The Scum Also Rises (with Douglas Brinkley)
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From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Preet Bharara. Our spirit in America is about the individual integrity, working together in a community. But with Trump, you've got to be all in, 100%. There is no room for intellectual deviation.

That's Douglas Brinkley. He's one of the nation's foremost presidential historians. Brinkley is a professor at Rice University, a commentator for CNN, and a presidential historian for the New York Historical Society. He's also the author of 40 books. Brinkley joins me this week to talk about the historic nature of the upcoming election. Is it really the most important election of our lifetime? What about the most important election ever? That's coming up. Stay tuned.

Support for the show comes from the new season of Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. What is a crucible moment? It's a turning point where we face a tough decision and our response can shape the rest of our lives.

These decisions happen in business too. And Sequoia Capital's podcast, Crucible Moments, gives you a behind-the-scenes look, asking founders of some of the world's most important tech companies like YouTube, DoorDash, Reddit, and more to reflect on those critical junctures that defined who they are today. Tune in to Season 2 of Crucible Moments today. You can also catch up on Season 1 at cruciblemoments.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

About a year ago, two twin brothers in Wisconsin discovered kind of by accident that mini golf might be the perfect spectator sport for the TikTok era. Meanwhile, a YouTuber in Brooklyn found himself less interested in tech YouTube and more interested in making coffee.

This month on The Verge Cast, we're telling stories about these people who tried to find new ways to make content, new ways to build businesses around that content, and new ways to make content about those businesses. Our series is called How to Make It in the Future, and it's all this month on The Verge Cast, wherever you get podcasts.

Before I get to your questions, I want to remind folks about our recent launch of a second weekly episode of the Cafe Insider podcast. These episodes feature my friend, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellie Honig, in conversation with Cafe contributors and other guests. This week, Ellie speaks with Cafe contributor and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa about the many legal battles surrounding the social media app TikTok.

That episode will drop tomorrow, Friday, October 25th. To listen, become a member at cafe.com slash insiderpod. Now, on to your questions.

This question comes in an email from Matt, who writes, Hi Preet, I have a question about that most important pillar of the legal world, the TV show Law & Order. At the end of every episode, when the jury reaches a verdict, the jury foreperson first hands a folded piece of paper up to the judge. The judge reads the piece of paper and then asks the jury what the verdict is. What is on that piece of paper? Matt writes in all caps, is it the actual verdict?

So the judge already knows the answer when he asks the jury, is it something else? Does this even happen in real life in New York? Please advise. This question has been bugging me for 30 years. Thank you, Matt from Boston. So Matt, I'm sorry that this has been bugging you for 30 years. You could have asked sooner.

So I'll speak about my experience in federal court. I do think that on television shows like Law & Order, there's a lot of folded documents, as you've seen the show probably many, many, many times. I have been a years-long watcher of the show also in similar shows, and I've always been struck by scenes in which a defense lawyer sort of walks into, just wanders into the prosecutor's office, has a folded-up motion in his or her pocket, and serves said folded document, folded motion on the prosecutor with great dramatic flair.

There's something of a folding fetish, I think, in these TV shows. Now, generally speaking, at least in my experience in federal court, the judge absolutely does know what the verdict is in advance of the jury making the announcement. Typically, the order of operations is the jury sends a note out to the court that they've reached a verdict. Presumably, they filled out a verdict form that can range in level of complexity to fairly simple, guilty or not guilty. It could also have various boxes to check.

with respect to predicate acts or overt acts, drug weight quantity, and all sorts of other things that the jury sometimes is required to determine unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt. So a judge will typically get a document from the jury. In my experience, it's not a folded up piece of paper, but a document that is in fact the verdict form. And the judge will sometimes say that I'm looking at this verdict form

for purposes of assessing its regularity, to make sure that they haven't left anything out, they haven't done it incorrectly, because that would be a little bit of a mess if they took the verdict without the judge knowing that everything was regular and proper and filled out correctly. So that's a little bit more of a mundane answer than maybe you were looking for, Matt. I hope it solves the mystery, though.

This question comes in an email from Frank. Hi, Preet. I love your show and I'm a longtime listener. This is my first time writing. I'm curious about your thoughts on why Trump is going to areas and giving fascist-dominated rallies where he has no hope of winning, e.g. Colorado, California, and New York. What is the strategy behind this? Best regards, Frank. Well, Frank, I'm not a political scientist. I'm not a political commentator, although I sometimes do that on the show and certainly in my personal life.

I guess the first issue is to question whether or not Trump is always strategic or even tactical. He sometimes does things that are not strategic or tactical at all, at least according to traditional politics. So there are a variety of legitimate and strategic reasons that you might want to go to a deep blue state, even if you're Donald Trump.

You can get a big media splash for going into enemy territory to help down ballot races. Although of the blue states that Trump appears to be visiting, there's not a close Senate race in any of those states. Maybe there are a couple of House races. And of course, sometimes deep blue states are places where there are fundraising opportunities. And maybe Trump is trying to do some fundraising while he goes to these places. But I think the most logical explanation or the best explanation that I've heard from various reporting is that Trump just likes certain iconic venues.

Chief among them, the one in his home state, in his hometown of New York, Madison Square Garden. And he is very excited to headline at that venue and to fill it up with MAGA supporters. By the way, one could ask the same question of Kamala Harris, who's planning to go to Texas to try to help Colin Allred, the challenger, sort of uphill challenger to Ted Cruz in the Senate race there.

Presumably, Kamala Harris also is planning on getting outsized media coverage for going to a red state. The Democrats have long hoped to turn blue with no luck. So Trump seems to be doing it more. But candidates will often go to places, even in the last fortnight of an election, to try to gain some media coverage and perhaps do some fundraising. We'll see after the election is over whether there will be recriminations for either candidate for not going to the right places with the right frequency.

Before I get to the interview, I do have an update on a case we followed closely on the show. Remember the two election poll workers in Georgia, Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, mother and daughter, who just did their public service in 2020? Do you remember them? Rudy Giuliani maliciously defamed them by making false claims that they tampered with ballots in Georgia. They were harassed and threatened and had to worry for their physical safety. So they took Rudy to court.

a form he is quite familiar and comfortable with, and they cleaned his clock, because the evidence and the law were on their side.

