Hey, it's John. Today we're sharing a special guest episode from Master Plan, the award-winning investigative series from our friends at the lever.

Master Plan's new season, The Kingmakers, traces the decades-long effort to manufacture an all-powerful presidency.

Host David Serota and his team of journalists

investigate the rise of a once-fringe legal idea

that's really hijacking the machinery of American government.

This particular episode takes us back more than 50 years

to a moment when Americans feared the rise of an imperial presidency.

Richard Nixon's attempts to seize the power of the purse and secretly expand the Vietnam War,

sparked a constitutional crisis and a backlash, and set a template for the imperial presidency.

Be sure to follow Master Plan on your favorite podcast app.

Now here is the full episode.

China's President Xi Jinping watched a huge parade

flanked by Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong-un.

Myanmar's military authorities are using brutal violence and intimidation to force people to vote in forthcoming elections.

The Pentagon is ready in 1,500 active-duty soldiers for possible deployment to Minnesota, where President Trump

has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act.

China, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar, all led by dictators known for cracking down on their

citizens.

And then there's, wait, the United States?

It's been just over a year since the return of Donald Trump to the

White House, and sending armed federal agents into American cities is just one item in a long

laundry list of increasingly authoritarian moves. President Trump has overseen America's largest

...