Which periods of American history does Heather Cox Richardson say 2026 resembles?

On the Prof G Pod, Heather Cox Richardson told Scott Galloway that 2026 most resembles the Gilded Age and the whole late 19th century, when industrialists bought senators and wealth and power consolidated. She also pointed to the American South from about 1874 to 1965 as proof that threatened elections are not new, and to the 1920s, when a prosperous public image hid struggling farmers and workers until the 1929 crash.

• Richardson said Gilded Age figures like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller still believed in democracy, while she argues today's people in power do not.
• She compared the current push to dismantle the post-World War II order to the era when powers carved up Africa and Asia.
• After the crash, voters swung from a 1928 Hoover landslide to a 1932 FDR landslide.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Pivot (2026-10-18). Read the whole episode summary →

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