683: Beer Summit

Man

A quick warning-- there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, ThisAmericanLife.org.

Ira Glass

Remember that old-fashioned idea that two people who disagree about politics could sit down, talk. Each would see the other's point of view. LBJ used to quote scripture as he headed into political negotiations-- "Come, let us reason together." Now, of course, we all realize that that's impossible. I'm overstating for effect, but you know what I mean, right?

There was this famous moment a few years ago when all this seemed way more possible, a moment which was so long ago now. It came about because of this thing that happened at a presidential press conference.

Ira Glass

That, of course, is Barack Obama. The year is 2009. One of my co-workers here at the radio show, Robyn Semien, has been revisiting this piece of very recent history. Because it is so recent, but feels like it's almost quaint, the fact that people thought that sitting down and talking together might work.

Hey, Robyn.

Robyn Semien

Hey, Ira. OK, so I talked to Dan Pfeiffer. He's the deputy communications guy in the Obama White House at the time. He was there in the room for that press conference. So beforehand, they'd gone over with the president the 10 specific reporters they wanted him to call on.

Robyn Semien

OK, so just to remind everybody, Henry Louis Gates Jr., a famous Harvard professor, African-American scholar, he comes home one night. He's trying to get into his own house. He has a problem getting in. Like, the keys don't work or something. And someone sees him and calls the police.

The cops show up, and the responding officer, Sergeant James Crowley, he learns that it is, in fact, Gates' own house. But then they get into an argument, and it escalates, and they both have words, and then Gates gets arrested.

Ira Glass

Right. So this comes up at the press conference.

Robyn Semien

Yeah, and President Obama is so comfortable in his skin. He is so casual in this moment that he even makes this little joke that it is impossible to imagine him making now.

Robyn Semien

OK, but then he says this. This is the part that's going to cause all the trouble.

Robyn Semien

So the night ends, and you're thinking that was pretty good?

Robyn Semien

Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's senior advisors, she was at the press conference too.

Robyn Semien

That was Glenn Beck on Fox News.

Ira Glass

Kind of famously.

Robyn Semien

Yeah. So that was one reaction. But simultaneously, civil rights groups are calling the White House and thanking Obama for putting a spotlight on this issue that was important to them. So essentially, President Obama had effortlessly divided the country with his one word, "stupidly."

Robyn Semien

So inside the White House, they go into full crisis mode. They're hoping it'll die down, but it doesn't. So they come up with this idea to invite Gates and Crowley to the White House to sit down and have a beer.

Ira Glass

So they get together for beers to calm the nation down. People take pictures. And as we all know, that did not work.

Robyn Semien

Yeah, no, it still comes up. Like a month ago, as you know, our colleague, Zoe Chace, was at a Trump rally in New Hampshire to talk to people there about why the country is so divided. And two separate people brought this up on their own, pointed to this as the moment that they knew that Obama was out to divide the country.

Ira Glass

OK, so Beer Summit did not unify America.

Robyn Semien

Right. I have thought about this so much since it happened, just the casual way that President Obama stepped into this. I've wondered if he was like, I set the table already with the race conversation as a candidate, so people know where I'm coming from. I wondered if maybe he was just trying to test the waters right then. Maybe he just thought, well, let's just see how-- let's just see where we are.

Robyn Semien

Dan told me he thinks that it wasn't what Obama said, but that he was the first black president in the White House. And that if it wasn't this, it would have been something else.

Ira Glass

OK, but if the goal of the Beer Summit was just three people sitting around trying to understand each other a little bit better, like, even for those people did it work?

Robyn Semien

I mean, yeah, it kind of did. Like, they were really mad before. And then after the Beer Summit, Sergeant Crowley did this press conference where he says, you know, we agree that we both have a lot to learn from each other, and we want to stay in touch.

Ira Glass

And they stay in touch?

Robyn Semien

Yeah, it seems like it. Since then, Gates has said that he and Sergeant Crowley have developed a really good relationship. And then he did this thing-- you know, he has this PBS TV show where he tests celebrities' DNA and tells them about their history. So he asked Crowley to do a DNA test, and found out that they have a common Irish ancestor, a cousin.

Ira Glass

So Robyn, in other words, it is possible for people to get along and become friends, and see each other's points of view, especially around the magic potion that we call beer. But we live in a country where most of the nation, for one reason or another, chooses not to believe that.

