The Opinions - Has the MAGA ‘Sugar Rush’ Finally Run Out?

Episode Date: June 27, 2026

As America heads toward its 250th anniversary, many of its citizens and residents are not feeling particularly celebratory. This week on “The Opinions,” the national politics writer Michelle Cottle and the columnists David French and Jamelle Bouie discuss what it means to mark the nation’s anniversary at a moment of deep division. Plus: The latest from the Reflecting Pool waters, and the three writers share their own patriotic recommendations for the week ahead. Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Engineering by Carole Sabouraud. Video editing by Kristen Williamson and Brandon Belk-Yee. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Original music by Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker, Julie Beer and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm going to sound like the kinds of conservatives I, like, read when I was in high school. Don't have this victim mentality all the time. Oh, let it out, Jamel. Let it out, Jamel. Testify. Jamel, testify. I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for a New York Times opinion.

And I am here this week with the usual suspects, columnist David French and Jamel Bowie. Gentlemen, good to see you. Good to see you as well. Michelle, great to see you. All right. This week, ahead of a marriage. America's 250th birthday celebration. We are talking about the division that we're seeing in the country

and the kind of leadership that might be able to get us out of it. But first, I want to take a quick look at what's been going on in this very exciting news week, starting with one of my personal favorites, the glorious reflecting pool. All right. So as a veteran Washington resident, I myself cannot get enough of this story, Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. for those who have managed to avoid it so far.

The basic gist of it is Trump spent millions to upgrade what he calls a swimming pool, most notably painting it American flag blue on the bottom for the nation's upcoming 250th celebration. But unsurprisingly, perhaps, the whole thing has turned into a gloppy, swampy mess. Algae, peeling paint, hapless bystanders arrested. accused of vandalism, and, of course, the president blaming everyone but himself. Now, this is not the first of Trump's public missteps, of course, not even the first involving one of his crazy vanity projects. So why has this specific faceplant become such a hot topic? Jamel, let's go to you first. I mean, I think first because the visuals so striking,

it's similar with the demolition of the East Wing. It's one thing to, like, be corrupt and stuff. to collect billions of dollars in crypto money. That's all quite abstract. But when to borrow, to borrow from, I believe, David Roth that defector, when it looks like they're brewing yodas in the reflecting pool, brewing yodas. I love that. I think it's very funny.

It's, of course people are going to raise their eyebrows of it. They're going to notice it. And when the president doesn't just seem. obsessed with this when he really ought to be doing better things. I mean, he, I know he's Trump, but he's also the president with like, it's a real job, but he's obsessed with this and his pre-acupy Thank you for reminding us. Yeah, I know. I think all that together makes, it just puts it into the public view in a way that the somewhat more abstract scandals are. It's just like, everyone knows what the reflecting pool looks like. You know, this is a major national symbol.

And now it's like a sickly green. It looks like GAC. For, for, for a view. viewers my age, late millennial viewers, it looks like ecto cooler. Ew. My favorite one that I've seen is somebody, some comedian saying that it looks like the world's largest pool of kombucha. It's just that they're brewing kombucha. Sorry, go ahead, David. You know, I think of this and the ballroom very similarly. And they both have one thing in common, and that is real estate.

I mean, this is this is Trump's thing. He wants things to be big and to be beautiful. If there's one thing he thinks he knows, it's real estate. They're also both perfectly representative of Donald Trump in real estate, because one of them is real estate plus corruption, and that's the ballroom. Like, it's not being done lawfully. You've been misleading the public. Is it going to be privately funded?

Is it going to be publicly funded? This one is another subspecialty of his, real estate plus incompetence. And so, yeah, he's very focused on this, is this sort of real estate. estate, sort of tangible visual thing, part of the beautification of Washington. I got to say, Michelle, it is pretty striking the visual difference in the Trump, Washington, D.C. Now, some of this was already underway. There was already efforts to clean up the city after a lot of the homeless encampments during the pandemic era. And so there were some positive changes in that way. but the reflecting pool undermines any sense of forward motion even from like sort of the most

maga dedicated person who likes seeing Trump up there. It is, it's a debacle and it's a debacle that he sort of from his standpoint perversely enough is just magnifying every day the more that he talks about it. I have to say I particularly like these kinds of faceplants of his because they're farce instead of, say, tragedy or horror, which is what we usually get from him. I mean, it's this big to-do and he looks completely clownish, which helps undermine his whole master of the universe, take charge, persona. And it's just something everybody can grasp, as you were talking about with the images, Jamel, a dead duckling floating in a pool of slime. is something that everybody can kind of go, yeah, yeah, it's the perfect metaphor. It's like, whereas like when he has the military and they bomb a school in Iran, nobody wants to look at that.

