Trump, Musk, and America’s 'Second Gilded Age'

[0:00] America suffers from a kind of divided soul, this double consciousness. [0:04] We imagine ourselves as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic, [0:08] and you can't be both without depositing a kind of madness at the heart of the country. [0:13] And then there are the folks who have to bear the brunt of the madness. [0:16] Hi there, everyone. There is no one with whom I have shared more of the history of the last 10 [0:26] years on live television than this week's guest, from tragic breaking news stories, [0:31] to devastating political outcomes, to the daily dose of grief handed to the nation from the COVID-19 [0:37] pandemic. This week's guest has put words to our collective grief like none other. [0:42] He's also cut through the lies of the Trump era with epic clarity. And it is in that vein of epic, [0:48] sometimes uncomfortable clarity that this week's guest, Eddie Glaude, joins us to discuss his [0:53] essential new book. Eddie is someone I turn to on a weekly, sometimes daily basis to understand [1:00] exactly how we get through this moment. His new book is called America USA, [1:05] how race shadows the nation's anniversaries, and it could not be more timely this week [1:10] and any week. So without any further ado, this is the best people. And this is my dear friend, [1:15] one of the best people I know, Eddie Glaude. Thank you so much for being here. [1:19] Thank you, Nicole. You have me blushing over here. Thank you so much. [1:23] Well, you make me cry and blush on a near regular basis. And I just wanted to start with, [1:30] you know, I think we first met on the set of Morning Joe. And while everyone else was sort of [1:36] chugging coffee and taking in whatever hilarity, Heilman or Billy or, you know, a particle delivered, [1:46] you just cut right to the bone all the time. Where does that come from? [1:50] I don't know. Maybe I'm a professor, but, you know, it's part of what it means to be a teacher. [1:55] But I want to just say that those moments, you know, you always get a little bit of heaven in [2:01] the context of ordinary time. And, you know, our efforts in those early days and our relationship [2:08] that we've established over these years, we've been doing God's work. And I just, I feel so blessed [2:13] from that first encounter to even to today. So I, but I think it comes from, you know, being from [2:19] Mississippi and not wanting my mother and my father to yell at me for not telling the truth [2:24] and being a professor, I think. [2:26] But the truth, the truth is, the truth isn't what it used to be, right? Like the truth, [2:32] the truth gets, gets shaved off from people wanting to please, not really the people that [2:39] we surround ourselves with, but a lot of people who do this. Social media has changed how willing [2:44] people are to tell the truth. Donald Trump has changed how willing people are to tell the truth. [2:49] But you've never wavered, ever. And I admire that so much. [2:54] Thank you for saying that. You know, I think two things. One, I have a job, [2:58] you know, I'm a Princeton professor. This is what I do. And two, the only reason why I think I'm on [3:06] television, the only reason why I think I have a public platform is, is to, to say what I think is the [3:13] truth. I think Americans are hungry for what the theologian Howard Thurman called the sound of the [3:19] genuine. They want to hear it because we're so awash in lies. And so I take it as my task to listen [3:27] intently, right, to try to bring the fullness of my bibliography, what I've read, what I know to bear [3:34] on a subject, and to think with, with others, to think with you and your audience, to think with those [3:41] folks together. And I think we model something. I remember one time, Nicole, we were talking about [3:48] something, and I was going to reference the Bush years. And you said, let's go there without blinking. [3:56] Yeah. And it's an example of the kind of background condition that allows us to do what we do [4:05] together. And that is to just simply speak from the heart and the mind to your audience every chance we [4:11] get. Well, I mean, just to pull the curtain back a little bit, there are days where breaking news [4:16] intervenes, and we, we blow up our show. But I think increasingly over the, it's been almost 10 years [4:23] since we've had our show, we want you no matter the development. And I think some of that relationship [4:30] that you have with our audience was forged during the pandemic, where we dealt with what I think everyone [4:38] was feeling, but no one was dealing with. And that was the collective grief. And we talk about that a [4:43] lot on and off TV. I wonder if you can just sort of share some of what we talk about, how the country [4:49] is still rumbling with grief that it's never processed. Yeah, I don't think we, I don't think we're okay. [4:56] We haven't, you know, you have all those empty chairs around the kitchen table, and you've got these [5:01] rolling anniversaries, where people who were once here are no longer here. You know, I think it's [5:09] something unique about the United States, you know, we had the Spanish flu, and immediately we called it [5:13] the roaring 20s. We don't linger with, we don't linger around death too long. And so you have all of [5:19] this unresolved grief. I remember saying to, to, to you that something to the effect that what we've [5:26] experienced is the privatization of grief. There were no public rituals, no kind of daily reckoning [5:34] with our dead. And that's when, and I remember you deciding with the show that you were going to end [5:42] every show by