I'm Brian Lehrer.

This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Tuesday, February 16th.

I hope many of you are listening to Kai Wright's live call-in show on Sunday nights,

the United States of anxiety.

It's on at 6 p.m. right after all things considered.

As it happens, I was among the guests this past Sunday night as Kai was interested in how you were

all responding to the impeachment trial as it was going on.

Did it serve a purpose for you in any way, even knowing the outcome,

almost certain acquittal, even in advance? And we're going to continue a conversation now that

I was fortunate to be a part of on Kai's show. Kai was interested in whether the trial felt

like a step towards a meaningful reckoning with the anti-democratic and

white nationalist parts of our political culture, not just Donald Trump. And to set this up,

personally, I don't think the House impeachment managers centered those issues very much at the trial,

but they did refer to them, such as when

impeachment manager Jamie Raskin told the story of one of the Capitol police officers who

had to fend off the rioters for hours.

And afterwards, overwhelmed by emotion, he broke down in the rotunda and he cried for 15 minutes

and he shouted out

I got called an N-word

15 times today

and then he recorded

...