Speaker 1: To say that was a year unlike any we'd ever
Speaker 1: lived through before would be an understatement. America and the
Speaker 1: world experienced the pandemic and economic crisis, along overdue reckoning
Speaker 1: with racism, climate related disasters, including the most active hurricane
Speaker 1: season on record and raging wildfires on the West Coast,
Speaker 1: and as a result of all this, we experienced a
Speaker 1: complete upheaval in the ways we live, learn, work, and
Speaker 1: interact with one another. Amidst all these challenges, Americans held
Speaker 1: a national election, casting their ballots and record numbers, and
Speaker 1: a presidential election that has been a bedrock of our
Speaker 1: constitutional democracy from the beginning. It's taken place every four
Speaker 1: years amidst wars, depression, and the pandemic, from virtual conventions
Speaker 1: to expanded vote by mail and early voting so that
Speaker 1: people could cast their ballots safely and reliably. Election often
Speaker 1: had a different look and field than those of the past.
Speaker 1: In the scope of America's challenges and the widely divergent
Speaker 1: ways the two candidates and parties approached them raise the
Speaker 1: stakes even higher. Our future and our very democracy were
Speaker 1: on the line. That became even more apparent in the
Speaker 1: weeks after election day, as Donald Trump and his most
Speaker 1: ardent enablers tried to overturn the results of a free
Speaker 1: and fair election that he lost and undermine the public's
Speaker 1: faith in our entire system, eventually leading to the disgraceful
Speaker 1: and deadly assault on the Capitol on January six. So
Speaker 1: why am I telling you this? Because with every new
Speaker 1: development in the campaign and its aftermath, it was clear
Speaker 1: we were living through one of the most consequential moments
Speaker 1: in our history, one that would be intensely examined and
Speaker 1: debated for years to come. Against the backdrop of our
Speaker 1: own lives. We were also living history in real time,
Speaker 1: never sure what each new day would bring, and we
Speaker 1: still are. I've been thinking about this a lot lately,
Speaker 1: wondering what future generations will make of all of it,
Speaker 1: and what we as a country and as individuals will
Speaker 1: or will not do to keep us moving forward. It's
Speaker 1: clear to me that President Biden and Vice President Harris
Speaker 1: are doing everything they can to serve everyone and working
Speaker 1: to bring us all back together. But the damage of
Speaker 1: the last four plus years of poison politics is very real.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm so glad to have a friend with
Speaker 1: me today who's one of America's most distinguished historians, the
Speaker 1: person I've learned to turn to when I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of these kinds of questions. Douglas Brinkley is
Speaker 1: a professor of history at Rice University, an amazingly prolific author, commentator,
Speaker 1: and a walking encyclopedia of American history, politics, and culture.
Speaker 1: I'm glad he's here, and glad we're going to have
Speaker 1: this conversation. Thanks for being here, Doug. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me, Mr President. Why did you decide to become
Speaker 1: a historian? Well, I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and
Speaker 1: my mother and father were teachers, high school teachers. My
Speaker 1: dad did social studies and my mother was an English teacher,
Speaker 1: which meant we didn't have much money. Um, so we
Speaker 1: had a small house. But what we did have was
Speaker 1: time and time in our summer, and so we got
Speaker 1: a trailer, a twenty four ft Coachman trailer, and my
Speaker 1: mom and dad would take my sister and I all
Speaker 1: over America. I got to visit the lower forty eight
Speaker 1: states by the time I graduated from high school, and
Speaker 1: in particular, they took us to history sites. So I
Speaker 1: would go to Independence, Missouri and see Harry Truman's house,
Speaker 1: where we'd go to Nebraska and and discover the landscape
Speaker 1: of the novelist Willa Cather, or we would go to
Speaker 1: California and look at John Steinbeck's house. On and on.
Speaker 1: The national parks were built into this a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: whether from the Everglades to the Grand Canyon, from North
Speaker 1: Cascades National Park to you know, the the Lake Shores
Speaker 1: in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We went all over
Speaker 1: and I just fell in love with the history sites.