Nobody wants to think through the horror of what's happening or he's shipping people off to foreign prisons or whatever. This is much more to my mind, the kind of way you undermine his whole get things done. I'm super competent and just have the will to dominate. I mean, he can't. even dominate a pool of algae. This is not impressive. I have to say. In addition to just the way that it works with familiar symbols of American civic religion, I do think that when looking at like D.C. as a whole, because I've been in D.C. a bunch recently as well, and the big banners of Trump on federal buildings, it cuts against, I think, Americans' expectations of what their government does, right? Like,

Americans don't, Americans associate that with tin pot dictatorships. They don't associate this sort of thing with the United States of America. And I do think that Trump may under, Trump may see all of this as sort of glorification for him. And certainly his supporters see this as, you know, look at what Trump is doing. But I think a lot of people look at it and they're like, what do you, what's this about, man? Like, no one elected you to be, to make yourself. pretend God Emperor. They elected you to lower prices. And that hasn't happened. So what do we think it says about the fact that the reflecting pool, all of these July 4th celebrations that the White House has been cooking up, have, instead of becoming a unifying event, have basically split everybody even farther.

This is the piece of this that depresses me, even as I'm laughing my butt off over the reflection. pool. So I see that it's very intentional from the administration. Like the White House doesn't conceive of all Americans as being American in the same way, right? Like some of us, some of us don't count the same as others. And the dividing line seems to be, do you support their political project? The notion that the president is the president for the entire country, that yes, you have your supporters and yes, you were elected by your base and you have your party. But like the office represents the whole people just is anathema to this White House.

They don't think about it. And that translates to their celebrations. The weird, you know, the weird special event for our birthday boy, Mr. President, what, two weeks ago with the UFC fight and all of that, that wasn't, not only was that not meant for the broad public, right? Like, you had to have a Paramount Plus subscription to even watch it, first of all. It was meant for just like a subset of even his own supporters. It wasn't any kind of attempt to bring the country together under common civic rituals.

And to me, it's just, it's an intentional thing. They're thinking of the 250th as an attempt to kind of glorify, and I use that in like the religious term, in a religious way, to glorify Donald Trump. And not as an opportunity to, despite our many divisions and fractious nature and all that, not to kind of think about our common origins and our common purpose. And the last thing I'll say, not the last thing, obviously, the thing I'll say for this little riff is that when you consider the extent to which the intellectuals associated with MAGA, and I include the vice president,

the extent to which they articulate a kind of hostility to the egalitarian reading of the Declaration of Independence to the notion that creedal nationalism, the notion that what makes an American is your commitment to a set of ideas, that they are hostile to that. It all makes sense, right? Like, the very thing that anniversary celebrations in this country have tried to focus on, I was reading Gerald Ford's address during the 200th not long ago, which is not just common origins, but common purpose, common ideals, they reject straight up. And so what else are they going to do but have like a bunch of meathead professional fighters and like guys on motorcycles right around the White House law? Like what else is there to do? David, what else is there to do?

There's a middle finger aspect to everything the administration does. So it's just, it's exactly what Jamel said. It's the opposite of unity. It's the opposite of an inclusive. It's the opposite of an inclusive version or vision of American life. It is to stratify certain kinds of activities and people as real American or not. And so these are the real American sports. And you had initially with Freedom 250, kind of an array of like country and Americana rock performers, that's real American music. He couldn't even get that, though, right? But he couldn't even get that. Once people realize what was happening, they were like, whoa. They're like, no, I'm good, bro. You saw the original vision of it. And so it's always subdividing and slicing to where there is a kind of sport,

there is a kind of activity that is the real American activity. It all fits with this sort of mega aesthetic. It's this constant stratification. It's this constant sense of a pecking order. And then this constant sense there is always, always in the back of their mind something that goes like this. How can we do this in a way that will make other people mad, that will make our enemies mad? How can we make our enemies mad today, as opposed to how can we bring the country together today? It really does seem to be an absolute communications priority of this administration is to just go ahead and decide to tick people off on purpose as long as it's the right people. Yeah, that strikes me as at the root of the president's movement all along.

