Hello again, I'm Arvin Aldi.

It's been two years since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, with a minority

of the vote, but a majority of the Electoral College.

Since then, many tweets, many lies, many contradictions by the president himself, many

actions attributed to his government, both domestic and

foreign, have led to the same question. How the hell did America end up here? Ben Fountain is a lawyer,

he's a popular novelist and a short story writer from Texas. He covered the campaign of 2016 as a

journalist for Britain's Guardian newspaper, and the result is Beautiful Country Burn Again.

It's a compilation of his reports, along with observations of how America's past has helped shape the present.

Ben Fountain, welcome to our podcast.

Thank you very much for having me, Warren.

You attended one of the rallies, at least, of Donald Trump during the campaign.

He's continued them since the campaign has been over while he's been president.

Here's an example of a standard line from one of his campaign-style rallies.

A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country

so much.

And you know what?

We can't have that.

You know, they have a word.

It sort of became old-fashioned.

It's called a nationalist.

And I say, really, we're not supposed to

...