Speaker 1: I would take pictures of myself at the homes of
Speaker 1: former presidents, at at graves of Paul Revere or or
Speaker 1: you know, Abraham Lincoln's tomb, and I just kind of
Speaker 1: became a history nerd. So by the time I was
Speaker 1: going to college, Um, I was debating law or history,
Speaker 1: and eventually I chose to make my profession to be
Speaker 1: a historian. Well, historian, how do you think history will
Speaker 1: review this election? Boy, Um is gonna live for a
Speaker 1: long time. I mean, first and foremost people are going
Speaker 1: to remember, Um, this was the year of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: one of the giant moments in all of US history. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we've had tragedies of you know, John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy's assassination in nineteen sixty three, or the Oklahoma City bombing,
Speaker 1: which you led us through UM so admirably, or nine
Speaker 1: eleven with UM George W. Bush. But those the disaster,
Speaker 1: if you like, tragedy happened in a localized way. COVID
Speaker 1: hit everybody, every state, every community, and everybody was asked
Speaker 1: to participate. So it's interesting to me that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: in the end developed the mask as his version of UM.
Speaker 1: The make America Great red caps of Trump meaning a
Speaker 1: symbol of twenty will be Biden's mask because early on
Speaker 1: he decided to lay low in Delaware, only do a
Speaker 1: limited amount of events and make sure he's social distance
Speaker 1: and try to educate the public on the public health
Speaker 1: pandemic that we were suffering through by by example. And
Speaker 1: so I think Biden will be remembered as the mass
Speaker 1: president who did the right thing through the pandemic, where
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was quite reckless. I think history will also
Speaker 1: look at as a record number of voter participation. I
Speaker 1: find that to be heartening UM, that we really were
Speaker 1: able to run a free and fair election without UM
Speaker 1: foreign interference, and we had record voter turnout which means
Speaker 1: our people in America showed up during a pandemic to vote,
Speaker 1: and so I find that upbeat. But in the end,
Speaker 1: the oddity of um Donald Trump, his strange behavior um
Speaker 1: throughout the pandemic, a holding of rally and Tulsa with
Speaker 1: no mask, and then his botching of of how to
Speaker 1: communicate to the public about the pandemic, really stays. You
Speaker 1: know it's there, and there's the excitement at the end
Speaker 1: of the year. I remember Mr President of ninety eight,
Speaker 1: after Nixon and Humphrey and Wallace and the assassinations of
Speaker 1: King and and Bobby Kennedy, the astronauts were on the
Speaker 1: cover of Time magazine in December of nine looking at
Speaker 1: planet Earth and are gearing up for going to the moon.
Speaker 1: When I saw Joe Biden and Kamala Harris first woman
Speaker 1: Vice president uh UM on the cover of Time, I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: even through this weird, ugly year, we're breaking a first
Speaker 1: in America with Kamala Harris becoming vice president. So I'm
Speaker 1: trying to feel upbeat about our democracy, even though I
Speaker 1: do recognize we're we've got a lot of corrosive issues
Speaker 1: we're having to grapple with. Well, I guess Douglas Brinkley
Speaker 1: after this. I want to welcome Doug Brinkley back and
Speaker 1: say that when we originally talked, it was before the
Speaker 1: attack on the Capitol along January six, and I think
Speaker 1: that it's important to put that into some sort of
Speaker 1: historical context as well as thinking about what it means
Speaker 1: today and going forward. Um So, first of all, let's
Speaker 1: do just the TATA history. Doug, uh, can you tell
Speaker 1: us about some other examples of insurrection in the country's
Speaker 1: history and violence against institutions. What happened? What can we
Speaker 1: learn from it? Well, it is unprecedented what happened on
Speaker 1: January six. I mean, it's going to live in infamy.
Speaker 1: It's going to be one of those moments where the
Speaker 1: video footage is played over and over again, like the
Speaker 1: Kennedy assassination or the planes going into the World Trade Center.