You know, it's like whatever you think of his policy, whatever you think of his politics. It's all about ticking off the elites, which is hilarious because he is an elite of sorts. He's just an elite who's always had a chip on his shoulder. Right. I mean, elites here is defined in a purely cultural, non-material way. Elips, for these people, if you are like a. barista with an English degree making $15 an hour, you're an elite because I don't know, I guess like there's a Netflix producers like to make shows for you sometimes. Whereas if you

are a billionaire buying pardons for your buddies, not an elite. Because the cultural taste makers supposedly look down on you. It's a very, it's a very self-aggrandized. vision of what who constitutes an elite and one that allows people with actual wealth and actual power and actual influence to obscure that under cultural grievances. But it's so darn exhausting. It's like I grew up going to like mud bogs and tractor pulls and I've been to a rattlesnake roundup. I challenge the president to find somebody in his cabinet who's been to a rattlesnake round up. But I don't understand how you could just spend so much of your time being angry and aggrieved about somebody not appreciating your cultural. And constantly thinking about social hierarchy

and social status. Just constantly thinking about it. And in a way that's always self-aggrandizing, that always puts you sort of like it's the scrappy underdog role. Like, so what Jamel said was exactly right about elites. You can be an underemployed brown English or art major grad, and that's an elite, and if you own five car dealerships and say Hattiesburg, Mississippi, you're just a working man, right? And so it's that sort of where you're constantly sort of on the bottom of a particular pecking order that, by the way, it's not the pecking order in their community and in their lives. So in the actual physical space that they occupy, somebody who's a very prominent maga person, will be often revered in the community, very respected in their community,

somebody who might be on the elder board of a church, in the head of the local Kiwanis club, or, you know, has their name on a building in a local college, right? And they will view themselves as the scrappy underdog because, you know, the Gender Studies Department in Oberlin looks down on them. Oh my God. And that kind of constant. Who? Constant sense. That's all I've got to say to the president.

It's just boo hoo-hoo. Get over it. Okay? Get over yourself. I mean, I'll say it's not even that anyone's looking down at them. It's just no one like the people, people who they associate with cultural prestige aren't necessarily thinking of them. But I just, I personally find this whole way of experiencing the world totally alien. It's sort of like, I don't know, man.

Like, to be a little real for a second, like, I'm a black American. Like, I know for a fact that there are no, not insignificant portions of the country that think kind of nasty things about sort of like my particular cultural background. And it's like, all right, who cares? I just live my life, you know? You're a grown up. It's a big country. Be a grown up.

People will be prejudiced, whatever. Just like, I don't know, grow up. Don't be. Don't be a snow. Don't be a snowflake, right? I just, I really do not understand that this, this. I'm about to sound, I'm going to sound like the kinds of conservatives I like read when I was in high school. Don't have this victim mentality all the time.

Oh, let it out, Jamel. Testify, Jamel. Testify. All right, as much as I hate to do this, I'm going to move us from the pool over to Capitol Hill. there the Republican-led Congress is in a Trump-induced. Swet it. I love it. So we're taping this, I should say we're taping this Thursday morning. Who knows what's going to happen. But Trump, earlier this week, abruptly canceled plans to sign a bipartisan housing bill because he's mad that Congress won't pass his beloved Save Act, you know, working to restrict voter access or whatever. So this has even

Republican lawmakers spitting man. We've talked about the SAVE Act before. And Jamel, I know you have many thoughts. So you want to just first to give us a refresher on the legislation and its current sorry status. Yeah. So the SAVE Act is just this voter integrity bill, you could say, that is more or less designed to sharply reduce the number of people who might be able to participate in the electoral system. The big thing it does is demand, uh, You prove your citizenship before you can register to vote. And I think as we've discussed here before, that is, that will disenfranchise millions of Americans, not because there are millions of illegal voters, but because it's actually kind of

difficult to prove your citizenship if you don't have all the exact documents you need. And to be clear, like real IDs, driver's licenses, very few states have ones that would count, right? You would have to whip out a passport or birth certificates. things like that. You can't just take your driver's license down. Right. Exactly. So many, many Americans do not have immediate access to birth certificates or passports if they have them that would prove citizenship. It costs money to get birth certificates in most states. It definitely cost money to get a passport. So the whole thing, I mean, in my view, amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax. And it also put restrictions on mail and balloting and the like. And Trump, who believes he lost

