The defining issue of our time, the great problem that allowed a demagogue like Donald

Trump to rise is the complete and total collapse of trust between the American people

and institutions of government, of civil society, of nonprofits, religious institutions,

corporations.

Everywhere you look, powerful interests, powerful people have broken trust.

When trust collapses, when it is incinerated, it gives rise to demigods.

People who believe that they can say anything, that if they speak fast enough, if they speak

loudly enough, if they talk over someone persistently enough,

that they will be able to lie with precision.

You can think about it at an individual level, beloved entertainers like Bill Cosby,

disgraced.

You can think about it at a presidential level.

Donald Trump, who lied to the American people 35,000 times. The Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, Enron,

the mortgage crisis. The list goes on and on and on. Everywhere, the American people look, they see malfeasance.

What they see is a rigged system, one set of rules for people at the top, and a different set of rules for everybody else. And remember always, the everybody else includes 40% of the

American population that does not have $400 cash available for an emergency and 60% of the population

that lives paycheck to paycheck. When trust collapses completely,

what it produces is a field where demagogues can rise. And of course, that's what Donald Trump

is and was, always has been, and always will be. What Trump has spawned is a new generation of

demagogues, demagogues like Vivek Ramoswamy. The interview that Medi Hassan did on

MSNBC Peacock with Vivek Ramamoswamy is a masterclass and how journalists should interview

their subjects. Medi Hassan is in a league of his own among American journalists.

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