Last week, as DC reporters were patting themselves on the back for not falling for internet falsehoods claiming that Donald Trump had secretly died, Garrett Graff wrote an essay on his blog, Doomsday Scenario, saying, “It’s time to have a serious conversation about Trump’s health.”

Graff is an author and historian who’s spent more than two decades covering American politics—more recently he’s written a series of oral histories on major world events, and hosted a critically acclaimed podcast series about the early days of the internet and the culture of armed self-defense.

But today, Graff is worried that political journalists are failing to recognize the history they are already living through. He joins The Kicker to share his thoughts on what he sees as the fragile state of American democracy—and the need for DC reporters to dig a lot deeper.

Read More:

*Graff’s blog post on the need for more reporting on Trump’s health

*Graff on the increasingly blurry lines between democracy and authoritarianism

*Breaking the Internet, season 4 of Graff’s acclaimed podcast series, The Long Shadow

*Liam Scott in CJR on how the White House press handled the rumors of Trump’s death