2020 because of mail-in voting and illegal voting, once this imposed to help Republicans try to hold on in November. Republican lawmakers, other than kind of the most sycophantic MAGA House reps, seem to grasp that this could very well disenfranchised a bunch of Republican voters and have been kind of, as I see it, they've been basically human. him on this saying, yeah, we'll put it up for a vote, sure. But no intention of trying to get this thing out precisely because the Republican coalition relies on a lot of people who, if you ask them tomorrow to prove that they're citizens, they probably couldn't. They probably couldn't. All right. So, David, why does Trump's refusal to sign the housing bill and put, hold it hostage,

put his congressional team in such a tough spot at this moment? Well, the congressional tea, they're all, one third of the Senate and the whole House is facing an election, an election in which affordability, especially housing affordability. We talk a lot about groceries and gas prices, but housing is huge. It's huge. And so this is something it was passed on a bipartisan basis that would allow Republicans and Democrats to go back to their districts and say, we hear you, we've done this thing. it's going to do these specific things for you. And so it was something very important for incumbents who are trying to defend their seats. Trump doesn't care about them at all.

So this is one of those points where Republicans for the umpteenth time, remember, he's in it for himself. So this just, as every point that goes down in his aggregate poll average, there's like a one percentage point increased chance that somebody somewhere in the Republican caucus will, you know, say enough. And we're starting to see that on the edges with these war powers resolution votes. He's triggered intense anger on Capitol Hill with this latest stunt. He is very slowly, but very surely eroding his goodwill even with some of his core on Capitol Hill. Yeah, I want to say that his trip to the hill and the yelling with the senators was in part. He was really attacking the Republican senators who voted for this around resolution thing. I mean, he's just, but I do like your math. The one point drop, the one point improvement and chances. I just want to one more thing on that was just to zoom out and say, this is not just about the SAVE Act. To Jamel's point, he is really obsessed with it. It's like Jamel is so right on with that. But even more than that,

What he is hoping to do is cause such chaos in the Senate that the leadership there has no choice, but to do all of these kind of broader-based things he wants, kill the filibuster or, you know, fire the parliamentarian so they can ram through more things along party-line boats. He is just blowing the place up. And I do think that because of his lame duck status and his. and his toilet level popularity numbers. I just, like, I think that we are finally seeing a few of the Republicans go, no, no, no, no, no, no, had enough. Maybe I'm just an optimist.

I think you're right, Michelle. I think also politically for them, it's just a bit too late, right? That they've, they already spent all of 2025 tying themselves incredibly tightly to the administration. under, as I read it, this was like irrational exuberance, this idea that kind of caught hold. I think throughout a large part of American politics that Trump's win represented, we've talked about this, Trump's ruin represented some sort of magi-seech change in American life. And as that, I think, I think, and I believe I wrote multiple times, like in December 2024, that this wasn't the case and that what you would see pretty quickly was kind of reversion to the mean.

The mean being people actually don't like this guy very much when he's president. And now we're at this point where, yeah, Trump's approval ratings are, you know, they are the political covenant of green algae in the reflecting pool. And Republicans, I think, are beginning to distance himself from him, but I think it's a bit too late because they've already, there is no separation prior. And so I think for voters, it's like, well, of course, yeah, of course you want to get away from him now. Look how unpopular he is. like the double-edged sort of Trump for Republicans has always been that, yes, in presidential elections, he can turn out a bunch of low propensity voters, a bunch of non-voters who then vote for Trump. They don't vote down ballot.

They don't show up in midterms, right? They, they, they, it's like a sugar rush and it's not sustainable. And Trump does not identify himself with the Republican Party. He identifies himself with his own political standing. So if he feels he needs to do something to protect his standing that harms Republicans, he'll do it without even thinking. And that's, I think, Senate Republicans in particular, who did not expect to be fighting for their majority this fall are somehow only now coming to understand that, yes, if you are in his way, he is going to, he's going to make life difficult for you. even if that cost you a Senate majority. And there's like a, there's like a, what, 50, 50 chance, 60, 40 chance that, yeah,

it costs the Republicans or Senate majority. And the element of that, you know, the one area in which you can sort of get Trump to care about these races is if you can convince him that if the Republicans lose, that it's a repudiation of him. And sometimes you'll see this, sometimes you'll see this awareness dawn on him. But then here's what I think the failure of the SAVE Act does for him. Internally in his mind, it creates the alternative explanation, which is, well, they didn't pass the SAVE Act and the Democrats stole the election.

