Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s 250th Celebrations

[00:00] Nobody does it better than Regent Seven Seas Cruises. Enjoy all-inclusive, unrivaled luxury with unlimited shore excursions, indulgent cuisine, personalized service and more aboard spacious all-sweet ships. Visit com to experience the unrivaled. [00:35] Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Alex Wagner. On today's show, historian Heather Cox Richardson [00:46] for July 4th celebrations and gearing down from celebrations of Trump's 80th, I thought I'd check in with someone who can situate all of the pomp and circumstance in historical context. You likely know Heather from her insanely popular substack, Letters from an American, where she writes every damn day about the history behind today's increasingly ahistorical politics.

Heather has a new series out to celebrate America's 250th. [01:16] Americans who, over the course of a quarter millennium, worked to make real the founding ideals of this nation, that all people are created equal. We're going to talk about that series and Trump's Fourth of July celebrations, as well as so much, much more. Trump's efforts to make C. just as tacky as he is, D. Vance's Catholic faith and how the left can embrace patriotism once again. It was a great conversation with Heather, and we're going to get to it in a minute.

[01:46] Only Friends out now with me and Hysteria's Aaron Ryan. Go check it out. Only Friends is the Friends of the Pod subscriber exclusive show where Pod Save America hosts and contributors dive into even more news stories from the week. In this episode, Aaron and I unpack the Justice Department's latest investigation into Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. We check in on whatever [02:16] and much more. So hit pause and subscribe to Friends of the Pod at com slash friends. Also, please, if you would check out my podcast, Runaway Country, where I this week talked to California Attorney General Rob Bonta about

D. Vance's war on blue states, the other war that he's tasked with, and then graded the vice's salesmanship efforts this week, [02:40] on the Iran surrender with the great Sam Seder. All right, here is Heather Cox Richardson. Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for joining us today on Pots of America and also preemptively thank you for offering wisdom and perspective on this insane American moment. Alex, it's always so much fun to be with you. We should do it more often. Anytime. Literally, you just say the word. I'm here. Let's start first with the [03:07] upcoming 250th celebration, the semi-quincentennial.

And... [03:13] how the president has chosen to celebrate this momentous occasion. Last Sunday, he, of course, hosted a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House. And then next week on the 4th, he is going to be hosting the self-proclaimed most spectacular Trump rally of them all on the National Mall. I don't have the same lens on history as you do, but can you recall any sort [03:43] celebration anytime in our history as a country? No, of course not. We're in a really different moment than ever before in American history with an administration that's rejecting the basic principles of our democratic government.

So one of the things that's interesting is how that's playing out, not only in celebrations of the 250th, but also in the memorials in Washington, C. But there's a larger story. I mean, everybody knows that I'm talking about the reflecting pool, [04:13] interesting dive, so to speak, for us to go into. The Kennedy Center, the, you know, the gilded horses behind the Lincoln Memorial, the arch, you know, all the things we could, the destruction of the Ben Sean, the proposed destruction of the Ben Sean murals, all that stuff. But, [04:30] What's really interesting as you look over it, when you think about democracy, is that if you think about our great presidents, the ones we remember, people like Lyndon Baines Johnson or Theodore Roosevelt or Eisenhower or, you know, we could go on and on.

They're the ones who carved their memory into the American people by making their lives better, by having Social Security or jobs. [04:59] health care or by trying to eliminate poverty, by suggesting that the way you create a monument to yourself is by changing the lives of the American people for the better. And it's just really interesting when you think about legacies, the fact that Trump somehow thinks that slapping his name on stuff matters, but that doesn't matter at all. And similarly, if you think about our history, you know, you can write and people do write books celebrating the absolute genius of

[05:29] And I'm going to pull somebody here at random Benjamin Harrison, but, [05:34] But it just doesn't stick if, in fact, it's clear that all you're doing is trying to celebrate a certain kind of dominant lifestyle versus something that actually made the American people better. So I would suggest that right now in American history, for example, a lot more people have heard of the Wounded Knee Massacre than have heard of Benjamin Harrison's great successes. [06:04] MAGA types have pointed to the fact that Teddy Roosevelt, I believe, hosted and fought in a boxing match.

