David Frum

You know, the analogy I should have chosen was not lustration after 1989.

It's reconstruction.

I mean, that's the American analogy where, you know, the traditional governing elite of half of one of the great parties of much of the country

committed itself to something not just in the defense of slavery, but to slavery plus fortified and amplified by treason.

And until that generation has spent its 40 years in the wilderness and a new generation has grown up and the politics of the country have changed and their victims have been brought into the political system, not just their disaffected followers, but also their victims.

then you're not going to have true stability again.

And that calls for, you know, so I think like, what are they going to be the equivalents of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments that go into place to make sure not just that we put Trumpism behind, but so it really can't happen again.

And so the people who got rich and powerful and who will remain rich and powerful don't use that wealth and power to attack American institutions in the way that the Trump people did in the first year of the second term.

And it looks like we got three more years to go.

That history is not going to repeat itself because it took the Great Depression to discredit high tariffs.

It took the Holocaust to discredit anti-Semitism.

And it took Pearl Harbor and then the subsequent American triumph in two oceans and the complete collapse of fascist ideas in the fascist countries and the repudiations by the fascist countries themselves of their previous fascism.

and that string of things is very so dramatic it's very unlikely to repeat so it's much more likely to happen that the trump people are going to have a bad election or two there will be some of the more selfish materialistic plutocrats will say you know that we overdid some things

We overdid something.

We shouldn't have shot that woman in Minneapolis.

We shouldn't have done the tariffs so much.

And, you know, if you want to get rich out of politics, you should just have this deferred gratification to wait until you've left office and then we'll make you rich.

Don't do it while you're in office.

That's just just impulsive.

And maybe less denigration of women and other minorities.