The Future of American Democracy

America is an aspirational idea, one we're still working to fulfill. It was shaped by enlightenment ideals, reason, liberty, and freedom of conscience. The belief that power comes from we the people, not a divinely appointed ruler, and while these ideals have not yet been fully perfected, they created something powerful, a framework that has expanded rights and freedoms over time Now, those freedoms and your rights are under attack. We're seeing growing efforts to blur the line between church and state, using public funds to promote religion, putting Ten Commendments into classrooms, and pushing a version of America that leaves out too many people. As our nation approaches its two hundred fiftieth anniversary, the Freedom F Religion Foundation is working to protect the Constitution, defend secular government, and ensure that freedom continues to expand Eone because America isn't just where we started. It's what we choose next. Go to frf. U slash state or text state to five eleven five eleven. teext state to five eleven five eleven, Txt fees may apply Keep your wellness routine going strong all summer. Kachava's new travel packs help you stick to your daily ritual even when you're on the go. Just one packet of Kachava's all in one nutrition shake provides complete nutrition wherever you are. with twenty five grams of protein, six grams of fiber, greens, adaptogens and more. Simplify your daily ritual Go to kachaffa dot com and use code fitness for fifteen percent off. That's kachaVa d. com code fitness Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Weekly showhow podcast for John Stewart. It is Tuesday, june sixteenth, Year of our Ns twenty twenty six. Oh I don't know if you hear in my voice in any way It's a little something called life little something called hope I, you know what? Heres I'm going to say something. before we get into the show. The Mets can suck all year. I don't give a fuck Do what you want Coming last. payroll of five hundred million dollars, I really don't give a shit doesn't matter. You know what? You've been granted amnesty You have you have a waiver. All my other teams, you have a waiver three year Row. void we have I know you're sicky hearing about it Uh, Seventh Avenue, Tenth Stre My wife, my son Robert S Meigl, one of his sons We stood there in the heat staring at the side of a building project in the game. it was just one of the most Wonderful uh experiences of my sporting life to just be in the city and feel the hopes and fears and ups and downs and adrenaline and negativity followed by just an absolute explosion of joy. And I have to give one along with like NYPD NYFT sanitation department, the people who projected up There was one dude Two guys actually MVPs of our of the seeventh Avenue Watch party. they had an gloo cooler in that cooler was the most delightful mix O snacks and drinks. I don't know where these angels came from they had crstles, they had those little bluebell cheese that you unwrap margaritas, beers water and just every now and again they would dip into it and somebody would like you on the shoulder and go Sheese. He would chease you during the game It was the most incredible. And for some reason and you showed this early He had a Ziploc bag, a pretty good size ziploc bag. Filled with twelve hard boiled eggs. Now I don't know if that was his seder supply that he's preparing for next year or if he's got an egg salad and go but he just withith all these delightful snacks and beverages, he had this thing and I just thought, what a ridiculous Ridiculous thing to actually consider to bring to this tailgate party in the middle of New York City. But I'm telling you Three quarters of the way through the fourth quarter. Tension got the highest out this bag of eggs Pople in the crowd responded to them like he was passing out free Nick t shirts from a t shirt gun Egg me, Egg me. He would throw the egg. People would catch them on a scoop on the stoop and eat them. It was the most brilliant. It was the Cout de Gras. of his entire refreshment regime that he had brought out there. And so sir, sirs I salute you You anonymous? heroes beaiful It was just it was a beautiful moment And that is how I will commemorate that day. But it paled in comparison to, you know, obviously martial arts fighting on the lawn of the White House to celebrate the two hundred fifteth. So I thought, why not for this show today? Let's talk about the nation's two hundred fiftieth birthday and why this has all become so controversial as to who owns our history, who doesn't own our history, what is our real history? And so who better to do that? And you know, these are always my favorite episodes. Historians. I just love historians. They've done the work. And all we get to do is ask them the stories and they have them at their beck and call. And so we're going to get them. These are two of the best, two of the best historians there Ladies and gentlemen, as we move into the celebration of our nation's two hundred fiftieth. year, we are honored to have with us today two just widely revered experts in the study of The history of this great country, Mr. David Blight, stterling professor of history at Yale University and professor Anned Gordon Reid, Carl M. Le University prorofessor at Harvard. university. So it's this the entire conversation is a Yale Harvard off. I want to ask you a, David, I'll start with you You know, perhaps nothing embodies sort of the absurdity of the moment that we're having right now in that our two hundred and fiftieth celebration, we have two competing visions of it, even within our own government, we have the America two hundred fifty celebration which is a, I guess a bipartisan group nonprofit established ten years ago through Congress u to come up with events. And suddenly we have the Freedom two hundred fifty. which was formed by the Trump administration for their vision What does that say in your mind, professor, about the moment that we are in Well, it's just one more measure of how divided or polarized we are One of those efforts is, I think, at least an attempt at real history That is complexity, some nuance, some ambiguity conflicts as well as the triumphs. The other one is propaganda The other one is Using history and the service political moment. It's history in the service of the present And it's a very partisan effort. It isn't just being done by the White House, though, of course The White House has had many, many enablers here, not least of which is the Heritage Foundation and other think tanks In fact, the Heritage Foundation has basically become the White House's history department So those two visions, if you like, are two different ways to do history. They're very both are very old. Yes, proropaganda, not a new form. No, not a new thing, not a new thing And that what You know, it brings up the interesting point. What is the importance? of a nation's origin story. And why do idedologs or partisans work so hard to control it We look to origin stories in the same way we look to our own origin stories. We say, whereere were you born? Where did you grow up? You meet somebody and you say, whereere are you from? if you say I'm from Texas, that tells people they think rightly or wrongly, a lot about me. If you're from Brooklyn, it tells you about you. So I think we ourselves and we look at the nation and we sort of meld them together and say, how did this country get started because it's going to tell us something fundamental about who we are Um And we've always done this and your first question about the polarization, I mean, history is inherently political because there's a battle about how people are supposed to think about themselves. So one person will tell an origin story that they think is all uplift and not truthful and I think that That's one of the what David is getting at there because it's something that makes you feel good in the present. And at the same time, you can, on the other hand, you could say, well I want a truthful story. I really want to know what happened in the past so that I can have a much more nuanced, as you said, story, a more realistic story. Now what I've fac is that I write about slavery and I write about Jefferson and and very difficult Bigs There are people who don't want truthful story about all of that. They want something that's a feel good and sometimes it makes you feel good and sometimes it doesn't. You have to have both of those things to have the kind of complexity that makes real history David, what what is what is the damage of a truthful story? Why is that so resisted. I mean, and that brings up a good point and there's something in there also about People lie to themselves as well It's not just about, you know, so I imagine for a historian that's even a very difficult thing to tease out that you can read You know, the difference between sort of journalism being the first draft of history and history and how you tease out are these people lying to themselves? Are they lionizing themselves? But why why would that be so resisted Well, because it becausecause narratives are always in conflict And when a powerful historical narrative, series of stories, exhibitions in museums, U great historic sites get somewhat reinterpreted. It can disorient people. It can dislodge them from pleasing pleasurable familiar narrative. You know, most human beings, let's face it, we're all a little bit part of this want to live in a kind of chosen narrative We'd all like our grandparents to be heroes. Our great grandparents, we can really make heroes if we didn't know them U, you