Donald Trump, just sworn in as the 47th president, was reelected to be a wrecking ball, a middle finger, the people’s punch to the Beltway’s mouth. And while this populist moment feels “unprecedented,” it’s not. The rebuke of the ruling class is encoded in our nation’s DNA. 

We have seen populist leaders like Donald Trump before. He stands on the shoulders of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, Alabama governor George Wallace, and Louisiana legend Huey Long. There have been populist senators, governors, newspaper editors, and radio broadcasters.

But only rarely has a populist climbed as high as President Trump. In fact, it has happened only once before. 

The last populist to win the presidency was born before the American Revolution. He rose from nothing to become a great general. His adoring troops called him Old Hickory, and his enemies derided him as a bigamist and a tyrant in waiting. His name was Andrew Jackson, and he’s the guy who’s still on the 20 dollar bill. 

On today’s debut episode of Breaking History, Eli Lake explains how Andrew Jackson’s presidency is the best guide to what Trump’s second term could look like. 

Go to groundnews.com/Honestly to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories.

Credits: Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and the Presidency; PBS

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Being the Republican House leader is a little like marrying Henry VIII. At some point, you’re getting your head cut off. 

But for now, Mike Johnson remains not just physically intact—but in a position of incredible power.

Two weeks ago, Johnson was reelected Speaker of the House on the first ballot. Despite having only the narrowest of House majorities—the Republicans control the House by four votes, 219 vs. 215 Democrats—Mike Johnson was able to unite the Republican Party’s warring factions—moderates, the Freedom Caucus, the Raw Milk caucus, libertarians, hawks, doves, and whatever Lauren Boebert is—behind him. 

It was tough to pull off, as it would’ve taken only a couple of No votes to send him off to that Republican Valhalla where John Boehner chain-smokes and chugs merlot, Paul Ryan does push-ups, and Kevin McCarthy throws darts at a photo of Matt Gaetz.

Now, Donald Trump will become president of the United States and Mike Johnson will have the task of shepherding his agenda through Congress. And because the Republicans control the House by only four seats, the Speaker might have to get very close to some moderate Democrats—particularly those with constituents itching for a tax cut. 

Today on Honestly, Speaker Johnson breaks down this challenge. He talks about how the party moves forward with two different visions for America; why he thinks Biden was “the worst president ever”; he recalls an eerie experience with Biden in the Oval Office; and he even gives us a taste of his uncanny Trump impression.

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Very few people have worked closely with President-elect Donald Trump, gotten fired, and walked away with a pretty balanced view of him.

But former national security adviser to Trump, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster is an exception.

In his book At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, he gives an honest account of working in Trump’s first administration: the good, the bad, and the unexpected.

Last week, McMaster sat down with Michael Moynihan at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for an in-person Free Press Book Club event to discuss it all. They talk about his moments of tension with Trump, his understanding of Trump’s foreign policy, and how Trump’s rhetoric toward adversaries was actually good, despite being villainized by the press. And also, as McMaster puts it, Trump can be “so disruptive, he often interrupts his own agenda.”

They also get into the president-elect’s current cabinet picks—ones who McMaster sees as good, like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, but how good picks do not ensure a harmonious administration. They discuss Trump’s options for handling Russia, Iran, and Hamas in his second term, and why McMaster is surprisingly and cautiously optimistic about Trump 2.0.

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The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute in Washington, D.C. FDD’s experts conduct in-depth research, produce accurate and timely analyses, identify illicit activities, and provide policy options—all with the aim of strengthening U.S. national security and reducing or eliminating threats posed by enemies of the United States and other free nations. Learn more at FDD.org.

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Trump’s inauguration is right around the corner, and there is so much to cover about the new White House. In the coming weeks, we’ll have key figures in the Trump administration on Honestly to talk about what they are planning.

But, we all know that if Trump 2.0 is anything like Trump 1.0, there are going to be a lot of twists and turns here. And we want to analyze and break down each development that unfolds in Trump’s new administration.

Starting today and for the next few months, we’re going to bring you weekly episodes with two of my favorite guests: Batya Ungar-Sargon and Brianna Wu.

