This is on the media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. In a sense, America has always been at war with itself.

Wars of politics, of ideology, of values, even dueling realities.

The election of 2016 was an epic battle.

And Trump's ascendancy, a victory for a huge voting block that sees itself is under siege.

In the next couple of segments, we will consider some of the assumptions that fuel the fight or could begin to resolve it.

But we begin with a counter proposition that there may be something more powerful than immigration,

than civil rights, then abortion, then the environment, than any of the cultural battlefields

that so polarize America.

The economy, stupid.

A couple of weeks ago, on Tax Day, USA Today published an op-ed by Donald

Trump. According to the president, the benefits of the GOP tax law, which significantly cut the

corporate tax rate, have already begun to trickle down to workers. He said three million jobs

have been created on his watch, and with a 44-year low unemployment

rate, wages are finally beginning to rise.

It would seem that the economy he promised on the campaign trail is coming to fruition.

America will truly be the greatest place in the world to invest, hire, grow, and to create new jobs, new technologies, and entire new industries.

The economy is on the rise, prompting author Thomas Frank to muse how prosperity might influence the next presidential election.

In Harper's this month, Frank specifically wondered, what would it take for Donald Trump to get

re-elected? History tells him it is not a naive question.

We have seen presidents who have screwed up all sorts of other things get reelected on the backs of good

economies. Unless you've got a war or something like that, that's what people vote on.

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