By Becket Adams
Sunday, February 22, 2026
Of all the traits shared by President Donald Trump’s
harshest critics, none is more amusing than their inability to see the ways in
which they mirror his worst qualities.
Take, for example, Jon Meacham, a cable television
groupie who aspires to become one of the great historians of our era.
You might know him best as the Morning Joe favorite
who convinced Joe Biden, the patron saint of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, that he was the second coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. You might
also recognize Meacham as the guy who went around cable news in 2020 praising
Biden’s campaign speeches, only for it to be revealed later that Meacham himself had helped write them. You might also know
Meacham for his demagoguery, including his frequent suggestion that Trump’s
supporters are 21st-century Klansmen.
Cable and broadcast news programs know Meacham for this
latter quality. That’s why they love him. With his affection for presidential
trivia, his penchant for comparing the Trump era to the American Civil War, and
his willingness to slander conservatives and Republicans, he has got steady
work on air as long as Trump exerts influence over the GOP.
So, true to form, while appearing recently on CBS News to
hawk his latest book, America’s favorite TV historian claimed that the country
is now at its greatest turning point since — you guessed it — the Civil War.
Why? You already know the answer: Donald Trump.
Asked what he means when he says the United States is in
a moment of “moral crisis,” Meacham responded, “If we don’t recognize each
other of equal dignity, if we don’t see each other as those who stand equally
before God and the law, then the covenant that is America falls apart.”
He added, “If I’m able to think of you as lesser than,
then I don’t have to accord you the full protections of the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution.”
These are some nice sentiments. Someone ought to repeat
them back to Meacham, who is not above the kind of rhetoric he criticizes.
After all, Meacham has described the Trump presidency,
especially its handling of Covid-19, as a “reign of terror,” adding that Republican voters support someone
who is dumber than a dog. He has also called “Trumpism” the result of the
“anguished, nervous white guy’s lizard brain,” and compared it to Southern
segregation and even the Klan.
“Trumpism is not new,” Meacham said in 2018, adding that
“America [is being] held hostage.”
He added, “Trumpism is an iteration of a theme of George
Wallace and Strom Thurmond, all the way back. . . . The forces the president
embodies — and the forces that he marshaled and managed to become president —
are perennial ones. The American spirit isn’t just about Martin Luther King
Jr.— it’s also about the Klan. And the battle is between those two.”
In 2022, he argued that voting Democratic in the midterms
was like supporting Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, the obvious
implication being that voting for the GOP was comparable to backing the
Confederacy.
He also said the 2022 midterm elections were the “most
important” since the American Civil War.
More recently, before Trump’s second inauguration,
Meacham accused Republican voters of being “out of compliance” with the
Declaration of Independence because, uh, they didn’t vote for Kamala Harris.
Earlier, he criticized the Republican Party as a whole, claiming “[it doesn’t] actually
want to unite behind the pursuit of that more perfect union with the
Declaration of Independence at the core.”
There’s much more where this comes from; you can read more here.
During his appearance on CBS last week, Meacham’s appeal
to our better angels persisted, with him warning, of course, that there’s an
“authoritarian galloping at the highest level.”
“This is arguably the most important hour for citizenship
since 1850,” he said.
But what about the young people? asked Meacham’s hosts.
How can they grasp this moment within its historical context? Meacham admitted
that, unlike himself, young people haven’t grown up adjacent to great moments
in American history. Instead, they’ve known only administrative malfeasance,
which is — of course — purely a Republican phenomenon.
“If you were born in the 21st century, the public sector
has not covered itself in glory, right? September 11, weapons of mass
destruction,” he said. “Iraq, Great Recession, Covid, President Trump, January
6, and school shootings and school shooting drills.”
One can’t help but notice significant gaps in this brief
history of 21st-century public-sector misconduct (also, September 11 as an
example of misconduct?). Are we to ignore the consecutive Obama presidencies
and the disastrous, single-term Biden presidency, for which Meacham is partly
responsible? Are we to overlook Democratic misdeeds, including how former
President Bill Clinton’s interference with the Community Reinvestment Act
contributed directly to the mortgage meltdown? Are we to ignore that Obama appointed
key figures in the financial collapse to plum government positions? Are we to
ignore that he droned U.S. citizens? Are we to ignore the fatal catastrophe
that was Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, a domestic and international disgrace
from which his presidency never recovered?
Apparently!
Don’t interpret any of this as a defense of Trump. He’s
clearly a loudmouth who is often guilty of the things people say about him. He
is vindictive, caustic, and graceless. Meacham is often correct when he
highlights Trump’s worst traits. That said, and to Meacham’s main point,
building a country where everyone is treated with some basic level of respect
is a two-way street.
Meacham should take Meacham’s advice. It would be nice if
the president’s critics were the change they want to see. It would’ve been
nicer still had Meacham listened to himself when he had the ear of a
notoriously inept president — you know, the one who compared voter ID
legislation to Jim Crow laws.
Or is it, as Meacham suggested during his recent CBS
appearance, that executive misconduct is simply not a thing when Democrats are
in power?
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