Heather Cox Richardson

And there's a lot of things that we can do better.

And I think that people want us to do better and that we have the tools to do better if we are able to get past this moment and rework American democracy and another conversation.

But I'm fascinated by

The fact that Mamdani in New York, when I asked him, how are you going to do all this stuff you're talking about?

He said something that to me was like the little light bulb went off in a cartoon.

He said, Heather, the laws are already on the books.

We just have to enforce them.

And I was like, oh my God, he's right.

Well, and, you know, the playbook that he keeps replaying is just the strongman playbook.

And people keep saying, oh, he reads Adolf Hitler or whatever.

I'm like, no, he doesn't.

This is the way every strongman has operated forever.

And it's really quite boring, you know, in terms of playbook.

We know exactly what's going to happen.

But the playbook that we need to be following is how to break that cycle.

Right.

And, you know, part of it is speaking up, as you say, challenging him on every front, going after the people around him.

Why is Stephen Miller so powerful?

Why is Russell Vogt so powerful?

You know, we didn't elect them.