Hi everyone. It's been a week since this election and I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I haven't said anything anywhere on social media. I've been waiting and watching to see what's been going on. I've been through many stages where I thought that I understood, but then things changed and I went back to a place where I didn't feel like it would be responsible to try and explain anything because I didn't know myself. The goal of this work has always been to educate and inspire, and realistically I felt like this week I couldn't do it.
But now it's time for a pod, and while I still don't know exactly what's happening, I do know more than many. So I'm going to walk you through what I do know in attempt to open your mind to things changing and changing pretty quickly in the next few days and months.
Hello and welcome to The PoliticsGirl Podcast. I'm your host, Leigh McGowan, let's get into it. I will tell you right now that I am very concerned. Concerned enough to be making sure my pantry is full and our medications and vaccinations are up to date. Now keep in mind that I live in California so this is something we often do to make sure we're prepared for potential earthquakes, but I am updating the way I do it.
I'm going to talk about the next thing I want to do is to make sure that I can explain everything right now because now feels like a good time. While I still can't explain exactly what happened with the 2024 election, it really does appear as if Trump and his dangerous lawless extremist allies have won.
The Northeastern Sea Board of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, along with New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, and Hawaii. Donald Trump taking all of the other states, including winning the popular vote, the first Republican to do that in 20 years, and every single swing state.
Despite the fact that the results were still coming in, Kamala Harris and Tim Walls conceded immediately. Vice President Kamala Harris called Donald Trump the morning of November 6th, and according to our campaign chairperson, General Mali Dillon, that conversation focused on the importance of working to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, unlike what we saw in 2020.
And she made it clear that she hoped that he would be a president for all Americans. According to people close to the two candidates, both leaders agreed on the importance of unifying the country.
Harris then delivered her official concession speech at her alma mater Howard University in Washington, D.C. at 4 p.m. that afternoon. In her address, she expressed her sincere gratitude to all of her supporters, and she emphasized the importance of accepting election results, stating unequivocally that we quote,
must accept the results of this election. Harris also reaffirmed her unwavering commitment to America's democratic principles, and encouraged everyone to never give up the fight for our democracy. Acknowledging the disappointment of the youth of America, she told them it was okay to feel sad and disappointed, but to know that everything was going to be okay. Harris finished the speech with a strong call for unity and resilience, highlighting the importance of the promise of America to the world.
Now, this very clear, very humble, very gracious concession came so soon after the election that a lot of people couldn't really take it in, because they were still reeling from the results. We had been told this would take a long time to sort out, that the election was going to be so close, that all the states had these different rules, and we wouldn't know on election night, and that all of a sudden that information seemed to be totally wrong.
It was shocking, it was disorienting. So many votes were still being counted, and yet the campaign seemed so sure that the race was over, and then as time went on, it seemed that they were right. Donald Trump's lead just kept growing until the final results were definitive, and that was a real blow to anyone who really understood the stakes of this election. Biden spoke on Thursday morning from the White House Rose Garden, about the importance of ensuring a peaceful and orderly transition.
The Hill called his speech a pathetic post-election pep talk. Now I would never say that about President Biden, who I really respect and admire, but I connect with the sentiment they wrote, when they said Donald Trump, the man who General Mark Milley called fascist to the core, and the most dangerous person to this country, does not deserve to have the blue carpet rolled out for him at the White House. Yet such hospitality was key to Biden's message.
As the writer went on to say, it's one thing to pledge a peaceful transfer of power, but quite another to proceed as though this was a normal transition to a normal incoming president. I think many of us feel that in our bones. We know something is wrong here. We know who General Trump is. We know what he has done. We heard what he said about everyone from women to immigrants on the campaign trail.
He is not an unknown quality, nor are the plans he and his enablers have for this country. Everything from mass layoffs of public servants so we can fill the federal government with people loyal only to him to closing the Department of Education and removing vaccine mandates from our schools. All while his party allows insurance companies to deny everyone with pre-existing conditions coverage by removing the protections of the ACA. This is all terrifying.
So this, it's all good the people have spoken thing when the winner is a man who tried to illegally overturn the last election, led hundreds of thousands of Americans die due to negligence, whose stole and potentially sold top secret documents from the White House, whose children and companies made billions of dollars off his presidency.