Robyn Semien

It seems that way, yeah.

Ira Glass

Well, that is actually our show today, people sitting down trying to see the other person's point of view over beer. In all these stories-- no kidding-- beer is involved at a critical turning point. In one story, the fate of an entire nation is at stake. Actually, now that I think of it, it's true for the other story, too. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, "One for My Baby, and One More for the Road." So with everybody in the United States and Europe breaking off into political groups who seem to understand each other less and less these days, this German journalist named Bastian Berbner spent the last three years reporting on people from these kinds of groups that dislike and mistrust each other, and see things very differently, who actually sit down and try to get along. He's traveled to a bunch of different countries looking for examples of this, where people do indeed somehow come to see eye to eye. So for example, in Denmark, he interviewed policemen who decided that the very best way to combat the most radical people they faced-- jihadists and neo-Nazis-- was to invite them in for coffee, with, I have to say, amazing results.

And the most extreme example of this that he found was in Botswana, where for decades now, the government has been running this kind of big social experiment to fight tribalism. Basically what happens is that, every year, the government tells thousands of civil servants to just pack up their belongings and move, sometimes very far from home, to live and work with people who are sometimes very different from them. This plan is not popular. Sometimes a parent is forced to work hundreds of miles from their own family. But the government has stubbornly stuck with this policy for decades.

Here's Bastian.

Bastian Berbner

When Botswana became independent from Britain in 1966, it was one of the last African countries to do so. Imagine, the colonialists leave and you are the first president of Botswana. For years, all around you, you have seen the same story over and over again-- countries become independent, ethnic violence follows.

Mali became independent in 1960. Two years later, the Tuaregs started a civil war. Congo, same story. Soon after its independence, the province of Katanga tried to break away. Nigeria-- independence in 1960, very soon the Igbos and Hausa started clashing.

Having seen all of that, the early leaders in Botswana knew they had a problem. Because the exact thing that had fueled the violence in all those countries, they had it as well.

Bastian Berbner

This is Unity Dow, the foreign minister of Botswana. She was a kid back in the '60s, when a few people in London drew the borders of her country on a map, creating Botswana. And like in all those other places in Africa, they were putting a bunch of ethnic groups together that didn't really like each other-- the Kalanga in the north, the Bakwena south of the Kalahari Desert, the Bangwato in the center.

In Botswana, everyone refers to these groups as tribes. So that's what I'm going to say in this story. In Botswana, there were 20 tribes, give or take. They spoke different languages, had different traditions, and now they were forced into one country. So the early leaders figured, to avoid that kind of violence here, what we need to do is break up the tribal identities and form a true nation. No more us, no more them, just a we. But how do you do that?

They came up with a plan. First, they decided, everyone needs to understand each other. So in schools, they would only teach English and Setswana-- the other tribe languages, not at all.

Second, to keep people from fighting over land, they gave a piece of land to anyone who wished. And they said everything underneath that land belongs to the state. This is important, because this is one of the diamond-richest countries on Earth.

So what happens if I'm given a piece of land, I settle there, I dig, and I find a rich diamond mine.

Bastian Berbner

There was one more thing, probably the most important one, people told me-- the transfers. Remember, each tribe had its territory. So if you were from a certain village in the north, you were most likely Kalanga. If you were from the Central District, probably Bangwato. So they figured, why not make all civil servants move to a different tribal area from their own for a few years? That would make sure that there are teachers and doctors everywhere in the country. But also, it would force people to mix. It would be an anti-tribalism tool.

Bastian Berbner

Can you force friendships? Does that kind of thing work? The transfers affected everyone working for the government, by far the largest employer in the country-- engineers, administrators, doctors, nurses, and most of all, teachers.

When I was in Botswana, I talked to 20 teachers to find out if this works, and what it's like for the people going through it. I'm going to tell you the story of one of the teachers, a woman named Carol Ramolotsana. In a way, Carol's story is typical of what I found, but she also stood out to me. I'll tell you why in a minute.

Bastian Berbner

Carol told me she became a teacher for the reasons a lot of people do-- she liked the one she had as a kid.

Bastian Berbner

What did she bring?

