Podcast: Successful conversations across difficult divides

With Trump’s return to the White House, we once again bear daily witness to a spectacle that could be described as entertaining, were it only a TV series. But Trump’s unprecedented assault on our democratic norms and institutions is not only very real but represents the gravest peril our democratic republic has confronted in the last 80 years.

Trump’s gradual consolidation of power and authoritarian proclivities, reminiscent of an earlier era, are very frightening on their own account. But it is his uncanny ability to control the narrative that empowers him to shred our nation’s fabric while proceeding with impunity. His actions not only threaten the very republic that he now leads but overturn the entire post-WWII world order, which is now in chaos. Trump has ostensibly cast aside the governing principle with the U.N. Charter of Sovereignty. By suggesting on multiple occasions that the U.S. will “get Greenland one way or another,” and that Canada might become our 51st state, our neighbor to the north is now developing plans to protect itself from what it views as the enemy across the border.