Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s 250th Celebrations

- Welcome to Pods Av America, I'm Alex Wagner.

“On today's show, Historian Heather Cox Richardson”

on America at 250. With the administration gearing up 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 pump and circumstance

in historical context. You likely know Heather from her insanely popular sub-stack letters from an American where she writes every damn day about the history behind today's increasingly a historical politics.

Heather has a new series out to celebrate Americans 250th, it is aptly named 250 to 250 where she tells the story of the Americans who over the course of a quarter millennium work to make real the founding ideals of this nation

that all people are created equal.

We're gonna talk about that series and Trump's fourth of July celebrations as well as so much more,

“Trump's efforts to make DC just as tacky as he is,”

JD Vance's Catholic faith and how the left can embrace patriotism once again. It was a great conversation with Heather and we're gonna get to it in a minute, but before we do, guys,

there's a new episode of Pods av America only friends out now with me and hysteria's Aaron Ryan. Go check it out, only friends is the friends of the Pods subscriber exclusive show where Pods av 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 was going on

at the turning point women's leadership summit. Know that is not an oxymoron and much more. So hit pause and subscribe to friends of the Pod at crooked.com/friends. Also, please, if you would, check out my podcast runaway country

where this week, talk to California Attorney General Rob Bonta about JD Vance's war on blue states, the other war that he's tasked with. And then graded the vice's salesmanship efforts this week, on the Iran surrender with the great Sam Cedar.

All right, here is Heather Cox Richardson. Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for joining us today on Pods av 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 upcoming 250th celebration, the semi-quincentennial, and 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 fourth, 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 of parallel to such a monstrous display of presidential ego in the name of patriotic 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 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, D.C. But there's a larger story. I mean, everybody knows that I'm talking about the reflecting

pool, which might be a really interesting dive, so to speak, for us to go into. The Kennedy Center, the gilded horses behind the Lincoln Memorial, the arch. All the things we-- the destruction of the bench on--

the proposed destruction of the bench on murals-- all that stuff. But what's really interesting, as you look over it, when you think about democracy, is that if you think

“about our great presidents, so once we remember,”

people like Lyndon Baines, Johnson, or Theodore Roosevelt, or Eisenhower, or we could go on and on, they're the ones who carve their memory into the American people by making their lives better, by having social security, or 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

And similarly, if you think about our history,

you can write, and people do write, book, celebrating the absolute genius of-- and I'm going to pull somebody here at random Benjamin Harrison-- 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 may be American people better. So I would suggest it right now in American history, for example. While a lot more people have heard of the woundedening massacre, than have heard of Benjamin Harrison's great successes. Yeah, I mean, people can talk to the trail of tears,

but they're not sure what old Hickory did in terms of interior decorations at the White House. Maggad types have pointed to the fact that Teddy Roosevelt, I believe, hosted, and fought in a boxing match at the White House during the presidency.

This is actually great.

“So if you want to talk about this, I would love to do this.”

Yeah, because what happens within the federal 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, but we also 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 principles.

And this is happening at 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-- yeah, just it's out for a million?

Yeah, that's just kind of familiar. But so one of the things that is driving theater Roosevelt is he's very concerned about the terrible conditions in the urban areas, especially in the East.

“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 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,

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.

Somebody had actually died playing a college football game. It was such a rough sport. So he actually manages to reach out to a real air. 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 air of cock fighting and prize-fighting and so on in the cities. It was not considered higher level entertainment.

“But there are some really big differences, I think,”

between-- and maybe at the time, people would not have said so. There is one really major difference between 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.

And what happened at the White House? And the really big difference-- two really big differences-- is one, taxpayer money didn't go into Teddy Roosevelt's fighting. And it was not a branding opportunity. And for sure, it was not the corruption opportunity

that the UFC fight on the White House has been. So even though it both involved flying fists, they're the systems that they are either accepting or critiquing where we're virtually opposite-- very important distinction. There was no cryptocurrency sponsorship

and paramount plus requirement to see the match. You could just be a human being there on the White House. Do you have any idea how many people attended that White House match that we're not voting? Oh, oh, there wouldn't have been.

