The Bulwark Podcast - Clint Smith: Make America What It Set Out to Be

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

It's hard to be in a celebratory mood about America 250. The administration only wants to tell a narrow story of the country without all the contradictions and complexities of its history. And for the past 18 months, it has also been a particularly challenging time for black members of the military under Hegseth, who brazenly disregards their service, blocks promotions of black officers, or expunges them from the ranks. But the aspiration of America as a multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith democracy is a noble one, and our job is to keep trying to build the country we want it to be. Plus: the man who's trying to stop the magafication of the Smithsonian, advice for how to talk to kids about the country's history, and the simple joys of a July 4th cookout.The Atlantic's Clint Smith joins Tim Miller for the holiday weekend pod.show notes Clint’s piece on being black in Hegseth’s military Clint on the man who’s put himself between Trump and the Smithsonian Clint's "How the Word Is Passed" Thursday’s “Morning Shots” on the words of Gerald Ford Tim’s July 4th playlist This week only, a full Bulwark membership for everything we offer on our website is $86 a year. That's 14 percent off at http://thebulwark.com/july4 

My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yowie, a gift shop from the lens of artists and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms, it was definitely one of the most user-friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you is it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on Shopify.com. I'm Keanu and I leveled up my business with Shopify.

Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business. But Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. I'm addicted. Start your free trial at Shopify.com. Hey, everybody. We have got my guy, Clint Smith, coming up next. And the pod ended. And I was thinking, I was pretty melancholy. I was melancholy. I was also pretty negative about America. And I'm about to drop this on you guys, on your holiday weekend. And Clint did a good job at moments of lifting my spirits. But I want to carry out my obligation to you and yours and offer a little bit of uplift about this great.

country of ours following that big soccer win last night over Bosnia and Herzegovina. I want to read two items for you. The second, if you're a longtime Bullock podcast listener, you've probably heard before, but it's always nice to refresh it. It's one of my favorites. It's a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the mayor of Washington, D.C., saying that he's too sick to go to the 50th anniversary of the Declaration. So the 1826 version of the event that we'll be holding on the mall this weekend.

history or trivia nerds will know that Jefferson ended up dying on the 50th anniversary of the declaration. And so this letter from him to Roger Waitman is one of his last writings. And it's extremely poignant. And I used to torture my staff with it back when I worked on Republican campaigns on the 4th of July morning to try to get them in the right mindset for celebrating our nation. So I'm going to read that one to you. The first bill in the newsletter yesterday, day shared some comments that Gerald Ford made on the 200th anniversary of the Declaration. And unlike our Megalomaniac president, Gerald Ford used the occasion, marked the occasion, to go to a naturalization ceremony and welcome the newest Americans on the 200th anniversary

and talk about the importance of immigration. I'm going to read both of these back to back because I think they say something important about our country that I want to leave you with. before we get to claim. Here's Gerald Ford at 200. I'm very proud to welcome all of you as fellow citizens of the United States of America. I invite you to join fully in the American adventure and to share our common goal and our common glory. You've given us a birthday present beyond price, yourselves. The Patriots of 1776 wanted to build in this beautiful land a home for equal freedom and opportunity, a haven of safety and happiness, not for themselves alone,

but for all who would come to us through centuries. How well they built is told by the millions upon millions who came and are still coming. Immigrants came from almost everywhere, singly and in waves. Such transfusions of traditions and cultures as well as of blood have made America unique among nations and Americans a new kind of people. We offered citizenship to all and we've been richly rewarded. That was Gerald Ford on 200. Here's Thomas Jefferson again on the 50th, explaining why he won't be able to be there to celebrate and lamenting that.

I should indeed, with peculiar delight, have met an exchange there. Congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies who joined with us that day. In the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country between submission or the sword, and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity continue to approve the choices we made. May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, to some part sooner, to others later,

but finally to all, the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves. And to assume the blessings and security of self-government that form which we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason

and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. I find these things paired together on the 50th and the 200th to be particularly beautiful about our experiment because it's talking about two related things that are happening. Ford is talking about those who are coming to the country and still want to come because we're offering this freedom to them. We're offering them opportunity.

We're offering them. escape from tyranny. And Jefferson to Waitman is talking about how he hopes this is our export, that all of the world will follow in America's example. And some sooner and others later will have the opportunity to burst the chains of oppression. Obviously, the context there for Jefferson is tough because not everybody in America had burst the chains at the time of the 50th. but it was about this aspirational hope, right? That everyone will be able to be free. Everyone will be able to secure for themselves

the rights of self-government and all the rights that are enshrined in the Bill of Rights and all the rights that are enshrined in our founding documents. And that this American moment, this American founding was not the end of something. It was not the end of a war. It was not just the beginning of the country. It was the beginning of the sea change.

where everyone in the world over will start to have their eyes opened to the opportunities of freedom. And in that way, America is special because we are the ones to hopefully set the world on that path. And I like this because, right, going back to the Jefferson letter,

this notion that to some part sooner to others later, but finally to all, that is the promise of America, the finally to all, that eventually some point through enough work and through enough dedication and through enough commitments that everybody will be able to not have equal outcomes, but will be able to have equal rights, equal freedoms, equal opportunity to live as they choose to live and to be themselves and to worship as they wish and to speak as they wish and to not have the thumb of some

autocrat or some monarch or some king upon them. And so with Ford and Jefferson together, it is, Ford is this welcome sign and saying we want to invite everyone into this bounty. And Jefferson is offering this statement of purpose that we want to export it all to you as well. And that is what America is about. We're failing. We were failing when Jefferson wrote that letter. We're probably failing worse now than we were when Ford was at that

naturalization ceremony. So we've probably backtracked in the last 50 years. But fundamentally, like, America is like this idea, this promise. J.D. Vance and these fuckers want to try to make it about something else. They want to try to turn us into Hungary or India or Brazil or any other country around the world where being a member of that country is because of who your ancestors are, what your religion is or because you grew up on this certain plot of land. Like that's not what our country is. It isn't. Like our country is about the promise and the creed that has put out in those documents

and that that is something that everyone should have the opportunity to experience, that everyone should have the opportunity to be a part of, whether it be because they've come to our land in the hope. for that opportunity, whether it be because we have tried, failed a lot, but tried to project out to the world what the benefits are of this style of government, what the benefits are of self-government. And that is something that's still worth projecting. It's still worth fighting for. It's still worth arguing for. And it's a beautiful thing about our country. So, you know, the celebration down there on the mall, fuck it. I don't think.

think anybody's going to be sitting there on some AI podcast 100 years from now, waxing nostalgic about whatever nonsense Donald Trump has to say tomorrow night. But what is underneath that is still good if we do our part to nourish it and fight for it. And that's what we'll do when we get back here on Monday next week. In the meantime, I don't know, I'm going to probably have some beers and sausages and hang out with my family and friends here in New Orleans. So we'll see you all back here on the podcast on Monday. Up next, it's Clint Smith. He's fucking awesome.

