Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics

and the Trump presidency for the New Spectator USA website.

I'm joined today by Thomas Frank, who is a great American writer of the left.

He's the author of many books.

Most famously, What's the Matter with Kansas?

And most recently, rendezvous with oblivion.

And we're going to be asking, are the Democrats really becoming that radical?

Well, it's not just them.

You saw in the State of the Union speech the other night.

By the way, hey, Freddie, how are you doing?

Very well.

Very well, indeed.

If you watch the State of the Union, Trump himself went out of his way to take a swipe at what he called socialism.

And the cameras, as he was doing this, and by the way, and was greeted with a mighty

cheer from the Republican part of the house, as he was doing it, the camera's all focused

on Bernie Sanders, you know, looking really...

Glum.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry, he looked, what's word nonplussed? Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, he looked, what's the word nonplussed? Yeah, yeah. And,

and yeah, I guess the idea is supposed to be that we are heading into this period of extreme

radicalism. Well, it's hard to take because they've cried Wolf so many times.

You know, you go back and look at your, you know, sort of right-wing culture going back to the 1980s.

...