talking about someone. And I don't know, it was so heart wrenching to watch you do it [5:49] every single day. It still makes me cry. It still makes me cry thinking about it. Every single day, [5:56] but it was part of, you know, it's, it's, I think if anything I bring to your show and to, [6:00] to television, I'm always coming from the moral angle, even when I'm talking about politics. [6:05] The choices we make, the events of the day, the horrors that we have to report. I'm just thinking [6:11] about our response. Our response to it all has everything to do with what kind of people we are [6:19] and who we aspire to be. So I'm always trying to get that moral question, that ethical question on the [6:25] front, front and center. And, and thank God you allow me to do it every, every time I'm on with you. [6:30] Thank, thank God you, you come and are willing to do it every day and every time you're on. [6:35] I remember, I think we were covering a mass shooting. [6:39] El Paso. [6:40] And El Paso with the manifesto that revealed some racial animus and, and we were dealing with it. [6:47] We were talking about ties to things that were in the ugly, sort of right-wing, um, media ecosystem. [6:53] And you made the point that this is who we are. [6:56] What we know is that the country has been playing politics for a long time on this hatred. We know [7:04] this. So it's easy for us to place it all on Donald Trump's shoulders. It's easy for us to place [7:13] Pittsburgh on his shoulders. It's easy for me to place Charlottesville on his shoulders. It's easy for [7:18] us to place El Paso on his shoulders. This is us. And if we're going to get past this, we can't blame [7:27] it on him. He's a manifestation of the ugliness that's in us. [7:31] It still gives me chills. And I think it, it, it, it lived in that moment. It sort of stopped [7:38] everything in the studio. I think it stopped everything on live TV, but it's lived on the [7:43] internet for a really long time. Why do you think that cuts through still? [7:47] I don't know. I, you know, I, I think it, it has something to do with, you know, how, [7:52] how impassioned I was at the time, how I was giving, I think I gave voice to, to some things [7:59] that people were feeling. And, you know, you, you're like a, an amazing jazz conductor. You give, [8:05] you give people space to play, to breathe. And so you didn't interrupt. You just watched me [8:12] kind of move through my emotion, my emotions. And, you know, I was writing Begin Again at the time. [8:18] And so Baldwin came out in, in this way about, no, no, no, no, no. We can't isolate this. We have to [8:26] confront it. This is us. And, and, you know, and, um, I can remember the next morning I woke up and, [8:34] oh my God, it was, it was crazy in terms of the reaction. I guess what I feel with you on the set [8:42] is that this is the only way to do it in a way that it's worth anything. And I think it's such a [8:47] gift. Like, I, I think the thing about the phone is that all the news is there. And so everyone and [8:52] anyone that watches the show is a guest in our house, right? And what you do better than perhaps [8:57] anyone else is feel things with them. And I think the other period of time when I leaned on you more [9:05] than just about anybody else was after George Floyd was murdered. And to talk about what it means to [9:12] have, um, a black son out driving around the streets of any American city, you know, the things that, [9:19] that you say to them, no white person could understand that. Um, they could try to learn it [9:25] and they could try to be empathetic. Um, but I remember you sharing that experience and feeling [9:32] like, I don't know that I could do that. I don't know that I could put that fear and that terror out [9:36] there. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, sometimes we, we, we talk and we're worried about how it's going [9:44] to land. Yeah. And so you have these, um, filters, you know, there's this inside discourse. What am I, [9:51] how am I going to talk with, with black people about this issue? How am I going to talk with you? [9:56] And part of what I try to do in those moments is to just speak across those, those divisions. Okay. [10:03] This is the raw feeling. I'm not going to be concerned. How about how it lands? The man cried [10:09] for his mom, right? We all watched it. And, you know, in some of those days though, some of those [10:16] moments I teared up, you teared up, uh, but it wasn't sentimentality, right? It wasn't just about [10:22] performing our own virtue. And I think what's so important about us having those moments together, [10:28] Nicole, is that ideologically people think we're, this, this is odd, right? There, I mean, there's a [10:35] sense, our journeys to that studio from where we've come. And then for us to just have these moments [10:42] where it's not about party divisions. It's not about politics. It's about the humanity, uh, of, of folk, [10:49] uh, of the moment and for us to give voice to it. Um, I mean, George Floyd, that whole situation, [10:57] it broke my heart. And I don't mean that in any silly kind of way. I, just like today, I don't, [11:04] I don't know what to do with the reality that we're here without just simply telling the truth. [11:13] And it seems to me that that's, that's what, that's what we're, that's what you want me there for. [11:17] And that's what I do. That's what I need you there for. I mean, but I, I also think that, [11:22] and I raised those moments because they're so seared in my brain. Um, but I think they're the [11:27] blocks that let people feel the horrors of Minneapolis. And I think that something about [11:33] everything