Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast. This is an election year. Will Donald Trump be re-elected? What is going on with the Democrats? And has America gone even more crazy? We'll be discussing all of these things and more, more than once a week, because

we don't feel you have enough Americano in your life. And I have a special offer for Americano listeners.

If you want to subscribe to the Spectator's US edition, which is brilliant, by the way, I edit it,

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our special Americano offer. If you insert the code Americano in capital letters like Donald Trump

on Twitter, you will get 5% off. Please do so. I'm joined today by Frank Buckley, who is a Scalia law professor and author of

American Succession. And we're going to be asking if coronavirus could lead to America breaking apart.

Now, Frank, you've written a piece that's coming out quite soon in the spectator about how the virus is causing what you've

already written a book about, which is that America is on a path towards the states breaking up,

and that coronavirus, rather than bringing the country together, seems to be doing the opposite.

Is that a fair summary of what you're saying in the piece?

The idea is that while most people have not paid much attention

to the idea of secession,

there are groups that are beginning to talk about it

in places like California, and indeed I argued,

it's a lot easier to imagine and more likely to happen than anyone has really

believed or thought up to this point. And the book came out in January. We're in the midst of a

coronavirus crisis right now. So the question is, has anything changed? You might have thought, you might have hoped, that the epidemic would bring people closer together.

I mean, that's what happened after 9-11, after all.

There was a tremendous sense of unity in the country.

Down at the bottom of my street at the metro stop, for example, people gathered holding candles to express solidarity with people at the Pentagon or in New York.

There's none of that now, of course, for a couple of reasons.

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