What A Day - The Elections That Changed the World with Dana Bash

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

President Donald Trump delivered a very Trumpian speech before the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly today. He, of course, touted the United States as being the hottest country and made more threats of "annihilation" toward Iran in the midst of the ongoing war. Trump said that he believes the two nations will make a deal right after the midterm elections.To talk about pivotal elections in history, Jane speaks with CNN Anchor and Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash about her new book, "The Elections That Changed The World: Fifteen Pivotal Moments That Shaped How We Live."Show Notes: Check out Dana's book – https://tinyurl.com/2u65svzd Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

The Romans had a pretty good character in Julius Caesar. And there's so many things that happened in his campaigns, multiple campaigns, that really set the tone for campaigns that we still see today. I mean, we're talking about more than 2,000 years ago. It's Tuesday, September 22nd. I'm Jane Koston. And this is what a day. President Donald Trump gave a very a Trumpian address for the

81st session of the United Nations General Assembly today. He, of course, touted the United States as being the hottest country and continue to make threats of annihilation toward Iran in the midst of the ongoing war. But I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not.

to. They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don't realize is that I'm not running. I did that already and won in a landslide. He also said that Cuba was a, quote, failed state, adding, quote, freedom will be coming to Cuba. In response to the Cuban delegation walked out of the General Assembly, as you might expect. But Trump is right. He's not on the ballot, even though he screamed about it at Trumpapalooza, 2026 a few weeks ago. However, it sure seems like Trump's policies are on the ballot, and that's very bad for the GOP. According to CNN, two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of foreign affairs, and nearly 75 percent think Trump is screwing up the war with Iran. That news comes as Iran is

attempting to escalate the war before the midterms, according to new reporting from MS Now. Hey, speaking of the midterms, Democrats have been focused on ousting long-time main Republican senator Susan Collins, and new reporting from ProPublica might give them some help. According to the report, the senator was being investigated by the FBI in 2024 for her alleged involvement in a pay-for-play scheme with a major donor and former government contractor. But when Trump came back into the White House, that investigation ended because, of course it did. Collins's office responded online calling ProPublica's reporting, quote, categorically false. But let's get back to elections. Actually, a whole bunch of elections. Actually, the history of the idea of elections.

Joining me today is CNN anchor and chief political correspondent Dana Bash to talk about her new book, The Elections That Changed the World. Dana Bash, welcome to what a day. It's so good to be here. Thank you so much for having me. So your book starts a long, long time before most people consider modern elections beginning with Julius Caesar. Why did you decide to start your book with Caesar and how he became Pontifix Maximus, given that he then became a dictator who usurped control over the whole of government? Why start there?

We wanted to start towards the beginning of the democratic process, right? It was the Greeks and the Romans, and the Romans. and the Romans had a pretty good character in Julius Caesar. And there's so many things that happened in his campaigns, multiple campaigns, that really set the tone for campaigns that we still see today. I mean, we're talking about more than 2,000 years ago. And he was such a figure that helped to define elections.

And it's also a cautionary tale about what happens when you get a lot of power and you don't want to give up that power, even if it is through the democratic process, then you can sometimes push away the others who want to be a part of the process. And he basically made himself a dictator and didn't go so well. We know how it ended for him. Unpleasantly. But what did you learn from Caesar about the way in which people who want power view the electoral process? Because you write in the book about how Caesar, he has a stepwise theory of how he wants to gain power and kind of the people he has to put up with and like appease in order to get there. What did you learn that you can see in today's elections? I mean, he really did have a populist approach. He understood. the importance of making people who are the voting masses happy. And of course, when I say who are the voting masses, it's because it was men. Right. And it was for the most part people just who lived in it around Rome because it was too hard

for those who lived further to get there. But he understood instinctively, I should say, that he needed to get the support from the outside to push him in. And maybe that's just kind of a no-dove for us who have watched the process through our lifetime and studied other Democratic elections. But it wasn't really done that much before he did it. And he also understood the art of celebrity because he became known when he was on his way to Rhodes to study oratory as. as one does. And he was abducted by pirates.