we've said so far today is that the, the, the truth isn't always what you want to hear, [11:38] but it's never wrong because it's just the truth. And I think there's something about the humanity with [11:44] which you covered other, um, difficult moments that enhanced our ability to talk about the [11:54] immigration excesses, which are the first feature, the first and maybe most brutal and most public [11:59] feature of Trump's second term. All of that credibility, I think between you and the audience [12:05] was built segment after segment, year after year, leading up to Minneapolis. Will you talk about [12:11] covering the second Trump term with us and what that's like? No, it's, it's, you know, [12:15] firstly, I had to deal with all the disappointment, right? Because at, at the end of Begin Again, [12:20] I said that the country had to make a choice. Would we double down on the ugliness of Trumpism or would [12:26] we, would we decide to be otherwise? And the country made its choice and I had to grapple with that. [12:32] And then I saw the implications, right? I mean, we had, I mean, do you remember Buffalo? Oh my God, [12:40] we had to grapple with, you know, Garneau Whitfield's grant, his mother being killed and all the [12:46] ugliness there. And then here we were in the midst of, of, of child separation and, and then we saw [12:53] Minneapolis. And so part of what I, I had to, to, to do is to say, okay, now this is what we chose. [13:01] This is what we chose. Now what, what does this mean about who we are, right? Because it's always going [13:07] back to the moral question, right? What does this say about who we are? My wife hates when I say we, [13:13] and she hates, it's not us, it's them. I've said, no, no, no, no, no, it's us. Uh, we're all in this together. [13:20] Well, we're all here. Yeah. Exactly. It's, we're all here. Um, and so the idea was to kind of, [13:27] really just kind of turn, always trying to turn us inside out to see what's moving us in the gut. And that requires a [13:35] confrontation with the ugliness, not a remembrance, but a confrontation. Recently, I said, [13:40] we have to name the devil that has us by the throat. And if we don't name it, we can't address [13:46] it. And it seems to me that I'm always trying to name it. Now I get in a lot of trouble for doing so, [13:54] but I'm always trying to name what has us by the throat. And so that's how I've been trying to [13:58] approach this, um, since day one. But we, we've been, we, we have been, Nicole, as, as, uh, the [14:05] poet Gwendolyn Brooks would say, we've been in the whip of the whirlwind and it's hard to keep one's [14:10] balance. So I say all that is sort of preamble to the first line of the new book. Um, I do not love [14:17] America. Explain. Yeah. So there, that, that sentence, oh my, I wrote it. I, I jumped up and started [14:25] pacing. It was fear. I don't know what, I can't write this sentence. Um, um, and then I said, [14:32] but I have to write the sentence that came out. So it's working on three registers. One, [14:36] it's announcing that I'm very skeptical of the idolatry of the state. You know, love abstractions. [14:44] You love people. Two, I wanted to announce that I don't begin where Baldwin begins. Baldwin says, [14:51] I love my country. And because of that, I'm paraphrasing, of course, I reserve the right to [14:55] criticize it perpetually. Instead, I begin with wound, which is the third register. I begin, [15:02] I grew up in Mississippi and I tell the story. My dad was the second African-American hired in the [15:07] post office in Pascagoula. We lived in Moss Point, which was the black labor force to Pascagoula. This [15:12] is Trent Lotz, Pascagoula is Trent Lotz district, right? Uh, and I'm playing with my Tonka truck and, and I, [15:21] my new friend, we were having a ball playing with those old Tonka trucks. Um, and his dad came out and he [15:26] said, stop playing with that N word. And I had to pick up my truck and go inside. And the world, [15:35] America told me what it thought about me that day. And then my parents had to get to work to, [15:42] to teach me not only how to survive it, but not to believe it. I don't, I don't begin with love. So [15:48] here I'm asking that hard question, that provocative question. Why would you expect me to? Why would you [15:57] expect me to love the country that is, that's gutted the Voting Rights Act? That's redrawing [16:02] districts. That's empowered a gaggle of white nationalists. What are you, what, from whence this [16:10] expectation? So I give the question back to you. Why would you think I would love the country given [16:17] my formation? And that's an affront to some people when I ask it that way. How has that been received? [16:24] Oh, it's been really weird. So some people will say, and, and, and, and overwhelming in some ways, [16:31] some people will say, um, you should be grateful. The country made your, this is the greatest country [16:37] on earth. You wouldn't be who you are. You're, you're rich. Like, you know, you're, you, you teach [16:42] at Princeton. You, you're well off. Your parents couldn't have imagined your life. America made this [16:47] gratitude is the expectation. Sounds like, uh, JD Vance. Um, and then there's, then there's, [16:54] I remember I did this interview, Nicole, this would, you'd find this fascinating. I had just [16:58] been on a panel and, and a young man, he was a, a older millennial, was trying to ask me about the [17:03] first question sentence and he couldn't say it. He just couldn't let it come out of his mouth. I guess [17:09] it was fear. And I said, and then I realized, I said, I guess I wrote the sentence to