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The Beat with Ari Melber - Season Episode 130 -Episode 130 englishsubtitle watchfull🎉 Secret Engagement
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00:01Welcome to the beat. I'm Luke Russert in for Ari Melber. We are on the cusp of the nation's 250th
00:07birthday. And while it should be the most magnificent celebration of America in our history, it has become a sad
00:14punch line. We are left with an underwhelming over overly partisan county fair that no one is going to. And
00:22for a time couldn't even if they wanted that fair was shut down today due to extreme heat.
00:28The Capitol looks like a demolition zone from the murky reflecting pool to the crater where the east wing of
00:34the White House used to be. And tonight, Donald Trump is speaking at Mount Rushmore, a place he has mused
00:40about putting his own face next to some of America's greatest president. It is like the preview of tomorrow night's
00:45festivities when the national fireworks will have to wait until after Trump finishes another long, winding speech.
00:53Winding speech. It feels like we are being robbed of a unique moment of national unity by a president who
00:59cannot fathom a celebration that does not revolve around him. And it comes as we are learning more about the
01:05unprecedented extent to which Trump is enriching himself off his public position.
01:10A level of wealth the New York Times calls unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting
01:18American president. Frankly, it's almost Putin-esque.
01:22And it is not just him. New disclosures reveal that Vice President J.D. Vance and First Lady Melania Trump
01:28both took in millions more last year than the year before.
01:32We also just learned that Trump made 21,000 stock trades last year, including hundreds of stocks that he picked
01:40up on his Liberation Day.
01:43But do you know the day when tariffs sent markets into a tailspin? But guess what?
01:48The markets in the president's portfolio shot up in value days later after he announced a pause in most of
01:57those tariffs and said, quote,
01:59quote, it's a great time to buy. Hmm. A White House spokeswoman says neither the president nor his family has
02:06ever engaged or will ever engage in conflicts of interest.
02:12Yeah. What do other Republicans say about all these unprecedented corruption allegations?
02:17Well, not much. After each new revelation, those who were once concerned about Hunter Biden selling his paintings, they've remained
02:27awfully quiet.
02:28And now the biggest celebration of America's founding of the first time we stood up and said no king will
02:35rule us is being hijacked by a president who seems obsessed with making a kingly fortune.
02:43Joining me now is Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of the Watchdog Group, State Democracy Defenders Fund and
02:50the democracy, democracy defender.
02:51You're the democracy defender, Norm. You're the best at it. All right.
02:55I want to read something here because I think it's really important to for our viewers to get an idea
03:01of just the level of what we're talking about here on corruption.
03:04And this is about the financial disclosures that we've seen, a staggering grift on a scale that we've never seen
03:10before.
03:10You said, quote, make no mistake, his billions in personal profit don't come out of thin air.
03:15Every dollar extracted from these schemes comes at a cost imposed directly in the American people, whether through weaker consumer
03:21protections, trust sold to the highest bidder or otherwise.
03:25Contextualize that for us, because when people see these stories about grift, they go, I don't know if it directly
03:32affects me, but it very much does so.
03:35We're really seeing the corruption narrative take hold now on this administration, and that is because Donald Trump has monetized
03:47the Oval Office to the tune of over $2 billion, Luke.
03:53And my point, wearing my democracy defender's action hat in that case, my point was when you look at these
04:05enormous sums, someone has to be on the other side.
04:09And too often it's the American people losing money.
04:12Take the Donald Trump meme coin over $600 million into Donald Trump's pocket.
04:19But guess what?
04:20The value of that coin has cratered.
04:23It's down 95%.
04:26People have lost huge sums of money based on that.
04:32That's hurting them and benefiting him.
04:35And the same thing is true across the full range of these corrupt activities that have landed him with the
04:43same public approval rating as Nixon at the very bottom of his corruption scandals.
04:49It's so remarkable because I think when you see these numbers that are flying around and people see $2 billion,
04:56the president has enriched himself in just the last year, the vice president making millions, the first lady making millions.
05:02This is something that is not akin to what we experience in America, especially over the course of our republic
05:10here.
05:11It's something that is very much more aligned with oligarchs and sort of authoritarian countries where in order to do
05:19anything, you have to pay back a bribe to who's in charge.
05:22Can you talk about on the founding of our 250th birthday as we approach this, the founding of our country
05:28and coming to this 250th birthday, just how uniquely un-American this is?
05:32Well, we've never seen anything like this in the history of our country.
