I'll keep it a monist, with a matter of fact, not opinion about the Democratic and Republican candidates for President. Whatever else you might think of them and whoever you plan on voting for in November, President Biden and former President Trump see the world as differently one from another as any two modern-day candidates have. What's more, their differences are not trivial. They touch on decades of bipartisan consensus about the way American democracy and foreign policy works. Lately, the contrast between the two is increasingly on display, from campaign rallies to courthouses to cable news, and today, a World War II monument to American Army rangers who fought and died on D-Day 80 years ago.

We talk about democracy, American democracy. We often talk about the ideals of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. What we don't talk about is how hard it is, how many ways we're asked to walk away, how many instincts are to walk away. The most natural instinct is to walk away, to be selfish, to force our will upon others, to seize power, never give up. American democracy asks the hardest of things, to believe that we're part of something bigger than ourselves.

President Biden today had pointed to Hawk in Normandy, saying what even a decade ago would neither have been especially remarkable nor fretted with the meaning it carries now. The difference is context. Today, that perfectly unremarkable tribute to self sacrifice landed hard on the heels of the former President, again suggesting in a clip that was released last night that the entire federal justice system be deployed to avenge one individual himself.

Well, revenge does take time. I will say that. It does. And sometimes revenge can be justified, Phil. I have to be honest. Sometimes it can.

That was the answer to Phil McGraw's attempt to do what Sean Hannity also failed to do the night before, namely get Donald Trump to stop talking so openly about seeking revenge. It hasn't worked. And just yesterday, the former President also called for members of the House January sixth Committee to be indicted. Reaction, it appears, to his former strategist, Steve Bannon, being ordered to prison for defying a lawful subpoena from that committee. The same Steve Bannon, who received a presidential pardon while being accused of bilking money from Trump supporters claiming it would go to build a wall on the border during the final days of the Trump administration. President Biden, by contrast, just reaffirmed a commitment not to pardon his only surviving son, Hunter, who's on trial on gun charges. In his tribute to the Army of the dangers today, President Biden also invoked Vladimir Putin's aggression and NATO's joint response.

They stood against Hitler's aggression. Does anyone doubt that they would want America to stand up against Putin's aggression here in Europe today. They stormed the beaches alongside their allies. Does anyone believe these dangers would want America to go alone today?

Well, for more than seven decades since the end of the Second World War, the bipartisan answer to whether the United States should go it alone in the world has always been no. And outside the fringes, Democratic and Republican support for NATO has been, if not a given, then certainly the vast consensus. So in that, nothing President Biden said today would even raise an eyebrow, except again, by contrast.

One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, Well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said, You didn't pay? You're delinquent? He said, Yes. Let's say that happened. No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they.