know, we always everyone's always looking for the perfect ancestor, you know, as long as I don't know too much about them And and, you know, I mean, that's and that's what your Origin Wy man. Yeah. no. Origin stories are self made. Who are we? Well Let us tell you. and also, I mean Origin stories are tricky. We can't live without them. Every culture does it, E church does it, every institution does it, every country does it Al has But they're tricky. Mark Block, the great French historian killed in the Holocaust weren't. he had a little piece of an essay entitled The Idol of Origins. and he said, Well, beware, as soon as you find your origins, well, then that origin has an origin and then that origin has an origin and watch out You don't really fully know the origin unless you look deeper, deeper, deeper. So the trouble with history is that it can it can dislodge us comforting story we'd like to be living. And that's part of what's happened here in the last Now let's say two decades really it predates Trump where the American right has become so concerned about some of the great changes in how we've interpreted narrated American history, everything from race to gender and many other issues has gotten them all worked up because there was a There was a comfortable narrative of this country. There always has been And it got quite dislodged, not because as Trump executive order said, we were trying to tell everybody nothing but shame about America. That's nonsense. R not what we do It's just because we've We've learned how tell the complexities of history. And it turns out most people want that. Oh they definitely Oh I would be sure of that. And is that what you've seen that over time, you know, the fact that you're dealing with tricky issues of slavery and race and those kinds of issues Is that is the dividing point here that. effort is create an origin story of the country that's more singular and more reflective of maybe a Christian origin story or a nationalist origin story that's more homogeneous and that because you're dealing in the complexities of race or as David said, gender things that don't fit as easily, that's where the pushback comes. And have you felt that pushback grow Oh yes, definitely. I mean the last from the revolution in the historiography of slavery in particular in the forties and the fifties. And And ever since then, that goes along with the civil rightights movement. I mean, history, we ask different questions of the past depending upon what's going on. And once we started changing Um laws and getting rid of segregation, all those kinds of things and making transforming America, you go back and people start looking at history in a different way, asking different questions. And I think as David is suggesting, this is a reaction to all of that. There are people who want to put the Jennie back in the bottle I want to rewind the tape and say, no, let's go back to a more comforting narrative. mainly because perhaps they want to go back to a more comforting country. You know, a country that a sort of nineteen fifties, nineteen forties country and everybody idalizes, but that's a time when, you know, people went to separate bathrooms. P women couldn't get credit cards. I mean, all these things There's a lot that goes along with this nostalgic vision of history and that is a a nostalgic vision of the present. And so that's what's really frightening about it. It's not just about a complaint about history. It's a complaint about where we are now, the kind of country we have become. in the past fifty or sixty years So is the idea and that that if they feel like they can control the narrative of the past they can control the future. Exactly. I mean, the thing is this is who we are in this the push for originalism, the idea we have to go back essentially to. It's always the seventeen eighty nine constitution, seventeen eighty seven, seventeen eighty nine constitution. It's not the post civil War one that gives us the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendment. Let's go back to the original And that is that's actually a time when, you know, Back there was a strict racial hierarchy gender hierarchy and we can't do anything past what those people thought at the time. And that's you know that's a complaint about history, but it's also a complaint about the new society that America has tried to make in the late twentieth century and the early twenty first century. John, yeah, David, go ahead. We live in the country that is essentially held together by the fourteenth Amendment Section one of the fourteenth, birthright citizenship, due process andquality before law That's right before the Supreme Court as we speak U, we were reinvented. by the fourteenth Amendment and we still live under it we if we can hold it You know, Well what's at stake here is more than just history. It's the social order I mean, it's this idea that if if you let these crazy left wing historians and universities alter the national story that fifth graders learn eighth graders, tenth graders and college students The social order could fall apart. familyily values could fall apart. and look, Uh it's one of the reasons The right is so exercised about gender u, because that is a relatively new challenge to the to the nature of history, if you like But it's ultimately here question of who controls The social and cultural order History is always at the center of that. It's always The first problem. Absolutely. I mean, and And the fourteenth Amendment basically animated by the Declaration of Independence that gives us a creed that says all men are created equal and progress of America since that moment has been tryed to realize that And that's why you have this attack now even in some ways on the Declaration as a creed saying as a sort of creed creed for American saying, no, America is not just a country about a creed. it's a country about a race, it's about religion. It's about something that doesn't have that inclusive encompassing thing. So the Declaration in the fourourteenth Amendment talking about equality has been a target for people who want a different vision of what the country is about, a white nation algorithm. The algorithm the way that it incentivizes the hostility and and weaponiz ideology and all it just it's not right. But the anidote, the antidote is information. and that's where ground newews comes in. Ground News, it's this website app. It's designed to give readers betteret way, an easier way to navigate the news. It pulls together every article the same news story from all outlets all over the world and puts them in one place and not not incentivized for like the worst, most hostile, most partisan tells you where it's coming from. you can see ly in black and white how these different organizations and algorithms are manipulating the information They show you how reliable the source is and who's funding it, Wh's funding it Hollow the money K know who's behind the headlinine Oh, who is this Rupert Murdoch fea? He seems delightful H seems to have a somewhat pointed view of the world ity The Nobel Peace Centers even mentioned that Ground News is an excellent way to stay informed. Noel Peace Center That's, I think the one that Trump started three D prrintince Nobel Peace Prizes and just hands them out. platforms independently operated supported by subscribers, so they stay independent and they stay mission driven gets sucked into this slot If you want to see the full picture, go to Ground News. They can help you Through the noise, get to the heart of the news. go to groundneews. com slash Stuart. Subscribe for forty percent off the unlimited access vantage subscription. disiscount available only for a limited time. This brings the price down to like five dollars a month Ground newews com slash Stewart or scan the QR code on the screen I'm fascinated by the idea that telling the stories of diverse populations Why do you think they view that as degrading to our national history and not something that is more remarkable about our national history in terms of where we've come. I mean, you've studied Douglas maybe the best scholar on Douglas. you know, reanimate him for a moment. wouldould he be astonished by the progress made? or disappointed that we're still litigating the very same structural issues that he litigated, both No, he would both G you and your nuance. Oh I know these horians theseese historians are always saying on the one hand on the other hand, but truly Douglas would be astonished at some of this progress, but he'd be disgusted Uh hu he'd be Lord he'd be disgusted at this attempt to erase all of that progress that has been made A best way to understand that is Dougas gave a very important speech in eighteen sixty nine, right point of the passassage of the fifteenth Amendment, the voting Rights Amendment called it the Cosite Nation. It's one of the most beautiful expressions you would ever read And note the date again, this is eighteen sixty nine.. It reads like a multiculturalism manifesto, you know, from a school system in in the nineteen nineties.o Yeah, no itah Das Douglas was woke. I think Douglas was woke. It was dude The dude was in the pluralism and the speech expresses this beautiful you know, crazy quilt of America and in the middle of it He stops. he takes up the great present issue of that moment And he makes the case for Chinese immigration Chinese immigration was becoming a huge issue, especially from the West. Right And there's Douglas saying, get ready, America, they're coming And they got a three thousand year old civilization. Look stuff we never