Heather Cox Richardson: ‘VERY optimistic’ about a political TIDAL SHIFT and Trump accountability

[0:00] There's a reason that as embattled as democracy is, as messy as it is at how many mistakes it makes, [0:08] there is a reason that people turn out into the streets by the millions to demand their right to [0:15] control their future. And that would suggest that in the end of the day, this is a winning [0:21] proposition as opposed to the idea of having one guy ruling the rest of us. [0:27] Hi there, everyone. To borrow a famous phrase about politics, it's the corruption, stupid. [0:36] Americans of all stripes are so supremely exhausted by the endless stream of stories about Donald Trump [0:43] and his kids and his inner circle grifting and profiting and enriching themselves from public [0:49] service. According to many polls, it is the number one issue heading into the midterm elections. [0:54] You can hear the outcry channeled by everyone from former President Barack Obama to candidates [0:59] up and down the ticket. The message, while Trump and his cronies profit, you, the American people, [1:04] the voter, are struggling. Our guest this week has done more than just about anyone else to underscore [1:10] and communicate and educate us about how, when it comes to corruption, the Trump administration [1:16] stands alone in America's history. Historian, podcaster, and substacker Heather Cox Richardson [1:22] is the essential voice of the pro-democracy coalition. In the last few months, she has [1:27] spent her time interviewing candidates from all across the country who are looking to turn [1:32] the page on the Trump era. Because as she puts it, we may be on the verge of a sea change [1:37] in our politics that begins with the backlash to Donald Trump. [1:41] So, this is the best people, and this is one of our favorite best people ever, Heather Cox [1:47] Richardson. Hello there. [1:48] What a joy to be with you again, Nicole. [1:50] I feel like our conversations are these mile markers, and I can even, like, track my own [1:56] despair. Like, I feel like the first time we talked, if I could have reached through, and [2:01] I think I did. I tried to reach through and grab you and hang on. But things have gotten [2:07] clearer, and in terms of what the American people have awoken to and seem to be demanding so much [2:14] better. Well, it's funny you say they're clearer, because the news is coming at us like such a [2:19] fire hose. Yeah. [2:20] That I feel like, unless you're spending 24-7 reading things, you're bombarded with stories [2:26] where you're like, wait a minute, who was that again? You know, I've lost the thread there. [2:31] But I think in terms of the larger picture, yeah, things are becoming a lot clearer. [2:35] I remember one of our conversations was around, there was an event where Trump and his people [2:42] were in a martini glass or something. [2:44] Oh, yeah. [2:44] With the Great Gatsby Party. [2:45] Thanks for reminding me of that. [2:46] Right? And so it was like the corruption had started to break through. And when I say [2:52] clearer, like, I do feel there's like a fog of war that they benefit from largely. But clearer [2:57] in that Trump's ambitions are clearer. He laughs now into a microphone in front of crowds [3:05] of his supporters about economic despair and distress. He says, we're doing great. We're [3:12] making billions. And he doesn't hide it. And so maybe what I mean by clearer is more transparent. [3:18] So, you know, what you're touching on is something that absolutely fascinates me in history. And [3:23] that's one of the things that historians and some people in literature tend to say is that [3:27] the present changes the past. And what they mean by that is not literally it changes the events [3:32] of the past, but it makes what happened in the past a lot clearer. And where that really [3:36] jumps out to me is with Trump's open embrace of Vladimir Putin at this point. [3:41] Mm-hmm. [3:41] Because there are a number of us who've been saying, since Trump's people changed the platform [3:47] in 2016 of the Republican Party. [3:48] In the campaign in 2016, from the McCain-era hardline on Putin to, you know, the first ever [3:55] foreign policy shift in the platform. [3:57] Right. In the 2016 platform. [3:59] In modern time, yeah. [4:00] And have pointed to the many ties of the Trump family and certain Trump campaigns to the Russians. [4:06] And of course, been greeted with, oh, you have Trump derangement syndrome. Somebody actually [4:10] said that to me within the last month. And Russia, Russia, Russia, it's a hoax and on and on. And you [4:16] look at it now and you say, how can you look at what they are doing right now to American foreign [4:22] policy and say that it hasn't been Russia all along when it comes to Trump? And I think [4:27] it's not just that. It's the corruption is another place where, again, you can't look [4:31] at what they're doing now and say it's something new. The seeds have been there and the actual [4:36] trail has been there all along. [4:38] So, in many ways, when you say things are getting clearer, I think it's in part that because [4:42] of where we are, we can look back and say, oh, yeah, right. Yeah, that really was what [4:47] was going on. It wasn't a situation of us sort of having derangement syndrome or something. [4:52] We were right about where things were. I remember two years ago, you know, we would [4:57] see a story about corruption and I said, you know, I'll cover it. But he's been corrupt [5:01] since the beginning. And voters didn't seem to care about the scam at the hotel and foreign [5:05] governments buying up all the rooms to influence him. But yeah, you know, it's newsworthy. [5:10] I still care. So we covered it and we covered it day in and day out. And now it's the top [5:16] voting issue. I think Russia is maybe six months behind. But I think it's the sort [5:22] of story where he projects so much guilt onto the coverage of Russia by calling it a hoax. [5:29] You know what else is a hoax? Affordability is a hoax, right? Like, it is the new tell [5:33] that we're onto something. [5:35] Yeah. From the beginning, the whole fury and nervousness with which he surrounded Russia [5:42] always suggested that there was an awful lot there. And I think we haven't begun to see [5:46] the tip of it. Again, what we learn in the future will change the way we think about the [5:50] past. But that has been the glaring red flag. And we know there's an awful lot of stuff around [5:55] that relationship that we've seen glimmers of that there are attempts to cover and so [6:01] on going on. So, you know, to me, when I think about this era, and again, I don't know, I could [6:06] be entirely wrong on this. But I think the Russia story is going to end up to be the central [6:12] story of this era. And all the fallout around it, including the corruption, which is part [6:17] of this idea of getting rid of liberal democracy and replacing it with oligarchy or with authoritarianism, [6:24] that is all part of the Russia story, I think. [6:26] Can you imagine a scenario where an ally provided something critical to our defense, and an [6:34] adversary asked that ally to slow it down or take it offline or attack the grid and Americans [6:39] died? I mean, that's what we did to Ukraine. [6:42] Yeah, I can imagine it. It's called Benedict Arnold in the Revolutionary War when he sold [6:49] out to the British and decided that he was going to weaken the fort at West Point, pulling [6:54] out the supplies and weakening defenses so that the British could take it. And look where he [6:58] has gone down in our history. I cannot imagine that Elon Musk and his accomplices haven't already [7:06] been hauled in front of senatorial hearings at the very least. No, this is absolutely unconscionable. [7:12] Do you think that's coming? [7:13] I do. I absolutely think it's coming. I mean, one of the things that I think we're looking [7:17] at after the midterms, if the Democrats retake control of either or both chambers of Congress, [7:23] is