give you [17:13] permission to say it. And you know what? Across the country, people have been saying, I had similar [17:21] experience. I don't begin there. Right. I love, I love people, but I don't, you know, this place. [17:27] And then when I say, you know, a certain kind of patriotism, a certain kind of idolatry of the [17:32] state sounds to my ear like a rebel yell, because I don't know what kind of politics comes in toe [17:39] with folks who wrap themselves in the flag when it comes to people like me. Um, and then I'm giving [17:45] people a permission structure, our favorite phrase, uh, permission structure, uh, to kind of delve [17:50] deeper into their feelings and emotions about their relationship to the country. [17:55] I mean, I think since you, you probably wrote that sentence, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting [18:00] Rights Act. The Republicans are gerrymandering, um, majority minority districts out of existence, [18:07] like not just messing with them, but eliminating them. Um, and white supremacists like Nick Fuentes [18:14] seem to have a platform and defenders in polite society. So it seems that the right is trying to [18:22] tell you, you might have a point. Yeah. Cause this, going back to our first, [18:26] the first part of our conversation, all the thing, all the work that we did in the midst of a racial [18:32] reckoning, which I use that phrase with you. And then here we are. And I'm, this is when I was writing [18:38] the book because I wrote it in this manic mode. I wrote it in nine months, Nicole. [18:42] Um, and I'm trying to make sense of it all. I said, well, the only, only thing I can conclude, [18:49] because in the blink of an eye, we're here after all of the work we were doing. The only thing I could [18:55] conclude is that people were lying. You weren't telling me the truth. You were performing because [19:01] how can we arrive here so quickly? And that's that rage that kind of seeps to the top of the page, [19:09] right? Um, uh, and so, you know, I think the evidence is in, we're in a second lost cause. We're [19:15] in a second redemption. Uh, and you know, this goes back to the, one of the central claims of the book, [19:21] America suffers from a kind of divided soul, this double consciousness. We imagine ourselves as a beacon [19:27] of freedom and as a white republic. And you can't be both without depositing a kind of madness [19:33] at the heart of the country. And then there are the folks who have to bear the brunt of the madness. [19:37] Why do you think J.D. Vance is so willing to write and say things that could very easily [19:44] prove all your points? Because he believes it. [19:49] You think so? He called Trump America's Hitler. [19:51] Yeah, but I think, you know, I, there's, there, when I read Hillbilly Elegy, [19:57] right, um, there, there, there elements, uh, you know, he's, there's an application of certain [20:02] kind of Charles Murray-esque like formulations to the white poor, but there's something about the [20:09] way he's, he's ambitious beyond, uh, any limit. So he'll, he'll morph into anything. [20:15] But I think ultimately, um, I think he believes some of this stuff about, about the nation. [20:25] When I hear him on July 5th, 2025 at the Claremont Institute, [20:30] saying America is not a creedal nation. [20:32] If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, [20:37] of the Declaration of Independence, that's a definition that is way over-inclusive [20:43] and under-inclusive at the same time. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, [20:48] it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the [20:54] principles of the Declaration of Independence. Must we admit all of them tomorrow? If you follow that [21:00] logic of America as a purely creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you. [21:07] That's insane. On the eve, on the day after July 4th, we're not a creedal nation. He basically gave a [21:14] blood and soil speech. I was, I was like, ah, this is, and he's part of the National Conservatives group. [21:22] Yeah. He's part of the Claremont Institute group. And when you begin to dig deep into those particular [21:27] intellectual spaces, you see what, you see what you see. And what you see is a kind of the intellectual [21:34] scaffolding of a white nationalist agenda that he seems to be committed to. [21:38] Which is more dangerous, that and those adherents or Donald Trump's, you know, I think decades of [21:48] smearing the Central Park Five and racist rental practices? Or is it the combination that's so dangerous? [21:56] It's the combination because Donald Trump's kind of carnival barker kind of approach, [22:02] right, has the kind of popular currency. But the actual effort to rip out the entrails of the [22:10] infrastructure of the mid-20th century, to dismantle the good society, to dismantle the New Deal, [22:16] this infrastructure of the civil rights movement and what came out of it, these people are engaging in [22:23] a wholesale attack. And they have an intellectual rationale for it. [22:27] Which is what? Which is what? [22:29] That, A, that they believe that the country is fundamentally a white republic. [22:35] B, they are deeply skeptical of the overreach of government on behalf of folk who they don't [22:43] believe to be central to their idea of the American republic. And to be honest with you, [22:50] they hold a view of the founding. This is a kind of small point. But they hold a view of the founding [22:56] where America's perfection was secured in its beginnings. Any talk about more perfect union, [23:03] right, slanders the American project. So they can't, so we can't talk about black