thought about before. Yes, they have alien language. Yes, they have alien religion, but man, these are amazing people. getet ready for them. And anyway. So But even that though, think about that though, that moment in history at eighteen sixty nine, Douglas says that. And what are the two things that occur almost right after that? Right. There is the birthright citizenship case about a Chinese immigrant exactly. But then the second thing is The South reinstates takes back the country. takes back Right Reanimates the very thing that created the progress that Douglas is talking about. It's the single most hopeful moment of Douglas's life. Yes. And he never John, he never gave that speech that I could find after about eighteen seventy one It was falling apart. I was doing a research for a book and found my great great grandfather's name on a voter list and Texas in eighteen sixty seven And it was good amazing. And then I thought Then I got sad because I realized what's going to happen in a couple of years. Yeah Texas is going, I mean, all this stuff is going to be rolled back and he's going to be put back into a state of near not chattel, but near near chattel almost as bad as slavery during that time period stripped of rights and so forth And is the idea that the right would like that moment erased from the record or de emphasized? is what is the purpose of and Annette you face this. I mean, again, when we talk about Douglas with David Blight, but also Sally Hemings and Jefferson with the Ned Gorden Reid. I mean, your scholarship on that unparalleled. So is that an analogous historical figure in terms, do they want that relationship erased You know When I was working on this subject, it occurred to me that I think a lot of it, when I listen to people, it has to do with this question of a white nation, if somehow person who is a symbol of the country. seeven children with a woman who is not It was not Surely White Then what does that say about the country as a white nation. I mean, an actual literal founding father here of not just white people but of people who were black and who as descendants who still identify themselves as black So a lot of it is just the it's a vision of themselves and the vision of what they want present to be to sort of situate the past to sort of, you know put us on the path to getting to a place that is comfortable to them and that is one where whites are in ascendency and people of color you know are lower down or people who are discriminated against I want to ask you about the process of that because David, you brought up early that idea of woke and diversity being a buzzword about this has we have to take woke out. You know, I think Trump did the executive order, restoring truth and insanity to American history. and it was all about removing any idea of woke. The idea being that the left or the elites are so focused on issues of race or gender or those kinds of things those peopleeople that were under those discriminary discrimination policies they didn't create those distinctions They had to live under them The idea of obsession with race or gender doesn't come from those who suffered under it It was the ruling class that defined those groups Well, that's true, no question.. Black folk didn't right pro slavery laws. No Black folk didn't write or defin themselves as something different They weren't part of the self definition of being chattel by any means, of course. Now Whether the right wants total erasure, there are many different parts of the right, as you well know, John Uh and some of them would say, Ohh, they just want talk about emphasis. You know, they don't want to lose Jefferson in the story of Sally Hemings and that tellell us hours on that U they don't want to lose Abraham Lincoln in the stories. of the complexities of how emancipation actually happened. They don't want to lose George Washington in the story of how the American Revolution was won and how bloody it was and how difficult and contingent it was and how they almost didn't win and so on and so on and so on. There are parts of the right who really are white nationalists. And I've learned this, I guess I'd say the hard way I recently challenged Kevin Roberts, the president. Kevin Roberts, president of Heritage Foundation. Yeah, Yeah, I challenged him to have a debate and we ended up doing an hour and ten minute podcast. Really Oh yeah. yeah. and Look, we set two rules. We were going to be civil. And sorry. we really tried. We did all right on that mostly. And we were going to stay in our lane because Kevin is a historian, his PhD in history from UT Austin and his dissertation was on slavery in Louisiana. and it's not bad twenty five years ago. And he's also one of the architects of the newew Rite, which is that project twenty twenty five Absolutely what they want in the future has been on record as saying he wants the future to be Trumpism Absolutely. and and Some of these executive orders come right out of Project twenty twenty five, verbatim language. R. They were written over at Heritage Foundation.. Kevin and I stayed in ourr lane as historians. We tried to be civil And by and large, it didn't work. Really? Well, we did remain civil. I was this host. I couldn't do, you know, wow I've been in that position. I bet you have. Yeah. You've interviewed it sometimes it works out better than other times. L you've interviewed two people. you'd like to kick that sure. Yeah. probablyrobably corct. Is that safe to say? What did you think Do you think he's being disingenuous then? What was his, especially if he's written you know, a dissertation on slavery in Louisiana. I mean, surely He understands the complexity of it Is he now being disingenuous for a Surely political projects Sometimes he is. I'm totally convinced of that he can read off, you know, twelve talking points for the Trump White House in two minutes He's very good at that. But often the the disingenuity, if that's the right word comes when they start cherry picking. When they start saying, Well, there was this one exhibit at the African American History Museum that said this that they should not have said, or there's that art museum over there that suggested that sculpture has something to do with scientific racism, which sometimes it does. But they will pick out a single cherry picked example somewhere and say, you see The whole damn institution has gone to hell with a bunch of liberals and radicals. They confuse anecdote with data. Absolutely. Anette, in your experience because the Sally Hemings thing was a very different situation in that There was a real denial of the reality of it. Their position there wasn't cherry picking emphasis. It was, no, that's not true Yeah. none of those folks descended from Jefferson and Hemings, it's just not you're lying Well, yeah, I mean it was denial for the reasons that I was suggesting before that there was an image of Jefferson as almost the personification of America. In some ways, that's not a crazy thing. That's one of the reasons he's an interesting figure for me, because you can write about so much in American history through his life about slavery, race, politics foreign policy, all of those things. And so he was a hero to people in a particular way, and they had sort of a personal identification with him Um, and They didn't want to leave that behind. But I do want to say something about the museum. One of the interesting points that's happened here is that During the president's first term, I believe it was the first time he visited the museum and he was very complimentary of it. Yeah. I mean, he thought it, you know, it was a It was an uplifting story and they It changed after I don't know what is the Heritage Foundation or the new the new Uh in the new pro other project that they put in place had to sort of alter the way they thought about these kinds of things. and all of a sudden it becomes this cherry picking that you're talking about. What could be more inspirational than that museum is just odd to think peopleople didn't see that as a story of the bad and the good talking about It's sort of a progressive understanding of things are getting better and better as you go up the floors And so it's exactly something that was made to in lots of ways to honor America notot to be critical of it. Oh yeah, not at all. There' a reason it was the hottest ticket in Washington. right? Absolutely because people do really want to know My experience is people really want to know the truth and can handle it. And that was right at the beginning of his first term. I think that was like feebruary ' seventeeenh or something They hadn't really been fighting the culture wars win yet to really win Now they are But why do they think why would you think that a more nuanced version of the history of this country is something to win or that that's part of a culture war is the idea that if we acknowledge the complexity of it owe a debt to those who suffered. Is it Is it about if If you do acknowledge that there was explicit racist or exclusionary policy that built so much of the equity of this country. If you acknowledge that, are you then saying Now there is a debt that acknowledgement. Absolutely. The thing is to say that black people o it's just it's usually black and white. It's much more complicated now in lots of ways with other minority groups. The idea is nothing happened to you The disparities that we see in health carere and education and wealth, all of those things, it's because you have not pulled yourself up by your bootstraps. Nothing has happened to you. And if you tell a story If you