This is the man who was indicted for over 90 felonies this year and has already been found guilty by a jury of his peers of 34. This is a man awaiting sentencing. Last time he was in power, he refused to concede and staged a riot to storm the U.S. Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power. This is a man who calls our country garbage and is a danger to women in the world order and the economy so it feels wrong to just consider handing over the keys of the country to him? No questions asked.
Now I'm a big believer in our institutions, but I spent the past week trying to figure out how I stay alive without access to my medications without the ACA or if there's a breakdown in their delivery. I grappled with how to talk to my 16 year old son about the results. How do you raise a boy to be good in a world that rewards men for being bad?
I felt blindsided by the idea that everything I had been taught about being a good person, about doing the right thing, about not lying, about having integrity was just bullshit. It shook me to my core to think the world was this broken, that everything I had taught my child about being kind and looking out for others had just blown up in my face. I found it jarring to be that disillusioned.
Now Harris was gracious, an empathetic in her concession, and Tim Walsh was kind and hopeful, and Joe Biden, who is the current president and the one who swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic, said it was a setback, and setbacks were unavoidable. But that didn't mean we should give up. Now I don't know about you, but this whole thing feels like more than a setback.
So that's a tough ask, from the one person who actually has the power to protect our lives and our freedoms and the American way of life. Here we are with half the public terrified and confused, and our president appears to be dedicated to upholding the honor of the office of the president, rather than acknowledging that the people who will be taking over that office
are going to burn the entire institution to the ground. Now I talk to a lot of people who seem to respond to the terror of our imminent destruction by taking solace in the idea that the people who chose Trump would also suffer. A common refrain in the days after the election were, they didn't win, we all lost, they just don't know it yet.
This week has felt like a year. It is confusing to know how the country is supposed to function with the idea that it doesn't matter if you're a criminal, or a rapist, or someone who publicly promises to hurt people. It doesn't matter because you can still become the president of the United States. It is a wonder how someone who ran a campaign of literal hate could be chosen by the majority of our fellow citizens to be our leader, and it is quite frankly demoralizing.
Of course, it didn't help that the Christian nationalist and the Republican leaders started coming out almost immediately, vowing retribution against their enemies, and full-throatedly admitting that after perpetually denying it during the campaign, in 2025, the conservative blueprint to undo decades of progress on LGBTQ rights, reproductive freedoms, climate protections, and social inequality wasn't just some random concepts from the Heritage Foundation, but their actual working agenda.
I mean, I personally had multiple on-air fights on CNN, leading up to the election with conservative operatives who swore up and down that liberals were just making up the Republican connection to Project 2025. The Trump had nothing to do with it, and it would have no bearing on his presidency. I had thousands of comments online from mega supporters telling me what a stupid, uninformed lie or I was.
And yet, as soon as Harris conceded, conservative commentator and Trump surrogate Matt Walsh tweeted out, Now that the election is over, I think we can finally say that, yeah, actually Project 2025 is the agenda. LOL. And there you have it. Former Trump advisor and podcast host Steve Bannon, enthusiastically held up a copy of Project 2025 on his War Room podcast, calling it a conservative triumph that should be shared everywhere.
And Republicans started openly embracing the project's punishing tone across the country. Look no further than Texas GOP official Beau French, who has continually been in hot water for using slurs against the gay and trans community, taking to social media on November 6 to say,
I just admit now that we're going to implement Project 2025. These people were just out here gloating that they had lied, that they were going to do exactly what we said they were going to do. And it was heartbreaking because we told ya. And now it seems like we're stuck with this outrageous plan that will hurt so many people when they didn't even have the integrity to run on it.
And speaking of lack of integrity, Donald Trump, the adjudicated rapist, who has been accused by 26 women of sexual assault or misconduct, and bragged about overturning women's federal rights to their own healthcare and bodies, a man who continually referred to his female opponent as a low IQ individual, a bitch who slept her way to the top because she was dumb as a rock, and then laughed with the supporters about her being a hooker, the man who closed his campaign by telling American women that he would protect them,
whether they wanted him to or not, was now the winner, and his victory seemed to unleash and free every in-sell and woman-hater in America. Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist misogynistic xenophobic anti-Semitic podcaster, who had dined at Mar-a-Laga with Trump, went on air to say that the future for women was your body my choice. In fact, the whole quote that got millions of views and hundreds of thousands of shares was...
