Fareed Zakaria

And so what leaves me thinking is, is about half the country really okay with illiberal democracy, with the idea that, you know, it's okay to abuse individual rights, minority rights, separation of powers, all that?

And what does that mean for the future of democracy if half the country doesn't really believe in liberal democracy?

And to be fair, the left has also done this sometimes.

Of course, but not nearly to the extent and never to this.

Yeah, there's no both sides-ism, but it always worried me when Biden would do these student loan waivers using executive power.

That stuff, just because you want the outcome,

You cannot want the outcome so badly that you violate the processes of liberal democracy.

That's the whole point of liberalism and liberal democracy, which is the process is very important.

You don't get to just make your policy happen any which way.

And what Trump is showing you is the real cost of that.

You know, what your point makes me think about is the degree to which maybe during the Cold War, American politics was constrained, was disciplined by the reality of the ideological contest between the Soviet Union, the need for America to be this beacon of freedom and democracy.

There was a sense in which...

Hubert Humphrey once said this, that he thought the reason for the civil rights movement was there was a foreign policy reason.

We had to show the communist world that America was in fact the shining city on the hill.

And since then, I think what's happened is honestly, we have no competition.

We've become so powerful.

It's exactly the opposite of the MAGA narrative.

We have no check, no constraints.

I think at some level, like the power has gone to our heads and the power has gone particularly to somebody like Trump's head.

Look at the way he treats other countries, right?