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COMMENTARY THE COFFE KLATCH ... APRIL 26TH 2025 with Ronert Reich and Heather Lofthouse The Worst 100 Days I've Ever Seen PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/live/go-gae-y2To Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
The Worst 100 Days I've Ever Seen \| The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich Robert Reich Premiered Apr 26, 2025 1.2M subscribers ... 199,653 views ... 12K likes The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich Were Trump's first 100 days defined by incompetence or cruelty? Are Americans coming together to reject his authoritarianism? And how will the late Pope Francis be remembered? Heather and I answer this week's biggest questions on today's Klatch. The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich Robert Reich Transcript 0:02 and it is the Saturday coffee clutch with Heather Loft House and yours truly Robert Rich and uh it's been another week Heather here we are i mean we're coming up to 100 days on Wednesday of Trump and it feels like 100 years feels like so many okay should we dive in yes we we the one of our purposes here is not only to bring you up to date and give you themes but also reassure you uh but the reassurance is getting harder and harder as time goes on but part of the reassurance is we're all together we are all together so that part's not hard we're all together and we're together with you um so what what are we going to talk about Heather let's cover Pope Francis yes trump's first 100 days as you just said and the economy going down the tubes but so are Trump's approval ratings well that's good news we're going to get to the good news um but Pope Francis I I I mean he will go down in history undoubtedly as I mean people 1:04 call him the people's pope but what strikes me uh particularly in the context of what we discuss all the time that's it is his character and temperament and his position on issues and values are in such sharp contrast with guess who donald Trump i mean if you put all of people all of the human beings on the earth in a line and said who uh stands for decency uh Pope Francis would be on one end and who stands for indecency somebody else that we discuss would be on the other side no and not and in a way I don't always think of popes as um being tuned in to politics and economics as such though of course they are but his sense of economic justice came through in a way that I think we're all looking at now and realizing exactly i mean he he he he 2:02 he came out against inequality uh of wealth and inequality of income and pointed out ways in which it corrupts societies uh he was one of the first to to speak out against what was going on in Gaza um he has come to the aid of migrants and im immigrants and and basically said uh you know he's he's decrieded the way in which some politicians i.e trump uh have characterized and and and demeaned um and demonized um immigrants i I think that that the pope uh was the most important voice on so many of these moral issues he was the conscience of the world now he didn't go as far as many people wanted him to go uh he did not say uh you know abortion should be a right of every woman that uh that priests should be have the opportunity to marry uh he but he he was he was 3:00 consistent in terms of his moral view right and he was astute and he was had such a sense of the globe and it wasn't just you know we have to remember the poor it was more nuanced than that you really got a sense from him that he cared about the difference between you know inequality as you said and that anybody could be poor that the poor were not a special separate group uh I mean he very often in his encyclicals and in his statements uh he talked about not othering right uh that that when you the minute that a society or people start talking about the other right uh that they are not they they not understanding that we're all in this together uh and that was terribly important have you ever been to the Vatican yeah me too in the '9s when did you go uh in the '9s was that was that no way back there in I remember blonde in the chapel waving and 4:03 you probably didn't have a great view it's incredible i mean the coincidences did you see Conclave uh yeah yeah that was good and also did you see the two popes mm-m oh it's another movie it's really good anthony Hopkins oh right that one yeah yeah i haven't seen it oh you have to see okay I'll see that um but so sad and so I mean of course not a young man didn't have the best of health but also I mean still a shock right after the JD Vance visit he became he was 76 when he became pope and people thought too old i mean you know um but he he proved that even an older guy can be a an activist and he was an activist yeah exactly okay well that's sad so we have to move on i apologize for being the timekeeper here well no we don't have to move on in the sense that I think we we all want to not only pay our respects but remember him in terms of what he represented of course and 5:01 keep that those values those principles that character that temperament at the top of our minds in a time of total darkness uh given the United States but given much of the rest of the world i know okay well it's good we're having this coffee um to kind of lift ourselves up I guess okay so first 100 days