05:37And indeed, even if you look around the world at dictatorships and despots, you struggle to find this kind of
05:46profit taking out of the public interest and into a president's own pockets.
05:56Take another example.
05:58Part of that windfall for the president is his crypto company, World Liberty Financial.
06:05Well, you had an Emirati royal who made a secret investment.
06:11And they gave him the jet.
06:13Well, the jet is from Qatar.
06:15Qatar, excuse me.
06:16But we will come to the jet.
06:18That's bad enough, too.
06:20The UAE makes this secret investment.
06:24$500 million in World Liberty Financial.
06:27That's a Trump family business.
06:29But the cronyism doesn't stop there.
06:32To your comparison, how un-American this is.
06:34The Whitcoff family, Trump's special envoy, his family is involved in this profit taking, too.
06:41So you should not have a president who's regulating, or as the case may be, failing to regulate crypto, while
06:48himself, his cronies, his families, his associates in and out of government making huge sums.
06:56That's not the American idea.
06:58I want to switch gears here because we've been fixated in Washington about this story regarding the reflecting pool.
07:03And a lot of people at home think it's not that big a deal.
07:06But it is a very big deal because it plays into the authoritarian playbook, essentially, that don't believe what your
07:12eyes see.
07:12I've been down there.
07:13I've seen the allergy in there.
07:15I've seen that it was a complete debacle to try and repaint the bottom of it.
07:19The president and his people put a fence around it.
07:22And you now have a client who's a former Olympian, a gentleman by the name of David Hearn, who was
07:27actually charged because, allegedly, he took a piece of the bottom of the reflecting pool.
07:34Right there, we could put it on the screen.
07:36Thursday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose recent prosecutorial track record has been as embarrassing as it is political,
07:42announced that Hearn has been charged with one felony count of destruction of property in D.C. Superior Court.
07:47I know you can't speak too much about this case, but on its face, it looks just as ridiculous as
07:53the ham sandwich one from earlier in the year.
07:56Well, we'll try the case in court, Luke.
08:01I will say Davey Hearn is innocent.
08:05These charges are outrageous.
08:08It should be alarming to every American that this kind of thing can happen.
08:15You have an administration that is trying to shift blame with a concocted narrative.
08:23Fortunately, we have a justice system where evidence matters, not these type of press conferences that we saw.
08:34And that's really all I can say about it.
08:36Just to correct one thing, even Jeanine Pirro does not say he took anything out of that reflecting pool.
08:43OK, that's good to hear.
08:45Well, Norm, you've had a heck of a week.
08:46You saved birthright citizenship and you're saving a poor guy who's getting charged with trying to take that part of
08:52the reflecting pool.
08:53What a spectrum you're working on.
08:54Thank you so much for joining us.
08:55We appreciate it.
08:56Have a great Fourth of July weekend.
08:57Coming up, 250 years after the revolution, America once again stares down the threat of tyranny.
09:04Plus a sneak preview of tonight's special programming featuring Rachel Maddow.
09:08But first, how Donald Trump's low energy state fair robbed us of a moment of national unity.
09:19According to a new report by House Democrats, Donald Trump has cheated Americans out of a celebration of our country's
09:26250th birthday.
09:27He completely turned what was supposed to be a unifying celebration years in the making into a grift.
09:34This new investigation by House Democrats reveals that a nonpartisan commission began planning and raising money for this bipartisan celebration
09:41a decade ago.
09:43But, quote, under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self
09:51-enrichment.
09:51Joining me now is a member of the Natural Resources Committee that conducted that investigation and published an eye-popping
09:58report, Congresswoman Adelita Grava, who's a Democrat from Arizona.
10:02Congresswoman, thank you so much for being on the show.
10:04Thank you for having me.
10:06So give our viewers a sort of quick synopsis of this report.
10:10I read it, and essentially that there is this bipartisan America 250.
10:15Donald Trump started this Freedom 250, and along the way ended up curing a bunch of favors and demanding donations
10:22and all sorts of things that are quite interesting.
10:26Yeah, essentially the key finding is Trump put himself at the center of our nation's birthday instead of what it
10:32looked like even 50 years ago at the Bicentennial in 1975,
10:37where it was a celebration of the United States, of our history, and where we need to go together as
10:43a country.
10:44And so the White House built Freedom 250 on deceit.
10:48A lot of the musical performers, among others, were misled about the programming and the connections to Trump's political machine.
10:55And that's why we saw so many performers saying, that's not what I was told when I agreed to sign
11:00up.
11:01And so then you had to, you know, do your sleuthing to find out if this was Freedom 250 or
11:05America 250.
