Whitewashing History, Blacking Out the Press

Welcome back to America’s Groundhog Day: where Reconstruction never really ended, Jim Crow 2.0 is trending, and Trump authoritarianism feels like a bad sequel. Antonia Hylton (MSNBC) walks us through how the post-Reconstruction era is colliding with today’s civil rights crisis. Then Charlie Sykes breaks down how the Trump crackdown on the media, the DOJ's weaponization, and a supine Supreme Court that keeps empowering the executive branch make Nixon look like a community theater tyrant. Spoiler: the First Amendment is now “pending review” under Trump’s authoritarian playbook. And while America teeters on a government shutdown, Democrats are delusional enough to think “bipartisanship” is a strategy instead of a suicide pact — even as tariffs smash farmers’ margins and rural America feels the squeeze of policy and propaganda alike.
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You can find Antonia Hylton @ahylton26 on social media, or on her website antoniahylton.com. You can also pickup her incredible book “Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum,” wherever fine books are sold.

You can find Charlie Sykes on X @SykesCharlie, and on his Substack “To the Contrary” at www.charliesykes.substack.com

Follow Rick Wilson at @TheRickWilson on X and @therickwilson.bsky.social on Bluesky, and subscribe to his Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. 

Join the fight with the Lincoln Project at www.lincolnproject.us and follow LP on X at @ProjectLincoln. If you'd like to help us continue our critical work, visit https://action.lincolnproject.us/helplp to make a difference.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, folks, delighted to bring you a special double header
episode today on the Lincoln Project Podcast. We've got Antonia
Hilton from MSNBC. It's got a terrific book about race
in America. We're going to talk about that and about
the media situation in the country right now, and my
good friend Charlie Sex where we talk about the party
that used to be called the Republicans and is now
a swamp of pure madness. Thanks for joining us. We

(00:20):
will be bringing you this doubleheader and maybe we'll do
this more in the future. People seem to like the
longer episodes, so let us know. By the way, just
shoot us an email, send us a message if you
like the longer episodes. We can go to the hour
with more than one guest, or we can sit with
the half hour format. It's up to you. Guys, You're attacked.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Will not be an easy one.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Your enemy as well as trained.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Well, but is not a liberal America and he's conservative
America United States of America.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Hey, folks, welcome back to the Lincoln Project Podcast. I'm
your host as always, Rick Wilson. Thanks for joining us again.
We are to be joined today by ANTHONYA. Hilton, today.
She is one of the smartest people I know, and
host the weekend on MSNBC Prime Time, and it's it's
become sort of a go to show because the conversations

(01:14):
there amongst some of the smartest people out there. You've
got Iman, You've got Catherine pell Elise Jordan, and you
sort of steer that ship. Antonio. You are out there
every day on these on these weekend shows talking about big,
consequential issues, and obviously it has been a show that's
been pretty unafraid of talking about the tough stuff. But

(01:37):
I as much as we both love the show, I
wanted to bring up first off to start off this.
You wrote last year a really excellent but dark book
called Madness Racing Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum, And
I think this is something that there's been a lot
of effort right now on the MAGA right now to

(02:00):
sort of completely erase history, and to completely erase the
one piece of history they hate the most, which is
the fundamental treatment of African Americans throughout the period up
to the Civil War and after the Civil War had

(02:20):
its own darkness. Talk to us about your book and
this story. First off, I want to get to some
other stuff in a minute. But it's a disturbing book,
but I think an important one. So tell us about
the book and talk to us about that time and
history where slavery was still a memory that was not
hated by everybody.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
You know what's interesting, Rick, is actually the timing with
this book seems to have worked out well in a way,
in a disturbing way, because of the moment that we're
living in right now. Madness tells the story of a
Jim Crow asylum built innineteen eleven, and the decision to

(03:04):
build mental health infrastructure in the United States that is
separated by race to sort of purposely push Black Americans
into substandard health and mental health care comes out of
a political moment that a lot of experts think we're
kind of living back in right now. You know, a

(03:25):
lot of people try to make comparisons between this moment
and the McCarthy era, and I think a lot of
those comparisons are very apt. But a lot of historians
talk about sort of the post reconstruction reactionary period in
the US when they look at the sort of pendulum
swing that we're living through right now when it comes
to civil rights and race relations in the country. And

(03:47):
one of the fascinating things about that period of our
history that I don't think a lot of Americans know
is that at the same time that we were passing
segregation ordinances, the first Jim Crow laws in the United States,
the other they're trends that sort of tick up in
those reactionary moments is an abuse, assault, and sort of

(04:08):
disrespect toward the homeless, the poor, and the mentally unwell.
So at the same time that there are all these
major changes happening in terms of the civil rights and
sort of communal infrastructure of the United States in the
late eighteen hundreds into the early nineteen hundreds, one of

(04:28):
the groups that you can look at try to understand
what's happening in your society, sort of the health of
your society is well, how do we treat the least
among us? And it's been interesting for me talking about
this book in that period while watching a moment in
which you know, we have a president who's openly trying
to push homeless people out of Washington, d C. We
have people using really abusive and dehumanizing language about homeless

(04:53):
people on television. I mean, Brian kill meat at Fox.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Either you take the resources that we're going to give
you and or you decide that you got to be
locked up in jail.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
That's the way it has to be now, or involuntary
lethal injection or something.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Just kill him, m Brian.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Why did it have to get to this point?

