WEBVTT - Trump vs. Democracy 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:08.760 social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:16.040 Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course, Trump versus Democracy. Donald Trump's 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:18.960 speeches of late are chock full of warnings about the 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:22.520 threat from within posed by his myriad opponents, those he 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:25.479 decries as vermin how to destroy the US and the 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:29.800 American dream. He routinely promises to crush his critics and 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:34.080 make America great again. As always with Trump, there's a 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.199 method to his madness. A history that looks back to 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:41.239 a mythologized past as the country's perfect time is a 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:45.800 key tool of authoritarians, notes historian Heathercox Richardson in her 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:50.560 new book Democracy Awakening. It allows them to characterize anyone 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:54.960 who opposes them as an enemy of the country's great destiny. 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:58.480 Richardson is a professor at Boston College specializing in the 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:01.840 Civil War era, and she's the author of a popular newsletter, 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:06.000 Letters from an American, which closely monitors and ponders Trump's 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:11.160 intersection with US politics. Like all forms of authoritarianism, she argues, 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:15.760 trump Ism clause at American democracy's true roots, at what 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.200 she describes as the idea that a nation can be 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:23.280 based not in land or religion, or race or hierarchies, 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:28.279 but rather in the concept of human equality. Richardson joins 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:31.240 Crash Course today to discuss the lessons from her new book, 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:35.240 Democracy Awakening, which already sits happily and handily as top 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.160 bestseller lists. Welcome to the show, Heather. 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:40.200 It's such a pleasure to be here, Tim. 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:42.440 I'm just very stoked that you're with us today. We've 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:43.760 got so much to talk about, and I don't know 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:46.319 that we can contain it in this little narrow package 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:49.000 we have, but let's give it a shot. Tell me 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.680 why this book? What was the germinating kind of motive 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:53.600 behind this one? 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.680 This book was intended to be a series of short 0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:59.760 essays that explained all the questions that people ask me 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:02.760 every single day, like how did the parties switch sides? 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:06.000 And you know, what was the Southern strategy? But I 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:08.960 realized pretty early on that the question people ask me 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.880 most is how did we get here? What on earth 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:15.160 is going on? And how do we get out of it? 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:19.639 So quickly it became thirty short chapters that take us 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:22.400 from how we got to this particular moment in the 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:25.720 Republican Party that gave us Donald Trump, and how Donald 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:29.080 Trump took that moment and turned it into an authoritarian movement, 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.240 and then finally how we get out and it actually 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:35.240 grew quite a bit from what I initially had intended 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:35.640 it to be. 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:39.280 And what do you think a historian brings to the 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:43.560 table that other analysts don't when taking on a project, 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:45.320 and the kind of questions you just brought up. 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:47.680 That's a really important question because a lot of people 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:49.720 make the mistake of thinking that I am a journalist 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.640 and I am not. I'm trained very differently than journalists are. 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:57.840 What historians do is we try to explain how societies change. 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:02.320 So we become very well verse in looking at actual 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:05.080 facts on the ground, looking at documents, looking at speeches, 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:08.160 looking at events, at things that happen and how they happen. 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:12.359 But crucially, although there's overlap there between historians and journalists, 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.000 what historians then go on to do is look at 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.120 the patterns try and say this is what is happening 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:22.639 and how it is changing society. So in this particular moment, 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:25.119 there's so much coming at us all the time, which 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.920 by the way, is partly by design from people who 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:31.120 are trying to undermine our democracy. But there's so much 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:33.320 coming at us all the time that it's somebody like 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:36.160 me who can say, you need to pay attention to this, 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.920 maybe not so much to this, because these things show 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:43.680 patterns and they show how society is changing. That other 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:44.840 stuff is just noise. 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:47.960 Yeah, you mentioned that magic word patterns. I often think 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:53.040 that pattern recognition is one of the highest forms of insight, 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:56.000 whether it's in the arts or in history or in journalism. 0:03:56.040 --> 0:04:00.720 That you know, weaving together connected events to them into 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:05.000 an understandable whole for your readers or your audience or whoever, 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:07.760 is a huge public service. It's I think an animating 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:11.600 force in your newsletter for sure, and it's certainly very 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:13.760 vibrant in this wonderful book that you've written. 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.920 Well, you can find patterns that are false. I mean, 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.200 that's one of the things that historians will do, is 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:22.200 we are not q you know, we are actually looking 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:25.960 for patterns that have establishment in history and that have 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.479 shown us how they play out. And that's an important 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:29.359 distinction as well. 