Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battlehardt.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America.

Good night and good luck.

I'm honored to have Ken Burns join us today on the Lincoln Project podcast.

You all know Ken Burns.

He is one of the most famous documentary producers of our era, the Civil War, baseball,

prohibition, the war, cancer, the way.

I mean, he has been involved in telling America's story through documentary filmmaking for decades.

And is a man who has watched and studied and internalized this great journey our country's been on throughout its history and and and the and the and the strange journey

it's been on in our lifetimes and and again Ken I'm so grateful for you coming on the show today

thank you so much um and I wanted to start out with the story that uh that has been making

some news lately you gave a commencement address at Brandeis University.

And as you said, and I thought very rightly, you have tried to always have a posture in your work and your speaking of neutrality, of taking in the big sweep of history in this country.

But in that speech, you leveled some pretty

intense criticisms of the moment we're in and the way our country is responding or not responding

to the constitutional crisis that Donald Trump poses for the nation and our future.

Talk to us a little bit about how you came to this moment and about the Brandeis speech because, and I recommend folks, we'll put in the show notes to link it.

It's a wonderful examination of America, but can tell us how you got to this moment.

Yeah, well, first of all, thank you, Rick, for joining me.

It's an honor for me, and it's great to be with you.

I gave a speech at Stanford for the graduation eight years ago, almost eight years to the day,

and took pains to sort of remind people that I have neutrality.

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