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Right? Can you imagine what would have happened to you
if you'd made a remark similar to that, you'd.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Be out, well, I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
They would have called you off the set and said
thank you for your help. Bye.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah. You know. The other strange thing about that moment
to me, Rick was that his co host didn't seem
that shocked by trust and believe that on the weekend Primetime,
if if any of the four of us says something
like that, I mean before our bosses could do anything
about it, our right, Yeah, then exactly And so weirdly,

(05:40):
this book, I think helps us understand a lot of
what we're living through right now. Madness tells the story
of Crownsville Hospital, Maryland's Jim Crow Asylum, built in nineteen eleven,
in the decades after slavery comes to an end, and Maryland,
but really the entire country is engaged in these really
messy debates about well, what does sort of full participation

(06:04):
in society look like for Black Americans? How are we
going to manage societal ills and frustrations that people have. Doctors, lawyers,
politicians in Maryland are arguing with each other about what
they want to do about what they perceive to be
sort of unruly black populations that are not adjusting to
freedom very well. And one of the theories that they

(06:26):
paus it is not that these communities are struggling with
trauma still and that slavery actually wasn't that long ago,
and there are many people alive at that time related
to or who formally enslaved, But it's that actually they
can't handle freedom. There's something biologically very different about being black,
and so when we're going to treat those populations, we

(06:47):
have to put them somewhere different, and we're going to
manage it differently. And Maryland takes it a step further.
They force homeless black men to build the asylum for
themselves from the ground up. They march first, it's twelve
of them, but eventually it grows to a group of
about one hundred and fifty men and boys who are
forced to clear roads, move railways, and do the backbreaking

(07:09):
labor of building themselves their own pursul mental institution. And
this book tells the about one hundred year history of
this place and argues that we need to understand how
our mental health systems were created, the ways in which
different communities and people were treated inside of them, and
it'll really help us understand not just why our mental

(07:31):
health system fails all Americans, not just black Americans. I mean,
you can meet wealthy white Americans who will tell you
they're having a hard time getting addiction treatment or support
for a kid struggling with distress. But I think you
need to know your history first to figure out what
our solutions might look like in the present. And that's
really what mannis is all I find.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
One of the things I found really frightening about it,
or disturbing about it, was folks in that period of
time in American history, even the most posh, private whites
only mental institution, would you, by today's standards, you would
say was a hell on earth. You would be mortified
in every possible way about the treatment of those folks there.

(08:14):
This was something even more horrific and and and and
administered weirdly with that, with that voodoo race science approach
of as you said, the idea that blacks could not
did not have the cognitive ability to adjust or to
exist in freedom, which which you know, Jim Crow was

(08:36):
like a like a persistent virus that kept trying to
to reintroduce the worst aspects one at a time, to say, Okay, well, okay,
we we're not gonna do slavery, but we will do sharecropping.
We're not going to do you know, we're not gonna
we're not gonna overtly do it, but we're going to
gussy it up in a pretend world. And as a
guy from the South who has been down that rabbit

(08:56):
hole of I mean, black prisons in Florida were had
a death rate that was that was higher than people
being put in the electricure or hanged for there because
of disease and treatment and so this sort of thing.
It reminded me of just how sweeping that as a
cultural institution Jim Crow was throughout and even in Maryland.

(09:19):
You do not think of Maryland as the Deep South,
but it is. But it was, you know, this story
was pretty dark when you wrote this book. I presume
since it was released in well, I guess late last year, right, you.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Would have been doing this, Yeah, about a year and
a half ago.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
You would have been doing this before the current moment
of excesses of trying to erase history, try trying to
eliminate black history in the Smithsonian and in the classroom
and everywhere else. And and if you were writing it
again now, would it have changed your perspective of a
bunch of the stuff you reported in this book, because

(09:58):
I think I think we've jumped up a let that
is kind of ugly since since that period, we.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Have definitely jumped up a level. But I will tell
you I think a lot of it holds because one
of the ways in which so for background for anyone
who's new to my work, before I started anchoring at MSNBC,
I was at NBC for five years and my beat

(10:24):
was covering sort of the culture war in K through
twelve education, and so I was there ground zero for
the CRT fight, the sort of first iteration of book
banning at the local level. And of course this had
sort of national connections. There were you know, uh, members
of Congress who were in the wake of George Floyd's

(10:45):
killing and the published the sixteen nineteen project, you know,
freaking out about this at the top, top level. But
there was this organic or semi organic, because there were
certainly organizations bankrolling a lot of this and trained activists
who are involved at times, but there were parents who
were starting to have this very emotional backlash. They were

(11:06):
worried about children feeling guilt about learning certain things in schools,
and so I kind of saw where this was going
to go.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
I guess I.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Wasn't shocked when Trump won. I had seen the sort
of local grassroots mobilization centered around schools and parents in
some of these communities really fire both the sort of
cultural shift and the political shift in the country, And

(11:36):
so I was not shocked and bamboozled and confused, in
part because I had done so much of that reporting,
and this book was, you know, I was finishing it up,
and I was getting ready to bring it out into
the world in that very environment, and so I think
in many ways it holds up. I guess I don't
know that I would do anything differently. Maybe I would
have ended it with a reflection on some of what

(11:58):
we've seen happen in just the last three four months.
I end it right now with Jordan and Neely and
his killing in New York City and the debate that
that inspired across the country. But to be honest, I
think that people will find that if you read this
book without knowing the day that I published it, it
would feel like it still makes very sense to you

(12:18):
right now. That's my point.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
I do thank you then and now.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
A fundamental underpinning of pathologies in all kinds of communities,
African American community and everywhere has been that we have
never figured mental health out in this country now, not
just in the era when it was deliberately abusive and
racially segregated like that. We have never figured it out.
And so much of the stuff that we struggle with

(12:48):
in cities and states around this country is that we
don't have a mental health system in this country. We
have this weird ad hoc patchwork. Sometimes you can, sometimes
you can't get help or treatment depending on your income,
and as you point out, even upper income people have trouble.
There's a critical shortage of mental health beds in this
country no matter what, no matter where you're from, it's

(13:09):
worse in it's worse in urban and minority communities. But
it is a broad problem that we just have not
tackled as a country.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Oh yeah. One of the things I write about at
the very beginning of the book is how during the pandemic,
while I was writing this, a family member of my
in search of experience psychosis. And my family, I'm one
of seven kids. We all have good jobs and good
health care. I have, you know, tons of aunts and uncles,

(13:37):
like thirty something cousins. So when this loved one started
going through a hard time, we had resources. We had
people on the phone. I mean, I have uncles who
are doctors who were calling people and trying to get
favors done for this person. Right, Like, that's the level
of resources we had at our disposal. And still my
loved one was put on a six to eight month
waiting list in order to get inpatient care. And they