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:31.680 So let's talk about that a little bit in the 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:34.400 context of this book, because I find it very important 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.919 and it's fascinating. I think one of the things in 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:41.599 your work, at least from my standpoint, is the development 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.080 and evolution of Republican ideology. And there's a sort of 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:49.239 classic Lincoln era republican ideology which is very different from 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.960 republicanism today. But in your book, I think, as a 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:56.560 departure point, you begin with the New Deal in the 0:04:56.640 --> 0:05:01.560 nineteen thirties, this federal response to horrors in the downturn 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:06.719 of a massive economic dislocation, and the very fact of 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:12.520 how the Roosevelt administration responded to that crisis raised a 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:16.680 number of threats to conservatives around how they believe the 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.280 world should work and what was happening to the world 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:23.200 they inhabited. That it set in motion a series of 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:26.200 responses that have led to where we are right now, 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:27.960 and I was wondering if you could kind of delineate 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:28.880 some of those for us. 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:31.840 Sure, But first let's start with the idea that the 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:36.320 word conservative was picked up very deliberately in nineteen thirty 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:39.200 seven by those people who opposed the New Deal. They 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:43.880 weren't embracing conservative ideology, they were using that term politically, 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:45.840 and let me explain what I mean by that. So, 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:48.800 the reason that the book starts in nineteen thirty seven. 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:53.359 Is because after FDR I reelection in nineteen thirty six, 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:55.800 a lot of the people who really opposed what he 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:57.920 was doing thought that he was going to flame out, 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.880 that in fact, he was an aberration, and as soon 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.200 as he was thrown out of office in nineteen thirty six, 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:05.039 we would go back to the kind of government that 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:07.120 we had had in the nineteen twenties, which is the 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:10.360 one that they liked. FDR when he took office, began 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:13.279 to use the government in an entirely new way, doing 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:17.240 what he called offering a New Deal to the American people. 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:19.880 That's how it gets the name it has. And that 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.280 New Deal was a government that worked for the people, 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.719 and it did so by regulating business, providing a basic 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.920 social safety net like social security, for example. That's when 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:34.560 that gets instituted, promoting infrastructures, so the Tennessee Valley Authority, 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:37.880 for example, which brings electricity, among other things, to regions 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:40.240 that had not previously had it, and that works on 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.839 our roads, and that works on our public installations like 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:48.760 post offices and customs houses and hospitals and railroads and schools. 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.040 That was all part of the New Deal. And finally 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.440 the New Deal began to protect civil rights in the States, 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:56.839 not anywhere nearly as fully as it would beginning in 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:00.960 the nineteen forties, but all of those aspects of government 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.520 are new to the New Deal. A number of people 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.000 look at that new government and they consider it anathema. 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:10.400 They want to go back to the nineteen twenties. And 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.640 those people are led both by Republicans who don't want 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:17.680 business regulation because they insist that that takes a man's 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:20.800 property and interferes with his ability to run his affairs 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:24.880 as he wishes, and Southern Democrats who are virulently racist 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:27.640 and want to maintain their Jim Crow systems in the 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:30.760 American South. So those two groups come together in nineteen 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.640 thirty seven and they put together a document that they 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.679 call the Conservative Manifesto, and it says that the government 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:40.400 should not regulate business for the reasons I just said. 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:42.880 It should not provide a basic social safety net because 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:46.400 that belongs to the churches. It should not promote infrastructure 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:49.240 because that should be done by private enterprise, which can 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:52.520 then pocket the profits. And it certainly should not interfere 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:55.160 with civil rights. It calls for something called home rule, 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:58.360 which means that Southern states get to keep whatever racial 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:03.320 codes that they have. The Conservative Manifesto disappears really quickly 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.280 for a number of reasons, but it gets reprinted in 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.480 Chamber of Commerce newspapers and newspapers around the country, and 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:14.680 that set of principles becomes the centerpiece of a faction 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:19.280 of the Republican Party that becomes known as movement Conservatives. 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:21.080 And that's why I just drew the distinction about the 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:25.200 word conservative, because they are not embracing the ideals of 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.800 conservatism so much as they are a political movement. And 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:33.640 that political movement gradually comes to take over the Republican Party. 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:36.200 And we could walk through all the pieces of that 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:38.720 if you would like, But what it means is that 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:42.040 it begins to assault this idea that is shared by 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:45.400 both Republicans and Democrats after World War Two, that the 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.199 government should do all the things that FDR and later 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:52.240 Truman and Eisenhower begin to use it to do. Americans 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:56.480 like that, They've always liked that. But the movement conservatives. 