I don't have any idea. But it would not have been huge, because remember what makes things 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 you know, Lincoln was also a fighter.

When she got nobody has ever asked me about,

Oh, no, worse. Lincoln, I mean, worse if you're not into kind of grab mouth. Grab mouth in your mouth.

“He was-- you 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. 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 are actually from the opposite party.

He's a wig in their Democrats. And they support him because he's such a great fighter. He has fought with them before. And right years, do we know if he bought ears? 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 male from both sides, saying, of course he did or know he didn't. But he came up through that era because he had to to survive on the frontier.

And it turned out in his case to be springboard into politics. Well, I mean, yeah, Trump was a public-- it was a fight promoter, basically, through much of his career in the 80s.

So here we are, and he's promoting fights

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 Indy Drag Race around the streets of Washington, DC, and the Great American State Fair, which several states we already know

are skipping at 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, like, butter sculptures

that they want to send in. But I feel like it's a little bit more political than that. Is this what I felt like in the summer of 1860, when he had states just opting out of 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 has ensured is not. So in the 1860s and before fourth of July would have been celebrated at a state level,

and there really wouldn't-- there are fourth of July speeches in a lot of places, but you wouldn't 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 pop 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 back control of the states from the governments

that were trying to protect civil rights in the southern states. And that idea that we are celebrating different histories is 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 the Trump is saying, this is my holiday. This is about me.

And this is about me dictating 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 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 freedom 250,

Trump's 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 sell awareness. So if you looked on June 18th at the Nick celebration in New York City, oh my God,

that was a Fourth of July celebration except they weren't actually talking about the Fourth. - Absolutely. - And the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on the same day,

people were actually putting on social media happy Fourth of July. - Yeah, yeah. And I actually spent, I last week, I did a Substack Live with Joy Read and we were talking about June 10th,

“which I think this year, more than any year that I can remember”

has become kind of an alternative Fourth of July for a lot of people who feel completely excluded from Trump's malignant narcissism that's cast a pallor over the Fourth of July. And June 10th in many ways represents kind of our reconciliation

or not reconciliation, but acknowledges it

and also moves the ball forward. And reminds us that we are living in a, we are in communion with one another. We are part of the fabric of democracy.

“In some ways, I feel like to your point,”

Americans have been sort of a 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 have the same observation about June 10th myself this year

that it felt much more like an American celebration of recognizing what one does when the system 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 seems somehow as if they were overdone, like truly nobody could really do X, are around us even still.

And well, you could always say that

because you know human nature, 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, in 1860s as well, but 1960s in 1970s.

I mean, both Connor still walks among us. And for those people who were not old enough to remember those days, you know, watching somebody like Greg Bavino, giving Nazi solutes and talking about ethnic cleansing.

And recognizing that he really was running our immigration policy is an eye opener,

“I think 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. - Fingers crossed. The mere existence of Stephen Miller is a reminder that we can indeed go back to our very, very violent

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That's rocketmoney.com/curkid. RocketMoney.com/curkid. (upbeat music) - I 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, Mara Logo, or perhaps Trump Tower, gilding horses with a half an inch thick gold plating, and trying to die,

they're reflecting pool, blue to no avail.

We'll talk about that in a second,

“but when we talk about the actual architecture of all of this, right?”

DC was designed to be 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. But 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 install a mammoth arch. He's trying to do something to the Lincoln Memorial, as well.

There's been a lot of pushback, there have been some lawsuits. I see Trump's push for monuments as an extricably linked to a male obsession with fabric objects, but maybe you have a less Freudian interpretation of what's going on here, Heather.

Why actually don't do a lot of work with Freud?