(13:59):
were told, for example, that, oh, when you come in
for your interview to finally get into this facility, if
you fail it, you have to go back to the
beginning of the line and oh, because of the nature
of their psychosis, they very likely may fail it. Yeah,
how does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (14:14):
It's a very broken sense, so broken.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
So I want to jump to you know, off of
the subject of mental health and onto a subject that
is making people crazy in the political way. As a
person in the media, you must have been watching very
carefully the last few weeks as the FCC has started

(14:38):
to threaten folks who say things that make Donald Trump upset.
And while Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air. It
took an awful lot for Disney. It took them losing
four point seven billion dollars of equity and their parks
to empty out and Disney Plus memberships to crash through
the floor.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
To make that change.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
As somebody who's in the front line in the media,
talk to me about the pressure you guys feel. I
think MSN is probably a lot a little different than
most outlets, But talk to us about that pressure that
the media is feeling in this post truth world of
Trump and the FCC running sort of a political interference
for the White House.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, I think everyone in our field is exhausted, a
bit fearful about what's going to come next, about how
all of this will develop. You know, as you said
at ms we're in a different position because while the
FCC has some involvement with cable, nowhere near what they

(15:41):
can do to broadcast. Of course, we're in the process
of divorcing from sort of a larger NBC Universal Comcast
family right now, so that's going to put us in
a different position because you know, we won't have the
same level of you know, sort of federal of corporate

(16:01):
partnership there. You know, MSNBC doesn't have to deal with
the federal government to run a theme park on certain
lands or to put cables down. So I think it
puts us in a different position. But that doesn't mean
that we don't have to be really careful. I know
that all the reporters right now, I mean I work

(16:24):
with incredible people who do great work no matter what.
But we lean on our legal and standards department. We're
really just aware of both the verbal and physical threats
that can come our way, but also the sort of
bigger picture of how this administration views the work of journalists.

(16:46):
A lot of us are talking and this is not
just at MSNBC. I mean all my friends in the
field talking about like, when is the moment going to
come when all of these newsrooms get together and figure
out a strategy to support each other. You know, is
going to be lawsuits over here and lawsuits over there,
or will there be a unified strategy at some point.
I think one of the things that makes that strategy

(17:07):
challenging is that this is a very tiered business too.
Where I mean this is in the ABC story right
where you're seeing the power of Disney and Bob Bieger,
but also the power of next door in Saint Clair
and the fact that exactly you know, these are really
sort of powerful entities that are going to shape the
way all of this turns out. And so how do

(17:30):
the journalists themselves, the people doing the day to day work,
figure out how to support each other the conversations are happening.
I wouldn't say all the resources and the plans are there.
I wish they were, But the bottom line is we
all do still feel that we have an obligation to
keep covering the stories, to take care of and check

(17:50):
on each other. Like the sort of background support we
also provide each other has been incredible, and we're figuring
out on just like a one foot in front of
the other basis, how to keep serving our audiences and
being fearless while also keeping ourselves very safe and so
that we can be in this field and do this

(18:12):
work for the long term, and that is hard. It
can be exhausting. I am currently out of you know,
New York City, taking a little bit of a break
for a few days because I anchored many hours of
coverage this past week around Charlie Kirk's memorial service. It
was really challenging work. You know, there were people on
the ground there, colleagues who were talking about the security

(18:33):
concerns at the event. These are very real things. They
affect all of us and we go home and we
take it home with us. So the other piece of
it is just figuring out like how am I as
a human being going to get through it? And one
are the things I need to do in my day
to day to just make sure I'm good and I
can come back and take another, you know, pass at
it the next day. Yeah, it's I don't know. Sometimes

(18:56):
when I remind myself that we have years in this
fight go, it can be really hard.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
But that is that is that is that is a reality.
Though we have we have miles to go on this fight.
So I want to talk a little bit about the
weekend because I love the show and I love the conversation,
and I think that that MSN has has built out
a few shows that are that more conversational beat thing.

(19:23):
It's not just the three box of guys remotely, it's
very smart people with unique perspectives, all bringing something to
the table. Talk to us about how the show has
been going, and and how do you how how you
like interacting with the other folks that you work with there.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Oh, the show has been so much fun, to be
honest with you. When I first got the opportunity, I
was kind of terrified. I've been an outdoor cat for
many years. I get to travel all over the place.
I'm on planes, I live out of a suitcase, or
I lived out of a suitcase, and so you know,
I kept thinking, like, really you want me on the show?

(19:59):
Like I don't know, I don't even know. You know,
I had never really read prompter before. There were all
these basic caces of doing the job that I was like, Oh, man,
but it has been a blast. First, you know, Aman
and I have been friends since I came to NBC
five and a half years ago, so I knew, like,
I know him. He's such a foreign policy expert, so

(20:20):
interesting to talk and debate with. So I knew he
had the experience, and that was going to be a
lot of fun. I'd followed Catherine Rampel and her work
at the Washington Post for a long time. I knew
how smart she was. I knew that I would learn
from her. The show started in the midst of like
all the tariff wars just getting started, so every day
we were all like, Catherine, help us, what's going on.

(20:44):
And then Elise Jordan, I knew because she's been like
a morning show regular for a long time. Also so
interesting she just just from her own career and work
in the government, but also from the work that she's
done focus grouping. She brings like such a great perspective,
and she's always so interested in bringing cool guests on
and unique people who she's worked with in the past.