Bastian Berbner

In 2004, Carol was working in a school in the capital city, Gaborone. She was 28, and everything was going great. She loved teaching. All her friends were in the city. At night, they went out to eat in Chinese restaurants. They went dancing. They were happy.

But then one day, the head of the school where she taught called her in and handed her a letter. She was being transferred.

Bastian Berbner

The head of the school told her the name of the place she was going, Lentsweletau, "Lion's Hill."

Bastian Berbner

Carol had known about the transfers of course, but she had always figured maybe she would get lucky. Well, she didn't. She had just paid for some accounting classes. If she went to this village, she wasn't going to get her money back. She feared that she would lose everything that was important to her-- her friends, her clubs, her restaurants. And she liked being among people like herself, people she had things in common with.

Bastian Berbner

She'd walk into the Ministry of Education with her letter, saying, please, can't you put me somewhere closer? Or at least delay so I can finish my classes? She wasn't getting anywhere. Most people don't.

That woman, Unity Dow, before she became foreign minister, she was the Minister of Education, and she had to deal with people like Carol all the time. She taught me that once a teacher brought in her elderly mother, pleading, please don't transfer me, I have to take care of her. Unity said that woman could barely walk, and it was clear the woman wouldn't live much longer. Still, she said, sorry, lots of people your age have an elderly parent, I can't do anything for you.

Carol couldn't get out of it either. She was desperate.

Bastian Berbner

Carol knew nothing about the place where she was headed.

Bastian Berbner

Carol's tribe was kind of the elite. The founder of the state, for example, he was from her tribe. And it was his grandfather who, back in the 1800s, went to London to negotiate with Queen Victoria. The place where she was going, very different story. She says they used to be enslaved by another tribe.

One day, the ministry sent a truck to take Carol's things to the new place. She didn't go with it. She stayed for two more weeks. And then, reluctantly, she got in her car, drove out of the city. And when she approached a village--

Bastian Berbner

I've been there. It's remote. Dusty, makeshift houses, many without running water. The school, just a few houses scattered on the deep red earth. Carol's house was on the school grounds. Campus housing for both kids and teachers is pretty standard in Botswana actually. She got her keys, opened the door, all her stuff was there in boxes. She cried, and slept.

For days, she wouldn't leave the house. A few times, someone knocked, probably a fellow teacher or her boss. She ignored it. She had brought food for weeks-- rice, pasta, 10 pounds of dried chicken, and tons of hard cider. Finally, she showed up to work.

Bastian Berbner

It's worth noting how this is basically the opposite of what the program is supposed to do. She's forced to go there. She didn't necessarily think anything bad about the people at first, but now she did. She didn't notice what she had in common with them. She noticed how they were different. Carol found herself in a corner that she hadn't really been in to start with.

Bastian Berbner

Most of the teachers I talked to told me stories like this, but many were reluctant to go on the record. Carol, not so much. She was like, what the hell, this is what the government does to us, people should know about it.

After a few weeks in the village, she had finished all the cider she had brought. So that night, she drove to the local bar and went in.

Bastian Berbner

The whole point of transferring teachers around the country is to expose them to people who are different from themselves. But whenever possible, Carol just tried to avoid that. Like the teachers, for example, they had a break room where they could eat lunch together and socialize.

Ira Glass

After three months, she got a housemate, another teacher from a different part of the country. And one Saturday, he suggested going out to this nearby town that's just a little bit bigger. They brought their camping chairs, because on weekends, the bars can get so crowded that you don't find a place to sit. So they take the chairs, sit outside the bar, and Carol feels happy because the people there seem more like her kind of people.

[CAROL CHUCKLING]

Bastian Berbner

Sometimes she gives out a fake number. But that guy, he got the real one.

Bastian Berbner

He seemed like the guys she hung out with in the city, not like the people in the village. They talked a bit with the guys he was with.

Bastian Berbner

Thabo, the guy who had asked for her number, said, that's my home village. It's where I grew up. My family lives there. This guy that Carol liked was from the town that she found so repulsive.

Bastian Berbner

What happened next is exactly what you think happened next. He visited her the next weekend, took her to parties, introduced her to friends, they got together. They traveled to South Africa, to the north of Botswana to see elephants. When they went out to dinner, he'd order the same thing she ordered. He lived a few hours away, so they only saw each other on weekends. But they'd talk on the phone.

