Make financial progress with into It Credit Karma. It's straightforward, stress free and personalize for your financial journey. Download the app to get started Credit Karma Start making Progress today. Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is Next Question. Wow twenty twenty four. What a year it's been. It's wrapping up and so is this podcast. At least this
season of Next Question. To mark the end of this road, we gathered some of the brightest observers of politics, from journalists to consultants, from sociologists to former ambassadors, and looking back on all the conversations I had, there is a clear through line. We're in for an unpredictable, possibly perilous, and democracy shaking four years. There are some bright spots though, some ways forward, and we'll get to that too, But first let's revisit early November twenty twenty four, the day
after Donald Trump was elected for a second time. I spoke with my good friend and former podcast buddy Brian Goldsmith. With Kamala Harris's defeat fresh on our minds, we tried to make sense of exactly.
What happened. Well, we may have overcomplicated this election. You had an incumbent president with a forty percent approval rating. You had sixty five seventy percent of the country saying we're on the wrong track. Stuff costs about twenty percent more than it did before COVID, and people were broadly dissatisfied with the status quo and the party in power, so they voted for the out party. Any political scientist would tell you that that is the most normal thing
in the world. But of course Donald Trump is the least normal candidate, imaginable and given and all of the as he would say, huge baggage that he's bringing into this race and now into the White House. I think a lot of Democrats, including me, thought this time would be different, but it wasn't.
Do you think that a lot of pundits and political experts such as yourself, Ryan thought that again his lunacy would outweigh people's pain at the pump and the grocery store, etc.
Well, we thought a couple of things. We thought the load was just too much for voters to bear at a certain point, the load of Trump right, all his problems.
You know.
We saw a version of this in North Carolina, where people wanted to vote for change. The state voted Republican for president, and yet they elected the Democrat Josh Stein as governor by a pretty big margin because well, I.
Mean, in fairness that his opponent was insane. If Mark Robinson, if hadn't been revealed that he was called himself a black hitler and liked to watch transgender people have sex, you know, that was part of his choice in pornography.
Well that's just an example of the load is too much to bear. So the load was too much for voters to bear with Mark Robinson. I think democrats thought, just as Mark Robinson was ultimately rendered unelectable based on his problems, Donald Trump would be rendered unelectable based on his problems. And yeah, he didn't call himself a black Nazi, but he did try to overturn a free and fair election and instigate a violent insurrection. So you know, Potato, Patato.
Well he's done a lot more than just that massive thing. I mean, if you just look at the last ten days of the campaign, and we've talked about this, Brian, it seemed he was making no effort, as Maureen Dowd wrote her Nerd column, to expand his base, to widen the net, to get any voter he could, and he just drilled down on this sort of obnoxious browie. I can say anything and there are no repercussions. Unhinged kind of weird behavior from filating. I never knew that was
the verb. By the way, I learned something this week filating a microphone. And you know, making all these disgusting, gross comments called us.
Should be shot, saying that his opponent should be arrested.
Yeah, you know, Nancy Pelosi is a bitch, Kamala is trash, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah, and more seriously, you know, promising all sorts of illegal actions as president. And so you know, to step back to answer your question. Yeah, we thought, despite broad dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, that Harris had run a pretty good campaign. She tried to position herself as a change candidate. She closed some of the gap, a lot of the gap on handling the economy, and that, just as in twenty twenty two, Democrats would overperform because
of the Trump factor. And what I think we know pretty definitively now is that Trump is a unique political animal who is kind of untouchable to his supporters no matter what he says or does and brings out a pretty big coalition to the polls.
No matter what.
Now, his coalition this time is actually pretty different than his coalition in twenty sixteen. And we'll get into all of that. But to your original point, it was a broad based victory in the Swing States. It was a series of narrow victories, consistent victories across the Swing states. But he wasn't winning the Swing States by five or ten points. He was winning them by one or two points.
He had bigger gains in places where the campaign wasn't actually being fought between Harris and Trump on the airwaves, but the whole country did seem to move in his direction.