And they won a judgment of almost $150 million. And the question was, would they ever see any of it? Well, they may not see all of it. But this week, a judge ruled that Giuliani must turn over all his valuable possessions and his Manhattan penthouse apartment to the control of Freeman and Moss. And here's what must be turned over. As mentioned, Rudy's 66th Street apartment in New York, Rudy's Citibank checking account, Rudy's

Rudy's 1980 Mercedes-Benz Model SL500, Rudy's television, Rudy's sports memorabilia, including his signed Reggie Jackson picture, his signed Yankee Stadium picture, his signed Joe DiMaggio shirt.

And now we get to the watches. And boy, does Rudy have a lot of watches. He has to turn over his two Bulova watches, his five Shinola watches, one Tiffany & Company watch, one Seiko watch, one Frank Muller watch, one Graham watch, one Coriam watch, one Rolex watch, two IWC watches, one Invicta watch, two Breitling watches, one Raymond Weil watch, one Bauman Mercer watch, and, per the order from the court, six additional watches. How on earth will Rudy tell time going forward? Oh,

All of which is, I guess, to say that Rudy has put a new spin on the old saying, if you can't do the time, I'll be right back with my conversation with Douglas Brinkley.

Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington and how they may impact your finances and portfolio. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's Managing Director for Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, takes a nonpartisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including regular updates on the 2024 election and its potential implications for the market, policy initiatives for retirement savings, and more.

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well into the countdown to the election. You and I are recording this on Monday, October 21 in the morning. The election, I guess it's a misnomer to say the election is in 15 days. The final day of voting is in 15 days. There's lots of voting going on already and more early voting will commence. I plan to vote in the state of New York as soon as early voting begins myself.

As I said to you before we started recording, I'm very confused about a lot of things. And people will make statements, historians and political scientists and commentators and campaign folks will say the ordinary laws of political gravity and political physics don't apply. There's the whole business of Donald Trump correctly stating some years ago that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a single vote. All sorts of crazy things going on. Here's the thing that I don't get, or I guess I get, but I would like to understand a little bit more and talk about it.

I believe that all these events, whether it's debates or campaign ads or speeches or rallies, are a Rorschach test. And depending on whose side you're on, you think it went wonderfully or you think it went terribly. So for example, Kamala Harris did that interview with Bret Baier a few days ago on Fox News. And if you're a Kamala Harris supporter or on the Kamala Harris team—

You thought it was terrific and amazing and you're applauding, I think. But the Trump people are also applauding and they think that Kamala Harris came off looking dim-witted and foolish and unprepared and stupid. I can give you a number of other examples of that. Maybe we'll go through them.

Is that a new thing in politics? I thought usually there's a consensus about whether someone performed well or not. It is new for American politics. You know, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., great historian, he used to talk, actually wrote a book even called The Vital Center, that you had to, the pendulum would swing, but it would go from center-right to center-left to center-right to center-left, but wouldn't get to an extreme margin where the country was utterly divided amongst itself,

Because if you did, you would be into a situation of a neo-civil war, and you wouldn't be able to accept the peaceful transfer of power. You wouldn't be able to believe that who won the election actually won.

And we've blown that vital center off. People want to – you either are all in with Trump 100 percent or you're not a Trumper. And on the Democratic side, less so, but they rallied together to form one unity voice about just despising Trump.

So it's just now a very brutal moment in our nation's history. I would tell you, Preet, there was a man named Charles Thompson who was the Secretary of the Continental Congress who actually was the name on the Declaration of Independence. He ran the whole founding of our nation. He chose the eagle as their symbol and helped design the Great Seal of America.

During the Revolutionary War, Thompson kept all the minutes. The founding of our country is like a moving archive. And he, at the end of the war, had to tell George Washington, you're it, you're president. You're going to have to run everything. And in 1800, he burned a lot of the founding minutes of our country because it was showing that

the disdain in 1800 between John Adams, the Federalist, and Thomas Jefferson, the Democrat-Republican. It was an ugly, mudslinging election, and it gave birth to our two-party system. And Thompson, foolishly getting rid of this stuff, but nevertheless makes this point that stuck with me, that if we go and beat each other to distrust each other so much, you will never be able to unify because

After a campaign, people said the new president's not a real president. And we saw a tinge of that with Bush and Gore in 2000. I like Bush v. Gore, actually. I know you do. I like that better. Sorry. But Bush v. Gore and, you know, just the point being that a lot of people didn't quite believe that, you know, the right president is.

um you know what should have been gory have the popular vote and adding to the the confusion out there is that electoral college which i'm for it's a longer conversation

on why we have it and aren't going to get rid of it. But it is true that it has punished Al Gore. It's proven to punish Hillary Clinton. And there's a specter we have now. Harris can win the popular vote by a lot, but yet not be president. And if you're a young person not taking civics classes, understanding government, it's perplexing to understand that. So we're going to have to do a better job of kind of

teaching, but that Charles Thompson warning was just, you know, there was a reason, say, when FDR did it, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. You know, that's, that inaugural's in March. We used to do them in March. Now they're in January. So by the time this election goes and people may sue or not sue, by the time it gets, it's so close that it doesn't become, feel like a unifying moment, I'm afraid, this year, the upcoming inaugural.

So I get what you're saying about polarization when it comes to values and policy preferences. So when someone goes up on the stage and behind the podium at a rally and talks about, you know, aggressive gun control, I can see why one segment of the population would say that's idiotic. Another segment would say that's wonderful and inspiring. I'm talking about more like just straight on delivery. So for example, I'll give you another one. The Al Smith dinner.

where Donald Trump, you know, made some remarks and said some off-color and off-putting things. Again, the Democrats are appalled and scandalized by some of the things he said. And this is not about policy or substance necessarily, but his supporters think he's hilarious and the second coming of the best entertainer in the world. Donald Trump recently, you know, there's been a lot of discussion about this, and I wonder if you think too much.