investigations. And that frustrates a lot of people because they're saying, you know, [7:27] wait a minute, we just don't want investigations. We want accountability. We want impeachments [7:32] and so on. Those will come, but first we need to hear what happened. And what we will find [7:37] in hearings is that people who feel like they can get out from underneath the potential law [7:43] breaking that they will be called out for will flip on the people who are higher up above [7:49] them. And I think what we are going to learn is going to be eye popping. And you have some [7:53] inkling of that in the stories that are already leaking from the White House, because there are [7:58] people who are trying to get out from under already. And, you know, these floating rumors [8:02] about the idea that maybe Trump would pardon all the junior staffers. Well, they don't want those [8:07] people to talk. That's probably not going to work for them. That pardoning them would likely backfire. [8:12] But, you know, I suspect once we start to get actual oversight, we're going to hear a lot of [8:18] stuff that people are going to be really shocked by. And of course, if the Democrats get control of [8:23] both houses of Congress, that will include Senate hearings. And Senate hearings tend to be pretty [8:29] high-powered affairs. It's interesting you say that about the lower-level staffers. I was on the [8:35] air when news broke that DOJ had failed to indict Cassidy Hutchinson. And people said, [8:41] why are they doing this now? Is this about January 6? And I said, sure. But it's also about what you [8:46] just said. It's also about sending a message. Your silence is expected now and forever. [8:51] Yes. And they did not get an indictment against her. And, you know, in fact, again, things look a lot [8:57] clearer. But there's so much news coming at us, it's hard to follow. And one of the things that [9:02] we are seeing among not the Supreme Court, of course, but lower courts is more and more pushback [9:07] against the Trump administration. And one of the things that, honestly, I'm not a lawyer. [9:13] Are you a lawyer? No, no. I feel like you and I probably have enough credits, right, from talking. [9:19] That's right. Like someone should probably, you know, count them up. But no, I'm not a lawyer. [9:24] But I did not realize, I guess maybe I sort of had internalized it, but I didn't actually realize [9:29] it was a thing. I did not realize that there was a presumption on the part of judges that the [9:36] administration and government's lawyers, for example, would be trying to do the right thing. [9:41] In good faith. Yeah, me neither. [9:42] In good faith. Yeah. [9:43] And the fact that they, you know, that was, that's a presumption, right? [9:47] Right. [9:47] And the Trump administration has destroyed that. So now instead of us sitting there sort of tearing [9:52] our hair out going, wait, can't you see he's lying? Which they would have covered under the [9:57] presumption of regularity. Now they are no longer giving them the presumption of regularity. And [10:03] they're saying, wait a minute, we know you're lying. And that's, that's a really important shift, [10:08] I think. And I want to call it out because a lot of the frustration that people who did not realize [10:14] they were such a thing as a presumption of regularity, like me, a lot of our frustration [10:19] is now being addressed by judges who are saying, you know, no, I don't believe you anymore. You [10:24] need to show me evidence. And the administration simply being like, no, no, no, no, we're just, [10:29] we're just going to, going to change the way we do things from now on. And the judges are like, [10:33] I'm sorry, on what planet are we going to do this? Because it's not going to be this one. [10:38] Well, and there's so much in this bucket, right? So the judges are one, but grand juries also, [10:43] which is an even more random sampling. They can't even get a grand jury indictment in DC. [10:48] And so they've started issuing these things called information filings, which aren't even [10:54] indictments. I mean, the Comey charges this week were not an indictment. They didn't even take it [10:59] to a grand jury. Right, right. And as somebody said, that there used to be that old saying that [11:05] you could get an indictment of a ham sandwich. But there was also there a presumption that by the [11:09] time prosecutors showed up with the case, there would be something there. And grand juries are [11:16] increasingly saying, well, no, actually, there isn't anything here. And, you know, it's going [11:19] to take a lot of rebuilding, I think, to rebuild that trust in the Department of Justice. [11:24] You know, what's funny, I know you've been talking about this with candidates about, [11:28] you know, it's too many years now in to snap back, right? There's no going back to the norms. [11:33] There's rebuilding something else, something better, hopefully, and more durable. And the first people [11:38] that started talking about the rebuilding to me are people like Jack Smith and Brian Driscoll. [11:43] Obviously, Jack Smith, the prosecutor who brought the two cases against Donald Trump, [11:48] and Brian Driscoll, the one-time acting director of the FBI, who sort of refused to out all of the [11:55] people who'd worked on the two investigations into Donald Trump. But what do you think that looks [12:01] like when you go rebuild institutions that have been gutted in about 20 months by Donald Trump and [12:06] Todd Blanch and Kash Patel? [12:08] Well, so I think this is really interesting because, as you alluded to before, I do think [12:13] we are seeing a sea change in American politics. And I study political ideology. That's what really [12:19] interests me, the difference between what people think is happening and what is really happening [12:24] around them and how those two things interact to create a government. So lawmakers might believe [12:31] one thing, they do something else, and how does that play out across the country? And that, [12:35] I just find that endlessly fascinating. [12:38] Explain that. Explain that. Like, what do you think people think we're in right now? [12:42] Give me a pass on right now because we'll come back to that. [12:44] I think what the Republicans successfully did in the late 1970s, early 1980s is sold the American [12:52] people on a myth. The idea that the reason the economy was not serving their interests was not [13:00] because of the fact that in about 1973, 1974, because of an oil crisis, it became clear [13:09] that the countries that had been devastated by World War II had rebuilt their economies. And [13:15] those economies were more modern than the United States economy. And what that meant was that the [13:19] U.S. was losing its manufacturing base to Asia, for example, and to European countries. And rather [13:25] than taking that on and saying, hey, we got an economic problem here that we need to fix, we need [13:29] to upgrade our infrastructure, we need to upgrade our factories, what they did is they sold a whole [13:35] bunch of people, especially people who worked in the manufacturing sector, on the idea that the real [13:40] problem was that tax dollars were going to minorities. And in order to sell that image, [13:46] they sold the image of the American cowboy, which is one straight out of Reconstruction, [13:50] the idea that a government that protects equal rights for minorities is, by definition, a socialist [13:56] government, which again comes out of the idea that when Black Americans, Black men start to vote during [14:02] Reconstruction, they tend to vote for roads and schools and hospitals and so on. And white former [14:07] Confederates say, hey, wait a minute, we're the only ones who own anything in the American South, [14:11] and therefore you're going to pay for that stuff with our tax dollars. Therefore, it is a redistribution [14:17] of wealth from white people to Black people, even though, of course, white people were going to be [14:21] using those road schools and