A unique political animal. Wow, that's really an understatement. It seemed to me that change beat out any personality issues Trump might have exhibited. His fans just didn't care. And there's a certain authenticity to the man that seems to be appealing to a lot of his supporters. I'll never forget what he said when he was running the first time, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't matter, or something along those lines. I think it's really true.
Nothing he said, nothing he did or failed to do, seemed to impact voters. They just love the guy and some of those coalitions Brian mentioned well, Trump did increase his support among black and Latino men, young men, and with urban and world voters. Perhaps no issue other than inflation loomed larger in this election than immigration and Trump's
vision on how to handle the border crisis. I spoke to MSNBC's Jen Soak about how we got to the point where mass deportations actually resonated with so many Americans. So who's to blame?
Sort of everybody's at fault in Washington in some ways because immigration is such a politically charged issue that people are unwilling to compromise on it and have real negotiations and discussions about it. I mean, Biden proposed an immigration bill that included increased border security and a more humane asylum processing the first day, right, Right, No one would discuss it, No one would come to the White House and meet with him about it. I'm not saying that
he's blameless. I'm just saying like that, right, tells you a lot about politics.
Often brought that up during the campaign.
Yeah, that is true. What is also true is that because the COVID restrictions were in place for so long that was in many ways artificially keeping the numbers lower until they were flipped back. And then during that period of time there was the negotiation with Mexico about re implementing the Remain in Mexico program, which was there was a lot of criticism of and a lot of people
who hated that, especially from the left. So I think there was a delayed reaction to where clearly the country was moving on immigration by I actually not really Joe Biden, but a lot of people in the system and the Democratic Party within the caucuses, and it wasn't very clear to me that it had moved massively until that bipartisan
border bill. So yes, hindsight's always twenty twenty. But I think looking now, there are aspects of how the party should proceed from here, which I think this election should be partly informative about, including acknowledging that the border and having a secure border is a part of what the Democratic Party messaging needs to be proactively, you know.
Yeah.
On the other hand, though, I think we should point out how Donald Trump and the party exploited the immigration issue with false information about the crimes that were committed and really misrepresented the fact that actually immigrants commit fewer crimes than native foreign citizens in this country. But I think it just got so twisted and exploited, and the
fear and the fentanyl and all that stuff. I think it got mixed up in one big bowl and made people just terrified, and to the point where for a lot of Americans, rounding up people and having a mass deportation of thirteen million immigrants sounded like a good idea. Jen brings up I think an excellent point that's undeniable in this era of modern American politics, and that, of course,
is misinformation. Trump's communication strategy has relied heavily on stirring up fear of immigrants, of trans people, of liberals, of high inflation, even as our economy was recovering. How can we actually break through the fear to have real conversations with people we disagree with to come up with some actual solutions. I spoke with Megan McCain about that, someone who really doesn't see the world the same way I do.
But first I asked her about the stickiness of Trump's message and why it was so effective.
One of the smartest things he's ever said is they're not after me either, after you I'm just in the way, And I think there's just a feeling of a lot of people in the country who you know, are living paycheck to paycheck, who have been screaming at the top
of their lungs that inflation's killing them. I have a friend in my life who couldn't go on a summer vacation this summer because of the amount of money she was paying extra and gas and inflation and interest rates on her I believe health insurance, can't remember a health
or car insurance, and her husband's gainfully employed. So I think there was just a feeling that people are not being heard, the needs of the lower middle class are not being addressed, and that Trump continues to say I'm an outsider, I am going to fight for you, and people believed it. And I just think there's been a lot of mistakes done along the way, but from Democrats running for office and governing in a world they want to see exist and not the one that actually exists.
So I think for a lot of people, as James Carville says, it's just the economy stupid and they just want change. I also think people are like very scared about the border and very scared about a lot of these culture war issues and just seeing a world changing in a way that they don't like. And they've sort of come to terms with the fact that the person who's going to change it comes in this like really really corrupt and character flawed package.