11:06And then, you know, Freedom 250 sold, Trump sold access, courted by foreign money in America's name.
11:14And it's just been a complete hijacking of our celebration as a country for 250 years.
11:23And the report goes into depth about all the different things that have occurred.
11:27And the first part of it just sadded me, because this really could have been one of the most incredible
11:32moments in American history.
11:33We could have had a bipartisan event with our best authors, our best musicians, our best athletes.
11:40Everyone could have come together, but instead it just went completely wayside.
11:43But I want to ask you about Event Strategies.
11:47That's a firm that you guys allege has gotten $100 million through this.
11:52They were involved in January 6th.
11:54What can you tell us about that?
11:56Well, that connection is scary enough as it is.
12:00So much of what Trump has done in his administration is do no-bid contract approvals.
12:06And so they don't go through any process, right?
12:08We've seen that with the reflection poll.
12:11We've seen it all over with different, you know, his pool guy can do it or something.
12:16He just sort of does these side deals with people who are supporters of his and not opening it up
12:22to any kind of process.
12:23And so even if you look at what's happening right now on the mall, parts of those pieces that have
12:30been assembled are falling apart.
12:32I was, you know, I saw a little video of some young people dancing and a piece of the stage
12:38came down.
12:38I mean, there's no one to hold accountable at this point because all of these were bids that were done
12:44behind the scenes.
12:45And who's paying the cost is the American people.
12:49Yeah, and there's a lot of allegations in there that people who had business in front of the president, if
12:55they made a donation here, it would get moved to the front of the line, et cetera.
12:58Classic corruption.
12:59Another element that you guys uncovered, which I think is far more serious and something that we've seen a lot
13:05of,
13:05is that this iteration of America 250, this Freedom 250 that Donald Trump and his cronies have engaged in,
13:13there is a real strong element of Christian nationalism that is meant to define what it means to be an
13:21American.
13:22Can you speak to that and what you guys uncovered?
13:25Well, and that's incredibly problematic because our nation is built on really the contributions of immigrants,
13:32of people from all different countries, all different nationalities, and all different religions.
13:37We do not have an official religion in this country, nor do I believe should we.
13:43We are supposed to be this melting pot where everyone comes together and is stronger as a result of it.
13:48But under this administration, it is more about how Christian you are.
13:52You know, you're not, if you're Catholic, you're not Christian enough.
13:55If you're Muslim, you're not part of our, I mean, it's like this sort of club of elitists,
14:00and they keep pushing people away and out of what is supposed to be a really solid celebration.
14:07Even some of the speakers that were speaking all spoke of religion and not as much about what the contributions
14:15have been in our country.
14:16We could have had a true celebration of art, music, poetry, just a big encompassing celebration of what it is
14:26to be an American and everyone that has contributed.
14:28But what it has been is an incredibly stifling, hot environment where nobody is coming to because there's really nothing
14:37to see there.
14:39Yeah, some of the earliest Americans were those who were fleeing religious persecution, and that's been a longstanding tenant of
14:45our country's success.
14:47It's also the freedom of religion is guaranteed in the First Amendment.
14:50I could go on and on about how one religion shouldn't hijack an entire celebration of America.
14:56Real quickly, trend lines are looking good for the Dems to take back the House.
15:01Do you think this would be something that would be investigated if Democrats get the gavel back?
15:05Oh, I believe it will be.
15:07Yeah, this is a 55-page just first run.
15:11I mean, even when we were having our oversight hearing, it was unilaterally closed down when we started asking real
15:19specific questions about really calling people to task and bringing court orders to have people have to subpoena people and
15:27have to have them come and speak in front of our hearings.
15:29All of a sudden, everything was shut down.
15:31You know, I was four years old the last time we had an opportunity in our country in 1976 in
15:37the bicentennial, and there was so – I can just look back and see all of the contributions and things
15:42that came up from that.
15:43I mean, Schoolhouse Rock is something that is part of every child, especially in my generation, in explaining, like, how
15:51does this country work?
15:53Those are some of the things that came out of those celebrations, and the sad part is when I think
15:58about, you know, what my kids are going to remember about this celebration.
16:01At 250, it's going to be – it was another Trump, you know, kind of campaign stop, and that's just
16:09really sad and pathetic.
16:10Yeah, we could have had Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen, but I guess we got Vanilla Ice, so here we are.
16:16Congresswoman Adelita Gray-Alba, thank you so much for being on this show and for that important report.
16:20We appreciate it.
