Heather Cox Richardson

You know, what's happened to the United States is heart-wrenching over the last 40 years at least.

Maybe in part because we have been so powerful, it's enabled us to get away with all kinds of crap because, you know, we didn't have to pay taxes.

We could simply borrow.

We didn't have to worry about our safety because we were the United States.

What we are seeing happen to us and our role in the world is heart-wrenching for those of us who remember a period in which we were really a force for good or at least tried to be.

But maybe what we will see coming out of this is a fairer order around the world thanks to people in other countries.

A little hard to be thrown into the backwater yourselves, but, you know, we did it to ourselves.

Well, so first of all, I think it's important to realize that he was not just breaking the law in his first year in office.

He was acting – not acting unconstitutionally, although it was that too, both of those things.

He was acting as if there wasn't a constitution.

which is one of the things sort of extra constitutionally, which is one of the things that's been hard to chase down.

Because, you know, normally if somebody breaks the law, you say, OK, I'm going to bring in lawyers.

I'm going to sue you and we're going to get to the bottom of this.

But think about the Department of Government Efficiency, for example.

We still don't know who was in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency.

How do you sue anybody if you literally do not know who was in charge of it?

So there are many ways in which the way he undertook to undermine the Constitution, in fact, puts him in line with those autocrats who operate without any check by the people.

So I think it took a long time for people to get their heads around that and to figure out how to fight back against it.

And we can talk more about that.

But that library, I think, is really interesting, along with the arch and along with, you know.