folk or women [23:11] or working folk or LGBTQ plus communities as being a part of an ongoing effort to live up to the ideals [23:18] of the country. Because for these folk, those ideals were secured in the beginning. And that's all we [23:23] need to do is to remember and restore. [23:25] But what's so nuts about that is that, I mean, that would leave 51% of the voting [23:29] public out of, I mean, women didn't vote either. I mean, it's insane. And they obviously don't, [23:35] well, I don't know, maybe they do mean that. Do you think they mean that? [23:38] Yeah. You know, there's, you know, when, when the guy, the heavyweight champion or whomever said, [23:42] you know, Michelle Obama is a man. At that moment, you saw the convergence of very, of two, [23:48] what seemingly are distinctive moments, but they're linked. So you saw the kind, this racialized body [23:53] with regards to this black woman, but also this, this fear of, of, of trans, because you have the man, [24:00] the manosphere in its, in its ugliest forms on the internet, driving this muscular man, you know, [24:07] this muscular performance of masculinity because they believe women are the source of the downfall [24:13] of the empire. And you can see it across the board in the way in which that discourse links with [24:21] great replacement. We're not having enough babies, undermining Roe versus Wade. I mean, [24:26] all of this stuff is connected. It's hard to kind of draw lines, but the lines are, are there. [24:31] Eddie, take me through the anniversaries because, um, I mean, I, I, I've covered [24:39] the Trump administration's efforts to whitewash and erase history, um, as, as insane. But when you [24:45] really look at our history, um, you can see that the first half of the project only works if you [24:52] erase our history. Yeah. So oftentimes we want to exceptionalize Trump, just like we exceptionalize [24:58] the South. If only the South would live up to the ideals of democracy, then we would be okay as a [25:03] country. When in fact, as Malcolm X said, as long as you south of the Canadian border, you're in the [25:08] South, right? The South is the beating heart of the nation. So they don't, they can't bear the burden [25:14] of our sins, just as Trump can't bear the burden of our sins. So I looked at these, I was trying, [25:19] every president demands a path to account for it. So I looked at this, here we are, the 250th, [25:25] all of this hell's breaking loose. And I said, well, why don't I look at these milestone [25:29] anniversaries and see what's going on? 1876, reconstruction is collapsing. That's a, [25:35] that's a generous word. Um, it's being murdered. Um, and it's the first national ritual post the [25:42] carnage of the civil war. And this is the story that encapsulates it. The most famous American, [25:48] one of the most famous Americans is Frederick Douglass, the most famous orator in the country, [25:52] Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass. He has an invitation to sit on the dais with President [25:55] Grant. He's trying to enter the exposition, the Philadelphia exposition, which was wildly [26:00] successful. Millions of Americans came. A Philadelphia police officer sees his ticket and [26:05] said, there's no way an N-word can be on the dais. And if it wasn't for a senator who saw his big [26:11] white mane, Frederick Douglass would have never gotten in. But guess what? He gets on the, he gets [26:17] on the dais and they just sit him there. He's not allowed to speak. Instead, Grant talks about the [26:22] grandness of the American experiment. We're no longer, uh, apprentice to, to Europe and the like. [26:28] Meanwhile, Colfax, Louisiana, violence. Vicksburg, Mississippi, violence. Hamburg, South Carolina, [26:36] violence. The enactment of the Mississippi plan aimed at disenfranchising Black folk and asserting [26:42] these political coups that would take over the South, even though some of the states are already [26:47] occupied. So that's 1876. 1926. Oh my God. The roaring 20s. The age, the jazz age. It's really the [26:59] decade of the Klan. Our colleague Rachel Maddow has done such great work on this decade. But Klan, [27:05] founded in 1915, reaches his pinnacle in the 1920s. Uh, its seminal achievement, Nicole, [27:13] was the Johnson Reed Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924. Representative Johnson from Washington [27:20] was a member of the Klan. Senator Reed, uh, from Pennsylvania, represented a state with over 250,000 [27:27] members of the Klan. At one point, the Klan, at one point, the Klan had six percent of the American [27:32] white population as members. At least that's, that's some conservative number. Um, and they marched down [27:40] in DC, thousands of them, not from the South, but from the Midwest and the North. They even claimed [27:48] that Calvin Coolidge would not have been elected president of the United States if it wasn't for [27:51] them. Now, this is the key, the divided soul. The Klan was approved initially to have its annual [27:59] convention on the grounds of the Philadelphia Exposition celebrating the 150th anniversary [28:06] of the nation. They were going to celebrate the flag and burn a cross at the same time. [28:10] But there was this odd and powerful coalition of Jewish folk and Irish folk and Black folk who blocked [28:17] it. But the Klan was clear. They were invested in Nordic Americans, these people who came from S-hole [28:24] European countries, these swarthy folks, these Irish folk with ambiguous allegiances. They were Papists, [28:32] right? They hated them. These were the America First people. They actually used the language. [28:37] Yeah. And so that's 1926. 