Toggle Menu

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)

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.

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.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

“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.

The Dems After Tuesday’s Primaries, plus Elmore Leonard’s Bad Guys / Start Making Sense
byThe Nation Magazine

On this episode of Start Making Sense, John Nichols analyzes this week’s primary results in California and elsewhere, and, from the archives, Elmore Leonard talks about where his characters and plots came from.

California’s jungle primary on Tuesday set the stage for the next Democratic governor of the state, and primaries in Iowa, New Jersey and elsewhere tested the strength of progressives in the party. John Nichols has our analysis.

Also: from the archives: Elmore Leonard, who died in 2013 at age 87, was unpretentious about his massive accomplishments: 45 novels, more than a dozen turned into movies, and a reputation as one of the great writers of dialogue. When we spoke in 2000, he had just published Pagan Babies, and his movies Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and Out of Sight had been hits.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe to The Nation to Support all of our podcasts

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.


Latest from the nation