Politics Chat, May 28, 2026

Añadido: 2026-06-01

[00:00:05][music] >> Welcome to Politics Chat, in which I try to answer your questions about modern politics.

[00:00:22]>> [music] >> Let me start with a place that honestly doesn't feel like the place that I should be starting, but I just have to.

[00:00:37]I realized this morning that, you know, I get it, you know, I wake up and I instantly look through the news.

[00:00:43]And I realized this morning that, um, you know, somebody asked me last night said I should write a letter for literally saying to the people the future for whom I write, "This is what it looks like today."

[00:00:56]But, I got up this morning and I took a look at the news and I took a look at the aerial photographs of the White House.

[00:01:04]And it just hit me that in this moment, in this week, we are looking at the cover of a million books written about the Trump era in the future and a million documentary films.

[00:01:19]Because if you look at an aerial view of the White House right now compared to what the White House looked like a year, you know, when Biden was in office, in place of the Rose Garden, the you know, the world-famous Rose Garden, which is was small and you know, I got to see it. I've I've been to see it. It was small and it was sort of intimate and in place of that now, that's been paved over to look like one of the patios at Mar-a-Lago. So, the Rose Garden is gone. Now, you got this sort of patio that looks as somebody said like a Panera.

[00:01:54]And then the East Wing of the White House is gone. It's rubble. It's a It's a construction site. It's It looks just like like it you know, it's like a hellscape of because it was all torn down.

[00:02:08]And now on the South Lawn of the White House, that sweeping expanse in front of the White House, there is a giant Ultimate Fighting Championship or UFC arena being built for the cage matches that Trump has scheduled for his birthday, his 80th birthday, June 14th.

[00:02:33]So, you've gone from this image of the White House that was really very traditional, you know, the blue the green lawn and the roses and the the original piece of the building that had been added on to and so on and the East Wing to a paved section, debris and construction, and an Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match arena to seat 5,000 people on the front of the South Lawn. And it just you just look at it and you think like the the historians whose great-grandparents aren't born yet are going to look back at that image and they're going to say, "Well, I got to have that be the cover of my book."

[00:03:24]Because as a symbol of what the Trump administration has done to the American government, it's just it's just so extraordinarily on the nose. It real It just really is. And the way the cage match is done, it's set to have sort of this bow over it so that it will be the White House will be framed by it for the television cameras. So, that in the scheme of many of the things that are in front of us right now is you know the least in some ways of our worries. I mean I care deeply deeply about the historic buildings of this country but I care more about the people who are in concentration camps. So on the scheme of things you know as much as it hurts to see what's happening in the White House.

[00:04:15]It doesn't hurt nearly as badly as seeing what's happening to people in American concentration camps.

[00:04:22]But it still jumps out of you, right? So when let's start with that because there's a lot going on there and then of course once I thought of that I'm like oh then I got to got to play it out. But so I think one of the things that's happening and this has been happening throughout Trump's second term is he is failing mentally. I mean I've said this a gazillion times. It's like obvious at this point to everybody, right? Even though it's not getting much traction in the media. But one of the things that he has done in his second term and then I think his advisers have encouraged is that he has spent more and more time essentially being a real estate guy. But his real estate is now the property of the federal government. So we're getting the destruction of the Sorry, the Ben Shahn murals. I'll throw that one out there as well. But we're getting the destruction of the Kennedy Center and the extraordinary um experiment for whatever is going on there in the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial and now the threat to build a triumphal arch. Although what exactly we're we're triumphing over is unclear to me. Um a triumphal arch there on the Virginia side of the bridge between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial. And by the way um I wrote about that a few days ago and and a bunch of people were like well how do you know what that arch is going to frame? The um The New York Times, which is linked in that piece, has uh uh interactive uh article where you can actually see a rendering um in a a 3D image of what that arch is going to be, and it's it's pretty clear that it does in fact frame Arlington House.

[00:06:06]Um And there's another rabbit hole I do do truly love to go into. You know, when all this is over, I'm just going to going to I don't know, write a book or do a video series called rabbit holes, because the story of Arlington House and the people who lived in Arlington House is the most interesting story ever in terms of anything that I would like to write about. And so maybe I'll write that book. Anyway, it's not just the Lee family um by a long shot. Look it up. All right.

