On Center Stage:

Hedrick Smith:
The Outlook for American Democracy

We remember Abraham Lincoln as a great president, but he was also a great student of history and nearly a century ago, he predicted the presidency of Donald Trump. Not by name, of course. But Lincoln knew history and human nature well enough to warn us that someday America would see the rise of a strong-man leader hungry for absolute power. Someone like Caesar or Napoleon.

Donald Trump is the kind of threat Lincoln had in mind – stealing power from Congress, demonizing federal judges who rule against him, purging the government of those who question his facts and his policies, attacking leading law firms and universities, sending troops into Los Angeles, bombing Iran, playing havoc with the Constitution.

For grass roots America, the key questions are whether Trump has done permanent damage to the core institutions of our Republic and whether voters in 2026 will give Trump and MAGA Republicans the green light to carry on their anti-government crusade for two more years? Or whether enough voters will react against Trump’s aggressive agenda and apply the brakes by ousting the Republican majority in one or other house of Congress, allowing Washington to begin the process of rescue and repair?

Hear straight talk from Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Hedrick Smith who covered dictators in Moscow, Cairo and Eastern Europe for The New York Times.