How can we have more conversations like this? How can we have two people who disagree on a lot of issues, and how we approach and tackle some of the thorniest problems in our country and have civil, respectful conversations. How can we encourage other people to do this?
Megan, I mean, I always lead with love in every part of my life that I'm capable of. I'm not perfect, and I certainly have still have a timber and I can still be like whatever. But I think age and having kids is I just want to have be in a world that I want my kids to be in, and this level of division is not tolerable or sustainable. And I think I'm open to I will talk to
anyone as long as it's respectful. I will talk to anyone on any side, as long as I know that there's not going to be screaming and name calling or anything like that. And I just think you can only lead by example and control how you behave speak. And I also think we should reward platforms that have bipartisan conversations right in this moment. It's actually what I'm the most interested in listening to across the board. I'm interested in both sides coming together and discussing where we're at.
And I think the reflection of how bad the ratings are on MSNBC and CNN right now show that maybe there's an appetite for more interesting converse, nuanced conversations.
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campaign promises? I mean, he's already walked back as pledged to lower prices at the grocery store. So will his supporters ultimately feel betrayed?
Now?
By the way, they're not a monolith, as we mentioned Trump voters represent a broad swath of the country. If you're a regular listener of this podcast, you know I'm a huge fan of Brian Stephenson. And to have some of those nuanced conversations that Megan mentioned, you have to be proximant. He would say, you have to get out of your bubble and be exposed to people who live differently and may think differently. I had a fascinating conversation
with someone who did just that. Sociologist Arley Hoakeshield, who teaches at Berkeley, of all liberal places, spend time in southern Louisiana for her first book, Strangers in their Own Land, and then in one of the poorest counties in the country in Kentucky for her second book, called Stolen Pride. Her goal was to better understand what was motivating a big segment of American voters.
If we go back two decades and we look at three decades, look at nafta offshoring automation that has created the haves and the have nots of globalization, and so the haves who live in cities who have bas for whom new opportunities have opened up, aren't looking at the situation of loss. It's not just deprivation, but loss of actually the white blue collar class. So they feeling frightened them and a sense of loss. So they have turned to a charismatic figure who works through emotions. And that's
that's why it's important. I believe, for example, that Donald Trump has I think actually as a person, he's experienced shame and very harsh father and that would be neither here nor there, except that it's given him enormous insight into the pain of unwarranted shame that a lot of blue collar men who feel in free fall have felt.
I really appreciate that Arley doesn't just drop into these communities. She really embeds in these different places and gains people's trusts, so they really open up to her about their life experiences. And that's something I talk with Jessica Tarlov about. She's the lone Democrat on the most popular show on Fox News, it's The Five, and she's learned that her co hosts who disagree with her passionately most things, have come to their views.
Honestly, I'm a proud establishment Democrat, very moderate by the party's standards, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, type of Democrat, not more AOC Bernie Sanders Mold And I think that that works better with the bipartisan conversation, because I mean, if you want to have a food fight, and you remember what cable news was like around once Trump announced, and like every night on CNN, it was like Anna Navarro losing her mind, right, and Kaylee Mcanenniy was on
in those days, and Anderson Cooper is just kind of sitting in the middle petrified, right like that, That's what it was like. But you could have a more thoughtful conversation, and I found myself being able to do that more or less. And it always is embedded, at least for me coming from a place of understanding that I'm talking
to people who generally come by their beliefs honestly. And I think that too many people suppose that folks who they don't agree with don't actually believe the things that they're saying. But most of the time they do, and a lot of that is due to circumstances how they grow up. Like I grew up here in New York City,
I have had a charmed life. I know where my liberal politics come from and what my lived experience has been and going to work at a place like Fox, I now have people in my orbit who have a completely different set of backgrounds who when they talk about how they feel about the Second Amendment that comes from a place of growing up with guns and having hunters in their families, or when they talk about, you know, probably the toughest issue that I ever have to discuss
on air being pro life or bringing pro choice, especially in the wake of the Dobs decision, that a lot of people's beliefs on that is rooted in their religiosity. Where I look at it as a policy issue and a scientific issue, and they're telling me about.
