Most Thanksgiving tables will be loaded with turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. And perhaps some talk about the midterm elections, the next presidential campaign and other hot-button political issues.
You may be hesitant to engage on those topics, in hopes of preserving civility among your family and friends. But rather than keeping quiet, there are ways to join the conversation and still keep things civil. Leaders of the bridging community enthusiastically shared some tips.
James Coan, co-chair of the D.C. Alliance for Braver Angels: “If people want a way to remember to have a conversation, I recommend they keep the mnemonic SVL in mind – pronounced just like ‘civil.’ Tell your stories (S), relate to the other person's values (V), and closely listen (L).” (Based on a Village Square talk.)
Pearce Godwin, founder and CEO, Listen First Project: “Listen with curiosity. Speak from your own experience. Connect with respect. ... See the person across the table, not the position. Assume good intentions and extend grace. Prioritize your relationship over your differences.”
Liz Joyner, founder and president, The Village Square: “We can ask open-hearted questions of the people we share a meal with — especially those who are most deeply different from us. Poet John O'Donohue: ‘I always think that the question is like a lantern. It illuminates new landscapes and new areas as it moves.’ And we can leave the conversation just a touch more wise for the asking.”
Debilyn Molineaux, co-publisher, The Fulcrum: “Commit to the relationship first. Political winds will frequently change but your friends and family remain a constant in our lives.”
Erik Olsen, co-founder and treasurer, Common Ground Committee: “The center of Thanksgiving is gratitude. Be grateful for friends and family who you know are good and caring people, without regard to political or cultural differences. Express your gratitude with love and tolerance.”
Christy Vines, president and CEO, Ideos Institute: “When trying to navigate divisive issues (or people), remember that one of the most powerful weapons in your arsenal is the question ‘Why?’ This tiny word can transform even the thorniest of conversations as it helps you unpack the motivation or story behind someone's opinion or perspective, instantly increasing your empathic intelligence and, perhaps surprisingly, upping your partner's critical thinking on the issue or topic. Pro tip: When executed from a place of real curiosity, this practice also tends to de-escalate emotional or tension-filled conversations.”
Jillian Youngblood, executive director, Civic Genius: "I think it's fine not to have a perfectly peaceful Thanksgiving! I love a raucous Thanksgiving! What you don't want is interactions that put up walls and destroy relationships. Try this: Commit yourself in advance to engaging with the relative who drives you craziest. Sit down ready to draw them out and really understand what they're telling you – even if it's nuts. Engage with good will. Then – and this is the harder part – continue doing that for the next few months. Stay in touch. Build enough trust that they'll hear you out in the same way. Let your defenses down enough that you can offer each other critique without it exploding. Then see what happens next year."
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.