[00:06:35]Um So, he's turned to these this idea of basically his happy place. He's gone back to being a real estate guy.

[00:06:44]And and yet what we are seeing is the destruction of the American government at the at the whims of this man who's not bothering at all to pay attention to anything legal about the way such renovation should be doing, but also of course has acted as if we don't have a constitution.

[00:07:03]He hasn't just broken the constitution.

[00:07:04]He's acted as if we don't have one. And that's a little bit of a different thing, because if we don't have one at all, that suggests we have the the space for the rise of an authoritarian dictator.

[00:07:18]And you know, I've talked before a lot about how the idea for this um it comes from a political scientist who becomes beloved of the Nazis and and the ways in which the Trump administration has worked through emergency declarations the same way that that philosopher said would be a good way to get rid of a constitution, put someone in power, and then a a of the people around Trump believe in that system or at least have emphasized it in a number of writings and so on. But so while he has destroyed the actual physical building of the White House and the spaces that are beloved of the American people in the US Capitol, he has also been acting as if we don't have a constitution and that what he's putting in its place is this idea of a strongman and he is obviously going to be the strongman. But the other piece of it that I think is interesting is the worse things go for him politically, the more he is doubling down on things like that, reflecting pool and the bright blue of the reflecting pool or um the the ballroom that he keeps talking about and so on. So there is also this almost like it really is his happy place. You go back to the place where you're comfortable when you're under stress. And that um I don't know where your happy place is, mine is a specific library.

[00:08:41]Um but you know, if you're really really stressed out, there are places where you're happy and it feels like he is going back to this deeper and deeper because this is a place where he feels happy.

[00:08:54]And that says something about what else is going on in the country. So one of the things to be watching right now, of course, is Iran and what Trump has done with Iran and I'm not going to rehearse where we have been with that cuz I've talked about it almost every time I've come on this webcast since he and uh Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel began to bomb Iran in February on February 2028th. But the bottom line at this point is Trump doesn't have a way out and the pressure is building. And what I mean by not having a way out is this.

[00:09:30]Right now Iran essentially is holding the upper hand or as Trump would say the cards.

[00:09:37]Because although the It Israelis and the US forces have inflicted enormous damage on Iran, Iran has managed to get control and to keep control over the Strait of Hormuz, through which before Trump and Israel attacked or the US and Israel attacked, about 20% of the world's oil flowed.

[00:09:57]So, by having control over that strait, the Strait of Hormuz, um Iran has been able to put enormous pressure politically not only on the US, but especially on the US, but also around the world. And this is a tragedy, by the way, of huge proportions. Because although I haven't focused on it much cuz my emphasis is America, the the cutting into the fertilizer supplies for countries that are food insecure is going to have extraordinary um repercussions over the course of the summer and the next year. And some of those countries are already in in dire straits because of war or because now of uh Ebola that is spreading us through the Democratic Republic of the of Congo, for example.

[00:10:44]So, the this is a this is a global issue that's happening. But here at home, what it has meant is that Trump expected to have a very quick turnaround. That he was going to go in, he was going to get rid of the leadership that he didn't like, he was going to get back out the same way he did in Venezuela, and then everything was going to be hunky-dory.

[00:11:04]And apparently, the Iranians did not get the memo because they have retained control over the Strait of Hormuz. And what this means is that in order to reopen that strait, and that's actually quite important in a in a really cosmic way, not just simply the issue of the transportation of fertilizer and of oil and of other products through that strait, but it's also important because since at least uh let's I'll I'll say 1941, but even before that, one of the things that the US and its allies have really backed is the idea of freedom of the seas.

[00:11:41]Because once you start having countries being able to, um, to have tolls, for example, over straits that are near them or over different bodies of water or to threaten each other's ships on the water, you, first of all, run the risk of conflicts between between countries, but you also get rid of free trade. And once you get rid of free trade, you're going to really hurt economies everywhere. So, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is a really big deal, and it it this is the first time in in modern history that it's been closed.

