In this episode of Democracy Works from The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the team discusses democracy’s many doomsayers and how to heed their warnings for the future without falling into despair.
Podcast: On democracy's doomsayers
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U.S. president Donald Trump delivers remarks at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D..C on Nov. 19, 2025.
(Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images/TCA)
Can MAGA go any lower defending Donald Trump?
Dec 01, 2025
I remember it well. It was Oct. 7, 2016, a Friday. That afternoon The Washington Post dropped a bombshell, the perfect October surprise, just a month before the presidential election.
Earlier in the week, Hillary Clinton had been hammering Donald Trump on the news that he may not have paid taxes for 18 years.
The vice presidential candidates, Sen. Tim Kaine and Gov. Mike Pence, had had a feisty debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
It had already been a campaign full of crazy turns and fireworks, and it was about to get even crazier.
“Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation About Women in 2005.”
In a never-heard-before recording from an “Access Hollywood” interview, Trump describes how he seduces women as a celebrity to host Billy Bush: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … grab ‘em by the p*ssy. You can do anything.”
It was mayhem after that. Was this the end of Trump’s candidacy? Dozens of Republican lawmakers called for him to drop out. The topic took up a considerable amount of attention at the next presidential debate, just two days later. Professional coaches, offended by Trump’s excuse that it was merely “locker room talk,” condemned the statement.
But while the tape certainly put Trump on defense, as we all know, the revelation that the Republican nominee for president admitted to sexually assaulting women did not derail his candidacy.
For those of us covering this, it was a low point. I remember sitting across from Jake Tapper at CNN, a friend and colleague and someone I admire and respect, and having to talk about this sordid, lewd, crass, gross comments, and the sordid, lewd, crass, gross man who said them.
I felt embarrassed — I couldn’t believe that this is what we were talking about. Nowhere in my journalism career did I think I’d be discussing a presidential candidate who bragged about grabbing a woman’s genitalia.
Flash forward about nine years, and it feels like we’re in a similar place, having crossed yet another unfortunate Rubicon into the moral abyss.
Two of the major story lines in politics today involve MAGA influencers with massive platforms, who are inexplicably white-washing white supremacy and pedophilia.
If you haven’t heard, Tucker Carlson has devolved into a conspiracy-theory spouting, despot-defending, neo-Nazi protecting weirdo. He recently interviewed Nick Fuentes, a self-proclaimed Hitler lover and Holocaust denier who has said some of the most vile and disgusting things I’ve ever heard any person say ever. Carlson didn’t press Nick on his hideous ideas, but instead gave him a very friendly interview where the implied takeaway was, “This neo-Nazi’s not so bad!”
The fawning conversation sparked an internecine battle on the right over whether laundering the reputations of white supremacists is a good idea. Believe it or not, many are defending it. Including the president.
Enter Megyn Kelly, another Fox News washout who’s found a new pool of paid subscribers to rile up, and using all the predictable foils: Bad Bunny, Zohran Mamdani, Michelle Obama, and Meghan Markle.
In addition to defending Carlson, she’s also — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — white-washing Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, too, questioning whether his preference for 15-year-old girls or “barely legal types” actually made him a pedophile.
Referring to someone who was “very close to this case,” she said “Epstein, according to his individual, was not a pedophile.”
“He wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds,” she said. “But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passer-by.”
Of course, 15 isn’t “barely legal,” it’s clearly illegal. But what point is she making in doing pedophile math other than a morally bankrupt one — that Epstein, and by extension Trump, isn’t so bad because he didn’t sexually abuse or traffic an 8-year-old girl?
The decision to protect neo-Nazis and pedophiles, just because it might benefit Trump in some way, is a precipice I never thought I’d see so-called conservatives walk up to. And yet, here they are, giddily leaping off of it.
Trump ushered in so many ugly elements, from white supremacy to rank misogyny. And the MAGA influencers who hitched their wagons to his star have to out-gross each other to prove their loyalty and keep their subscribers sufficiently radicalized.
For these unconscionable ghouls and sell-outs, nowhere is too low. Seriously, if they’re able to normalize neo-Nazis and pedophilia, what else is left?
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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U.S. president Donald Trump delivers remarks at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D..C on Nov. 19, 2025.
(Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images/TCA)
Can MAGA go any lower defending Donald Trump?
Dec 01, 2025
I remember it well. It was Oct. 7, 2016, a Friday. That afternoon The Washington Post dropped a bombshell, the perfect October surprise, just a month before the presidential election.