Speaker 1: But when you look back in American history, and we've
Speaker 1: had plenty of insurrections, I think the energy of the
Speaker 1: Trump insurrection you could see parallels with the No Nothing
Speaker 1: Party of the eighteen forties. In eighteen fifties, the know
Speaker 1: Nothings were vehemently anti Catholic. They had conspiracy theories, about
Speaker 1: how the pope was going to run America. They wanted
Speaker 1: America to stay a white Christian Protestant country. So German
Speaker 1: and Irish immigrants coming to America, we're getting killed, stoned, hazed, um.
Speaker 1: And it really grew in power the know nothing things.
Speaker 1: I mean, former President Millard Fillmore was drafted as ex
Speaker 1: president to lead the No Nothing Party. People like John
Speaker 1: Wilkes Booth considered himself a know nothing. The leading congress
Speaker 1: people in Massachusetts, in Maryland became know nothings um. And
Speaker 1: of course that led that tension of that anti immigration
Speaker 1: view kind of fizzled out once we got into the
Speaker 1: Buchanan presidency and we are on the doorstep of the
Speaker 1: Great Civil War. And nothing talks insurrection more than the
Speaker 1: Civil War. I mean the fact that Abraham Lincoln had
Speaker 1: to take a train ride from Springfield to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: With the assassin's lurking, going into an executive mansion that
Speaker 1: wasn't protected, and the thought that when the Fort Sumner
Speaker 1: happened in the Southern States broke, Lincoln was just surrounded
Speaker 1: by basically insurgents. Uh. And incidentally, the no nothings I
Speaker 1: see having very similar attributes and people that joined the
Speaker 1: Tea Party movement for example, or Q and od uh.
Speaker 1: There's a feeling in America about conspiracy, ease that elites
Speaker 1: were Masons, and there be used to be a great
Speaker 1: anti Mason movement that somehow these elites were had a
Speaker 1: secret cabal in society. So the other Americans formed their
Speaker 1: own sort of secret cults to try to beat up
Speaker 1: on the elites. And so I see a lot of
Speaker 1: currents I recognize. However, with social media added into the mix,
Speaker 1: which has never before happened in American history, I really
Speaker 1: worry about the continuation of other January six, if not
Speaker 1: an attack on our capitol, but you know the need
Speaker 1: to secure federal and state buildings. There is a real
Speaker 1: anti government movement alive and will in our country right now.
Speaker 1: And do you think there's going to be a long
Speaker 1: term impact. You know, I think that where this whole
Speaker 1: year will be getting more puzzle pieces for January six,
Speaker 1: it's going to be its own realm of study. There
Speaker 1: will be universities that have January six scholars um and
Speaker 1: it's going to It's why Nancy Pelosi correctly in my mind,
Speaker 1: called for a nine eleven commission like report we just
Speaker 1: need to gather more and more data, um, not just
Speaker 1: for the sake of helping the FBI or law enforcement
Speaker 1: find perpetrators of the capital raid, but just to start
Speaker 1: let us understand what happened. And so that's gonna work
Speaker 1: itself through for a couple of years here, this neo
Speaker 1: civil war we're in right now. You and know better
Speaker 1: than I, but I think it's going to go on
Speaker 1: for a while. I don't see uh Joe Biden, who
Speaker 1: is doing an incredibly great job as president and calming
Speaker 1: our country and showing leadership and statesman like qualities, But
Speaker 1: it's going to take us a while. Uh. The great
Speaker 1: poet Robert Frost used to say, the only way out
Speaker 1: is through. Only we're going to get out of this
Speaker 1: this mess we're in politically is to kind of go
Speaker 1: through all the steps that it could take a few years.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have a hard time that. Already. They're literally
Speaker 1: a hundred bills introduced in the state legislatures by Republicans
Speaker 1: to make it harder to vote. One in Georgia says
Speaker 1: you can't have vote my mail anymore unless you've got
Speaker 1: a good reason not to vote on election day and
Speaker 1: you have to have an affidavit swearing to that, putting
Speaker 1: yourself at legal risk. And it's chilling stuff like this everywhere.