[06:11] At the White House during his presidency? This is actually great. So if you want to talk about this, I would love to do this. Because what happens in the Theodore Roosevelt presidency is this is coming. First of all, Teddy Roosevelt really jumps into some sort of American prominence in 1884, which is an important year politically. Because that's really when the younger Republicans are coming of age. And they're looking at the corruption of the Republican Party and saying, we can't be Democrats because of the Civil War. [06:41] Can't be that kind of Republican.

So one of the things that they are trying to do is figure out how to return America to its democratic, small d, democratic power. [06:51] Principles. [06:52] And this is happening in a time of industrialization. And during that time of industrialization, the industrialists are essentially arranging the systems in the United States to create an undereducated, underpaid, underclass that will continue. [07:22] Remember, he loses both his mother and his wife on the same day to diseases that have come out of that sort of urban soup before we really understood germ theory.

And he wants to clean up the cities, but he also wants to return the country to a place where we can actually create good citizens. And so he's going to support cleaning up the cities. He's going to support education and he's going to support. [07:44] the wide open spaces that he's going to try and protect through conservation. But he is also going to try to reclaim a kind of American masculinity that says, you know, we're not just cogs in a machine of a larger system. And that speaks to his own sort of rediscovering his ability, his physical abilities from his youthful asthma through boxing.

So this is when you get and he also protects football, football, somebody had actually died playing a [08:14] such a rough sport. So he actually manages to recover. This is also the same period when we get indigenous names attached to sports teams, because the idea was that you wanted men to be savage, and I'm going to put that in air quotes, but only on the football field, for example. But you think about what Teddy Roosevelt was trying to do, and a lot of people looked down on it, because of all the bare knuckle fighting and all that, and this is sort of an era of cockfighting, [08:44] and prize fighting and so on in the cities.

It was not considered higher level entertainment, but there's some really big differences I think between, and maybe at the time people would not have said so. There's one really major difference between, [09:00] Teddy Roosevelt and boxing and his exhibition boxing, which was not the same bloody stuff that was going on in Five Points in New York. [09:07] and what happened at the White House. And the really big difference, two really big differences is one, [09:14] Taxpayer money didn't go into Teddy Roosevelt's fighting. [09:18] And it was not a branding opportunity.

And for sure, it was not the corruption opportunity that the UFC fight in the White House has been. So even though it both involved flying fists, the systems that they are either accepting or critiquing were virtually opposite. [09:48] how many people attended that White House match that Roosevelt fought in? [09:51] Oh, oh, there wouldn't have been. I don't I don't have any idea, but it would not have been huge because remember what makes things. [09:59] huge is the ability to get places quickly and to know that they're happening, neither of which would have happened.

It would have been written up in the newspapers afterward. And I'm sorry to have gone on so long about that, but literally nobody has ever asked me. No, I love this. And just so you know, Lincoln was also a fighter, which, again, nobody's ever asked me about. [10:17] Like a boxing fighter? Oh, no, worse. Lincoln, I mean, worse if you're not into kind of sports. Krav Maga? He was, remember, he was from the frontier, and he was quite a big man, and he had quite long arms and legs. And that made him a really good guy in a fight.

[10:35] And in those days, and there's an argument about how deeply he went into this, this was the era of eye gouging and ear biting and so on. And there's big fights about whether or not he did that. Lots of people want to say, oh, he would never have done that. Maybe, maybe not. But remember, he gets his political start in Illinois, and he is backed in a bipartisan basis because there's a gang who supports him. And they're actually from the opposite party. He's a Whig and they're Democrats, and they support him because he's such a great fighter.

He has fought with them before. [11:05] ears? Do we know if he bought ears? We don't know. We don't know the answer to that. And people who listen to this podcast now are going to write you and me probably hate mail from both sides saying, of course he did or no, he didn't. But he came up through that era because you had to to survive on the frontier. And it turned out in his case to be a springboard into politics. Well, I mean, yeah, Trump was a public, was a fight promoter basically through much of his [11:35] to enrich himself and line the pockets of his allies on the White House grounds with taxpayer money.

You mentioned Lincoln, and I'm kind of interested in asking you whether this moment, there's a lot that's reminiscent. History tells us the future as much as it is a detail of the past. But Trump has other plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary, including the indie drag race around the streets of Washington, C. [12:05] least eight states, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Maine, Oregon, Washington, and Pennsylvania, all blue states, have said they will not take part in the fair. Maybe they don't have any butter sculptures that they want to send in, but I feel like it's a little bit more political than that.

