Clint Smith: Make America What It Set Out to Be
7/3/20261 hr 8 min
It's hard to be in a celebratory mood about America 250. The administration only wants to tell a narrow story of the country without all the contradictions and complexities of its history. And for the past 18 months, it has also been a particularly challenging time for black members of the military under Hegseth, who brazenly disregards their service, blocks promotions of black officers, or expunges them from the ranks. But the aspiration of America as a multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith democracy is a noble one, and our job is to keep trying to build the country we want it to be. Plus: the man who's trying to stop the magafication of the Smithsonian, advice for how to talk to kids about the country's history, and the simple joys of a July 4th cookout.
The Atlantic's Clint Smith joins Tim Miller for the holiday weekend pod.
show notes
- Clint’s piece on being black in Hegseth’s military
- Clint on the man who’s put himself between Trump and the Smithsonian
- Clint's "How the Word Is Passed"
- Thursday’s “Morning Shots” on the words of Gerald Ford
- Tim’s July 4th playlist
- This week only, a full Bulwark membership for everything we offer on our website is $86 a year. That's 14 percent off at http://thebulwark.com/july4
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Speaker 21:14
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Tim Miller· Host1:18
Hey everybody, um, we have got my guy Clint Smith coming up next, and I, like, the pod ended, and I was thinking, I was pretty melancholy. I was melancholy. I was also pretty negative about