It so a personal liberty issue.
All of the things that we think about it versus this is what I was taught in Sunday School, this is what I know. I grew up in, meshed in an environment that feels really differently to that.
That broader understanding of where people's beliefs actually come from, whether it's rooted in their upbringing, lived experiences, religious teachings, or culture, really shapes how we approach difficult conversations. And speaking of challenging topics, one area that has sparked significant debate in recent years is education, particularly around claims of so called woke indoctrination in schools. From critical race theory to gender identity, these topics have become political flash points.
The problem is most of the arguments have no basis in truth. Remember the pet eating Haitian immigrants in Ohio, the claim that your son goes to school as a bod and comes home as a girl, or that infamous pedophile ring in the basement of the dcpiece of parlor. Yeah, not true. I spoke with Miguel Cardona, the outgoing US Secretary of Education, about how these issues have reached a boiling point in our political discourse. But I wondered, have
they really taken over our nation's schools. You mentioned political ideology, and I think there is also an undercurrent of anger that some voters apparently feel that somehow students are being indoctrinated with sort of a woke ideology, whether it's critical race theory or gender identity issues. And I'm curious if you could speak to that and sure separate fact from fiction and what's going on in classrooms across the country.
You know those campaign strategies, Katie, I'm gonna be very frank with you. I have less say on what my children learn in the classroom now than I did when I was a classroom teacher. Every position I've had before Secretary of Education, I've had more authority to control the curriculum than I do now. So that's all misinformation, and I think it was done again an attempt to create dissonance and and really get people to believe something that's
not accurate. So a lot of it was misinformation intended to create division in our in our schools. I do not control curriculum, you know. In terms of indoctrination, I think the closest thing we've seen to that is we have some states, you know, buying Bibles for every student in their school. I mean, and I'm a Christian, I'm I'm a God fearing man. I you know, was raised Christian and still practice and have strong faith. Faith has
really driven me so much. And I don't talk a lot about it, but I know that I'm following God's plan and it's not my plan. I really can get into that, but I do believe in the separation of a church and state. So when I see those who are saying that we're indoctrinating students doing some of the things that really align with indoctrination. I get baffled, you know, but I never bet against America's schools and America's educators and parents to really separate fact from fiction and see
what's happening. There is no indoctrination there. You know, there's a lot of this. I was at a at an event recently and I saw a friend of mine from high school. True story. He told me that his mother believed when it was said that, you know, you send your kid to school as a boy and then comes back three days later as a girl, and they changed them and they didn't know why she believed that. And this person that was telling me that said, you got
to talk to my mom. I don't know how how the hell she believes that that's that's wild, But yet she believes it because she hears it being said. And that to me, is more of a political strategy than it is talking about education policy. And it was done to get people to believe what they hear. It's sad that it's gotten to that point of such misinformation direct
lives being shared openly. There was a time where no party would ever stoop to that level of spreading lies just to get people to believe you so that you could vote a certain way. You know, I have confidence that our local educators and our local parents work well together and they're going to continue to evolve education to
make sure that our students needs are being met. But it really it's sad in me how how much misinformation was being spread with the intention of dividing our communities for a vote.
Well, when it comes to sort of educating kids about gender identity, are there certain guidelines or is it decided at the state and local level.
Local level, I have not had any conversations in my time as Secretary of Education of how to teach any of that. As a matter of fact, I have not even weighed in on that my personal beliefs or my beliefs as a lifelong educator with degrees in education. Has never been heard on an airwave about how to teach that.
