'A speech JFK would have been happy to give’: Historian reacts to Mamdani’s America 250 address

[0:00] President Trump has spent this milestone anniversary doing what he does best, [0:04] making the story of America a story about himself. [0:09] After years of suggesting that his face belongs at Mount Rushmore, [0:13] the president traveled to the monument last night. [0:16] He did not repeat that idea from the podium, [0:18] but passengers aboard Air Force One were handed cookies depicting Mount Rushmore with a fifth face, Donald Trump's. [0:26] According to a social media post by Bettina Trump, the wife of Donald Trump Jr., [0:31] the text of the cookie reads, quote, Black Hills, South Dakota, five presidents. [0:39] Instead of delivering a unifying message about the country's future, [0:43] President Trump devoted much of his remarks to warning against a renewed communist threat in the United States, [0:49] calling for political opponents to be, quote, sent into exile and pushing his Save America Act. [0:56] There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, [1:01] including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. [1:10] We're not going to let them take too long or too much of our time as they play their games [1:14] and send them into exile. [1:17] We will send them quickly away. [1:18] We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms if we are foolish, stupid, and unwise. [1:29] But if we terminate the filibuster as we should do and immediately vote for the Save America Act, [1:37] then we will not lose an election for 100 years. [1:43] I was nine years old when the country celebrated the Bicentennial, and the mood was completely different. [1:51] Anne Applebaum writes about this in her piece in The Atlantic, but it was a national celebration. [1:56] It was about America. It was not about one particular person. [2:01] And my friend Karen Finney reminded me, she brought to dinner the other night, [2:05] her father in 1976 bought a bunch of $2 bills commemorative. [2:11] And this is one of them. It's from 1976 on the front. [2:17] But here's the key thing. It's the founders signing the Declaration of Independence. [2:25] And what's significant about this is that the president's signature is not on this bill. [2:31] The president himself, Gerald Ford at the time, is not on this bill. [2:36] And it stands in stark contrast to the president we have now, who his signature is going to be on some of the money, [2:44] who's trying to insert himself into the American story and make the American story about him and not about us. [2:51] It's not surprising that Donald Trump would do that. [2:54] Like, we all knew this is how it would be. [2:57] But I think actually seeing all of the ways in which he has inserted and superimposed himself onto this story of America is— [3:07] like, historians are going to have a field day, because there's so much there. [3:11] And I think there was a world in which even Donald Trump, as president, took this as an anniversary of 250th proof, [3:19] you know, was able to prove his naysayers wrong, stick it to us, who always say he thinks only about himself, [3:25] and he just doesn't have that capability, even in the speech yesterday in South Dakota. [3:30] Among all those guys, right, who gave so much to the country, flawed as though they were, [3:37] he has an inability to not turn everything into a rally speech, a speech that is divisive, [3:44] a thing about fighting, and bringing the country together. [3:47] It's just not in him. [3:48] Yeah, I mean, I do think 250 years into the American experiment, [3:56] we're certainly at a very interesting moment that provides us a lot of fodder to scrutinize [4:04] and question whether or not we are living up to those ideals right now. [4:09] Well, there's obviously been a very imperfect implementation of democracy, [4:14] but I do encourage people to, at the end of the day, no matter what is going on in our world, [4:22] to try to use the moment to take a step back and reflect on their own lives, make it about themselves. [4:29] Take that character energy and channel it into yourself. [4:33] I mean, yesterday I was talking with my dad, and my family history has actually informed my love of this country, [4:38] and that's something I feel like I've sort of forgotten about, being caught up in the day-to-day news leading up to this. [4:45] My great-grandfather was the mayor of a small town in Spain, and he opposed fascism [4:50] and spent two years in a Franco concentration camp during the Spanish Civil War. [4:55] My grandparents, living in that oppressive fascist government, [4:58] decided to leave when they were old enough to do so. [5:03] They moved to the United States in the 1950s and made a life out of nothing. [5:08] So I hope everyone can... [5:11] None of our stories are possible anywhere else. [5:13] Correct. [5:13] Like all three of us, and many of you at home, [5:16] nothing that we could have done to be here happens anywhere but the United States. [5:20] Right. [5:20] So I am grateful for that. [5:22] But because I'm grateful for that, I am also, I feel, a duty, [5:27] as a person who lives in this country who's benefited, [5:29] to make sure that other people also get those same benefits that the country has promised. [5:32] Yeah. [5:33] I mean, as descendants of slaves who built this country and from a community that marched in [5:39] the streets and bled and fought for the right to vote and to make this country a more perfect union, [5:47] I defy anyone to tell me that I do not love this country and I am not a part of this country. [5:53] I will fight anybody who tries to say that I am not American. [5:59] Joining us now, Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian, professor of history at Rice University, [6:04] and Anne Applebaum, staff writer for The Atlantic and author of Autocracy, Inc. [6:09] This is a wonderful panel to kick off this show. [6:12] Thank you both very much for coming to the weekend. [6:15] Anne, let me start with you because, as I noted in our host chat, I was nine years old in 1976, [6:20] and what I loved among many things about your piece in The Atlantic is that you pointed out [6:26] you were 11 years old in 1976, and you talked