[12:22] Is this what it felt like in the summer of 1860 when you had states just opting out of like Fourth of July celebrations because they just did not see themselves as part of the union? I mean, I'm not saying that that's what's happening right now, but the division, the steep division in a moment of that is supposed to be about national pride, but obviously Trump is insured is not. [12:52] have been able to make a statement like that. And in fact, everybody would have harked back to the framers and the founders, the framers of the Constitution and the founders of the Declaration of Independence.

So 1860 is a little bit too early to go. But what is interesting is if you popped forward to something like 1876. And in 1876, there is real concern that the United States is going to fall apart. Remember, this is the year before 1877 and the American South taking [13:22] from the governments that were trying to protect civil rights in the southern states. And that idea that we are celebrating different histories is critical. [13:33] actually part of a lot of our celebrations. But I would say something different in this moment.

And that's what really jumps out to me is far less that different states are saying we're not going to play with Trump. Then that Trump is saying this is my holiday. This is about me. And this is about me dictating [13:54] the state of Washington, and also the state of our history. And he's been tripping up over history right and left lately, as he's been trying to dictate how we remember it. And one of the things I love about that is that, [14:06] As that happens, people are stepping up and saying, wait a minute, I want to know the real history.

Tell me the real history. So one of the things that you are seeing as... [14:17] Freedom 250 trumps [14:19] group has basically taken almost all of the money from the bipartisan, congressionally backed America 250, is that Americans themselves are finding their own ways to celebrate. So if you looked on June 18th at the next celebration in New York City, oh my God, that was a 4th of July celebration, except they weren't actually talking about the 4th. Absolutely. And the opening of the Obama [14:49] Chicago on the same day, people were actually putting on social media, happy 4th of July.

Yeah, yeah. And I actually spent, last week I did a Substack live with Joy Reid and we were talking about Juneteenth, which I think this year, more than any year that I can remember, has become kind of an alternative 4th of July for a lot of people who feel completely excluded from Trump's [15:12] you know, malignant narcissism that's cast appaller over the 4th of July. And Juneteenth, in many ways, represents kind of our reconciliation with our very, very troubled and dark past on slavery, or not reconciliation, but acknowledges it and also moves the ball forward and reminds us that we are, you know, living in a, we are in communion with one another, we are part of, you know, the fabric of democracy.

In some ways, I feel like to your point, Americans have been sort of, [15:40] forced to reckon with their history in a way that they haven't before, and also find ways to plant a flag, pardon the metaphor, in patriotism in a way that feels authentic and honest. And that is like a weird downstream effect that is kind of positive, I think, from all of the Trump nonsense and garbage. I think that's right. And I had the same observation about Juneteenth myself this year, [16:10] is designed to strip away your freedom.

And one of the things that the Trump administration has done, I think, is it has made people realize that the, I'm sorry, but the villains we found in our past that seemed somehow as if they were overdone, like truly nobody could really do X, are around us even still. And while you could always say that, [16:34] because you know human nature. [16:36] Watching some of these people take positions of power in the same sorts of ways that the segregationists did in the 18, I'm sorry, 1960s and 1860s as well, but 1960s and 1970s.

I mean, Bull Connor still walks among us. And for those people who were not old enough to remember those days, you know, watching somebody like Greg Bovino giving Nazi salutes and talking about ethnic cleansing, you know, [17:02] And recognizing he really was running our immigration policy is an eye-opener, I think, [17:11] that reminds people we must act in solidarity against those who are trying to destroy American democracy, not by party, not by any of the other divisions that people tend to emphasize or have tended to emphasize since the 1980s. But really, this is an existential struggle for the survival of American democracy.

And we could actually get it right this time. [17:35] Fingers crossed. The mere existence of Stephen Miller is a reminder that we can indeed go back to our very, very violent racist roots. [17:53] Today's show is sponsored by me. Think about your career. Maybe it looks fine on paper, but does something feel a bit off, Tommy? Yes. Maybe you're stuck, burned out, ready to move up to the next level, or maybe you just want clarity on what's next. I wish there was a career coach or a mentor that I had.

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Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at com slash crooked. That's com slash crooked, com slash crooked. [20:29] You mentioned the way other ways in which Trump is celebrating America 250. And one of them is remaking, recasting the city in the image of, I guess, Mar-a-Lago or perhaps Trump Tower, gilding horses with a half an inch thick gold plating and trying to dye the reflecting pool blue to no avail.