Bastian Berbner

The transfer program was created to forge a nation. It's funny to think that this could be the real secret to how it might actually work-- people fall in love. For Carol, after she met Thabo--

Bastian Berbner

She became friends with the owner of the smelly bar. She cooked for the soccer team. She was invited to be a judge in a beauty contest, which is kind of a big deal in the village. She went to weddings and funerals. There was even a woman who gave her a piece of land.

Bastian Berbner

The former education minister Unity Dow, she says what Carol experienced is actually pretty common, and a big part of the program's success.

Bastian Berbner

A few years after she had moved to the village, Carol finally felt at home. She had built that house, her relationship with Thabo was going great. Carol was taking oranges to class again. She did still bring her handbag and her heels to class every day. In fact, one of the women who teased her about it, a science teacher, she started bringing her handbag too.

Carol was still a little bit of a snob about the locals. But overall, she was as happy here as she had been in the city.

But there is something I haven't told you about the transfer program. You don't just get transferred once. For teachers, it's every five years, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more.

So one day--

Bastian Berbner

There were five teachers teaching religious education, one too many.

Bastian Berbner

On the other hand, if it weren't for the transfer program, she wouldn't have met Thabo.

Ira Glass

This was December last year. They had been together for 15 years at that point, survived three transfers. Thabo had never moved with her. As a soldier, he was also told by the government where to work.

But then, a couple of months after the interview, I was texting with Carol and she told me she had broke up with Thabo just before the wedding. She had found out that he was having an affair.

Bastian Berbner

All the teachers I talked to found the transfer thing mostly annoying. Some of them found it so disruptive that, at some point, they considered quitting. Like, there was this one guy, after being transferred, he fell in love, much like Carol. He had a kid. But then he was transferred again, and again, and again.

He worked in seven schools. He had four kids with four women. And he was single again when I talked to him. He blamed the transfers, and himself.

Recently, the government has made some changes. They now allow married people to move together. They've tried to reunite couples who have been split up. They also allow swaps. So if you find another teacher across the country who is willing to switch jobs, they'll usually agree.

So yes, they try to make things a little easier. But still, this policy is supposed to be intrusive. That's the idea. All the officials I talked to acknowledge the hardships it causes, and all of them stood by it. Yes, it was sometimes bad for individual people, but it was good for the people as a whole. In fact, they say it's a big reason why they are a whole.

The effect of the transfers has never been systematically analyzed. There is no study. And Botswana had other things going for it that helped them unify. There was less of a colonial legacy to overcome. The British had kind of ignored the country, and ruled it from neighboring South Africa. And Botswana enacted those laws that prevented any one group from getting rich off the country's diamond wealth.

But the officials I talked to were convinced the transfers were essential. They helped make their country, drawn on a map 50 years ago, into a unified nation-- one that has never seen war, one that is the least corrupt country in Africa, and one of Africa's best-working democracies.

And the economy? From the mid-'60s to the mid-'90s, Botswana had the fastest-growing economy in the world-- not the United States, not emerging China, Botswana.

Bastian Berbner

This is the president of Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi. I had the chance to speak to him a few weeks ago.

Bastian Berbner

I asked if some version of this might work elsewhere, like in the US and other countries that are so divided.

Bastian Berbner

It's hard to imagine the US shipping teachers from New York City to red states, and vice versa. If you attempted this with teachers in Germany, where I live, you'd probably have riots on your hands. But we could try something to get different kinds of people talking to each other face to face.

Everybody I spoke with in Botswana told me the transfer program works, and everything I found in my reporting suggests it works. But I also got a glimpse of its limits.

One day, I gave a woman a ride, a young French teacher. We sat in the car waiting for the rain to pass, and she talked about her family, a family of teachers, a family shaped by transfers.

Bastian Berbner

A Motswana. In other words, a Botswanan.

Bastian Berbner

Then she started listing the Botswana tribes.

Bastian Berbner

So yes, of course it has worked. Here's a woman who identifies first and foremost as Botswanan, who hasn't spoken her native language in years. But also, it hasn't worked, not all the way. I mean, they tried the most radical thing that I've found in my years of reporting on this. They did it for decades. They moved hundreds of thousands of people around. But the question is still being asked, what's your tribe?

