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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies.

It's President's Day, a time when it's customary to remember George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and other great leaders in critical moments in the nation's history. This year, the presidency itself is arguably being redefined by the current occupant of the White House, with potentially lasting consequences for American democracy.

Our guest today is Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian John Meacham.

He wrote in a New York Times piece on the eve of the 2024 election that he regarded Donald Trump

as a man whose contempt for constitutional democracy

makes him a unique threat to the nation.

We've asked him back to fresh air to see where he thinks the republic stands a year into Trump's second term,

and to talk about his new book, American Struggle, Democracy, Descent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union.

It's a collection of speeches, letters, pamphlets, and other original texts from 1619 to the present,

organized into specific periods with introductions by Meacham.

Meacham has written many books on American history, including biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson,

George Herbert, Walker, Bush,

and Andrew Jackson, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He's currently working on a biography of Dwight

Eisenhower. He teaches at Vanderbilt University, and he's recently been named the National

Constitution Center's semi-quincennial scholar, a new role anchoring the center's programming

around America's 250th anniversary.

Well, John Meacham, welcome back to fresh air.

Thank God you're the one who had to say that.

I can't do it, so I'm delighted.

...