speaker 4: You'll pick out man. But even the man that you
Speaker 4: picked out, he's got a key, said he wasn't a
Speaker 4: member of a gang. And then they looked and on
Speaker 4: his knuckles he had MS. There's a wait a minute,
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, he had MS thirteen on.
Speaker 8: We had some tattoos that are interpreted that way.
Speaker 1: But let's move on.
Speaker 3: Okay, let me just explain what's going on here? Garcia
Speaker 3: has tattoos on his hand and someone labeled a photo
Speaker 3: of them, trying to prove that they're actually a code.
Speaker 3: The problem is Trump thinks that the labels are part
Speaker 3: of the tattoo, and he is very, very insistent on it.
Speaker 1: Let's move on.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, I way tear it, Terry, Terry.
Speaker 8: He did not have their letter MS one It says
Speaker 8: MS one three.
Speaker 1: That was photoshop. Don you want me to show you
Speaker 1: the picture. I saw the picture.
Speaker 4: Well, a stotoshop.
Speaker 6: Here we go.
Speaker 4: Here we got photoshop. But don't look at his hand.
Speaker 4: He had amster.
Speaker 8: If he did have tattoos, that can be interpreted that way.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on them. I want to turn
Speaker 1: to Ukraine. I want to get to your cran. No, no, no.
Speaker 4: He had m as as clear as you convey, not
Speaker 4: interpreted it.
Speaker 3: Now I understand why he's so proud of that Gulf
Speaker 3: of America poster. He thinks Gulf of America has actually
Speaker 3: written on top of the water.
Speaker 6: Makes sense.
Speaker 3: And what is so crazy is that Terry Moran kept
Speaker 3: trying to change topics, but Trump wouldn't let him. I
Speaker 3: have never seen an interview where a reporter catches a
Speaker 3: politician in a gotcha, and the politician is the one
Speaker 3: who says, stop trying to move on. I am not
Speaker 3: done embarrassing myself. But I will hand it to Terry Moran.
Speaker 3: He held his ground to the point where it actually
Speaker 3: wore Trump out. And that's when we saw a moment
Speaker 3: of vulnerability from Trump.
Speaker 4: He's got MS thirteen on his knuckles card. Okay, we'll
Speaker 4: take such a disservice.
Speaker 1: We'll take a look.
Speaker 4: You just say, yes, he does, and you know, go
Speaker 4: into some Honghous's contested you crain.
Speaker 3: Why don't you just say I'm right up and down,
Speaker 3: left is right, Santa is real, and that is Trump
Speaker 3: at a nutshell. I can't prove the insane things I believe,
Speaker 3: so just go along with them. Don't believe your eyes,
Speaker 3: believe the photoshop. But I, I for one, will not
Speaker 3: believe the photoshop. Okay. I will go into the rest
Speaker 3: of the term with my eyes wide open, staring and watching.
Speaker 3: Oh God, no, no, oh, my eyes, my beautificated eyes.
Speaker 3: Oh make it go away. When we come back. The
Speaker 3: truth about Stephen Miller's to show Welcome Maxima Danny Show,
Speaker 3: one of the defining policies of President Trump's first one
Speaker 3: hundred days has been his let's same enthusiastic deportation effort.
Speaker 3: We all know that the architect of that policy is
Speaker 3: his top aid, Stephen Miller. But how did Miller get
Speaker 3: such power? Let's find out and a brand new daily showography.
Speaker 1: Come gather round the diying embers of democracy and attend
Speaker 1: my chilling tale. The legend of a pale wraith who
Speaker 1: haunts the soul of an entire nation, a vampiric fiend
Speaker 1: with an insatiable urge to suck America is for Americans
Speaker 1: and Americans only. This is the twisted chronicle of Stephen Miller,
Speaker 1: what he does in the shadows. By now you surely
Speaker 1: know of the plague wrought by the bald monstrosity.
Speaker 10: Map deportations, chaos and confusion, people detained and family separated.
Speaker 6: It a toddler and US citizen deported in cages.
Speaker 7: A Muslim advance is how democracy died.
Speaker 1: But what of the beans hideous origins? I first became
Speaker 1: aware of the wretched creature through tales told of him
Speaker 1: in the American West, in a cursed land called Santa Monica.
