Showing how at least some liberal elites are already in retreat when it comes to reconsidering their own role in the country’s toxic political climate following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, CBS News Sunday Morning led off with correspondent Robert Costa turning to none other than liberal historian and President Biden speechwriter Jon Meacham to warn America’s “in a dangerous place.”
Why, you ask? As per Meacham’s explanation, some Americans feel called to violence because they believe parts of the country do not view them as equals.
Costa began with a softball: “What’s the state of the American soul today?”
Meacham huffed America’s “in a dangerous place” as this will be a moment we would not want “to see replicated” even though “there’s never been a once-upon-a-time in American history.”
He continued by explaining the rise in political violence as having occurred anytime “there is an existential question — who is an American,” “[w]ho deserves to be included in ‘we the people,’ or ‘all men being created equal’?”
“When that is in tension, when we don’t have common agreement about that, then, if you look at it historically, violence erupts,” he added.
For his part, Costa said Kirk “had his critics, who called him an incendiary voice” and thus “the latest convulsion in a divided country.”
Meacham’s remarks here did not exactly square with his past rhetoric that turned up the temperature, viewing the right as an existential threat: “We do not want to be in a place where because you disagree with someone, you pick up a gun. That is not what the country can be. And if it is, it’s something different. It’s not the America we want.”
Telling Costa we must “see each other as neighbors,” the former Newsweek editor insisted we must recommit to “the American covenant” of peaceful debate (click “expand”):
MEACHAM: When we lose the capacity to engage in argument and dissent and debate peaceably, we are breaking faith with the American covenant. And the American covenant is that we live in contention with each other, but we’re not at each other’s throats.
COSTA: What can political leaders do to keep that covenant?
MEACHAM: Make the case. Tell the story. What do you want the country to be? And this is why history matters, I think, more than ever, because there’s not a hell of a lot going on in the present that you want to say, “Yeah, we want more of that,” right? You want to tell the story of Omaha Beach. You want to tell the story of the Pettus Bridge. You want to tell the story of Gettysburg. Because those were moments where imperfect people actually created a more perfect union. It’s not that they were superhuman. Quite the opposite.
COSTA: They got through it.
MEACHAM: They got through it barely.
COSTA: But even if Americans can just barely carry on this weekend, Jon Meacham says we must.
MEACHAM: If they could do it, then we can, too, if we decide that this country is about a more perfect union, it is about dissent, it is about respecting each other, and it is not about hunting each other down.
Using his historian credentials, Meacham has done plenty to further this poison and coarsening, painting those on the right as not only wrong, but evil (and thus tempting to crazies).
Rewinding to January, Meacham invoked the second inauguration of President Trump to on par with Pearl Harbor in its destructive nature.Two days earlier, he ruled Trump’s reelection showed Americans who voted for him were “out of compliance” with the Declaration of Independence (which he also voiced in 2023).
Those are quite serious!
But, wait, there was more!
Meacham stumped for Biden in media appearances by arguing the “patriotic” thing for Americans to do would be to vote for the then-Democrat nominee, Joe Biden.
In 2022, Meacham tied those who supported President Trump on January 6 to having fallen to the same evils of temptation that befell Adam and Eve. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, Meacham painted Republicans as threats to the country’s survival. On CNN, he said voting Democrat would be like supporting Abraham Lincoln and, over on MSNBC, he called it the most important singular moment since the Civil War.
Back in 2020, Meacham said American lives are not safe with President Trump in the Oval Office, that Trump’s presidency has been a “reign of terror” America must end, called Trump voters “lizard brain” “white guys,” and suggested he’s dumber than his springer spaniels.
He’s also shown a disdain toward the Founders (despite having made millions writing books about them). On October 22, 2019, he went full Nikole Hannah-Jones in declaring America was formed to “protect slavery.”
Meacham hasn’t shied away from incendiary rhetoric that ascribed the worst possible motives. Speaking on HBO in March 2018, Meacham compared Trumpism (and thus its followers) to modern-day Klu Klux Klan members with George Wallace in the lead. Three months later, he would double down on ABC’s The View.
Skip ahead to January 2019 and he said a Trump address to the nation on illegal immigration was akin to words emanating from a KKK Convention.
And back in January 2016, Meacham compared Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) to dog feces.
If Meacham was serious about tone and respect, then he should start with himself.
To see the relevant CBS transcript from September 14, click here.