hospitals. So anyway, they sell this image of the American cowboy, and a [14:27] lot of people really, you know, grabbed hold of this idea that they could make it if only you got that [14:32] big government out of their way. Right. And that worked for a long time. And the more that it ceased [14:38] to work, the more they doubled down on the idea that, you know, minority voters were takers rather than [14:45] makers. They wanted something for nothing. They include women in this who, and by saying, [14:50] you know, they want the government to protect their right, for example, to reproductive health [14:56] care, to abortions. And it worked, you know, it worked for a long time. It became a cultural identity [15:02] that was completely divorced from the reality, which was that once they got into power, the [15:07] Republicans were putting into place legislation that concentrated wealth among a very small group [15:12] of people. More than $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% to the top less than 1% between about [15:19] 1975, with that change in the economy, and 2021, when Biden takes office. So that's what I mean by [15:27] that is that people voted based on the image of what they wanted America to be or what they were told [15:33] America was. Yeah. And they ignored the fact they were being robbed blind. So that's what interests me. [15:39] And that, for me, that line between image and reality is not just in politics. It fascinates me [15:47] because, you know, I don't know if you've read Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night, but that's a book about, [15:53] you know, this guy is maybe a Nazi spy, but he is also working, you know, for the allies. Who is he? [16:01] And that line between who are we and who do we think we are is all over, you know, Double Star by [16:10] Robert Heinlein or, you know, much of the literature, Henry James and so on from the late 19th century. [16:16] I think it's a profoundly human question. Yeah. Well, who do we think we are right now? [16:22] Well, see, this is what's so fascinating to me about this moment. And it's so weird, Nicole. It's like [16:28] being a historian in this moment, it's like, it is, it is almost like living with a split screen. [16:33] Yeah. Because you're watching everything coming at you on the one hand, and then you're also sort of [16:39] overlaying it with the past, with things you know about from the past. And it's, I think of it like [16:45] sometimes you have those things in newspapers or in media where they'll have a photograph from the [16:51] past. And if you slide over it, it becomes a different era. I feel like that's what I'm [16:57] dealing with every day. Yeah, yeah. [16:59] So I think what we're seeing right now is what we have seen on occasion in the past when that [17:03] dominant myth falls apart. And because people realize, they have to realize that it is not [17:11] serving their interests in a pretty dramatic way. And I actually think the cost of diesel [17:15] has spread this destruction of that myth across the country in a way that it had not been able to [17:22] spread before. And they are in the process now as the MAGA Republicans or the MAGA Republican [17:28] movement, it's no longer really a political party, has jumped off a cliff, become a far right, [17:33] you know, neo-fascist authoritarian party. Everybody who's left standing on looking over the edge of the [17:41] cliff and saying, we're not going there, is rebuilding a new politics and a new political [17:48] ideology. And what I find especially interesting about this in my historian hat is that in the [17:54] past, when I have studied, for example, the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s or the rise of [17:59] the progressives in the 1890s or the rise of the New Deal Democrats in the 1920s into the 1930s, [18:05] is I have always personally seen it as an intellectual development in the sense that it's [18:14] people thinking about the world around them and putting together an argument. And as I'm looking [18:20] here, what I'm seeing is something that is far more organic. Somebody saying, hey, wait a minute, [18:26] I got a problem up here in Iowa. And here's something that I think will help in Iowa. And somebody in [18:31] Arkansas going, okay, we could tweak that a little down here. And somebody in Rhode Island going, [18:37] not going to work so well here, but maybe if we did this. And that watching ideology, watching this [18:43] new version of America grow from these individual candidates who are top notch, by the way, is just [18:52] fascinating. Well, you know what I think about in this context? Well, two things. One, it is very hard [18:59] for Americans to see themselves as part of global tides, right? We're just like our information [19:05] diet is subpar to that of other people in other countries. Our education is so much more self [19:11] absorbed than that, which other countries sort of immerse themselves in. But when you look at the [19:17] results and Rachel Maddow texted me Sunday night, and it just said, Brazil, Serbia. And I was like running [19:23] around at travel baseball, and I have a toddler. And I was like, what, what? And there are global [19:28] tides that feel like they may help blow us, you know, in some of the same directions that Brazil [19:38] and Serbia seem to be going. I think that's right. You know, we've heard an awful lot about the rise of [19:43] the right wing, really, since at least the 1990s around the globe. And, you know, I've always thought [19:49] that that was tied to information diets, to the fact that really with the collapse of the Soviet [19:54] Union, the Russians were incredibly tactical about what they called virtual politics or political [20:02] technology that is creating a false reality that divided populations and enabled the rise of strong [20:08] men. And one of the things that you've seen in Serbia and especially in Brazil when they rejected [20:13] their rising authoritarian leaders or their established authoritarian leaders was the use of [20:19] social media to push back against that. And so maybe we're getting a bit stronger on that. But, [20:24] you know, I wonder what you think about this. I agree with that. And I do think that there is a pushback [20:32] in a number of countries. And let's not forget Hungary, of course, which rejected Viktor Orban, [20:39] and the fact that around the globe there is problem for authoritarian leaders. But I would argue [20:43] that the quest for human self-determination embodied as it usually is politically through a representative [20:51] system like a democracy or a constitutional republic or, you know, some kind of a representative system [20:56] is actually a profoundly human quest. That is, there's a reason that as embattled as democracy is, [21:05] as messy as it is at how many mistakes it makes, there is a reason that people turn out into the streets [21:12] by the millions to demand their right to control their future. And that would suggest that in the end [21:20] of the day, this is a winning proposition as opposed to the idea of having one guy ruling the rest of us. [21:28] I think that's absolutely right. And I think it makes, I mean, I said this to you before we started, [21:35] the despair that I felt two years ago is almost like a distant memory because I think I was waiting, [21:45] you know, I was an ex-Republican and I was waiting for someone in the other party to come and be [21:50] perfect, right? Like, oh, I switched. I'm over here now. Where is he or she? And I think one, [21:57] that's never the answer. And two, it removes the human element that you're talking about. [22:01] But we're only going to purge the toxicity of Trumpism, which the Republicans should never get [22:11] a pass on becoming Trumpists. But it did replace one of the two political parties because, I mean, [22:18] I worked for John McCain. He loathed Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump has, whether the Republicans [22:24] loathe him or love him, it doesn't matter. They're doing everything that Trump wants