After a series of jobs in marketing and media during her first decade after college, Justine Lee was motivated by Donald Trump's election to augment her career. She created Make America Dinner Again based on this simple premise: Gathering politically diverse strangers for good food and guided conversation about hot-button issues could improve listening skills and enhance cross-ideology understanding — and as a result make a small but meaningful dent in the polarized partisanship at the core of our democracy's challenges. Thousands of dinner participants and almost four years later, there are chapters in a dozen cities. Lee runs the operation in New York while working as an audience development consultant. Her answers have been edited for clarity and length.
What's the tweet-length description of your organization?
We do not aim to change minds, but to help people grow by sharing stories and learning from one another. There are many avenues to protest, donate, fight and be heard; our gatherings are an avenue to listen.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
This will age me, but the first I remember is voting in Pennsylvania's 2008 Democratic presidential primary during senior year at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. I voted for Barack Obama even though my friends were for Hillary Clinton. I was drawn to Obama's backstory, intelligence and confidence, his ability to speak clearly and passionately, and his capacity to capture hope. He was the underdog at that point in the race and that appealed to me, too.
What was your biggest professional triumph?
If it has to be one moment, then when one of our earliest dinners was featured on NPR. As a result, we heard from hundreds of people across the country interested in hosting their own dinners — participating and collaborating with us. That moment planted a seed with a big audience that respectful dialogue about politics is possible. But the real triumph has been in the journey. I take pride in growing from our first meal in San Francisco to hundreds across the country, and in partnership with one of my closest friends. We've created and nurtured a community that exists against many odds.
And your most disappointing setback?
Not being able to find a publisher for a MADA book to be written with co-creator Tria Chang. We were eager to tell the story of our bridging work through vignettes about our dinner guests. We also liked the idea of having a book as an artifact to memorialize our work in the context of the political moment. It was disappointing that publishers passed on it, but writing the proposal did help us take stock of our progress and "assets," refine our vision — and get a glimpse into the world of publishing.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
My Taiwanese immigrant parents came to the U.S. for graduate school. They lived off small stipends, learned English in between classes, faced discrimination — and generally struggled to find their place and make sense of a new culture and environment. With hard work, good timing, favorable immigration policy and a good economy, they were able to build a comfortable life for me and my brother. Through their example and guidance, they instilled in me tenacity and the practice of gratitude. I learned from them the ability to not be discouraged by rejection, recession or moments of self-doubt. They taught me life might not work out the way you planned or wanted, in small and big ways, but there is always something to be thankful for and it's important to honor that.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
This quote from Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist, linguist and popular science author: "We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naive to work toward a better one."
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.
It's called It Takes Two to Taro and it's based on one of my favorite root vegetables, which is often used in Asian cooking and desserts. This is cheesy, but taro's light purple color is a blend of red and blue, and that represents my group's spirit of bridging divides.
What's your favorite political movie or TV show?
For laughs, "Veep." I've heard it paints a more accurate picture of politics than "House of Cards," which I also enjoyed. These days, I've been listening to "The Weeds," the Vox policy and politics podcast. It truly gets into the weeds. And I find the banter, and the sometimes long-winded explanations full of details, comforting and illuminating.
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
Scroll through Twitter! It's a bad habit.
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
I rarely read all the dozens of extracurricular articles open on my browser. At the end of each week, I "clear" my tabs by bookmarking them with the intention to get to them at "another time."
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.