tell young people, wait a minute, you know, when Annette Gordon was a little girl at six, when she went to the doctor, she had to go to a separate waiting room that was much smaller and didn't have, you know, the accouture also the other side or the white one or that you had to sit in the balcony. If you talked about all those things and that they happen to people millions of people over the years, then you do owe them a debt. You do feel sympathy for them. And the lack of this notion that you shouldn't have empathy for people or sympathy for people is a big part of their thinking because they really don't like the idea of social programs, of any kind of responsibility that people have to try alleviate those circumstances. So it's a way of saying You know We don't You know, we don't have any responsibility. The society has no responsibility for the legal impediments that were put upon people. for many, many decades You guys are familiar with the internet. You've been on the internet those kinds of things. you probably think, o, look at me looking shit up, looking things up. I like to look things up. I like information. I like surfing the web. But I don't know if you realize this. Sbody somebody out there is checking you out It's gotten to the point you don't even thinkink about it until all of a sudden you have that moment of Is this tracking everything and everywhere that I am going and doing. and it's just a wonderful moment of paranoia that we all feel. And then we think to ourselves Well Oh, I'm just helpless Well I'm helpless because I want to buy Fcks certainly not want that information to be out there, but I have to do it. and I'm going to do it on Amazon and all. 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They can't harm you if they can't find you the link in the description to claim your sixty percent off and get your personal data off the market in cognit dot com slash Stewart. What's so interesting about that to me is so I think about it and maybe this is far afield, but I think about globalization and and what it has done to the sort of the center of the country and the manufacturing base you know, working Working class whites, I would say, are the primary victims of that kind of job loss, right It's very common in this country to say the policies that were instituted destroyed that The economic prospects for those folks in that part of the country, it led them to Deaths of despair, it brought out a lot of different vices and those kinds of things And we're going to take policy measures repair that damage. We're going to levy tariffs. We're going to do various things try and Alleviate the suffering that occurred from the policies that were put in place. Isn't that the exact story of racially exclusionary policies Why is that in any way controversial issue Well Okay question. I mean, I grew up. I'm taking this class. All right, miss. Well, you get an A already. All right, U, You know, I grew up in an auto town, Flint, Michigan. I grew up in an autoaker family. That white working class midwest, that's where I'm from. So There's no question Democrats lost that white working class. And Republicans gain major portions of it because of globalization, because of the loss of jobs, because of sending jobs abroad and on and on and on. No question. What's also happened in that process, is they have taught that white working cl and a whole lot of other people Distrust inststitutions like universities distrust. institutions like great museums. distrust this whole apparatus that Annette and I are just two small parts of of the practice of history, the practice of acemic the creation of academic knowledge And we got surprised by that. And this is where the left has to take at least a look in the mirror and realize that For years, we were being distrusted and didn't really even know it And we forgot that only about forty seven percent of Americans ever even go to college, any kind of college And the slight majority of this country neverever sets foot on a college campus, even for a football game because they can't afford it So You know, we lost touch in some ways. We made our creation of knowledge Obscure in many ways, although many of us for years and years on theette, you know, was the spearhead of this because of the Sally Hemmings case. and that took time to convince Monticello and the country of its truth. Right. But there's a resentment there. Yeah, because of its truth. Well, that's true too. There's a resentment towards Anette or towards you Yeah for even bringing up that truth. Telling us the painful stories. That's right. Don't tell us those painful stories. Make us feel good again. And it makes me feel like it's a battle over who the real victims are. And now the white working class is saying, no, no, no, no, no, it's not the woke that are the victims. It's us. Yeah. We're actually the victim. Yeah. Well, there's the racial story that's involved in this as well. I mean, the white working class, you know, beloved of news organizations, so forth, the diners stories and so forth. Sure. They represent they're seen as representing real Americans in some ways. And this is sort of a way of saying that are kind of not real Americans. Explicitly so, even the heritage Americans. Yeah, ye, exactly. And the truth is, most African American people are descended from people who came here in the seventeen hundreds, in the early seventeen hundreds You know, so it we would certainly be people who have a history here for very, very, you know, for centuries and yet we're not real Americans. So when you think about when people are told that the government, and that's the other thing that they is not only mistrusting, Uh, Universities, the government is the problem So we're an industrialized country that doesn't have a social welfare system anywhereike that approaches any place else in Europe and are sort of people who have comparable types of societies. And so And that is social scientists suggest is because of the racial. question here is that people don't want those people, those people's children or those people to have, you know to be helped in any way. And so it's very much a sort of a heritage Christian nationalist kind of understanding of who belongs in this country But at the core of it is it resource guarding? Because I think you see in some, I mean, I'd say that only because I have dogs. I'm say because you have a dog. I have a dog. So I'm always thinkinggn I do like, oh, they resource guard Yeah. And in some ways, is that the resentment of, you know, you hear that a lot. if we weren't spending money on these immigrants and the healthcare, my life wouldn't be hard, but we're certainly not the only country with a complicated history. Oh, not at all God no. Not at all. Talk to the Russians and the Germans Right. yeah. Well, but you know We do have something a little peculiar on them And that is you know, talk talk to common Russians about Progress They might ask you what the hell that is, you know But whatever generation of Germans about Progress But Americans have this, I don't know if it's DNA, in the water, in the air, wherever it all comes from. There's this it's in American mythology. It's deep in American mythology. There exceptionalism. Yeah, This place has to be about progress And these messy, complicated, conflicted, difficult histories are disrupting that progress are showing us that, oh my God But our job has been for years. and and actually, we're paying the price for some of our victories I mean, I think so. and I wonder if Anet doesn't You're talking about victory progress in terms of civil rights and those kinds of things. It's breeding resentment in other groups. But even writing the new histories, I mean both of us here have came of age with the transformations of the subject of American history Race was the big subject for both of us, but many others. You know, the rewriting of American the history of American foreign policy, the rewriting of the American West because of the explosion. of scholarship on Native American history. And sometimes, you know, maybe we did go overboard Maybe we didn't stop studying the presidency. When you say overboard, do you mean in terms of painting it as a story of pure negative impulse or colonizer versus victim in that way? or? Well to some extent that. And if I hear one more student in a seminar use the term settler colonialism for just everything they want I will stop them because there are other other ways into American history. Right. But I think it's more than just, you know, shame or whatever. No that's not I'm talking about just the explosion of the new histories I mean, there's so many new histories. We are so pluralistic. And thatet, do you see that as well? Do you do you see a kind of success in in the scholarship because it feels like It's never excess if it's just if people are just exploring those histories, as long as there are other options to be studied. you know, if a college only offered you a narrow slice of very specific a colonialist victim histories, but it sounds like we're expanding the palette. Yeah, I would you, I would you know depart from David a little bit on this because I think it's basically comes down to the sort of cherry picking that we're talking about before that people come and they look go to a university and they find some class that they think is crazy. And say this is what people are being taught. Right. Judged by its title usually. Yeah byy title and people would say, you can't take Shakespeare I mean, there' no classics. And you know, I went to Dartmouth. and you could and people