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My guest tonight is a coolant surprise winning

presidential historian whose latest book is called

The Soul of America, the Battle for Our Better Angels.

Please welcome John Meacham.

Welcome to the show. Thank you, sir. You have an interesting role as a writer and as a presidential historian.

You just look at the history of presidents. Is Donald Trump unprecedented?

Have you ever seen anything like this? Are we overreacting?

We're not overreacting. He's sort of precedented.

We have seen various elements of demagogues, of people who have wanted to blow up the conventions,

who have done the wrong thing, who valued hope, over valued fear, over hope,

which is what this president's about. But to treat him as if he is a unique creature

is almost to give him superpowers that we shouldn't endow him with.

That's an interesting point. Do you think though that maybe he doesn't...

It's not that we're giving him superpowers that he lives in an age where he has superpowers.

You know some of the presidents you talk about on the book and some of the leaders,

like McCarthy, for instance, who is a senator, we see similar traits to Trump,

but they didn't have Twitter, they didn't have mediums that he helped them connect with as many people.

The thing I would... This is not a book about or an argument about,

hey, let's relax because we've been here before.

Right, right, right.

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