Again, not policy related and not values related really, but I guess in a way you could suggest it might be. All I've been seeing on television this morning on certain channels is the fact that Donald Trump at a rally over the weekend made some commentary about the famous golfer Arnold Palmer's, everyone uses a different euphemism, Arnold Palmer's manhood. And so a lot of folks on the left are scandalized by that. People on the right think it's hilarious and just Trump being Trump.

I don't know if they think it's locker room talk or something else to use that phrase. But is there something weird about how radically different people are reacting to the same words in the same tone? Yes, because in American history, there have been art forms of exaggeration, which others call lies. I mean, great writers like Mark Twain used to talk about that being America's kind of conglomerate.

common form of humor almost to tell a stretch it tell a tall tale we created folk heroes of people like billy the kid who was a murderer al capone who was a gangster because they you know we tell tall tales and exaggerate them and vulgarity is is across the land but is that but is that what trump is so that's i think that's a very excellent point and way of thinking about it are you suggesting i shouldn't put words in your mouth

That the Trump folks view Donald Trump as simply telling tall tales, like wanting to be a dictator on day one, wanting to have a period of time that would be similar to the purge to get rid of violent crime. Do they view those things as tall tales and just sort of bravado? And are they right about that? Or are the Democrats right in saying they're very fearful about what a second term could mean?

Well, when we started, I talked about that inability we're having to compromise down the middle. Yes, there's a group that knows that Donald Trump is exaggerate and they think it's funny. But you mentioned the Al Smith dinner. Trump had a couple of killer great jokes, but then he was demeaning.

And to a degree, it's cringing and cringeworthy as our big phrase of the year. And it was because we don't have a right to dehumanize people. And Trump has made that clear.

But is that new to civilization America? No. I mean, you look at, you know, the settlement of the West and the treatment of indigenous people. I mean, look at Andrew Jackson's on the 20 and, you know, Jacksonville,

Florida and Jackson, Mississippi and Jackson and then the Vucaray and New Orleans with the statue. And yet, you know, there's a violence, a vulgarity that's part of our history. What's different is

Trump is unlike any other president. He represents certain strands of America, New York builder, vulgar talking, understanding of the power of the tabloid to run the day.

But in addition to that, he adopted things like Ross Perot's, you know, the sucking sound of the jobs you hear or, you know, your job's going to Mexico. And when Perot gets 19 percent in 1992 with that one issue, Trump saw that and has grabbed it. That's why he early on was a reform candidate. And then the power of race in America, segregation as a motivator, the

I may be poor and white, but I'm not black. And people like George Wallace or Strom Thurmond ran movements, ran for president, both of those two gentlemen, on that segregationist platform.

And then Joe McCarthy was – he was the second biggest name of the 50s outside of Dwight Eisenhower as the senator from Wisconsin running nativism and smearing of fellow Americans and making threats.

You know, there's Lyndon LaRouche. But that fever, but the one you just mentioned, the McCarthy fever broke. And it didn't take, you know, how long did it take for that fever to remind me as a historian how long it took? It broke because of the U.S. Army stood up.

And some Republicans like Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican, told McCarthy, you're a shameful man. We haven't seen that in the power coming out of the Senate or Congress on the right. They are afraid of Trump. We saw Liz Cheney, but that didn't have much effect. Well, Liz Cheney, but that's – there are a few.

But Mitch McConnell was the one who mattered. And Mitch knew what happened on January 6th. And then Mitch turned coward. And so did Lindsey Graham. But why do you think, so, you know, I knew Mitch McConnell a little bit from my time working for Senator Schumer. And he was many things, depending on your perspective. But I actually didn't think of him as having cowardice. Where is that coming from now?

It's coming from Trump's ability to destroy a Republican's career using social media and, you know, X or other forms of communications. If Trump wants to turn his cannon on McConnell in a real way, he's already mocked his wife in horrible terms, Mitch McConnell's, but Trump would just blow Mitch out of the water. So you needed real backbone. And I thought Mitch had it. Harry Reid had it.

I thought Mitch McConnell had it, but it turns out he didn't. And there's no resistance to Trump within the Republican Party. And when there is, they end up in an ash heap and aren't functioning in government anymore. So it's just encouraged Trump's authoritarian bent.

But half the country remembers Trump as the entertainer, the apprentice, the long red tie. He stayed in character all these years. All these people come and go, and we're still talking about Donald Trump.

And Trump recognized that currency in America became celebrity. And the big thing was to be famous. So even though here's a man who never sent an email in his life, Donald Trump, he naturally understood that you create followers. And Trump admires people who has a lot of followers. He doesn't care whether they have conspiracy theories about COVID or whether they're

half-baked nut who didn't think Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. They have followers. That's what he notices. That's what he cares about. Who's famous? Who are people leaning into? Well, that's not good governance. It's celebrity culture run amok. Let me give you another example in this vein that we've been talking about where

Trump says something, it's reacted to on the other side with some seriousness. His words are taken seriously. And then that reaction is then mocked by the right. So Anne Applebaum, student of fascistic movements, writes about government, very well respected, has lately been writing about the sort of autocratic tendencies of Donald Trump and talked about what a second term might be like, you know, in fairly sharp language. I saw on social media that

Someone who's a Trump supporter respond, basically saying she's lost her mind. She's a lunatic. Elon Musk, who we'll get to in a few minutes, he himself literally responds to the Ann Applebaum assessment with LOL. And on the right, people just laugh it off. Who's right on that?

Well, Ann's an awesome scholar and writer, as you know. But is she overreacting? I mean, I'm asking actually this in a genuine way because I have to live in this country. Well, she's considered an elite. I guess maybe you and I are. And there are a lot of Americans who feel that the privilege of the Ivy League, the people that made it big in life, that left Indiana or Missouri or North Carolina

barely to come back, headed to both coasts, look down on the hinterland. And that's a common in American history populist sentiment. I mean, you're looking at, you know,

William Jennings Bryan running in the 1890s on that. You know, the lawyers and bankers in New York and all these rich people are taking your money. The irony is that Trump is the ultimate, you know, kind of wealthy guy, the billionaire. However, he spent a lot of his life building or whatever he did, branding and talk to working people.