He convinced the pirates who were holding him for ransom. And he convinced them, no, no, no, you need to offer or ask for more money. I'm worth much more than that. And so then he was released and then he had these pirates killed. But it was the lore of this event that was spread likely by his. and by others in his orbit that made him so well known. And it got him to the point where he could be part of the ruling class in an elected way. Yeah, it's interesting to think about Caesar's populism.

And then you shift to imperial Rome in which it's literally like 20 people all trying to make decisions and trying to kill each other. And everybody else is kind of like, you know, unless you're in the military, nobody cares about you. But let's fast forward to actually one of my favorite elections, which you talk about. The election of 1800, which I think was probably, and I know this is saying something, the dirtiest American presidential election. Everyone is saying things that are, everybody lost their minds. So what made it so consequential? And why was it so dirty?

It's like, you know, you have, we've only been having presidents for a couple of years. and yet you already have a presidential election in which people are spreading rumors about who is having sex with whom? And it's 1800. Ohio isn't even a state. It's so true. Well, first of all, why is 1,700 in 1796 before that?

Why are they so consequential? They were the first contested elections. George Washington was basically anointed. Obviously, there was a vote, but it wasn't a question who was going to be. The question was, what would happen after him when the electoral process really was going to be tested? And in 1796, Adams beat Jefferson. But in 1800, which you're talking about, it was a rematch and it was so ugly.

And the newspapers were partisan, which, by the way, was true for, I mean, there obviously still are partisan newspapers, but they were largely partisan for most of American. history, which is interesting. But they were used as the mechanism for each side to get their point of view out. I mean, they weren't really campaigning. So they were using these newspapers who were happy to be used because of the printing press. They realized that this is a way to make money. The newspapers were very profitable. And you're right, they were so ugly. The uglier they got, the more they sold newspapers. The pro-Gefferson, the pro-democratic Republican newspapers were saying that John Adams is a weak man, he's a hermaphrodite, the pro-federalist Adams-backed papers were saying, like you said, were talking about very, very openly about the

fact that Jefferson was sleeping with his slaves and calling him an atheist, which was a horrible thing to say back then if you even remotely were religious. So it ended up that it was very contentious and not that close with the popular vote. Jefferson won by 60% of the vote, pretty healthy margin. But these men who created the Constitution created the Electoral College and then they had to live by it. And there was a little bit of a mistake that they made, which was repaired afterwards, which was that the candidate for president and running mate were not put, were not voted on together. They were voted on separately. So Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, were tied in the electoral college. So it was the first constitutional crisis. The first

contested election and the first constitutional crisis. So the House of Representatives had to decide it and eventually decided for Jefferson after a lot of politicking, including from one Alexander Hamilton. Yeah, I've always found it kind of funny that they're like, oh, Jefferson's an atheist. He's like, no, no, no, he's a deist. He believes that God made the world and then left, which I'm like, sure. So as a World War II history dork, something. Oh, are you? Oh, I love that.

We don't have time to get into all that. something I'm very happy that you mentioned because you go you talk about elections around the world and you talk about I think a really important moment, which is Germany in 1932. And I think it's important. And you make this point and I really enjoy this chapter. Adolf Hitler wasn't elected. He didn't actually win an election. The Nazi party got a majority of seats, but he didn't win anything. He was appointed in a plot that, seemed to just be, I mean, obviously, looking back historically, one of the dumber ideas. But can you talk about how his rise to power was fomented by all of these people who seemed to think that they could control him or that he would be the best for industry? And what that story has to teach us? Yeah. Well, the story has to teach us broadly that the democratic process is a beautiful thing, but it is also a process that people who are in it for evil can use and they can really take the structure of democracy and get into power that way, if they're clever enough. And he was clever enough along with the people around him in the Nazi party.