It's always a young person, but I actually,

I gotta do a shout out here. I think the New York Times is done a really excellent job of popularizing understandings of the architecture in Washington, DC. They've had a couple of really good issues lately,

where they set out what it will mean to have these changes to the landscape and what it looks like. And so that's just, 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 nodes of power and so on. And one of the things about the proposed ballroom

is that it actually breaks the line of sight between the, yeah, 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, DC and Virginia, which is really important to the Civil War and the fact that the 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 Lee's house,

which, and again, somebody said, "We should tear the house down." I, I have fervently disagree with that. The Robert Lee House has a different name as well, is a really interesting and important historical document itself,

the people who've lived there, it's actually got very much a biracial history and so on. But 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. So popping yourself down in the middle of it, it strikes me that that kind of mirrors when he shows up at foreign dignitary events, like the G7 last week, or any one of them,

and basically walks in and says, "Well, I'm here and the boss is here and gets laughs." It's literally that that statements like that are greeted with laughter because what a joke. I said, 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 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 horses and all that. That needs to be done. But this isn't 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 horses, much as the next person, but I would very much rather 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 urgent and life-threatening health, conditions dealt with. I mean, this is all stuff that has been slashed in the name

of putting in extra few centimeters of gold on the horses by the Lincoln Memorial. You mentioned the costs, the taxpayers, this week we have new reporting from the Washington Post, the cost of the ballroom that monstrosity

is going to cost $600 million with approximately half of that

Well, in worse, they knew that. The whole-- that was a fabulous article by the way, the Washington Post has some great exclusives lately, too. But when he was out there saying, private funds are going to pay for this, which, by the way, is not OK either,

they already had cut checks off the public treasury. And 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 their turning round and spending,

“I believe the number I believe don't quote me on this,”

is $352 million of taxpayer money on this.

Without-- and lying to us, I guess for me, 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 of the people,

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 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, Alan 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 steuages through government contracts, or no bid, no bid government contracts, or government loans, Donald Trump Jr. sits on the board of a company that just got a $600 million 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 didn't exist several years ago. The core level of corruption will make your eyes not just water, but believe. And that's the government, the Department of Defense,

these government agencies have deep pockets because we appropriate a lot of money towards them. And the Trump administration learned something between Trump 1.0 and 2.0. Like, if you're going to go corrupt, go big, or go home,

it makes the Trump hotel amoluments clause to look like child's play compared to what's happening inside the guts of the federal government. We see what's happening in the corruption on the outside, you know, just gargantuan to betrayals

like the destruction of the East Wing and the construction of 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 office? - Personally, no. And the reason I say that is I don't,

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 the sudden, some bed is off, but there's legal challenges, there's financial challenges, Trump is falling apart, nobody likes that ballroom.

Maybe, but, you know, if you think about any construction project you have ever done yourself, yes. Like, every, all the planets in the universe have to be lined up correctly to get it done on time. And it's almost never 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, I don't know, just my personal experience says, - Doubtful, personally.

- Yeah, I mean, I just was struck by it that, you know, the UFC matched 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 balcony, like, and obviously, not on the scale of malignant narcissism and Trump is operating on, but just, when presidents have done renovations to the White House,

significant ones that the public can see. Has there ever been any sort of flutter of outcry that would pre-sage something like this? - Well, yes and no, that is Americans complain about change at all the time, 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, like, total waste of money. Why are we doing this, you know?

So you're always gonna get pushed back. And basically, that's human nature, right? So there's always push back 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 interesting because it was during the Civil War when the Lincoln's move into the White House,

And Mary Todd Lincoln's wife was actually,

“probably a better political instincts than he did,”

which is saying something because he was a political animal. And she recognized, in a way that he didn't, the power of women in Washington to determine

what politics we're gonna end up being the most powerful.

So she recognizes that the White House is totally shabby. And she undertakes the redecrating of it, because the guy who desperately wants to be president is the man that Lincoln makes treasury secretaries, named Sam and P. Chase, he's from Ohio.

And he thinks everything should revolve around him. 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 sort of a very much a social life.

