A Conversation with Steven Beschloss on Democracy and the Media
The Mary Trump Podcast
Mary Trump Media
4.9 • 846 Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My conversation with Steven Beschloss examines how the crisis facing American democracy is also a failure of journalism and institutions to name reality. We discuss how corporate media has protected power, hollowed out local reporting, and normalized authoritarian behavior, while independent and local journalists step in to fill the gap. We also look at the global consequences of democratic decline, including Donald’s performance at World Economic Forum in Davos, the unraveling of the post–World War II order, and why voices like Mark Carney matter right now. Finally, we talk about what real resistance looks like and why this moment is both dangerous and a call to action.
Steven Beschloss is an award-winning writer, journalist, editor, filmmaker and professor. He writes and publishes America, America, a popular Substack newsletter on politics and society, democracy and justice.
His articles and essays have been published by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Republic, Smithsonian, The Economist Intelligence Unit and many others.
Books by Beschloss include Adrift and The Gunman and His Mother: Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite Oswald and The Making of an Assassin.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Mary Trump podcast. Let's dive it. |
| 0:11.2 | Thank you so much for listening to this first part of my interview with journalist Steve |
| 0:16.4 | Beschloss, in which we talk about the failures of corporate media, the limitations of journalism |
| 0:22.8 | America right now, and what it is that gives Stephen Hope for the future. |
| 0:30.1 | It's really good to see you because I need some help figuring out what in the world is going on because, as you're probably |
| 0:42.2 | aware, it feels as bad as 2025 was. It feels like America has basically fell off a cliff on January 1st, 26. |
| 0:57.1 | Well, you know, it's interesting. |
| 0:58.2 | I mean, I actually was out of the country until like Friday night, the second of January. |
| 1:03.2 | Me too. |
| 1:03.9 | Right. |
| 1:04.5 | And the third, what was the third? |
| 1:06.2 | That was, you know, the morning when there was the invasion and attack of Venezuela. |
| 1:10.9 | Yep. And then that appalling, you know, the morning when there was the invasion and attack of Venezuela. Yep. |
| 1:11.2 | And then that appalling, you know, insane press conference where we learned, you know, |
| 1:16.8 | ostensibly what had happened and that Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth were now running Venezuela, |
| 1:24.9 | of course, later only to find that, you know, that Donald was, |
| 1:29.0 | was in fact the acting president of Venezuela. I mean, and it feels like since that Saturday, |
| 1:35.1 | it's just been nonstop. Yeah, it has. Well, it feels that way because it has. So I're a journalist, and I am, like many people, have been deeply concerned with the failures, especially of corporate media, to keep the people American people informed and basically lay out the facts instead of pretending that both sides have been |
| 2:04.4 | equal or equally truthful or equal in any way because I think I think that is clearly not at all |
| 2:13.1 | true anymore. Do you see any shifts like every once in a while, you know, the New York Times has put |
| 2:18.9 | out a couple of great pieces on the extent to which Donald and his useless family is enriching |
| 2:24.7 | themselves through the presidency, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, it feels like we're such, |
... |
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