'The rule of law' itself is on trial in Trump hush money case: historian

Monday, April 15, 2024 marked a first in United States history. Jury selection in Donald Trump's first criminal trial got underway in a Manhattan courtroom, and never before had a former U.S. president been tried on criminal charges.

The word "historic" was used a lot on MSNBC on April 15. Historian/author Doris Kearns Goodwin agrees that April 15 was an historic day, but during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," she lamented it certainly wasn't historic in a good way.

Goodwin told host Mika Brzezinski, "Of course, it's an historical moment. We've never seen this before; it's a moment where the rule of law is on trial — when no man can be above the law…. But what saddens me as an historian is: I love to time-travel back to other historic moments that moved us forward in time…. We've been in a defensive stature, and we've been moving backward in time. And we have so many fights we have to fight, and so much of it is now connected with (Trump's) legal problems."

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Another historian who often appears on MSNBC, Jon Meacham, also weighed in on the historic implications of Trump's criminal trial.

Meacham told Brzezinski, "This is a test of our democracy."

Goodwin, at 81, still has vivid memories of the political turmoil of the 1960s. And she noted the parallels between that time and 2024.

"It did seem, in 1968, that the country was falling apart in the seams," Goodwin explained. "Old people seemed different from young people. People in the country felt different from people in the city. There was an enormous sense of unsettlement, with all those riots in the summers."

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Goodwin argued that Trump's trial underscores the bitter political divisions plaguing the U.S. in 2024.

Goodwin lamented, "We've lost a sense of a collective identity of who we are as people — what values are we promoting, what values do we care about….. What was so extraordinary about (the 1960s) and so important for us to know now it was a time when people believed they could make a difference…. The rights that were won in the 1960s through all that action are now under threat again…. I'm so glad I was living in that time, when you felt you were really changing things."

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