Speaker 1: A festering evil village with not even that great of
Speaker 1: a ferris wheel. Even as a child, Stephen Miller struck
Speaker 1: fear into the hearts of the innocent. As his third
Speaker 1: grade teacher would later recall.
Speaker 3: He was a strange dude.
Speaker 6: I remember.
Speaker 3: He would take a bottle of glue, and then he
Speaker 3: would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry,
Speaker 3: peel it off, and then eat it.
Speaker 1: Yes, while some creatures thirst for blood, this one had
Speaker 1: the taste for paste. But Miller's cravings could not be
Speaker 1: seated by glue.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Speaker 1: He began studying the dark teachings of his era's most
Speaker 1: demonic figures, was soon penning mad screeds to the local
Speaker 1: newspaper about the horrors at his liberal high school.
Speaker 9: We do nothing for American holidays, but everything for Mexican holidays.
Speaker 9: Condoms are available to students grade nine through twelve. We
Speaker 9: have a club on campus that will gladly help foster
Speaker 9: their homosexuality. Refuse to say the pledge of allegiance and classroom,
Speaker 9: we invite a Muslim leader to the school to explain
Speaker 9: the splendor of Islam. O Sama bin Laden would feel
Speaker 9: very welcome at sam On the high school.
Speaker 1: Come on, buddy, save something for your manifesto. The still
Speaker 1: gestating monster was determined to recavoc anyway he could ha ha,
Speaker 1: whether it was jumping out of the stands into a
Speaker 1: girl's track meet to prove he was faster than them,
Speaker 1: or running for a student government on a platform of
Speaker 1: being a total dick.
Speaker 6: Am I the only one who is sick?
Speaker 1: And to be told to pick up more trash? I'm
Speaker 1: not plenty of By stepping out of the sunlight to
Speaker 1: run for office, Miller learned he it was perhaps more
Speaker 1: suited to lurking in the shadows, breaking the shackles of
Speaker 1: Santa Monica. Miller sojourned for a time at Duke University,
Speaker 1: once again beasting on every conceivable controversy.
Speaker 7: Shows like Will and Grace and Sextacy promote alternative lifestyles,
Speaker 7: can a row traditional value work.
Speaker 9: Christmas is slowly meting XI out from society. I for one,
Speaker 9: am of bend and I'm Jewish.
Speaker 1: Smoky is not.
Speaker 7: Nearly as dangerous as special interest groups have made it
Speaker 7: out to be. The real risk are the fascistic tendencies
Speaker 7: that prohibit smoke. Prisoners are afforded so many luxuries continue
Speaker 7: to worship with the altar of multicultural is so called
Speaker 7: affirmative action.
Speaker 1: Sorry, feminists, I would say he probably wasn't much bun
Speaker 1: at parties, but I'm pretty sure he never got invited
Speaker 1: to any. Miller's facility with arcane meledictions soon caught the
Speaker 1: eye of America's greatest master of the dark.
Speaker 5: Arts, joining us now from Rawleigh, Steven Miller columns for
Speaker 5: the Duke Chronicle student newspaper.
Speaker 1: And so the Dicky torch was passed to a new generation.
Speaker 1: With the notoriety he had achieved, gross feratu insinuated himself
Speaker 1: into the entourage of some of the most repellent figures
Speaker 1: in America's hell mouth. During these years, he said nearly
Speaker 1: a thousand emails planting stories in writing media. They didn't
Speaker 1: all site well known white nationalists, but it was more
Speaker 1: than you would like. And then in June twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: he found a master truly worthy of his devotions. So
Speaker 1: I was watching the announcement by everybody else live on television,
Speaker 1: and as soon as I thought, I said, I have
Speaker 1: to join his campaign. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime,
Speaker 1: their rapist. Miller became the bronze Lord's most trusted minion.
Speaker 9: Our republic is being destroyed now before a very.
Speaker 1: Odd he conjured dark utterances for the new president's speeches.
Speaker 4: This American carnage stops right now.
Speaker 1: Bet him a constant dream of diabolical talking points.
Speaker 7: I would never, ever, in a million years, allow my
Speaker 7: daughter to compete against a biological man.
Speaker 1: Never unless it was a joke to make fun of
Speaker 1: how girls are lane. Obviously, ha Miller's ability to hold
Speaker 1: followers in his throll became the stuff of legend. We're
Speaker 1: getting a lot of texts from women.