So please stick around for that. Happy 4th of July. Hello, and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Happy 3rd of July. I guess we're celebrating 4th of July on the 3rd of July today. I am excited for today's guest, especially chosen for this holiday. He's a staff writer at the Atlantic.

His books include the poetry collection above ground and the best selling how the word is past, a reckoning with the history of slavery across America. That's my guy, Clint Smith. Welcome back to the show, man. Good to see you. It's good to be here. I think I've had your brother since then. You have had my brother.

Yeah, and he dropped me to have some op-o and you we're going to get to at the end. So just... Have you had any other sibling pairs or are we the first one? I believe the Smith siblings are the only ones. Correct me if our own producer. I'm trying to think if there's any other who that would be. So kudos to you. All right.

We're out here. It's a talented family. I've got to get your sister. What I want to start with is you had a recent piece in the Atlantic about being a black soldier under Pete Higgiseth in his new Department of War. You interviewed a bunch of people. Some of the basic facts here is at the Pentagon. He has blocked or delayed the promotion of 12 plus black and female senior officers, pushed out several of them. You removed the portrait from the art gallery of Chapie, James.

the first black America to be promoted a four-star general. You know, it's one of those things with the beginning. You start to raise your eyebrows a little bit at some of the choices, but the trend line is not subtle. It's not subtle, no. And, you know, for this story, I interviewed over two dozen, currently enlisted and retired officers, civilian and members of the military.

And it was interesting because what a lot of them are experiencing is this sort of cognitive dissonance, where on the one hand, they are acutely aware, of their own history. And they are aware of the fact that, you know, oftentimes they're like second, third, fourth, fifth generation and their family to serve in the military. They've got folks going all the way back to the civil war, like formerly enslaved people who fought in the civil war, than people who fought in segregated units in World War I and World War II, people who were, you know,

one day fighting for civil rights in the U.S. and then the next day fighting in Vietnam. And so there's this long tradition of a recognition that black Americans have often fought for a country that hasn't always fought for them. And in many ways, for a country that's often purposely antagonize them. And so that sense of history gives them this sense that like, all right, it's bad now, but our ancestors have been through worse. My grandfather's been through worse. My dad has been through worse. And still, it's incredibly difficult to exist in the current paradigm where you are being inundated with messages explicit and implicit rhetoric policy that is telling you that you don't deserve the position that you're in and that you are not worthy of ascending to certain high-ranking

offices within the military. That the only reason you're in the military or the only reason you're in these high-ranking positions or have been considered for them, you know, The suggestion from Secretary Hegseth and his aides is that it's because of affirmative action. It's because of DEI. It's because of Joe Biden's, quote-unquote, woke military. And that is a really difficult environment for people to be in. And so there's this back and forth of should we stay, should we go, and people making different sorts of calculus about what the right thing to do is. Well, let's tease that out.

You talk to, I guess it was Gerald Curry. Somebody did decide to retire. And kind of you talked to him about that very question. How are they thinking about this? I mean, this is one of those questions that is, you know, I've had some, you know, FBI folks on here and people with DOJ. This is a tough question across the government, right? It's like, do I work for a government that I believe to be corrupt?

Is it better enough people of responsibility in these positions or not? Like, that's sort of the ways on a lot of people. Like, this adds kind of an additional layer to it when, you know, the secretary is just being blatantly racializing, you know, these decisions. Yeah, you know, I think that one of the factors for many people, and I think this is probably the case within the federal government as well, but in the military, after 20 years, you get a pension that you receive for the rest of your life. And that's important for all members of the military, to be clear. And that's a huge incentive for so many of them to stay on for extended periods of time.

This is why so many people in the military have such a long tenures. Because once you get past 20 years, even if you get to 25, 30, 35, you get paid. more and more the longer you stay in. But it's hard to overstate the role that the military has played in the providing an opportunity for black upward social and economic mobility in ways that are kind of singular in the sort of intergenerational configuring of the American professional infrastructure, right? Like it's a huge thing that has happened is that there are so many generations of black folks in the military because it has been such a reliable mechanism by which to achieve, you know,

and ascend, you know, to different socioeconomic statuses. It's like actually the irony about this because it's like actually a meritocracy. Right. No, for sure. And the other part of this is, you know, one of the things that people I spoke to brought up is this idea that because the military is such a, has been such a singular place in that way, a lot of the folks have come from. really impoverished or working class backgrounds. And the military has made it so that they are the economic source of stability for their

entire family, right? Not just like their kids, their partner, but like their extended family. And so, you know, you have these folks who have now ascended into a different socioeconomic realm because of the stability that the military is afforded who are trying to make calculus about whether to stay or to go with a recognition that the calculus isn't just about, you know, what red line is hexagoner. Sethkin Across or how much is racism am I willing to experience, but also like this job is what allows me to support, you know, many, many people beyond myself. And so I think that's another layer

that is added on to the sort of complexity. And Gerald, you know, Gerald Curry, who you mentioned, part of the reason he decided to join was because he joined the Air Force was because he saw his cousin when he was a kid in Fort Knox and just saw his house he lived in and saw his pristine uniform and it represented a sort of stability that Lieutenant Curry yearned for for himself. And that is one of the things that led him into the military in the first place. Yeah, obviously some of the folks who had to talk to, you know, couldn't go on the record because of either they're in the military or it's just not outside of the tradition of the military to kind of pop off about something like this.