coming up this Wednesday is the anniversary if we have to characterize it I mean are we is it cruel is it incompetent i would say it's both incompetent the Trump you can't pick one word the Trump regime is the mo you know I have been in four different white houses three different administrations and um I have never come across uh an administration a regime that is this incompetent i mean people it's not just Pete Hegathth uh yes there is Pete Hegath and his you know the Pentagon is coming apart it really is coming apart uh and you can't have the Pentagon coming apart uh but you have the State Department also you have the Justice Department i mean all of these 6:04 major departments of the United States are in in in mayhem i mean complete mayhem it's chaos and that's because the leaders aren't qualified to lead and then now with the Heg Seth example you have his chief of staff and others leaving i mean you've run a department before you can't What does it look like when all your top people run for the Hill well it means that you are a really a terrible manager i mean what you need to do and the Labor Department that I ran was small i mean compared to that I mean compared to the Justice Department or compared to the Pentagon but how big was it well it was about 16,000 when I came in okay i mean but it was rinky dink but um but what you want to do is you want to maintain a sense of of collective identity and solidity and stability and you want to give people um uh an understanding of what they are there to do uh and you want to link your 7:00 mission with the mission of the United States uh now it's hard to do that I think in the Trump administration Trump regime uh but Hegath and others are Marco Rubio right I mean look at what he's doing look look at Homeland Security i mean what a wreck these places are uh now you asked whether it's incompetence or cruelty and I think it's You can pick another adjective well I think it's both i think that there's a lot of cruelty particularly in the people around Trump i think Trump is totally incompetent i we know he has the attention span of a fruitly he can't maintain anything can't even read drosophila uh yeah what drosophila what is fruitfly drosophila i didn't know that i keep going attention span of of Chrysophila drosophila drosophila um but sorry I can't even remember what I was talking about but but you you but but there is cruelty around Trump i mean you know people like Steven Miller uh who is 8:00 in charge of immigration uh is really I think a a you know I hate to say this about anybody but and I don't know him but from everything I see and hear he sounds like a horrible person and they're getting a high off of the cruelty and the power they have and their ability to influence him and get it through and Elon Musk also the same thing and uh the fellow who is the the trade zar uh both I mean all of these people uh are just um they're not people you would ever want to encounter certainly you couldn't make friends with but they're values they're values and then as a group I mean that's part of it too is dynamic they egg each other out and I think the difference heather between the first Trump administration regime and this one is that the first one at least you had people who were not only establishing guard rails around Trump's craziness but they were establishing a certain sustainability and a certain stability uh and now it's 9:02 just everybody every sickopant and they're all sick of fans they're all lackey uh all of them are competing for Trump's attention and again because Trump has no attention span uh he's changing his mind every minute i mean on every issue whether it's trade or immigration or anything else if it's controversial a week later or three days later it's something else and and they salute and they like to follow through on the insane orders and before it was no no we have to have some bounds around this now it's let's go and let's see what he does next and then we can make more money and then we I mean well it is well he I think the only values that he that is Trump thinks about we now know if we didn't know before are power and money it that's it but the people around him I think do have a kind of fanaticism that uh I have not seen before in government uh a a a kind of a a brutality a bullying aspect uh I mean 10:04 immigration is just the tip of this iceberg but you wherever you look you see the FBI look at look at Cash Patel i mean of all the of all the people who want you don't want to be put in the position of FBI director that is one of them and they are now proving it right now why would you say that because he has an enemy's list because well he has an enemies list and he also he boasted uh just yesterday about the fact that the FBI had arrested uh a a judge in uh uh Milwaukee Milwaukee that's right um and I'll remember her name in just a minute dugan was her last name hannah Hannah Dugan um but how can the FBI arrest a judge just because she's there trying to uh make sure that immigrants have access even if they have no papers even if they are undocumented they have access to a courthouse that's what that's what judges ideally are supposed to do you arrest a judge how can the FBI 11:04 how can the the administration the executive branch arrest a judge an article 3 judge well this is we're getting into very dangerous territory here