And then when you open up casinos, by nature, you're dealing with Americans at a different kind of core level where your big come on is, you know, free shrimp cocktail tonight or, you know, there's this person. Look, that's a big come on. Hey, it is. And he knows that side of the American psyche clearly.

that they're not teaching in Yale or Harvard, you know, and they're out there. But particularly this, and then you get the sectional division. I mean, look, what are the red states? I mean, when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, when he said there goes the South from the Democratic Party,

He was right. It's all red, except we're seeing what North Carolina does now and Georgia has become Atlanta, such a big international city. We'll see. But the point is, you know, we're touching on a lot of things in American history with Trump. They just never had been brought into the idea that that's presidential behavior because it's really a running for president loathing the U.S. federal government.

And this anti-government movement's been going on for a long time, and it really started in the '70s. You started having the Cato Institute and American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation, and they were scared of regulatory America.

particularly on environment, if you're an extraction company, but other things. And so it's been a kind of battle now. And their side has gotten traction with Fox News and radio and the New York Post. And they've developed their bench and they're able to take on what they see is not just democratic, but democratic media coastal alliance. And we're stuck in the middle on that.

But how are we supposed to evaluate what a second Trump term will be like by virtue of Trump's own words? And we've been talking about this issue of tall tales and exaggeration and optimism. Bill Maher, who not everyone loves, but I think says sometimes incredibly incisive things and often in a very funny way.

This past week talked about all sorts of things that Trump promises, you know, dictator on day one, the purge, everything else. He's the first president in history or the first candidate for president history. He quipped whose voters actually hope he doesn't keep his campaign promises. We've never kind of seen that. So when he says he wants to do these things, when he talks about taking network licenses away as if there were such a thing,

Should we not take him seriously or should we? We're a society based on law and law words matter, right?

But in Trump land, Trump's followers see dictator on day one is Sean Hannity as him being joking, meaning I really am going to get on the border. It's a kind of – I'm looking for the objective truth, professor. I mean obviously I'm being facetious. But who's right? Are the people who think he's joking right or the people who are concerned right?

I think people who are concerned because the stakes are so high that you can't use reckless rhetoric like that and add to it some of the negative effects of social media and it creates a feel of authoritarianism that if he gets in and then added –

to his praising of Putin instead of, you know, praising of Benjamin Franklin. It gets one concerned, and I think more so because of the Supreme Court decision where, you know, it's basically Nixon's line to David Frost that the president does it, it must be legal. You give a person like Trump, love him,

lo them, it doesn't matter. If you give somebody like that, that kind of Supreme Court verdict to roll on, then these people get very worried. But the truth of the matter is, no matter who wins, and it may not happen election night, it might take a week or two or a month, but there will be a new president. And that new president, we're going to have to find a way to get behind because we're the United States of America. We're built to last.

And we're going to have to try to evaluate and understand what's going on more. But we've got to forge forward. We owe it to our ancestors. We owe it to the people who died at Valley Forge or Normandy or Iwo Jima. We owe it to our parents and grandparents. We've got to find a way to make the United States work. And we have a lot of things in our country that are doing well. But this presidential politics

running people for three years, ad buys nonstop. It's gotten out of control. And the biggest problem, if you don't teach civics, you're going to have people not understanding public service or government, and you're going to have bad operators rise to the top. That old line of Hemingway, the sun also rises, but it's also the scum also can rise.

you know, some of the worst elements of our country could come out. It's a little known sequel. Yeah. Scum also rises. Like, you know, Father Coughlin in the 30s or Huey Long, you know, Louisiana. These characters have existed and they rise, but not to the level of being the commander in chief of our armed forces and president of the United States. Trump's unique in this regard. I'll be right back with Douglas Brinkley after this.

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When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion.

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Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Part of the problem is, and not everyone's going to love how I'm going to phrase this, because you try to put yourself in the perspective of the other side, at least I try from time to time, and how they're thinking about it, right? So Trump has gotten a lot of attention recently, again, in the same vein, talking about his political critics as the enemy within Trump.

And I think for good reason and understandably, people are criticizing that rhetoric as maybe a preview of something terrible. And when Trump talks about taking out retaliation against his political enemies, his opponents freak out about that. And I get it. And that's understandable. And that makes a lot of sense. Or weaponizing the Justice Department. But his people are like, that's very rich. What are you talking about? Trump is the one who's actually been prosecuted.

by the other side. Now, there are distinctions and there are reasons and there are righteous prosecutions and there are not. But from their perspective, I can understand why they're saying, like, what is wrong with you people on the left? Because these things you're worried that Trump is going to do, your side is doing. You call him a fascist. You say he's going to be a dictator. He says enemy within. How can you condone one side of that rhetoric but not the other?

Well, that's fair. I mean, one would have thought that we've had – he was twice impeached, Donald Trump. He's 34 felony charges. But he's still up and running. I mean, he's not been really held into – he's not been made accountable in a real way except some money lost.

So people are wondering, man, you've spent a lot of time going after them. And then you become the roadrunner going beep, beep. You're not getting caught by the coyote and you grow in the estimate of people. When you don't get the person and they're still up and running, they develop a sense of they're invincible people.

And then you add to that the horror at Butler, Pennsylvania, and the utter failure of our Secret Service to protect the president and have that kind of vantage point wide open, which was horrific.

And my heart went out for Trump and the Trump family at that moment. But there, you know, when that bullet almost hit him and it didn't, he's bleeding and he says, fight, fight, fight. And that's when Elon Musk joined Trump. There's seeming to be a sentiment that everybody's trying to get Trump. He deserves it, but he somehow isn't caught in the briar patch. And that is, it's a mystery to some, but it tells you some kind of cunning and instinct that he has. And the question is, is,

What is it? And you have to combine P.T. Barnum with, you know, Roy Cullen or, you know, it's not going to come at you with a simple answer. You have to really do a composite of personalities. I mean, the word narcissist is the one most used, but there's a lot going on around Trump. And he's outfoxed an awful lot of the intelligentsia of our country time and time again.