Batya Ungar-Sargon is a Free Press contributor and the opinion editor at Newsweek. Brianna Wu is a Democratic fundraiser and activist, and in her past life, a video game developer. If you’ve heard them together on Honestly before, you know that these two come from different sides of the political spectrum, but we really value hearing both of their perspectives, even—or especially—when they disagree. We think you will too.

Today, we’re going to cover the L.A. fires and their political implications, the civil war inside the MAGA movement between the nationalist populists and the free marketers over H-1B visas, and Mark Zuckerberg’s red pill moment and changes at Meta—and the pair give us their predictions for confirmation hearings beginning this week.

If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.

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It’s the biggest crime—and cover-up—in British history. And most people, at least until recently, haven’t even heard of it.

Thousands of young girls, mostly children, were systematically groomed and raped by immigrant gangs across the UK over a period of decades. Police turned the girls away. Detectives were discouraged from investigating. Politicians and prosecutors did their best to sweep it under the rug. Journalists skipped the biggest story of their lives. A culture of silence enveloped the United Kingdom. Why?

Today, we talk to two women who spoke out years ago about what was happening while nearly everyone looked the other way: the British feminist and author Julie Bindel, and the author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Both took tremendous risks in highlighting the story while the legacy press largely looked away. Bindel is the author, most recently, of Feminism for Women and writes a popular Substack column. Hirsi Ali, a Free Press contributor, is the author of numerous books on radical islam, including Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights, which helped bring attention to the grooming gangs scandal in 2021. 

Julie and Ayaan explain today what happened, how these rapes and murders were covered up in the name of preserving “social harmony,” how it’s still happening, why Elon Musk is suddenly tweeting furiously about it and how Britain’s ruling class is being forced to reckon with a scandal it had, until recently, successfully ignored. 

It’s a story about “tolerance” run amok, and how a civilized country can convince itself to accept the most uncivilized crimes imaginable.

If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.

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If you haven’t heard of Bryan Johnson or watched the new Netflix documentary about him, Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, Bryan is a person who has given his life—and his body—over to the science of longevity. That means that he has essentially turned himself into a human lab rat, undergoing hundreds of tests and studies on every human marker imaginable in order to discover the best ways to stop the process of human aging.

What he’s found is unconventional, to say the least: He eats dinner at 11 a.m., he has swapped blood with his 17-year-old son, and he measures his nighttime erection lengths—just to name a few of the hundreds of things that you probably have never heard of a person doing in the name of health and longevity.

But it’s not just that Bryan wants to reverse aging and live forever. He also thinks we’re at the bleeding edge of a new kind of reality. He believes he’s akin to Amelia Earhart or Ernest Shackleton, and that he’s on the frontier of something big—something that will change everything about humanity as we know it.

In that way, this conversation is not just about wacky exercise routines and unusual supplements. It’s a philosophical discussion about the meaning and purpose of life, and what we’re all doing here on this planet. 

Today on Honestly, Bryan Johnson tells us about why and how he’s not going to die.

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There is something so delicious about a single, tight joke in one headline that captures the political moment, or even just the banality of our lives. Here are some examples: “Drugs Win Drug Wars”; “Nation Throws off Tyrannical Yoke of Moderate Respect for Women”; “I Have Decision Fatigue, Says Woman Whose Only Decision in the Last 7 Years Was Not Going to Law School.” These headlines are from satirical news sites like The Onion and Reductress. Both are on the political left. For most of Bari’s life, the big political comedy came from the left. Until The Babylon Bee, which launched in 2016. 

The Bee is a Christian conservative satirical news site, which may sound like an oxymoron. It did to us. Until we read it and discovered, it’s funny. Often really funny. While everyone else was busy criticizing and mocking the right, the Bee found success by filling a void. The Bee’s distinctive tagline is “Fake News You Can Trust.” 

Here are a few recent headlines: “Biden Cancels Aid to Syria After Finding Out Needy Americans Live There”; “Canadian Dentist Now Offering Euthanasia as Alternative to Cavity Filling.” The crazy thing about the Bee is that the headlines are often not just satire, but prophetic. Here’s an example, in 2020, the Bee posted: “Democrats Call for Flags to Be Flown at Half-Mast to Grieve Death of Soleimani.” And now Ivy League students are flying Hezbollah flags and mourning the death of the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. In 2021, The Bee published the headline "Triple-Masker Looks Down on People Who Only Double Mask." One day later, CNBC featured a graphic highlighting the higher efficacy of triple-masking. 