[00:12:12]And and this is really on Trump, right?

[00:12:15]So, he wants that to to reopen.

[00:12:19]But the problem with it is that there doesn't, you know, Iran is is saying, you know, we're basically going to extract some concessions from you before we do that. We want reparations, we want unfreezing of some of our uh uh assets that have been frozen overseas because of sanctions. They've asked for a number of things. And Trump, in turn, is saying, but I want your uh, ability to create a nuclear weapon, and I want that strait back open. And these are actually not compatible. Um, they certainly could be negotiated, and the Obama administration, along with China and France and Germany and the United Kingdom and um, did I say China? I did.

[00:13:01]I don't forget who the fifth country was, I'm sorry, off the top of my head.

[00:13:05]Did in 2015 negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA that took a lot of these issues and found a solution to them, and that's what Trump took us out of in 2018. That he's now trying sort of to get back to, but he's not going to get back to that specific issue. Anyway, all that to say that some of Trump's supporters, especially on the on the far right side, want him to to really start bombing Iran again and force Iran to reopen that straight.

[00:13:34]But if he does that, Iran does have the capability to hurt and to hit Arab states, especially the oil production of nearby states. And of course the Arab states are like, "Don't even think about it because you're hurting our economy really badly and they're taking out our oil."

[00:13:51]So, if he makes those strikes, that's going to create problems for the United States and for Trump. And the other thing he could do is he could send in ground troops and I don't think that I need to explain why that's not going to be a very popular thing in the United States of America.

[00:14:09]Or he could simply do nothing, which would leave Iran in control of the straight and that's not popular.

[00:14:16]But what he can't do is leave it because as in the condition it's in with the Iran being able to control what ships can go through the straight, pressure is mounting because the US is not getting the kind of oil it's accustomed to using and just today um the news came out that what we have been doing around the world, but certainly in the US is the US has been spending down whatever reserves people had to try and keep prices somewhat low and those reserves are running out and when they do, they're going to we're going to hit another real energy shock. Thank God it's summer because those of us who live in cold climates um you know, it it's bad enough trying to heat your home in the you know, even where oil was and now we're in a real mess. So, basically he can't walk away, he can't bomb again, and he can't leave things the way they are. And this is a recipe for extraordinary stress. And so, that I think is another reason he's turning back to all of the work in the um in the uh, on the on the the building that he's trying to do in Washington, D.C.

[00:15:30]Um, but but there's another way in which he's really lashing out. And the way in which he started lashing out yesterday, mostly yesterday, was that um, he's not entirely suddenly, but he's begun to lash out against people who have gotten the better of him in the past. It's almost as if he is determined to demonstrate his dominance.

[00:15:55]Because he's very into these whole ideas of dominance displays and the idea, you know, he's he cares a lot about, you know, the the ultimate fighting championship and he cares a lot about uh, professional wrestling and, you know, the whole idea of this administration was that it was going to every day was going to be an episode in a soap opera and he had to win the end of every day. And he cares a lot about dominance, you know, he never backs down, he always has to dominate. So, last night, we learned from CNN that the Department of Justice has opened up a criminal investigation into whether 82-year-old now um, E. Jean Carroll, the journalist um, who won a number of lawsuits against Trump, committed criminal perjury in her testimony about um, her defamation suit against Trump and about her uh, her lawsuit accusing Trump of sexually assaulting her.

[00:16:53]Um, that is a a case that Trump has tried very hard to get out of. He's tried very hard to say, first of all, that he didn't sexually assault her and then that he should not have to pay the extraordinary numbers of millions that a judge awarded um, E. Jean Carroll after a jury did in fact convict Trump. Um, and the the reopening of that was just not really reopening, I'm sorry. The fact he's got the Department of Justice to look into whether or not she has committed a crime in her testimony almost just seemed like a knee-jerk I got to beat somebody up to me anyway.

[00:17:30]And that she was a logical place for him to try and assert dominance both because she's female and because she won against him in the past. And that that I thought was interesting, but that's not the only thing yesterday. He also refiled his lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.