He has. And I wonder if something else is going on here, because I've had some friends who have recently gone canvassing in various places. And some of the reporting back suggests that people have memory hold Trump's presidency. It seems to me that he has successfully sloganeered terms like the economy was great, the economy was perfect, there were no wars during my term. Historically, I guess my question is, what is the role of and the existence of

collective forgetfulness. Now, what kinds of things do we forget or overly remember about a presidential term and how is that playing out here? That's a great question. We do forget. We are a nation that's about the next next thing all the time and we don't micro study everything. Most people's memory of Trump was that the economy was doing well. It was under Obama too, but it was doing well with Trump and then COVID hit.

And so they don't blame Trump for any downturn. And Biden, I think, has brought the economy. I mean, we're better than anywhere else in the world. But people don't have the ugly memories of Trump. They think I'm talking about Trump supporters. They see when he did the bleach in, you know, about COVID. He just was talking and shouldn't have and pickpocketing.

paste the wrong words together. And for anybody who's serious minded, that was a very ridiculous thing to state. But a lot of voters say, oh, that's just Trump was trying to, he botches things like we all do. He doesn't talk the

the way professionals do. He talks in a broken way, but we can feel him. I would underline that we can feel what he's thinking. We're not focused on each word. And all these years, we're still talking about Donald Trump and what he says. And I'll be critical of something on the Democratic side. The late writer Norman Mailer told me, I wrote a profile of him once,

And he was a ardent Democrat, Kennedy Democrat. But Mueller told me, he said, the left or Democrat are going to lose a lot in the future because of political correctness.

that you cannot tell people that they say a wrong word and suddenly one time they say something that means they're a racist or that means they are anti-book or means. And the left too often weighs in on that political correctness, which could go too far, right?

And that's why people watch Bill Maher. You know, he blows that. He'll say it both ways and not worried about the fallout from it. But a lot of Americans, once you call somebody to their face or on television a racist, it's hard for every bond. I mean, that's a powerful. The battle lines are drawn. Yeah. And look, there are racists. There are people who are racists.

And they should be called out. I guess your point is, again, people will send your letters to us, that it is an accusation often of first resort. Right. That you have to really make sure you don't throw those words around lightly, that calling somebody an anti-Semite or you're a racist or, you know, my dad was the nicest man in the world. And he would go to a gas station and fill up and he learned broken Spanish words.

during the Korean War. And we would cringe, my sister and I, because he would talk to the, in those days, people pumping gas. And he would try to, you know, he'd be, you know, like basically, hey, amigo, you know, kind of. And we'd be, oh, God, that's hard. You used the word, yeah, you used the term cringeworthy already. Right. Cringe. We would cringe.

How often does that apply to our families, right? Right. But then later I once saw him do that before he died. And the guy that was pumping gas loved it because he actually, my dad was trying to be friendly and, you know, he wasn't meaning it in a way. He was trying to show I've learned a little bit of broken Spanish and,

and, you know, it wasn't his heart that was being, trying to be. And when you see that, you know, and people that are 80, they learn words to say, they say things wrong. They may not, you know, they grew up on, you know, talking about not going to the Japanese-Korean fusion restaurant. They were, it was called an Oriental restaurant and they're 80 and they slip up and

You don't have to just try to then label and destroy them. We need a little bit of forgiveness in that way. Only if somebody really is showing in a concerted way a hateful essence do you start riddling them with, you know, smear terms. Well, so then here we go, Professor. What degree of forgiveness should we give to Donald Trump?

given his age and the language that he uses? I think Trump has proven himself a bad operator because he uses this to divide us. He understands the political correctness issue. It's not in good faith. It's in bad faith. He doesn't do it in good faith. He does it to exploit us.

you know, people. And he's a divider and conqueror. And that's style in world history. But when you teach civics, it's about Lincoln. We were divided and you make whole one. The great leadership should be pulling the country together, not working to divide it, win by an inch, and then operate in that fashion. So I just don't see, he is, if Trump got reelected,

He's a revolution in America. He's a very big figure. This is not a one-term asterisk president who went down an escalator and squeaked past Hillary Clinton. Even if he loses this time? I think if he loses, Trump, he then will have to see what legal jeopardy he's in. Yeah.

And he'll lose a little bit of box office. He'll probably try to hand the baton over later to J.D. Vance, who will keep Trumpism alive, or Ron DeSantis to a certain degree, or five other people, whoever they choose there at Mar-a-Lago. But he'll get older, Trump, and he'll be somebody we'll look back on as kind of an oddity in American history, a nativist...

populist movement based on celebrity and reality TV right when the social media came to light. But if he wins, it means this country is having a – it's not center-right. It's a right-wing movement, and we haven't had that.

You know, say what you want about the 60s and 70s. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Johnson may have done great society measures that were irresponsible. I'm not judging that, but they they tended to rein in the most radical elements. They weren't of society. There was a limit there.

Trumpism, there's no limit of how far right you can go. You can talk about Hitler as your hero and you can still be at Mar-a-Lago hanging. There's not a limit as long as you're for Trump. And that's a problem to me because you're allowing very irresponsible voices into the intersanctum of White House leadership, which is the preeminent role of power in the world.

Yeah, so I'm ticking off this list of reasons why we're in this strange predicament, memory holing, polarization. I also wonder, are we just a nation of idiots who don't know anything about anything anymore? And here's my example, and I used this with a guest recently also.

So Donald Trump's whole economic argument or the thrust of his economic argument is that Biden and Kamala Harris brought you inflation, right? Gas prices up, home prices up, terrible. It's a powerful argument. It has some truth to it. Even though inflation has abated, prices are still elevated, right? So inflation, inflation, inflation, inflation sucks. Biden brought you inflation. Kamala did too. She's going to bring you more inflation, right?

Meanwhile, the second pillar of the Trump economic policy is a 60% tariff on Canadian goods and a 10 to 20% tariff on all other goods from every other country, including Canada, which every sane human being on earth tells you will increase dramatically and materially inflation. And yet his people...

Don't see a problem there. Discuss. Because a lot of them think that's just Trump's negotiation point. You jack that number up. And by doing it, it's like dogs and cats in Ohio.