yes I saw your Substack this week that warned us about where is the dangerous territory where does a democracy end and a dictatorship begin really truly well this we're getting very close to a dictatorship and I I hate to say this i hate for you to say it well I hate to for you to tell me that you hate for me to say it but it's Could you post this on Substack and then I can Yeah comment it's it's it's it's it hurts me personally so much i mean I spent uh you know years in the Federal Trade Commission in the Justice Department and the Labor Department um you know and I and I was surrounded by people who cared about this country uh but now you have somebody surrounded by others who are bent on really 12:00 overwhelming democracy on turning our democracy into a dictatorship and I think that if we're talking about the first 100 days uh this has to be one of the bigger central themes uh and let me if you will excuse me for going off on my rant no I love it let me get my coffee keep going um every democracy depends on what might be called a level of mid-range intermediary institutions i'm talking about the media universities courts um you know uh political parties nonprofits nonprofits i mean all of these intermediary institutions that exist independently and their independence independence from uh the head of state or the president uh is critically important in terms of maintaining honesty in the democracy science would be another good example um 13:00 but what you see this administration this regime doing over and over and over again is attacking all of these intermediary institutions they're going after universities systematically they're going after law firms they're going after even libraries and museums they're going after the courts um you know one of the reasons that the judges getting together just this past week um and one of the you know the judicial conference of the United States is usually a yawn i mean nobody pays attention to what the judges do what they get together but this week they got together and they they they asked whether they are going to be able to maintain the US Marshall protection because so many of them are getting death threats why are they getting death threats because Trump and some of the people around Trump are demeaning and excoriating the judges uh well this is again what you see Victor Orban uh do what we saw Stalin and uh and and Hitler and and other so-called strong men of 14:07 the uh previous century do uh they go after these institutions but they're not just so yes they're going after them and that's horrible but around that is the threat to go after them the fear I mean just in the nonprofit space this week there was an executive order around ACT blueue for example which is a a payment processor and everyone's terrified that that's going to come down so there is he is so good at stoking the fear and then often doing something that he threatened he would do not all of it maybe He zigs instead of zags but that fear underlying everyone is so can be so paralytic he trunks in fear exactly we cannot allow that part to and and the fear leads to intimidation and intimidation leads to silencing and then we're doing his bidding for him exactly well you can't I mean I've said this before a a tyrant or 15:01 tyranny generally cannot be maintained without people submitting to it uh but how do you avoid submitting to it if you are for example a a judge uh getting phone calls or getting written notes threatening your life and you're not sure the US Marshall Service will actually be there there to protect you uh your family might be vulnerable i mean how do you protect yourself if you are uh working on in a lab on some very important uh you know experiments and suddenly it may be that your entire funding is gone because you've said something or you've you've done something and then you're driving home and you can't listen to public radio anymore because that's on the chopping block and about to have a big vote where the bulk of the funding would be gone for the two biggest public broadcasters that's or or the media generally look at CBS 60 Minutes the head of 60 Minutes Bill Owens uh he he resigns from 60 16:03 Minutes why because he doesn't think he can maintain uh his credibility or the credibility of 60 Minutes um because of the pressure being put on 60 Minutes and on CBS from from a lawsuit where does the lawsuit come from it is a defamation suit that came from Donald Trump yeah 66 billion dollar suit and it's all tied up in money and politics in terms of who's gonna who's owning what behemoth you know money and power profit and that's behind the news but but the but the problem is if you have the head of state uh who has huge money and huge power and doesn't have any sense of responsibility to the institutional framework of a democracy all he cares about is power and money uh then you are not only inviting corruption you're inviting fear and intimidation and silencing and when these intermediary institutions all of them begin to disappear or begin to 17:04 become silenced then your democracy is silenced then you know then I mean um if if if if somebody can be picked up and and and basically without a trial without any kind of a hearing uh an accusation that the person is dangerous and sent to El Salvador none of us none of us is safe right it's a slippery slope and this word