That said, I'm kind of curious when it was, you know, just you guys on background, like how much bitterness there was about it, like what the vibe was about it. I mean, to me, I just can't imagine these guys like working their whole career serving Iraq, Afghanistan, going into war zones,

and having like a weekend talk show co-host, clown, you know, making these types of decisions. Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of animus toward Secretary Hegson. I understand. You know, I mean, I think the brazenness with which he disregards the service of these, you know, thousands and thousands of members of the military across these branches is not something they felt like they would ever have to experience and certainly not experience from the person who is in charge of the military, right? It's one thing to experience this on an interpersonal level from a commander, you know, or a racist, you know, lieutenant or whatever the case may be.

on a sort of, you know, one off of that, but for the, for the head of the Pentagon to be sending down these messages, to be, you know, flying in generals and admirals from all across the world in order to tell them that they can put hands on their subordinates, right? And for them to then hear that and think about what implication that's going to have for the units that they're a part of, where the thing that is prevented, you know, otherwise wildly racist incidents from transpiring is that there's a level of accountability from the top. But now there's no accountability from the top. In fact, there's a sort of blank check, so to speak, that's been written where it's like, no, do whatever you want to do and you won't be fired. You won't experience consequences. So there's a lot of anger.

There's a lot of despair. You know, one of the guys I talked to, he said, was everything I fought for in vain. You know, like this is not what I signed up for. At the same time, one of the things that was recurring in these conversations was the idea that a lot of these folks were like, I don't fight for Hegset. Like I didn't sign up to fight for Hegsafe. I didn't sign up to fight for Trump. I didn't sign up to fight for America as it is. What I signed up to fought for was the Constitution. Like I signed up to defend the Constitution. And what the Constitution is, particularly in the Black historical tradition, is as Dr. King talks,

about it. It's a promissory note, a promissory document. It's a document that represents the aspirations of what America can be. And so I think part of the black military tradition is this recognition that you are often fighting for the aspirational version of what America can be and not necessarily what it is at the moment. Yeah. Just got to be a little bit more of a bitter pill to swallow when, you know, he's such a joker too. It's like, it'd be one thing if it was a racist who was a good, good military general that rose through the ranks and demonstrated themselves and that's not what this happened in here.

Well, that's the other thing. You know, like, I can't get in P. excess head, but like one thing that came up over and over again was this sense from people of them wondering like why there was such a particular venom directed toward black service members and women, to be clear. And wondering if it was, if at some point in his career, Secretary Hegseth felt as if he was passed over for a promotion at the expense,

you know, at the expense of somebody else or because somebody else, you know, who he deemed to be less qualified, who may have been black, who may have been a woman, who may have been anybody other than a white man. And perhaps was that a catalyst for the level of intensity that he is bringing to this effort to sort of expunge black officers from from the service. Quinn, this is why I like you. You know, this is the generosity of spirit that you showed and how the world has passed, too, as you go to meet these races. Like, something must have happened to this guy.

I don't know. Pete Higgs is might be a fucking ass clown. But yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah, he also might have been passed over. That's true. This episode is brought to you by the New York Times. You know when I called them the failing New York Times, it's the love.

We love the New York Times. Here's why. Clinton and I were having this conversation about how the administration is trying to rewrite history and whitewash America's 250th. And one of the things we spent a few minutes talking about was something that I took a reporter, my guy, Michael Bender, is doing work out in the field a bunch of time to uncover. You have to do real work, real reporting, put effort into it, put time into it. you've got to verify, you'd have the resources to do it. Like, that is something that is valuable and that is needed for a liberal democratic republic. And it's something that we're doing a little bit of here at the bulwark, but it's different in nature than podcasting and being independent media.

For me to have things to flap my jaw about, it's important that there are other people out there that are doing the work, verifying, getting the facts right. It's not just our friends of the Times. it's folks at a bunch of places. Republica, your local paper, anywhere reporters are working a beat. A guy Jonathan Cohn right here, he's working a beat. They're the ones that gather the facts, find a story. And I do worry that in this world

where all you people are sending me Instagram reels from random people out in America shouting their opinions about things with no editing, no fact-checking. I worry it's something that we're missing and that we're losing a little bit of. So I appreciate that the Times is out there doing it when Clinton and I talked about that MAGA group

that went after Smith College for DEI, at a transverse and at their graduation. We were relying on the reporting of the Times. And I was replying on the reporting of the Times this week when we had Maggie on talking about what was happening behind the scenes in the Trump White House. We're going to continue to do so. Journalists like Michael Bender, like Maggie,

spend weeks, months, and even years, put those stories together to keep us informed. I appreciate it. wherever you seek it out nationally, locally, support fact-based reporting. Will you tell us about, because I had not heard of General Chapy James, probably just my ignorance, but it was interesting the degree to which taking down his picture affected some of the folks you talked to. Yeah, it was huge.

And to be honest, I wasn't familiar with Chappie James before working on this project either. So General James was the first four-star general in the military, served in the Air Force. And, you know, he helped train soldiers Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. He served in Korea and in Vietnam as a fighter pilot. It was an incredibly decorated firefighter. There's also this moment where he's in Libya and has this showdown with Omar Gaddafi, when Gaddafi is like this young rebel and there's the coup happening.

And Gaddafi drives the military vehicle up to the gates of the U.S. base. And in this very dramatic showdown, Chappi James, like, closes the gate before Gaddafi can get in. Gaddafi gets out of his vehicle. He puts his hand toward his holster where his gun is. Chappy James, almost Western style, like grabs his gun first, pulls it out on Gaddafi and sells him. He better not move his hand and touch the gun in his holster. And Gaddafi very slowly sort of withdraws his hand and walks back to the vehicle and drives off. And it became part of sort of military mythology.

They called him the Black John Wayne. And so this is somebody who has like a very renowned military pedigree. And he had his portrait hanging in the Air Force Gallery in the Pentagon. And in the early days of the Trump 2.0, it was taken down. And I was really hurtful to a lot of the folks who I spoke with because General James' portrait in many ways sort of symbolized the, the, possibility of upward mobility for black officers within the military, right? Like his portrait being there was a sort of daily reminder every time they walk past it. Like, this could be possible for me too.