And she redecorates Sam and P. Chase's house to the Nines. And then Jay Cook, who's a banker on a 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 would be considered corrupt now, is considered corrupt then, right? But so Mary Todd Lincoln looks at this

“and recognizes that Kate Chase is the one”

who's going to be having all the fancy parties,

because she's the one who has the beautiful home. And this is gonna mean that her husband's presidency is gonna be undermined and that Chase will probably get the 64, four years out nomination. 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 major sum of money at the time. Wow. So there was that, but she was right.

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 applicable. And that is, and I hate to mention him twice today.

During Benjamin Harrison's administration, he has this near-do-well son, which I know you can't imagine what happened to him. Well, President with the near-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." And they come up with plans dramatically to redo the White House.

To add a 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 U.S. president.

And again, the White House has always been humble

because theoretically, the president represents the people and it's supposed to be humble. Not that gold stuff everywhere. It's supposed to be plain. And he was absolutely eaten alive in the press.

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.

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. Of new reporting last week that Trump's literally going around, I guess it's in Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book

or a 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, using it to apply, I guess more gold objects to the mantle pieces

and the walls of the White House, which they said surprise no one in the White House, but should really astound the rest of us 'cause that is not what presidents do. - You know, it's actually interesting.

I mean, again, not a psychologist, but like, if you were crumbling, at least if I were crumbling, - Yeah. - I can't think of a single instance in my life, I have ever turned to a coin

or that kind of a decoration. - Yeah. - Like, I'll buy pens is what I'll do and notebooks. Like, they're gonna have to take away my wallet. - They're gonna pry your notebooks from your hands.

He has a very specific psychology. Look at you. That's a blessed 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 belt. There's a raging debate about whether it should be torn down, whether it should be re-appropriated 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 sightlines back and have the White House restored. The ballroom the way he is talking about it is huge. It dwarfs the original building. And yet, I am not gonna rule out the possibility

of the American people would be to put here.

“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 places in other countries to reaffirm popular power. - So I'm gonna acknowledge-- - So I'm gonna acknowledge it. - Yeah. - Yeah, maybe that's where you have the reconciliation trials.

I just have no idea. - Go ahead. - The reconciliation trials, Heather. (upbeat music) - The hot state of America is brought to by Zipper Criter,

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And now you can try it for free at zippercriter.com/cricket meet your match on Zipper Criter. It is essential that we mention was 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. First of all, thank you for doing this great American. And did you intend for that to be a bomb 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 for saw.”

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.

I firmly 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 principle marginalized people.

You know, if you've got those rights, you're not the one fighting for them. So it's people like Vanity Lou Hamer for example. And 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.

The idea that change simply sort of comes from on high, like all the 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 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, you know, one year of the revolution alone to a podcaster it's a lot. Yeah, but for the story and 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 because we

is we've gotten married, a fabulous narrators for them and their great narrators. Yeah, well, because everybody suddenly wanted in, which was great. And we wanted to match the narrators to the stories and what that means is that if you're going to get 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. Yeah. The one in the area can now, which put a judge, former Secretary of Transportation State,

put a judge narrated, is like, that's like my entire lecture on the earth's amazing.

Yeah. And then there's some that are just really heart-wrenching that are not, the one I'm thinking it was not out yet, so I won't drop it on you. But we did. We didn't do live people unless there was some important reason too.

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 why did they get who is this guy?”

And then he says who he is. Oh. And I know. Yeah. It's coming.

When's it dropping? Do you have a date? I don't know. 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 god. Because I didn't know he was. I don't think anybody probably knows what this person looks like, but I'm really important. 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, you know, figure some history, you also”

have like that Everglades in Yellowstone, or 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 the new Madrid. It's not new Madrid, who knew it's the new Madrid earthquakes, which happened in the early

1800s and sort of the Missouri area of the country, and moved the Mississippi River and forced indigenous tribes to go west, which, 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. Similarly, we did somewhere, I didn't, I mean, I obviously wasn't alone in coming up

with the topics. We wanted to make sure they 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 DuBos read that one for us.