1976 is very different. 1976. I talked to Secretary Lonnie Bunch about it. He said, [28:48] in some ways, the Bicentennial was the commemoration for white ethnic America. So the children and [28:54] grandchildren of the European immigrants of the 1920s who were seen as infestations are now claiming [29:01] the revolution as their own. But the nation had to deal with all of the skepticism of Watergate and [29:09] Vietnam and Black Power and the women's movement, the radicalization of the students' movement. So the [29:15] Bicentennial, which I was seven years old, wearing red, white, and blue pants that my mom bought me, [29:22] the Bicentennial bore the burden of positing this consensus, Nicole. And I keep thinking [29:30] about that image in Boston of the young teenager with the American flag attacking Ted Landsmark, [29:36] a Black Yale lawyer who was just simply rushing to get to a meeting that he was late to. That's the [29:42] classic image by Stanley Foreman of soiling old glory. This is the anti-busing protest in Boston. [29:50] Again, the contradiction in full view. And we see it with each anniversary. And here we are in the 250th, [29:58] dealing with the same ghosts. If history isn't whitewashed, how would you write the history [30:04] of this anniversary? This 250th? Oh, my God. I would tell the truth about our failures [30:12] and our triumphs. It would be such a serious blues. Actually, the story of the country is told in the [30:22] music of the book. I commissioned Joelle Thompson to score the book. I wanted a musical kind of [30:32] accompaniment to the argument. And he wrote and blue. And each parts of the composition constitute [30:42] the epigraph to each chapter. And when you listen to it, it'll blow your mind. And so what you hear [30:47] are these American show tunes and familiar music. And then you hear these blues chords. You hear the [30:55] upper registers and lower registers of the piano going at each other. And of course, the ambivalence [31:00] that attends all of it. But if I had to write the story, it would be one that would look the [31:08] ugliness of who we are and what we've done squarely in the face in order to release us [31:14] into a different way of being together. I said this to someone when I was on the road. I said, [31:20] you know, imagine a couple that wants to save the marriage, but no one wants to admit the lie [31:26] that's at the heart of it. If we're going to get to the other side of this madness, [31:31] we have to tell ourselves the truth about why this man showed up in this moment. And I think [31:40] we can tell a thick story as to why that's the case. [31:45] I feel like in public life, Michelle Obama is trying to dance with this story a little bit. [31:51] In the things she said, both in the opening of the library and in her convention speech, [31:58] I guess, what is it, two years ago now, she gave that searing indictment of Donald Trump [32:04] in the summer of 24 for Kamala Harris's nominating convention, where she talked about [32:10] how she didn't have the luxury of failing upward. What do you think about her contributions to the [32:18] conversation? They seem to exceed those of most people in public life. [32:23] Yeah. I mean, I think she tries her best to speak as truthfully and directly as she can. [32:30] You know, the political consulting class has told politicians repeatedly that, you know, [32:34] you don't want to trigger the racism in the American electorate. So you can't talk about race too much. [32:41] Wouldn't you say since 16, it's been pretty triggered? [32:43] I would think so. [32:45] That seems insane. Like Trump's been elected twice doing the opposite, like intentionally triggering. [32:52] That's why I love you, Nicole Wallace. But it seems that it still shackles the way in which Democrats [32:58] talk about race everyone else talks about. So Michelle Obama is a bit, she's a bit more forthright [33:04] than Barack Obama about this sort of stuff. And so I think it plays a significant role. [33:11] But you know what? In the book, I trouble more perfect union talk. And I do so for this reason. [33:23] As long as we... More perfect union talk to my ear, Nicole, sounds like a moral holiday. [33:31] It works like Catholic confession. Right? That's all I need to do is admit that I've sinned. [33:35] Like a shortcut. [33:36] Exactly. I've sinned. I'm going to say 10 Our Fathers, [33:40] and then I'm okay and I can go back and do whatever. Go back to the bar. [33:42] Exactly. And so we tell ourselves we're always already on the road to a more perfect union. [33:48] Yes, there was slavery, but the arc bends towards, yes, there are women. Yes, but we're... [33:53] And so what I want is a more blue-soaked orientation to the past, where we're not kind of secure in our [34:02] innocence, or secure in the end in which the country's journey. There's no guarantee that this [34:09] experiment will survive. And so I want that. That's what I mean by I want the country to grow up. [34:15] And so there are moments when the Obamas, which I understand it, that's their brand, [34:20] they have to traffic in the more perfect union talk. [34:24] But in our current days, how can I put this? It sounds like 80s music. [34:30] You know, it's like, oh, I remember that track. Yes, it was great. [34:33] But it would never hit the charts today because the sound has changed. And so I understand the impulse. [34:42] When I listen to Stevie Wonder's High Ground, yes, I feel it in my heart. But I know it wouldn't hit the [34:49] charts today because the political lexicon, the landscape has so fundamentally changed in a way that [34:57] I don't know if that orientation, although it cleanses