And when it was taken down, it very much felt like the very opportunity to ascend to the sort of position that Chappie James had ascended to was also taken away. Right? And the other part of it is that's interesting is like Chappie James was by no means like this radical, liberal, progressive, anything. Like, he was a pretty conservative dude. Like, he was a Reagan Republican. Ronald Reagan loved him.

He called him like a model soldier. He said that he was a hell of a pilot. He, just a few years ago, they named a bridge after him. DeSantis signed a bill to name a bridge after him in Florida. And so this is somebody who, had he lived, he had a heart attack not long after he retired from the military. But had he lived, he was considered. as someone who could potentially be a running mate to a Republican presidential candidate.

And so that added dimension of it almost ironically made people even despair more so. Right. Because it was like, this guy's not good enough for him? Like this guy, this is a Republican. Like he's, he is the almost prototype of what you would think the military, certainly a Republican administration in their military service members would want. And certainly, hey, he, you know, he was the case for previous administrations. And so the fact that a Republican black general was taken down from the walls, people were like, well, if this guy's not good enough for them,

there's no chance for me. Be one thing if you know they're taking down Jesse Jackson or whatever. It's like, I get that, you know. Right. It's related to another article that you're working on recently, which was an interview with Lonnie Bunch, who heads up the Smithsonian. Maggie Haberman on Wednesday's show talking about her book regime change. And it was a section of it that struck me.

And obviously there's like so much happening in the first year that's horrible, like kind of locking in on what happened at the portrait gallery. Like at some level feels a little, you know, doesn't have the gravity and weight of the other crimes against humanity

happening from the Trump administration. But I was pretty struck just by kind of the whole, you know, conversation about how, how like Trump's underlings and people around him like really were kind of obsessed

with these exhibits and like wanting to get them fixed and like and he tells the story she recounts the story with a bunch tells about where Trump visited the African American History Museum and like he seemed to not care at all and he tried to talk to you about how they love him in the Netherlands when they were like I think it was looking

at a Netherlands slave ship or something so you know he bunch is kind of hanging on to this job They end up getting, firing the woman at the portrait gallery. But, you know, he is sticking around, at least for now. You interviewed him recently. Like, just tell us about him and kind of, why is he sticking around? Does he got a pension too?

I was like, if I was that guy, I'd be like, get me the fuck out of this job. Yeah. I think that, you know, part of the reason he's sticking around, one, he's the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, right? And so, you know, he built this museum when there was no collection. There was no staff. There was no art. There was no building.

There was no site. We didn't know where it was going to be. It was just an idea. And he was selected to bring this idea to fruition. And he spent, you know, more than a decade of his life engaged in this project. And now it is one of the most popular museums in the country, you know, and is one of the focal points of the National Mall. And so, you know, then he obviously ascended to the position of secretary, but I think his history with the Smithsonian as the founding director of National Museum of African American History and Culture, before that as a curator at the National American History Museum. He has a lot invested in this institution. I mean, this institution has been his life, you know, since he was a young, young historian coming through the ranks.

And I think that he is also, he's a kind of singular figure. I mean, most people would tell you he is the most renowned and celebrated public historian in the country. One woman I talked to said that he was the Beyonce of museums, that like you walk through hotels with him during conferences and people are like following him, trying to take selfies and, you know, getting his autograph. It's a pretty astonishing thing. I love that. But he is so, he represents, I think, because of his pedigree, because he has been a curator, because he is the first historian and first black person to serve as secretary of the Smithsonian. He's uniquely suited to defend it.

And I think that he feels a deep amount of personal, a deep personal sense of responsibility to stand up and make sure he's defending it. And he's trying to navigate. you know, as diplomatically as one can, ensuring that he is protecting the Smithsonian and standing up to this administration while also not actively antagonizing the administration. And I think it's interesting because Trump has attacked the Smithsonian a lot, right? Like he's come very directly at Smithsonian, so they talk too much about slavery. They talk too much about the sad things in America. They're too woke, et cetera, et cetera.

But he's never attacked Lonnie by name. as far as I know. Like, there's been no true social posts about Lonnie. And so in some ways, I think the president, as much as he despises what the Smithsonian is doing or is being told to despise it by people around him, I think that he kind of likes Lonnie. Like, Lonnie is a likable guy. And I think when Lonnie went about this lunch where Trump's talking about how, like, Lonnie's worried that Trump's going to start ranting and raving about the black trans statue of liberty or whatever. and instead he just like wants to show off the chandeliers and talk about how he wants to get rid of Dulles Airport

and make a Trump airport. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing about Trump, you know, is there's the, there's sometimes a disconnect between the bluster and the public performance of a certain, you know, bellicose, brazen personality, which isn't to say that that's not a part of it, but like, but it looks different when you are oftentimes, one-on-one with him.

And I think a lot of people who are reporters, certainly a lot of my colleagues at the Atlantic experience this directly, where the way that Trump talks about them online versus how he talks to them when they're in person is pretty different. And I think for somebody like Lonnie, he went into that lunch thinking that, like,

that it was going to be over for him, right? Like, was he going to make it out and still be the secretary of the Smithsonian? Were they going to come in and magify the entire institution? And instead, you know, Trump wants to talk to him about chandeliers. curtains and like which color, you know, what should he use gold or silver to ornament his new ballroom. So it's a, the cognitive dissonance that he's experienced has been, has been

something. Trump just really, if only Fred had hugged him more, you know, he could have been gay, theater queen, interior designer. I think he could have been happy, you know. Look at you extending the same generosity and thoughtfulness to, you're just trying to figure out everybody's villain story. That's right. That's fair. That's. That's fair. No, he's probably, there's probably no path to a healthy Trump. All right, everybody, we're taking back the fourth at the bulwark. Miniature American flags for some, abortions for others, Bullwark plus subscriptions for yet a third group to borrow from the Simpsons.

We are running our Fourth of July sale right now. It's happening this weekend. You get a full year membership for everything we offer on our website for just 86 bucks, 14% off because of this holiday, this flag, this country, it belongs to all of us. Not one party, not one person. I got my Fourth of July playlist. It's epic. I'm giving that to you for free.