The misinformation Secretary Cardona refers to is of course spread online via social media, and it's a huge problem that I think is behind our hardened positions and the polarization in this country that seems to be getting worse every day, polarization that is reinforced by our intensely partisan media landscape. Michael Tamaski, the editor of the New Republic, believes the
conservative side is winning. He's covered the growing influence of the right wing media industrial complex, and I asked him about his diagnosis of where we are and how we got there. Can I quote your article? If they're done, you're in fantasy land. They're not happy with the rough parody, the slight advantage they have. Now they want media domination. Sinclair bought the once glorious Baltimore's son. Don't think they'll
stop there. I predict Sinclair or News Corp. Will own the Washington Post one day, maybe sooner than we think. So I guess the question, Michael, is what can be done about this?
Well, Liberals have to make a concerted effort, as Republicans did twenty and thirty years ago, to build their own media. And it has to be smart, it has to be good, it has to entertain, it has to get an audience. All those burdens will will apply to it, so you know, it has to be good and succeed. But they just
have to start doing something about this. And they have to try to reach into Middle America and talk to people there because there are so many just vast swaths of the country where the idea of liberalism and the
name of the Democratic Party are just dirt. And you know, I cited also in the piece an example, the voters of Missouri voted to protect abortion rights on one ballot initiative, and they voted for paid family leave in a higher minimum wage, and always they voted for these very democratic liberal things, right, and by reasonably comfortable margins on those But would they They wouldn't elect a Democrat in a million years.
You know.
The Democratic candidate for Senate, Lucas Kons who ran against Josh Holly, ran a good race, had money won, the debate didn't come within fourteen fifteen points, So you know, work has to be done, especially in those parts of the country where Democrats used to win. Wasn't that long ago that there was a Democratic senator from Missouri Claire McCaskill, or Democratic senators from Iowa, even Arkansas, But it just seems inconceivable now. So the party needs to rebuild in
those places. And part of that story is media rebuilding.
So what I'm hearing is that the Liberals or Democrats need to develop their own network, their own vast network of media entities. Does that mean sort of news that reported just the facts, that wasn't based in opinion, that let people know what was going on and tried to give context, is just a thing of the past.
No, I don't think so. I think the facts. You're kind of on liberalism side. That's one thing. I mean, you know, and most people support a lot of things that liberals are for. Most people support a higher minimum wage, as that Missouri vote shows. Most people support paid family leave, Most people support a tax increases for the wealthy. You go down these issues in child tax credit, most people are for these things. So I don't think it means the end of It means the end of a certain
kind of neutrality, but that neutrality has been disrobed. I think over the last twenty years. It's not enough to say this side says this, and this side says that, and we won't referee it. That hasn't worked. That hasn't worked. It means just refereeing it and telling people the truth, putting truth ahead of fairness. That's what I always say, Katie.
There are these two values of the media, as you know, that are traditional values to be fair and represent both points of view or all points of view, but also to be truthful and tell the truth I think, and this is truth. I'm sad to say of The New York Times. In many cases, although the New York Times remains a great newspaper and does tons of great reporting, they sometimes when those two values clash, they sometimes put fairness ahead of proof. We've got to put truth ahead of fairness.
If you want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Truth ahead of fairness makes sense, right. Unfortunately, no one seems to agree on facts, and they're in life the rub. Meanwhile, the Trump transition is well underway, and it's been kind of unhinged. Remember when Matt Gates was going to be
Attorney General. Well, Gates might have been the craziest pick, but many of the folks Trump is selected for his cabinet are raising more than a few eyebrows. His supporters want him to really drain the swamp this time and disrupt the bureaucratic status quo. But his detractors compare this crew to the one you might find at the Star Wars CANTEENA. I asked David from a conservative writer from the Atlantic, to weigh in on how this transition differs
from previous ones. So let's talk about cash fatal David. He is a MAGA loyalist to his core right.