(21:08):
And so I think her voice and her perspective with
you know, the libertarian Republicans as well, just is a
needed voice on our show. And so we have just
as a really good group, and we have a really
dedicated audience too, of people who know that because of
the time that we have on the weekend three hours
Saturday and Sunday, we're going to get to cover ground

(21:29):
other shows don't get to Monday and Friday. We can
dig into some things that maybe when everybody's hair is
on fire during the work week they forgot to talk
about or couldn't really guessed around. We get to a
lot of that material and we can dig in and
dig deep, and so I think that's what's making the
show really special. And we're starting to just feel that
gelling now a couple months into it, and now I

(21:53):
finally feel like, Oh, got deserved to have this job.
I can do it.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
But I do think I do think that longer conversational
format people, and yes, you have good gas in and out,
but that longer conversational format is I think something that
appeals to people who they may take a lot of
their news in bites from social media or whatever. But
humans want to talk, Humans want to have, humans want

(22:18):
to work the problem. Humans want to tear things up,
you know, apart and look at things up and down
and sort of get other perspectives and you watch that
chemistry emerge. I think it's really been it's really been
like a backbone of the show. I really like it.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
I come from before I came to NBC. I was
at Vice for a long time doing long form sort
of documentary style reporting, and so while this is so
different from that, one of the things I do like
about it is that long form feeling where we have
time to explain an issue to our audience. We can
keep a guest around for two or three blocks if

(22:55):
that's what we want to do, because we have the time.
And I do think people are really hungry right now
for this feeling like they are connected to you in
an authentic way. They're engaged in a conversation with you.
We get feedback from our viewers good and bad. They're
they're always willing to reach out to us on every
single platform. The MSNBC audience is super engaged and passionate,

(23:20):
and we are so so lucky to have that. And so,
you know, with that comes the responsibility of like every week,
wanting to make sure that we hit the conversations that
matter to them, that we represent the viewpoints that they
need to hear, and have the debates that they want
to see explored, and that we get the guests and
the lawmakers and the people on who they want to

(23:41):
learn from. So you know, it's it's this good thing,
and then it also really raises the stakes where every
week I'm like, I'm on it, Like, Okay, Saturday and Sunday,
all my friends are relaxing, but I'm like, right, I'm
in high gear. But but I know that's a blessing.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
That is that is a blessing.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
I think I think that's right. But so listen. I
want to thank you so much for coming on the
show today. I really appreciate it as always, and tell
folks where they can reach you.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
On social media, you can reach me pretty much everywhere.
I am under Antonia Hilton, a Hilton twenty six on everything.
I also have a website Antonio Hilton dot com where
you can send me emails, whether that's about my book,
my reporting stories you want to see covered at MSNBC.
I love to hear from everyone. All right, and thank
you Rick for having me.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
I'll see on TV.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
I'll see you on Thanks.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Hey, folks, welcome back to the Lincoln Project podcast. I'm
your host as always, Rick Wilson. Glad you're joining us
once again for good conversations with smart folks in the
pro democracy movement. And my favorite of those folks is
Charlie Sikes. He and I are refugees from a party
that no longer exists, now governed by a mad king,
and Charlie, I wanted to start out with the with

(25:04):
this idea that that Donald Trump's unpopularity is an underappreciated
problem for the Republican Party right now, because this guy
is he is underwater on every issue, including his signature
issue immigration, right now. Talk to us about where you
see like Trump's political strength. I think I'm trying to

(25:26):
make the case that his political strength outside of just
being president is vastly overcounted right now.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
No, I think that, and and yes I agree with you.
By the way, good morning. It's like we're good to
talk with you again. Rick, you know, I mean you know,
a lot of his power, uh, you know, depends on
his perception of being powerful. And you know, so many
of these institutions have caved in because, like they tell themselves,
he's irresistible, right, I mean, he is, He's so dominant,

(25:53):
and so it creates that aura that somehow he's got
this this this wave behind him. But I wonder, and
I wanted to bounce this off you as as well,
that even as these numbers come in showing how thin
his support is and how he's underwater on some of
his key issues. He doesn't seem to care that much,
does he. And I think there's something a little bit

(26:14):
alarming about this that Donald Trump seems to be acting
like the guy who says, I have the power, I
don't need to be popular. Interesting take for a populace,
by the way, And I think that the way they're
going about the jury mandering and everything, part of me
thinks that Donald Trump doesn't even look at those top
line numbers. The question that he's asking, you know, his

(26:36):
you know is his humunculous Stephen Miller is, well, how
am I with the base? Is the base still with me? Right?
Is the base? And as long as the base is
with him, he feels that he's got you know, that
he can do anything. I mean, he is behaving is
if he can do anything. And he doesn't seem to
give a shit about persuading, reaching across, moderating, pretending at all.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Now, you know, I keep looking at that at that
number on inflation and prices, twenty seven points underwater on
it absolutely catsh trophic. And yet thirty five forty percent
of this country believes that we are in an economic
golden age, and they wake up in the morning and go, oh,
it's all it's so much better now. We're getting paid
so much. I can't wait to get my five thousand

(27:22):
dollars doze check all the like that fantasy bubble my
like my one thing I've been sort of watching for,
and I think we're seeing the earliest signs of it.
There is some cracking going on, and like with the
farmer or farm folks in rural communities who are like,
oh wait, they really are closing our hospitals. Oh wait,
we really are going to lose our farm because of
the you know, the tariffs. But I don't know that

(27:44):
it's I don't I I don't know that it's ever
going to crack that infrastructure of MAGA reinforcement online and
with Bright part Fox everything else.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
No, and and and there's such a vast network right now.
You know, when you and I first started talking about this,
back and it feels like the before before times, you know,
when things seem really really bad but now seem kinder,
gentler era. I'm talking about like twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen.
The this ecosystem is much bigger, it is much more powerful.
There's much more hermetically sealed than it ever has before.

(28:17):
That doesn't mean that there's not going to be some
internal divisions in it. I mean, you see, you know
some of the folks breaking off over the Epstein files.
There is real anxiety I think in rural America. You know,
here in Wisconsin, people are starting to realize that if
you're raising soybeans, you are royally being screwed by these
these these tariffs. But I guess the question is, is

(28:40):
this tribalism, Is this tribal loyalty so intense that yes,
they can be unhappy about X, Y and Z, but
ultimately they're going to stick with the team, especially because
I'm not I mean, I'm looking at these same numbers
and people are there's there is a group that is
having uh regret buyers more remorse about voting for Donald Trump.