Earlier in the week, Hillary Clinton had been hammering Donald Trump on the news that he may not have paid taxes for 18 years.
The vice presidential candidates, Sen. Tim Kaine and Gov. Mike Pence, had had a feisty debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
It had already been a campaign full of crazy turns and fireworks, and it was about to get even crazier.
“Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation About Women in 2005.”
In a never-heard-before recording from an “Access Hollywood” interview, Trump describes how he seduces women as a celebrity to host Billy Bush: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … grab ‘em by the p*ssy. You can do anything.”
It was mayhem after that. Was this the end of Trump’s candidacy? Dozens of Republican lawmakers called for him to drop out. The topic took up a considerable amount of attention at the next presidential debate, just two days later. Professional coaches, offended by Trump’s excuse that it was merely “locker room talk,” condemned the statement.
But while the tape certainly put Trump on defense, as we all know, the revelation that the Republican nominee for president admitted to sexually assaulting women did not derail his candidacy.
For those of us covering this, it was a low point. I remember sitting across from Jake Tapper at CNN, a friend and colleague and someone I admire and respect, and having to talk about this sordid, lewd, crass, gross comments, and the sordid, lewd, crass, gross man who said them.
I felt embarrassed — I couldn’t believe that this is what we were talking about. Nowhere in my journalism career did I think I’d be discussing a presidential candidate who bragged about grabbing a woman’s genitalia.
Flash forward about nine years, and it feels like we’re in a similar place, having crossed yet another unfortunate Rubicon into the moral abyss.
Two of the major story lines in politics today involve MAGA influencers with massive platforms, who are inexplicably white-washing white supremacy and pedophilia.
If you haven’t heard, Tucker Carlson has devolved into a conspiracy-theory spouting, despot-defending, neo-Nazi protecting weirdo. He recently interviewed Nick Fuentes, a self-proclaimed Hitler lover and Holocaust denier who has said some of the most vile and disgusting things I’ve ever heard any person say ever. Carlson didn’t press Nick on his hideous ideas, but instead gave him a very friendly interview where the implied takeaway was, “This neo-Nazi’s not so bad!”
The fawning conversation sparked an internecine battle on the right over whether laundering the reputations of white supremacists is a good idea. Believe it or not, many are defending it. Including the president.
Enter Megyn Kelly, another Fox News washout who’s found a new pool of paid subscribers to rile up, and using all the predictable foils: Bad Bunny, Zohran Mamdani, Michelle Obama, and Meghan Markle.
In addition to defending Carlson, she’s also — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — white-washing Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, too, questioning whether his preference for 15-year-old girls or “barely legal types” actually made him a pedophile.
Referring to someone who was “very close to this case,” she said “Epstein, according to his individual, was not a pedophile.”
“He wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds,” she said. “But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passer-by.”
Of course, 15 isn’t “barely legal,” it’s clearly illegal. But what point is she making in doing pedophile math other than a morally bankrupt one — that Epstein, and by extension Trump, isn’t so bad because he didn’t sexually abuse or traffic an 8-year-old girl?
The decision to protect neo-Nazis and pedophiles, just because it might benefit Trump in some way, is a precipice I never thought I’d see so-called conservatives walk up to. And yet, here they are, giddily leaping off of it.
Trump ushered in so many ugly elements, from white supremacy to rank misogyny. And the MAGA influencers who hitched their wagons to his star have to out-gross each other to prove their loyalty and keep their subscribers sufficiently radicalized.
For these unconscionable ghouls and sell-outs, nowhere is too low. Seriously, if they’re able to normalize neo-Nazis and pedophilia, what else is left?
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on August 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Getty Images)
Leaked ‘wish list’ for peace in Russia-Ukraine war is hardly America First
Nov 28, 2025
Last week, a 28-point “peace plan” for the Russia-Ukraine war surfaced. It was apparently fleshed out in Miami over cocktails by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Witkoff’s Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev.
Many critics immediately derided it as a “Russian wish-list.”
That was before we discovered that the version which was leaked – probably by Dmitriev – had literally been poorly translated from Russian. In a closed-door session with senators, Secretary of State Marco Rubio even described it as a “wish-list for the Russians” and “not the administration’s plan.” On his way to Geneva for peace talks, Rubio scrambled to deny he ever said that.
But all of that is apparently moot now. What seems to have happened, amid all the chaos, is that Rubio had pried the Ukraine portfolio away from Witkoff. By Tuesday, Rubio revealed there is a whole new plan anyway.
This is good news, because the original plan wasn’t in America’s best interest.