Ira Glass

Bastian Berbner is a reporter for Die Zeit. If you speak German, he has a book about all this called, in German, 180 Degrees-- Stories Against Hate. He's looking for a publisher in English. Carol, by the way, after splitting up with Thabo, she met somebody new. They're planning to get married later this year.

Coming up, a bar where everybody knows your name. And that is exactly the problem. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

This is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "Beer Summit," stories about people who disagree, trying to get along, aided by the magical healing power of beer. We've arrived at act two of our program-- Act Two, "Loggerheads."

So we got a tip about this next story from a source I have to say we do not get many story ideas from. Ben Calhoun explains.

Ben Calhoun

Yeah, so a couple of years ago, I called this guy in Indiana.

This was way before Mayor Pete started running for president. These days, I don't imagine he does a ton of hour-long chats about the direction of the Democratic Party with reporters. Which, that's what we were doing.

And in the middle of that, he mentioned this thing that happened in South Bend.

Ben Calhoun

Mayor Buttigieg was so matter-of-fact, it took me a second to register just how wild what he was saying was. That at one of the oldest, largest, most important Democratic clubs in his hometown, half the leadership had voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

In other words, it was like, in the tiny world of this one bar, you had what the entire Democratic party's going through. In some key places like the Midwest, a bunch of Democrats deserted, and the Democrats lost, and the rest are left trying to figure it out. Are they mad at those people? Sure. Can they win those people back? What the heck is going to happen with those people?

So a little while ago, I went to the Clay Democratic Club to see how this was all working out there.

[DOOR OPENING]

The Clay Democratic Club, it's sort of like an American Legion hall, crossed with a bingo hall, crossed with a neighborhood bar. Pool costs $1.25. Beers are $2.50. Because it's a private club, you can smoke, which is a well-exercised right. There's a stage in the back for drawings, bands, karaoke night.

As a kid from Wisconsin, I would say it's pretty much everything a bar should be. Behind the stage, there's the club's logo, a red and blue donkey, with the name Clay Democratic Club over it. There's tables that the club moves around depending on what's happening. And at the bar, there are regulars who always seem to be in the same spots regardless of what's happening.

Every time I stopped in, there was Marty on the right end of the bar, Denny in the middle, and then, down at the far left end of the bar, Liz, Liz McCombs.

Ben Calhoun

This whole thing started, Liz told me, on the eve of Indiana's last presidential primary, May 2, 2016. This was a Monday night. Donald Trump was in town. He was holding a big rally in South Bend, just a few miles south of the bar. They had it on all the bar's TVs.

Ben Calhoun

So everyone's watching the coverage of Trump on the bar's TVs, drinking.

Ben Calhoun

And then it was over. The rally ended.

Ben Calhoun

Right there, on the TV, in the crowd streaming out of the Trump rally, was this guy that everybody in the bar recognized, a guy named Russ Thomas. Everyone recognized Russ because he was a longtime member of the Clay Democratic Club. But on top of that, Russ Thomas was the sitting President of the Clay Democratic Club.

Ben Calhoun

I called Russ to hear his version of all this. Russ, I'll say, is gruff but nice. He's a real connoisseur of short answers. "What is it that convinced you to support President Trump?" "I just like him." "But were there policies or certain issues?" "I just like him." He did have more than that to say about the rally, though-- mainly that he was completely and totally unapologetic.

Ben Calhoun

Russ says the rally was exciting. He went there with a buddy that night, another Democrat-turned-Trump supporter. It wasn't easy. Russ has problems with his legs, and by his account, could hardly walk. His friend couldn't use one foot because of diabetes. But they willed themselves through the walk to South Bend's convention center. And then they stood and waited until Donald Trump made his entrance-- to the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up."

[MUSIC - THE ROLLING STONES, "START ME UP"]

Ben Calhoun

Russ points, indicating he was in the back, back towards the back right corner of the room.

Ben Calhoun

Indiana's primary comes pretty late in the process. But that night, Trump was on the verge of effectively locking up the Republican nomination. And he told Russ and his buddy in the crowd there that their votes the next day could put him over the top.

Ben Calhoun

Of course, that night in Importantville, not everyone was feeling so great about stuff, specifically the patrons of one Democratic bar who'd been watching TV.