16:21Now I'd like to bring in my panel.
16:23Charlie Dent is a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania.
16:27Amanda Littman is the co-founder and president of Run for Something.
16:30Thank you all for being here on this holiday.
16:33Charlie, let me start out with you.
16:35It seems that the president's corruption knows no bounds, but he's still relatively popular amongst the Republican Party.
16:43Do you think that this corruption angle could sink him at all, or is he forever going to be the
16:50standard bearer as long as he's around?
16:52No, I do think that all of these issues that have been discussed in recent weeks and months about the
17:00ballroom, the reflecting pool, the crypto business, the meme coin, all that,
17:04I think it's actually having a real impact.
17:06I mean, the president's approval rating is, what, 35 percent?
17:09So none of this is helping him.
17:11He's accumulating a lot of barnacles.
17:14It's also clear that he's got more difficult relations with Republican members of Congress, particularly in the Senate.
17:21So I think this is having a cumulative effect, and it's clear that given what we've seen in the off
17:26year and special elections,
17:29that Republicans are just not turning out what the rate Democrats are, and you're likely to see a pretty big
17:34wave in November.
17:35So there's an impact to all of it, politically.
17:38Amanda, you think you started to run for something.
17:41You obviously understand the pulse of where people are on the Democratic side.
17:46Do you think that these corruption allegations move people to really want to get involved because they feel like the
17:52rug is being pulled out from under them?
17:53You see the cost of living is high.
17:55Inflation is high.
17:57It is so hard to keep your head above water for so many ordinary Americans, and yet they're looking at
18:02their president raking in billions of dollars.
18:06That seems to me like it turns the enthusiasm gap up just a little bit on the Democratic side.
18:11I think you're exactly right.
18:13It's not just the corruption.
18:14It's the fact that it's getting better for him and worse for you.
18:17You have to really tie it back to why voters should care, that he is just picking their pockets as
18:22the cost of everything for our barbecues this weekend is getting more expensive,
18:26as housing is getting more expensive, as he's explicitly saying, I actually don't care if housing is ever affordable again.
18:32It is, I think, really important for Democratic candidates and messengers to not just talk about how he is corrupt
18:38and sort of baked in,
18:40but how his corruption is coming at your expense.
18:44And to follow up on that, I think something regarding the corruption is it ties into that energy where we've
18:49seen candidates that have done really well are the ones that are saying, I get it.
18:54I get where you're at.
18:55I am fighting for you.
18:57Can you explain that a little bit to people out there?
18:59Because we've seen some upsets on the Democratic side in the primaries and whatnot, and we'll talk about that a
19:03little bit later.
19:04But just in terms of enthusiasm, how it ties into this corruption angle.
19:08When people feel like they're getting a raw deal, they get angry and they want to be heard.
19:14That's exactly right.
19:15Yet again, I think it really is candidates who can speak to that fury, that sense of betrayal, who also,
19:21I think, are outside the system.
19:22Because, you know, admittedly, one of the things we hear in focus groups when you're talking to voters is, well,
19:27both parties are corrupt.
19:27Yeah, Trump is bad, but the Democrats are doing insider trading.
19:31They're just as bad, which they are not the same.
19:34Two parties, not the same on the kind of corruption.
19:36That being said, that's how people feel.
19:38So I think candidates who come from outside of the system who can say, yes, it is broken.
19:43Yes, you are getting screwed.
19:45That is true.
19:46This is not a distraction from that.
19:48This is real.
19:48It is happening to you.
19:49And I'm as mad as you are.
19:51That's such a powerful way to break through in this cycle, especially at a moment when people,
19:56especially Democratic primary voters, are so pissed at the status quo.
20:00They are so pissed at the establishment.
20:02It's why you're seeing incumbents get challenged.
20:05In some cases, you're seeing them lose, which is really hard and very rare for it to happen.
20:10It's because they are representing, whether they're ideologically center or left or even far left,
20:15they are representing the status quo that feels broken.
20:19Indeed.
20:20I want to switch gears quickly, Charlie.
20:24Atlanta, the FBI, Georgia, Trump still poking around there in Fulton County.
20:30We have New York Times headline, FBI assigned scores of analysts to examine election records
20:35in Georgia.
20:35This is via Cash Patel.
20:37Here we are six years after that election.
20:40You served in the House.
20:41You understand.
20:42We used to talk all the time when I was a Hill reporter.
20:45I won't say that you're a House Freedom Caucus whisperer by any means.
