PBS Hosts Historian Meacham: Trump Is Like McCarthy, Jesse Jackson Kept ‘Hope Alive’ #Political
PBS’s Firing Line with Margaret Hoover hosted the elitist media’s favorite historian Jon Meacham, who predictably found parallels between President Donald Trump and House Rep. Joe McCarthy of so-called “Red Scare” infamy, while hailing the late Jesse Jackson.
The slant started in host Margaret Hoover’s introduction, a clip montage featuring “triumphs” of democracy consisting of archive footage of women gaining the right to vote. The “trials” of democracy? Clips from the January 6 riots and ICE officers spraying mobs in Minneapolis.
Host Margaret Hoover: Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian with a new book, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union. Drawing on documents and speeches spanning America's history, Meacham illustrates how the fight for democracy has always been an uphill battle, full of triumphs-
[Archive clip: News Announcer] Energetic suffrage adherents realize their long campaign is over.
[Margaret] And trials.
[Archive clip: Crowd] Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!
Hoover: As the Trump administration expands executive power. America's democratic experiment is once again being tested.
[Archive clip: Shot of ICE protesters being sprayed by ICE officers]
Hoover began with a supportive softball, asking Meacham if he was still concerned about "constitutional government" a year into Trump's second term.
On PBS's 'Firing Line,' host Margaret Hoover sounds like an infomercial for liberal author Jon Meacham -- to sound the alarm that Trump is a threat to constitutional governance. They warn about nationalized elections, and say nothing about how the Democrats pushed for that. pic.twitter.com/DpjIUUYPok
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) February 24, 2026
Hoover: We last spoke in the days following the November election in 2024, after Donald Trump had been reelected.
Meacham: Right.
Hoover: At that time, you warned that President Trump was a unique threat to constitutional government. You also said that you hoped you would be proven wrong.
Meacham: Absolutely.
Hoover: Thirteen months into Donald Trump's second term as president, how you reflect on that sentiment?
Meacham: I haven't been proven completely wrong, but we're still here, and so I'm delighted by that.
Hoover: Is he still a unique threat to constitutional government?
Meacham: Absolutely he is, because what you saw, I thought in 2016 to 2020 that he was a difference of degree, but not kind. He was, you know, you could recognize what he was doing, not the tone and the behavior, that's totally unique and was then, but basically, you could sort of put it on an American spectrum what he was doing. Then comes the unfolding January 6th, the attempt to undermine the election, and that's a unique virus in the American body politic, and if you create the capacity, the tendency, to denounce elections simply because you don't like the result, no American president's done that….
Asked by Hoover about the struggle for the "American soul" between (as quoted from Meacham’s book) the “few and the privileged” and “the aspirations of the many,” the historian responded smugly.
Meacham: It's more closely fought than I would prefer. I think all of us believe that, most of us believe that. You know, 35% of the country, that's the number of folks, by the way, who still approved of Joe McCarthy after he was censured in 1954-55, 35% of the country is a kind of hardcore [Trump] base, but a huge chunk of the country is malleable, is movable, given the season and the issues….
Hoover didn't care to ask Meacham about his speechwriting for Joe Biden, or anything about Biden or Kamala Harris.
Several minutes after trashing Trump’s supporters as parallel to Joe McCarthy, both the guest and the nominal "conservative" Hoover offered elevating praise to the late, longtime left-wing racial activist Jesse Jackson for paving the way for President Barack Obama.
On PBS's sad reboot of 'Firing Line,' liberal Jon Meacham puts Jesse Jackson at the center of the last 50 years of American history, as his 'keep hope alive' is the inspirational high point leading into the magical reign of Obama. pic.twitter.com/9Hfz1Mhkh1
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) February 24, 2026
Meacham: ….I guess what pleases me to some extent is that, as you ask this question, I'm having to think about Jackson's role in this, whereas often in history, if something is organic, you don't single it out. Does that make sense?
Hoover: Yeah. Yeah. It's part of the tapestry.
Meacham: Yeah, so I just think of the American story of the last 50 years is, there's Jesse Jackson saying, "Keep hope alive."
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