Good day, Thomas Jefferson hour podcast listeners and welcome to this week's edition of the Thomas Jefferson hour as always. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for supporting the show this week. I was I was nowhere to be found.

I was off doing a presentation and educational presentation, but you and Lindsay persevered. You soldiered on and gave us a pretty interesting conversation.

Well, if you'd been there, of course, and we missed you, you would have said, now wait a minute at the two of you back down. Let's keep it civil here.

We didn't disagree much, although we disagreed a little, but we took seriously the idea of what we would say to President Biden had we been called in with other historians much more eminent than I am certainly to give him advice.

So if you know I've had some encounters with presidents in the course of my life and Supreme Court justices and governors and legislators and you know these are rare opportunities where you get to speak your mind.

So I ask everyone who listens to this program, what would you have said to President Biden or for that matter, President Reagan or Trump or Clinton or Bush had you been called in at some point to assess the mood of the country.

And to try to help us understand how history can enlighten us or provide clarification or provide context for whatever situation the country happens to find itself in at that moment.

It was a really interesting experiment. I think that we should go to the show because I think it speaks for itself, but I was very pleased to have this opportunity and you know I would be thrilled if a week or three weeks from now someone from the White House called said, hey, would you would you and Lindsey come on over. We'll serve you some lobster bisque.

Very good. So we go to that conversation now, sir. Let's do and thanks everyone for supporting the program. Go to Jefferson Hour dot com for details on a range of subjects.

Good day citizens and welcome to this week's edition of this Thomas Jefferson Hour. This week is special one-on-one conversation between Clay Jenkinson and Lindsey Chervinsky.

I was away in the two of you talked and you picked a subject which I found pretty interesting and that was based around the current president's request for contemporary historians to come in and meet with him. That's kind of unusual, isn't it?

It is a little bit some presidents do and others don't. I'm told the president Trump, for example, never invited a historian of any sort to come talk with him during his four years as president, but Barack Obama did some of this and Bill Clinton even more and Joe Biden.

I think facing a national crisis that none of his predecessors faced, which is the future and survival of the American constitutional system.

Has been consulting John Meacham, the distinguished historian who is also Jefferson biographer and others, including Doris Kern's good one throughout his first two years as president, but in this case, he called in a number of historians together to the White House as a kind of a seminar on how things stand in 2022.

And whether we are likely to survive this strange crisis we find ourselves in.

Well, you had some things to say both to our current president and some things to say about our previous president. Should we go to the conversation now, sir?

We should, David, but just this brief disclaimer, Lindsey and I decided we would take this very seriously. In other words, what if we had been called to the White House to state our views?

And I think that the crisis that we're in is so acute that this is a time for people to speak with real candor.

And so some of our viewers may disagree with what we say, but it's not what we say that's so important. It's the idea of all of us trying to process this moment in American history.

So with that preface, let's listen to part of the conversation.

Very good, sir. Hello, everyone. I'm Clay Jenkins and welcome to the special edition of the Thomas Jefferson are listening to America today.

A conversation with our good friend, Dr. Lindsey Turvinsky, an American historian, Lindsey.

...