(29:03):
But they are not yet sold on the Democrats. They
are not going, Okay, we think, yes, Trump sucks, we
are alarmed by by Trump, but they're not persuaded yet
that the Democrats are a better choice. And I think
that's kind of the the Rubik's cube puzzle that we
have to work through here.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Well, you know, when you see Schumer and Jeffries going
to the White House on the shutdown issue. And this
may air after the shutdown debate has has ended. But
you said going to the White House. I'm like, well,
we want you to preserve the affordable care subsidies, and
imagining that Trump will not break any deal he makes

(29:42):
with them. I mean, Charlie, this is this, to my mind,
is like our old party. You know, the say say
what you will about the about the fascism, but our
old party, the discipline of wanting to win is is
like an ultimate underpinning value of that party. The Democrats.
I cannot imagine how they walk into a meeting with

(30:05):
Trump and think, Okay, we're going to negotiate in good
faith with this guy. He's going to tell the truth
and keep a deal that we make with them.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Okay, It's just it's ludicrous. I mean that that would
be the definition of insanity. Now, I'm not sure that
they actually think they're going to get a deal. Maybe
they're just going through the kabuki dance. I mean, these
shutdown before, they're always these lung kabuki dances that go
on and on and on and that are eventually resolved.
I'm not sure that's the case this time. But I
think that at a certain point you have to say, well,

(30:34):
we tried, we negotiated, we said in the ovaloves we
made a good faith ef right. But if Chuck Schumer
thinks that there is any sort of a deal or compromise,
then then he is he's completely delusional. I actually wanted
to use a much stronger word there to that. I mean, look,
we've seen a lot of political malpractice, but that would

(30:54):
be the worst. And the point you're making is crucial.
First of all, Donald Trump's not going to blink on
this right now now. Number two, whatever he promises, you know,
means nothing. I mean, we're in the process right now
of the Trump administration with the Supreme Court's apparent acquiescence,
is saying, you don't give a shit what Congress appropriates.

(31:16):
We don't care what's actually in the budget where you know,
we we think that we have the power to spend
or not spend as as we choose. So what is
the point of making a deal with somebody?

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Exactly?

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Is in the process of saying deals, budgets, laws don't
matter to us.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
That that that, Charlie, to my mind, it is absolutely
like the key point here the recision argument that Russ
Voughtt has been making for since the since the drafting
of Project twenty twenty five, has been the president can
do anything he wants. All executive offices belong to him,
all power belongs to him, and once you authorize and

(31:58):
appropriate those funds, they belong to him.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
For his at his discretion.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
And I'm just to my mind, it's like it's like
if if you're a Schumer or Jeffreys or both, my
argument would be you walk in there and you say, okay,
mister President, you're only going.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
To get a deal if you undo the tariffs, because.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Then they can go to America. They could go to
the country and say, hey, we saved you, because let
me tell you, no farmer in America who's voted for
Donald Trump twice or three times wakes up and goes, man,
I can't wait to hear more about the climate plan
or the gun control plan. For the Democrats, they do
care about the fact they're going to lose a goddamn farms,
And to my mind it's just like, yes, this is

(32:37):
this is a layup, and I cannot figure out why
they can't walk in and go yeah, sorry, sorry, chief,
but you need our votes you need enough of our
people to vote for you. It's not going to work
unless you give us, unless you end the tariff for
about saving America.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah, but I mean he's not gonna do it. There's
going to be no deal. So the question is, you
know what what what flag you plant? You're a you
know what flag are you going to plant on this
particular hill? My look, I have come around like you.
I was a little squish year earlier. This year I
didn't like when when Schumer went along with it. I

(33:13):
think that was the fight that Democrats wanted. I think
it was the fight they needed, but it was a
fight they couldn't win, and the timing was not ripe.
I don't think they have a choice. I think they
have to do. They have to not go along. You
cannot fund the Donald Trump government. You cannot sit there
and vote with everything that is going on. And you know,
we can talk about healthcare, we can talk about terroffts,
we can talk about troops on the street, we can

(33:35):
talk about receiving all of those things. You cannot do that.
My big question to you and to them is, Okay,
once you do this, what is your exit strategy? How

(33:55):
does it end? I mean, so you have this, you
have this game chicken, I mean, and I don't see
anybody swerving, So I mean, I actually was having flashbacks
to remember when Ted Crews wanted to shut down the
government and everybody, all the people on the right, were
all excited about it, and there were actually a few
Republicans who started asking questions like, Okay, okay, how do

(34:17):
we get out of this? Because Obama is not going
to repeal Obamacare. It's just not going to happen. So
what is your what's your strategy here? And the answer
was Ted crew didn't have a strategy, he didn't have
any answer the Home of the Holma, though, So I
do think, I don't know, I am I'm not I'm
not saying they shouldn't do it, because they have. They
absolutely have to do it. I mean, this is a

(34:38):
break the glass moment. You know, you want to talk
about red lines. You know you have to do this,
and you can't be intimidated by the threats from Trump
and vote that there's going to be mass firings because
you know what, you know they're gonna fuck with the
federal workforce anyway.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
So right right, watch what happens if they give in
on the mass firings, then vote says, you know to
be because I don't. I woke up on the wrong
side of the bed today. We're gonna fire all these
people anyway, and see if the Supreme Court stops us,
because it won't.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
It won't. No, and and and I have and I
have to admit that that Supreme Court decision and again
it was on the emergency docket that the Supreme Court,
if it was looking to restrain what's going on, this
would have been an easy one because I think that
this has been a solid legal principle that that the

(35:28):
president cannot simply impound money. Okay, you know it has
that that Congress still does appropriate money. It's also a
fundamental constitutional question is you know, does the unitary executive
turn Congress into a potted plant? And once again the
Supreme Court has whiffed on this and so and and

(35:50):
I expect them to whiff on tariffs as well.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Well blows it. Yeah, well, yeah, I keep calling it
the red Court for a reason. I think it is not.
I I had an argue with a maga ish person
the other day, and I said, you are not looking
at a conservative Supreme Court the court you're looking at
was the court you always said you hated. They're a
hyperactivist Supreme Court, empowering the executive disproportionate to any reading

(36:18):
of the Founders or the Constitution.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
You know, you and I have talked about this in
the past, and I am increasingly frustrated by the use
of the word conservative to describe what's going on with
the court or the administration.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
You know that.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
And I'm also frustrated with the people who will say that, well,
this is the logical conclusion of fifty years of conservatives.
This is an abandonment of conservatism. There's nothing conservative. This
is radical of right wing ideology, and by the way,
the whole idea of originalism, you know that the conservatives

(36:53):
talk about. You know, what did the Founders mean when
they wrote this? Let me tell you something. What the
Founder's original intent was, no king right. The Founders did
not intend to have a president who would rule by decree,
impose taxes without the consent of the government, would be
able to send troops into into towns and villages and cities.

