Public opinion polls show President Trump’s approval rating has slipped substantially since his second inauguration. Do those results indicate vulnerability? If the trend line continues, could President Trump begin to lose his grip on the reins of political power?

Despite this evidence, discussions in the national media contain little speculation about declining influence. Instead, the national media report on the expansion of Trump’s influence in American life.

Will this state of affairs continue? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.

There are some intriguing similarities between Trump’s situation and that of Joseph McCarthy. Senator McCarthy seemed invincible in the early 1950s, but later, in a matter of months, he quickly fell from grace. McCarthy’s record demonstrates that political power can erode quickly when political conditions change and leaders overreach.

When Kimmel returned to ABC Television after a temporary suspension, he delivered a powerful defense of the American people’s right to criticize political leaders and their policies.

This podcast traces the evolution of ideas about free speech from a court case in 1735 to the present. It notes that some of the most important efforts to deal with the rights and limitations of speech and press occurred during wartime.

The podcast also explores the relevance of this history to present-day controversies about the Trump Administration’s pressures against Jimmy Kimmel and the mass media.