So at THEI directors have always been since the Darator who days people of broad and widely accepted reputation for political neutral people who sometimes didn't even vote and always did things presidents didn't like. And that was a job many many presidents and many FBI directors refused even to
meet one another. I worked in a White House, and if you had anything you want to know from the FBI, including the President is going to decorate an FBI officer, and we need to know the names of the officer's children and make sure they're pronouncement spelled correctly so we can recognize them with the speech. If I wanted to say,
what are the names of this hero's children? I went to the White House Council's office and said, would you make the call to the FBI to ask them the name of the hero's children so we can because I can't talk to them. I would be fired and or worse if I placed a direct call the FBI.
There is no any any signal, event propriety, or any kind of pressure from the Executive Office to the FBI. Was absolutely for Boden, for.
Boten, and that's how it's always always been. And now you're going to point this person who is one of these Watergate characters who will do anything for Donald Trump. You commit and you know, when he was serving in the last year of the Trump administration as chief of staff in the Defense Department, the chairman of the Joint Chief said, jail is an uncomfortable place. So if you're thinking about doing something that will get you sent to jail,
don't do. He had to caution people, do not break the law for Trump when he was working as a staffer in DoD Now he's offered for the head of the FBI. I think you can group the Trump appointments into three main categories. They're the people who you know, maybe you like them, maybe you don't, but their resume sort of makes sense.
Right Marco for example.
Yeah, and maybe you have a high opinion of him, maybe have a low opinion. But it's not crazy that the senior Senator who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would become Secretary of State. Maybe he'll be a weak one, but he won't be an outlandish one. Then you have the people who where there's a serious personality problem of some kind or another, but where their ability to do harm is maybe limited, like Pete Heeksach. I mean, you know,
he's a crackpot, He's an ideological crank. His record with women is horrifying. His own mother thought so. But my guess is that Pete Hegsead just doesn't have the mental horsepower and the knowledge of the building and the Pentagon is organized in a way I don't know how much
harm he's really going to be able to do. Then you have the Tulsa Gabbards and the cash Betels, who are going to smaller organize it where the boss is more powerful, and who have who are not just strange personalities, but are in the grip of really un American ideas, and they can do a lot of damage.
Trump's nominees could in fact do a lot of damage as norms and institutions continue to be challenged. What will that mean for our country going forward? Democratic Senator Chris Murphy Ofnnecticut told me he's worried.
So what I am really concerned is that we lose the rule of law. That's what happens in democracies that stop being democracies all of a sudden. You can't rely on a fair trial, you can't rely on a fair prosecution. All of a sudden, You get favors and immunity if you are a political supporter of the person in power
and you are specifically targeted, often very unfairly. If you are political opposition, you still have elections, right, but they don't matter as much because the opposition just disappears because most people, when faced with the threat of persecution or prosecution, decide to just lower their voice, recede into the background.
So I am most worried about Pambondi and Cash Pattel, who are being picked because they are willing to turn the Department of Justice into a witch hunt operation for Trump's political opposition.
And you already see.
What's happening in the business right now. So the mega billionaires in this country who run the information system have already telegraphed that they are not willing to fight. Comcast has announced they're selling MSNBC they're getting out of the business of criticizing Donald Trump. Jeff Bezos did not make an endorsement in this last election, signaling that he does not want to fight either. Twitter is being run out
of the Whitehouse right now. So you see signaling from very powerful people in this country that they do not want to criticize Donald Trump's they want to protect their billions. And you see a Department of Justice is about to be taken over by a crowd that may actually start locking up or threatening to lock up people in this country who try to oppose Donald Trump. That's the end of democracy.
But he also says, in order to fight back, Democrats have some work to do. Let's talk about the Democratic Party. It's been over a month since the election, and the inauguration is not too far away. Half of you seen the Democratic Party other than looking at itself and wondering where it went wrong? Change in the weeks since early November.
Well, I'm deeply worried because I haven't seen the kind of introspection that I would have hoped. I think that there's a lot of folks who look at the race and say, well, Trump, you know, really didn't even get fifty percent it wasn't a landslide. We almost won the House of Representatives. We just need some minor adjustments. I don't look at it that way. I think we need to recognize how unbelievable it is that we keep losing to somebody as reckless as Donald Trump, a felon, somebody
who openly supported an insurrection. Again, it's the United States government. We should not be satisfied to lose to somebody like that by such a slim margin.