Like, did you know that there was one 24 hour period when the flags of three different countries flew over St. Louis? 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, it's the, it has to do with the Louisiana purchase and first France has a territory that Spain has it, but then France has it than the U.S. has it and so on. But like, 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 people have been so good to me. You know, I, everything I do is available for free, but people pay willingly for the substack and so on. And you know, as I say, Trump walked away with all the funding for so much stuff.

And I was like, you know what, this can be my gift back to all the people who gave me the funding to do it. So I just, yeah, so I love it. So I'm pleased it's killing us, but we're really all good things to do with it. All good things to do.

I mean, it does get back at that 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, sociopolitical question, which is Jerusalem Demsus, who is the founder of the argument, recently was a really provocative piece arguing

that the left basically has a band in patriotism and needs to recapture its sense of reclaim

at sense of patriotism in order for democracy to function. To protect democracy, we must reclaim, I think, a form of patriotism that is authentic, but patriotism nonetheless. As a 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 ideology and call them of the left. The left has a specific definition. It is an ideological position that critiques liberal democracy by saying that it doesn't

and rebuilt.

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, people”

who are not part of the radical right, who are either Democrats or centrists have tended to seed the idea of patriotism to that radical right. 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 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.

But especially taking off in the last two years, let's say, with the insertion into especially the House of Representatives, but also the Senate of so many veterans of wars and intelligence agencies 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 the country for us. Now for many years and 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 it gets picked up by Rambo because it went

on to live in film. As in the 1980s, so much of patriotism lived in film with things like top gone and like red dawn and so on. But I actually think that what you have identified is central to a new political ideology for those that are not part of the radical right. And perhaps not part of the left, although the left certainly is closer to the goals

“of centrists and more left leaning. Oh, we can call them progressives. 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, wow, the Democrats are getting in on that. And I think it is central. I didn't event with Jason Crow at

Harvard a month or so ago. And his understanding of the protection of veterans is 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 people like me, and he tells the story of being on the front lines. And he was a, you know, he was a, you know, he was a 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 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 politics that talks about the, 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. So yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And I think it's central. And I don't think people recognize that enough. So thank you for that. I'd say America's Project by Tommy John, this summer don't be that guy, you know, the one, the one who has full sweat pools under his arm sticking to a shirt in the heat. Well, eat Tommy John. That's going to be me. All right. I like your underwear. But you don't. This is what's going to happen. I can't stop it. Public transport is a sauna. You're

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“I think that there's probably when you talk about how the left articulates a patriotism that's both urgent and needed.”

We we talk about what patriotism means to the right what identity that undergirds patriotism means to the right. And I I always return in moments like that. And

particularly moments like this when we're talking about the declaration of independence and the fourth of July and all the rest. To a speech and I know you listen to this speech that J.D. Vance gave at Claremont in the Claremont Institute. And I believe it was last year. It was in 2025 where he basically laid out the maga world view, the nativeest world view that animates. I think all of the Trump administration's policies if there is such an elegance. Like that. Insofar as thought does undergird anything that they're doing. This kind of idea about blood and soil nationalism is the essence of

Trump. And I think in some ways the Trump appeal at one point in the speech. Vance critiques what he calls the creedal principles of the country as not enough on their own. He names the declaration of independence as an example of a document that is both way over

inclusive and under inclusive in terms of defining what it means to be an American. And he basically goes on to give an

alternative vision of what citizenship and being an American ought to be. He's like it's not an idea. It's a place in a people. And it's really specifically in paraphrasing people who fought the Civil War.

“And maybe against the North. What in that seems to be most dangerous to you in terms of what Vance is arguing?”

Well, first of all, I'm amused by being able to say, here's the marker. You had to fight in a civil war. There goes Trump's family, right? And why fight in a civil war? And just, I mean, again, not that it matters. And I really don't think it matters at all. My ancestors on both sides were here from like the very beginning. And I'm looking at that. And I'm like, I'm like, why pick that? Why not be like the date was April 30th, 30th of 1834. I mean, does an arbitrary date? That exactly. Exactly. And you know why.