All right. We're putting that in the show notes right here. $0 for the Fourth of July playlist, $86 of value from that playlist and all the other reporting and commentary we're doing here at the bulwark. Sale runs all the way through this weekend. Come join us. Theborec.com slash July 4. that's the bulwark.com slash July 4 link in the show notes to the offer and the playlist.

So like this dichotomy, right, between like Trump's online bluster and then in person that gets managed by Lonnie. Like it's harder to do outside of that, like within the broader MAGA apparatus. And like when it comes to this DEI stuff, you know, there is now like a whole cottage industry that has been built up like around Trump to go after. and attack these programs. So there's a story earlier this week by my guy, Michael Bend, during the Times. I also want to read a little bit of it to you because it just shows kind of the extent of this.

This story starts. The complaint that prompted a federal civil rights investigation into gender policies at Smith College. Smith College. A lot of gender discrimination happening there. It was not filed a student, a graduate, or anyone affiliated with the college. It originated from defending education, a conservative parents' rights group. The organization targeted Smith,

after learning one of the school's graduation speakers was Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender physician and retired four-star admiral. And I guess they saw the speech online and were like, we should go after Smith College now. This is just kind of one anecdote. And there are like 100 plus examples of this. And, you know, this is like a full-out campaign and attack

that's happening. And just from this one group defending education, but, you know, there are other examples of that all around the country. And this stuff you kind of monitor and cover and just like what's your sense of like kind of the scale of this and how much of a clawback there's going to be when we you know turn the clock into 2029 you know what's interesting is as i was doing this reporting for the military story it's not only the case that hegseth and trump are or i should say you know hegsef as authorized by trump is preventing these folks who have been

signed off by the military by these thorough extensive military boards to become a general, to become an admiral, to get a different star. It's not only that Hegg Seth is chopping people off the list because they're black or because they're a woman or because they're queer, it's also that his aides go and do a lot of research on these people who are put up for promotion. And they do these sort of thorough online searches using AI to try and find instances in which anybody who's been put up for promotion has at any point said anything positive about diversity, equity, and inclusion, about LGBTQ rights, about feminism, about black history. And then those

things are presented to Hegsteth and they're used as justification to prevent you from, you know, getting the promotion that you deserve. And the thing that people need to understand is that, like, the military isn't making these decisions on a whim, right? Like there's a very thorough vetting process that happens by which members of the military, high-ranking officers themselves and part of these military boards, are looking at every part of your record, every part of your character, every part of your education, every part of your service, and determining whether or not you deserve to be promoted,

and whether or not you are in a role that is commensurate with your skill set. And so when they promote people, it's typical, you know, previous administrations that the Secretary of Defense is going to trust that process, which has been in place for many years, and largely just sign off on it. And so it's pretty unprecedented to this degree that the Secretary of Defense would start like saying no to so many people and disproportionately having those people be black people and women or people who have said anything in support of black people and women at any point. And then inevitably what happens is you begin to fill the high-ranking spaces of the military with people who look the same and think the same. And in the context of the military, I think that's not only a moral issue. It's also a question of like, oh, you're actually making the military like a less effective force. You know, you are preventing the military from being the healthy ecosystem of diverse viewpoints and perspectives that is needed in order to the military to do the sort of work that it does across the world. in all sorts of different national, ethnic, and geopolitical contexts, and if you have people in the room who only have one point of view or one set of experiences, then you are decimating the health of this institution to be able to effectively do its work. Yeah. And to your point on that at the end, like, the military seems like the worst possible organization to try to go after the EI end.

Because, like, as you're saying, like, there is, like, you do specifically want people who are representing different cultures and who understand different cultures because of the nature of the work the military does. I do just kind of steel-maning the argument, though, I'm just, you know, is there not any kind of movement, any type of ideology or policy can go overboard at times? Like, is there not anything to the fact that in some of these organizations, they created DEI organization that maybe did some good things about identifying to people to hire? then also to kind of continue existence. It ends up doing a lot of make work kind of nonsense and silliness. Like makes people roll their eyes or maybe is an efficient or like maybe that money could be used better actually going to hire a new black soldier or professor or something rather than having another department head at college.

And I think this is part of Pete Higgs has critique of the Department of War II, the amount of money going to kind of overhead versus people in the field. Like what do you say to kind of the like non-racist, like just. more legit critique on the grounds of like efficiency and fairness? I think a good faith argument for thoroughly vetting programs to ensure that they are doing the work that they should do and that they set out to do is a good thing, right? And I think that, you know, nobody, you know, certainly in the context of the military or the federal government, you know, people don't want their taxes going to initiatives that are ineffective

or that feel wasteful. The issue is that there was no meaningful attempt to analyze or to go in and figure out what's working and what's not, or to have a set of conversations to do, again, a sort of like thorough unpacking of like what are these DEI programs set out to do. But also the thing is like DEI is just become an umbrella term, right? Like so the issue is that it's been a bad faith effort. And what it is is as my colleague Adam Surwer has written extensively about recently is that like we have a federal government, we have an administration and executive branch that is fundamentally interested in like reconstituting Jim Crow in many sectors of society. That would have felt

hyperbolic to me a few years ago. I'd have been like, look, man, like, I don't know, like they're doing some bad stuff, but like new Jim Crow in the, you know, but I think if you look at the policy, if you look at the rhetoric, if you look at what they are actually doing, they are trying to create a federal infrastructure, a military infrastructure. A military infrastructure. infrastructure, a C-suite infrastructure that does not believe that black people are capable, have the intellectual capacity to serve in positions of power and authority. And they want to remove and or prevent black people from having access to these opportunities. And that is like a central part of their program.

That is the central part of what they're trying to do. And so, yes, there are bad DEI programs in the same way that there's bad, like, you know, HR programs. They're in the same way that there's bad. Sure, we have some pointless military units, actually. There's some soldiers doing things. Yeah, you know, and so. Yeah. So I just think that ultimately, like, what this is, and this is how the military story is tied together with the Smithsonian story and my work, you know,

and thinking about public history and slavery in this country. America is a place that's done a lot of good for a lot of people. America is also a place that has done a lot of harm to a lot of people. America is a place that has provided unparalleled, unimaginable opportunities for millions of people across generations in ways that their own ancestors could have never imagined. And it's also done so at the direct expense of millions and millions of other people who have been intergenerationally subjugated and oppressed. And both of those things are the story of America.