[00:17:49]And again, there's so many lawsuits I know, but he had I believe it was a $10 billion lawsuit. Don't quote me on that. It's off the top of my head.

[00:17:58]I said I actually couldn't really prepare either today cuz I was busy doing stuff, but a $10 billion lawsuit as I recall against the Wall Street Journal for publishing that birthday card with his signature on it that was came from the Epstein estate that had been a gift to Jeffrey Epstein on his I think 50th birthday. And the Wall Street Journal published that and and said that it came from Trump and Trump sued and the case got thrown out for technical reasons and now he has relaunched it.

[00:18:39]And that was interesting because that card shows you know, the Wall Street Journal keeps calling it a body card which is a word but it is seemingly child a girl.

[00:18:58]And the writing of the words on it are very suggestive of um sexual assault against children.

[00:19:10]So it was interesting that once again in a case that had sort of somewhat fortuitously gone away for for Trump, um that he felt the need to refile that.

[00:19:23]Remembering, of course, that The Wall Street Journal is owned by the Murdoch family, Rupert Murdoch.

[00:19:29]And that they have always been on Trump's side. And this almost seemed again, obviously they're not that much anymore. The Wall Street Journal has been turning out really pretty hard-hitting journalism that exposes things like that birthday card.

[00:19:43]But it was interesting that he felt the the need to reopen that as well.

[00:19:51]Um but there was also the fact that um one of the things that Trump has always insisted is that it that the Department of Justice has been used against him, not that he's using it against other people. And that, of course, is the justification for that 1.776 billion dollar slush fund that is designed allegedly to go provide payment for those people who were convicted of crimes associated with Trump's attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

[00:20:31]Trump's argument for that slush fund was that the Department of Justice had been weaponized, as he says, against his him and his supporters.

[00:20:41]So, while they're making that argument, they are in fact using the Department of Justice themselves against other people, which is again a tactic that a number of Republicans have used for a while now, accuse other people of what you yourself are doing. I'll come back to that in a minute.

[00:20:57]>> [snorts] >> But last night a group of 35 former judges wrote a a letter asking the judge who closed Trump's lawsuit that that led to the slush fund, asking that judge to reopen the case uh because they believed it was a fraud on the American people. And let me untangle that just a little bit for you. A number of people have referred to that slush fund as part of a settlement.

[00:21:32]And it was explicitly not part of a settlement.

[00:21:37]Trump had sued the Internal Revenue Service for the fact that a contractor to the IRS during his first term had released the tax returns of more than 400,000 people to media outlets.

[00:21:52]He sued the IRS during his second term for $10 billion.

[00:21:58]And the judge who was in charge of that suit was looking at it like there were a lot of signs that she was going to say this isn't real because you can't sue yourself.

[00:22:10]And then turn around and say, "Well, I deserve this much in a settlement." You just can't do that. That's That's not actually a lawsuit. So, right before she was about to decide whether or not it was a real lawsuit and could go forward, Trump and his sons and the Trump Organization, all the people who brought it in the first place, dropped it. They closed it.

[00:22:30]So, it went away. And she she in her order canceling the depositions and so on, or canceling the movement forward of that case, she said, "This isn't a settlement.

[00:22:41]The case is done. That That This there is I have not seen a settlement. There is nothing about what I'm hearing about that is part of this case."

[00:22:52]That same day, or maybe it was even the day before, the Department of Justice said it had a settlement agreement with Trump, his oldest sons, and the Trump Organization, and that part of that settlement agreement was this slush fund.

[00:23:10]And so, what these judges have asked is for the judge to reopen that case and say, "Are you perpetrating a fraud on the American people with this 1.776 billion-dollar slush fund, essentially?"

[00:23:23]So, that is also here on the table in the last 2 days.

[00:23:29]Um but I but I'm not done yet. I'm really not done, and I will try to be quick here.

[00:23:35]Um The other thing that we heard today came from ProPublica, which has been doing just phenomenal work. I really urge you to support them if you can.