And you know why. And that's because you actually had when you had, if you identify something like that, you can say exactly that. We're looking to fight for a white culture like that of the old South. And the real thing about the switch that he is making and make no mistake that is a real switch. That is from the founders of the country, which is what we identify the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence. That's the name we use as the founders, the framers of the Constitution.

From that time, they were literally saying, we are creating a nation built on these ideas.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident. And the, and talked within that, I think is another bigger”

piece that I'll come back to. But they literally say that America is about this idea. Now, the people who have tried to say, no, no, no, it's about race, where people like before the Civil War, like the old Southern elite and slavers who wanted to say, no, no, no, no, we're a white country. And when they did that, people like Abraham Lincoln said, you know, why don't we just tear up the Declaration of Independence then? But this idea of blood and soil is actually when

it comes out of Europe. It's not one that fits naturally at all over North America because of course, if you're going to talk about soil and the origins of the United States of America,

you're really looking at 13 colonies. And those 13 colonies were never white. I mean, they were

never a bunch of Europeans. That is such, I mean, that actually comes from a 19, a document from the early 20th century, the 1920s in the US. The tried to say, well, they're all Nordic, you know, which and the Nordics went to England. And you know, it's all just about, it's all just about garnering political power with an appeal to racism and sexism. I mean, what we don't talk enough about here is the degree to which this idea of you had to fight for your country in the Civil War,

basically says most women didn't fight. Now, they contributed in other ways and some actually cross-dressed and fought, but that's really an attempt to put white wealthy men in charge. But even more profoundly, I think it is an attack on what America means. So what the founders say in the declaration is that it is possible for human beings to accept a series of natural laws, not divine laws.

because of our observations, that there are natural laws, like all men are created equal. Now,

again, there's all kinds of caveats, they have around that. But the natural laws, the laws that actually rule this planet, say, people are the same. And they have certain rights. And among those are the right to have a say in the how they are governed when they come together as societies, and that they have a right to equal access to resources. And that we, as human beings, can observe the natural world and we can construct social systems that reflect that.

“And that's what American democracy was always supposed to be. And when you have somebody like”

J.D. Vance coming in and saying, no, no, no. This is all about what God says, or what race says, or any of these systems that are based not in natural law, but rather in human prejudices, or divine inspiration, that is not only a rejection of sort of the surface level of these are rights. It's a rejection of the entire enterprise of human self-determination. And people ask me why I think we're going to come out of this. And I won't say okay because we've already lost so many

people, and so much. But the answer to that is I believe in those natural laws, and I believe in the human capacity to say, hey, you know, if we destroy our environment, we're all going to die, so maybe we shouldn't do that. And to reject that and say, no, no, no, no, I get to dictate stuff. Seems to me to be a position that eventually is going to run headlong up against reality, rather as Trump's war and Iran has run up against reality. And that at the end of the day,

we are, I think, living in the world that the founders outlined as being part of a series of natural laws, and we do have the capacity to discover those and to act accordingly. Yeah, it's just, we need to talk about reality coming crashing through the front door. J.D. Vance's version of America excludes his own children and his wife. And it's why, if, yeah, I mean, well, and he's just such an opportunity, he'll say anything. Well, that's, and then I think

is actually one of the most dangerous things is that he is espousing a belief that so at odds with

“what he fundamentally lives and himself, I think, beliefs. So that's what he said that. He told,”

you know, when the whole eating cats and dogs thing, he actually said that he was willing to make stuff up because it would call attention to the dire conditions under which people lived or something. And it's like, what you're saying is the ends justify the means and so you can lie.

And here's a news flash. The ends never justify the means.

'Cause you never get into the history. If you're in any way a student of history, you know that to be true. But what is J.D. Vance's student of other than shameless, shameless ambition, I guess, and lost for power? Heather, let me ask you one more question before we wrap up our, your brilliant analysis of this moment and what patriotism means and how we should be thinking of America's 250th. If you as a historian had to pick another moment other than the signing of the Declaration of

Independence to celebrate, to make a national holiday out of. And you can't say Juneteenth because that's already an actual moment. Is there another moment in American history that you think represents

“in many ways, you know, the establishment of the American ideal or a reaffirmation of American ideals?”