Ben Calhoun

Again, Liz McCombs, longtime Clay Democratic Club member.

Ben Calhoun

It probably seems like Russ could not have been more busted, but he was. The head of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party-- that's the county where South Bend is-- the head of the entire Democratic Party at that time was a guy named Jason Critchlow. Jason was outside the Trump rally that night, just checking out the Trump supporters. And then what happened, he looks across the street, he told me. Who do I see? It's Russ fucking Thomas.

Ben Calhoun

Jason was like, I'm the county party chair, this is kind of a weird thing for me to get mixed up in, but also kind of too big of a deal to just let go.

Ben Calhoun

Not knowing what to do, Jason started calling and texting a small group of people who he knows go to the club. Eventually, he gets to Dan Hardman, former president of the Clay Democratic Club.

Ben Calhoun

Dan Hardman is like everything about the Clay Democratic Club turned into a person. His life seems to rhyme with everything about the place. Dan was born in South Bend in 1946, same year as the club. In the beginning, the founders didn't have enough money for a building. They just poured a basement and put a roof on it.

Some of Dan's early memories are of being a little kid, running around on the low-slung roof of that basement building while the adults were downstairs in the club. Dan was a member for years, eventually became vice president. Dan was president for seven years before Russ came in.

Ben Calhoun

Everyone at the club seems to love Dan, which is easy. He's not a big guy, but he seems big because he's so outgoing. He's a grandfather of 16, retired Teamster, drove a truck for years, Army veteran. He's got this completely bald head and a long gray goatee.

When Dan got the call from Jason about Russ, it was the first he'd heard of any of this. Dan was reeling.

Ben Calhoun

Dan, who'd known Russ for years, ended up being the one to have to call him to see what this was about.

Ben Calhoun

At the club meeting that soon followed, Dan asked everyone to, quote, "not crucify their friend for his beliefs."

Ben Calhoun

Again, Liz McCombs. Liz says she was friends with Russ, still is friends with Russ. But she says most people-- at least, the ones that spoke up at this meeting-- drew a hard line about what he did.

Ben Calhoun

Russ resigned as president. A couple of people told me he wasn't doing that good of a job anyway. Russ denies that. The only thing Russ would say is that it was, quote, "personal." No matter how many times I asked, that's what he said. What I do know, Russ submitted a very succinct letter of resignation shortly after the incident at the rally. No reasons, just that he was stepping down as president of the Clay Democratic Club. Dan Hardman came back for another term, like FDR.

But what makes all of this complicated is that Russ quit as president, but he kept coming into the club because it's a great bar full of people he knows, and because Russ still considers himself a Democrat-- previously, now, in the future. He says he just likes Trump.

Ben Calhoun

At this point, it seems like it became clear that the Russ Thomas situation wasn't just going to be about Russ.

Ben Calhoun

Liz McCombs says things changed at the club in the months that followed. When Dan Hardman came back as president, he told Russ if he was going to keep coming in, he had to be tactful about his support for Trump. But Dan also made sure Russ knew that he was still welcome. And so Russ continued to do some of the things he'd always done, like run karaoke at the club on Friday nights, which is how karaoke night turned into a time for people at the club to choose sides.

Ben Calhoun

Russ estimates that maybe 10% of the club's members like President Trump, and others said the same thing. But most of the Trump supporters keep it quiet-- most, though definitely not all.

Another contingent increasingly came into the club spoiling for a fight, looking to mix it up. Dan Hardman, and Liz McCombs, and a number of others say the loudest was a guy named Mike Powell.

Ben Calhoun

Like Russ, Mike's a lifelong Democrat, member of the club for years, who decided to support Trump. Dan Hardman told me Mike would come into his office at the club and try to convince Dan to defect like he had. Again, here's Liz.

Ben Calhoun

Surprisingly-- and unsurprisingly-- Mike Powell sees this whole situation differently. Mike's account-- he has not gone looking for fights about Trump. In fact, he feels, if anything, it's been the other way around.

Ben Calhoun

There was a blow-up over the situation at a board meeting at the club when they discussed Russ's support for Trump and the impact it was having. According to a few accounts I've heard, someone-- a longtime Democrat-- stood up and he said some version of, half the board didn't even vote Democratic. Club president Dan Hardman shot back saying that wasn't true. Though I guess that comment about half the board is what produced the story that spread through Democratic circles, and eventually made its way to Mayor Buttigieg.

