Meacham: GOP Has ‘Sold their Soul for Temporal Power’ with Trump and ‘the Check Is Bouncing’

EXCERPT:

SCARBOROUGH: "Let me ask you this, as far as personal feeling goes, I got into this yesterday on the show and a little after the show. We’re from the south. And what at least our generation was taught was constantly being polite. People would come from across the country and all my friends that would come from the north would say, 'Everybody is so polite. Everybody is so kind. People I don’t even know say hello to me.' Take them to church. You know, that’s what the south had going for it. You know, we have had our problems, but as far as being kind to people that were coming down here, we always took pride in. You know, your parents I’m sure at times, my parents at times would say, 'That is not how a southern gentleman treats a lady. Open the door. Walk behind, do this. Carry that.' For Yankees, and I know you are one, Barnicle, but for Yankees, it’s hard to know how much that actually is pounded into your head every day. Your friends, there is even peer pressure. You don’t talk to somebody that way and yet you have the entire south it seems, you have Evangelicals especially, despicable Pharisees, leaders of the church in the south kowtowing to this horrific man who has no humanity and is the antithesis of everything we were taught growing up in the south about how you treat other people."

MEACHAM: "And I think there’s going to be some kind of reckoning. Basically, the Republican Party, a lot of, as you say, a lot of our fellow southerners have sold their soul for temporal power and the check is bouncing. And I think that the cultural ubiquity of this president is fascinating to me. Andrew Jackson started as the president as the central figure, Lincoln as the Great War president. T.R. understood the mass media, he made his kids characters in the national drama. FDR changes everything. But nobody has ever been as top of mind as the 45th president of the United States. I don’t think ultimately that’s a good thing. You know what John Adams said? 'I studied politics and war so my son can study engineering and geography. He studies that so that his son can study literature and philosophy.' We are all the way back to point A."