Men win again, and yes, we control your bodies. Hi, I'm your Republican Congressman. Hi, I'm your Republican Congressman. It's your body my choice. And men win again, men win again, they will never ever be a female president. Never, there will never be a female president ever. It's over. Glass ceiling, dude, it's a ceiling made of fucking bricks. You will never break it. Your stupid face keeps hitting the brick ceiling. We will keep you down forever.
You will never control your own bodies. You will never be the president of the global empire. Never gonna happen, sweetie. Your body our choice. Never gonna happen, sweetie. Your body my choice. Embolded men who voted for Donald Trump at the highest rate in this country took the masks completely off this week and celebrated Harris's loss across the country by putting women in their place and attacking them online.
Repeating for entices your body my choice everywhere from X to middle school classrooms. They are out here calling us whores and cunts and threatening us with rape squads and saying things like we own you now. Their response only further proved what women have been saying all along and that's that abortion rights were never about life and always about control. Control of women and their bodies.
Women have already died thanks to the extreme abortion bands in red states hundreds of thousands of rape babies have been born against the will of the mother and even if the Trump Vance administration doesn't pass a federal ban which seems very unlikely. The existing state level laws have already damaged reproductive care across the country with access to contraception and IVF now under threat. This toxic reaction of American men to Trump's win is its own problem.
There is clearly a gigantic rise in extremistogy around the world. Social media has become a breeding ground for extremist behavior with little to no push back. The online universe is now ruled over by the king of the thin skinned bullies Elon Musk and is full of men young and old, growing about male dominance in a world where statistics tell us a far different story.
Finally, after Trump closed his campaign with the violent imagery of enemies being punished, news networks losing their licenses, schools didn't teach what he wanted losing their funding and political enemies like Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad. Many far-right supporters celebrated his victory by calling for more violence. Saying Democrats are a terminal cancer on our country that has to be completely eradicated and many calling for mass or public executions.
As one supporter wrote, there has to be as many traders executed as there are days in office, build the gallows, restore the republic. And when those of us who see and hear all of this talk to Trump supporters, we're often met with gaslighting that what we see isn't real, that what we're doing is just fear mongering, that none of these terrible things, the winning candidate, his followers, his supporters, his backers, and his allies have said are actually going to happen. But why wouldn't they?
As this pod is being recorded, the Democrats are saying they still have a path to winning the house, but it looks far more likely that the Republicans will take that as well. So mega Republicans will have the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court, and apparently the mandate from the popular vote to do everything in anything they want. It's about as bad as it could get for anyone who believes in human rights and human dignity, the rule of law, and democracy.
There is no doubt that Donald Trump plans to rule like an authoritarian, that he is in the pocket of people far smarter and more powerful than him, and that the people being chosen to lead alongside him will work to roll back as many of our civil liberties as they can, to build an America that looks the way they want and rewards the people they deem worthy.
The smug entitlement of Republican operatives on display in the media this week tells us everything we need to know. These people are prepared, excited even, to take over the American government and install a president without a moral compass.
Who, thanks to the Supreme Court, has unchecked power, a man who admires dictators, sucks up to autocrats, and was caught on a hot mic, saying that he wished his people would stand at attention for him, the way the North Korean people have to do for their murderous dictator. On top of that, Donald Trump is surrounded by opportunists with extremist goals and sadistic tendencies, with very little concern for human life.
If this man becomes our leader, Americans are going to have to find their grit really fast. Right now, we're kind of a soft people. We've been safe enough, for long enough, that we got complacent about living in democracy, with everything at our fingertips, where we can count on the protections of the rule of law and our civil rights and constitutionally protected freedoms. But those days might be over. And if they are, then we need to return to our roots.
Our country's history is defined by resistance to tyranny, and sadly, since it doesn't appear we learned our lesson, or perhaps it's because we didn't include everyone in the land of the free the first time, we're going to have to learn this lesson again. If this happens, please understand it's going to be really bad.
And while I sympathize with the desire to just double middle finger your way through the next four years, to just check out and say, fuck it, I did everything I could, let the people who chose this suffer, the thing is it won't just be them that suffer.
It's going to be all of us. And while I sympathize with the anger and disappointment of groups who feel like they've been absolutely abandoned, women, particularly black women, the disabled community, the trans community, people like me with very serious diseases who might just die under a second Trump administration. Even with all their federal power and their years of preparation, these people can't just accomplish everything they want overnight.
