Chris Hayes: The Catastrophe of Trump

Chris Hayes: The Catastrophe of Trump

Plus, Joan Walsh on when politics came to late-night TV, 1968.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener
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We are in “one of the most perilous and fraught moments for American democracy since the mid-19th century,” says Chris Hayes; what’s hopeful is that “the movement we’ve seen in the streets is the largest protest movement in American history.” Chris of course hosts All In weeknights on MSNBC; he’s also editor at large of The Nation, and he spoke recently with Katrina vanden Heuvel at a Nation magazine online event.

Plus: Politics on TV–in 1968, when Harry Belafonte hosted The Tonight Show, for an entire week—and his guests included Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Also: Aretha Franklin. Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, talks about the new documentary, The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show—she’s one of the producers, and it’s streaming now on Peacock.

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We now confront a second Trump presidency.

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Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon Wiener Jon 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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