Ben Rhodes

Rhodes said younger Democrats such as Ossoff, Warnock, Murphy and Ocasio-Cortez are figuring out how to link Trump's radicalism to people's lives.

“I think the notably younger Democrats, by the way, are figuring this out”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 1:16:26

Rhodes argued Democrats should connect their democracy message to economic outcomes such as corruption and higher prices.

“We have to not have the separation of the democracy message and the kind of economic message because they're connected”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 1:17:11

Rhodes argued that a candidate who harnesses moral language about dignity and caring for one's neighbor would benefit in the 2028 presidential race.

“I think that kind of language, whoever can harness that and capture that, I think that would be very useful in a 2028 presidential candidacy”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 1:07:20

Rhodes recounted that the dream passage was absent from King's prepared text and was ad-libbed.

“He did not have the dream in there. He ad-libbed the whole dream sequence”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 59:57

Rhodes said conservatives such as Reagan appropriated King's rhetoric while omitting his demands on government.

“Reagan loved to cite King and the content of your character, not the color of your skin, while leaving out those parts”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 35:41

Rhodes argued that advancing rights today requires embracing the whole American story, including its flawed founders, as Douglass and King did.

“if you want to persuade people and if you want to advance rights in this country, you actually have to embrace the whole story, like even the parts we don't like”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 42:15

Rhodes argued that one of two competing American stories is an inheritance-based nationalism he likens to originalism or blood-and-soil nationalism.

“there is one story that is a nationality of inheritance that you can call it originalism. You can call it blood and soil nationalism”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 9:53

Rhodes argued Trump's radicalism lies in rejecting the constitutional framework rather than in his xenophobia or populism.

“The radicalism of Trump is not in the underlying xenophobia or populism. It's in putting that in service of someone who believes not in the constitutional framework”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 1:14:02

Rhodes argued that Douglass's unpopular defense of Chinese immigrants may have ultimately prevailed despite the Chinese Exclusion Act.

“Maybe because he went high and he went big, maybe he won in the end”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 1:01:04

Rhodes said he now sees Reverend Wright as part of the Black church jeremiad tradition shared by Douglass, Stewart and King.

“Reverend Wright emerges out of the black church tradition of the Jeremiad, which is a speech that is intended to call out a nation's sins”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 50:32

Rhodes described Lincoln's second inaugural as an unapologetic, near-religious case for abolition as a second founding.

“he does give an absolutely unapologetic and almost religious case for abolition as the second founding of the United States”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 45:40

Rhodes argued that Stephens presented white supremacy not as a necessary evil but as an enlightened discovery to motivate poor white Southerners.

“He turns white supremacy into like a progressive enlightenment discovery, philosophical moral truth, as you quoted”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 30:55

Rhodes noted that Franklin's closing convention speech said nothing about the Constitution's contents and focused entirely on compromise.

“The entire speech is about the virtue of compromise itself”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 24:00

Rhodes argued that citizenship must be equal and that the U.S. is anchored in law and the Declaration's creed rather than lineage.

“How can some people be more American than other people? We are supposed to be a nation anchored in laws, the Constitution, and a creed, the Declaration of Independence”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 15:20

Rhodes said Vance's Claremont speech openly articulated the inheritance-based story, which is why he opened the book with it.

“And so I actually think that JD did the service of framing the other story for me”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 11:06

Rhodes said that studying all of American history let him see Trump's election following Obama as part of a recurring pattern rather than an anomaly.

“reliving all of American history kind of allowed me to situate our experience in a continuum where it's actually not that unusual that this happened”

Pod Save America: What Does it Mean to Be an American? (May 31, 2026) · Listen from 7:20