That's not a reflection on me. It's just more fraud like 2020. And so you can already see this process starting to lock in because the rhetoric, you know, in that Twitter podcast right is this is the fate of the. the republic. Everything depends on it because it has so locked in to the minds of lots of people on the right that they cannot legitimately lose. All elections are stolen from them. That is the excuse that Trump is already building in into, you know, that mental architecture so that he is not repudiated this November. And and and and, but that's the only way. If you're a Republican member

the House or Senate, the only way to get him to care about the midterms or your seat at all is to tie it to him personally. So I want to look at where we are as a nation. Right now, we're looking at a 250th birthday celebration. But it's been with this administration and this president of sort of weird, unsettling time to think about breaking out your party hats for democracy here. How are you both feeling about kind of this upcoming anniversary and where we are with all of our divisions and chaos. So one thing I think it's worth thinking about is that these anniversaries, these 50-year, every 50-year marking the Declaration of Independence have often fallen at times of, like, heightened

political division. It's actually sort of striking to look at. So 1826, it's just in the wake of the Missouri crisis where the country, the first major sectional crisis over slavery that is so fresh in the mind of everyone there. And it's just two years after an extremely bitter presidential election in which, you know, famously Andrew Jackson loses after the election goes to the House. and it's a real time of heightened political division in the country. 1876, you know, that should be a year that is familiar to people.

1876 is the year where we tend to mark the end of reconstruction. And the prior two years sees really horrific political violence throughout the South. Again, a time of heightened division in the country. Even 1926, this is. at a high watermark for American nativism, and there's quite a bit of division in the country. Even 1926, this is at a high watermark for American nativism, and there's quite a bit of division in the country. And 76, obviously, in the wake of Watergate, in the wake of the Vietnam War, a time of malaise, you might say. So there's this funny way in which, you know, this 2026,

celebration, which is in the midst of a period of heightened division and anxiety about the future, is very in keeping with what happens during these celebrations. Very in keeping with how these things have played out. So you're saying we're right on track. This is where we're always are. I'll say this. I think, you know, from the White House, there's, as we've discussed, there's really no interest and should putting forth a more, like a celebration or a commemoration,

what have you aimed at, at least trying to pretend like the divisions aren't there, at least trying to aim for the notion that this is, you know, we are, we have a common heritage here, we've common ideals. But I do think that there are plenty of opportunities for just like individual communities, for states to play that role. I might myself, I'll say, you know, go up to Monticello in Charlottesville where I live and attend the naturalization ceremony that happens every July 4th where they do a public reading in the Declaration of Independence. I find it very... That's fantastic.

I find it very moving. And I think just because our politics are heavily divided does not mean that we can't, in our own collective ways, try to think about... the high ideals of the country, the aspirations. We've had the, the extent to which we need to still try to reach them, and mark the period that way. Like, this is, I don't want to go too long. I'll say, I will say this. I'll say this.

The Declaration of Independence, obviously written in Philadelphia, you know, post up in Philadelphia, but like, it was printed, and it was printed and distributed throughout the country. And it was read publicly throughout the country. It was, in a lot of ways, a public and democratic document with different communities of Americans across the colonies, reading it for themselves, understanding it for themselves. Some people who weren't included in it, hearing it, and taking ownership of it for themselves. And that spirit of taking ownership for yourself, of your community taking ownership, I think is like the right spirit for this particular moment. David?

You know, when I think about it. And I love Jamel's run down through American history, which actually shows this very messy moment. The Wren is also a very American moment that we sometimes suffer from this halo effect about American history that sort of, you know, looks at it with these sort of gauzy, filtered eyes. When the reality is this thing, this American nation has always been a tenuous project to live up to the noble ideas of its founding. And when I think about it, you have this beautiful idea. We're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. Among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This beautiful idea.

And advanced by some deeply flawed people. I can't think of a better illustration for this American experiment. It's a beautiful idea that is always laying on top of a deeply flawed people. And some years, some generations, we have. picked up the torch and we've carried it and we've advanced and we've moved closer to that beautiful idea. And some generations and times we've sort of like taken steps back away from that beautiful idea. But for 250, the way I'm putting it and thinking about it, you, it doesn't take me, take much to convince me to celebrate the American idea. I can celebrate it on July