[00:23:45]That the Pentagon did a $620 million deal with a company that Donald Trump Jr. had invested in, and at the time when people s- you know, people's eyes kind of eyebrows kind of went up.

[00:24:03]The White House and Trump Jr. said, "Well, you know, no strings were pulled. You know, I this had nothing to do with us." Turns out Peter Navarro, who is Trump's trade adviser, actually said to the Pentagon, "You got to get this deal done, and you got to get this deal done quickly." And that, according to ProPublica, and that is um you know, corruption 101, basically. So, you have that actually on the table as well. So, I think all of these things, these pressures are starting to mount, and they're they're illus- illustrative of what's happened to the American government, but I think they're also illustrative of increasing pressure on Trump himself.

[00:24:47]But, let me just move a little bit further south and west for a minute, because the other thing that is happening out of Texas is really interesting. And remember when I look at this stuff, um I'm not a journalist. You know, sometimes people think I am. I am not a journalist. I'm trained very differently than a journalist. My interest is in the American government, in the United States of America and its continuation.

[00:25:18]And I've talked a lot about why I care so much about America, but or the United States of America, just to be very clear, there is a distinction between the continents of North America and South America and the United States of America that is a political entity. And that's my thing, is that political entity. And I can talk about other places as well, but only as they interface with that political entity.

[00:25:44]And so when I look at what's happening in the country right now, I don't really do the the what people call the horse race thing of who's ahead and who's, you know, what should somebody say and, you know, what should this party do and what should that party do.

[00:25:58]That's that's not I wouldn't say it's not my business. I I'm just not interested in that. What I am interested in is the way the American people have changed over time to try and perpetuate their country and how that's played out through politics and through political parties. So one of the things that fascinates me right now is happening all over the country, but it really showed on Tuesday, I guess it was, in Texas where Trump managed to unseat uh an incumbent long-term incumbent Senator John Cornyn.

[00:26:39]And it looked like Paxton would have run would have won anyway, Attorney General um Paxton in uh in uh in he's the Attorney General of uh of Texas. And he's a he is not only MAGA, he is MAGA and he's aggressive.

[00:26:57]He's fighting fighting the culture wars all the time. And he has been indicted for securities fraud and um he got again, because he's the attorney general, things end up not he gets sort of ways to serve or or or make restitution for things that he's been in trouble with that um sort of seem a little bit milder than other people might have gotten.

[00:27:24]Um but there's he's got he's just got one scandal after another attached to him. And the reason that this is interesting to me is that it looked as if Remember in primaries, usually in primaries, the most extreme members of a party turn out. And so especially on the Republican side what that means is that the the people who win tend to be more and more and more extreme. And because of gerrymandering, this is not true of a Senate case a Senate um campaign by the way because that's statewide, but for House seats, that tends to mean that you get really extremist candidates and that's how you get, you know, the Lauren Boeberts and the and the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world is because with gerrymandering, those districts are going to go Republican even if you are um running a, you know, a Canasota um because they're just if it's got an R by its name, they're just going to vote for it. So um >> the the primary nod in that primary.

[00:28:50]So, first of all, they have just lit on fire $90 million.

[00:28:55]And the people who study these things estimate it's going to be $250 million to win that seat for Paxton. So, that's over $300 million that Donald Trump just basically burned up on the Republican side.

[00:29:10]But, it's also interesting because Paxton is a darling of the MAGA branch of the Republican Party.

[00:29:19]But, he's really unattractive even for more traditional Republicans because he has had such corruption that even the Texas House of Representatives impeached him and they're Republican dominated.

[00:29:31]They're like, "This guy's a bridge too far even for us." And the Senate acquitted him under a lot of pressure from Trump. But, you know, he's also in real trouble. He's in the middle of a divorce that his wife, um, who's a a state senator in Texas as well, um, said she was getting for biblical grounds, um, that that's going to probably carry a lot of weight in Texas. He's not a savory character.

[00:29:56]And at the same time, running against him is a Democrat, a guy named, uh, James Talarico.