We'll talk about that in a second. [20:59] a piece of civic art. And it is what the New York Times recently called an accumulation of carefully arranged details, many quietly referencing one another there. I grew up there. There is a through line in many of the buildings, even though they're different styles. And now Trump wants to like install a mammoth arch. He's trying to do something to the Lincoln Memorial as well. There's been a lot of pushback. There've been some lawsuits. I see Trump's push for monuments as, [21:29] inextricably linked to a male obsession with phallic objects, but maybe you have a less Freudian interpretation of what's going on here, Heather.

Well, I actually don't do a lot of work with Freud. I was always more a young person, but I actually, I got to do a shout out here. I think the New York Times has done a really excellent job of popularizing understandings of the architecture in Washington, C. They've had a couple of really [21:59] to have these changes to the landscape and what it looks like. And so that's just, you know, we don't talk necessarily enough about when the media really gets something right. But I think that's exactly right. I mean, one of the things I've always loved about DC is the degree to which when it was laid out, it was supposed to reflect the American government, the three separate, you know, the three separate nodes of power and so on.

And one of the things about [22:24] the proposed ballroom is that it actually breaks the line of sight between the, yeah, it [22:32] which you grew up with, right? Down Pennsylvania Avenue, I think it is, that you can look all the way down and see the White House. And similarly, the arch goes from having that bridge between Washington, C. and Virginia, which is really important to the Civil War and the fact that the [22:53] Arlington National Cemetery sits on General Lee's former plantation. And that itself is a really interesting story.

And if you look at how that is laid out, at least according to the renderings by the New York Times, what it does is the arch will frame Robert E. Lee's house, which and again, somebody said we should tear the house down. [23:23] historical aspects [23:25] document itself, the people who've lived there, it's actually got very much biracial history and so on. But [23:32] I think what you are seeing is somebody who doesn't understand the concept of the people or the majesty, the true majesty of the concept of a government that is controlled by the people who are governed, which is in our Declaration of Independence.

[24:02] one of them and basically walks in and says, well, I'm here now. The boss is here. [24:07] and gets laughs is literally that that statements like that are greeted with laughter because what a joke um i gotta ask except it's our taxpayers at this point putting up those jokes well and that's the other piece of this that i don't think we we have yet grappled with is how much of our money is going into those vanity projects and mind you i love the idea of upkeep on the gilded [24:37] his money.

It's our money. And you look at the number of people who have been thrown off SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and I'm like, listen, I love a gilded horse as much as the next person, but I would very much rather... [24:52] My neighbors can eat. Children getting free lunches at school or hot lunches. Children getting sometimes the only meal they're going to eat. Medicaid recipients having, you know, urgent and life threatening health conditions dealt with. I mean, this is all stuff that has been slashed in the name of putting an extra few centimeters of gold on the horses by the Lincoln Memorial.

[25:22] with approximately half of that coming from taxpayer wallets, Heather. Well, and worse, they knew that. That was a fabulous article. By the way, the Washington Post just has some great exclusives lately too. But when he was out there saying – [25:38] private funds are going to pay for this, which, by the way, is not okay either. [25:41] They already had cut checks off the public treasury. And, you know, I just again, when I see these people out there talking about waste, fraud and abuse and what they mean by that is we're tossing people off Medicaid and then they're turning around and spending.

[26:11] that that's sort of the overall, I mean, it's all part of democracy, right? You either have a democracy that is responsible, where the government is responsible to the people. [26:19] Or you have an authoritarian government where everything we have belongs to them and they can spend it however they wish. And those two things should be firmly in front of the American people. But don't lie to me and tell me that you're protecting my money while you are literally picking my pocket. I mean, that to me and the same thing back to the UFC fight.

Don't tell me you're having a party for the American people when you're. [26:44] You're making bank off it, and I can't see it unless I belong to Paramount Plus. I would just say this is the stuff that we know about, too. We on Runaway Country had an episode last week talking about the ways in which the Trump family is basically stealing money from the Department of Defense, lining the pockets of friends and stooges through government contracts or no bid, no bid government contracts or government loans. [27:14] got a 600 over over 600 million dollars in a federal loan to scale up its rare earth mining or to scale up its rare earth magnet manufacturer this is a company that like didn't exist several years ago the level of corruption will make your eyes not just water but bleed and that's the stuff you know the government the the the department of defense these government agencies have deep pockets because we appropriate a lot of money towards them and the trump administration learned [27:44] Trump 1.0 and 2.0.