While the Bee has garnered fame or infamy depending on who you ask, they do try to be equal opportunity critics, poking fun at the right too. Here’s a 2016 headline about Donald Trump: “Psychopathic Megalomaniac Somehow Garnering Evangelical Vote.” And “Shocker: European Supermodel Who Married Billionaire Reality Star Might Not Actually Be Conservative.”

Still, in the past few years, The Babylon Bee has been the target of online censorship, deplatforming, and media scrutiny. Twitter suspended the Bee’s account in 2022, after it made a joke misgendering Admiral Rachel Levine, President Biden’s head of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The Bee was later reinstated when Elon Musk took over Twitter, who said, “There will be no censorship of humor.” These days, The Babylon Bee still gets fact-checked by Snopes and USA Today, which perfectly encapsulates our internet age: a parody page getting its jokes fact-checked because people really can’t distinguish between truth and humor. 

Today on Honestly is the CEO of The Babylon Bee, Seth Dillon, to talk about it all: the Bee’s Twitter suspension, how he views content moderation and censorship in 2025, the concept of punching down in comedy, and the growth of antisemitism on the far right. Seth also shares how he’ll keep being funny during the Trump presidency and why he believes “if it’s a joke we’re not supposed to make, it is probably the one we should be telling.”

If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.

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This past year was not easy. But 2024 certainly was eventful. Joe Biden dropped out of the race at the eleventh hour, and Kamala Harris’s swift anointment brought us the joy of Brat summer. There was not one, but two assassination attempts against Donald Trump; the continued wars in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon; the sudden and surprising fall of the Assad regime in Syria; the murder of a CEO (and Luigi Mania); mystery drones over New Jersey; and finally, Trump's decisive reelection to the White House. 

On a cheerier note, 2024 was also the year of breakdancing at the Paris Olympics; Claudine Gay’s resignation from Harvard; SpaceX’s first commercial spacewalk; and Israel’s epic spy-thriller, pager-explosion attack on Hezbollah—not to mention they took out Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar as well. 

So, what will 2025 bring? 

We are starting the year, as we did last December, with a special 2025 predictions episode of Honestly. We called up some friends of the pod—people we trust in their fields—to get a better sense of what’s in store for the year ahead. 

Political analyst and former spokesperson at the Department of Justice Sarah Isgur tells us what we can expect in the Trump 2.0 White House. Linguist John McWhorter looks at new words and how language will evolve in the coming months. Our very own Suzy Weiss talks us through the cultural calendar. Stylist Leandra Medine clues us in on fashion trends in 2025, and last but not least: Historian Niall Ferguson tells us, as he did last year as well, whether or not we’re right to have nightmares about World War III—but for real this time. 

Some guests cheered us up, whereas others freaked us out. All of them were a pleasure to talk to. We hope you enjoy these conversations with some of our favorite people.  

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This show is proudly sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE believes free speech makes free people. Make your tax-deductible donation today at www.thefire.org/honestly.

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Whether you believe in the story of the virgin birth and the resurrection, or whether you believe that those miracles are myths, one thing is beyond dispute: The story of Jesus and the message of Christianity are among the stickiest ideas the world has ever seen.

Within four centuries of Jesus’s death, Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. It had 30 million followers—half of the empire. Today, two millennia later, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world.

How and why did Christianity take off, and how did it change the world in such radical ways?

Here to have that conversation is historian Tom Holland. Tom is one of the most gifted storytellers in the world, and his podcast, The Rest is History, is one of the most popular out there. Each week, he and his co-host, Dominic Sandbrook, charm their way through history's most interesting characters and sagas. I can't recommend it more highly.

Holland's book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind chronicles thousands of years of Christian history, and it argues that Christianity is the reason we have America. That it's the inspiration to both the French and the American Revolutions. That it's the backbone of wokeness as an ideology, but also the liberal forces fighting it.

