Origins of the Imperial Presidency
David Sirota on how Trump got the power of a king.

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.
Welcome to Fighting Fascism, a new podcast hosted by The Nation.
Long-time political organizers Aaron Regunberg and Jonathan Smucker, and their normie friend Matt DaSilva, discuss the history of fascist takeovers, the conditions enabling them, and the resistance movements that have defeated them, to find lessons for today’s fights against Trump, MAGA, and the growing threat of modern authoritarianism. Want to piss off fascists? This is the podcast for you.
In the first episode, Aaron, Matt, and Jonathan are joined by Astra Taylor, author of End Times Fascism, and Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, for a big picture conversation about what it means to fight fascism in this historical moment. Topics include popular resistance to ICE, tensions between “radical” and “normie” mobilization, how much we all hate AI, and why it shouldn’t actually be that hard to build a majoritarian coalition around the idea that like 25 creepy pedophiles shouldn’t own literally everything on the planet.
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President Donald Trump reacts during a Cabinet meeting.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)As millions of Americans protest Donald Trump under the slogan of “No Kings,” it is worth asking how the nation ended up with such an authoritarian president. David Sirota and the team at The Lever have provided a great answer to this question in their new podcast series, Master Plan: The Kingmakers, which looks at the revival of the imperial presidency after the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. I talked to David about the history uncovered in this podcast and why Trump is merely a symptom of a much deeper problem.
Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

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.
As millions of Americans protest Donald Trump under the slogan of “No Kings,” it is
worth asking how the nation ended up with such an authoritarian president. David Sirota
and the team at The Lever have provided a great answer to this question in their new
podcast seriesMaster Plan: The Kingmakers, which looks at the revival of the Imperial
Presidency after the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. I talked to David about the
history uncovered in this podcast and why Trump is merely a symptom of a much
deeper problem.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Subscribe to The Nation to Support all of our podcasts
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Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
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As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
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