we keep saying deportations a deportation means sending someone to safety in the country well it used to not sending someone into prison in a country well this is this is this is an abduction and this is a new kind of kidnapping a new kind of vehicle for fear i mean if you are a student uh in the United States an international student on a visa or you are on a work visa uh or if even if you have a green 18:00 card uh you are likely not to speak up about something that you feel otherwise ought to be said uh that is critical of the administration or in some way crosses what the administration line is uh or the regime's line is because you are fearful uh that you could be uh in you know there could be some retribution right and we have him going after the universities the students and the people themselves the judges it's all-encompassing that's the issue i mean we're you know there's a lot of discussion about each of these separately but the unifying theme is going after the intermediary institutions with fear and intimidation and is he winning well it's hard to know because you don't know how many people have been silenced um I one of the things that I really do um I'm angry about I mean I'm angry about a lot of things Heather but one of the things that really angers me pisses me off is you've got a lot of uh the 19:00 CEOs of this country the big uh big companies that depend on the stability of this country that really do depend upon government in so many ways depend on Americans and American consumers they are backing Trump they want selfishly they want a big tax cut uh they want regulate regulations uh you know health and safety and environmental regulations tossed away uh they're not standing profits right and that for their own greed it is just their own greed uh well as as has been said many times you know it's not just the bad people and the their actions it's the silence of good people that allows a a tyrant to take over well so you mentioned his incompetence so on the one hand it is disgusting watching it when so many people are in harm's way because of it and then it's also embarrassing that this incompetent 20:03 person re is represented to the globe to be an American it's mortifying so I'm having all these feelings about it but then I have this feeling of but at least he's incompetent and I feel like some people are starting to notice it so there's a is it a little bit of one of your dull tarnished silver linings well that way in other words if he were really competent all of this would be much worse right u I I think that's right um because what he does is he moves in one direction and then when he sees that it was a mistake or he's getting well he doesn't see when he someone tells him it was a mistake better reverse or if he sees the stock market I mean uh the tariffs are a good example uh he he comes on strong and you know tariffs are great tariffs are wonderful tariffs the beautiful word uh and then he he puts the tariffs up on and he calls them reciprocal tariffs as if they are somehow justified deserved 21:00 deserved and and reciprocal and and so uh and then what happens the stock market tanks but the bond market we've talked about this before the bond market which really is supposed to be treasury bonds the safest place to put your money the the world begins to pull its money including a lot of Americans out of tea bills and he gets a little nervous he gets scared he says well we'll we'll put a 90day hiatus on all of this time out time out and but he still has 145% tariffs on China and then he starts realizing that China has a lot of ways of making life impossible for America he starts realizing because his phone starts ringing they're call CEOs start calling him up look at my age i'm dialing like this yes you are not like this yes well I I would dial like this right and so they say 'We just got to tell you that the tariffs on China are really actually we're going to have to raise the prices we just got to flag it for you.' That's right and when when he sees the prices are actually going to 22:06 go up go up and he's been his whole reason for being the reason that so many people voted for him is he said 'I'm going to take prices down.' Day one uh on day one and then he gets nervous and he says 'Well maybe the even the China tariffs were were too high they're unrealistic they're not really sustainable he says uh and the stock market then goes up oh by the way you know when you have girrations in the stock market and bond market like this you know that somebody's making a lot of money oh for sure somebody was And you know who it is inside not us but somebody who has inside information somebody maybe who knows trump family could it be and then crypto's on the rise and so much cronies financial shenanigans there is I mean one of you know I think we can talk about the first 100 days we will but I think looking back on this historians will find uh 23:03 more uh more just uh payoffs and and and uh you know we should be able to be seeing this now right and I feel like there was a time when investigative journalists would were were able to find more things and felt free to speak out about it or when someone who felt a moral feeling you know or compelled to say you know what I have to say this isn't okay we need to adjust how often we're I don't know Congress is admitting to what their where