4th, 5th, 6, 7th, 8th, you know, whenever you want me to celebrate it, I can celebrate that. And I think we should celebrate it. But against the celebration, and the backdrop of the celebration is an indictment. The indictment is, what are you moving towards that beautiful idea or away from it? And right now I feel like we're in a period of national backsliding. And so in that sense, I think 250 can be a tonic and a corrective

because it can remind us of who we are supposed to be. It can remind us the vision upon which we were founded. And it's a great opportunity to hold that vision up and look at it and compare where we are. And then to say to ourselves, it's our time. It's our time, our moment to preserve this vision to stop the backsliding and to maybe even turn this ship around a bit to make a move or two back towards it. And it's the battle between the incredible virtue of the ideas of the founding and the remarkable

vice that we as human beings can demonstrate in selfishness and greed and all of the things. that we're prone to. But one thing I love about this country is every time we march towards vice, we are indicted by the virtue of the founding. So this is, I think, an important part. When I talk to people who are discouraged about what's going on or they just seem a little bit convinced that it's never going to get better, you can't see the field in terms of pride in the country. So obviously there are a lot of flaws. Obviously, there are a lot of problems. obviously it's not headed in a direction that a lot that many Americans feel good about but you know this is a moment to look back and to look forward and to not kind of just shrug your shoulders or

throw up your hands and say I just I can't deal with it you have to you democracy has to be tended or it winds up in the hands of the kind of people who will play with it for their own devices And with that, I want to shift to recommendations. And because we are where we are, this is the last time we will get to chat the three of us before the big Independence Day, hoo-ha. I'm wondering if maybe you all have suggestions that kind of fit into the spirit of the occasion. David, anything? Yeah. So I'm going to make a recommendation that, you know, it would be, you know, if you're going to go and you're going to say,

what can I watch? I'm going to stick to my wheelhouse, Michelle. You know, it's got to be streaming. It's got to be, you know, one of these television recommendations. And there's some that immediately come to mind, like if you're going to talk about sort of the best of America in this moment and sort of, you know,

so you could think about Band of Brothers, for example. But I'm going with something a little bit different, the John Adams miniseries from HBO. If you've not seen this, if you've not seen this, this. This is several years old. It might be more than 10 years old. It's like 20 years old. Oh, Jamel, you're telling me that. Why are you got to do that? Why are you doing this to us? Come on. Why? Why? Time is a flat circle. I was a, I was a teenager when it came out.

Oh, stop, please. David, I say we shun Jamel for the rest of the rest of the year. Yeah, this is terrible. This is terrible. I hate this. So even, okay, now that I know it's like a hundred years old, I can even recommend it with double enthusiasm because I know that a lot of of the listeners may not have even heard of it, but it's a John Adams miniseries. And it is this look at John Adams and the founding through his eyes. And it's really fascinating because it takes place in the United States. He's got time in France. He's got time in the Netherlands. He's got time in England. It's just sort of this, and it really gives this picture of the American founding of all of the various moving parts. You know, we tend to think of it signed declaration,

fought battles, won independence. But in fact, it was signed declaration, negotiate here, negotiate there, compromise with this person, compromise with that person, so that, you know, you had, it was a multi-front battle. You had Washington in the field. You have the Continental Congress with each other. You have the American diplomats spreading out to try to bring legitimacy. see, it's just, and it's just so well done. It is a delight. So that's my recommendation. Jamel.

I will say, we've been talking, we've talked a lot about the declaration. There's a very strong case to make that the declaration, as we understand it, is not the one that was signed in 1776. It was the one that was reinterpreted by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. And so I will recommend that you read Gary Wills' book, Gettysburg, which is about the writing of the Gettysburg Address and the meaning of the Gettysburg Address, which, you know, famously begins four score and seven years ago our father's conceived, founder, new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all manner created equal. Like the speech begins with this evocation of the declaration, and Wills really explores both the form of the speech, but also the meaning of the speech. And the speech does seek to not just make the declaration this, you know, important document, but kind of the mission statement for the American Republican, a way that it wasn't prior to the war. Okay. And I will wrap this up with every year, longtime pod listeners will know July 4th. I reread the Great Gatsby, which for me is the great American novel, whether you're talking about kind of the self-creation and self-destruction of the central character. Jay Gatsby, whether you're talking about Daisy and Tom, the story and the characters can be mapped

onto all kinds of political eras and moments. And it's just such beautiful writing, which is why, in my opinion, it can never be made into a good movie. They've tried a couple times, blah. But the book itself is incomparable. Just go forth, read it. That's my recommendation. That's what I will be doing as I fly.

on the 4th of July, just say. All right. And with that, I'm going to land this plane. Guys, thank you so much. Enjoy the holiday. And we will do this again on the other side. Yeah. Thank you, Michelle. See you later.