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.840 Just interrupt you for just a second, right there. You know, 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.559 when you were talking about the development of the Conservative 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:06.440 Manifesto and the response to the New Deal, I recently 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:11.960 finished David Nassau's biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, and Kennedy 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:16.920 was essentially co opted by FDR to be an ambassador 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:20.040 to that very community. Kennedy was one of the few 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:22.200 sort of titans of business at the time who said, 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.560 you know, the world has changed. I consider myself a conservative, 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:27.360 but I also know now there's going to be a 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:30.880 permanent role for government in the life of the country 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:33.720 in a way that had existed before. And I'm ready 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:36.480 to sort of advocate for that. But most of the 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.560 business class he came out of, and certainly most of 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.640 the Republican Party where he had one foot in, didn't 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:46.360 agree with him at all around that. And that sort 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:49.160 of tension that began in that period that you've identified 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:52.360 really then gets to be this war over whether or 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.040 not the government itself is a valuable presence in American 0:09:56.080 --> 0:10:00.440 life becomes this political football in the year that you 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:02.600 were about to talk about. 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:04.600 Well, and I'm happy to talk about them, but this 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:07.640 is a really interesting rabbit hole that you just opened up, 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.720 and that is that it is no accident that it 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:13.760 comes from somebody like Kennedy, because a lot of the 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:18.000 ideas behind the New Deal come from the Democratic Party. Obviously, 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:22.120 that has its roots in the urban areas in the East, 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.439 especially in places like New York, where local governments had 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:28.840 in fact been taking on these roles since the eighteen eighties. 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:31.439 And in many ways you can look at the New 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:35.800 Deal as the application of those lessons from the Gilded 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:39.480 Age in the cities to the national government. So having 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:42.800 somebody like Kennedy in there, who knew, of course, the 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.120 histories of those urban areas, had lived in those cities, 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:51.560 is a really nice bridge between that old urban machine 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:54.080 and the idea of bringing that kind of a government 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:55.120 to the national level. 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:58.120 So let me get you back on track again, since 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:00.280 I bought you to the Kennedy rabbit hole. You know, 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:03.880 we have this post World War two consensus, as you 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.559 noted that both the New Deal and World War two 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.679 spending had created an economy and a high tide that 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:13.160 lifted many boats, and there was more or less a 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:17.600 consensus that that kind of an economy created a broad 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:19.880 middle class and was good for a broad swath of 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:23.720 Americans who had access to the economy. But that didn't 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:28.480 really survive the post World War two years intact, did it. 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:31.360 It didn't, and it didn't because of the May nineteen 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.440 fifty four Brown Versus Board of Education decision, by which 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:37.840 the Supreme Court began to defend civil rights in the States. 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:43.319 It said that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. And 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:46.280 with that, the next year you get the establishment of 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.640 the National Review under William F. Buckley Junior, in which 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:53.560 he vows to tell, as he says, the violated businessman's 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:56.559 side of the story. But immediately he begins to make 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.200 the argument and his writers begin to make the argument 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.840 that all along, while people had liked this large federal 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:05.840 government that was protecting their economic rights, that what was 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.360 really going to happen was you would start to see 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:13.080 the redistribution of wealth from white taxpayers people of wealth 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:17.320 to undeserving black Americans. And this was a trope right 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.840 out of Reconstruction, and it's one that they deploy really 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:23.960 effectively from nineteen fifty five on that In nineteen fifty seven, 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:26.560 of course, Eisenhower is going to send the troops to 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:30.080 Little Rock to integrate Little Rock Central High School. That 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:33.760 simply adds gasoline too the fire. By nineteen sixty you 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:37.160 have the rise of somebody like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:39.760 who argues that he will take the government back to 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:44.560 the nineteen twenties. Sixty four, he becomes the Republican candidate 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.040 for president and picks up in that election his home 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:51.240 state of Arizona and the five deep Southern states that 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:55.319 want to maintain segregation. By sixty eight, Nixon's going to 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:57.200 have to make a decision about whether or not he's 0:12:57.240 --> 0:12:59.679 going to go down that same route or try to 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:02.080 pick up the new black voters who have been empowered 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.680 by the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. He 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.960 doubles down on the Southern strategy, telling strom Thurmond of 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:10.920 South Carolina, for example, that he would not use the 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:15.720 federal government to enforce desegregation. And that line keeps on going. 