You don't just flip a switch from democracy to autocracy, especially not in a country like America. Let's be real. The holidays can be tough on our skin. Between indoor heating, cold weather, and late nights, our skin can end up looking dull and dehydrated and tired. But that's where one skin comes in. I try not to get too caught up in my age, but I do want to keep my skin as healthy as possible as I get older, which is why I'm pleased to tell you about one skin.
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As Lawrence Tribe, Harvard professor and one of the foremost constitutional experts in the country reminds us, that slide into authoritarianism, the one we've seen in countries like Hungary and Belarus will be harder to accomplish in America. First of all, America is huge, arguably too big for one country. We have hundreds of millions of people here. Orban took over Hungary in a period of time, but there are less than 10 million people in that country.
We have over 40 million people in LA County alone. The US also benefits from a decentralized government, what's called a federalist system, where state leaders have their own power and can serve as a counterweight to team Trump's authoritarian ambitions. Governors and state attorney's generals in blue states across the nation are already speaking out against the Trump agenda.
Gavin Newsom has been incredibly clear that he will stand as a bull work against Trump and has been joined by many other blue state governors promising the same thing. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker clearly stated that if Trump comes for his people, they're going to have to come through him. Massachusetts Governor Mora Healy said that her state law enforcement will not help Trump with his mass deportation plans.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is poised to fight back along with Minnesota Governor Tim Walls. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said at a press conference that if the requests of the administration are contrary to our values, we will fight them to the death.
And in New York, Governor Kathy Hocal and Attorney General Latisha James have created the Empire State Freedom Initiative to protect New Yorkers against any potential abuses of power, as well as looking out for their reproductive and civil rights. In fact, according to recent reports, Democratic-led states are already shaping up to be a major point of opposition for the GOP as they try to implement their wildly sweeping plans.
So the states are going to play a major role in the resistance to Trump's dream of unfettered power. I understand it may feel like it's over. And without sugarcoating it, if this transition happens, which it currently looks like it will, in many ways the America we know will be over. But please understand, the idea of democracy, of human rights, of civil rights, of knowing right from wrong is not over. Yes, if this horrible man and his enablers take office, our institutions will have failed us.
Our political party will have failed us. The media definitely failed us. We will not have been protected the way we should have been. But we need to contend with that idea, and we need to understand it didn't happen overnight.
What we're dealing with is the results of decades of hard work by people working to uphold the status quo, of right wing zealots working behind the scenes to take us back to a time before they had to share rights with others, of a long-term goal to corrupt the Supreme Court, and massive amounts of foreign meddling in our elections and our media. Far too many knew it was going on and chose to ignore it, because they benefited from not rocking the boat.
If this goes down, it doesn't matter how many of us sounded the alarm or fought back over the past 10 years. The people who could have fixed this over the past 50 were either unable, unwilling, or unaware. So we need to look out for ourselves now. Now that being said, we are not entirely alone, or without options.
As author of Strong Men, authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat has always said, it is the beginning and the end of an authoritarian regime where bureaucratic and civil society resistance are the most effective. So as much as you might want to put your head in the sand and give up, we cannot. Because if the power is transferred to Trump, and he comes into office saying, I have unlimited power, and we just say, OK, then we are obeying in advance.
And that is the very thing experts on tyranny tell us not to do. As Timothy Snyder says in his book on tyranny, most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then they offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
It is allowing the wannabe dictator to be the dictator. But if Donald Trump comes in and says, I have unlimited power, and we say, no, actually, you don't. And then we make them fight us in court for it, and in our state legislatures, and within the court of public opinion, that is where we can make a difference. It took Putin a long time to get to the unlimited power he enjoys in the oligarchy-run kleptocracy Russia is now.
But he had to change a lot of rules to get there, and he did that before social media, in a poorer nation, without a state system, or a strong constitution to fight back. Lawrence Tribe points out that the American constitution is more than just a piece of paper with some rules. It sets up an actual infrastructure within our nation. It's federalism itself, state laws, state legislatures, a state-run court system. You can't just undo all of that overnight.
Sure, you could set the constitution on fire, but the country is already built around how it works. Even Trump's plan to use the military on our citizens is dependent on him using the Insurrection Act. So he is looking to break the law within the confines of the law, because he is still tied to our rules. State-level resistance, along with federal judges, who also retain a very large degree of independence in America, just doesn't align with an authoritarian agenda.