Today, Tom explains how and why the story of Christianity won, how it shaped Western culture and values, and if he thinks our vacation from religion might be coming to an end.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.

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This show is proudly sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE believes free speech makes free people. Make your tax-deductible donation today at www.thefire.org/honestly.

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Merry Christmas, Honestly listeners! We hope you’ve been enjoying the parties, the spirit of charity, the lights, the tree at Rockefeller Center, the schmaltzy movies, and of course, the infectious Christmas music everywhere you turn.

But did you know that the Americans who wrote nearly all of the Christmas classics were . . . Jewish?

Indeed, many of the writers of your favorite Christmas jingles were the children of parents who had fled Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe during the great wave of immigration between 1880 and 1920. Sammy Cahn, the son of Galician Jewish immigrants, wrote the words to “Let it Snow!” and was known as Frank Sinatra’s personal lyricist. There is also Mel Torme, the singer-songwriter responsible for composing the timeless “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” His father fled Belarus for America in the early 20th century. Frank Loesser, a titan of Broadway and Hollywood musicals, wrote the slightly naughty “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” He was born into a middle-class Jewish family, his father having left Germany in the 1890s to avoid serving in the Kaiser’s military. Johnny Marks, the man who gave us “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”—yes, he was also one of the chosens.

Then there’s the greatest American composer of them all, Irving Berlin. His “White Christmas” is one of the biggest-selling singles in the history of American music. Berlin’s earliest memory was of watching his family’s home burn to the ground in a pogrom as his family fled Siberia for Belarus before emigrating to NYC in 1893.

Today, Free Press columnist Eli Lake explores why and how it was that American Jews helped create the sound of American Christmas. We hope you enjoy this delightful and surprising jaunt through musical history. Happy holidays!

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This show is proudly sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE believes free speech makes free people. Make your tax-deductible donation today at www.thefire.org/honestly.

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Just a few years ago, as AI technology was beginning to spill out of start-ups in Silicon Valley and hitting our smartphones, the political and cultural conversation about this nascent science was not yet clear. I remember asking former Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Honestly in January 2022 if AI was just like the sexy robot in Ex Machina. I literally said to him, “What is AI? How do you define it? I do not understand.”

Today, not only has it become clear what AI is and how to use it—ChatGPT averages more than 120 million active daily users and processes over a billion queries per day—but it’s also becoming clear with the political and cultural ramifications—and the arguments and debates—around AI are going to be over the next few years.

Among those big questions are who gets to lead us into this new age of AI technology, what company is going to get there first and achieve market dominance, how those companies are structured so that bad actors with nefarious incentives can’t manipulate this technology for evil purposes, and what role the government should play in regulating all of this.

At the center of these important questions are two men: Sam Altman and Elon Musk. And if you haven’t been following, they aren’t exactly in alignment. 

They started off as friends and business partners. In fact, Sam and Elon co-founded OpenAI in 2015. But over the years, Elon Musk grew increasingly frustrated with OpenAI until he finally resigned from the board in 2018. That feud escalated this past year when Elon sued Sam and OpenAI on multiple occasions to try to prevent the company from launching a for-profit arm of the business, a structure that Elon claims is never supposed to happen in OpenAI—and he also argues that changing its structure in this way might even be illegal.

On the one hand, this is a very complex disagreement. To understand every single detail of it, you probably need a law degree and special expertise in American tax law. But you don’t need a degree or specialization to understand that at its heart, this feud is about something much bigger and more existential than OpenAI’s business model, although that’s extremely important.

What this is really a fight over is who will ultimately be in control of a technology that some say, if used incorrectly, could very well make human beings obsolete.

Here to tell his side of the story is Sam Altman. We talk about where AI is headed, and why he thinks superintelligence—the moment where AI surpasses human capabilities—is closer than ever. We talk about the perils of AI bias and censorship, why he donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund as a person who has long opposed Trump, what happens if America loses the AI race to a foreign power like China, and of course, what went wrong between him and the richest man on Earth. 

If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.

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This show is proudly sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE believes free speech makes free people. Make your tax-deductible donation today at www.thefire.org/honestly.

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