#432 — The Undoing of America

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with David French about Trump’s assault on American democracy. They discuss Trump’s persecution of political opponents, abuse of the pardon power, Congress’s ineffectiveness, David’s proposed change to Article II of the Constitution, whether democracy in the U.S. has passed the point of no return, the future of election integrity, Trump’s threats against Elon Musk, the weaponization of ICE, the dangers of deploying the National Guard in American cities, white evangelical support for Trump, Republican infighting and why only Trump can hold the MAGA coalition together, Trump’s unique political talents, the prospect of him remaining in power beyond two terms, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe
0:21.9	at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely
0:27.3	through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider
0:31.7	becoming one. I am here with David French. David, thanks for joining me again. Thanks so much for having me back. I appreciate it.
0:42.1	Yes, great to see you. I'm a big fan of your writing. Remind people where they can read you online.
0:47.2	New York Times. I have two, I have a newsletter and a column every week at the Times and then also
0:52.9	podcasts pretty regularly. So just go to the New York Times and there I'll be. Do you publish anywhere else, are you exclusive for the Times now?
1:00.4	All my written work is at the Times. I'm also on a, I have a podcast called Advisory Opinions that I do with Sarah Iskert. And that is covering the law in the Constitution, basically exclusively with a little
1:13.0	bit of free, like, dating advice for lawyers sprinkled in there as well.
1:17.7	Well, we're not going to cover the dating advice, but we will talk about the law a little bit.
1:22.2	Let's start with your big picture experience of the last seven some odd months, how has the second Trump
1:31.0	term struck you? I would classify it as an assault on our Republican form of government
1:38.7	is one way to put it. If you're thinking about the American system and the American form of government,
1:46.7	one of the things that's really important is you sort of break down the two foundings of America,
1:51.4	the first founding, the 17, you know, running from 1776 and the declaration through the
1:56.8	Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And then the second founding is the Civil War and the Civil War amendments.
2:03.2	The fundamental aim of the first founding was establishing this Republican form of government. No monarchs,
2:09.4	no centralized power under one person. This is really fundamentally the entire object of that first
2:16.3	founding is establishing this Republican form of government. And what we've
2:19.5	seen is in the last seven months is what we've seen as an escalating attack on that Republican form of
2:26.2	government. This is something that's been happening for a while in the sense that the presidency has
2:30.5	continued to just accumulate more and more power over time, but it is now gotten to a point
	...

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