(37:15):
This was specifically what the Founders intended to prevent. They
they had this bast structure to prevent them someone like
Donald Trump from being in the presidency, and then if
he was in the presidency, to act like an unchecked emperor.
That is the fundamental originalist interpretation of the Constitution.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
One CHARLEI, I could not agree more that idea, you know,
and God knows, I geeked out about eight or nine
months ago, and I went back and the read Federals
papers and anti Federals papers and a whole bunch of this,
and the constant caution with the founders, the constant sense
of caution, of avoiding a tyrant, avoiding a king, avoiding

(37:59):
an all powerful ruler. It was, it was on the present, guess.
And even when they talked about the power of the
executive in like Federals ten, in Federals fifty one, they
were still bounding and controlling and constraining the power of
the executive because they all believed that if you let
a man have that much power, he will take more,

(38:19):
and take more and take more. Thus it has always
been with with authoritarians. And you go back and look
at Washington, who could have become all powerful and suddenly nope,
stepping back, done, Now this is it. You can't you
don't need me for a tenth term. You don't need

(38:40):
me for a fifth term. I'm gonna I'm gonna do
the job that that a democratically elected leader in a
republic will should do. And then I'm going to go home.
And I feel like I feel like we're getting less
and less of the of the Trump will argue to
stay in power after this is over from a legal perspective,

(39:01):
and just be a gambler. Because he's a gambler. He'll
just say, fuck it. I'm gonna call out sometime in
twenty twenty seven or eight, He'll say, I need all
Republican people who want to run for president someday to
come and swear loyalty oath to me because I'm sticking around.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
You.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
You stole a term for me, so I'm sticking around.
I mean, I really believe he's gonna he's gonna try something,
and even if he doesn't think it'll work, try January sixth,
and weirdly, in the end, it worked.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
Weirdly in the end, it working. And by the way,
he's still trying to rewrite the history of January sixth.
You know, I have been very, very skeptical about this
sort of the the alarmist view of Trump, you know,
a three point three point zero. I'm starting to come
around to it because one of the big failures that
we've had is the failure of imagination to imagine how
bad Donald Trump could be, what he could do in

(39:51):
even those of us who had a pretty dark view.
But I think that there was a there was that
this sort of the smart kids who said, well, you know,
take him, take him literally literally, surely he won't he
won't do this, and or well, there will be constraints,
you know, I mean, there will be constraints. Look at
look at the Czechs will stop him? Yeah, well at

(40:11):
this point, at this point.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Actually I wrote something on on Monday about this, about
the failure of imagination of Republicans who are acting right
now as if they will never have to give up power,
because you know, if they need to sit back and
go imagine, if you're okay with Donald Trump exercising this
kind of kingly imperial power, how would you feel if
it was AOC. How do you feel if it's AOC

(40:35):
who controls the Department of Justice. How do you feel
if it's Gavin Newsom who turns the FBI into his
personal cudgel. What would you imagine if a Democrat could
impose taxes or bully companies in the way that Donald
Trump is doing right now. Not to mention the the
the climbing, the corruption, the grift. There's there's a reason

(40:55):
why authoritarians don't like to give up power. It's like
riding the tiger because they're afraid that if they get off,
it will eat them. They are acting as if they
will never have to turn over the reigns of power
to Democrats would have the kind of power they do,
which makes me think that scenario of Donald Trump in
twenty twenty and by the way, what Republican will stand

(41:17):
up against him and say no, you can't.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Right, anybody think the name Mark or Rubio is going
to go no, sir, can't do that.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
And you know what, I was actually thinking about this
last night. So the Supreme Court, let's just say, the
Supreme Court says, no, the Constitution's pretty clear in this,
you can't do it. Donald Tump says, you know what,
Let's let the states decide, Let's let the people decide,
and one Republican legislature after another will go, yeah, we're
going to put him on the ballot. We're going to
We're going to do that, and we'll see what happens

(41:46):
with the electoral college.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
I mean, it's.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
We're at the point now where we have to use
this imagination in order to do it. I mean, Gavin
Newsom's about the only guy out there right now saying
I really worry about twenty two twenty eight, and I
think it's about time.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Yeah. I tried to, you know, I told people for
a while, like like, you know, he's going to be
so old at that point. You know, this job wears
everybody down, even the worst of us. And it's funny.
A friend of mine sent me a picture of me
and him and George W. Bush back in two thousand

(42:24):
and some of the young guys, yeah, and I'm like,
I was like, yeah, I look like I was. I
was in my late thirties, right, And then but I
looked at George W. Bush and he looked like he
was like forty.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
He looked young.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
And then you look at the pictures of him as
he left, and it's just like the office wears you down.
But when in Trump's case, I don't think he governs
the same way, doesn't have the sense of responsibility other
leaders have traditionally had, so he just sort of. I mean,
the guy's either going to die in a month or
he's going to die at one hundred and five years old,

(43:02):
is my theory of the case. And that idea he
could hang on. Man, that's got to really be addictive
to him. Well it is.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
And look, I'm not predicting it's going to happen, and
I'll be glad if I'm wrong about this, but I.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Think I want to be wrong.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
You need to start creating these guard rails. And you know,
I look back and I don't want to, you know,
make too much of a digression here. One of the
real failures of the Biden years was that they had