Speaker 1: There are amendments and offered in my state legislature of
Speaker 1: my native state Arkansas, basically trying to control what what
Speaker 1: the courts can do and what cases they can hear
Speaker 1: and things like that. I mean, this is all over
Speaker 1: the country. So they're just as active as they were before.
Speaker 1: They're energized, and they believe that they nearly won. And
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna have to keep fighting this. And
Speaker 1: for the President his administration, the most important thing to
Speaker 1: do is produce just produced results people can feel. Where
Speaker 1: were you on January six, Mr President, you were in
Speaker 1: Chappa Claw and you started watching all of this unfold?
Speaker 1: What what did you think? What was your your fears?
Speaker 1: And did it ring your Oklahoma City bell or it did?
Speaker 1: But I have to say, if you look at what
Speaker 1: we saw on six, I knew that Trump said I
Speaker 1: you'll have a peaceful march. I heard him say that,
Speaker 1: but he was encouraging them to do what they did.
Speaker 1: You know, he used to do the same thing in
Speaker 1: with his rallies. You know when he said, uh, he'd say,
Speaker 1: beat the hell out of the protesters at his rallies?
Speaker 1: Are you know, maybe his second amendment? People could take
Speaker 1: care of Hillary? And no one took him seriously. I
Speaker 1: mean not no one. I took him seriously, but but
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people didn't. What I saw
Speaker 1: that day was profoundly troubling, but I did not realize
Speaker 1: myself until later in the day, and then as the
Speaker 1: days unfolded how much actual danger members of Congress were
Speaker 1: under at the time. That they could have been viewed
Speaker 1: as just a crazy mob having fun, you know, trashing
Speaker 1: the capital, which was terrible, but you can repair things.
Speaker 1: But it's obvious that a lot of them were there
Speaker 1: under an under a planning program and intended to do
Speaker 1: what they did and intended to They thought they could
Speaker 1: intimidate a number of these Congress people and the Vice
Speaker 1: president into changing their opinions. And because Donald Trump told
Speaker 1: him that's all it would take, they actually believed him.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. The historian Brinkley, who do you
Speaker 1: believe is the most consequential person in American history and
Speaker 1: if you will, in world history that most people don't
Speaker 1: know much about. Boy, there I have a few that
Speaker 1: quickly jumped to mind one I know you would agree
Speaker 1: with in recent times as Dolora Suerta. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: she's people are looking for a Latino leader, and there
Speaker 1: she is in our mist and when you really read
Speaker 1: her backstory of bravery working with Caesar Chavez in the
Speaker 1: fields and as an organizer, she's somebody that really deserves
Speaker 1: a definitive biography and a lot more attention to. UM.
Speaker 1: I think Dwight Eisenhower's performance in World War Two, while
Speaker 1: we all honor it was really quite remarkable the way
Speaker 1: he dealt with all the egos of British generals and
Speaker 1: people like Pattent and with the way that Ike's personality
Speaker 1: was able to kind of keep a steady hand, uh
Speaker 1: throughout World War Two. We probably owe eyes and how
Speaker 1: were more gratitude for his leadership during the war than
Speaker 1: we then we give him um. And then there's somebody
Speaker 1: I've why I've kind of might made a hobby out
Speaker 1: of Mr President named Charles Thompson, who was the Secretary
Speaker 1: of the Continental Congress when our nation was founded, and
Speaker 1: he kept all the minutes at Independence Hall, you know,
Speaker 1: the records, and he'd also have to reimburse Jefferson and
Speaker 1: Adams for lodging and food and all of this. But he, um,
Speaker 1: he kind of was our did an amazing job to
Speaker 1: fund Washington's army. So when you read George Washington at
Speaker 1: Valley Forge and the men of the Continental Army are
Speaker 1: freezing and have dysentery and uh, they're really their toes
Speaker 1: are falling off, and it's Washington writing Thompson, I need munitions,
Speaker 1: I need blankets, I need medicine. And his ability to
Speaker 1: find things that Washington needed during the war. And then
Speaker 1: Thompson's the one who chose the eagle as their national
Speaker 1: symbol when Ben Franklin wanted the wild Turkey. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he then designed Thompson the Great Seal of the United States.
