This is an I-Heart podcast.

How do you see things right now in America?

If I woke up from a coma and I had been lights out for the election.

And you just told me Trump's back in there.

And obviously, you got to put a little bit of perspective on the ball when you tell me what happened here over the last nine months.

But what's gone on?

Where are we as a country right now?

Well, if you would woke up and came, I might ask you, I'd say you might want to go back to sleep for a while.

I mean, I had thought we had reached as a country a low point in the first term.

I didn't think we could go lower. We've gone lower. And my fear is that we could go lower still in this,

both through a combination of acts of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, but also an abdication of courage and truth-telling by a large part of the media.

And that, to me, Donald Trump is Donald Trump,

but the most concerning thing is the acquiescence to him and the rather Republican threats

to just sort of abandon the First Amendment, to abandon what's, you know, decency to abandon what we want.

I would say to you, if you woke up, like, we're at the, probably the most,

obviously the most pivotal point in time of my lifetime for our American democracy.

I would also say, if you went to sleep thinking it could never happen here, we've all been

wrong about that. I mean, and you've been in politics and probably watched it ever since you were young,

just like me. I understand history of America as well as anybody and the problems we've had and the

things we've gone through. I never thought this could happen. I never thought this could happen in

America. I never thought that we would get to this point. I can see a first

term of Donald Trump, but I thought we as Americans would learn our lesson and not do it again.

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