(43:37):
the failure of imagination. They did not batten down the hatches.
They did not pass the legislation that would protect the
vote or you know, protect all of these abuses. And
it was because what they thought that the fever had broken,
you could move back, the old norms were safe. We
didn't have to be concerned about that, and I I

(44:00):
think that's part of the problem. We cannot make that
mistake again. You have to fire if democracy is ever
going to come back, or the rule of law, constitutional republic.
It's got to fire proof itself this time. And we
have to have discussions like this, Okay, let's fireproof the
constitution because let's imagine what the next threat is going

(44:22):
to be, and let's not pretend it's not going to happen.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
There's a degree I think that's so right, Charlie, there's
a degree of you kind of need to do at
the end of Trump. And folks, I think there will
be an end of Trump. There will be an end, sure,
but we do have to do basically like a Truth
and Reconciliation Commission. We have to we have to look
at the abuses of power that occurred in the last
in the last twelve years on Trump's part wise in

(44:47):
and out of office, and say to ourselves, Okay, if
we're going to play by the rules that our founders
in this amazing inheritance left for us, we can't do
the following things again. And and some of it is
just like I mean, like, I think one of the
reasons Trump ran again was just the money he's wanted.
He saw the first time, he didn't monetize the presidency

(45:08):
at this time he has I think he ran was Yeah,
it was a legal protection, and I think, you know,
the US Supreme Court is now saying that, yeah, president
doesn't really matter anymore. Claire Thomas said.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
It explicitly, this man Thomas.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Ye, he said it explicitly. Well, you know the story
decide is maybe it's just people making stuff up. Well then, okay,
then I hope that Trump the United States they get
out of jail free card. That the Trump the Trump
was given by the Supreme Court is something we don't
think of as precedent because this country as a constitutional amendment.

(45:46):
That's that would be one of my top ones to
put out there in the world, is that no president
is above the law in any civil or criminal.

Speaker 4 (45:55):
See.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
I didn't think we needed a constitutional amendment to establish
the principle that no president was above the law. I
thought that was there, right.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, we all took it for granted for forty years.
But you know, here we are.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
Yeah. So that would be a good birthday present for
the two hundred and fiftieth birthday party, though.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
Wouldn't it.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
Wouldn't it though, two hundred and fiftieth Birthday Party, say, hey,
by the way, we don't have kings who are above
the law. Okay, percent.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
So so if Trump does go, I look, I think
there's going to be another different moment in the country politically.
I think the hunger games on the right are going
to be insane. If Trump, let's say Trump drops dead
on you know, on Christmas Eve twenty twenty seven, and

(46:47):
there's an open field for twenty eight, I think the
hunger games are going to be utterly insane. I think
Don Junior or Eric will get in. I think you've
got Rubio, You've got Vance, You've got you know, all
these other guys who've really wanted to be president. The
you know, the the Hall Is the Cotton, Tucker Carlson,
all these books that are going to come out of
the work. What do you see that landscape looking like

(47:10):
when this when.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
This moment comes, I well, I agree with you. I
think it's going to be a free for all. I mean,
I think you have too many little Now you have
the Imperial presiden Sceine, but you have all of these duchies,
all the dukes and the parents, and they're all and
they're all okay. But as you were, as you were
thinking it through, and this is this is not something

(47:31):
I want to contemplate, Okay, Rick. But you see, you
take me into these dark places. If it's Christmas Eve
twenty twenty seven and the and the great Martyr Donald
Trump passes from the world, is there any way that
Don Donald Trump Junior does not become the Republican nominee.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
See it they he says, I must carry on my
father's legacy. While I respect vance, there is no no
one who knew my father's heart better than his own son.
And and the name the name I d and and
Lachlan Murdoch at that point will go cha ching. And

(48:15):
it's an easy it's an easy fit for the populist
part of the MAGA base. And I I think, and
I think the AOC Donald Trump Junior race will we
want for the age?

Speaker 3 (48:29):
Oh oh jeez, right I I I think by then
I'm gonna need to live on an island in to
the in the north.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Of Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna give rid at and yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
Well again that's the failure of imagination on the part
of Republicans. I mean, I really do think that I
would like to have a conversation with with with with
a MAGA enthusiasts. All right, let's talk about AOC having
the kind of power that you're okay with with Donald
Trump having The reason I'm saying this is going back
to conservatives used to understand why you wanted a small government,

(49:04):
why you wanted a limited government, Why you wanted constraints
on the power of the state over the private sector
and over individuals, Why the process mattered, and the importance
of Congress and the deliberative body as opposed to one
man rule. This whole idea of conservatives deciding that they
really liked the imperial presidency based in Washington, d c.

(49:28):
That overrides local governments and state governments is.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
The thing the government that's best as closest to the people.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Oh my god, Yes, no, we conservatives said that all
the time. Not to mention, the conservatives actually wanted to
conserve things as opposed to blow things up, destroy things.
And there was something about that. And this this full
frontal attack that Trump is now joined in that America
is not, you know, the exceptional city on the hill,

(49:59):
that that America is not an idea that you know,
blood and soil. Again, this was always out there, but
it was not something that I ever thought was the
mainstream of conservatism. And I want to say this for
your progressive are progressive listeners here? Because I think when
you say that, well, you know, this is just the

(50:20):
same as conservatives always were. Now, oh, that's what Trump
would like to convince a lot of conservatives out in
the country that, like, you're a Republican, you're a conservative.
We have our after our name, right, we are doing
just the same thing that you always wanted us to do.
And I think it's there's a really important point saying,
don't buy into their spin. Their's spin is that they

(50:42):
are part of this tradition. The reality is this is
a radical departure. These are revolutionaries. These are people who
are overturning centuries of American values. They are not conserving
American values. They are torturing them. They are obliterating them.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
And you're you're so right, TROI, it's exactly the opposite.
And and and as guys who lived through the eras
of Reagan and Bush forty one and W and the
Republican emergence as a national political party in the post
Nixon era, none of these people I didn't know Ronald