to do in service [22:29] of Vladimir Putin's foreign policy, not ours. And so, like, I spent too much time wondering what [22:35] they really thought about grabbing him in the, you know, what, or good people on both sides of [22:39] Charlottesville. And I spent years wanting to get someone to say out loud what I knew they felt, [22:43] which was that Trump was disgusting, he was crass, he was ignorant, and he was un-American in his [22:48] foreign policy views. It doesn't matter whether they say it or not. They have acted in that way. [22:53] And your point about humans, our neighbors, our fellow humans are the ones that are coming to save us. [22:58] No government can be sort of destroyed without the will of the people, and none can be saved [23:05] without it either. It's not as elegant as I think you managed to put it every morning before I have [23:10] my eyes open or my coffee in my mouth. But it is sort of a twist on what I feel like political [23:15] journalism has been looking for over the 10 years of Trump. [23:20] Yes. And before that, one of the things that I think we lost since Reagan was the idea that [23:27] the government is really us, that we have agency to change that government. [23:31] And what I feel like I have seen, especially since Trump took office in the first round, [23:37] is Americans reclaiming of their agency to change the future. [23:41] 100%. [23:42] And the trick to that that people need to remember is that, you know, human's gonna human, [23:47] which means that we are not gonna have the perfect candidate, and we are not, you know, [23:52] the people that we love are gonna disappoint us, and so on. But that's kind of, I won't say it's [23:57] not the point. I will say that the framers of the Constitution arranged the system in such a way [24:02] that it was designed to give off-ramps to the bad stuff and keep the good stuff. And we have abandoned [24:08] those off-ramps and those guardrails that we need to reinforce again. But the larger picture [24:14] of people sort of crowdsourcing the way they want to construct a government, and I like to think of [24:20] it as crowdsourcing rather than, you know, I don't know, grassroots or whatever. Because you think [24:26] about how many meetings you've been in with a whole bunch of people, and you're working on [24:30] some intractable problem, and somebody goes, well, but wait, what if we just did this? And you're all [24:36] like, oh my god, that's the answer. That's kind of the way democracy is supposed to work, [24:41] and I think we're reclaiming that in the United States. [24:44] I also think that there's something for all of the grip that tech has on us, and all of the fear [24:51] that's been mongered, is that a verb, around AI. It is still most powerful that which we do with [24:59] their bodies, right? Like showing up in the cold in Minneapolis after the murders of Renee [25:05] Nicole Good and Alex Preddy. Like, changed the course of the Trump presidency. Like, people just [25:11] came out, people who had never—and it gives me chills just remembering it, but I was on live when [25:16] some of those protests happened, and I remember I had added Minneapolis, you know, to my weather app, [25:21] and I remember looking at the temperature and saying, there's no way the crowd's going to be out [25:24] there. It was freezing, and they were out there, and there is something about what people will go [25:29] out and do, and go out, and then the No Kings rallies are the same. You know, these movements [25:35] that people are willing to go out and be present for and with seem like a remarkable hallmark of what [25:42] you're talking about, people taking control and regaining agency. [25:45] I think that's right. I will also add to that. One of the things that we are seeing is the rise of a [25:52] new demographic in the United States of America. So, of course, we have the extension of health in a [25:59] way that it was not there for our parents, at least for my parents, to have what at least one major [26:05] thinkers called a third act. And one of the things about that third act is that the story of what it's [26:11] going to be is unwritten. And so you have, on the one hand, people who seem completely unwilling to [26:18] leave the positions that they held as younger people. That is, you know, we have a 92-year-old [26:23] in the U.S. Senate. [26:24] But then on the other hand, you have a lot of people, especially women, whose experience has been [26:29] entirely different than the people who came before them. So we have women who came of age during the [26:34] 1960s and into the 1970s when they had, first of all, contraception, beginning really in 1965, [26:42] and then abortion rights shortly in states around that time and shortly after that, [26:48] and then with the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. And then you also had the 1972 Title IX Act, [26:56] which enabled women to go to professional schools. Until then, there had been quotas on how many women [27:01] could go to a professional school, and those quotas were usually between one and five percent. [27:05] Mm-hmm. [27:06] So you ended up in the 80s and 90s and going forward with this whole cadre of women who were [27:12] taking jobs outside the home, who were developing skills, were developing networks. And now that they [27:18] are in the later years of their lives, they are using those skills to do whatever they want. And what [27:24] they have discovered they want is to protect democracy. Right. [27:27] And that's a whole new addition to what we are doing in this country to protect democracy, [27:33] because we've never had this group of older people, especially older, well-connected, [27:38] sometimes wealthy women, saying, you know what? We're throwing our weight in this game. And every [27:43] time one of the young MAGA people makes fun of the gray-haired ladies at one of these No Kings events, [27:49] for example, I think, you know, one of the things that women have tended to be very good at in politics [27:57] is organizing. And the last thing you should be doing is thinking that this is a mark against [28:02] them. This is a mark of just how strong this movement is. [28:05] I mean, they're also the most — some of the most informed voters, right? I mean, [28:08] this is the group that forms prolific book clubs. They're informing themselves. They have a diversity [28:13] in their information diet, largely. And they're also — I don't know how to put this in a positive, [28:20] so I won't even try — but the indignities, I think, that they've endured don't make them [28:26] as sensitive, shall we say, to the young men who seem like the real snowflakes in this political [28:32] moment. I mean, you know, you want to call me a gray-haired liberal activist? Knock yourself out, [28:38] dude. I'm just here registering voters. I mean, look, she wasn't — I mean, she was a young mom, [28:43] but Renee Nicole Good was like, hey, I'm not mad at you, dude. I mean, women are so accustomed to the [28:50] friction of having their voice heard, of having their views expressed, of organizing others who [28:56] maybe share views that are in opposition to the power structure. But I think you're right. They are [29:00] — they are like the real changemakers. You know, it certainly looks this — that way. And I will say [29:06] that one of the things about Trump in Trump 1.0 and in his 2016 campaign was that his behavior [29:15] was one that most women who had worked in public settings recognized. And, you know, when we saw [29:24] him, you know, breathing down Hillary Clinton's neck while she was just trying to answer the questions [29:29] and stalking her on the stage and so on, I mean, how many of us didn't deal with that at some point? [29:35] And we recognized it, I think, in a way that a lot of people — a lot of men did not, [29:40] because they had not experienced it. — Mm-hmm. I mean, look, it's not a perfect tie, [29:45] but I do feel like it's of a piece. The response to Vivek Ramaswamy's, you know, disgusting ad about [29:52] Amy Acton, where he takes the biological mother whose husband raped her 12-year-old daughter, [30:00] puts her in an ad calling her daughter a liar. — I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying [30:06] about her opponent, it's not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is [30:14] a liar. — And then J.D. Vance goes and doubles down behind the ad. — And now the media and the [30:21] Democrats in the state of Ohio are obsessed because guess what? Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run [30:28] a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar. — Is, to me, [30:34] a lights-out political moment, a career-ending political moment if gravity returns to our politics. [30:40] — I agree with that. But it also, in an era when we are talking about the denigration of women, [30:48] the subordination of women, often around issues of rape, the fact that they were willing to weaponize [30:55] the sexual assault of a child. And then to stand firm on that said very much, I think, about their [31:03] way of thinking about the value of women in society and the value of protecting children, [31:10] which is actually fundamentally the principle behind which governments form. So the sheer [31:16] we want power at any cost just seemed so clear with that ad. And in a way, if you combine that [31:25] with the fact that billionaire Elon Musk has shoveled close to a half a billion dollars into the midterms, [31:33] there is, I think, a growing awareness on the part of a lot of people that these are, [31:37] these people are not your friends. Like, if they're willing to weaponize the rape of a child and to [31:41] pour a half a billion dollars into buying control of the government, clearly they want to do something [31:48] with it that we don't want them to. So the political ads that you run are for voters, [31:55] like, the clearest choice of your priorities, right? You are choosing to put your political fate [32:02] in the hands of what? This message. To your point, a woman whose daughter was raped by her husband [32:07] and charged with that crime, indicted for those crimes. It makes the cover-up of the Epstein files all the more [32:14] credible. And it, to me, leaves absolutely no more defenses for the Republicans. Like, [32:21] if you're standing with Vivek Ramaswamy, of course you're fine with covering up the powerful men hidden [32:28] in the Epstein files. I think that's right. And not to make this a theme of this particular show, [32:34] but the more we learn in the present, the more the past makes a lot of sense. [32:41] I think that's right. I think that's right. And like, I feel like I've misstated my optimism. I [32:46] don't know that I'm actually optimistic, but this piece that you, you know, almost as a mantra keep [32:51] mentioning, I feel like the credibility of people who've made these points about the past is renewed [32:58] by things that are happening in full view in the present. Does that make sense? [33:01] No, I think it's exactly what I'm saying, that we see it so much more clearly. I was making this [33:06] comment to somebody about a different issue. And I said, listen, and let's use Russia as an example, [33:11] although it was not the one that I was discussing with my friend. If Trump had come out and he had [33:17] supported Ukraine and he had thrown out more sanctions the way a bipartisan group of Congress [33:23] people required, if he had, you know, come out and talked about how great Zelensky was, if he had [33:30] worked at pushing back against Putin, then you would look at people who had talked about the ties [33:36] of the Trump campaign to Russia in 2016 and the machinations around Ukraine and so on. You would [33:43] say, listen, you guys are really bonkers. You know, you really were out to lunch. Look at what he's doing [33:47] now. But conversely, you look at where we are now and you look back across the past and say, oh yeah, [33:53] the people who were defending him and saying, oh, you people who are worried about Russia just have Trump [33:58] derangement syndrome. You can see now that that was the right story. And this is one of the things I [34:03] say, the present changing the past, you can see the stories far more clearly and in the past when [34:09] you know how they turn out. And one of the things that I play with a lot is, again, if you think [34:16] about human nature and you think about the repetition of stories in our lives, imagine if you were writing [34:22] this era as a novelist. Like, first of all, you couldn't have sold it because it's too unbelievable. [34:28] But if you had sold it, what comes next? And what does that say about where we have been? [34:36] And of course, I don't know. The whole point of the future is we are still writing it. [34:40] But it does make you reshape, I think, the way you have thought about the past. [34:48] You know what's interesting to me in terms of what comes next is that Obama still [34:54] melts Trump's inner core. It's crazy, isn't it? [34:58] So he gives this speech where he takes the wood off of the corruption of the White House. [35:04] He gives voice to the economic anxiety of every person living on Earth One and the vast majority [35:12] of those poor souls still on Earth Two with Donald Trump. He takes apart the incompetence of the second [35:20] Trump term. And then he has like a throwaway joke. It's like a laugh line. It's like the quintessential [35:26] like Obama sort of, you know, they've cheered, they've roared. Now let's get a little giggle [35:31] and keep going. And he says, you know, the White House is so cheesy. It looks like Saddam Hussein [35:36] opened a cheesecake factory. And all Donald Trump heard was, I have bad taste. And this is where we [35:42] still do a terrible job, right? Like there was so much in that speech. And then the right starts freaking [35:47] out about the cheesecake factory. Nowhere in there is an insult for the cheesecake factory. [35:51] And that Trump didn't even hear the Saddam Hussein part just responded to the cheesecake factory part. [35:56] Like it shows you how dumb our politics are. Like to your point about a novel, [36:00] like not only would it be implausible, it would be too dumb for anyone to publish. [36:04] Well, and that just shows, I think, how little they've got. And I think it also illustrates, [36:09] to me anyway, the real need in our understanding of technology and in our eventual regulation of [36:17] technology, to regulate not the content, I'm a firm believer in the First Amendment, [36:22] but to regulate the algorithms. Because the amplification of that crap is clearly part of [36:28] the way the algorithms work. Because again, it's just stupid. And that, you know, nobody really cares. [36:34] I mean, it's incredible outrage over, and this happens, by the way, again and again and again, [36:39] outrage over some teeny little piece of something that has been taken out of context, [36:43] that they're trying to turn into a really big issue. When the bottom line is nobody really cares. [36:48] What's amazing though, is that you get a window into what Trump really does care about. [36:53] And he cares that like Obama likes his redecorating of the White House. [36:56] But that's the other piece about this whole era that's so freaking weird, [37:01] is that if you think about the places that he has put his effort, and according to Maggie Haberman and [37:08] Jonathan Swan of the New York Times, when they wrote their book, Regime Change, that that's where [37:13] he's putting, what did they say, 70% of his time. He's worried about redesigning famous structures in [37:20] Washington DC. Which again, I look at Washington DC, and sure, we all would love to see stuff upgraded, [37:28] and so on. But man, that's a beautiful piece of work as a city. We've lived with it, we've added to it in [37:34] specific ways. Again, we don't always like everything that went up there, don't start me. But generally, [37:41] you know, it's this work of art, and he's just slapping crap all over it. If you were the most [37:47] powerful person on earth, and you could do