But what you have is an administration that does not want to account for the totality of America's history and the contradictions and the tensions and the complexities that lie therein. You have an administration that only wants to tell a very particular and very narrow story about what America is. and it wants to tell that story in order to justify the ability to create a new society in which certain people are in charge of other people, speaking directly, like that white people exist higher on the totem, the proverbial totem pole, than their counterparts. And that that is understood as the sort of natural order of things, because

because what happens is if you don't understand American history and you don't understand the reason one part of D.C. looks one way and another part of D.C. looks another way. You begin to assume that the reason that certain people live in certain communities or in certain conditions is because that is the natural order of things rather than recognizing that it's something that has been done to people or that resources have been extracted from people. And if you fail to understand that history that shapes the current,

landscape of inequality, then the current landscape of inequality just, again, seems like it, like the sort of natural order of things. So that takes us to where we are today. You said you're traveling, going to some America 250 events. How are you processing, you know, where we're at today and the backsliding we've done recently. And, you know, I think that there's probably going to be some Americans out there that are just gleefully not really contemplating these historical weight of what's happening and just enjoying fireworks and hot dogs. And there's something to be said for that. My guess is if you're listening to this podcast right now, you're not one of those people. So I'm wondering how you're kind of thinking about it and what you'd say to people

who are kind of struggling with trying to grapple with where we're at on this anniversary. You know, we were just talking about how America's a place that's done a lot of good and also a place that's done a lot of harm, a place that's provided a lot of opportunity and a place that has intentionally prevented people from having any opportunity. It's interesting, you know, I had the young reader's edition of how the word has passed come out last year and I was talking to a bunch of middle schoolers when we're going on these middle school tours. and the way we were talking about it, you know, when I'm sitting with them in their classrooms, is that like, I'm somebody who has done things in my life that I'm proud of, and I'm somebody who's done things in my life that I'm not proud of, because I'm human. And I make mistakes. And what I try to teach my children or how I try to be in community with people is not that you pretend as if you never made a mistake

or pretend as if you never did anything wrong. what you try to do is you acknowledge your mistake, you recognize the thing you did wrong, and you try to learn from it and address it so that you can become a better version of yourself in the future. And if that's the standard I hold myself to, if that's the standard I hold my children to, if that's the standard these middle schoolers hold themselves to, then why would we not hold our country to the very same standard? Right. Like we recognize that America is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And in order to understand what the last 250 years have been,

I think you have to accept that this 250 years has looked very different for lots of different people. and that we are celebrating in many ways one iteration of America's birthday. But some would say that America, in fact, should have a different birthday and it should be 1965, right? Because that's not actually, that is actually when you had black people and a wider range of citizens who were able to more fully participate in the democratic process. And if the goal of America is to be this sort of singular multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy in a way that has never existed in the history of the world at this scale, certainly. Then our job is to acknowledge like what it takes to get there and where we've been before. And so, I mean, we're about its retirement age by the time Trump gets out of that. Almost AARP.

Yeah, maybe we should just kind of hang it up. You know, it was a good try. We did it 65 years. I do think the aspiration of America is a noble one. And I think it is a remarkable one. Again, like there is nowhere else on earth that is tried to do what we are doing, right? That is tried to, with this many millions of people, of this many millions different backgrounds, to build a country and sustain a country and sustain peace in a country that has people

with so many different facets of their identity and to do it in a democratic way. Can I be a downer? Can I just be the downer? I know I used to do the Republican and I should be like the flag where you've heard you. For the time, it was my favorite holiday as a kid. And it's become melancholy. I wish it wasn't so. I don't know, man.

Canada seems to be doing it all right. And it's not quite at the scale of us, but there are many millions of people in Canada. There are black people, Asian people, brown people. And it's a new, and that's a new thing for Canada. That's true. Right. Like, I mean, what is true is that the level of immigration that Canada has, the sort of the extent to which Canada is a multiracial democracy is a pretty new thing for them,

certainly relative to us. I mean, and they don't have our history, right? like they don't have this history of enslavement. They don't have the same history of immigrants of so many different backgrounds having been in this country for so long. And I think Canada's great. Toronto is one of my favorite cities. Shout out to Canada.

Their soccer team is doing great right now. Love watching them in the World Cup. But I think that what America is trying to do at our best, in spite of what we have done to so many, people is an effort is a goal that I'm proud to be a part of, even if I recognize how far we are and how in many ways we're backsliding from where we want to be. But I think about those all the time because I obviously wrote this book on the history of slavery. And the thing I tell people and I think about this all the time is, you know, first enslaved people

came to the British colonies that would become the United States in 1619. Slavery didn't end formally until 1865. But from the moment enslaved people arrived on these shores, they were fighting for freedom. They were fighting for emancipation. They were fighting for liberation. What that also means is that the vast majority of people

who fought for freedom never got a chance to experience it for themselves, but they fought for it anyway because they knew that someday someone would. And I think all the time about how my life is only possible, how my children's lives are only possible because of generations of people who fought for something they knew they might never see but who fought for it anyway

because they knew that someday someone would. I think about what is my responsibility? I think about what responsibility is that bestow upon me, does that bestow upon my kids to try to build the sort of world and build the sort of country that we might not see ourselves but to try to build it anyway, to try to be part of the project

of making it what it set out to be. even if we don't get to reap the benefits of it. And it's like we're all chipping away at this wall. And you don't know if the wall is six inches thick or six thousand miles thick. But what you know is that the more you chip away at it, the less the people who come after you will have to chip away at. And I think that that's part of what sustains me in moments like this, where things feel hard and when things feel as if they're not moving in the way that we want them to,

in moments where it feels as if progress is, fleeting. I remember that I am part of a history, that I am part of a tradition of people who gave their lives and who fought over the course of their lives to build a sort of country that they knew they wouldn't see. And to build it for people they knew they would never meet, but to do it anyway. And so that's, you know, that's what I think about, you know, my Fourth of July is Juneteenth. And that's what I think about when when Juneteenth comes around. And I think about it again, a few weeks later when July 4th comes around. And I think it's appropriate that they are in close proximity to one another.