their funds are going well this is where the silence issue comes in it could be uh I mean we have a lot of reason to believe that there is a lot of uh funny business going on a lot of payoffs a lot of inside information but uh we're not getting any reportage because a lot of people are scared right a lot of people don't want to be whistleblowers in this environment reportage reportage reportage is that a word yeah i mean not I mean it's French well um so the good 24:07 So I Oh hi i refuse i feel like our Michael and our team we can't do this so far we're also not allowed to sing okay it's been outlawed i think we're great um so in terms of the positive which is I'm having to put on you know my loop to really look and see a tiny little glimmer of positive your rosecolored My rose colored jeweler's loop yeah um but so people are some people I mean I couldn't believe this and you know I never say positive things about Goldman Sachs but even they spoke out this week about the importance of diversity and said hello you know you can't just write things off yes i think there are people in the business community in the financial community beginning to say uh no this is wrong i mean it's not just wrong in economic sense uh you know even the Wall Street Journal has been against 25:03 a lot of what Trump has done and no it's wrong in the sense of what a society should be of what we want from uh America of what this country ought to represent uh and the fact that Goldman Sachs did say well diversity is an important value uh is critically important the fact that Harvard University stood up to Trump and said no independence of a university is a very critical value you have these little green shoots and hopefully there will be more right and then you have certain it's it's good to see certain people on the messaging side of things who are really being so clear right so you have AOC and Bernie who are against the oligarchy which is so interesting because we had Democrat saying uh Democrats shouldn't be using the word oligarchy they should focus on wokeness he thinks it's people don't know what an oligarchy is right and so the assumption there is that people first of all people do know what an oligarchy is right they are sensing it they are watching it this came out this week in the Wall Street 26:04 Journal that the 19 richest households in the United States earned in wealth additional $1 trillion last year 19 19 households earned1 trillion on top of what they had they had to divide up the the trillion i mean when you divide up a trillion between 19 I mean it's not much but I mean these numbers so and Americans know this they are watching they say we like the part of taking down the elites in some way we are feeling shortchanged and so but to say I mean so back to the messaging I'm liking what AOC is saying I mean we had Van Holland go down and watching him speaking and Cory Booker and and and obviously Bernie Sanders and Pete Buddhaj Judge has been poking through with very clear has been poking but the question really is what is the message not just the Democratic party but what is the message uh after 27:01 100 days or as we approach 100 days that criticize the key criticism of this administration that brings together I mean people conservative pundits like David Brooks say say we need a some sort of national civic uprising now for for for that to happen um you've got to have uh a society that is not just Democrats who are enraged but a lot of independents and even some former Trumpers who say he's gone way overboard uh this is not what I expected or what I think Americans on average are agreeing on these things they're seeing on average right i mean of course the base base is going nowhere but I think this idea that you know uh they're pro- immigration we're anti-immigration it's not that people want secure borders and lawful im immigration on average if you ask them and but also his poll numbers 28:03 aren't plummeting i know they're going down especially even around immigration i mean even around but around protecting the border it's high but people are saying we actually want the rule of law and we actually don't want oligarchy on steroids see this this is a very very important point because um if if people are suspicious uh of uh how the game is is being played and and that the game is rigged and that inequality is out of control you want a term like oligarchy that explain that people can you know that that people want to learn they want to see that yes we used to at the turn of the last century have a first guilded age and we had an oligarchy a small group of people that were controlling everything financially and politically we are now in a second guilded age and we have a new oligarchy and it is a small group of billionaires who are controlling everything economically and politically and it's the big picture 29:01 this is orchestrated this has happened before this is not novel because all of a sudden we have all these fabulous brilliant people coming in and get make getting richer and richer and richer this was predictable this is a repeat and that's the whole message to really have it and and the way you overcome oligarchy is for people to come together and to politically reassert their majority right uh and uh you know I think if we waited till 2026 maybe Democrats hopefully please God Democrats are going to