Welcome to episode

Welcome to episode 72 of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast. I hope you had a fun election.

I was on the road for most of it in Chicago and then California and then New York and then New York again.

And one of the things that I noticed this time around was that there was nothing like the freakout

after Donald Trump won that we got back in 2016.

In 2016, I watched the election in an Italian restaurant in Manhattan.

I left the city about midnight, perhaps later, and as I walked to Grand Central, I saw riot vans,

flanked by police officers who were carrying AR-15s and shields. On the train, everyone

was talking about it in harsh tones. My Uber driver from the station felt the need to tell me that

the Republic was over. The next morning, when I went back into the city, there were protests in Washington Square Park and Union Square

I even saw some people crying and that continued for a while for weeks in some cases but this time

even in New York nobody really seemed to care.

I don't know whether that's because Trump won the popular vote

or because he's been president before

or because he's now been the major player in our politics for nearly 10 years.

Well, something else. But this time his election just felt much more

normal and i hope that continues there are a number of points in the next few weeks at which it could

change the certification of the results as we saw disgracefully in 2021, is one of them.

So is inauguration day, but thus far it's been okay, and it's important that we get back to that

norm. A quick programming note.

It's been brought to my attention that a lot of listeners to this podcast might not know

that I'm also on another podcast here at National Review.

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