From the 1950s Red Scare to Trump, Plus the Alger Hiss Case | Start Making Sense

Donald Trump is "the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s"—that’s what Princeton’s president Christopher Eisgruber said. Others say that what Trump is doing is worse. Beverly Gage comments – she wrote “G-Man,” the award-winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover.

Also on this episode: In 1948, Alger Hiss, a prominent New Deal Democrat, was convicted of perjury for testifying that he had not been a Soviet spy. The conventional wisdom is that he was probably guilty. Now, Jeff Kisseloff says it’s not hard to show that Hiss was innocent; the hard part is figuring out who framed him. Jeff’s new book is “Rewriting Hisstory: A Fifty-Year Journey to Uncover the Truth About Alger Hiss.”