be gaining control of maybe one or two chambers of Congress but can we wait till 2026 uh do we need to have this kind of sense of mass resistance right before then and I so appreciate your substack that you wrote having spoken to Sam Brown where and talking about is it a general strike he used the 30:00 term and has used and is well known for using the term moratorum which he likes better than a general strike in terms of its ability to bring many people in have you met Have you met Sam no I would love to he's an interesting guy he in 1969 was the brains behind the antivietnam moratorum now he at that time I remember a lot of people were saying general strike and he said no if we want to make this big enough to be seen and heard and have an influence on American politics we've got to use words and concepts and do this in a way that more and more people feel it's theirs it can't feel partisan it can't feel uh like a strike uh and I remember at the time kind of debating with friends about that i wasn't sure I did participate uh Bill Clinton participated uh in those demonstrations in 1969 that was brought up in the future yes it was in October of ' 69 and then again there was even a larger march on Washington in December 31:04 of ' 69 but all of that Heather contributed to ending the war and getting Nixon out of office yeah yeah and so that worked it it worked to that extent yes it was it was a huge it became a huge movement and what we need now is a pro-democracy movement we need a movement that recognizes uh that we uh that the rule of law and also economic consistency they're very close together can you talk about Jerome Powell and what happened this week well if if if for example um you know I mean what happened last week was that Trump uh made it sound as if he was going to try to get rid of Jerome Powell the head of the Fed uh and markets reacted uh as we last week said we thought they would because if you if if you don't have the independence this goes back to the theme of independence of these of these institutions the Fed has to be 32:02 independent or it has no credibility uh and so uh Trump had to go back and say 'No no no i'm not going to do anything i'm not going to threaten his job.' Uh it's another example of Trump being inconsistent incoherent uh uh kind of chaos in terms of the Trump administration because he is creating uh circumstances that are making life very hard for many many people out there but it's not the many people he listened to it's whoever dialed him up and said 'Okay too far.' Yeah the markets are not happy you need to You need to say you're not going to fire the guy you called a loser in all caps yesterday yes and in this case it was the evidence suggests that it was uh the heads of major corporations that said 'If you don't do this we're going to face huge inflation we're going to have to raise prices.' Uh it's it's the combination of your tariff policy and your criticism of uh Jerome Powell uh it's going to drive the economy nuts and he listened he listened 33:07 is that good is that is that good news um I mean I when I look at this f first 100 days um I I I just say to Miss myself the good news the really good news uh is that or maybe the potential good news here we go soften it no I'm going to say a potential silver lining um is that uh Trump may be ironically bringing people together uh bringing together the nation uh against his dictatorial impulses against his inconsistency against his chaos uh against his tariffs against his his immigration policies i mean it's all uh so antithetical to fundamental values shared by so many Americans not just democrats so we maybe maybe if we are lucky the silver lining and the 100 days 34:00 or the 150 days or how many days it takes is that Americans are brought back to first principles and we agree on the basics so you've mentioned the intermediary organizations and I am watching gatherings right universities starting to come together lawyers signing friends of the court um memoranda um all of these examples but also at the individual level it's so important that people are making calls showing up at protests um getting online and staying engaged and active and that informal leadership um that people are leaning into is critical it's absolutely critical um even if the intermediary organizations were strong uh you still need grassroots activism and it's something that we talk a lot and we talk a lot with you about because you by the nature of being with us with Heather and me uh you are grassroots activists but this grassroots activism uh has to be 35:05 enlarged and uh more and more people have to be pulled into it uh it really is a matter of the future of the country i liked seeing that uh Harvard research study that you have cited a couple times which talks about this 3.5% threshold isn't that interesting yeah so it basically says that you if you have 3.5% of a society of a population really intentionally mobilizing against a government that there can be a topple this is a a study coming out of Harvard and I think the uh researcher was Chennowith am I correct um but um the researcher looked at historically at movements that did actually change politics and uh found that 3.5% of the population seem to be the critical determinant if you could get to 3.5% which in our population is what 11 36:05 million something like that yeah