And the way that they did it was, I mean, everybody who knows anything about history, has seen these rallies that Hitler did. And he went around, starting in Nuremberg, but went around to towns all around Germany and had these massive, massive speeches and said all of the things that people wanted to hear. Germany was hurting big time. The Treaty of Versailles after World War I put them on their back feet,

and they were really indebted to the United States and others. And then the Great Depression hit, and the U.S. and others said, okay, Germany, we need you to pay back your debts to us, and they didn't have the money. And so the Depression hit hard in the U.S. In Germany, it was even more so. And what happens in desperate times, desperate people turn to leaders who give them hope. and feed their anger. And that's exactly what Hitler did with these, with these speeches, with his with Joseph Goebbels, with his propagandist. And so slowly but surely with each election in the Reichstag,

which was created after World War I, the Nazi Party gained more and more seats until you get to the point where the Nazi party gets so many seats. seats that they really can't be ignored. And Hindenberg, who was the president, was the leader of Germany, had to try to figure out how to deal with them because it was a parliamentary system. And in parliamentary systems, you got to put together a government, right? And Hitler immediately said, I want to be chancellor. And he said, no way. I'm not making you chancellor. They struggled for months. And then Hindenberg made another, maybe the first of the disastrous decisions. And that was to hold another snap election, thinking that they would be able to prove that the Nazis aren't as powerful as everybody thinks.

Well, they were. And the Nazis won big time. And he had no choice but to agree to, he thought he had no choice, but to agree to let Hitler become chancellor. As you said, he wasn't elected. his party was elected because of his leadership, because of the way that they played on the fears and anger of the German people. But of course, once he became chancellor, he took over and effectively dissolved the democratic process. And then he was off to the races in trying to take over all of Europe. Yeah. And it's interesting, and I think very telling, how there were so many people, so many entities at the time who thought Hitler, you know, he's really good with these rabble rousers. You know, he has this party that's full of former veterans. But, you know, these brown shirts.

But if, you know, if we can control Hitler, then we can control all of these people. And Hitler's basically like, mm-hmm, sure, that sounds great. I'm, you know, I'm happy. I will do whatever you want. I will say whatever you want, which obviously wasn't true. That's exactly right. Because, I mean, Can I just read one quote? Yes, absolutely. I think this, not a quote, but a passage. The number of votes for or against him, Hitler, made no difference. Hitler had used the tools of democracy to destroy it.

The election was neither free nor fair. Yeah. And that's exactly, that was what happened at the end. And then later, his life, his rise to power, remain a vitally important lesson of how democratic institutions can be perverted for individual gain. We'll get back to my conversation with Dana Bash in just a moment. What a day is brought to you by Built. Rent, mortgages, whatever you're paying, it's too much.

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Let's get back to my conversation with Dana Bash. Was there an election that you wish you could have covered in this book but you didn't have space for? No, we made it because actually, I'm glad you asked that question, kind of going back a little bit, these 15 elections, they're totally subjective. We made the David Fisher, my wonderful co-author and I made the choice that we were going to have some that are very obvious, like 1800, like the ones that didn't, that were cautionary tales like in Germany that led to World War II, but also others that showed it's not just just elections for government officials.

We have a papal election in there because obviously the Pope is a pretty powerful individual globally. And this one Pope, the good Pope, he was known as Pope John the 23rd, really transformed at the Catholic Church in the 1960s. And then we have Martin Luther King Jr. And you don't think of him. I didn't think of him as somebody who was elected.

He's a civil rights leader. but there was a very small election in a church in Montgomery, Alabama by a bunch of civil rights leaders who said, we need a formal organization to lead the bus boycott, and we need a person to lead that. And he was very new to Montgomery. He had been at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church like a year. And he had impressed people, his parishioners, with the way he's. spoke, and they called them in at age 26 and say, we want you to do this, and they raised their hands, maybe about a little more than 12 people, and launched Martin Luther King Jr. into the stratosphere

because of his ability to lead and to move people with his words, which is what Joanne Robinson, one of the civil rights leaders in that group, who actually suggested him, that's what she said to them. So elections of all different shapes and sizes, all different stripes, can have a very big impact, not just on our lives, locally, statewide, nationally, globally, but also on generations to come. And those are a couple that really did strike us. There are so many more. I don't think the answer to question, I don't know that there's one that we left out. But I do. think that I hope that this book is a way to get people, you know, who read it talking? I mean, let me just ask you. For example, what would you have put in here? Okay. There's a theme here.