Speaker 8: Our audience at prime time believes you're some sort of
Speaker 8: sexual matadora.
Speaker 1: Indeed, this thirty nine year old man doesn't look a
Speaker 1: day over thifty three. It seemed he could convince weak
Speaker 1: minds of anything, whether it was that his master didn't
Speaker 1: wear terrible, ill fitting clothes down Trump's a style icon,
Speaker 1: or that he didn't actually lose the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 7: We have more than enough time to right the wrong
Speaker 7: of this fraudulent election result.
Speaker 1: Okay, Miller's brief attempt at pretending not to be bold
Speaker 1: was taking it too far, but anything else so now
Speaker 1: the creature stands astride his defy Old Kingdom.
Speaker 7: We don't know how this battle ends, but we know
Speaker 7: that we will be riding in this battle, in the
Speaker 7: struggle to say democracy with a real man.
Speaker 1: And we must ask ourselves, is it truly he that
Speaker 1: is the monster? Or is it us? But no, seriously,
Speaker 1: he's the monster. It's like not even debatable. Won an asshole? A.
Speaker 3: John meecho will be joining on the show, said John Away.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Today Show. My guest tonight is a Bulle
Speaker 3: Surprise winning presidential biographer and best selling author. Please welcome
Speaker 3: John Meachama. You got some meet and heads in the audience.
Speaker 5: Usually I get that reaction at assisted living facilities.
Speaker 6: Right between murder, she wrote, and Jeopardy.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're right in the middle. That's a good run.
Speaker 3: That's a good.
Speaker 6: Grouping, would be a good place to be. Well.
Speaker 3: Thank you for being here on such a celebratory, so exciting,
Speaker 3: so many things. You were once an advisor for for
Speaker 3: Joe Biden. You've written books about Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 3: Andrew Jackson. You're writing one now on Eisenhower. What inspired
Speaker 3: you to want to write so extensively about the US presidency?
Speaker 3: See for me, I'm intrigued, but I have a hard
Speaker 3: time because there just isn't a female lead that I
Speaker 3: can connect to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's very and you and we've now proven
Speaker 5: we'll send anybody to the White House that is true.
Speaker 6: Not just once, we've proved it twice, two times. Very impressive.
Speaker 5: So the presidency is, as President Kennedy once said, the
Speaker 5: vital center of action. It's where the life of the
Speaker 5: nation is most dramatically manifested, both for good and for ill.
Speaker 5: Who knew for ill would be quite so formidable in
Speaker 5: this era? And so the human drama with the larger
Speaker 5: story of the populace of power, to me, is the
Speaker 5: most fascinating story you can possibly have. What I think
Speaker 5: about the people I've written about have been flawed, imperfect people,
Speaker 5: fallible people who just at the last possible moment managed
Speaker 5: to bend the arc of history in the right direction,
Speaker 5: and they just got it right fifty one percent of
Speaker 5: the time. These are not sixty forty people. These are
Speaker 5: not eighty twenty people. Necessarily, these are fifty one forty nine.
Speaker 5: And I think that should give us some hope for
Speaker 5: democracy itself, because a democracy is the fullest expression of
Speaker 5: all of us, and I'm sure you're a better person
Speaker 5: than I am.
Speaker 6: That's not hard. Don't get cocky that.
Speaker 3: But did you see my first act?
Speaker 6: Well I was going to mention that.
Speaker 5: But I think that if we get things right just
Speaker 5: enough of the time in our own lives, which most
Speaker 5: of us do. You know, I get things wrong a lot,
Speaker 5: But when I get something right, okay. So that's what
Speaker 5: democracy is, because it's the fullest expression of all of us.
Speaker 3: Do you think President Trump will get it right? In
Speaker 3: the eleventh hour?
Speaker 6: One lives in hope?
Speaker 3: Strong pause.
Speaker 6: There was a long pause. There was a long pause.
Speaker 5: Look, I think the best thing that's happened in these
Speaker 5: hundred days is the evidence of the public reaction to
Speaker 5: what's unfolding. And the numbers are not great, and so
Speaker 5: it may just be that, as Winston Churchill once said,
Speaker 5: you can always count on the Americans do the right
Speaker 5: thing once they've exhausted every other possibility.