I also think it is morally.
Unsustainable for our party to stand up and say we're the party of poor people, and poor people don't want to vote for us. Like, how do you sort of wake up every morning and say, well, we're the party of poor people, but poor people don't like us. We're
not listening to the people we claim to represent. And even if you can sort of minimize the political jeopardy that we're in after this election, there's there's a moral jeopardy we're in as a movement that will just exacerbate and get worse if we don't look at square in the face. So I think the answer to your question case, I haven't seen a lot of things changing the Democratic Party yet I'm arguing for some major change. Maybe we just needed a month or so to lick.
Our wounds, but like we got to get moving well.
You wrote a memo to fellow Democrats a couple of weeks after the election, and you talked about winning back low income voters. You believe the key to doing that is taking on corporate greed. But with all key respects, Senator Murphy, hasn't the Democratic Party been talking about corporate greed and nauseum for decades?
I don't, not in the way that translates to ordinary average voters. I mean, frankly, I think the Democratic Party, along with the Republican Party, has presided over an economy for the last forty years that has done really, really well for folks at the very top of the income threshold. I mean, people sort of look at the economy that Democrats constructed and it looks like it did really well
for very, very rich people. And they look at who our coalition is, increasingly upper income individuals, and it doesn't look like we're sincere. When we talk about corporate power, we also talk about it generally. We don't necessarily talk about it specifically. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, they will take on specific company specific CEOs. But people notice when ninety percent of Democrats when they talk about corporate greed don't
actually name anybody, that doesn't sound real or sincere. So I don't think people really believe that we want to deconstruct concentrated power. And I think that you saw you saw the hesitancy of the Democratic Party to make that a ten poll. In the end of this last election.
I talked to a lot of really smart people, but I always turned to Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican campaign advisor who is no longer a Republican by the way, for his thirty thousand foot view of where we are in our nation's broader history.
All I can say in this moment for any American, our country's going to outlive all all of us. We'll never see the whole. We're never gonna get to see the ending. We just won't, right. And I think this is like so deeply important to appreciate in the context of there are things bigger than us, and as an American, there is nothing bigger than us than the United States.
And in our story, this chapter of it, I think it's exciting to be part of it, and to oppose something that I think is deeply terrible because on the other side of it is something a lot better. That's
the greatness of the country. Lincoln was preceded by the worst president in American history until Trump became president, and so I think Trump is going to be a disaster disaster, but the country will endure, damage will be done, Terrible consequences might happen, but one of the consequences that will come from the disaster ahead is greatness that will emerge from it, a greatness that didn't exist in the moment when what's to come could have been prevented. Destiny did
not shape the events at hand like that. So I think in this moment, opposing what is about to come is of deep importance, and I'm excited to have a small voice in that effort because for me, some people are great at sports and some people love music and painting. This is what I care about. There's nothing more important
to me outside of my family than the country. And what that's come to mean to me over recent years is not the partisan victory and the excitement of winning a campaign when I was a young man, but about the opportunities that everybody ought to have in a country. That ought to mean when it comes to freedom, the same thing for everybody, and that is very much on
the table right now, that question. And I could not think of a better thing to do if I got a day left, a week left, or thirty five years left, than to talk about that right now, because what's been handed down to us to preserve it makes stronger for
the next generation is of profound importance. There's three hundred and forty million Americans alive, half of us who have ever lived or alive right now, because there's only been seven hundred million people in all the history of the world since July fourth, seventeen seventy six who've been able to say these words that mean more to me and I think mean more to a lot of people in the country than any other association in their life.
And it's this.
I am an American.
Everyone here at KCM and specifically next question hopes you will all be enjoying a much needed break and that you'll be spending the holidays with people you love and if you don't always agree with them, meanwhile, we'll see you next year. As we continue to try to understand and navigate the next four. Happy holidays everyone. Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
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