the palate, is sufficient to address [35:07] the gunk, the mess that we're in, if that makes sense. [35:12] Yeah. I mean, it's like the difference between, you know, changing the rug after a flood [35:19] and like gutting the black mold from the walls and the foundation. And I wonder who does that? [35:27] How do we do that? [35:29] Yeah, I don't know. I think what, you know, I think what we have to do is set the stage for [35:33] this next cohort of folk to do. I've been on this 20-day tour. And I said this, I said, you know, [35:39] I don't want to do to the younger generation what was done to us. And they're like, what do you mean? [35:47] I said, well, I only have a short window to have a microphone and a platform because the baby boomers [35:52] never left. They suck up so much oxygen. Yeah. And so part of our task, I think, [36:01] is to clear the underbrush, is to take out all of the stuff that's been underwater, soaked, ruined, [36:10] so that the millennials and the Gen Zers can come in and gut the house and do what's needed to be done [36:17] to actually get us to the other side of this. [36:21] Do you see people doing that? Do you see people in our politics that give you hope? [36:25] No names jump off the page immediately. You know, I mean, you mentioned Mamdani and [36:33] immediately people think you're a socialist, and I hate these labels. I just want people to try to [36:38] address the circumstances of folk. You know, we're drowning in greed and selfishness and hatred, [36:46] and politicians manipulate those three things repeatedly. And I just want somebody, whether [36:55] it's Dave Jolly in Florida or whether it's Mamdani in New York, I don't give a damn where you are in [37:01] the ideological spectrum. I just want you to address the circumstances of everyday, ordinary folk. [37:06] You know, I find the two senators from Georgia to be— [37:09] Oh, Asif and Warnock, yeah. [37:11] And like, they're totally different, but they're talking differently than everybody else, [37:15] and they're not falling into any of the traps you're talking about. And they're dealing, [37:19] I mean, Ossoff with his focus on corruption and like really trusting the audience to understand [37:26] the details of the grift, like really putting detailed information on the theft of the American [37:32] taxpayer that is underway from Donald Trump. And then Senator Warnock seems to be speaking [37:40] the moral language that you and I are talking about and that you always do. They seem to be [37:45] really, I don't know, communicating differently right now than anybody else. [37:50] Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that for sure. You know, there's the challenge, [37:57] of course, of aligning one's rhetoric with one's policy positions. [38:01] Mm-hmm. [38:02] Mm-hmm. [38:02] I remember with the Biden administration hearing the Tulsa speech going, oh, you know, oh, [38:09] shit, this is different. [38:10] Millions of white Americans belong to the Klan, and they weren't even embarrassed by it. They were [38:16] proud of it. And that hate became embedded systematically and systemically in our laws and [38:26] our culture. We do ourselves no favors by pretending none of this ever happened. [38:32] We should know the good, the bad, everything. That's what great nations do. They come to terms [38:45] with their dark sides. [38:48] Mm-hmm. Well, just that he went was different, right? [38:52] Yeah, it was different across the board. And the one thing about Tulsa, it cannot be [38:58] assimilated into a progressive narrative because it's just violence, raw cruelty. And so it's like, [39:05] ah, this is different. And then you align it with policies and you say, ah, but we're still in this [39:12] space. I think what we have to do on the democratic side, we have to leave the third way behind. [39:18] The legacy of the DLC has to be put aside because if we're going to do an autopsy of how we got to this [39:24] moment, we need to understand everything that fertilized the soil that produced it. [39:29] What do you mean? [39:29] Um, I think the triangulation, um, the shift from working people to Silicon Valley, [39:37] uh, you know, the Democratic Party becoming basically Rockefeller Republicans. You know, [39:43] this is paraphrasing Clinton at one point, Bill Clinton, that is. [39:46] Yes. [39:46] Um, we find ourselves in this moment because of, um, a kind of, um, capitulation to corporate interests [39:58] overrunning democratic processes. Um, and both parties are complicit. Underneath that, [40:07] of course, is peop, people suffer. And then when people suffer, they reach for the scapegoat. [40:13] They always have. And we have a ready, ready at hand scapegoat in the United States. [40:17] Well, I think of it as the evidence of failure is so abundant, right? Like, like you get in trouble [40:27] because I think people attach, um, politicians and people to it. But if you just step back, [40:32] like if you live in New York City and you see the excess and the sort of evidence of the billionaire [40:41] class is, is, is everywhere. Like the disparity between the, the uber rich and people who could [40:47] barely get by is so glaring. Like who's missing it and who thinks this is working and for whom is it [40:54] working? You know, I think, you know, they, we say that Mark Twain said it, but we're not sure he said [40:59] it, but history doesn't repeat itself. It, it damn sure it rhymes. Yeah. Uh, we're in the second gilded [41:04] age. Yeah. Um, but it's actually worse. Um, the idea that a trillionaire, a trillionaire, that's [41:12] fucking evil to me. And like, why was he in charge of USAID? Like what would a trillionaire possibly [41:18] know about a program that Democrats and Republicans used as a lever of soft power for the United States of [41:25] America to make Americans safer all over the world, to make American troops safer all over the world. [41:30] He destroyed it in like an afternoon. Yeah. And think about, and think about all the, [41:34] all the death and destruction that followed it. Right. Think about what happened with, [41:38] yeah, that, that happened with Doge and what they unleashed. All of those government workers, [41:42] particularly black women who in a blink of an eye lost their middle-class footing. Uh, and this guy's a [41:49] trillionaire. Um, but you know, what's interesting about the end of the 19th century in this moment, [41:54] you had the gilded age, oligarchs seizing power. You had imperial imagination of the country. [42:02] Our gr, our greatest export isn't just simply baseball. At the moment in which Jim Crow was [42:07] being solidified in the South, America was exporting its racial logics to Haiti, to Cuba. It's this [42:16] convergence of these historical dynamics that we're experiencing in our current moment. And I guess, [42:23] you know, like you said, you just got to be, you don't have to, you know, widen the aperture. [42:27] The evidence is clear. Just look. But you know, we're shattering mirrors, as I say in the book, [42:32] it's ours is a time of shattered mirrors. We don't want to see it. The book doesn't end, um, [42:39] with hopelessness though. And so I just, I want to spend, I want to spend some time with how it ends. [42:44] Like it ends. It doesn't, I mean, the opposite of not loving America isn't hating America. Um, [42:51] just explain how it ends. Yeah. You know, I want to change the, from a preposition to a conjunction, [42:57] instead of love of country, love and country. I love this place. It's my home. My great-grandmother [43:04] is buried in Mississippi. My mom and dad worked their behinds off to make my life possible. Yes, [43:12] there are wounds, but you know, um, I love this place. I love the tradition that has made me who I [43:20] am. There's nothing like listening to Al Green and drinking some brown liquor and having some fried [43:25] fish or listening to BB King or Bobby Blue Bland. I love being me. And it has everything to do with, [43:32] uh, the hard work that, and the grit of people who taught me not to believe what this world said [43:38] about me. And I don't need MAGA to appropriate it. I don't need some abstract notion of America [43:46] to tell me how great that is. I don't need the symbol of, of the Obamas. I know it in my heart [43:53] that this is, this is what makes this place swing. Your country, as I say at the end, no, no, no, no, no. [43:59] You hear us on your tongue, in your English. You taste us in your food. You hear us in the music. [44:05] You hear us in the literature. We make this place swing, right? And whether you know it or not, [44:12] we know how we got over. I don't need an affirmation of that. But business is this thing here. [44:17] One of my students in my Baldwin course, going back to the Baldwin seminar, I started teaching that [44:22] seminar that year I gave you the syllabus. I've been teaching it for 10 plus years now. She wrote a [44:27] paper. She was so sweet, Nicole. She, she was from Texas. She had black girl, young black woman. [44:33] She had an infectious laugh. She just joy. But Baldwin was beating her up. She, it was killing her. [44:40] Come in my office. I had, doc, I don't cry. And I don't think I want a white boyfriend anymore. I [44:44] mean, it was just existential crisis. And she wrote the paper and she was charting Baldwin's notion of love [44:51] from notes of a native son to evidence of things not seen. And in the end of the paper, she gave me [44:56] instruction. And I read it, I wrote it in the book. It says, the last sentence of my student's [45:03] final paper about Baldwin's view of love may serve as a balm. What remains, she wrote, is not hope, [45:11] but something just as lasting. The insistence on truth carried by love and lit by rage. [45:20] She was telling me in that moment, Eddie, doc, we need you to bear witness, bear witness. And I end with [45:31] this notion of love because Ralph Ellison is right. Democracy at its best is a disinterested form of [45:37] love. I don't need to know you to care about you and want you to flourish. But in this moment, [45:45] no Pollyannish stuff, no sentimentality. Tell the truth with love lit by rage. [45:53] It's so perfect. It's so perfect. Is that your, um, is that your wish, [46:00] I guess, for what people bring into, um, their reflections on July 4th? [46:08] Yeah. If we're not angry about our current moment, something's wrong. [46:14] If our feet stand on solid ground in this moment, something's wrong. Um, I want on July 4th, [46:24] they're going to tell a host of lies. They're going to claim the country as theirs and theirs alone. [46:30] And they want the rest of us to shut up, be grateful and disappear. I want us to show our asses. [46:39] That's what I want. And that could be with barbecues. It could be dance lines. It could be [46:47] no Kings marches. I want the full diversity of the country because the power of America has never been [46:54] in the symbol, in the abstraction. The power of America has always been, uh, in its people. [47:00] We just need to get clear on who those people are. I love that you're one of my people, Eddie Claude. [47:06] Well, not stop. Thank you. I do. I do. I could talk to you for four hours straight. Oh, [47:15] thank you. And thank you for everything that you do and that we do together. Thank you for the book. [47:20] It's a marvel. I appreciate you.