Speaker 3: Boy, have we ever from a historical standpoint, what is
Speaker 3: the significance of the first one hundred days? Is it
Speaker 3: really that meaningful or is it just a hallmark holiday
Speaker 3: for the media.
Speaker 5: Well, Doris Goodwin and I have a we do action
Speaker 5: figures for it.
Speaker 6: It's very exciting. That was funny.
Speaker 1: One.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3: We'll sell them on the web. We'll put them up
Speaker 3: on the web later on the website. If that's still.
Speaker 5: Up is It started out as a great undertaking. It
Speaker 5: was Franklin Roosevelt and the winner of nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 5: twenty five percent unemployment, a serious question about whether American
Speaker 5: democracy would survive, whether democratic capitalism could survive. You had
Speaker 5: totalitarianism taking root in Berlin and Rome in Moscow, huge
Speaker 5: question about whether democracy would work and endure.
Speaker 6: Here.
Speaker 5: FDR, the night he became president, the first of one
Speaker 5: hundred days, is having a glass of whiskey and going
Speaker 5: to bed, like we all should do. And an aid
Speaker 5: comes to him and says, kind of pretentiously, when you
Speaker 5: think about it, so, mister president, if you solve the
Speaker 5: crisis of the depression, you'll go down as our greatest president.
Speaker 6: But if you fail, you'll go down as our worst.
Speaker 5: And FDR looked at him and said, if I fail,
Speaker 5: I'll go down as our last. He understood the stakes
Speaker 5: of the hour, and so in those hundred days he
Speaker 5: did everything he could, just throw everything at the wall,
Speaker 5: trying to get the first new deal passed, and.
Speaker 6: You know, the nineteen thirties and forties we live in
Speaker 6: the long shadow of that.
Speaker 5: It redefined the relationship of the government to the people,
Speaker 5: not just the New Deal, but the Second World War.
Speaker 5: Something like we had federal spending with something like three
Speaker 5: point nine percent of GDP in nineteen forty one.
Speaker 6: It was thirty percent during the war.
Speaker 5: It went back down to about twenty two percent in
Speaker 5: our most prosperous years in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 6: And so, I know, we all want to think that
Speaker 6: it's just.
Speaker 5: The private sector and it's just individual initiative, and we're
Speaker 5: all Horatio Alger. You know what, The government has a
Speaker 5: lot to do with this. The public sector has a
Speaker 5: lot to do with this. And to cut mindlessly is
Speaker 5: just mindless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you talk about after January sixth, your biggest regret
Speaker 3: about Trump, President Trump, I guess I should say to
Speaker 3: be respectful, we should, you know why, because there was
Speaker 3: this creepy tell me on it.
Speaker 6: Well here this is actually this is a wasp point.
Speaker 6: Those are the kind I make.
Speaker 5: So there was this creature in America for four years
Speaker 5: in right wing media named Biden.
Speaker 6: Right Biden was doing this, and Biden was doing that.
Speaker 5: We know what he was a president the United States,
Speaker 5: and so let's give him the title on the hope
Speaker 5: that perhaps the beginning with the little stability might hearken
Speaker 5: some sanity.
Speaker 6: It's a small hope.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm with you on that. You one of your
Speaker 3: biggest regrets about President Trump is that you thought that
Speaker 3: he was a difference of degree and not kind. We're
Speaker 3: now one hundred days into his second term. How do
Speaker 3: you see him now?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: So, I for the first four years, basically from twenty
Speaker 5: fifteen until after the twenty twenty elections, so not just
Speaker 5: January sixth, but the call to Georgia, the fake electors,
Speaker 5: the attempt to overturn an election. That and this is
Speaker 5: against my business model. When I say something is unprecedented,
Speaker 5: that doesn't help me as a historian. But this was unprecedented.
Speaker 5: No American president had ever done. Andrew Jackson had lost
Speaker 5: a much closer election. He hashtagged it, he called it
Speaker 5: a corrupt bargain. But he went back home to Nashville
Speaker 5: and just ran again. Nobody stormed the Capitol, Nobody did this,
Speaker 5: And so that was a difference of kind.
Speaker 6: And I.
Speaker 5: Didn't think the American people would do this again. I
Speaker 5: didn't think forty nine point nine percent would do it again.