about what the country was like then, [6:33] the celebrations happening all over the country. [6:36] And you write in your piece, I had it in front of me, here it is, [6:43] Trump's anti-patriotic trap, because they, meaning Trump and Vance, believe that only their clan [6:50] represents America, that only people like them deserve to be considered real Americans, [6:55] and that the American government exists to serve them alone, [6:58] they need to undermine anything that tells a more unifying story. [7:02] Talk more about that. [7:03] I was very struck in 2024 at the Republican convention [7:11] with, by J.D. Vance's acceptance speech, [7:15] which, if you remember, closed with a description of a graveyard in Kentucky, [7:20] where he said generations of his family had been buried. [7:24] And he spoke about this graveyard, and what he said was that [7:27] it's for the people there, for the place, that's what makes me American, [7:32] that's what I would fight for. And he very specifically said not for some abstractions, [7:37] not for some ideas. What he was saying was, [7:41] you're American if you belong to a particular clan. [7:44] The ideas of America, the idea of freedom and equality, [7:48] the things that made us into a union when we were really disparate sets of states, [7:52] people of many religions, all of those are abstractions. Those are ideas and principles. [7:57] They aren't real. And what I wanted to argue in my piece, first of all, I also have a family [8:04] graveyard. It's in Galveston, Texas. It also goes back many generations. There might even be people [8:09] there who got to the Gulf Coast before J.D. Vance's family got to Appalachia. But even though it [8:17] exists, it's not what makes me American. What makes me American and what makes my great-great-great-grandparents [8:23] Americans and J.D. Vance's in-laws American, they were born in India, is the fact that all of us [8:29] agree to live in this country according to a set of principles and ideas, these abstractions that he [8:35] spoke about, and that we respect those rules and we then hand them to the next generation. [8:42] And what's so disturbing about this administration is it's really the first to break precedent in that [8:49] sense with the American idea. What Trump was saying in his speech last night was we can't lose the [8:55] midterm and therefore we have to find a way to steal it. What he was saying was my enemies aren't [9:02] people I disagree with. They're communists. They're people who have to be exiled. They're people who [9:06] don't count. And he didn't say exactly who they were, just the enemies, just the people who don't agree [9:11] with me. And this is this is fundamentally incompatible with the ideas of the United States that [9:18] we've known and have grown up with. And I hope that Americans find it in their hearts today to think [9:25] about what he's saying, to think about what it means and resolve to dedicate themselves to building [9:31] something different and something more recognizable, a country that you remember from the bicentennial and [9:36] that I remember as well. Douglas Brinkley, I want to play something from Zoran Mamdani because we keep [9:44] looking for leaders in this country who will reflect back in these big moments of patriotism. And it's very [9:52] interesting that despite everything that the Republicans thought they were going to get in [9:55] that Fox News has said they've gotten from Mamdani after this speech, that it was very patriotic. And I [10:01] want you to listen to this and we can talk about it on the other side. Yeah. We are told that America [10:06] is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. The truth, my friends, [10:13] is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed. [10:20] We may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the [10:25] Declaration of Independence, that work endures and it belongs to us all. It belongs too to our newest [10:32] Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade [10:38] ago, I too felt what you feel, the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. [10:47] All of those people surrounding here were recently naturalized U.S. citizens. [10:50] I was struck by nothing is fixed into place. And the whole thing about this country is they're [10:58] always pushing forward. They're always realizing that we can change the powers within us. I think [11:03] about the fact that we have amendments to the Constitution. Even the guys who put it together [11:08] knew that it was something that needed to be tweaked and changed, that they didn't get it all the way [11:14] right that first time. A more perfect union saying that we're going to keep moving toward that. [11:18] As you sit here, 250 years in, listening to what Mom Donnie said and what Trump said, [11:23] what rings true to you? [11:25] Well, they were two very different speeches. Both were playing with the idea of American [11:29] exceptionalism. Donald Trump at Mount Rushmore was talking about, we're exceptional and now we've [11:35] got to drive the communists out of the country, basically restoking a red scare, something that [11:43] kind of speech Joe McCarthy would have easily given. When Dami is reflecting back on Ellis Island and [11:51] the tradition in New York of becoming a naturalized citizen, he's born in Uganda. When asked, he says, [11:58] I can't have presidential ambitions. The Constitution says, I can't because I was born in Uganda. And [12:05] here it is, July 4th, Alexander Hamilton, one of the greats of the Revolutionary War era, [12:10] had the same issue. He served his country in every way possible to George Washington. [12:16] And as we know, his role in the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and the like, but he could [12:21] never run for president. But they're a naturalized citizen, Mondami was talking about. And it reminds [12:27] us that we keep refreshing ourselves in this country, having new waves of immigrants. And that [12:32] is the American dream. And that is what makes America exceptional. I think Mondami hit on a lot [12:40] of good, clear points. And clearly it was a speech John F. Kennedy would have been happy to give, [12:46] Lyndon Johnson, many Democrats.