20:49But this obsession that the president has with 2020 and Fulton County and using all of our intelligence apparatus
20:56to try and get nowhere to something that's been investigated before, what do you make of all of it?
21:01Well, first, it's an incredible waste of resources to try to investigate something that has really been long settled.
21:09The 2020 election has been investigated thoroughly up and down through the courts
21:15and really found that it was a fair, clean election.
21:17My friend Chris Krebs, who ran CISA, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency,
21:22under the first Trump administration, said it was the most safe and secure election in American history.
21:28And, of course, the president has subsequently then directed the Justice Department to investigate him.
21:33But that said, they're not going to find anything here.
21:38So, again, it's an enormous waste of resources.
21:41They should just listen to Brad Raffensperger, who was a secretary of state at the time,
21:45and just accept that Georgia went for Joe Biden.
21:50Don't have to like it, but he won it.
21:53But the president has an unhealthy obsession, and he just can't get over it.
21:58But, you know what?
21:58Voters are over it.
22:00You know, they're looking forward.
22:01They're not looking backwards.
22:02So this is another issue that is obviously not going to benefit Republicans in the upcoming midterms,
22:07this discussion about the last election.
22:12Yeah, if there is so much corruption, how come Republicans did so well in 2024?
22:17I digress.
22:19Charlie Dent, Emanuel Littman, stay with me.
22:21We're going to come back and talk to you guys some more.
22:23We'll have much more to talk about after this break.
22:28Donald Trump's return to the White House has been marked by protests across the country,
22:32from people supporting fire government workers to those three large-scale nationwide no-king's marches,
22:38when millions took to the streets to exercise the very rights won when the U.S. gained independence.
22:43And as we get ready to celebrate the 4th of July, MSNOW is marking it with a special at 9
22:49p.m. tonight,
22:50featuring Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki, and Allie Velshi.
22:53They will host a live community event in the birthplace of our nation, Philadelphia,
22:57and discuss the state of the nation with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro
23:01and civil rights attorney Sherilyn Ifill.
23:03Here's a preview.
23:06Americans in our DNA are foundational value, the thing that makes America a place.
23:14The fact that the thing that makes Americans Americans is that we fight fascism.
23:19We fight tyrants.
23:20We did it back then.
23:21We do it still now.
23:22We just passed the anniversary of the very first No Kings protest.
23:29That huge crowd that came out right here in Philly.
23:32Look at that.
23:38That was you guys.
23:44Philly.
23:45Philly was the flagship city for the first No Kings Day protest,
23:49which will go down as yet another seminal date in the history of fighting fascism in Philadelphia.
23:56And of course Philly was the flagship, right?
23:59Philly is the city where we first said No Kings.
24:01Yes, 250 years ago.
24:04Back with me, Charlie Dent and Amanda Littman.
24:08Amanda, I want to ask you something because yesterday Jack Smith came on our air.
24:13He spoke to Nicole Wallace and he spoke about not being intimidated.
24:17I want to play the tape and get your reaction to the other side.
24:21Are you afraid to be speaking out?
24:24No, not at all.
24:25I'm not.
24:25I am not going to be intimidated.
24:28And there's no way in the world if the thought was to go after me so that I wouldn't speak
24:34up about the corruption that's happening or speak up to defend these agents and prosecutors.
24:39That is a grave miscalculation.
24:41There is no way I'm going to be intimidated.
24:44I thought that was very powerful for Jack Smith to say that.
24:47I think it piggybacks off of what Rachel was saying in Philadelphia as well.
24:50This idea that we are not afraid.
24:52We are here and we are going to fight for the rights that are guaranteed to us in the Constitution.
24:58Can you speak to how important it is for people who may be down, may be feeling that the country
25:05is moving in a direction that they can't begin to comprehend, that there are people who are out there who
25:10are fighting?
25:11I think over the last 18 months, we've seen really two tracks.
25:15One is the elites, the institutions, the universities, the honestly democratic leadership in the Senate up until a couple months
25:21ago, law firms and elsewhere who have folded, who have been cowards, who have shown that they all bark and
25:29no bite.
25:29And then the other track has been the totally normal, ordinary people who have done this extraordinary thing, whether it's
25:38the nearly 100,000 people who've signed up to run for office with us in the last 18 months or
25:43the people in Philadelphia and across the country who are marching at no kings or the folks in Minnesota and
25:49L.A.
25:49and Portland who stood up for their neighbors against ICE, the people who are giving to GoFundMe's and supporting families
25:56who are experiencing hardships right now.
25:58Like that is the true story of America.