It gets people listening, and what it means is I'm going to be tough. I'm going to bring jobs back. It's another example in a different context. Yes. They don't take him at his word. Right. It's another tall tale. They know that he's purposefully overstating that in order to say, then you come down from the really high price. But the message is clear. I'm going to – there will be some sort of tariff. I'm going to not allow China to do piracy anymore of –

artist rights or whatever it might be. So it gets through to a certain group of people that that's what he's doing. And others are saying, this is nutty. I've spent my life doing economics. I've got a degree from Northwestern or University of Chicago. And now I'm listening to this billionaire Rube, you know, telling me about economic policy. And it's,

And so, yeah, it's still about Trump's sense of what we, I said earlier about that art of exaggeration, you know, the art of the deal. Then it strikes me, and I want to be careful to make clear, I'm not praising this other than to, as an observational matter, say, what kind of catbird seat are you in if you're a politician who has set the stage in a way that you can say anything the F you want,

And whether it's idiotic, whether you mean it, whether you don't, that can be taken by any part of your constituency as true if it suits them, as a sign of actual intent if it suits them, or as a tall tale if it suits them, or as bravado if it suits them. And there's literally nothing you can't say that doesn't serve your purpose in some way. Who else in modern history at that level has had that luxury?

Nobody except certain – It's nuts. That's what he has earned for himself, Trump. And that allows – he can tell 100 lies. And if Kamala Harris inches into one lie, she will get hammered for it because she's playing by the standard rules and Trump in an anarchistic way like a bull in the China shop breaking up any civic –

responsibility or common sense bonds just says, screw it, the rules don't apply to me. And unless he goes to jail for something and really found guilty in a big way, people are saying, you know, he's getting away with it. And he's turned, that is who Trump is. That's his, he could say anything to date.

10 things and none of it will really matter. And meanwhile, he'll make TikTok or, and kids will watch. Can you believe Trump said that? Isn't that funny? People don't take politics seriously. They find it as an entertainment form. Entertain me. Trump gave me some entertainment today on my iPhone. Did Harris entertain me? Well, they'll say he entertained me. Plus we weren't in wars and the economy was good, right? And it's, by the way, it's even worse than, and I'm almost done with this line.

It's worse than he can say anything, because it would seem to me that one of the most devastating critiques you can have of a leader, a manager, a CEO, a university president would be if that leader says, not uniquely, but says, I'm going to hire the very best of the best. And then pretty much everyone you hire in a top position, and in this case, it's something like 40 out of 47 cabinet secretaries plus the vice president, say that the leader is

who selected them and who they were predisposed to admire, respect, and serve and want to see reelected say, holy shit, this guy is unfit. This guy is terrible. He's a threat to democracy. You would think that that's an incontrovertible set of arguments against that guy. In fact, if anyone on The Apprentice who was aspiring to win on the show had that track record of defections among the top people that they hired at their company,

Trump would have said you're fired. And people who don't like Trump, you know, use that as an argument. And to me, it's a powerful argument. But then if you look and see what the Trump supporters say about that argument, they are almost uniform in supporting Trump in firing all those people and saying, well, those people didn't serve him well. Those people were rhinos. Those people were the establishment. Those people were the deep state.

Pay no mind to the fact that Trump is the one who hired them in the first place. And they say, that's why we're going to vote for him, because the next time around, he's not going to hire these establishment rhino asshole Republicans. He's going to hire the people who are going to serve him loyally. Can you make any sense of that? Yes, I do. And that's what a authoritarian or dictator does, right? It's all over the world.

You have to have a full allegiance to the leader. In America, we were supposed to have a smorgasbord of ideas. One could agree with Trump about border security but also believe climate change is real. You can be a Catholic who's worried about climate change but

but is also pro Roe v. Wade. Our spirit in America is about the individual integrity, working together in a community. But with Trump, you've got to be all in, 100%. There is no room for intellectual deviation.

And that creates this sort of syndrome of full bore allegiance. And without any, you know, the point of having good critics is that they allow you to rethink things and maybe find a better solution. I mean, John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, you bring in all the experts. What do you think? What do you think? Take a hundred different ones. Tell me what I'm doing wrong to problem solve with the correct outcome.

But there's nothing wrong with Trump running, criticizing, you know, saying my economy is better than your economy. There's nothing wrong with him saying we weren't in a war with Ukraine, Russia or Gaza, Israel when I was president. I think all of that's fair game. And I think he does that and brings that case.

It's the dehumanization of fellow Americans, of treating certain people using words like vermin. And it's not – there's a level. And this is where political correctness matters. It's a purposefully trying to hurt somebody, not accidentally saying something. And it's not something that people – he's not helping people want to serve in the U.S. government. He's convincing people not to.

Hence the line that you're suckers for having fought in World War I about our military. It's the thinking that why would you do that? Greed is king, not this sort of public service for not a high amount of money.

And how does one run a country with that? Well, what you do is you'll get oligarchs. You'll get rich people, a group preying on the middle class. But yet he's the leader of a kind of blue-collar middle class because somebody screwed people in Ohio, Illinois, Michigan.

Somebody, you know, made Cicero, Illinois or Akron a ghost town. The question is, who do you blame? And Trump was unique that he didn't pick parties. He blamed NAFTA. He blamed Clinton and Bush 41.

You know, he didn't want the, you know, a war in Iraq against, you know, he was willing to go after George W. Bush. I mean, that was unusual. That means he's not politics as usual. He's kind of a reformed third party, you know, guy. He should never be in one of the main two parties, but he found a way to own the Republican Party because nobody stood up to him properly. Or excuse me, Liz Cheney and all, but there are a few, but I don't know. And far between. Yeah.

Right, because, you know, we have this conversation about tribes and about polarization and party separation, but you're exactly right. It's not Republican and Democrat. It's sort of Democrat slash establishment, and I don't like that word either, versus this new thing. I mean, there's that old phrase, right? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. But it depends on who the enemy is. And Trump's enemy is not the Democrats. Trump's enemy is much, much broader and more effective, is it not? Absolutely. Absolutely.