(51:26):
Reagan personally, but I knew forty one, and I knew W.
I worked for forty one, and these were men who
would reject the things that Trump has done. Categorically, they
would not only no, but hell no, there wasn't in
critique those guys. All you want democratic friends, but not

(51:47):
one of those men wanted to stay in power forever.
Not one of those men.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
This.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
No Romney was doing this.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
You may hate these guys, but no, this is not
what the kind of presidency they would have. Now Richard Nixon,
who by the way, actually did have a foreign policy
that was coherent, unlike Donald Trump. And you have to
listen to the secret tapes to find out some of
the things that that Richard Nixon has done. Richard Dixon

(52:17):
believed when you're the president, you can't break the law.
Donald Trump was saying, fuck it, when you're the president,
you can do anything. In fact, not only can I
not break the law, it's not a scandal. And that
that's what I thought about the whole Jimmy Kimmel thing,
you know, from you know, a couple of weeks ago,
is that it's a little bit like you know, Watergate.
Every day on blast on big loud speakers, Yes we

(52:39):
have an enemy's list, Yes we're going after jim comey, yes.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
We're not ashamed. We're not ashamed of it.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
No, I'm like, yo, damn right, we have an enemy's listen,
damn right. We are going to order the Department of
Justice to indict them, regardless of the facts, regardless of
the law. I mean, it's just like.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
The abuse of power or at scale is something that
is never. Nixon stuff was trivial, like like bush League,
you know, triple A ball stuff. And this is the
series of corruption right now. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing, there's
nothing constraining. Even among the ambitious people who want to

(53:21):
run for president, none of them are saying, you know,
this could not work, This might not work out so
well for us, because we're gonna have to defend Did
Donald Trump make billions of dollars while he was in office?
Did Donald Trump use the power of government to punish
his political enemies? The answer is going to be yes
across the board. And I can't wait to see Marco

(53:42):
or Vance or always other people getting sweaty. One thing
they all lack is that utter sense of shamelessness that
Trump has.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
They're working on it. This is pretending he's shameless, but
he's not really shameless.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
Trump just does not give a damn And I'm curious
how that's gonna play because it's hard to scale Trump is.
It's hard, it's hard to copy it. Why do you
want why do you want diet Trump? If you want,
you know, why would you like Marco or Vance? Why
do you want the diet version of Trump? It's really
I find it like all these guys that are faking it.

(54:15):
Because you and I both knew Jamie Vance when he
was a part of with us in the Never Trump movement.

Speaker 4 (54:20):
I'm a never Trump guy. I never liked him. It
makes you think that at a fundamental level, this is
sort of a he said, she said, right, And at
the end of the day, do you believe Donald Trump,
who always tells the truth just kidding? Or do you
believe that woman on that tape?

Speaker 1 (54:34):
I cannot stand Trump because I think he's a fraud.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
Well, I think he's a total fraud that is exploiting
these people.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Who is a total fraud you, Like you said, I
agree with you on Trump because I don't think that
he's the person.

Speaker 4 (54:46):
I don't think he actually cares about folks. Definitely, there
is definitely an element of Donald Trump's support that has
its basis in racism or zenophobia. I think there's a chance,
if I feel like Trump has a really good chance
of winning, that I might have to hold my nose
and vote for Hillary Clinton. I think that that I'm
I'm I'm going to vote for I'm going to vote
third party because I can't stomach Trump. I think that

(55:08):
he's noxious and is leading the white working class to
a very dark place.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
And so this guy, they're all faking it. I'm just curious, like,
I wonder how long they can hold that illusion together
once he's gone.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Oh, I think they can look radically diminished when he's gone.
You see. I I think that you're you're, you're right
about this. Look Marco, Marco Rubio, and look I I
remember there was a period where I actually did believe
that Marco Rubia was the future of the Republican Party.
And then you know that, remember that he was on
Time magazine.

Speaker 4 (55:39):
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
I Oh, I was working, I was helping him, I
was working together, and and and yet.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
When he ran for president, he was suddenly exposed as
as an empty suit, you know, a week and he
and he's exposed himself that way. So I'm not sure
that that that you you auditioned to become the next
Donald Trump, the next emperor by basically being the complete toady.
So these guys are going to look very, very shrunken,
which is why that Don Junior thing. Now, Don Junior

(56:05):
is a horrible human being, terrible and and and stupid.
So I'm not I'm not sure that's going to within
the Republican Party. I'm not sure that's a downside for
most of the No no, no, no, no no no,
not in within the Republican Party. But in a general election. Now,

(56:27):
of course, if the Democrats put up somebody who's unelectable,
that that that's that's a different thing. But I don't
see these guys. In fact, I think you look at
what they don't realize is that you you you look
at JD. Van's and and Marco Rubia, and they don't
project that sort of superhuman personality that that the maga porn.

(56:48):
Maga porn is a real yes, and and I'm not
seeing any maga porn about any either of those guys.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
They there's the one thing that Maga really loves underneath
all of it is that essential cruelty that Trump has.
The brutality. Yeah, yeah, the brutality, the ugliness, the cruelty.
These guys don't have that. They could try to fake it.
Vance tries to fake it all the time. That looks ridiculous.
It looks absurd. But well, Charlie Sykes, it is going
to be a long, long, long future ahead of us. Still,

(57:17):
let's do this more off the long. Appreciate you all right, Rick,
appreciate you coming. We'll see you next time. All right, Okay,
thanks a lot. The Lincoln Project Podcast is a Lincoln
Project production executive produced by Whitney Hayes, then How and
Joey Wertner Cheney, edited by Riley Maine. Hey, folks, if
you want to support The Lincoln Project's work against Donald Trump,

(57:37):
Elon Musk and this Maga craziness, go to action dot
Lincoln Project dot us slash hel LP. If you'd like
to get in touch, or have suggestions for a guest
or a show topic, or just want to say hi,
our email is podcast at Lincoln Project dot us for
our Maga friends. Please no more neuds. Thanks so much,
and we'll talk to you again next time.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
Good luck,