26:01These people who care enough about their neighbors to be braver than in many cases, the billionaires.
26:07It has been, I think, so inspiring and so hopeful and a good reminder that for most of us, our
26:13job is not necessarily to like punch back as hard as we can.
26:16It is to simply do the next brave thing we can, whatever that looks like.
26:20And we've gotten so many examples of it since Trump won last year.
26:25Yeah, it's very touching because so many people caved, especially at the beginning.
26:29Very powerful people, people who had armor, willfully put down their armor and just completely caved.
26:34And ordinary people stood up.
26:36And I think it's something that is really galvanizing a movement across the country about what it means to be
26:41an American.
26:42And somebody else who spoke about that today was the mayor of New York, Zoran Mondami.
26:47I want to play what he said and get your reaction, Charlie, on the other side.
26:50Oh, sorry.
26:51We don't have that.
26:52We don't have that video.
26:53But I can give you just a little bit of synopsis.
26:56Essentially, what the mayor said is that the frontier may be closed.
26:58We may have walked on the moon.
26:59But the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, my friends.
27:05And it belongs to us all.
27:06It belongs to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom are recently naturalized.
27:12Nearly a decade ago, I, too, felt what you feel, the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker,
27:16but an American, too.
27:18You each hold a special power, the power to determine what America means.
27:21Charlie, talk about the importance of America as a home for immigrants and how immigration is what this country was
27:29founded on.
27:29It allows us to stay a world superpower because we get the best and brightest to fill all types of
27:37jobs.
27:37But talk about how the definition of American is not necessarily someone who traces back to the Mayflower, but is
27:44replenished every single day.
27:47Yeah, I think every one of us, you know, who's not a Native American probably can tell you stories of
27:53their ancestors.
27:53I often speak of my great-grandfather, Dent, came off the boat from England in 1866, started a very successful
28:00business in the late 19th century.
28:03And, you know, that's the immigrant story.
28:05So many of these people who are first generation do incredible things, and they help provide an energy, help make
28:12America the point of the spear,
28:15which separates us from so many other places in this world.
28:19Whatever problems we have in this country, and we have so many, we talk about them all the time,
28:24but I remain firmly optimistic about the future of this country because this is such an innovative place.
28:31People want to be here.
28:33They know there's freedom, and that they can innovate, they can fail, and they can try again, and they can
28:38make something of themselves.
28:39They know that their lineage really doesn't determine their future here, unlike other parts of particularly Europe,
28:46where you have more structured class systems.
28:48Here you didn't have it, and that's what makes America different and special.
28:53And think, too, about our founders, the enormous risks that they took to create a republic.
28:58And these were powerful people in many cases, George Washington, Ben Franklin.
29:02They had a lot to lose, you know, financially, personally, their own lives.
29:07They took on the greatest power at the time, the United Kingdom, Great Britain.
29:11They took them on, and they were successful.
29:14But it didn't necessarily mean they were going to be successful, but they had so much to lose.
29:18And I think we should celebrate that, that as we deal with all these issues today,
29:23I wish that the most powerful among us would also recognize that they may have a lot to lose,
29:27but there are others who've stood to lose before, and they stood up.
29:31And I like that point so much that you made there, Charlie, because the founding fathers,
29:36there were a lot of them that very easily could have stayed in the comfort of which they had acquired
29:41and just made deals with England and not put their lives at stake and not put their fortunes at stake.
29:47And it's an important part of sacrifice, which is also what this country is built on.
29:51Amanda, I want to give you the last word here.
29:52Going back to what we spoke about earlier, for folks out there who look at this July 4th
29:58and they come upon it and they go, man, this is a really difficult time to drape myself in the
30:04flag
30:05and beat my chest and be so proud of everything.
30:07What do you sort of say to them and couch that to tying it to November
30:13and why it's so important for folks to vote?
30:18If you want to fight for this country, you have to love this country.
30:21You don't always have to like this country, but you do have to love it.
30:24And I think that's something for this weekend, really understanding.
30:28You don't always have to like our government.
30:29You don't always have to like the things we do.
30:31But we know that there is so much potential here.
30:34We have seen what it looks like when the best of America rises up.
30:38Honestly, I'm getting such joy out of watching the World Cup right now,
30:43seeing not just the celebrations, not just the people coming and experiencing American food,
30:47American splendor, but also the way that American towns
30:51and cities have welcomed people from across the world.