I believe American foreign policy should put America first. But I don’t subscribe to “America First” foreign policy, because that’s a label slapped on anything Trump wants, whether it’s in his personal interest or the country’s.
People who embrace the slogan “America First” generally believe that helping Ukraine isn’t in America’s interest. I think they’re wrong.
Because Vladimir Putin’s Russia is America’s enemy.
This isn’t nearly as controversial as you might think if you only get foreign policy analysis from MAGA influencers on social media. Russia allies itself with our adversaries, in China, the Americas and the Middle East. This policy is deeply rooted in Russian history and in President Putin’s nostalgia for Russian “greatness.” But if it matters, there’s also a doctrine behind it, the Primakov Doctrine, which holds that Russia should do everything it can to constrain and contain America and NATO.
Russia has been mucking about in the internal affairs of the U.S. and its allies for nearly a century. In recent years it allegedly tampered with electricity grids, elections and cyber systems. It funded psyop campaigns– using useful idiot influencers and willing volunteers alike – to pump racism, antisemitism and sinister conspiracy theories into domestic politics here and abroad. “The Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area,” according to NATO.
If you’re of a more idealistic bent, Russia is also a murderous authoritarian regime that oppresses its own people and visits heinous war crimes on its neighbors.
In short: They’re the bad guys.
That’s why there’s a compelling moral argument for helping Ukraine resist a lawless and brutal invasion that has taken perhaps a million lives and resulted in the kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to be brainwashed. Our national honor is on the line as well, given that America encouraged Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for “security assurances” in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Legally, assurances aren’t “guarantees,” but they’re not nothing either.
Put morality and national honor aside. A cold-eyed, America-First strategist might argue that the slaughter of Ukrainian troops – and civilians – is in our interest if it comes at the cost of bleeding Russia’s military, economy and global prestige.
No, we shouldn’t send American troops to fight Russia. That is a strawman raised by opponents of helping Ukraine at all. But weapons? Intelligence? Why not? Many of NATO’s weapons were built for the purpose of fighting Russia. If Ukraine can use them to that end, it’s the best of both worlds. This leaves out that we can – and do – sell many of these weapons, either to Ukraine or our European allies who then transfer them.
And it’s been working. Russia didn’t have the bandwidth to save its puppet regime in Syria. It didn’t – couldn’t – ride to the rescue of Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah either. The Russian economy is a mess, with near double-digit inflation despite insanely high interest rates.
And yet, this original “peace deal” would rescue Russia, ceding it territory, including all of the Donbas, that it hasn’t been able to win militarily. It would provide Russia sanctions relief, invite it back into the G8 and hobble Ukraine militarily and politically. It describes America as a “mediator” between Russia and NATO, despite the fact that NATO is an alliance created and led by America. There is no greater strategic goal for Russia than dividing America from her NATO allies. All of this in exchange for the “expectation” that Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine again later.
Hopefully, Rubio has come up with something more in America’s interest, and less in Russia’s.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, September 11, 2025 in New York City.
(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Trump's Clemency for Giuliani et al is Another Effort to Whitewash History and Damage Democracy
Nov 23, 2025
In the earliest days of the Republic, Alexander Hamilton defended giving the president the exclusive authority to grant pardons and reprieves against the charge that doing so would concentrate too much power in one person’s hands. Reading the news of President Trump’s latest use of that authority to reward his motley crew of election deniers and misfit lawyers, I was taken back to what Hamilton wrote in 1788.
He argued that “The principal argument for reposing the power of pardoning in this case to the Chief Magistrate is this: in seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a well- timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth; and which, if suffered to pass unimproved, it may never be possible afterwards to recall.”
“The dilatory process of convening the legislature, or one of its branches,” Hamilton continued, “for the purpose of obtaining its sanction to the measure, would frequently be the occasion of letting slip the golden opportunity.”
Never did Hamilton imagine that the Chief Magistrate would one day be the insurrectionist-in-chief and that he would use the clemency power to spare his fellow insurrectionists, people like Rudy Guiliani, Trump’s lawyer during the 2020 election fight; Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff; Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman who played key roles in concocting and carrying out the scheme to keep Trump in power.
The president also granted clemency to “all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting activities, participation in or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of presidential electors … as well for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 presidential election.”
MSNBC’s Hayes Brown gets it right when he says, “Trump has been moving to rewrite history, in effect declaring that there was nothing shady at all about his plotting.”
There is little citizens can do to prevent the president from abusing his clemency power. But it is the responsibility of everyone who values constitutional order to resist this effort to rewrite history. That means making sure that schools, libraries, and museums accurately convey the truth about what happened when the president and his allies conspired to overturn an election.
