00:00Well, it brings to mind this erosion of trust, and it's not just foreign countries' trust in
00:06America. It's also our own trust in ourselves. There's a new poll from APNORC that shows more
00:11Americans have stopped believing in the government. Public trust in federal government information
00:15about inflation and cost of living is now 18 percent from 26 percent in 2024. Trust in
00:21information about the labor market down to 15 percent. Trust in elections and politics down to
00:2613 percent. Can government or our institutions rebuild or repair that trust, Richard? First of
00:33all, it's really depressing to hear statistics like that. That's kind of what you get when politicians
00:39continually tear down the government, raise questions about the legitimacy of our elections.
00:44When we've looked at it, take the 2020 elections, we looked at it, what, at 60 court cases, there was
00:49nothing there. When you have people talking about the deep state as though the government, the tens
00:54of millions of Americans who work for the government are somehow something else. No,
00:57they're us. They're our wives, our husbands, our children, our neighbors. And we want the best and
01:03brightest to go into government. We need to trust our country, our government, because we're so
01:08affected by its decisions, what it does and doesn't do. Look, it's going to take a few things. It's going
01:13to take leadership that stops tearing us down. That would help from the top, but also from the bottom.
01:19We need to, for example, have civics taught in our schools. You should not be able to get
01:23a high school or college degree, I would argue, without understanding the basics of democracy,
01:28the relationships between this country and its individual citizens, your rights,
01:32but also your obligations. What do you owe this country? We want more people to do public service,
01:36whether it's military or civilian, international or domestic. We have to rebuild the bonds that made
01:42this country so special. So when de Tocqueville came over here, what, 200, 150 years ago, he looked
01:48at America and he said, wow, this is a country that works together, that's unified. Again, here we are,
01:529-11. What happened after 9-11? Unity. We came together. What did President Bush do? He went to the
01:59mosque in Washington and said, we are all Americans, whatever our religion, however we dress, we have to
02:05be there for one another. We need to hear a little bit more of that.
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