30:54You know, small towns in Kansas welcoming Algerians,
30:57the Boston opening itself up to Scotland,
30:59these beautiful intercultural communities and diaspora communities
31:05celebrating the places they are from as well as celebrating the American team.
31:09If you're not feeling particularly patriotic this weekend, I get it.
31:12But know that we are going to make this country what it can be and what it should be.
31:16And part of that is, yes, finding joy now.
31:19But it's also, of course, voting, volunteering, donating and doing what we can in November.
31:24And know that that's just one small part of the American journey.
31:27I love what you just said and seeing fans come to the World Cup
31:32and enjoy some of our unique, peculiar American things like big gas stations and super sizes and everything.
31:39And it puts a smile on people's faces.
31:41And, yeah, it's a great sort of world community that we have here for the World Cup.
31:45And we're showing our best foot.
31:46At least the people are.
31:48And I won't say the government, but the people are.
31:49Charlie Dent, Amanda Littman, thank you so much for joining us.
31:52We really appreciate it.
31:53Have a great holiday.
31:54Still to come, a look back at the last major milestone in our country's history
31:59and why Donald Trump's state fair doesn't quite meet the moment that is next.
32:07Fifty years ago, in 1976, Americans came together to celebrate the country's bicentennial.
32:13And anyone who is there will tell you it was epic in the proper sense of the word.
32:18Here is the front page of The New York Times from the day after, quote,
32:26If you look all the way at the top, the paper even included six pages of bicentennial articles and pictures.
32:34Gerald Ford was president.
32:35The country had just been through Watergate, and everyone got together and celebrated.
32:40Tomorrow, we will celebrate America's 250th anniversary.
32:43And suffice to say, the planned celebrations are more about Donald Trump and division
32:47than they are about the principles and values America stands for.
32:51But history teaches us not to lose hope, especially in a resilient country like ours.
32:57I'm lucky to be joined by two presidential historians, Douglas Brinkley,
33:01a professor of history at Rice University, and Alexis Coe, a senior fellow at New America.
33:06I was a history major in college, so I'm so excited for you guys to be here.
33:10That's your book, Alexis, right there.
33:11You never forget your first about George Washington, which is a fantastic read.
33:14I recommend everyone go out there and do it.
33:16First question to you, I got to ask you, Alexis.
33:19You wrote an article in town and country about the last big celebration we had 50 years ago.
33:24There were some issues with how that came together.
33:27Can you just give us a little bit of intelligence on how that happened back then?
33:32In some ways, our committee, our official committee was seamless in comparison.
33:37It was dismantled because it was considered too commercial, and the country itself was excited,
33:46but it was also more divided than I think we remember.
33:49We are just a couple of years out of Vietnam.
33:51We've had our first presidential resignation, and there is this hope for unity,
33:57but there's also quite a bit of resistance.
34:00We just don't see it the way we see it today because it's a different world with social media,
34:05but I think that there was the same sort of feeling of what does this mean and where can we
34:11go from here?
34:13Douglas, you wrote something that I think was very profound, and you said that,
34:19and may we practice those American virtues of tolerance, compromise, and perseverance
34:25in the hope of mending the American tapestry wherever it is frayed.
34:29Some days that hope can seem futile.
34:31History tells us it is not.
34:33A lot of people out there right now, their hope in America is not big.
34:39Why should we continue to have such hope?
34:42Well, you know, Alexa just did a nice job doing a little summary about 1976,
34:47and people were in despair.
34:49Some people thought Ford shouldn't have pardoned Nixon.
34:53What were we doing in Vietnam that long?
34:55We had 58,000 dead Americans and Agent Orange and post-traumatic stress syndrome, on and on.
35:02But he hit a good mark, Gerald Ford.
35:05It was the middle of the presidential election year that Ford would lose to Jimmy Carter.
35:10But even after Ford loses to Carter, they became the closest of friends.
35:16I mean, Jimmy Carter gave the principal eulogy for Gerald Ford.
35:20They traveled together.
35:22Their wives were great friends.
35:23We try in America to heal.
35:25And time and again, if you have right leaders, they're working to unite the United States.
35:31More generally speaking, we have Civil War scholars.
35:34And you really learn to understand what happened, Luke, in Antietam and Shiloh and the Mississippi town of Vicksburg and
35:45the death.
35:46You realize we got through that civil war.
35:48And we did get through that difficult Vietnam War, long 60s era.
35:54Two Kennedys assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. and a lot.
35:57But we've got to, like, move forward.
36:00And also, I've been teaching forever.
36:02It does not help to tell 20-year-olds to give up on life, be in despair over whether it
36:08is climate change or crypto or high cost.