Before looking at Trump’s latest gambit to whitewash history and turn the story of an insurrection into a glorious affirmation of democracy, let me say more about Hamilton’s thoughts about the pardon power.
Hamilton had the difficult job of convincing his countrymen that it was better to give the president the prerogative that had heretofore been vested in monarchs instead of in the legislature or a council of wise people. As he argued, “Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed. The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.”
Hamilton believed that giving the pardon power to a single person would encourage a “sense of responsibility” in its use. He hoped that “The reflection that the fate of a fellow-creature depended on his sole fiat, would naturally inspire scrupulousness and caution…” in the president.
As smart as Hamilton was, I guess one cannot fault him for not anticipating that America would one day be led by someone like Donald Trump.
Having just lived through Shays Rebellion, an uprising in Massachusetts in response to a post-Revolutionary War debt crisis, Hamilton worried that treasonous sentiments in the populace would more likely be shared by the representatives of the people in Congress than by the president. He didn’t foresee a situation where a president like Trump would foster such sentiments in the people, as a way to hold onto power.
As the commentator, George Cassidy Payne notes, “Hamilton’s writings suggest that the pardon power should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances where the public interest is paramount.” It turned out that Hamilton did not think that George Washington’s first use of the pardon power in 1795, to spare participants in another domestic uprising, was one of those circumstances.
Hamilton’s hopes have informed the way others have understood the president’s clemency power. The Supreme Court has said that clemency is not a “private act of grace.” It is “part of the Constitutional scheme,” and should be used to further “the public welfare.”
Well, there is nothing about what the president did for Giuliani et al. that furthers “the public welfare,” despite protestations to the contrary. The pardons didn’t even offer much help to their recipients.
As the Washington Post explains, “(N)one of the more than 75 people listed has been charged with federal crimes, though several have been prosecuted in states including Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada for roles in the alleged scheme to submit fake electors during Congress’s ratification of the 2020 vote. As president, Trump has no authority to pardon people facing state-level charges.”
“Still,” the Post adds, “the clemency — granted to key figures who have faced years of scrutiny by local prosecutors, congressional committees and local bar associations — signaled Trump’s continued focus on relitigating his 2020 defeat and furthering false claims of widespread voter fraud in current elections.”
Recall the president’s earlier decision to pardon more than 1,500 people who participated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and you get a sense of Trump’s ambition to turn criminals into heroes while vilifying the Biden Administration. Karoline Leavitt, the president’s press secretary, made that clear when she said about those who received pardons, “These great Americans were persecuted and put through hell by the Biden Administration for challenging an election, which is the cornerstone of democracy….”
“Getting prosecuted for challenging results is something that happens in communist Venezuela, not the United States of America, and President Trump is putting an end to the Biden Regime’s communist tactics once and for all.”
In a statement accompanying the pardons, Edward Martin, who Trump appointed as the government’s Pardon Attorney in the Justice Department, expanded on Leavitt’s bogus claims. “For over 200 years, this nation held elections as our framers envisioned… whoever prevailed, citizens could be confident that their votes would count without dilution or diminishment.”
“This proud tradition died in 2020. For the first time in American history, partisan state and local officials relying on narrow exceptions for absentee voting and signature verification attempted to conduct a fully remote presidential election…. At the same time, biased media failed to accurately inform the American people of the unlawful actions taken to deprive our country of a free and fair election.”
Martin’s statement reads like a summary of President Trump’s greatest hits. It goes on for pages rehearsing baseless allegations of voting irregularity in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Mexico, and Nevada. It details the alleged failures of the Biden Justice Department to investigate fraud and misconduct in the 2020 election.
Martin defends the Trump campaign’s fake electors’ scheme, calling them by another name, “contingent electors.”
He argues that state-level prosecutions of the president’s co-conspirators are “Attempts by partisan state actors to shoehorn fanciful and concocted state law violations onto what are clearly federal constitutional obligations of the 2020 trump campaign.” Martin’s statement concludes that “a pardon recognizing the complete exoneration of the contingent electors and all who have been swept into this unjust vendetta against President Trump is appropriate and fully serves the interest of justice.”
The justice Martin speaks of is Trump-style justice. The president and his allies aim to utilize all the levers of the government, including pardons and the accompanying proclamations, to ensure that history will overlook the truth.
Such an effort has no place in a democracy. If citizens do their part, the president and his enablers will fail in their effort to portray what they did in 2020 as something other than an insurrection.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
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