Mark Halperin

on the fentanyl crisis and then here at home about AI and about taxes and spending and all the issues, housing, all the things that we face.

I ask people in politics and who are interested in the government and the country, how do we go forward like this together?

And then sometimes people want to say, well, let's talk about post-Trump.

Post-Trump's far away, number one.

Number two, I don't think there's much to say about post-Trump.

I'm not sure what that's going to look like.

But in the here and now, in 2026...

When I've asked people this week in both parties, and again, we're talking about pros and civilians, what are your hopes for the country?

What do you think we can get done?

How can we come together to grapple with AI, which continues to be such both a huge possibility for America and a peril in the minds of the many and in reality?

How do we deal with a unified position on China?

Should we go to war with Iran?

It's all freighted.

It's all colored by this deep, deep concern.

On the left, that Donald Trump is a menace, which for many of them is discombobulating to say the least.

And then on the right, a belief that all of the dynamics, all the factors that got Donald Trump elected the first time and then reelected the second time, that all those things are still out there, that there's still too much woke, that there's still too much government control, still too much government regulation.

I look at the things I said in 2016 and 2024, and I think I was so right, I was so aware of the division, and yet almost nothing in our society is doing anything to change it.

I try on two-way, I try here, I try to do my best to be an explainer, okay?

I can't afford doing what I do to have Trump derangement syndrome,

or to have the reality of Donald Trump as president give me a mental health problem.