[00:30:02]Young guy and, um, and one of the people that I've been watching for a while because he is he's an eighth-generation Texas Texan and he's been really outspoken about his Christian faith. But, it's a kind of Christian faith that leads him to policies that are progressive policies, education, health care, um, treating people right, you know, all those sorts of things that have been as associated in the past with reform and progressivism, um, that have really been hijacked by white evangelical Christians. Black evangelical Christians are not this way, but white evangel- as a group, but white evangelical Christians have really hijacked that idea of Christianity and tied it to the Republican mega project, which itself is really interesting. I'm actually working on a new book about this. But Talarico is um running really strong. He's running really strong against Paxton. He was running strong against Cornyn, too.

[00:31:05]But Cornyn was um a much more sort of tradi- He'd been in the office a really long time, much more traditional senator in the Republican Party. And it's a really interesting moment because it feels to me, and see what you think, cuz you know, I just I watch. I feel like sometimes I feel like I'm Charlotte of Charlotte's Web. She's, you know, the kind of the person I compare myself to.

[00:31:27]She's up there in the corner watching, you know? And she's I say she's a writer and a good friend, and that's I hope what I am.

[00:31:36]Um But as I watch it feels, and and I use that word deliberately because I am not I don't have the numbers behind me. I You know, I follow a number of people who do, but it feels to me like there's something in the water.

[00:31:54]And what I mean by that is that my frame of reference is always the 18- Weirdly, the 1850s and the 1890s and the 1920s, the three periods that I have studied most deeply in the work that I do. And in the in my historical work. And in those periods, you get a time when neither party, traditional party, seems to be standing up against those people who are taking over the American system.

[00:32:24]And they are managing to take over the government by mobilizing voters on cultural issues. And in the 1850s and the 1890s and the 1920s, um it was largely about white racism against black Americans, although in the 1920s and the 1890s, but especially the 1920s, there's a very healthy dollop of anti-immigrant sentiment in there as well. Some in the 1850s, but really in the 1890s and then overwhelmingly in the 1920s. And you can absolutely see this in the language that's already coming out of Paxton in Texas over James Tal Rico. Although, interestingly, what what they're doing against Tal Rico is they are trying to portray him as somebody who is not masculine enough, which again, absolutely fascinates me.

[00:33:18]Uh they have called him transgender and they have said he is low-T and that he is a vegan and you know, all these sort of markers for people that they consider not masculine enough.

[00:33:32]And for Texas. And um he's been handling it absolutely beautifully. But the reason that it that interests me is um because when that ability to get voters to vote against their own interests based on cultural issues, racism, sexism, um the issues that mobilize angry white voters.

[00:34:01]When that breaks, when when American voters recognize that they have put in power a cabal of people who are turning the American government into their own pockets, um that are making the laws and the system function in such a way that the rich get richer and everybody else, um you know, can go to hell in their own way, if you will.

[00:34:24]When that breaks, there's a real change in politics. And yes, there's a change in who gets elected, for sure. You get a new generation of people. Aside from Aside from anything else, you get a new generation. You get new voices, which I think you can see happening around us.

[00:34:38]But you can absolutely see it in the 1850s and the 1890s. That's where we get Teddy Roosevelt. That's where we get Abraham Lincoln. And we get this new set of voices.

[00:34:47]But you also get a political realignment in which people's old political allegiances fall away. Not all of them.

[00:34:55]I mean, again, I'm speaking in really general terms, but where people suddenly who had been absolutely committed Whigs, for example, walk away from the party. So, Abraham Lincoln in when this all starts in the 1850s in 1854, Abraham Lincoln is such a committed Whig that when this upstart political party, the Republicans, tries to court him, he's like, "I don't want you know, I'm a Whig. It's not happening. I'm a Whig. This is This is how I'm going to make my political If I go back to politics, it's going to be as a Whig." Well, of course, by '59, he's the guy at the head of the Republican Party articulating its principles. And those those shifts throw everything into confusion. And from that, you end up creating a new set of a a new ideology for a new era.

[00:35:52]And you know, who knows? I mean, in each of the periods I mentioned, it looked as if that cabal of first the um the slave power, the elite enslavers in the 1850s, and then the robber barons in the 1890s, and then, you know, the pro-business Republicans in the 1920s, it looked like they had stitched up the entire system so that there wasn't going to be any room for a movement that would return politics to the people. And in each of them, the country turned really, really quickly.