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:18.160 You see Reagan picking it up with the Welfare Queen 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:21.400 and giving one of his important speeches in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:24.480 where three civil rights workers were murdered very famously in 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:28.559 nineteen sixty four. And that thread that a government that 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:32.520 works for all the American people is simply redistributing wealth 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:36.439 from white people to black people, is a form of socialism, 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:39.280 which you are still hearing today from the Republican Party, 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:43.360 becomes more and more and more central to that party's 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:46.640 message and becomes more and more and more exaggerated. 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:51.280 It also, you know, the idea that states' rights are 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:55.720 getting trampled at the expense of a muscular and overweening 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:59.040 federal government is part of this as well, and it 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:03.040 informs the federal ear of society. It informs this legal 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:08.560 push into creating a bulwark around the notion of states 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.800 rights and any other right that gets federalized, whether it's 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:16.560 access to reproductive rights, it's access to voting, etc. Et cetera, 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:20.280 et cetera, amounts to a trampling of states rights. So 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:23.400 in addition to everything that you've just charted here on 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:27.680 the political and socioeconomic side of the ledger, you get 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:31.280 this very powerful push on the legal side as well 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.880 to enshrine state rights as an argument against federalism. 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:38.320 Essentially, yes, and that's precisely what they are doing. They 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:41.440 begin to argue that these Supreme Court decisions, which by 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:45.760 the way of course, are decided under a Republican Chief 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.240 Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren had been a 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:52.440 Republican governor of California, and they are unanimous decisions. Sings 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.480 like Brown versus Board is a unanimous decision. But those 0:14:55.520 --> 0:15:00.320 decisions of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, those opponents of 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.200 those decisions begin to argue that this is judicial activism, 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:09.120 that is, judges are deciding something on which voters never agreed, 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:12.480 and so they begin to defend states' rights on the 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:14.840 idea that this is a way to return power to 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:17.480 the people. But of course there is within that a 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.880 poison pill, and that is that states also decide who 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:24.680 gets to vote. So by throwing everything back to the states, 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:27.520 you're throwing them to a body that gets to decide 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:29.720 who gets to vote in those states. And this was 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.640 always the problem with the concept of states rights, that 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.840 until you protect universal voting in the states very quickly, 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:39.840 what you see in the states is a few people 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:42.760 manipulating who gets to vote in those states and therefore 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:46.240 determining their outcome. And the very concept of states rights, 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.880 when Andrew Jackson first really began to embrace it ideologically 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:54.480 in the late eighteen twenties, was tied up in this idea, 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.000 and in the nineteenth century, that idea of states rights 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.640 actually gets to the point that you have people arguing 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:04.640 that the whole idea of a human enslavement is actually 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:10.200 pro democracy because voters in states have decided to enslave 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:12.800 their neighbors, and because they have decided to do that, 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.280 it's just fine. And you see that right throughout the 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:17.360 late nineteenth century. 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:19.960 As long as the state wants to do it and 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.480 it's residents vote for it, even if those districts sort 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:25.400 of been jerrymandered, it's okay. You can do anything you 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:29.040 want under the umbrella of states rights. And we're living 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:30.800 with that now. We'll explore some of that as we 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:34.040 go forward. All of these concepts that you and I 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:38.600 are talking about, politicians and people on the ground, over 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.640 time became more and more adept at exploiting them. You 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:45.160 began with Barry Goldwater. You mentioned Richard Nixon. You get 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:48.520 to Ronald Reagan. You get from Ronald Reagan, I think, 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:51.320 to Nuton Gingrich. You get from Nuton Gingrich to Sarah Palin. 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.440 You get from Sarah Palin to Donald Trump. And Trump 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:58.120 is sort of the apotheosis of all of this, because 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:00.840 I don't think he's probably ever read a single book 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:03.800 of history. He certainly hasn't read yours, But in his 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:08.400 sort of reptilian brain, he does have this street smart 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.880 apprehension about what moves people emotionally. He's got a salesman's 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:18.359 understanding of how to pluck at people's heartstrings around certain 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.440 issues and certainly around the issues that divide them. And 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:24.679 that's what I want to get into as we continue 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:35.160 this conversation after the break, Heather, We're back with historian 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:40.320 Heather Cox Richardson, and we're exploring creeping authoritarianism in American 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:45.159 life and politics. So, whether we've been discussing the roots 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:50.199 of our current wrestling match with authoritarianism personified by Donald Trump, 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:52.960 I probably gave short shrift to all of that. I 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:55.639 think your book gives anybody who's got the time to 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:59.120 read Democracy Awakening, you can explore that at greater length. 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:01.520 Do you want to bring us up to the president? 