Speaker 5: But you can't be for democracy only when you win.
Speaker 5: And so the question now is we're all facing this
Speaker 5: extraordinary test of citizenship, and he is, I think, knocking
Speaker 5: down a lot of the barriers, a lot of the guardrails,
Speaker 5: a lot of the institutions that are flawed and imperfect
Speaker 5: like all of us, but which have in fact served
Speaker 5: us well enough to still have a system that's worth defending.
Speaker 5: And so what I again, these polls show me suggest
Speaker 5: that people are not thrilled about chaos that at least
Speaker 5: is economically painful.
Speaker 6: Right, And that's a really important thing.
Speaker 5: Here, right, is politicians all act on incentive. Lincoln said
Speaker 5: that all men act on incentive, and so people talk
Speaker 5: themselves into thinking in the twenty twenty four election that
Speaker 5: President Trump would represent prosperity. Well, eh, you know, my
Speaker 5: favorite headline of the week was Trump has planned to
Speaker 5: work around tariffs for car makers.
Speaker 3: What does that mean?
Speaker 5: Well, outer space, they brought the tariff aliens came and
Speaker 5: we're going to stand up.
Speaker 6: Against these evil tariffs.
Speaker 5: It was like, you know, so cognitive dissonance is an
Speaker 5: American characteristic.
Speaker 6: But we don't have to quite that bad.
Speaker 3: Right, I hope not. There has certainly been a lot
Speaker 3: of just him acting out, doing whatever he wants, flooding
Speaker 3: the courts, finding loopholes. Do you think in a way
Speaker 3: that this could act as a blueprint for Democrats moving forward?
Speaker 6: Well, I hope not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you're right, that was a bad thought, bad suggestion. Okay,
Speaker 3: all right, it's essentially not a better person.
Speaker 6: Yeah that's okay.
Speaker 5: Well you're from Kentucky to shame, Yeah, yeah, says the
Speaker 5: Tennessee Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, I think here's what I do think is happening.
Speaker 6: I think that.
Speaker 5: And I was not a great math student. So when
Speaker 5: a pendulum goes this far right, when it drops back,
Speaker 5: it doesn't go back to the middle. It keeps going.
Speaker 5: So you don't have of President Trump. Is not a
Speaker 5: recipe for us to have a president from the Brookings
Speaker 5: Institution next time, right, for some sort of moderate you know,
Speaker 5: we're all going to breason together. The pendulum will probably
Speaker 5: move pretty far that way. And I think I never
Speaker 5: thought I would say this, But the longer President Trump
Speaker 5: governs the way he's governing, the more likely he's making
Speaker 5: the presidency of AOC and and as the and as
Speaker 5: the right wing gets their chirrods ready about that, that's
Speaker 5: simply it's a historical point about when you push too far,
Speaker 5: there's always.
Speaker 3: A reaction, right, So it does feel like there is
Speaker 3: a moment of populism. So also with the popularity of
Speaker 3: Bernie and AOC. So you think that's an actual possibility.
Speaker 3: I think it's likely.
Speaker 5: I don't know, there's likely, but but I don't know
Speaker 5: if it's likely. But it's we live in earl of
Speaker 5: Donald Trump's been president twice.
Speaker 6: What's like?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: How can you.
Speaker 5: Even predictions a post Cartesian world?
Speaker 3: Do you feel like the checks and balances and the
Speaker 3: guardrails that have been woven into our democracy will hold
Speaker 3: on or are we going to need a bigger guardrail?
Speaker 6: Well, here's the here's the thing.
Speaker 5: It's actually and I use the image I shouldn't have,
Speaker 5: it's not an inanimate image. To call it a guardrail
Speaker 5: actually suggests that there's some non human force that's going
Speaker 5: to save us.
Speaker 6: Institutions are human.
Speaker 5: So when we say the courts, we should really say judges, right, yes,
Speaker 5: would we say Congress we should say congress people and senators.
Speaker 5: It's when we say universities, it's university presidents and boards. Right,
Speaker 5: it's us and we are going to get what we deserve.
Speaker 5: And that's a terrifying thought in many ways. But I
Speaker 5: do think what Harvard did recently is really important because
Speaker 5: fear is a really good starter for demagogues. It's hard,
Speaker 5: it's not a great finisher. It's hard to keep a
Speaker 5: lot of people afraid for a really, really long time.
