Dr. Richardson is a prominent historian and professor at Boston College.
I think the whole video is worth watching, even if you are generally aware of what’s going on in this country. Some of the relevant points:
First Minute: HCR puts some of Trump’s outrageousness in historical context, in light of a Republican intellectual triumphalism—“We’re right and, guess what, you’re wrong!” We saw a lot of that beginning with Reagan’s election. I remember it well.
Third Minute: She doesn’t use the phrase, but others rightly call it “herrenvolk democracy”: any Democratic victory is inherently illegitimate.
Sixth Minute: A concerted effort to destroy rules-based order.
Eighth Minute: He thinks only people like himself should be in power.
Ninth Minute: He’s no compos mentis. It appears they’re giving him psychiatric drugs. It’s a behind-the-scenes effort to control him.
Eleventh Minute: No, J.D. Vance would not be worse.
Twelfth Minute: It’s extremely difficult to tell what’s happening in this Administration.
Fourteenth Minute: What appears to have just happened in Venezuela.
End of Seventeenth Minute: A work of genius by the Venezuelan regime and its allies.
As historians know, invasion of your country greatly helps to unify your people.
Nineteenth Minute: Trump’s oil fantasy.
Twenty-first Minute: Shrinkage from a global power to a regional power. Jettisoning the benefits of the rules-based international order.
Twenty-third Minute: Greenland.
Twenty-fourth Minute: A fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of American power.
Twenty-sixth Minute: Russia gets Ukraine, we get Venezuela. Sort of like the eve of World War I, but this time with nuclear weapons.
Twenty-seventh Minute: Oil is the technology of the past. The future lies in semi-conductors. We’re giving Xi permission to take over Taiwan—which makes 60% of the world’s semi-conductors. And Trump doesn’t understand this.
Twenty-eighth Minute: Destruction of the rules-based international order. A demented president, no longer operating in reality. Magical thinking is a hallmark of this moment.
Twenty-ninth Minute: Don’t follow grandpa down this road. Time to speak up.
Facing MAGA 