It's not immediately clear if every conservative justice in this country is simply going to give Trump the free reign he wants. I mean, I'm not going to hold my breath, but they could very well choose to fight back. We need to stand with the leaders and the groups and the judges who plan to follow the rule of law. We need to be supporting our Democratic allies around the world, and we need to stand against things like historical revisionism.
Historical revisionism is the whole idea that history is written by the winners. It is something that Steve Bannon just loves to say. Because strong men are known for rewriting history to justify their abuses of power. They depend on fear to control their followers. They attack educators and writers and journalists, real journalists, non-endertainment journalists, as well as independent voices.
So we need to work together to keep the truth and democratic norms and the rule of law and human rights and the true American values of freedom and justice and liberty alive while they try to kill it. Listen, if they come into power, you should expect some shock and awe behavior, mass arrests, killings, things like that that they believe will terrify us into submission.
Authoritarian governments thrive on people being afraid. They need us confused and shut down, silencing our own voices to keep ourselves and our people safe. Now I understand people are tired, and I know if things get crazy, it will feel easier to retreat. I understand that sentiment, but I can tell you if we do not fight back.
If we don't uphold the kind of society we believe in, if we don't stand up for our neighbors and our friends and for human rights and for personal freedoms, things will only get worse. It's the people working together to collectively act as a break wall against a full authoritarian takeover that we will need if this comes to pass. It will be our job to slow them down, to get in the way, to be endlessly annoying.
We can see from countries around the world that the more ground an authoritarian takes, the harder it is to get it back. Look at Afghanistan. The women used to look exactly like us, going to school, hanging out in their bathing suits at the beach. Now they are covered from head to toe, and they're not even allowed to speak to each other. They have lost their education, their freedoms, their bodies, their voice.
We can't allow our own homegrown, hateful religious bigots to get a foothold here. We have to fight them. There can't be one square of uncontested ground. Every single time this group tries something that goes against our values or our freedoms, we fight back. We might not win every battle, we might lose most of them. We might be aiming for death by a thousand cuts, but nothing good happens if we retreat. And as much as we need and deserve rest, rest is not coming.
If I could tell you anything, it would be prepare for action. I don't know what's going to happen in the next days and weeks, but I'm not going to pretend it's going to be easy. In fact, I think it's going to be worse than most of us can imagine. I'm also not going to say that this is just an American problem, because I believe that Russia and China and a bunch of other countries have a major stake in destroying American democracy and NATO's dominance in the world.
And they have played a major part in this. And I'm not going to tell you that this election doesn't seem off. It does seem off. It is weird how fast it was called. It is weird that we had record voter registration, but low turnout. It's weird that we aren't seeing a single audit, considering the results in the swing states, with Democrats, particularly female Democrats winning down ballot, but Donald Trump still winning the top of the ticket.
It's weird how many people in those battleground states voted for Donald Trump, but didn't also vote for the Republican Senate candidate on the same ballot. It's weird that weeks before the election, Donald Trump kept saying he didn't need our votes, that he already had enough votes. It's weird that he couldn't stop talking about how the Democrats were cheating until he won, and then that claim just ended.
It is weird that Donald Trump could be the first Republican president to win the popular vote in 20 years after running a hate-filled campaign that alienated half of the country and promised to do things that would hurt them. It's weird that Kamala Harris was filling stadiums and raised a billion dollars, and she would lose the popular vote to a man who had no ground game at all, and by the end of his campaign was having a tough time filling school gyms.
I don't think it makes you an election denier, or a conspiracy theorist, to question the 2024 results, considering how strangely it went. A manual recount of certain swing states, or a full recount before the Electoral College meets mid-December, would allow us to go into the future clear-eyed no matter the results. I mean, with the bomb threats alone, we know there was foreign interference, and perhaps the results would be exactly the same, but at least we could all have confidence in them.
If we are really going to enter a time of American authoritarianism, where so many people are going to suffer, then our citizens at least deserve to know that for sure this is what the public chose. And those who voted against it, don't have to wonder as they lose their marriages or their social security or their health care that they were just suckers for rolling over. I feel like that seems like a reasonable thing to do.