Like if you're going to go corrupt, go big or go home. It makes the Trump hotel emoluments clause debate look like child's play compared to what's happening inside the guts of the federal government. We see what's happening, the corruption on the outside with, you know, just gargantuan politics. [28:03] to betrayals like the destruction of the East Wing and the, you know, attempted construction of the ballroom, which actually I wanted to ask you about, Heather. Do you think that this thing's actually going to be constructed before Trump's out of office? [28:17] Personally, no.

[28:18] And the reason I say that is I don't. [28:21] I never assume anything's going to happen the next day. I mean, that's one of the perks of being a historian. You know that you get really weird things happening and all of a sudden some bed is off. But – [28:33] There's legal challenges. There's financial challenges. Trump is falling apart. Nobody likes that ballroom. Maybe, but if you think about any construction project you have ever done yourself, like anything. [28:49] All the planets in the universe have to be lined up correctly to get it done on time.

[28:55] And it's almost never... [28:57] on or under budget. And that's when you're not under pressure. So I look at that and I think maybe, I mean, maybe if you throw enough money at it, but it's, it's, I don't know, just my personal experience says, [29:13] doubtful, personally. Yeah, I mean, I just was struck by it. You know, the UFC match in the background is the rubble of the East Wing. And it's, I mean, it's still very much a construction site. It's an open, it's a gaping wound, if you ask me.

Has there ever been a parallel? I mean, when Truman installed the balcony, like, and obviously not on the scale of malignant narcissism that Trump is operating on, but just when presidents have done renovations to the White [29:43] Has there ever been [29:44] any sort of flutter of outcry that would presage something like this? Well, yes and no. That is, Americans complain about change all the time. [29:55] All the time. There is never a change where somebody goes, who, boy, that was a great idea. I mean, even when we went to the moon, there were people who said, that's a total waste of money.

Why are we doing this? You know, so you're always going to get pushback. And basically, that's human nature. Right. So there's always pushback about everything. But there are only two occasions that I can think of when there were when there was a really big pushback. And one was. [30:19] Interesting, because it was during the Civil War when the Lincolns move into the White House, it's falling apart. And Mary Todd Lincoln, Lincoln's wife, was actually probably a better political instincts than he did, which is saying something because he was a political animal.

[30:35] And she recognized in a way that he didn't the power of women in Washington to determine what politics were going to were going to end up being the most powerful. So she recognizes that the White House is totally shabby and she undertakes the redecorating of it because the guy who desperately wants to be president is the man that Lincoln makes Treasury Secretary. His name is Salmon P. Chase. He's from Ohio and he thinks everything should revolve around him. [31:05] And so he comes to Washington and his the woman who is in charge of his house is his daughter, Kate Chase, who's beautiful and who is, you know, sort of a very much a socialite.

[31:16] And she redecorates Sam and P. Chase's house to the nines. [31:21] And then Jay Cook, who's a banker out of Philadelphia, picks up all the tab for it. And yeah, exactly. And then he goes on to do a lot of work with the Treasury, which was corrupt, would be considered corrupt now, was considered corrupt then, right? [31:51] and that Chase will probably get the 64, four years out nomination. [31:56] Wow. So she redoes the White House and then she goes to the Congress and says, this is how much it cost.

And it was a lot. I mean, in dollar terms, but also they're in a fight literally for the survival of the union. And Congress goes ballistic and says, we are not paying this. And Lincoln ended up picking up the tab for it himself. And it was a it was a major sum of money at the time. [32:18] Wow. So there was that. But she was right. Then then Washington. I mean, the White House became the centerpiece as opposed to Kate Chase's house. And that's actually what led to her bad marriage.

And I could go on at great length. I'm actually writing a book and I am back in history and I can't tell you how much I love it anyway. I'm so jealous. So then there's another time, though, that is much more. [32:42] applicable. And that is, and I hate to have mentioned him twice today, during Benjamin Harrison's administration, he has this ne'er-do-well son, which I know you can't imagine what happened to a president. A president with a ne'er-do-well son? His name is Russell. And when Benjamin Harrison becomes president, Russell Harrison and his wife and children move into the White House.