Because I think Juneteenth, to me, is a reminder of what the 4th of July can be or should be. And yeah, it's just work, man. We just got to put in the work. You're stirring a little something to me. I'm not ready to wave my little mini-American flag yet, but it's pretty good. I'm getting there. I'm curious about the kids' book. I haven't read the kids' version of how the word has passed.

But you're talking about those conversations with the middle schoolers just does kind of make me wondering that a lot of people probably having these kind of conversations with kids this weekend. I mean, Trump gives us big speech on the 4th of July night and the fireworks. And if I was a parent in D.C., you're trying to process how to talk. talk to the kids about that if you or they hide it from them. I'm just kind of wondering like, this is heavy stuff. I mean, for people who didn't read the book, you know, you're going to kind of these gold plantations and and speaking to ancestors and talking about and speaking to like

Confederate reenactors and trying to grapple with the legacy of this a couple hundred years later, or I guess over 100 years later. And like, how is that different? Like when you're talking to the younger people. Like, how do you frame it in a way, you know, that gets a good reaction out of them that you feel like is valuable? I think that for kids, the idea of like the both and inness of America, the duality of America is one that feels very easy to digest. It's the grownups that come and mess everything up, right?

Like, it's the kids are like, yeah, America's done good stuff and America's done bad stuff. Like today I do you the really bad stuff though do you do you sand the edges down of it? I think you talk about things in the way that's developmentally appropriate right? Like I think about this with my kids all the time right. I got a nine year old and a seven year old. And I don't want it to be the case that my children, you know, are never introduced to, you know, really difficult topics until they are 16 years old. I think that that would be failure. But when I talk to them, you know, especially like they are children who are the descendants of enslaved people.

They are the descendants of Nigerians. They are the descendants of pilgrims. And so they carry within them like a lot of the sort of dynamic stories of what makes America, what it is. And so, you know, it's important for us to talk about the history of colonialism that created the civil war that led their grandmother to come from Nigeria to America. It's important for us to talk about the fact that my grandfather, you know, their great-grandfather, who we just visited in New Orleans last week, that his grandfather was enslaved, right? And like, what implications that has for the world they live in and to remind them how recent these parts of history

are. And you, you, you, you know, my nine-year-old can talk, I can talk about it with him in a way that I have to be more mindful of with my seven-year-old because each kid is different, each age is different. And so you, I wouldn't say it's like sanding the edges necessarily, but I think it's knowing, knowing who your kid is, knowing who your audience is, and in trying to get a sense of what way you can introduce the subject matter to them without overwhelming. filming them. It's tough, man. I got an eight-year-old and, and, you know, I do think, it's interesting that you talk about that, about the ways that your kids have all, you know, this different stuff within them, because it's just been a challenge for me, like, I was a white kid growing up in

Denver in the white suburbs. And, you know, I learned about Rosa Parks. I learned about Martin Luther King. And it feels like something that is from another world. Right. It has, it felt to me growing up, like it's something that had no impact on me at all or my family. And like, I wasn't until I was older that I even like that like really, I realized. I was like, oh, wait, that happened in the 60s.

Like, my parents were a lot. You know what I mean? Like it's black and white. It just like feels like such history. And counted that to living in New Orleans with my daughter growing from North Orleans being black with all the history of that being everywhere around us. You know,

being at a school where you're starting to learn that stuff. You're like, oh, wait, those are my people, you know, that had to suffer through that. I don't know. It's just something.

that like I feel like kind of I'm going through it the first time with her and trying to figure out how to to be constructive and be positive while also being honest, you know? We as parents, I think, have to be mindful of the various constraints that we have. Like both the opportunities that we have and the constraints we have in the way we talk about these things. Right. So like, I am the descendant of enslaved people and can speak to that history in a way that is deeply personal in a way that I cannot speak to what it means to be an immigrant from Nigeria, right? But my wife can speak to my kids about her mother's experience, you know, and what it means to be a child who has to walk from Nigeria to Cameroon on her brother's

back as a young girl to escape a war that killed millions of people, what it means to not know when you're going to get your next meal. Because of my subjectivity. Like there's a way that I can speak to that, but it's also shaped by my proximity to that experience or not.

So I think for any parent, you know, part of it is figuring out, like, to what extent are we bestowing information on our kids or versus to what extent are we also being like, we're on this learning journey together,

right? A lot of things with my kids, I'm like, I don't know. Like, let's figure it out. And we're going to learn, you know, whether it's about history or whether it's about something happening, you know,

that's more personal. I think there is power in parents having the humility to be like, I'm still learning about this too, and I'm still trying to figure this out also. And when we're just kind of bestowing her own trauma on them for no reason of their own. I thought it'd be fun. You did the show, Crass Corps Black American History on YouTube.

I did. And just to honor the 250, I thought it'd be fun. I picked two out of the blue that I thought were interesting. Okay. And we're going to quiz you. See how good your memory is. It's been a little, it's been a minute.

On my show. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, I'm going to quiz you on your own show. So watch out. You did the scripts. I'm being immortalized on YouTube. They were like, well, they were like 11 minutes, like 10 minutes or something.

You only need to pull from that brain of yours like 45 seconds of facts. Like, I'm just looking at rapid fire facts on two of your crash course. I want you to crash course me. If you fail, it's okay. I mean, you know, you seem like you're a straight-a student. I might need to rewatch them to be fair. You might need to rewatch it. I'm just going to put a disclaimer.

All right. Here we go. Shirley Chisholm. Are you asking me who she is? Yeah, I want you to crash course me. Whatever facts you got in your brain. Oh, I am crash coursing you. You're crash coursing me.