Honestly, it feels like something Donald Trump should want us to do, that way he could really lean in on that mandate. Finally, I will say that one of the things that has concerned me the most post-election has been people's reactions. It seems as if a lot of our fellow citizens have given up, that they no longer have the will to fight, that they want to disengage, because it all feels so hopeless and depressing.
Stephen Miller, the mad racist xenophob is now the White House deputy chief of staff for policy? That guy wants to do things like bring back child separation and turbocharged denaturalization, which of course means stripping actual American citizens of their citizenship.
Clearly, we can see now how effective disinformation has been on us, and we are well aware of the quality of people who are going to be surrounding this president, with the majority of the Supreme Court in the bag for their completely unchecked right-wing power. So I understand the sentiment to want to disengage, to find someone to blame, to point fingers and close the door on working with anyone who isn't in your immediate group, because they feel like the only people you can trust.
We know now, if Trump becomes president, that the justice system failed us, that the politicians, Republican and Democrat failed us, that white people failed us, that men failed us. We know the rule of law does not apply to everyone, that some people are just untouchable, and that will only get worse. Women are already dying for someone else's religious beliefs. But this idea that organization and community and goodness can't stand up to any of this should it happen is fundamentally untrue.
No doubt it looks like we're in a hideous position, that the Republicans will control everything federally. But that also means they'll have to take full responsibility for everything that happens, and their actual ideas are terrible, and people are going to hate them for it. So if this is really what we're doing, you can't obey in advance, you can't disappear or hide, that's what helps an autocrat destroy a country.
We need to stand up for this nation, stand up for our friends and family, stand up for ourselves, we can't just turn our back on humanity and what is right and what is wrong because they have. We have to ask ourselves to be better, and I understand that that is annoying and unfair, but it just is what it is. America is still an amazing nation, filled with incredible people. It's just that right now, half of them have been swayed by the dictator.
But there is a good 30 to 40% of them, they're going to find out pretty quickly that he was full of shit, and we have to be there to scoop them up when the wool falls off their eyes. The thing is, no matter who the president is, if we want to continue to live in a society with an actual rule of law, it is essential to work to uphold it. We know the Trump administration won't, but it's important we present an alternative to their lawlessness.
If we really go into this bleak future, I do think it's possible to respect the rule of law without just being good girls and boys. Because I can promise you, if I hear one your body my choice comment at a someone's mouth, I am breaking that fuckers nose straight up without hesitation. If someone tries to remove the gay couple from the restaurant I'm eating in, I will stop them, and I will hope the rest of the patrons will help me.
Look at Ukraine. They have been fighting back against Russian influence and violence for decades. They got rid of their puppet government, using an election system that had been rigged against them for years. They had part of their land annexed and no one in the world helped them get it back. And now they are in a full-scale war, standing all on their own against Russia, and Russia still needed to bring in North Korean soldiers to help them because they were losing.
It's Ukrainians know you can't just have whatever you want because you are stronger and bigger energy that we really need to be embracing right now. Those Ukrainians are unafraid and they know who they are. They simply refuse to lie down and take it, and that is what Americans need to be. Look, historically democracies fail. Someone always wants more power and chooses to break the rules to get it. It just hadn't happened to us yet.
But we are essentially a young and arrogant nation and we opened ourselves to it. The question is, what do we do next? As we move forward, I'm going to keep you as up to date as possible throughout these trying times. Please know that those who would oppress us are counting on us to roll over, to feel powerless and depressed and just let them destroy democracy, but we are not going to let them.
As Rachel Maddo said, history didn't just end. America is not over. We're just getting new marching orders and the people who want to hold onto democracy and the rule of law are going to have to fight for it. I've been through a lot of my life and I can promise you after you get over the depression and the bargaining and the sadness after you literally go through all the stages of grief, you end up with the choice to lie down and die or get up and fight back.
And I hope that most of you will join me in the latter. I want to thank you for joining me today. This period of time we're going into is going to be crazy. I want you to stay aware and stay alert and surround yourself with a community that you trust. It's going to get very real, very fast, and I don't want you to panic. We have just joined a long list of countries that is trying out the strong man thing.
But if we don't want to go too far down that road, if we want to actually have elections in 2026 and 2028, then we have to be brave and band together now. We have to band together around the truth and the true ideals of American freedom. So let's make Mag is attempt at authoritarianism an absolute failure because this is the land of the free. And we are not going to freely give that up. Until next week. PGA.
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