And they probably begin to say, this is way too small for a president to live in. [33:10] And they come up with plans dramatically to redo the White House, to add a green greenhouse. I'm not sure if there was a ballroom or not, but they did this. They were going to redo it in this huge way because this was fitting for the S. president. [33:40] And people were like, if it's too small, why did you move in? We didn't elect you. And in fact, that renovation never goes forward. It dies.

[33:48] Okay, so they didn't go around hand gluing coins and memorabilia to the walls to spruce up the place like Trump appears to be doing. We have new reporting last week that Trump's literally going around. I guess it's in Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book, Regime Change, but Trump literally has like, is it a glue gun? It's some kind of guerrilla glue or crazy glue that he's like... [34:09] Literally using it to apply, I guess, more gold objects to the mantelpieces and the walls of the White House, which they said surprised no one in the White House, but should really astound the rest of us because that is not what presidents do.

You know, it's actually interesting. I mean, again, not a psychologist, but like. [34:30] If you were crumbling, [34:32] At least if I were crumbling. Yeah. [34:35] I can't think of a single instance in my life I have ever turned to a coin. [34:41] Or that kind of a decoration. Yeah. Like I'll buy pens is what I'll do. And notebooks. Like they're going to have to take away my wallet. You have to pry your notebooks from your hands. He has a very specific psychology. Yeah. [34:55] Look at you. God bless pen and paper.

I'm with you, sister. Do you, what do you think should happen to this stuff? Like assuming let's assume he does get the ballroom built. There's a raging debate about whether it should be torn down, whether it should be reappropriated to be something else. What's your opinion on that? I'm afraid right now. I don't have an opinion. That is, I would very much love to see all the sight lines back and have the white house restored the ballroom. The way he is talking about it is huge. It dwarfs the, the original building.

Um, uh, [35:24] And yet, [35:25] I am not going to rule out the possibility that somebody says a great representation of the American people would be to put here. [35:34] And I don't know what comes next in that space, but certainly it is possible to think of the American people being able to turn a symbol of authoritarianism into a symbol of popular power. And other countries have done it. And somebody who is good at architecture, unlike me, would probably be able to say, here's what we really need to do, you know, the same way they have repurposed architecture.

[36:00] places in other countries to reaffirm [36:04] popular power. Well, some kind of reconciliation. Yeah. [36:08] Yeah, maybe that's where you have the reconciliation trials. I just have no idea. God, the reconciliation trials, Heather. [36:23] Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. A new CNBC report highlights that almost half of all hiring managers rank a candidate's enthusiasm as the single most important element when evaluating them for a position. If you need to hire for your business, how can you separate the candidates who are really excited about your opportunity from the ones that are just going through the motions?

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And ZipRecruiter has made it so much easier for us. [37:10] us. Use ZipRecruiter and find enthusiastic talent fast. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And now you can try it for free at com slash crooked. That's com slash crooked. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. [37:25] Hey, so listen, whether you're in the States, across the pond or somewhere on the other side of the world, we love that you tune into Crooked for US News. But did you know we also have a UK news show?

Yes, that's right. It's called Pod Save the UK. Pod Save the UK is a no bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics focused on the issues that matter most to the people of Britain. With all the changes in our government, including the fun revolving door of prime ministers we have here, there's always lots to talk about. [37:55] to journalists, politicians, experts, comedians and activists. We've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Aisling B. We've also had Tommy Vitor on, who may be our boss. We still don't know.

We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be Jon Favreau. [38:14] I don't know if it's John Lovett. It's hard to say. It's not clear to us who our bosses are. Some of our listeners call us irreverent, but not stupid. I object to that. I'm deeply stupid. It doesn't sound too bad. So look, come check us out. Come join us. Pod Save the UK every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. [38:33] It is essential that we mention, as we talk about the ways in which Americans are trying to reclaim their own history and think of patriotism in a way that feels authentic and honest.

You have embarked on a project because you're not busy enough. Honestly, I think of myself and I'm like, but Heather Cox Richardson is writing today. You have launched a project 250 to 250, which highlights, quote, the people, places and events that have helped to move us forward toward a more perfect union. [39:03] First of all, thank you for doing this great American. [39:07] Did you intend for that to be a balm on the self-aggrandizing staged patriotism that Trump is offering us? Well, first of all, thank you for mentioning them. They have turned out and I will tell you more about the working of them because they have turned out to be a much bigger deal than I think I anyway foresaw.

