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What Can Stop Trump—Plus, Project 2025–the Dumb Parts

On this episode of Start Making Sense, David Cole talks about citizens defending the Constitution, and Rick Perlstein comments on Republican plans for the second Trump term.

Jon Wiener

December 4, 2024

Republican presidential nominee former president Donald Trump dances during a campaign rally.(Rebecca Noble / Getty Images)

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What Can Stop Trump, plus Project 2025–the Dumb Parts | Start Making Sense
byThe Nation Magazine

“Our worst enemy right now is not Trump himself, but fatalism about our ability to stop him.” That’s what David Cole says – he recently stepped down as National Legal Director of the ACLU, after 8 years and hundreds of lawsuits against the first Trump administration.

Also: Project 2025,the Heritage Foundation’s famous 900 page book, is partly “"too dumb to accomplish anything at all”–that’s what Rick Perlstein says. The rest, he says, can be read as a useful catalog of how we should focus our resistance.

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“Our worst enemy right now is not Trump himself but fatalism about our ability to stop him”—that’s what David Cole says on this episode of Start Making Sense. Cole recently stepped down as national legal director of the ACLU, after eight years and hundreds of lawsuits against the first Trump administration.

Also on this episode: Project 2025—The Heritage Foundation’s famous 900-page book—is partly “too dumb to accomplish anything at all,” according to our guest, Rick Perlstein. The rest, he says, can be read as a useful catalog of how we should focus our resistance.

The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

Mamdani’s Socialism—and Us; plus Football and Concussions | Start Making Sense
byThe Nation Magazine

Zorhan Mamdani takes office in four weeks as the first socialist mayor of New York City. How should we understand the constraints he faces, without accepting those constraints? Bhaskar Sunkara has our analysis; he’s president of The Nation and author of ‘The Socialist Manifesto.’

Plus: Sports Talk on The Nation podcast! Of course Thanksgiving was a big weekend for football on TV – a weekend where millions of viewers got to see a festival of brain injuries — concussions after receiving blows to the head. Dave Zirin will comment – he's the long-time sports editor of The Nation and host of the Edge of Sports podcast.

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Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


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