And so my worries, I believed in the bipartisan consensus of NATO from Harry Truman all the way to Joe Biden, that if we keep the Atlantic alliance strong, prioritize NATO, keep our friendships with Japan and Australia and other key allies, it's worked.

he wants to blow it up because he really, uh, in the end doesn't like NATO because those countries never kissed his ring, Germany or France or Spain, number one, but number two, he sees it as a world of three big power people for, you know, it's realism run amok, uh, real policy, you know, four, four big guys run the world. All you little people, um, you know, you're gonna, who cares? Um,

And that hence why it's the shithole country of Haiti or any poor country in the world he'll dump on. And so it's the ultimate of a kind of an American arrogance. And if we're not wanting our children to behave like that, why would we want our president to behave like that? It's that simple. I have three kids. No parent I know raises their kids well.

to be like that. But there are a lot of Americans, half of the country, giving Trump an exemption card for his bad behavior because he represents their middle finger. They don't have to give the middle finger. Trump's giving it to them. If your life didn't turn out well, the American dream hasn't been yours, you've been ripped off and I'm your Avenger. And there's a lot of box office with that.

Yeah, and I wonder about what you just said, because I tend to think the way that you've talked also. But I think there are people who teach their kids not necessarily to use profanity in coarse language, but I think there are people who teach their children to be resentful of other groups. You know, the old phrase, I don't know if it's true, I'm not a behavioral psychologist, but

That prejudice and racism is not something you're born with. It's something you're taught. Well, who teaches it to you? Your family often teaches it to you. And if you've, if you're growing up in a place where you think you're losing out and the demographics, the demographics have shifted. Sure. Maybe you're teaching your kids and you know, maybe there's a bridge too far, but I'm kind of feeling it in this hour. Maybe you're teaching them to say please and thank you, but maybe you're also teaching them to resent and feel hatred towards their

People who don't look like you, who you think are taking your jobs. Isn't that fair? And that's what's happening right now. And it's deeply unfortunate. Um,

On the upside of the equation, I mean, we have in some way Kamala Harris from our house. And again, we're finally maybe getting our first woman president. But we've had Nancy Pelosi, first woman speaker of the House. We've had Ronald Reagan picking Sandra Day O'Connor of the Supreme Court. Women are more and more in politics. And we have more after Barack Obama. You know, there's a chance for anybody to live the dream to be president, regardless of color. They're still blocked.

to that by and large, but we are advancing as a country in a great way. So I see Trump as a reaction. Ronald Reagan, I added Reagan's diaries and Reagan in one line said, I'm not against FDR. I voted for him four times. I want to destroy the great society.

And that wars of the 60s and 70s still play out, the cultural wars. And this is kind of the revenge going on here. They want to undo Roe v. Wade, undo the EPA, undo Clean Air and Water Acts. At heart, he represents Trump in that regard, regulatory America. Trump people don't like the federal government regulating their businesses, right?

And everybody doesn't like the IRS because you got to pay money back.

So they're not blaming the company that left Ohio. If a factory leaves Ohio, they're blaming the government because the IRS is on their back. And that makes it very ripe for somebody like Trump to demonize the federal government. And if we don't have a federal government that people believe in, then what are we in the United States? And their answer may be states, states' rights. We're getting back to the oldest argument in American history.

You write about media and how the press works from time to time. Could you describe how you think the press has evolved since Trump came down that escalator? And I'll give you one example that I posted about on Twitter this past weekend. Donald Trump, you know, whether it's a tall tale or using abusive language, you know, whatever the case may be, he referred to Kamala Harris as a shit vice president.

I'm sitting vice president of the United States and, you know, I'm not a puritanical person. I do not, I do not have virgin ears. I curse up a storm in my private life. I don't do it on the podcast except in this episode. And people, um, I think, you know, have gotten very upset about that, particularly in, in a world in which the slightest, most innocuous seeming transgressions of etiquette on the part of Joe Biden or Barack Obama, uh,

were played out ad infinitum on Fox News, and they were accused of all sorts of things, including engaging in a fist bump once between Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. I was reminded that early in Trump's presidency, there was a CNN host, he had his own program, his name is Reza Aslan, who in his private capacity, I think on social media or somewhere, referred to Donald Trump as a piece of shit, which is his First Amendment right, and not too far off the mark, if you ask me.

And conservatives called for his head, called for him to be fired, and CNN fired him. How far have we come or how far have we fallen since 2016? Well, I wrote a biography of Walter Cronkite. And in 1981, he resigned from CBS News. And journalism had a very high approval rating, like 70%. Now it's 30%. And so there's been a—

by and large, people don't have a referee in media. They don't trust it. So we're in silos. We all know this. I think from when the escalator in CNN was covering Trump, he was good coverage. There's this plane, you know, Trump on it, landing in Alabama, and they played it over and over again, all under the assumption that he was blowing the Republican Party up, and then he'd lose to Hillary Clinton.

That has not – did not transpire. And the real enemy of Trump in his mind isn't Kamala Harris or Governor Walz. It is the media. That's where he wants to go at, that he feels that the media is corrupt.

And this is – he's saying this from the way he's felt treated, and he's going to make heads roll in that regard. I thought with the combination of comedians and news media that Trump would have been more damaged than he is. He couldn't have more insults thrown at him than – I don't know how he takes that much incoming and still stands. But the fact that he is standing even though – is –

Tells you that messages aren't going through and it's a changed media climate. And Trump understands, knew it when he adopted Twitter, knew it when he was Truth Social, that he can go over traditional media and it doesn't cost anything but a click.

And if you could say whatever the hell you want, there are no rules of engagement. The key is to be interesting, to say something that's startling, that gets your eyeballs wide open. Trump's mastered that.

I don't know anybody in American history that would go that route because it leads to shamelessness. And most American politicians, except Joe McCarthy, and there are many others, but most try to at least pretend they're not craving or pretend they wouldn't say a horrible thing about a woman or a person of color. But

Trump finds it as you punch me, I'll punch you back three times harder, and I'll amplify the issue, and I'll win in the end. And so many people have fallen down trying to take Donald Trump down. And so in that way, he's not Teflon, and he takes a lot of hits. But here he is neck to neck.