would make these complaints about, you know what's not there on the curriculum, but all the traditional things were there. It's just that they weren't focusing in on that s I think it's more people being upset because they don't want other people They don't want those kinds of things available at all, even though what they want is still there. That's the point. They don't want it available at all. It's a food court Just because you've introduced Panda Express and empanadas doesn't mean you can't still go to McDonald's. Exactly. It's all still there. But it's the expansion of it is frightening. Yes. I mean, when people come to something that you, you're not used to this. You're used to the very things that you always went to and now you have all these alternatives And you know, it Starbucks, you know, I, you know, I want my coffee, but I'm resentful that other people are getting the no whip frappuccino, whatever And you can have those things if you want them. You can tell it's around lunchtime for all of us. Right right. And all the analogies now are going to be food. food related. But it's all taken as an attack What are the ways, you know So let's think about you know, there are countries obviously with even more complicated South Africa is a great example. And now there's this real Rennaaissance and nostalgia for tide, South Africa, Rhodesia and those kinds of areas you see it on social media and all these other things. Why is there a nostalgia for that and did South Africa's trruth and recconciliation Commissions bridge a gap to ease that. What's going on in these other complicated histories? Well There have been many, many different attempts at truth and reconciliation, trruth commissions of various kinds. In fact, we did a conference aring all those at Yale some years ago, there' many different efforts and they're very difficult to do And they're all rooted in their own cultures and their own histories. But thank God, the world has at least attempted to do this in many different from India to Germany to South America, South Africa, you name it. U nostalgia for past, it's a human urge You know,ostalgia for the British Empire when, you know, for some not just Brits They' they're Americans who are anglophiles and may yearn for I don't know, some time in the history of the British Empire, they better not look at. Some of those wars the British fought in Africa or India. sureure. It's going to get ugly. Or amongst themselves. Or amongst themselves. I think sometimes there's this feeling that if it was just homogeneous, there wouldn't be issues. Yeah. But human beings will always find a way to divide ourselves. Oh you know. And if you just you can go back to, well, if it was just this anglicized version of Christian nationalism, and you're like, right, but whose version of it And suddenly you're back in the Protestant Catholic wars. You're back into the hundredundred years Wars. You know, you're back into a whole other era. Yeah of violence and division, just based on different ics Sure. I once I was teaching in Germany thirty some years ago and I showed Ken Burns's film series on the Civil War into German, by the way, it was weird. but Anyway A German student came up to me and said, Why isn't you Americans think that anything that happened to you was the greatest, the biggest, the bloodiest And he said Have Americans ever heard of the thirty yearsars War? And I said, no, probably not You know I'm sorry, but they probably haven't.ry. You know, we don't do comparison that often or we should do more. But you know, the burden is still on us It's still on us historians to make what we do clear translate what we do. and I think Well, you've got two historians here who have been attempting to do this for years and years and years to reach out to real people who read books You know, the public to write in ways that are not only accessible, but goodood narrative based on deep research, but good narrative. and historians lost touch with some of that over the years Revolution in social history, the revolution in this kind of method, that kind of theory. But there's a real movement now. I think It's it's an interesting In fact, this conference I'm running here right now is all about this. to Take history to the public Good history to the public. whether it's in museum exhibitions, in our books in lectures tellell the big complicated stories. I like to eat things in Bows all types of bows We see that Leslie Jones wrap from Mess andel Bs, B b, I think was the songy eightdy Bryan or something like that. I hope this is not a digression I think bowls are probably the best a receptacle by which man has created things out of Gs goodood enough for my dog, it's good enough for me. And my favorite thing to put in bowls telling you anything you don't already know Serial I love a nice cereal telling you something I used to eat it all the sugary stuff. And always felt like, you know I felt like Superman for like seven minutes crash that makes you question why God ever put you on this earth point is that Magic spoon makes healthy cereal. You can still eat it out of a bowl, but you won't get that crazy up and down crap. thirteen grams of protein No sugar Zero grams of net carbs per serving G flavors, fruity, frosted cocoa, cinnamon crunch. all What's better than a bowl, what's better than cereal? what's better than magic spoon. Nothing for Magic Spoon on Amazon or at your nearest grocery store And there are plant based versions of the cereal too. Even vegans get to feel like they had a childhood. You'll find vegan options at Whole Foods orr get five dollars off your next order at magicspoon dot com slash tWS. That's magicpoon dot com slash tWS five dollars off You know, juneteenth is coming, june nineteenth and people may not know, but you played a crucial role in I'm embarrassed to even say when I was younger going to school, I had no idea of that the significance of that dayate, you know, we are taught the emancipation proclamation. And that's kind of the end of it. There was an emmancipation proclamation. and after that, we were good And then there was a little kerfuffle in maybe the sixties. Somebody wrot my book on that. That's what I'm saying. So you know, Anette that's coming up is is that What was your process like In bringing that story more to the public forefront Getting The acknowledgement of it from a government that's resistant to that kind of acknowledgement Well, it was a pandemic book Oh, that's the idea. if you don't leave the house, you don't leave the house. I get a lot of writing done. fair enough. I was there in Manhattan and only going out to Central Park for for breaks and so forth. But in, I thought that I could tell the story of Texas and this day through my family story. So and that's I think that is David's point about making things accessible. People like stories about other people, you know. And that was the hook to try to do it. I hadn't thought that the government, I hadn't thought that there would be a A national holiday. there's another woman who's responsible Opal Lee, who's more responsible for all of that. But the timing was good. And you know, I worked on it and got it out. And it was it was a way to try to get people to think about not just emancipation proclamation, but also to think about how African Americans in Texas and other places in some ways liberated themselves by leaving the plantations and were responsible for in some ways for their own freedom, I thought it would be This was sort of a celebration of human rights that people in the country could just say, this is just a milestone. It's not the end of everything. It didn't end slavery. It didn't end the whole the thing of the slavery ends with the fight R But It was it's a marker for people to latch on to Can I ask what the response is because I'm curious sometimes The standard historian framing and you brought up Ken Burns is you're studying this other period and you're looking for all the source material and you're sorting out who might have been lionizing themselves, self aggrandizement, who is how are they manipulating the details of the events versus your story about through the lens of your family in Texas where it's a much more personal story and I would imagine harder to Refute through the lens of intentional attacks. Yeah I see It's difficult because I don't write about myself. It's much easier to write about other people in other people's families because, you know, it's just you're too much into it. But by the same token These are my impressions of my past. And so people can' and this is what I think. People can't come and say, that's not how you felt. You know watching Billy Jack, that's not how you That that how you felt when you saw those movies and you know, by the way, one of my favorites, I think that inform that you know a lot about people which side of the town they were empathizing Billy J. If you know people that watch Billy Jack and they And you know which side they're empathizing on, that tells you a lot about where their politics are. Oh, those movies, I try to explain it to my kids. They were the best. In my town, my little East Texas, you know very, very conservative town, all of these people were just whipping you know, in favor of Billy Jack and his compatriot something. wait a minute. you the same folks, do you understand Do you understand what this is about? Do you understand what this is about. I'm coming at this very differently. I was a high school teacher when Billy Jack came out Billy Jack. Man, that was hot. dont know how many times I saw that with students. Yeah. But you