anything you wanted, I promise you my move would not be to [37:58] build an arch that threatens planes and overshadows the Arlington National Cemetery. So it's just the [38:06] weirdest thing that we've got basically an interior designer, and not a very good one, [38:11] running the country. [38:12] Yeah. I mean, this is where I struggle too with, you know, why does this matter? I mean, I cover [38:19] these things because, to your point, this is what the President of the United States does all day. [38:24] But I always try to deepen it with like, why does it matter? And I think it's what you just said. [38:28] Because if you could do anything, some presidents spend extra attention making sure USAID saves as many [38:35] vulnerable children as possible. Democrats and Republicans have thought that was important. [38:39] Others spend as much of their time as possible on climate change. I mean, largely Democratic presidents [38:45] have thought that was a priority. Like, that what is worthy of his time in his view and by his telling [38:50] is destroying the East Wing and putting up some tacky ballroom is bananas. [38:56] Well, somebody described it recently to me as a throne room, which I think speaks more to it, right? [39:01] Yes. [39:02] But because why is he doing it is because he wants monuments to himself. [39:07] Yes. [39:07] And again, I just think this is fascinating because it is, I have never done a study of this, but I [39:13] don't think I would be going too far out on a limb to say that anybody who becomes the President of [39:18] the United States wants to be remembered, right? They want to have a good legacy. They try not to do [39:23] things that make them look stupid. But the ones that we remember are the ones who wrote their legacy [39:30] into legislation or into movements that created a better world for the American people. [39:36] So you think of somebody like LBJ and his great society. You think about somebody like FDR and [39:41] the New Deal. You think about Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era. You think about Abraham [39:45] Lincoln and the Civil War and his Emancipation Proclamation that ended human enslavement in the [39:51] United States except as punishment for a crime. That still bothers me, by the way. [39:56] But you think about the ways in which they are trying to write a legacy, but they clearly are [40:02] saying, my legacy will be written in the history books and in the hearts of the American people. [40:07] Whereas Trump somehow thinks that his legacy is about brick and mortar. Ozymandias, that famous [40:14] poem, comes to mind because, of course, those things don't last at all. You can chip somebody's name [40:20] off something in a heartbeat. And it's just like he doesn't get the whole concept of human society, [40:27] let alone democracy. [40:28] What do you think about when you think about the Democrats' opening moves? Should they retake [40:37] the House or the Senate or both? [40:39] I think two things. The first thing, the things that have to be returned is the rule of law. So [40:43] that's accountability. And I can't tell you how strongly I feel about that. [40:47] Yeah, me too. [40:47] But that probably will look like hearings in both the House and the Senate as well, [40:55] because what you need to do is you need to uncover what happened. But then there's something [40:59] really interesting about all the people to whom I have talked. And I shouldn't have used the word [41:02] all. I would say most. I would say at least two thirds of them. Actually, when I talked to them about [41:09] what they wanted to do going forward, and I was really pushing them to talk about their ideology, [41:13] and they all looked at me like I had three heads and said, whatever, we can talk about ideology, [41:18] but we need to do stuff now. This is urgent. They all use the word urgency, which I thought was [41:24] really interesting because I did not lead up to that at all. I was actually pushing them in a [41:29] different direction. And they would look at me and say, we have to move with urgency. There are things [41:34] that have to get done now. And what they are talking about is putting back in place the subsidies for [41:40] the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, reversing the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance [41:45] Program, reversing the cuts to Medicaid. And VA, right? Putting back the VA funding. [41:50] The VA. And supporting the purchase of home heating oil, which is a huge disaster in states like Maine [41:58] and New Hampshire because we have these older systems that still run on oil. And I don't know how [42:02] people are going to make it through the winter. So when I talked earlier about the idea of ideology [42:08] coming from immediacy, the immediate needs of people, what has really impressed me is the people [42:15] who are saying, listen, we're going to worry later about how you're going to put this together as an [42:19] ideology. My constituents need heat. And so I would expect to see standalone bills, none of this stupid [42:29] 1200-page omnibus bills to pass as the Defense Authorization Act in, you know, the end of a year. [42:36] Standalone bills that the Democrats, if they take power in the House of Representatives and or the [42:42] Senate, what they put forward and they pass and they say to the Republicans, I dare you vote against [42:49] this. Because the Republicans recognize that the issues that they caught or that Trump backed and [42:56] that they cut in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of July 2025, those are enormously unpopular. [43:02] Correct. [43:02] And the question is going to be, are they going to continue to stay with Trump, [43:06] who is an absolute lame duck and has shown he can't turn people out anymore? Or are they going to [43:14] make these changes that people have demanded and that they have called for as election issues, [43:19] but we fully expect they're going to back away from afterward? We'll see. [43:23] It's interesting that you talk about the urgency because when people from Washington have said, [43:28] oh, but the Democrats are fighting amongst themselves. And I was like, where, when, who? [43:33] I said, what I cover is largely the Democratic base, right? Like the people that are demanding [43:41] different things from their leaders. And I have not heard a single one of them that I've interviewed [43:46] say, well, where do they stand on this, that or that? They want fighters and they don't care if the [43:50] fighter is Mark Kelly and Alyssa Slotkin fighting the illegal boat strikes or if the fighter is John [43:55] Ossoff fighting the corruption that is brazen or if the fighter is Chris Murphy or if the fighter is [44:00] Raphael Warnock fighting the immoral cuts that you're talking about. They don't care what part of the [44:06] coalition they come from. They just want someone to fight for them. And it's something that Liz Cheney [44:10] articulated before she was run out of office to my colleague, Rachel Maddow. She said, listen, [44:14] I want to come back and debate like policy with you, but there was an urgent need to save our [44:19] democracy. And I feel like that is, in what I cover and what I see, the thing that is sort of [44:26] undergirding all of the candidates that I've seen out there. [44:29] Hundred percent. And this is the exact same thing we saw before the Civil War. [44:32] And I don't mean by saying that to say we're going to a Civil War, but rather that the moment [44:37] has changed and people want fighters. And there's this really dramatic moment in the 1850s after [44:44] a Southern enslaver has beaten Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner almost to death on the [44:48] floor of the Senate. And Democrats have stood around watching it happen, saying it wasn't their fight. [44:54] In which Northerners, who for years had sort of made nice with the South and backed off and tried [45:00] to say, we're not going to push back against you. We know you're a minority down there and you're [45:04] frightened. And they tried to get along with them as the Southerners got more and more and more [45:08] aggressive. And there's this moment after the caning of Charles Sumner where this guy from [45:13] Massachusetts named Anson Burlingame, who is a brand new representative, stands up and he says, [45:19] we will fight. That's it. We will fight. No more making nice with you guys. We're going to push [45:25] back. We're going to fight. And all the Southerners are like, oh my God, he's coming out. Can you [45:29] believe what he said? But he becomes a hero across the North to the point that there's still a couple [45:34] of towns named for him. And that's really a signal to elect a whole new kind of representative [45:41] in Congress. And that's what the people do. And that's how we get the birth of the Republican [45:46] Party that says, listen, we got to use the government for the good of the majority of [45:50] Americans, not just for the elite enslavers. So what does that, if past is prologue, [45:56] what does that mean happens next? I think what happens next is we see this great coalition [46:03] of people who are going into the 2026 election, which is a midterm election, right? It's not going [46:10] to change the White House, except perhaps the behavior of the White House, is working together [46:16] at this point to stop the rise of authoritarianism. It's working against fascism. And again, within that, [46:22] there are a lot of people who don't get that that's the assignment. They still think we're [46:24] playing business as usual. They don't particularly like their candidate and they're not going to vote [46:28] for that person. They're going to give us a purity vote. And all we can do is hope that they are [46:33] outnumbered by the people who are like, okay, this is not my top choice, but we're going to go for it [46:38] because we got to get rid of Russell Vogt and Stephen Miller and the people who are surrounding them. [46:44] But they come together in a coalition to reverse the use of the government to agglomerate power and [46:51] wealth among a very small group of people. And when they do that, they pass a lot of legislation [46:56] that is really good and they probably amend the constitution. I am going to be out front in [47:01] advocating the overturning of Citizens United, for example. And I suspect, since we know that about [47:06] 80% of Americans want to see that, I'm not going to be alone and I'm going to be standing there with [47:11] a whole bunch of people with whom I disagree about virtually everything else. But then what comes from [47:17] that is a whole new kind of political coalition because the issues that we have got coming up in [47:22] front of us do not have natural breaking points that we had in the 80s, 90s and aughts, right? [47:28] So like data centers, AI, migration, climate change, disease, those are not going to divide the American [47:34] people the way they used to. And one of the things that was interesting about going in from the 1850s [47:38] into the 1860s is again, literally the Republican Party formed out of a group of congressmen who came [47:45] together after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. They go into this room. Actually, [47:51] it was held at the boarding house rooms of Edward Dickinson of Massachusetts, who was Emily Dickinson's [47:56] father. It's only six people in this era and they do the rest with mirrors. But they all go in there [48:01] and they literally say, we don't agree about much stuff. We don't agree about immigration, finances, [48:07] internal improvements, but we can agree that we cannot turn this country over to the slave owners. [48:11] Then they go out across the country. The party does not have a name yet. It becomes the anti-Nebraska [48:16] party. They win a ton of elections, thereby isolating the extremists on the other side, [48:21] which is how we get the extremism of the Democrats in the North during the Civil War. And then, [48:26] interestingly enough, as you go into the war, you know, they look like they're all together and [48:31] organized. But coming out of the war, some of the people that went into that coalition saying, [48:39] I'm only here to get rid of the slave owners. I'm going to go back to my old ways and the whole [48:43] thing. Coming out on the other side, they become some of the most fervent Republicans. [48:48] And some of the people who were fervent going in as Republicans abandon the party on the other side, [48:53] because the coalition's all changed during the war, because the issues changed during the war. [48:57] So, you know, who knows what it's going to look like in 10 years. But right now, [49:02] we're seeing that coming together. And on the other side, we're going to split again. [49:06] What I think is so interesting about the issue set you just ticked off is that, [49:11] like, if you take one foot outside of, like, D.C. or New York, all that people are talking about, [49:19] well, two things, data centers and gas prices. That's it. That's it. And the idea that, like, [49:26] every politician in the Republican Party largely found themselves on the wrong side of those two [49:30] issues, it's just bananas. Like, it calls for the collapse of the party completely. [49:34] Well, and those two things are tied together. And the data centers, I think, [49:38] are really interesting because they are a physical symbol of the tech bros trying to run our lives. [49:45] Right. [49:46] And it's easier to organize around them than it is to organize around, you know, someone like me [49:52] saying, well, this is not the way we should divide up the economy, you know? [49:55] Or around content, because I think that gets mushy, right? Like, I just watched The [50:01] Social Reckoning, the new movie. And I certainly live the other side of that, [50:04] covering the people who've been radicalized. I don't really have the tech background to reverse [50:10] engineered and explained it the way Frances Haugen does, who's the whistleblower. But I feel like [50:15] we're living the consequences of that. But the data centers, to your point, are this physical [50:19] manifestation of all that power and all that greed that nobody wants. [50:24] And they're really dramatic. [50:26] Yeah. [50:27] When you see them, they are huge, empty boxes, windowless boxes of nothing, [50:35] usually in fairly beautiful areas. So they're really symbolic, as well as everything else that [50:42] they encapsulate. You look at them, and it's not like you can say, oh, no, this is actually a [50:46] really nice addition to our community. [50:48] I want to ask you about the actual vote. Since before Trump was elected a second time, [50:56] there have been warnings from inside the House. I mean, General John Kelly does his only [51:00] recorded interview with my husband, actually, in The New York Times. And he's warning about what [51:06] Trump's vision was in the first term for how to use the military. And he's warning about how he wants [51:11] to use the military inside America and against Americans. People vote for him anyway. And that is [51:18] largely what he has sought to do, with the only guardrails being the judges we talked about. [51:23] What should we not fail to imagine as possible on Election Day? [51:28] Well, the guardrails have not just been the courts. The guardrails have been the American people. [51:32] And that's a really important thing to remember, because when Trump gets pushed back, [51:37] he either doesn't do something or he backs away from it. And that's really important for people to [51:42] remember because, first of all, you're seeing the administration working really hard to muddy the [51:47] waters, to make it look like it's dangerous to vote, to make it look like votes won't be counted, [51:51] to try and make it seem like they're messing around with stuff, and to make people less enthusiastic [51:57] about voting. And I just keep insisting it's really important to remember that this is our country. [52:03] The Constitution literally begins, we the people, and we have the right to