And some people feeling he's got momentum and potentially back in as our president again. We are in a big game. I think we lived in a – from Truman to Biden, it was still a kind of Cold War, post-Cold War era. Trump represents going into a different kind of world order where the United Nations is scoffed at and where NATO is – it either gets disbanded or loses control.

some of it's wallop. And instead, Trump's going to say, here are the countries that have money. Here are the ones that have power. Here's the ones like Putin who could just say yes or no to something that doesn't have to go through the brutality of a legislative process. And so he's trying to say the world should be run by four or five strongmen. I don't have a lot of hope for

or issues of polarization to ease anytime soon. But I have these two abiding views at the moment, and they will come into collision when you talk about the issue of polarization in 12 months. So my first deep and abiding hope and prayer is that Kamala Harris wins. I make no bones about that. I want her to be the next president and not Donald Trump. My second abiding view of life is that people who commit misconduct and break the law, no matter who they are, should be held accountable for those things.

So I want you to imagine a scenario in which Kamala Harris wins, Trump loses, and it's clear. Then all these cases that have been on hold and paused, the criminal cases in at least three jurisdictions and the appeal in the fourth jurisdiction, Manhattan, they continue to grind their way towards trial. And now you have Kamala Harris who's trying to bind the nation together

and take us forward, presumably. In the summer of 2025, perhaps, the country will be facing multiple criminal trials of her erstwhile opponent, Donald Trump, where once again, and I've used this phrase before, he will be the thief of our attention. He will be a political martyr in some sense. Accountability is important, and you reap what you sow. But at that moment, how do you think the administration of Kamala Harris is going to feel about

All eyes, every camera in the country, every microphone owned by the media in the country is going to be focused on the criminal trial of the political opponent who she beat in my hypothetical. When she's trying to get economic policy passed, she's trying to end wars in various parts of the world. She's trying to get people what she keeps saying over and over and over again to campaigns, a chance not just to keep up, but to get ahead.

How are they going to feel about that? All this commentary about accountability notwithstanding. It's the big question. If Harris wins, everything you said very likely would occur and Trump will still be owning the headlines. Front page, every paper in the country. And it's going to be very hard for Harris to get her message across.

But if her message on international scene is to stay strong with NATO, to work with the European Union, to not say – to not be enchanted by right-wing governments of Hungary and Turkey.

Turkey, and just try to continue a kind of foreign policies consensus. And here at home, listen to the voters that they had some concerns that Biden-Harris did not convince enough Americans that they were focused on the border.

They needed to have and they didn't. Listen to people that talk about the need for some more energy independence, but don't destroy wilderness and national forest while doing it. She'll have to just go forward, but it puts her in a box because Trump will still be out there.

dominating, like you said. There's no question about it, but she should stay out of it. Let the courts do what they do. And then there could come a moment where she decides whether to pardon him or they lessen a penalty. How do you do it? I used to think Jerry Ford did the right thing pardoning Nixon. I don't think that anymore. You don't. And is that because of the experience of Trump? Yes.

Because I thought that because when then Nixon went on Frost and said, my belief is with the president does it, it's legal. And now you get our Supreme Court verdict with increasing presidential power to an unprecedented degree. It creates a bit of a frightening scenario. So I think at that point, Harris will probably have to not pardon it.

Trump, and he may be forced to stay on the compound at Mar-a-Lago or lose assets, and he may not be found guilty of anything, and he might go sailing forward. I don't want to prejudge any court case, but what your main point is, yes, Trump will remain a burden, a burr on the saddle of the Harris administration for sure.

Professor Douglas Brinkley, really a treat and a pleasure to have you on the show and to help me with some of my therapy. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. My conversation with Douglas Brinkley continues for members of the Cafe Insider community. In the bonus for insiders, we discuss college, electoral, and otherwise. I am not in favor of it, except it's not going away anytime soon.

To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com slash insider. Again, that's cafe.com slash insider. I want to end the show this week by talking about something completely different.

As you may have seen, there were a lot of amazing sporting events and outcomes this week. Of course, for someone like me, who grew up in the suburbs of New York City in the 70s, the return of the Yankees and Dodgers to center stage at the World Series is both an amazing spectacle and also kind of a giddy return to my childhood. If you grew up a Yankees fan at the same time I did, you'll understand exactly what I mean.

But there is precedent for that, and that's not the big sports event I want to acknowledge. Instead, I want to take a moment to celebrate the New York Liberty, who on Sunday won the WNBA championship for the first time in the franchise's 27-year history. What a feat. It's the first basketball title for any New York area team in 48 years. Even the New York Post, infamous for its relentless shit-talking, had to celebrate with a cover headline that read, Sweet Liberty.

My producer, Noah, who is a huge fan of the Liberty, wanted me to share a couple of amazing things about their journey to the league championship. The team was bought by Barclays co-owners Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai in 2019 and moved to Brooklyn. Before that, the future WNBA champions were playing just north of the city in Westchester to crowds of fewer than 2,000 people. In the few years since their move, the Liberty has exploded.

On Sunday, they beat the Minnesota Lynx in overtime before a record-breaking sellout crowd of 18,090. Clara Wusai spoke at the Barclays Center in the minutes after the win. Look what can happen when you have an intention and you put resources and care and attention to it. This is what can happen when you invest in women. Thank you.

As a New Yorker, I am of course excited for the city, which will host a ticker tape parade for the Liberty on Thursday in downtown Manhattan. But it's more than that. This is a big moment for women athletes who work tirelessly to be recognized, supported, and compensated equitably. At a recent game, Noah spoke to a couple of parents who brought their two young daughters to the stadium. They said their girls thought the players were superheroes, literally.

Their daughters talk about the star players long after they leave the games. And that is what this is about. This is a win for all the young girls who dream of playing basketball or any other sport on the world's biggest stages, who can now see what is possible. Go Liberty. Well, that's it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Douglas Brinkley.

Or you can send an email to letters at cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tadishore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noah Azoulay and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernandez. And the Cafe team is Matthew Billy, Nat Wiener, and Leanna Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost.

I'm your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.

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