[00:36:28]And I don't know what's going to happen going forward. Um you know, we could stay in this authoritarian moment and we could fall to authoritarianism and I absolutely don't want people to get complacent because now as I keep saying is the time to bring power to bear.

[00:36:43]But I'm sitting here looking at a president who is almost 80 years old, can't stay awake in a cabinet meeting, um is so corrupt that even former judges are saying, you know, we got to do something about the slush fund and he's got the Pentagon giving $620 million to a company that his son is invested in and you know, he's he's got Qatar giving him airplanes and he's taking the money from our um national park fees to repair fountains in Washington, D.C. Um which just don't even start me. I'm looking at that but this the corruption that is surrounding increasingly surrounding him.

[00:37:34]And his his his fighting against E. Jean Carroll and the Wall Street Journal almost seems like desperation because he recognizes that it seems to be falling apart. Certainly in terms of Iran, certainly in terms of the economy. And when you And it feels like he's getting smaller.

[00:37:54]And as that happens, there seems again to be really wiggling going on in what might be possible going forward. And as I say that, I recognize that I've been calling this now for a decade, right? Saying, "Come on, it's time. It's time to rebuild this country."

[00:38:14]So maybe I'll be saying it for another decade.

[00:38:17]But I do feel like if Texas is in play at the senator level.

[00:38:26]It's going to be a struggle going forward because I think it's really clear that um that the Republicans understand that they cannot win this unless they manage to make it harder for the rest of us to vote and make it harder for our votes to be counted. And then that begs the question, will we accept that? And I think the answer to that's no.

[00:38:46]>> [snorts] >> So, I guess the story that I have today is that just as always, lots going on, but it certainly feels as if we continue on this race to see whether Trump's authoritarianism or the American people are going to triumph in the end. And the actions of this week, the cage the cage uh arena in front of the White House, that aerial view, Trump lashing out at E. Jean Carroll and at the Wall Street Journal. Judges saying you got to get rid of that slush fund. Iran sort of being an intractable intractable problem that right now um is is in such creating such pressure that now the Iran and America, the US are are actually striking each other again. And on the June 2nd, we've got Congress coming back into session where it's entirely likely they will decide that Trump has to withdraw the troops from Iran. You know, there's just an awful lot of pressure building up on that White House. And in this moment, I would once again urge people to continue to speak up not only about what you don't like about the Trump administration, but about what you want going forward. You know, what does the world look like the a good world look like to you? And and I got to say after everything we've heard this week about the use of our fee money going into national parks for um the Trump's vanity projects in Washington D.C. You know, I keep saying my thing is education and the weather and overall climate change. That to me is a given.

[00:40:27]But for me, protecting our national parks is climbing the charts. So, let's figure out what we want and what we think America looks like and what it means to to protect a country that actually provides us not just with enough food on the table, although it's not doing that right now for everybody, but also with the tools to create the kind of world that we would like to live in.

[00:40:51]Cuz it just it just feels like I mean, I'm tired like everybody else, but it feels increasingly like a world of possibility. In part because what we are seeing is so outrageous and be in part because so many people who previously would not have listened to the idea that a Republican president was actively hurting them can look at the cage match arena on the White House and think, "This is not where I expected to be."

[00:41:25]>> [music] >> If you'd like to tune in live, I record these chats on Tuesday and Thursday at 6:00 p.m. Maine time on both my YouTube channel and my Facebook page. If you want to hear more from me, I write letters from an American every night.

[00:41:46]It's available on Substack and on Facebook.

[00:41:49]And the audio version of the nightly letter is available the following day wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:41:56]And finally, on Saturday mornings I talk with Dr. Joanne Freeman, the historian of the early Republic, professor, and dear friend about history and politics.

[00:42:07]We call our talks what the heck just happened and you You find them on YouTube.

[00:42:12]Politics Chat is produced by Lauren Westfall, music by Andrea von Campen.