We came up with this idea before Trump had done anything because it's not really an answer to him as it is an answer to American democracy. [39:37] believe that the meaning of American democracy is that it has always been contested and that it has been the story of marginalized peoples demanding inclusion in the principles that were laid out in the Declaration of Independence. So it's never done, but it's always about what the American people are willing to do. And one of the things that is central to that is it puts in the middle of that [40:04] That principle, marginalized people, you know, if you've got those rights, you're not the one fighting for them.

So it's people like Fannie Lou Hamer, for example. And what we wanted to do was make was center the American people in history again, because what I have observed really since the 1980s, but you see it in a lot of the curriculum and certainly in the things that Trump is trying to put up in national parks, for example. [40:34] sudden Rosa Parks just decides not to stand up. Rosa Parks had been working for the NAACP doing really deep dives into statistics on rape, especially in the American South, for literally decades by the time that she works to challenge segregation, so in that way.

So, um, [40:56] We wanted to regain what was missing from that curricula and center the American people and say, you know, if you want change, this is how you do it, even in times when people didn't have rights. Yeah. And so we started it. And it's been really interesting because, first of all, we only have a maximum of 250 stories, which is nothing to a historian. I mean, we could do 250 stories on books. [41:21] you know, one year of the revolution alone. To a podcaster, it's a lot. Yeah, but for a historian, it's killing, it is killing me.

And many people have given us great suggestions we simply can't do. But what's been interesting about it is that we have a maximum of 124 words. [41:38] Because we wanted to get them in a minute. [41:40] a maximum of 124 words, which means that [41:45] What we've done is we've gotten narrator, fabulous narrators for them. And they're great narrators. Yeah. Well, because everybody suddenly wanted in, which was great. And and we wanted to match the narrators to the to the stories and. [42:01] What that means is that if you're going to get

[42:04] what it is, who did it, and why it mattered, you've got to really condense the material. So it turns out that they're actually really good teaching documents as well. Like the one on the Erie Canal, which Pete Buttigieg, former Secretary of Transpiration State Pete Buttigieg, um, [42:22] narrated is like, [42:25] That's like my entire lecture on Theory Canal. That's amazing. Yeah. And then there's some that are just really heart-wrenching that are not – the one I'm thinking of is not out yet, so I won't drop it on you. Deep tease.

We didn't do live people. [42:42] Yeah. Unless there was some important reason to. And there was one that I did not know who they had gotten to do it. And he's talking and I'm like, well, it's fine. But like, why did they get who is this guy? And then he says who he is. Oh, like now I want to know. Yeah. [43:01] It's coming. When's it dropping? Do you have a date? I don't know. I don't have a calendar. I'm not in charge of the calendar. But I got to tell you, when he said his name, I started to cry.

Oh, my gosh. Because I didn't know who he was. I don't think anybody... [43:11] probably knows what this person looks like, but it's a really important story. I was going to ask if his name rhymed with Smarok Tobama, but no, no. You also pick places, right? I mean, you're not living people, but it's not just figures from history. You also have like that Everglades and Yellowstone are part of this compendium. It's really like thinking of the country both as a land and people. Yes. People, places, and events. And so we just did one on

[43:41] the New Madrid earthquakes, which happened in the early 1800s in sort of the Missouri area of the country and moved the Mississippi River and forced Indigenous tribes to go west, which... [43:54] I mean, I'd heard of them, but I had no idea they were so important. And everybody in that part of the country is like, yeah, we grew up on this stuff. [44:01] Similarly, we did some where I didn't. [44:04] I obviously wasn't alone in coming up with the topics. We wanted to make sure there were at least two from every state and territory.

Oh, cool. And so that also means people. Rita Moreno was an early one we did, and Ariana DuBose read that one for us. Did you know that there was one 24-hour period when the flags of three different countries flew over St. Louis? Yeah. [44:29] No, like I sort of knew, but like it's all involved. I feel like one of us would maybe know that and that person is not. Well, but, you know, it's like. [44:38] It has to do with the Louisiana Purchase, and first France has a territory, then Spain has it, but then France has it, then the

S. has it, and so on. But it's like, let's figure this out. So there's a lot of really fabulous stuff. What a great project. Well, but the theme was always that we wanted to center the American people. And in many ways, to me, it felt like. [45:00] people have been so good to me. You know, everything I do is available for free, but people pay willingly for the sub stack and so on. And, you know, as I say, [45:10] Trump walked away with all the funding for so much stuff. And I was like, you know what?