Speaker 1: And he was against slavery. He was an abolitionist and
Speaker 1: also wanted quality for women, and I was a lawyer
Speaker 1: defending Native American rights. He ran the Sons of Liberty
Speaker 1: like Sam Adams ran it in Boston, Charles Thompson ran
Speaker 1: it in Philadelphia and was the top beer maker brewer,
Speaker 1: and that period of America. Well, Sam Adams now has
Speaker 1: a bottle of beer named after him. Nobody's named the
Speaker 1: bottle after Charles Thompson, who was actually a more successful
Speaker 1: brewer than uh Sam Adams. So one day I hope
Speaker 1: somebody does a book on Charles Thompson. I think you've
Speaker 1: probably just inspired two or three hundred people to start
Speaker 1: looking at it. Give us a travel recommendation. You talked
Speaker 1: about traveling as a child, all these places that my
Speaker 1: dear love American history. What or two or three places
Speaker 1: you to want your children to see now to learn
Speaker 1: about the pass in the future. That's my favorite question
Speaker 1: you can ask me. Because I'm a I'm a real
Speaker 1: road person. I love to go explore America. Underrated UM
Speaker 1: is back to that upper Midwest. If you go to
Speaker 1: Minneapolis St. Paul and go to um Lake Minniaca right
Speaker 1: there near the cities, but then go to the St.
Speaker 1: Croy River along the Wisconsin border and then north where
Speaker 1: voyagers Um National Park is and nobody really goes in
Speaker 1: northern Minnesota. But then in Michigan if you go to
Speaker 1: Lake Travis and I'll royal parts, but there's a national
Speaker 1: lake Shore I recommend to everybody called Leaping Bear National Lakeshore.
Speaker 1: These giant sand dunes that go into the lake. UH
Speaker 1: in northern Michigan, and so vacationing up there in the
Speaker 1: summers in Minnesota, Michigan is um particularly when the weather
Speaker 1: gets warmer in the summers. That's cool up there and
Speaker 1: you don't have the crowds of Cape Cod or or
Speaker 1: around Seattle or somewhere that that leaps to mind. And
Speaker 1: then just Utah to go see the canyon lands, arches
Speaker 1: in Zion and Bryce Canyon, what you did for Grand
Speaker 1: Escalante and saving that part of the Colorado Plateau which
Speaker 1: you can go get lost in the Red Rock wilderness
Speaker 1: and you can find solitude and you can hike, and
Speaker 1: they're all these little towns there. I'm proud that Utah
Speaker 1: has become a National park state that you can really
Speaker 1: go and travel. And FDR envisioned it is that FDR
Speaker 1: planned Utah to be a National park state as a
Speaker 1: way to raise income for the state. And he did
Speaker 1: the same for Vermont for ski lodging, and he thought
Speaker 1: recreation dollars coming into those states would help defer some
Speaker 1: of the mining or types of extraction industries that could
Speaker 1: be harmful for the land. So there's nothing like Utah
Speaker 1: parks um if you get a chance to go to
Speaker 1: them and then in Arizona to the Grand Canyon. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. Um, I can't thank you enough. I
Speaker 1: take it. I can close by saying that, on balance,
Speaker 1: you still believe America has better days ahead. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: that's what matters most. So thank you Doug Brinkley, and
Speaker 1: I hope our listeners enjoyed this. If you have any questions,
Speaker 1: you can contact Doug or figure up some of his books.
Speaker 1: You'll like them all. Thanks, Thank you, Mr President. That
Speaker 1: was fun. Why am I telling you? This is a
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