Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller Mr. Jones about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. The film The Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it. Today, we're joined by

Ocita Wanibu, a contributing editor at the New Republic and a columnist for The Guardian. We're

talking about his new book, The Right of the People, Democracy and the Case for a New

American Founding. Yes, please, let's go. So I want to ask, what made you want to write this book?

The book that I've always wanted to write, by the way. So thank you for writing it. I'm just glad

that it exists. Well, thank you for having me. What made you want to write this book? I mean,

I think that we've all had a rough 10 years or so, so we're recording now, I think,

a day after the 10-year anniversary of Donald Trump coming down that escalator. And so, you know,

I think that the last decade or so has been an education for all of us in democratic principles,

what makes democracy important. All of these things have kind of been in the air.

For me, they've been in the air since I was a kid.

One of the first political stories I remember ever falling was a 2000 election.

I remember being really real incense that George Bush won for reasons.

I don't think I fully understood, but kind of like got trickled down

to me from. There was a Brooks brother riot. The Supreme Court just came in and just sealed the deal

for the Republicans. And the Democrats didn't put up the fight they needed to put up. Yes, it was very

traumatic, especially for us young people who are just learning, being told, oh, you can vote now.

Or, you know, you get ready to vote, the power of your vote. And you're like, wait, do I have the power of the vote? Go ahead. Right, right, right. So, I mean, I was in second grade. So I feel like I, there's a lot of that that I didn't understand. But I did get this sort of basic sense of unfairness from the whole thing. You know, more people voted for this person, why is this other person the president?

By 2016, I learned a lot more. And to see it happen again, I think, was really

kind of radicalizing for me. And I think for a lot of people. And so that basic flaw there of our

system, the Ottawa College twice so far this century has brought somebody to the

White House who lost a popular vote. That's a problem in both cases that had catastrophic consequences

...