tell those kinds of stories and people relate to them and then you give them history and then it becomes a part of The whole thing's taken together, you know you hope that they learned something. It's a different way of doing it. I wantan to ask you what's somewhat confusing about. for me about this two hundred fiftieth celebration is one of the things that You know, we were always taught about was this idea of American exceptionalism. And that American exceptionalism was about ed It really was about declaration of independence and all men are created equal and God And that is what separated. And to go back to blood and soil, feels like an admission of defeat It feels like we're then saying, actually, we're not exceptional We're not a shining city on a hill. We're just like every other nationalist movement in the history of the world. So why wouldn't the right embrace what truly is exceptional about the country, this creed so difficult to achieve but certainly worth pursuit andet what do you think of that Well A lot goes along with that. if you believe in the creed. You believe I mean, and there've always been a segment of Americans when you know those words were written and when Jefferson said them, and we could we don't have time to go into him on all of this. But There were always people who disputed that notion and the Civil War in the South explicitly rejected it in, you know the cornerstone speech. We don't believe those things. Jefferson was wrong, essentially what they say. So we've always had that some percentage of people. Tell me what the cornerstone speech is because I'm not familiar with the cornerstone speech. Alexandere, the vice president of the Confederacy wrote a speech basically saying that the cornerstone of The new southern society they were making was the idea that the African race was not created equal to white race. And he calls out Jefferson and says basically, they were wrong. They believed, you know, essentially a necessary evil, but they believe that slavery was the wrong thing. And we don't believe that. We believe that that is the natural state of African Americans to be in slavery And yet somehow somehow in the early nineteen hundreds, it became about states rights as they might own ask.. Well because at some point when racism becomes They understand iss a dirty word In some way, you have to say, no, it's not and they know they were wrong. You know, when people know they're wrong, they come up with some kind of explanation for what it is they're doing. And it is the tariff. You know, you kill six hundred thousand people about the tariff. Right. It's like, no, I don't think so. So the notion changes especially when the cornerstone speech exists When when when when it's when it's on record. On record and it was just the beginning. I mean, this every secession resolution Tld the world of the states exactly what it was. Tld the world they were sececeding to protect a racial system, a labor system. And by the way, that was a slave labor system. But John, back to yourle your creed question. I think it's crucial here It's absolutely crucial Crees were dangerous Treeds are dangerous. That decclaration of Th those four first principles life, liberty Pursuit of happiness and the right doctrine of consent and the right of revolution They're dangerous And nobody appropriated them quite as vigorously, forcefully, hopefully as did Black Americans, eventually. And the whole abolition movement. I' Anette and I were just doing a teacher institute together in Philadelphia about the Constitution. and And she heard me on this, but if a person goes and just reads the declaration today, which we'll be hearing endlessly in the next week or two Stopping stopping look Jefferson spent more words and so did the whole committee that wrote it defending the right of revolution than they did of the other natural rights. almost as though life and liberty and consent or givens that right of revolution, you're going to overthrow monarch and you're going to overthrow a government. They spent twenty two lines of the Dclaration justifying as a human right. Those are dangerous creeds. But you're right, we all own the Creeds. and why doesn't the right want to embrace the Creeds a little more? Well, they do to their own purposes Those cs were dangerous too depends on who gets to use them. They've seen how people have used them. as you were saying here, the first people who file petitions, freedom suits, all of those things are African American people who said, wait a minute We've created this country and that is that is an exceptional thing. I mean, to go from a monarchy aublic. Right. In this modern world, that's a big deal. And it damn there didn't work. And it almost didn't happen When it was contingent at every stage. Exactly. It' contingent at every stage. And so when you see the people who have used this, Black people have used it. womomen used it in Seneca Falls, eighteen forty eight, gay people have used it Labor movement Labor movevement used, it said the right to strike, all those things come out of this notion of the Ced And so if you don't like those things If you don't want to see a racial hierarchy leveled, if you don't want equal rights for women, if you don't want labor unions to be able to collectively bargain, if you don't want immigrants, I mean, the creed was used to teach people who came to the country, these are the American foundounding documents And if you believe these things And you support this, you are an American. If you don't like those people, those ideas, then you're going to you're going to be against it. The creed, as David said, is very, very dangerous because of who in history shows, who has used those things to make a different place for themselves. Is it the success then of the creed people that have used that as a fulcgrum to elevate themselves to their natural, unalienable rights. is the success of that animates ash always, you know, we talk about kind of the idea of Yeah, Well, let's look at Germany. So Germany tries to reckon with its past and they create laws that you can't deny the Holocaust and all these other things. And people view it as this is a successful way of facing up to a difficult path, but nothing has animated in Germany right now, more than the far right Yeah I was just in Berlin a week two weeks ago, John,d give a lecture at the American Academy And I spent some time in central Berlin. When do you guys have office hours? All I'm hearing about is It's June, man. I' down here doing a speech. I'm over here signing a book. Oh yeah, well, it's June, man.'ing for the office. June. All right I'll accept it. June is every academic's favorite month. In fact, I've always wondered why if God had all that power, why didn't he create two Junes? I want two Junes. Anyway, but Germany has in central Berlin and Three, at least great museums. And of course, that huge Holocaust memorial has faced its path Time. has faced its past nationally more than any other country, and they had the most difficult past to face. But that's because the world made them do it Yeah the world was looking in on. The Cold War made them do it et cetera, et cetera, etcetera. No one came from outside. Force Americans. to face their path. We have to do it We have to do it through our politics. We have to do it through history. which and which makes it political fight as well as a scholarly fight and a history fight and a teaching fight Well and what we're in now is is a whole new level of that. I mean, but there there's never been an executive branch presidency take on the entire practice of history, museums to universities, etceter like what has happened Certainly not in this country. I mean, it's been done and not anotheragine. Oh ye, it's been done another's been done in other autocracies. Yeah. That's right. And and that's exactly what's been done in the past year And we are we are catching up. We are trying to figure out with our own resources how to fight back And we are fighting back. Are you heartened in any way? Anette, are you heartened in any way by sort of the small acts of defiance of that or Well, any act of defiance is heartening to see people doing things to stand up against it because as we've been saying, I mean, American people, most American people don't want a whitewashed history And there are people who standing up to say, you know, local school boards gets book banning and so forth.'s pulling people out who don't normally participate in these kinds of things. And that's what it's going to take. It's going to have to take people saying, we don't want to live in Hungary. Hungary didn't want to live in Hungary. R. And you know after a while This is our great thing was you were able to think and to say what you You know, say what say what you think about things. I've sat on many You know, it advisory committees and so forth recently in meetings at museums and places. and people are scared to say stuff or wondering about, can we say this? Oh yeah. and frightened to put their funding at risk. I mean, there' there's it's a funding issue as well. Yeah, I' never you never in all years have have, you know, I heard people That is used to when we grew up. Oh, there's self censoring going on everywhere. everywhere. It's like it's censoring from the top places like the National Park Service, where I'm located right now. and and other federal agencies But But here's one good sign and I think Anette knows about this On september twenty sixth, John, there's going to be a day or a weekend. and there's a whole coalition of organizations, the major history