[45:16] this can be my gift back to all the people who gave me the funding to do it. So, yeah, so I love it. So I'm pleased it's killing us. But but we're really all good things with all good things, too. I mean, it does get back at that. The thing we've been talking about throughout this conversation is how do we celebrate this country? And what sort of lessons do we need to remember? I want to ask you a specifically kind of like socio political question, which is Jerusalem Demsus. [45:46] who is the founder of the argument at recently was a really provocative piece arguing that the left basically has abandoned patriotism and needs to recapture its sense of, um, or reclaim its sense of patriotism in order to, [46:02] for democracy to function.

To protect democracy, we must reclaim, I think, a form of patriotism that is authentic, but patriotism nonetheless. Does the left seem historically unpatriotic to you? I guess I should ask. Well, so let me start by making it very clear that one of the great successes of the radical right has been to take everybody who doesn't adhere to their political [46:32] It is an ideological position that critiques liberal democracy by saying that it doesn't work, either because it's too racist or sexist or classist, and it needs to be taken down and rebuilt.

And that's a really interesting story, just FYI here, that I'm not going to go into. Because I think what that argument does is it identifies that really since the Vietnam War, [46:57] People who are not part of the radical right, who are either Democrats or centrists, have tended to cede the idea of patriotism to that radical right. [47:08] And so if you take that as a premise for what I'm going to say, one of the things that Honest to God has jumped off the charts for me for years, [47:17] Many years now, really, since you started to see veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, especially female veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan running for office, because their advertising was very different than any kind of advertising, political advertising I had seen before.

[47:47] On the Democratic side, what I think you are seeing is the claiming of patriotism by people who are not of the radical right and redefining it and redefining it as the protection of the United States, of course, but also of protection of the people who have defended patriotism. [48:07] country for us now for many years. And, you know, you think about things like the idea that veterans who came back from the Vietnam War were spat on. There is no documented instance of that happening. That was a construction of the radical right.

And yet it lives on. And it gets picked up by Rambo because it went on to live in film. [48:30] As in the 1980s, so much of patriotism lived in film with things like Top Gun and like Red Dawn and so on. [49:00] I think that much of what the progressive wing of the Democratic Party wants right now is, to my mind, very centrist. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt was talking about universal health care, right? But those people are redefining a new kind of approach to what it means to be an American right now.

And in a way that has not happened, I think since World War II, the Democrats are getting in on that. And I think it is central. [49:30] at Harvard a month or so ago. And his understanding of the protection of veterans is... [49:38] Very much tied up in his idea that the government should be working for ordinary people because he says, you know, who's out there fighting in Afghanistan, but but people like me. And he tells the story of being a. [49:52] on the front lines and he was a pair, you know, he was paratrooper and being on the front lines and coming back to the, I don't know if they still call it the mess hall, but coming back to eat.

And he said, the kid putting, [50:06] mashed potatoes on his tray. They got talking and the guy was making like four times what he made in terms of money. And he said, this is not the way it should be. And this is not patriotism. And that kind of marriage of money. [50:27] Politics that talks about the ordinary people and talks about our military as those people who are protecting our way of life and are part of that is a really different way than saying we'll just wave the flag and claim we love veterans while we're slashing all the funding for the VA.

[50:45] So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And I think it's central and I don't think people recognize it enough. So thank you for that. [50:58] Pots of America is brought to you by Tommy John. This summer, don't be that guy. You know, the one who has full sweat pools under his arms, sticking to his shirt in the heat. Well, eat Tommy John. That's going to be me. [51:07] All right. [51:08] I like your underwear, but this is what's going to happen. I can't stop it. Public transport is a sauna.

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Shop Third Love and explore over 60 sizes, including AA through H, and half cup sizes you won't find anywhere else. Get $15 off your first purchase at com with code PODCAST15. [52:29] across the pond or somewhere on the other side of the world. We love that you tune into Crooked for US News. But did you know we also have a UK news show? Yes, that's right. It's called Pod Save the UK. Pod Save the UK is a no bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics focused on the issues that matter most to the people of Britain.

With all the changes in our government, including the fun revolving door of prime ministers we have here, there's always lots to talk about. [52:59] comedians and activists. Yeah, we've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Aisling B. We've also had Tommy Vitor on, who may be our boss. We still don't know. We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be Jon Favreau.