Dwight Eisenhower ascended to the presidency when the United States was in the grips of a red scare - a red scare fanned by Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. As McCarthy exploited the public fear to steal the spotlight with hundreds of unfounded accusations of communist sympathies, Eisenhower, and three future presidents then in the Senate, had to grapple with the moral and societal threat of McCarthy to the republic, and what they were willing to do to stop him.
New York Times best-selling author Larry Tye, author of Demagogue: The life and long shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, discusses the origins of the McCarthy era, its costs, and what it took to end it.