associations, Association of local History All kinds of historical associations, museums and so on have come together and a lot of them are at this little conference I'm hosting It's going to be a day they're calling, We want more history We want more history And it's going to be it's not the snappiest tyit. No, it's not I wasn't I wasn't on the committee to cateed a de. We want more history. I would take the word want out of it. Americans's always want want, want, want. you know, But but it's going to be a day when every little every small museum, every historical society is going to be challenged. All, what are you going to do today to fight back against this attempt to control how we get to know our history I think in the la, I mean, there's a lot of damage being done. And I am not terribly hopeful about this. but It's very hard to take over a country's History teaching of it, writing of it. repepresenting it. when it's been pretty free for a long time Yeah They're not going to win this one in the long run. They're going to do a lot of damage along the way. rightight. But I don't think they win this in the long run And it's a political question. The question is what do citizens do? Absolutely. I mean, historians, we can do things, but as we do things as historians, as citizens, but other people, this is about voting It's about who is in power And the American people have to get take control of that. Well, it's so interesting you bring that up in now because it is when you look at the battle plan control of that. There's the historical aspect But there really is almost more importantly the voting aspect than when you see them rip out the pillars of the Voting Rights Act, or to suggest and I'm really not sure how this is that it's okay to gerrymander for ideological and partisan gain but not And if those are synonymous with race, too bad. And if and if districts that are you know, majority, minority lose their ability not to have minority representation to have their voice matter within their cohort That's the interesting thing that they're not just attacking this in in one area There are tentacles. Oh yeah. this is a full force Widespread, well coordinated. Does Roberts admit to that, David? You know, when you were having your debate with him, I'm curious how he would frame the difference between Ced and blood and soil as historian. or does he does he brush over it because project it takes, you know, precedence over everything. No, no. he wants to speak about Creeds He is a Christian nationalist. He's a Catholic Christian nationalist and those labels matter to him He used to run a small private Catholic school, etcetera, etcetera, et cetera. How does he square that with the American creed? Good question. I tried to get him to respond about separation of church and state and he changed the subject So, you know, that's that's what they do. But you see The far right wants the Creeds And they tend to talk about them by talking about how much we the left, liberals, scholars, have soiled those creeds. have misused those creeds, have twisted those creeds. u have have have called The abuses of those creeds a shame on the country and on and on and on They go on the attack immediately rather than to step back and calmly say, you know, we're all part of those creeds. All of us And if we didn't have that separation of church and state, we may have blown apart by now Right And we may again. They're very selective. And is there any acknowledgement that any project of this kind of exceptionalism is going to If it wasn't a battle, it wouldn't be so exceptional. Exactly. If the attempt to create What's happening wasn't hard Well, everyone would do it Look at every major religion in the world that founds itself on creeds. It ends up fighting.. It ends up having schism after schism, breakups, Protestant Reformations and on and on and on. It's the same if a Cedal nation has set itself up to violate the crereedes Because you know, we don't obey all the Ten commandments either. But you have to have the aspirations. Yes. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's America as an aspirational country. Without that we're nowhere.. Without that we' nowhere. I mean, how can African American people, how can any group of people who've been discriminated against in this country that has the history that we have without thinking about the notion of aspirations? and even you, not even people who've been oppressed necessarily inspire to something. Exceptionalism is problematic. I have no question about that The idea that you don't see what an enormously important project it was for the founding of a country based onublican Democratic Republicanism versus a monarchy And to include words that people have used over the years to make a place for themselves in it is It's an exceptional thing. it is something you should be proud of. and we should be Trumpany. Don't you thinking that this is one of the reasons some I hate to racialize anything, but sometimes people, white people are surprised when they encounter black patriotism When they encounter, you know, black folks wanting to take back the flag, take back the Declaration. Oh, absolutely. You know, because they say, well, wait a minute, why would you do that? Because it belongs to us? We've been here forever Right. And I mean, in some periods of times, it was it was frowned upon for African Americans to celebrate the fourth of July Yeah from whites because they thought that this was it was provocative. You're claiming these rights are themselves. Well, Douglas himself made that famous speech about you know, what is the Fourth of July? Rhetorical masterpiece R speech. Oh boy. But it really is, you know, it reminds us that Aspiration is the fuel of progress. It's the catalyst that drives it forward. and it's always been present. And the thing that I think and maybe this is a nice place to kind of through is what happens to a country when it begins to take its exceptionalism as birthright and not as project worthy of Cstant iteration and edit and aspiration dececadence. Yes. Dgeneracy. Yes. And and, you know, Maybe they would become a Roman Empire that may begin to collapse with gladiators. I mean, I'm just saying Yeah you know, Well that would never happen here, s. The idea that never on the lawn of the people's house, half naked men would grapple seems absurd. No you know, you know, John, you I'm sure you know this, but in all those centers out there that are studying democracy, there are all kinds of these and they do indexes. the United States is now in that that middle zone of democracies that are falling back into autocracy by any measure. Yeah. any measure. Softly and otherwise. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. It has happened so quickly in a very surprising rapidity. Well it's happen it's happened over a long period, but but it's hitting us quickly. There's no question Yeah. one is definite One of the great bulwarks against that slide. is the work of fabulous historians And I thank you both just for the incredible work you both do and the fact that you help build that wall is protective against those kinds of things. David Blight, stterling, prorofessor of history at Yale University and Edte Gordon Reid, the Carl Loebe University professor at Harvard University. Guys, thank you so much for for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Thank you, John. Thank you for having us. This is great. Thankks We've all got great ideas rattling around our heads about businesses. but If you if you got a business idea and you want to make some dollars There is a company that can help you make that pipe dream a reality. And that Sopify, all the dumb ideas that I have rattling around in my head I can use Shopify to make a reality commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world It's actually ten percent of all e commerce in the United States Shopify is the commerce platform So you can't you can't go wrong. And it's easier to get on than shhark tank. What are you doing? You're waiting for shark T tank, aren't you? I know what you're doing You're sitting at home and you're thinking, I'll tell that Kevin O'Leary off. I'll tell him what I really think of him. 