I love to go. You're crowsing me. Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman to run for president as a Democratic nominee. And I guess she wasn't the Democratic nominee, but she was the first person to be in that part of that primary. And she's a sort of, in many ways, considered a, sort of foremother for so many black women in politics. She was incredibly progressive in her policy stances. She, you know, many ways people say that she laid the groundwork for Kamala Harris to run for president. And I think there's still a lot of lessons that people pull from her in

terms of her advocacy for the poor. She was very involved in food stamps and trying to make sure that working families and mothers, particularly families of color, but also white families had the social support she needs and just really believed in building the social safety net of America to take care of those who had the lease. All right. There's good. I picked this one because I did not know anything about Barrett Rustin, like until grown adulthood, which was pretty embarrassing.

To me, it's gay man. Once I first learned about him, like, I went on a big Rustin deep dive. and you did one of these on another guy that I've learned as part of that deep dive, which is Philip Randolph and Baird Rustin and the march that they were planning before the King March. So Crash Course Us on that. Byard Rustin was really among the most amazing civil rights leaders in American history. He was in many ways a sort of guide, a sort of mentor to Dr. King. He helped Dr. King conceive of and make sense of and implement.

his plan of nonviolence through the civil rights movement. He took the lessons from Gandhi, from India, and helped to create the infrastructure of the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s. He is also someone who helped, along with Hayfield Randolph, to plan the march on Washington. And people, I think, take for granted how much of a lift that was, right?

Like, to plan all, like, you know, the food, the bathrooms, to get the permits to find the speakers, to do, I mean, like, it was really, really different. Some of these places don't want.

Yeah. 100%. And for like hundreds of thousands of people. And he did all of this. And obviously created the, what is in many ways, the sort of seminal moment, or one of the seminal moments

in civil rights history. But he, as you alluded to, was a gay man. And because of that, he was often pushed back, both metaphorically and literally, behind many others, because at this time, many civil rights leaders thought that it would undermine the civil rights effort if a queer black man were at the forefront of those efforts. And it's really a shame because he was a remarkable person, and he was really, he similarly was deeply invested in ensuring that America created not only

the conditions for black people to be successful and to have the opportunity to achieve social mobility, but also, you know, as mirrored in many ways by Dr. King's evolution on economic rights, you know, was deeply invested in ensuring that he was creating the conditions or working toward the conditions for the working class as a whole to ascend, right, to create, you know, the sort of human dignity and economic dignity. that was necessary for people to live a sort of meaningful life. This could have been a history podcast. This wouldn't end it.

I promise you, Apo. Talman wrote me this. As you mentioned, you're both from New Orleans. Your brother, when he comes to visit, he calls me.

I hear you were, it seems like you were here last week. You didn't call me. But that's okay. My feelings aren't hurt. Next time. He said this. Clint never had a left foot in soccer.

And he only had one move. Stop, stop, go. So, stop, go. Look, man, there's a lot to be said about slow, slow, fast. That's all you need. I don't need scissors. I don't need, you know, these Ronaldo moves, these Ronald Dean.

Sometimes you're just the fast kid and you just go slow, you go slow, and then you go fast. Do you got to have a World Cup projection for us? We're taping this Wednesday afternoon. I mean, the team you picked might have lost by the time this airs. Yeah. So I lived in Senegal for a little while. And that place is so near and dear to my heart. It was a hugely transformative experience for me.

And I love how they play. I love them since the part of what inspired me to go there was the 2002 World Cup where they beat France 1-0 in what is still one of the greatest upsets in World Cup history. This was right after the France with the defending world champions. And I always remember that goal, Papa Bubba Juf and Al-Hajiz Jouf and those guys, Henri Kamera. an amazing team. And now they've got like a really good squad. They snuck through to the knockout stages. But I think if they get going, they can make a run.

But they might have lost by the time this plays on Friday. As we're taping, you can go watch the second half. They're up one-no right now against Belgium. Are they up one-zero? I just looks. There we go. France's got a pretty easy. I mean, Francis, have you been watching any of them?

I don't, I don't soccer. You know. You don't soccer. But even people who don't soccer, soccer during the World Cup. Yeah, that's true. You can like tap in. Yeah, I fall asleep to it, you know, which is nice. It's a good, the background noises.

It's sort of soothing. British announcer. Are you doing Fox soccer? Are you doing Telemundo? Fox. Fox. Should I do Telomundo? I feel like it's a different sort of experience when you do telemundo.

Okay. We'll try Telomundo. I appreciate how excited people get about it. I had an emergency. I was supposed to fly out of Aspen. People don't want to hear my travel nightmare story. I ended up having to take a car down all the way to Denver. It was long drive.

And the driver was from Ecuador. And so Bro is excited And Ecuador lost last night to Mexico But I feel like fully briefed On all of the South American teams Because it was the very long drive So I shout out to that guy I'm up to speed on Mexico

That's not South America I'm aware but Paraguay Argentina And now Ecuador's out So I'll be monitoring So I'm rooting for Senegal I think it'll be France Because they're just stacked

And then you know We'll see what our boys from the US do can't lose to Bosnia. All right. Clint Smith, man, I appreciate it very much. Thanks for doing this. I hope it was invigorating for the audience.

And after this, they can just go have a little whatever, you know, Italian songs, get some barbecue, right? Like, are you going to enjoy yourself?

Do you have any joy for the weekend? I am not a, I'm not above a hot dog. You know, like I'm not, give me some good dogs, some good links, some ribs,

some wings. I mean, I love a cookout. And I think, you know, July 4th is another opportunity to cook out. And you sit as you hold that dog in one hand and that rib in the other hand, you say, you know, these are culinary metaphors for our country. You know, just a little crispy covered in carbs and delicious. I love it, man. All right. I appreciate your time as always.

do holler next time through town and we'll see you soon. Everybody else, we'll be back here on Monday. I'm not going to watch this fucking speech tomorrow. But if it's crazy, maybe I'll get to it on Sunday night and we'll give you guys a little recap of the craziness on Monday.

And I look forward to seeing everybody there. Hope you have a good weekend. Clint, we'll see you soon, all right, man. All right, thanks. All right, happy Fourth of July. I'll see everybody on Monday. Perfect slice of apple pie. Got me filling a warm inside.

Shooting stars, scars like stripes, red, white and blue, police lights. Big, it's to the U.S. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.