Thank you for being part of the conversation.  This is Play It Forward.  Real people.  Real stories.  The struggle to Play It Forward Episode 623 with U.S. Ambassador Ira Shapiro the author of The Betrayal How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America. The Founding Fathers gave the U.S. Senate many functions, but it had one fundamental responsibility—its raison d’etre: to provide the check against a dangerous president who threatened our democracy. Two hundred and thirty years later, when Donald Trump, a potential authoritarian, finally reached the White House, the Senate should have served as both America’s first and last lines of defense. Instead, we had the nightmare scenario: today’s Senate, reduced through a long period of decline to a hyper-partisan, gridlocked shadow of its former self, was unable to meet its fundamental responsibility. Shapiro documents the pivotal challenges facing the Senate during the Trump administration, arguing that the body’s failure to provide leadership represents the most catastrophic failure of government in American history. The last section of the book covers the Senate’s performance during President Biden’s first year in office and looks forward to the 2022 Senate elections and beyond.