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No, None of it I don I don't know what the hell happened where suddenly, I was like, ooh, knowledge. I think that's fair. I feel like college is kind of wasted on young people who don't have the same impression of like, oh my God, I get to just learn from these people. That's insane It is interesting that The view on the right is that, you know, these colleges are indoctrination centers of this left wing bias and all that. but my experience with college students because I have two of them is that overwhelmingly The ethos at college is not indoctrination, but U How am I going to get a job? Yeah How am I going to meet partner How am I gonna get drunk? L overwhelminglyly, college is not these hotbeds of indoctrination. Yeah, it's almost like they're being disingenuous when they say that. Well, Jillian, I didn't want to say it in that way.. They're like, look at these college students with all their ideology. I'm like, I would love for you to turn that mirror on yourself, bro Turn it on yourself bro because really they're just looking to score some gummies.. It's not It's not that hard. It's not that serious. And they're all like everywhere you look and I'm like, I've met some of these STEM students they wouldn't They're literally just like, I can't believe they gave me twenty pages of problems. What the fuck is happening to my life. Yeah, they're just like cold brew all night in the library trying to make it through Wait a minute. I just noticed Britty. Yes. You're rocking the Stevie Nicks. What happened there? Taylor Swift went to the thing and they all designed their own shirts and they've exploded. Exploded everywhere. Nicks puns. It's all n I know It's so fun. I saw the New York Philarmonic has a shirt out, that's Philarmonic Really? Yeah, that's funny. I imagine Nick at Night should be jumping on this. That's a good one. Nod. Oh my God, they gotta rebrand that for next year. Nick said, ye, let's go. Just to be clear, I did not make this myself like she did Now do they have are they already selling those? Absolutely. Yes. like multiple places are just yeah.. I did overnight this, but why is it that I can never catch that lightning in a bottle You know, she eff she's effortless. Taylor Swiftter is effort. She just thinks, oh, you know what, I'll have a fun little thing with my friends time. And we'll put some shirs on. And the next thing know, it's probably a multim million dollar business. And I'm literally in the living room with my wife going. I'm telling you the crumple. if you make a dog bed for dogs, you throw it down. it changes the topography every time. We call it the crumple I'm offering you ten percent. It's gonna happen. Who wants to get on the floor with me and make some money? It's effortless for her. It's crazy. It's ridiculous. It is effortless. Did you guys watch the how did you experience the festivities of the New York Knickerbockers? I just watched at home and then actually like did the streets explode outside of your apartment? Yeah.. that's what I did I like when I was getting a little optimistic near the end. So I actually put I put my TV on mute and I opened up the windows so I could just hear the reaction You felt That's what I wanted to do is feel the city Yeah. and then after it ended, I went out on the street and I took my dog on a walk and we got to see everybody celebrating and stuff. Oh It was great. That's so awesome How did your dog handle? I was gonna say, I was like That sounds like a great story except he's like we're walking towards the loud noises. Right I don't't Roman candles, my favorite. Yeah. Breadney, did you pop outside as well? I stayed awake this time. Nice. And we did. I ran outside when there was like five minutes left. There wass like a pizza place near me that had like screen set up And it was wild. But the best part was the TV was on delay. So we kept just refreshing our phone to see. And so we saw that they had won. and we were like, And it was awesome. And then like fireworks it was so cool. It's just a wonderful night. Yeah. You know, Smigle was the one who I was saying, you know, where are you gonna to watch you thinking about maybe Madison Square Garden or something like that in the house ites? tell you You want to feel the city. And it sounded so like, and I was like, yes Feel the city. That's what we want And so that's what we did. You were in the streets. Well, they showed you on the broadcast. Yeah, that wasn't. I was like, stand out there, I just looked up at her say I was like, I don't know. just You were the Spider Man, meae.. I don't know what's happening right now. Hey, feele the City would be a good t shirt, John. Feel the City. I like that. Yeah. Get on it. You know what else? What if the feel the City shirt doubled as a crumple And you might dead. And you throw it on the floor. Brittneany, what do the people want to know this week All right, first up, John, after two hundred and fifty years, is it fitting or disturbing that Trump is president? Oh God Fitting or Wait, what? Fitting. It's not fitting. This is It's Trump The president is not befitting of a country. We just talked about this grand experiment of exceptionalism, of a creed that a people must strive morally and aspirationally to get to. And now we're just a subsidiary of Trump enterprises. can't be the guy at the two hundred fifty. It's such the wrong, you know what it reminds me of We're like a long running show, like a Broadway show. Yeah. We're like it's two hundred and fifty years of cats, but now instead of like the big stars that were there Now it's just like from summer House,'s what that's where we're at We're at the replacement level reality TV star taking over a hallowed institution. And the audience is on their phones. And the audience is on their phones going like, I remember when I saw this with Matthew Broderick, it was great. It was great. And now guy doesn't even know how to say. Ticket sales down the toilet. Yeah, no. Okay Next. Next John, are you gonna replace the next picture above your door with a picture of the twenty sixteen? I would you know what? I would love a companion. Yeah T that. A of space. L at it now. Yeah. I love that picture so much because that is that's it's when I fell in love with that team you know U Willis Reed and the magical coming out after, you know, hurting his leg and hitting two quick jumpers you know, to lead out you know, the next I mean, he went out of the game after that, but he sort of inspired the team and Bradley and DBusher with just these unbelievable they were the great like corner, you know, Bradley from the corner just popping them and Walt Frasier was a magician and Dickie Barnett and just Those were the teams that I fell in love with them, and then they ended up adding Earl the Pearl and winning again and seventy three, but team just represents like I just loved the city so much and that team just felt so resative because it wasn't also like back then it was Wilt Chamberlain And like you know, the Celtics dynasties and all that shit down. My first ever game at the garden was a double overtime playoff game, Nick Celtics My brother and I went So cool. Yeah, yeah. Nicks were getting the doors blown. It'sunny.' a very simil kind of game. They're getting the doors blown off in the first half And then Frasier just came alive And they tied the game, went to overtime double overtime. These were the Jo White Celtics, Dave Callenge and all those guys in. Havalcheck, I think, who wasn't playing Yeah just it just the best in the heart of the city, you know, just, it's just such a special There's none of the like Madallands bullshit. There's none of the like where oh, they're the New York Kicks, but they play in a swamp somewhere near exit sixteen W. L it was in the city. You could take the subway there. You could walk outside and feel this it's that thing Smigo was saying, felt the city. Whenever you went to the garden, you felt the city. fantastic. Were you courts for that game as well? Oh yeah no, they to be right. I was I was right next to the stars of the day. Yeah, I'm not even sure I mean, I think I might have gotten altitude sickness at that point. like The rafters are real like Rfters are realarely see up there. Yeah. Yeah, but but they are as they say about the rafters, they are real And they are spectacular. Yes. All right, we gott to get you a picture to go up there. Yeah, ye. What else have we got? A fininal question in the trilogy of Taco Bell questions. Oh God The people want to know. They really do Chipotle or Taco Bell. Oh, please How is this even a question? Potle, Hey you want me to just scoop it out of a bucket for you? Hey, hey, come on in here, what do you want? A bucket of chicken or you want a bucket of beef Or maybe I could give you a bucket of black bean mush that we decided to add whatever fucking ridiculous ghost pepper spice they put in there. likeike al It's brutal. Yeah. I don't I don't like to eat out of buckets I like to see some work I like some origami I want to see, I want to know that a craftsman, that an artist now, to be fair They probably do use buckets. I just don't see that part. The real mistake of Tripotle is putting the buckets. you're walking right down the street with them. You're like, you want out of this bucket or you want of this buet? Let me get my ice cream scoop And you're watching them also do the like portion training Yeah where they're like, give me the half scoop and the thing. let me get them the thing of rice and then like You know, there's there's a lot of manipulation that goes on. I like to I don't want to see the work. I want to see once the piece of paper becomes a swan. That's all I want. I want to see the swan I don't want to see the folding. I definitely don't want to see the folding. Yeah. Fantastic. How they get in touch with us this Br? Twitter, we are weekly show pod, Instagram, threads TkTok, blue sky. We are We weekly show podcast, and you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, the weekly showow with Joonn Stewart. Boom, do it. Thanks again, as always, prodducer Brittie Mammettvic, producer Jillian Speer, video editor and engineer Robv Vatoa work cutout for him today, Audio editor and engineer Nicooyyss had a work cutoutut for today. and our executive producers is Chris Mche and Katie Gay. Thankks so much, and we'll see you next week weekly show with John Start is a comedy central podcast that's produced by Paramount Audio and Bust Boy Productions This podcast is sponsored by Made in Cookware. Made in partners with multig genererational artisans and some of the world's best chefs to create professional quality cookware, knives and kitchen tools. Their products are trusted in Michelin starred restaurants worldwide and designed to perform just as well in your kitchen From five ply stainless clad to carbon steel, every piece is built to last and made to actually make you a better cook Discover award winning cookweare at madeincookweare. com