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.680 Because Trump is such a litmus test and sort of 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:10.200 the approve I think of the dangerous outcomes that come 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:13.439 from a lot of the things we've been exploring, and 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:15.879 you bookend, I guess I'll refer to it as round 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:17.760 one of the Trump era. Because Trump has had one 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:20.680 tour through the White House, he's positioned, it would seem, 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.480 at the time of this podcast to be setting himself 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:26.919 up possibly for a second tour, so you sort of 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:30.040 bookend round one of the Trump era with his election 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:34.520 as president November twenty sixteen, and then the insurrection he 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:38.040 fomented at the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one. 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:40.960 I think it's obvious why you chose those two things. 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:43.760 They're vibrant and useful and disturbing. But talk to me 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:47.040 a little bit about how you, as a historian, think 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:48.320 about both of those events. 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:53.040 Well, let's start with something you just said, and that's 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.160 that Trump is a salesman. And I think it's important 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:59.680 to recognize that we would not have Donald Trump had 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:03.520 we not had the previous forty years of Republican leaders 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:07.920 dividing the nation into quite deliberately and convincing their voters 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.080 that those people who did not vote for a Republican 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.400 not necessarily just Democrats, but those other parties who didn't 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.159 vote for a Republican were people who were trying to 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:22.440 replace American capitalism with socialism. They demonized these people as 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:25.880 being increasingly anti American. And what Trump did was he 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:29.719 held up a mirror to those people and said, listen, 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.399 I can fix the economic stuff that you don't like. 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:35.200 People forget in twenty sixteen, he was the most moderate 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:39.080 Republican in terms of economics on the debate stages. You know, 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.520 he called for fixing tax loopholes, he called for better 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.520 and cheaper healthcare, he called for infrastructure, he called for 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:49.399 bringing back manufacturing. But he also promised that he would 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:52.879 actually hurt those people that the Republican Party had so 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:55.639 demonized with his sexism and his racism and his an 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:58.480 attacks on a disabled reporter, and all of the ways 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:01.320 in which he seemed to body the idea of getting 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:05.240 rid of those bad people. So his election, I think 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:08.640 was a picture of a certain part of the American 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:12.480 population in that moment in twenty sixteen. And I also 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:16.640 obviously talk about the disinformation campaign that really helped him, 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:20.680 and the different pieces of that election that were unusual 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:23.600 because there was an attempt to disrupt American democracy from 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:28.480 places like Russia, for example. But what Trump does that 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:33.879 is so important is he takes that disaffected population and 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:38.239 he turns him into a movement. And that welding of 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:43.120 those people into a movement are what gives us that 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:48.000 moment in twenty twenty one where his followers are willing 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:54.280 to destroy America. In order to recreate their own version 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:57.560 of a new kind of America in which they are 0:20:57.600 --> 0:20:58.800 better than everybody else. 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:04.280 It's deeply seated cult of personality. Essentially, you start with 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:06.840 people sort of throwing their vote to Donald Trump. You 0:21:07.080 --> 0:21:11.040 end with people being willing to do whatever he tells 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:14.040 them to do because they think, in a world full 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:19.640 of mixed messages on social media and countervailing facts, that 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:23.760 he's a lens for both authenticity and value, and therefore 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:26.160 if he tells them to march, they'll march. 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:29.080 Yes. But this is a place where historians are helpful 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:34.320 historians and scholars of totalitarianism or authoritarianism, because there's a 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:38.000 really central question there. How do people go from oh, yeah, 0:21:38.000 --> 0:21:41.080 I'll cast a vote for this guy to yes, I 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:43.280 will follow him to the point that I'm going to 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:47.440 end up either dead or in prison for very long 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:50.480 periods of time. And his scholars began to study that 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:53.360 after World War II, and people like Hannah arent who 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:56.800 was a great theorist of totalitarianism, or Eric Hoffer, who 0:21:56.880 --> 0:21:59.880 was a long shoreman in San Francisco, had a great 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:04.440 insight into what makes people follow an authoritarian and those 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:07.240 two ideas put together, I think tell us a lot 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:11.920 about Donald Trump's following. So, first of all, in twenty seventeen, 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:14.879 at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, he 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:17.520 does something very important and just by the way it 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:20.120 changes the way he approaches the presidency. Although I don't 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:22.280 really talk a lot about that in the book, but 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:28.440 he gives authority to those militia movements, those far right movements, 0:22:28.560 --> 0:22:32.680 those fringe movements that have been percolating through American society 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:36.080 really since at least the nineteen nineties, at least in 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:39.680 the Clinton administration and even before that. He says to them, 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:42.480 you are good people. You don't have to live on 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:45.639 the fringes any longer. And that matters because one of 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.040 the ways that you create a movement out of those 0:22:48.080 --> 0:22:51.680 disparate fringe elements is by making them feel like they 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:55.640