Two (bright) women talking
January 14, 2026
Winter at the left side of The Feathers, Frenchman Coulee (2018)
In conversations between Nicole Wallace and Heather Cox Richardson, iron sharpens iron
Say it isn’t so.
That’s what flashed through my mind 27 months ago. I was watching and listening to historian Heather Cox Richardson’s appearance at the LBJ Library in Austin as she was being interviewed by fellow historian Mark Lawrence.
After ten minutes of pleasantries and chuckles, Lawrence read from the first two lines of her then-new book Democracy Awakening. This is what Cox Richardson had written: “America is at a crossroads. A country that once stood as the global symbol of democracy has been teetering on the brink of authoritarianism.”
Lawrence stopped there and asked her how important the 2024 election would be…
“The most important,” she replied. “If former president Donald Trump or a Trump-like figure is elected president or takes the presidency in 2024 we will lose American democracy for our lifetime. Not forever, because strongmen always fall. But they do a lot of damage before that happens and I would like to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
How’s that for prescience?
It was only hours into his second term that Donald Trump issued a presidential pardon to the more than 1,600 January 6, 2021 rioters who’d been sentenced for their role in the insurrection at the Capitol. The rest of the story? Well, we’re living through it.
Nicole Wallace (left) and Heather Cox Richardson during their riveting discussion last week
I’m one of HCR’s millions of subscribers and marvel at her stamina and productivity. It all derives from her passion; her love for her country and thirst for connection with her fellow Americans.
I’m also a big fan of Nicole Wallace, whose training is in journalism but who got her start as a press aide to George W. Bush. She later joined the staff of John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, a campaign that, among other things, gave us the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin.
Palin and Wallace could hardly be more unalike and Wallace’s alienation and disillusionment in trying to work with Palin drove her back toward journalism. She ultimately landed as host of her daily, 2 hour, Deadline White House show on MS NOW. Most days I listen to it on my laptop while eating lunch. She’s bright and brave, re-married to a top New York Times investigative reporter and a mother to a new child. I don’t know how she does it but, like HCR, the short answer is she loves her country and she works incredibly hard at her job. She has a gift for being earnest, passionate and highly professional all at once, and it makes for compelling interviews and commentary.
A week ago—Wallace invited HCR to a lengthy podcast interview that I want to share here. (I’ve inserted the YouTube link above. But you can also listen to it here.)
It’s about politics and culture and the crisis in American journalism—a crisis which HCR has notably transformed into an audience for millions, without a drop of advertising and corporate interference. Much of the discussion has to do with how we communicate with each other, a subject the two of them are highly qualified to illuminate.
Today’s post is unequivocally free to everyone but please consider a paid subscription to The Daily Rhubarb at the link below.
Here’s a lightly excerpt from their discussion to give you the flavor but I highly recommend the entire interview if you have time to take it in. I’d not forgotten how cathartic listening to an intelligent conversation can be, but this one is a welcome refresher, especially in these chaotic times.
HCR: You and I are engaged in the enterprise of trying to make sure people have accurate information. You know? Because unless you have accurate information you cannot make accurate decisions about your life. I find it fascinating that the American radical right—because that’s what they are—consistently simply lie to their viewers. And I find it interesting that people are willing to be lied to. That in itself is an investigation of human nature. But in the larger, societal sense, when I look at the place that you change the American story it is always people like you and me, but many of us, who are trying to make sure that people see the truth because the whole premise of democracy is that if people have access to good information most of them will make good decisions.
…(W)e really do seem to be at war for democracy, but this war is one that is being waged intellectually, if you will. And that one is proving less bloody than when people shot at each other with artillery but it is no less a war for control of the world I think.
Nicole Wallace: What do you think we’re living through in terms of information and news?
HCR: ..One of things I think it interesting is the number of people who say there is no market for the kind of stuff I do. Because I think the people who read me have proven otherwise. I’ve never advertised, I’ve never accepted advertising. And, as you say, a lot of people have built this community to find out what’s really happening.
{TIME reports HCR had more than 3 million followers on Facebook and 2.5 million subscribers on Substack, as of mid 2025]
Nicole Wallace: The thing that holds us all together is the hunger for connection and that only comes through depth and authenticity. And to the degree that media on the right or left lacks depth, authenticity and the ability to connect us it’s ultimately going to lose its grip. It is painful though to watch the process play out. You saw with the January 6th (White House posting)— whitewashing and revising seem too gentle to describe what the Trump White House and the right wing media did on the five year anniversary of January 6th.
HCR: They’ve gone so far that it has become a caricature.
—tjc