36:11So you've got to kind of, as Woody Guthrie used to say, be a hope machine and try to get
36:16people to believe that.
36:17But we are a great nation with great things yet to come.
36:21Alexis, I was looking over some of the grievances that appeared in the Declaration of Independence.
36:27And Stephen Beschloss, a friend of the show, actually compared those to sort of what we're feeling now in America.
36:33I want to read a few of them out there.
36:36This is what our founding father said to the king, King George at the time.
36:40He has obstructed the administration of justice.
36:43He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices.
36:47He has kept us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislatures for cutting off our
36:52trade with all parts of the world.
36:54And on and on and on.
36:55We see it up there for our audience.
36:56Can you speak a little bit to that?
36:58Scott, are we in one of those moments now?
37:00Because we certainly have a president.
37:02The protests against him are called No King's Day, who seems to believe in the imperial presidency, the absolute power
37:09of the executive branch.
37:10Are some of those grievances coming back to the surface now, 250 years later?
37:17History doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.
37:20That's something that my lot says all the time, because it's true.
37:23When you read those grievances, they do sound very familiar.
37:28And I think that is the point, as we're supposed to evolve as a nation.
37:33And we often think of the founders as being these, they are revolutionary leaders, but they were also avowed capitalists.
37:42They risked everything.
37:43And so I think this idea that they were unique would have been a surprise to them.
37:49There's a great letter in which John Adams writes to his nephew, who's calling him a founding father.
37:55He says, we were just doing what we could with what we had at the time.
37:59And calling us founding fathers makes us seem like we were wise beyond our years.
38:03And I think it's important to remember, they didn't have a crystal ball, but they did hope that we evolve
38:08and adapt with the nation more than we have.
38:11And I think one of the things that they were able to hold that we're not always able to do
38:15is this idea that complexity is not a liability.
38:19They could disagree on everything, but come together to agree on the nation.
38:23And I think that is maybe the difference between today and 1976, is there was more bipartisan community as far
38:33as in Congress and reaching across the aisle.
38:35Everyone really wanted this to be a great anniversary, and I think we're not feeling that cohesiveness, but I think
38:41we could.
38:42And I think on a local level, people are feeling it more than we see.
38:46I'll just add, I think back then we had smarter leaders and now victims to social media and scoring points
38:52that are just so cheap and political.
38:54Douglas, I want to give you the last word here.
38:56One of my favorite people in America, one of my favorite Americans really is Bruce Springsteen.
39:00And Bruce Springsteen often talks about the American dream and the American reality and the distance between the two.
39:07And then all that rolls into what the promise of the country is.
39:11At 250, is the American dream still alive?
39:14And how do we play that against what the American reality is?
39:17Well, it depends what one's American dream is.
39:20You know, I've thought about this a lot recently, and I think it's a lot to do with despair of
39:25a generation on home ownership.
39:27Can you really get a house or a car?
39:30How are you going to, you know, the affordability issues?
39:34And they weigh heavily.
39:35People aren't quite sure about that.
39:37And also, whatever we say about 1976, there was a kind of sub-narrative that, hey, we endured Watergate.
39:45The Constitution held up.
39:47And now a lot of people are worried that our founding documents, particularly the Constitution, on the issue of presidential
39:53power in particular, is working against the national benefit.
39:58And no more maximalist presidents.
40:01And so we're in a bit of a hole right now.
40:04But it's happy Fourth of July.
40:06Celebrate it.
40:07Blow up fireworks.
40:08And better days are yet to come.
40:10And nobody's better than Bruce Springsteen.
40:12Amen to that.
40:14And I agree.
40:14I think that American promise is what ultimately carries us through in very difficult times.
40:20And we've been here before.
40:22We just came upon the anniversary of Gettysburg, which was the largest single loss of American life in one day.
40:29And the heroes that came out of that ultimately led us down the road.
40:32People like Joshua Chamberlain in Maine, who was someone who believed to unite together after all those years and was
40:39very instrumental in reaching across the aisle and trying to move forward with a sense of healing.
40:43So hopefully we can come back to those types of times.
40:46Doug Brinkley, Alexis Coe, I'm such a history nerd.
40:49It was such an honor to have you guys on the day before the Fourth of July.
40:53This will top my week.
40:54This will top my month.
40:55I really appreciate it.
40:56Thanks so much for being on here.
40:57Up next, I'll talk to Jen Psaki about the other celebration captivating people across the nation today.
41:04Don't miss it.
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