Speaker 5: But to fight fear, you need courage, and courage is
Speaker 5: one of the most contagious things you can imagine.
Speaker 3: We're definitely seeing cracks in the media ecosystem right now
Speaker 3: in terms of how they're covering the administration, the pressure,
Speaker 3: the aggression towards media in general. What would you like
Speaker 3: to see more from the media at large in terms
Speaker 3: of covering this administration.
Speaker 5: I think we're all the media now. This is another
Speaker 5: question of terminology. There's a there's the press, and then
Speaker 5: there's the media. And anybody with a cell phone actually
Speaker 5: can now reach far more people than Cronkite ever thought
Speaker 5: about reaching, right, I mean, it's just anyone. So the
Speaker 5: notion of a gatekeeper, I think is pretty much gone.
Speaker 6: To state the obvious. I think that the more you
Speaker 6: can say, the.
Speaker 5: More you can just actually stand up for truth and
Speaker 5: just facts, I think is the best thing to do.
Speaker 6: I remember, I know they were sweet.
Speaker 5: They were sweet, they were a little cute, they were fuzzy,
Speaker 5: were a little tiny facts, And so just say and
Speaker 5: and the notion, this is one of the more troubling
Speaker 5: things this happened in the last decade or so, is
Speaker 5: the notion.
Speaker 6: That facts are partisan.
Speaker 5: Right, that the moment when the future vice president incumbent
Speaker 5: vice president said well wait, wait, we weren't going to
Speaker 5: do any fact checking rememb during the debate, So what
Speaker 5: if the moderators tried to say something we're not going
Speaker 5: to do as if okay, we're just suspending reality now,
Speaker 5: you know, right, And so I would I think investing
Speaker 5: as much as many resources as possible on saying this
Speaker 5: is accurate. This is not two plus two equals four.
Speaker 5: And just because President Trump says is equals.
Speaker 3: You're better at math than you said.
Speaker 6: That was sort of being a little bunch.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I just just here's what's discernible, here's what's not
Speaker 5: And when you can manipulate that, which is part of
Speaker 5: the era we're living in.
Speaker 6: Then you're moving from a.
Speaker 5: Reality based universe to a full, full on reality show,
Speaker 5: but unfortunately that reality show becomes our reality d.
Speaker 3: D as a revered historian, revered it's like.
Speaker 6: Being the best restaurant in the hospital.
Speaker 3: Do you think that we will look back on this
Speaker 3: time differently than the way that we're experiencing it right now.
Speaker 5: It depends on how it turns out. If this is
Speaker 5: a if this is seasonal, then we will look at
Speaker 5: it as a case study in how the legitimate cares
Speaker 5: and concerns of a lot of people were manipulated and
Speaker 5: marshalled by someone who did not actually have their cares
Speaker 5: and concerns at heart, and it will be an example
Speaker 5: of how American democracy can veer out of a lane
Speaker 5: of reality based rule based order. If this is chronic,
Speaker 5: then it will be a great battle to tell the
Speaker 5: truth about this and to bear witness to know.
Speaker 6: This is what is true.
Speaker 5: Just because someone who got more boats than the other
Speaker 5: guy says that something is true does not.
Speaker 3: Make it so that's the truth. I sure hope that
Speaker 3: we ve here right right out of this, and I
Speaker 3: appreciate you being here to help process this moment in time.
Speaker 3: You are you are a grounding force and give us
Speaker 3: a little optimism for the future.
Speaker 5: Well, what's the alternative, right, I mean, we didn't, as
Speaker 5: John Belushi said, we did not give up when the
Speaker 5: Germans bomb Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 3: I'm going to end it coming out later this year
Speaker 3: with introductions to the federal papers as well as don
Speaker 3: needs them. Everybody, we're any take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We'll be ready show.
Speaker 6: Michael Love will be.
Speaker 3: Here tomorrow to half off our coverage. It comp's first
Speaker 3: one hundred days, so don't miss it now here. It
Speaker 3: is your moment of zen.
Speaker 1: Elon.
Speaker 4: I love the double head, but appreciate all I wanted
Speaker 4: to can do then get away with it. Well, this
Speaker 4: person and I say I wear a lot of hats.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 6: Even my hat has a hat.
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