At this meeting, Mike Powell told me he got called out as a Trump supporter, to which he yelled back, it's none of your business how I voted. Mike told me a staunch Democrat started shouting at Mike's wife, who is the club's financial secretary. He was pointing a finger in her face. Mike told me he went up to the guy after the meeting and told him if he pointed a finger in his wife's face again he'd break it off and shove it up his ass.

Dan Hardman says he's done what he could to limit the damage as stories like this have circulated. He wrote in the newsletter telling people not to believe everything they heard, making it clear that it was a Democratic Club for Democrats.

Dan told me, leading up to all this, membership at the club had already been declining. But all this strife, it made it worse.

Ben Calhoun

He means Democrats didn't think the club was really for Democrats anymore.

Ben Calhoun

That must have been difficult to go through with a club that you'd been running, and that you'd built over the course of years.

Ben Calhoun

Mike and Russ, the more they've come under attack from their Democratic friends, the more they've sought the company of those who agree with them. Russ told me, these days, he's relying almost entirely on Fox News. Both guys read a lot of conservative stuff that they get from other Trump supporters on the internet. Democrats want open borders. President Obama wanted one world government. Mike said he doesn't want Muslims in our government. That scares the tar out of me, he said.

I asked both of them what the Democrats might do to win them back, if that was even possible. Russ said, maybe for 2024, but I'm sticking with Trump. Mike told me he likes some of what he heard from Tulsi Gabbard and Amy Klobuchar, but really, it was pretty unlikely.

Ben Calhoun

There's a certain schizophrenia to Russ and Mike's politics these days. Even though they support President Trump, their biggest concerns still do seem to be traditionally Democratic causes. Russ says he's concerned about health care. And if somebody could present a plan to get everybody covered, he'd be for that. Mike also worries about health care, and the cost of prescription drugs, and about the quality of public education in America.

They both told me the story of the Democratic Party they were loyal to, that they still love, was the story of a party that was for the little guy and against the big guy. I told them, I think many of the Democrats running now still talk about the party that way. And they're making proposals to do things that both men say they want. But whatever the story the Democrats are telling, Russ and Mike do not see themselves in it.

The one part of the Democrats' message that seems to be getting through to Russ and Mike is just how badly they all want to get rid of Trump, which just makes them want to defend him. One Democrat who's had to come up with a strategy for how to deal with the Russes and Mikes of the world is club President Dan Hardman. And his strategy could pretty much be boiled down to, let's just all try to chill out some, go easy on each other, maybe have a beer.

Russ isn't so interested in hearing from any Democratic politicians right now. But he also made a point of telling me about this thing that Dan did for him after all this went down. Russ lost his wife, Carol, earlier this year. They'd been together since high school. After she died, Russ got really depressed. In the middle of that, Dan organized a dinner for him, and he held it at the Democratic Club. Russ says that-- that meant so much to him.

And so there is one Democrat I know for a fact Russ respects, that he listens to, and that he likes. It's a guy who keeps letting him know he's welcome to sit with him at the bar, regardless of who's in the White House.

Ira Glass

Ben Calhoun is one of the producers of our show.

[MUSIC - GEORGE STRAIT, "COLD BEER CONVERSATION"]

Ira Glass

Well, the program was produced today by Zoe Chace with help from Elna Baker. The people who put together today's show includes Emanuele Berry, Ben Calhoun, Sean Cole, Damian Grave, Jessica Lussenhop, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katharine Rae Mondo, Ben Phelan, Nadia Reiman, Tracy Roland, Robyn Semien, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Managing editor is Diane Wheeler, executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Sarah Dryden-Peterson, Moses Ochonu, the Pew Research Center, NDR in Hamburg, Betty Olivier, and Denny Grounds.

Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 680 episodes. And there's videos and tons of other stuff there too. Or get our app, which has all that stuff and also lets you download as many episodes as you want. Again, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks as always to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he just signed up with the Hair Club for Men. He seems to be taking it very seriously. But to be honest, I am not sure he understands it.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life.

[MUSIC - GEORGE STRAIT, "COLD BEER CONVERSATION"]