This year's U.S. presidential election ended very differently from 2020.

After Donald Trump's decisive victory, there were no legal challenges or claims to widespread voter fraud,

and there were assurances of a peaceful transfer of power.

A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the

results.

That's not to say that things were completely smooth, though.

Multiple bomb threats were called into polling places, and these were later linked back

to Russia.

Everyone in the building was evacuated.

Bomb detection dogs searched the building, did not

locate any explosives. They're up to mischief, it seems, and they don't want us to have a smooth,

fair, and accurate elections, and anything they can get us to fight among ourselves. Beyond this,

people are much less likely to trust the media. According to a 2024 Gallup poll,

36% of U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media. And another 33% of Americans

say that they have not very much confidence in the media. That's more than two-thirds of all

Americans. One big problem here is disinformation. I'll give you an example

close to home. A few weeks ago, my teenager told me that he'd been surprised to learn that the

Tiananmen massacre never happened, that it was all a Western conspiracy. It turned out a documentary video had popped up in his YouTube feed

purporting to provide proof that Chinese troops never fired on human rights protesters in 1989.

He's a smart kid, but that video had put a question mark in his mind about historical facts,

and he got confused. In this podcast, we've been talking about

moves we can borrow from diplomacy to overcome distrust, solve problems, and create more

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