Dana, you have many, I'm sure, fulfilling hobbies. One of mine is that I absolutely hate George McClellan, former Union General, but then who ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Because, one, George McClellan was amazingly self-absorbed. That is like the entire reflection you get of his entire career is that this is a person who both overestimated himself and overestimated everyone around him, including his opposition. But I think that the reason why I would choose the election of 1864 is one, we had an election in the midst of the Civil War. And two, you have someone who is running, who has, you know, failed on such a grand scale, but only with the benefit of history do we really understand that. I think that something that I find helpful about history is that nothing is a foregone conclusion.

You don't know what's going to happen. In 1864, the war is exhausting everyone. Like, you know, now looking back, it's like, obviously the North has more resources. You have, you know, you've got the Emancipation Proclamation, which means that you have a number of African Americans who literally are like running to join the Union Army. me. That's right. You feel like, you know, everyone should know how this is war is going to end. You don't. You have no idea. You have absolutely no idea. And you have George McClellan running against Abraham Lincoln saying, like, if I win, I'll, I'll just declare peace. Well, you know, we'll just be two countries. This is all tiring. We're all tired of this. And so I think that something about that election and thinking about elections taking place during American wars since is that you don't know what's going to happen. You don't, you know, there were elections. held during World War II. You think of FDR as being this pinnacle of democratic norms who could possibly run against him. But if you don't know what's going to happen at the end of the Second World War,

there were lots of people who were like, this is a terrible idea and we got to get out. We got to get out of this war. This is too difficult. You know, the economy is still exhausted, even though, you know, the wartime economy is propping it up. So I think for me, the election of 1864, which I think it's the no one knows anything election is one in which looking back, it seems insane for someone to challenge Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. But at the time, it made sense, even though George McClellan was terrible. First of all, I think that the way you just described, when you're in the moment you don't know, it's not until hindsight that you know, is kind of the whole thesis of this book. And you said it so well, which is even for us, when we go vote,

we could be voting in an election that will just affect our lives present day, but we could be voting in elections that will have monumental ramifications. Now, if you're in the middle of a civil war, you pretty much know that it's going to be a big vote, right? And we do put in one of the chapters is the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, his first election, which is what people knew that electing him was probably going to mean. the civil war. Not for sure, but they thought it was possible. Right. None of the Southern States voted for him. And then if you fast forward to 1864, you're exactly right. One of the arguments that he made and that FDR later during World War II borrowed from was don't change a horse

in the middle of the stream, midstream. And the idea was, you're not going to get rid of me. Why would you get rid of me? Like we're fighting this war. And in fact, Churchill, even used it across the pond. You know, it did work for Lincoln and it worked for FDR three times. He was reelected three times. But you're exactly right. You have to put yourself in the position. I mean, if you think about where we are right now, modern day, that you see the, it's a very different war, it's a very different everything, but just in terms of the public support waning for whatever's happening in Iran, you see that the numbers go down every single day, especially and even in the president's own party. So then you think, well, what's he going to do next? And he just said at the

UN, I'm at a crossroads and I have to decide whether I annihilate him or not. Now, that's also a tactic, negotiating tactic, to say that at the UN, but still, it's sort of a reminder that we don't know how Iran is going to end. Yeah. And we, and that's, that's the case for so many pivotal moments in the history of the world. Yeah. Dana Bash, thank you so much for joining me. Oh my God. It was such a pleasure. Thank you so much. That was my conversation with Dana Bash, CNN anchor and chief political correspondent, and the author of the new book, The Elections that Changed the World.

Before we go, Crooked Con, announcement. The Crooked Con, 26th lineup is officially out, and I think you're going to like what you see. Among all of your favorite crooked hosts, like me, you'll see Senator Chris Van Hollen, Representative Sarah McBride and Jamie Raskin, I've had it's Jennifer Welch, Ben Wickler, and many, many, many more on our stages at the Washington D.C. Convention Center on November 7th. View the full CrookedCon lineup online and get tickets at crookedcon.com. Ticket prices go up on October 6, so get yours now to lock in the early bird prices. See you there.

That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a review. Here's how you know that GOP's polling is bad, bad, and tell your friends to listen. And if you are into reading, and not just about how Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donald's has removed a bunch of references to Trump from his campaign website, including a photo of himself and his wife with the president. Like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston.

And that's in Florida. Florida. What today is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Emily 4, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Adam Lippert, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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