Assembly Required: Rachel Maddow on Winning America’s Fight Against Fascism
What A Day
What A Day
4.8 • 166 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, the What A Day team is off. But we’re excited to bring you a recent episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.
In the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, we’ve watched Republicans erode American democracy with alarming speed. While this political moment may feel unprecedented, it isn’t new. America has dealt its share of far-right movements, fascist provocateurs, and anti-democratic threats. But time and again, heroes have risen to meet those moments. In this episode, Stacey unpacks how we’ve fought fascism before – and won. She’s joined by the host of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.
Subscribe to Assembly Required wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
Learn & Do More:
- Be Curious: History can be an extremely useful tool to help us navigate the present. Pick up Rachel Maddow’s book Prequel — now available in paperback anywhere books are sold. Also pick up the Assembly Required Recommended Read: The Dictator’s Learning Curve by William Dobson.
- Solve problems: The best thing we can do right now is show up and use our voices. There are two key ways to do this. First: call your representatives! Democrat, Republican, Independent — it doesn’t matter. Tell them where you stand and why it matters. Second: get involved locally. Join a protest, volunteer to support a community that is particularly vulnerable right now, donate to a grassroots group in your area. Change starts with showing up, so let’s get to work.
- Do Good: Not only has Trump waged a war on books, he’s waged a war on independent businesses. So if you’re interested in reading any of the books I mentioned today, or want to pick up our weekly recommended reading, purchase them at a local bookstore. If there isn’t a local option near you, or you just prefer the convenience of online shopping, check out small businesses that operate online — like Octavia’s Bookshelf.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Jane here. The What a Day team is off today, but we're leaving you with something worth your time. |
| 0:04.9 | It's an episode of Assembly Required, hosted by the one and only Stacey Abrams. |
| 0:09.4 | In this episode, Stacey teams up with Rachel Maddow to break down the first 100 days of Trump's return |
| 0:14.1 | and how history shows we've beaten back fascism before. From past resistance to present threats, |
| 0:19.5 | this is your crash course in how democracy |
| 0:21.2 | survives when people rise up to defend it. It's a conversation about how change actually happens |
| 0:25.8 | in this country and how to be a part of it, because I think that nothing is more important than |
| 0:30.6 | knowing how you can make something better, not just how bad something already is. If you love |
| 0:36.4 | the show as much as I do, make sure to subscribe |
| 0:38.5 | to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:50.8 | This is Stacey Abrams with Assembly Required. |
| 1:00.5 | Last week marked 100 days of Republican control of the United States government. |
| 1:13.6 | And in that 100 days, we have witnessed the erosion of not simply democratic norms, but a nearly uninterrupted rise of contempt for everything we once celebrated about our nation. We have a president who willfully ignores human rights and civil rights, while he profits from schemes that would make a conman blush. |
| 1:22.6 | We have a complicit Congress that has abandoned its basic obligations to serve the people rather than accrue |
| 1:30.3 | their own power. We have a judiciary that is grappling with the fruits of its own permissiveness, |
| 1:37.5 | although recent decisions do show some sign of patriotic intent. But in the midst of counting |
| 1:43.7 | up the ways Republicans have made our nation |
| 1:46.0 | weaker, our people more vulnerable, and our values more tenuous. We here at Assembly Required |
| 1:53.6 | have tried to do a little bit more than just catalog all the wrong. We've attempted to |
| 1:58.8 | deconstruct the attacks and demystify the processes that they're |
| 2:03.2 | using so that we can navigate this moment together and so we can imagine what might be next, |
| 2:09.7 | what we can build next. One of the most effective ways to survive where we are, though, to build |
... |
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