I know I'm asking you this, like, totally on the spot, but you're so good that I'm confident. Can I have two? Sure, why not? 14th Amendment, right on. 14th Amendment is my favorite amendment. And it, it should be everybody's because it's the one that says, you know, that whole equality thing, we mean it. And that if in your states, you, you know, you and I talked about have a, you know, both Connor walks among us still. If in your states, you're run by both

honors or you have been bought by corporations that are that are willing to destroy your workers' rights or your women's rights or your environmental rights or whatever, we're going to come in and we're going to change that. And that, and it gave the 13th, 14th, and 15th,

are the first amendments that give power to the Congress rather than taking it away.

When does it, do you know the date offhand of the ratification? Uh, what month would that be? No, because I think it's August 13th. Oh, it's a good time for a three-day weekend. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm in. But, um, and I should know that, uh, the issue is it passes Congress and then it goes off to the states for ratification and I don't remember all those individual dates to say August 13th sticks in my mind, but don't pull me on that.

I'm probably wrong. So also written in 1866, it's, it, when, when it becomes clear, the south is not going to permit black equality, they actually write the Congress rates in 66, and then it doesn't

the, the signing of the voting rights act, um, which, again, aside from anything else that it does

“because it sets in motion a lot of things, um, including things like having our ballots in different”

languages, which, you know, has, has been an issue throughout our entire history. There's a wonderful journal from, uh, the colonial era in which a woman is traveling from the, um, or a little after that, I guess, is traveling from the coast to Ohio. And in it, she says, you know, everyone thinks it's like J.D. Vance thinks that this is an English-based country. There was certainly English-based government. She gets, like, almost there, and she's like, you know, what I really want when I get to

Ohio. I can't wait to hear the language of English spoken again. She hasn't met a single English speaker,

“the whole way. She's going across that whole way. So we get, from the, voting rights act, the idea”

of ballots in different languages, but we also really put our money where our mouth is and say,

yeah, everybody gets a say. For the first time, everybody gets a say in the government, and that,

of course, has been what the radical right has been working to dismantle ever since. And so in this era, I'd say both of those, but it's certainly worth celebrating the voting rights act, as well as the 14th. And for, um, all of you, Cracker Jack Googlers, uh, the, the ACE production team at the Pontiff, America tells me that the ratification of the 14th was July 9th, 8th, 8th, 8th,

“but it's so close to July 4th. It all makes sense. Oh, that's a really good idea. We're going to have”

to change our vacations, Kendra. That's a really good idea. Hey, next year. Next year, we'll do it. Let's do that. That's a good idea. Can we do a special episode about it? Yeah, sure. We shot a calendar. Yeah. July 9th. Yeah. Because I'll be right for the book comes out. So I'll be foot loose and fancy free. Heather Cox Richardson, the most prolific, the most prolific person in this, in this, a degraded American, which we live where people have just been content to rest

on their, on their bums and do nothing. Or have been called the action, been called to action, have been engaged and we applaud you if you're, especially if you're listening to this podcast, but most especially we are so grateful, Heather, for all the things you do to keep us wise and thinking

and keep our front porch lights on mentally speaking. It's always just such a real pleasure,

and it's always so enlightening to talk with you. Thank you for reminding us of who we are and who it can be. And good luck with 250 to 250. Everybody should download and watch the clips and always subscribe to Heather's Substack. The great Heather Cox Richardson. Thank you. Thank you Alex. It's always a pleasure. A huge thank you to Heather Cox Richardson for spending some time with me. The gents will be back in your feed on Tuesday. Positive America is a crooked media production.

Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with re-chirling Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefcoat, Jordan Cancer, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pelavi, David Tolls, Mia Kalman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of America East.