slightly more I think yeah you don't need to have a vast majority but you need to have activists activists who are making loud noises about 3.5% and you get change yeah that is a silver lining i am old enough to remember civil rights and the antivietnam war movement and Sam Brown and a lot of things uh that to me showed the likelihood the the imminence of change you are probably too young well I've studied them so and I have I mean protests are protests they're happening yes but to study the to be have been at some of these big ones seems I mean I'm jealous but also there's the other part of me that thinks it must be hard to have been there and then to be back in a way it is it is and I think a lot of people a lot of kind of ancient relics 37:01 like me uh we look back and we say well it was possible in civil rights and antivietnam uh and we accomplished a great deal and the wi women's movement was really also a major movement uh why is it so hard to take on Trump well I don't think I think the answer is it won't be that hard it's only a 100 days let's keep on reminding ourselves not even a 100 days is that making me feel better or worse well it should make you feel better in this context okay got it yeah no right because because we haven't really uh given all of the forces that could come together enough time the blitzkrieg of Trump right and one of the features of Trump in the in in his second term is that it has been a blitzkrieg it was planned as a blitzkrieg um I mean the first Trump administration uh he had a lot of people around him who were essentially guardrails uh preventing him from just doing even crazier things this second 38:02 Trump administration he's surrounded by enablers who as you said before are cheering him on uh and part of the cheering him on is the Blitz Creek get stuff done as fast as possible if you stretch out the graph of time as I always say you see trend lines right so I one other thing that I try to remind myself of is that looking back in 10 years from now right my child will be looking back from 10 years and saying 'What did you all do?' By the way I was only 12 at the time there there might be a there will be a low but will there be a high and how high can we get the graph to go back up you know is it above where we were before on many issues i hope so i hope so i hope uh again part of the silver lining uh is that we get to a point that is better than where we were before Trump even before Trump won uh that we uh have enough commitment to democracy and the rule of law uh that we 39:03 get big money out of politics yeah uh that we reduce the power of big corporations uh that we actually have institutions in Washington and in state capitals that are working hard for average working people and for the poor uh which takes us back to Pope Francis i mean Pope Francis could do only so much he could be the conscience uh of the world but he had no political power uh and at every turn he was confronted with the reality of politics and that was the limit of Pope Francis and I think the greatest tribute to Pope Francis and the greatest tribute to others like him the prophets of the world who had no political power like Martin Luther King Jr is to make in politics the values that they represented yep yep do you know where I'm going next no i'm going to my local independent bookstore because today is 40:06 independent bookstore day let's let's have it let's cheer independent bookstore day independent bookstores and also reading and books so here's what I'm buying i am buying Tim Snyder of course the Yale historians book on tyranny because we are going to be interviewing him and having coffee with him next week next week here yeah next week here join us tim Snyder the Yale historian will be with us tim and Well that's great yep so I'm going to read On Tyranny and then I'm going to pre-order your book from a bookstore cuz I'm not getting it from other places and I'll leave it at that so your book your memoir coming up short hilarious a memoir of my America so it's so I'm so excited to read it and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to buy it and then I'm going to take little notes in it and I want to bring it onto a coffee clutch and I want to spill coffee on it and I want to discuss it and I want to make it part of our part of our history i could 41:01 I couldn't endorse you more um listen thank you and you and thank you for everything that you do for inequality media civic action you're the inspirer and for your just intelligence and stop it okay I won't embarrass you further uh but um let me uh also thank you uh behind the camera today is Michael Lannes Calderon and Michael is is just you've met him before and we'll have he'll be back on our our coffee clutch uh but I want to thank you for bearing with us for joining us again for being out there every week uh for telling your friends and acquaintances and uh people even people who you are not friends about us and the importance of joining not only our coffee clunch but also joining the movement so thank 42:00 you we'll see you next Saturday that was so fabulous and I had a great time and I literally thought it was wonderful i thought it was very very fun and you were beyond great have you done this before i've never done it before but you you hit a new high really

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