vote. You know, [52:10] instead of being afraid to vote, we should make them afraid to stop us from voting. [52:15] So in terms of what they could do, people have gamed this out. There have been literal, [52:20] you know, people sitting down and trying to figure out things that the administration could do. And [52:25] I'm not going to go into those. You can search them and find them. Because while we, again, we talk [52:31] about the legal recourse if something untoward happens, the bottom line remains that there is [52:38] something outside of legal recourse in the United States of America, and that is the pressure of the [52:43] American people. And the more we make it incredibly clear that we are not going to put up with any [52:49] kind of machinations about our vote, the more likely it is not only that Trump will not dare to do [52:55] something, but remember, Trump is degrading before our eyes. The real question is what Republicans in [53:05] office will go along with whatever he decides to pull. And the more pressure they see from the American [53:11] people saying, no, I'm not going to put up with that, the less likely it is that they will back [53:15] him. Think of January 6th. The reason he managed to come back from January 6th, 2021 and the attack [53:21] on the U.S. Capitol was because a lot of Republicans rushed back to his side. So what I'm really trying [53:26] to emphasize to people is speak up and say to your Republican representatives, I fully expect that my vote's [53:34] going to be counted and that you are going to stand behind the U.S. Constitution. Because if you think [53:39] about it on the other side of these midterms, Trump doesn't hold any power. I mean, yes, I know he's [53:44] the commander-in-chief and I don't mean to denigrate that and so on, but in terms of political power [53:49] with which he can do good things for the other Republicans in office, he ain't got nothing. And so [53:55] you can start to see already the number of Republicans who are cracking away from him and endorsing [54:02] Democrats, for example, for office. And the more we see of that, the more encouragement we should give [54:08] that. And, you know, these are not necessarily people who have suddenly seen the light and are, [54:13] you know, deciding that they're going to do what's right. These are people who recognize exactly where [54:19] their bread is buttered and they're trying to make sure it falls on the carpet butter-side up. [54:24] And the more we can encourage them to do that, the less likely it is that anything he pulls will stick. [54:32] I think that's right. And when people talk about him not leaving in two years, I'm like, [54:36] in two years, if he has a 20% approval rating, it'll be an act of God or, or, you know, [54:41] faking the numbers. If I say this all the time on the show, if Donald Trump were the top figure in [54:48] sports or entertainment or music or academia, and he gave a speech where he talked about someone's [54:56] ass, man or woman, um, or if he posted all night, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 posts, if he wrote a [55:04] 1500 word post about Bill Maher, he or she, um, these people would be run out of their respective [55:10] fields, right? ESPN would be on 24 seven about said athletes meltdown or visible, um, breakdown. [55:19] You know, if anyone were acting like this in any other sphere of sort of cultural relevance, [55:25] they would not still be on the job, let alone have the single finger on the nuclear codes. [55:31] What are we doing? [55:31] I think that that is right there, a condemnation of the Republicans, especially the Republican [55:39] senators who are shielding him. And we must not let them off the hook. It is unconscionable [55:45] what they have done to this country. And especially now with Trump's cozying up to Vladimir Putin, [55:52] overturning our foreign policy now that we've had on a bipartisan basis for decades, uh, attacking [56:00] our alliances with Europe and our other partnerships around the globe. The fact that they are literally [56:05] putting the United States of America at risk is just simply unconscionable. And I would personally, [56:14] you know, this, this has mattered to me for a long time, and I'm sure it has to you as well. [56:19] I would love to see actual Republicans in office split from him and say, we just can't do this. We, [56:25] we have defended him too long. We must walk away from him. And the fact that they're not doing it is just [56:31] an absolute indictment of them. And I hope they see that from the American people, both in this [56:36] election and in the next election. But we need to call that out. And what are we doing here? We are [56:41] watching a group of people who have put power and party over country. And that should deeply offend, [56:48] as well as alarm, all Americans. [56:50] I've talked about my optimism. I think I've argued both sides of it. Are you optimistic? [56:54] Yeah, I'm, I am very optimistic. And I don't necessarily mean just about this election, [56:59] because again, a lot of people have their hopes on this election. And I will reiterate it is a [57:04] midterm election. That is, we can send a huge signal in a midterm election as we did in 1894, [57:10] as I'm sure everybody remembers, which is actually a very cool election. But closer to home, you think [57:16] of the election of 1974 after Watergate, which saw the influx of all the Watergate babies. And most [57:22] people forget about that next period, the next two years after the 74 election. But that was the period [57:28] when we got a whole bunch of new legislation that reigned in the power of a rogue presidency. [57:34] Then we get the election of Jimmy Carter. And it's 77 and 78 that we get a whole slew of new [57:39] progressive legislation that most people tend to forget about because they remember the oil crisis [57:44] and then the hostage crisis under Carter. But when I think about the next three to five years, what I [57:51] really think about is the 70s. So when I say I'm optimistic, of course, I am optimistic about the [57:56] midterms as everybody else's. But I'm actually looking at this as a much longer game, not only [58:02] through the next presidency, but then the next midterms, which again, usually go against a [58:06] president in office, because those will be the ones about gerrymandering. And if we have not at that [58:11] point managed to outlaw partisan gerrymandering, that's going to be a really important one for [58:16] making sure we have free and fair elections. So my goal is to see the culmination of this sea change [58:25] within the next five years, so I can retire and get in my kayak and eat M&Ms and do nothing else. [58:31] So I think we should have a campaign that says put Heather in her kayak with so many M&Ms, [58:39] she might sink. And that's what will turn people out to vote so they can stop listening to me. [58:43] You are going to be in your kayak only after we have all had the pleasure and the benefit of reading [58:49] what you have written and what you have thought through for us. You have given, I think, more to [58:55] more of us than anyone over these last two years. And I went back and read the notes from around, [59:02] you know, the days before I interviewed you the other three times. And everything that you noted [59:09] and observed, you don't do a ton of predicting, but all the things you were pointing to have always come [59:14] to pass. So I hang on to your every word. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. [59:18] It's always a pleasure anytime, Nicole. Thank you so much. [59:22] Hey, it's Rachel. I am so glad to see you at the end of that clip, because this is where I get to [59:35] tell you about a new way to watch all our clips and all of our shows and everything on MSNOW on your [59:42] phone or your tablet or your laptop. You can watch things live or recorded. Plus, you can ask me and all [59:47] the other hosts and reporters questions in our weekly live chats. You can go to ms.now membership [59:55] or just click below. Thanks.