Lies, Politics and Democracy: Tim Alberta (interview) | FRONTLINE

There's a period of a couple of days where he becomes junior, he's Alex Jones, and there's a moment at the end of the week when Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Kevin McCarthy come out and amplify some of the questions about the election. can? It describes the moment Trump comes out and the choice the Republican party faced at that time. The only word that comes to mind is paralysis. You have Republicans who have been listening to Trump for the last year sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the election. In a way, before we get to this moment, none of them are really sure if he's going to deliver or not, if he's really going to pull the trigger and claim that he won an election that maybe he didn't win and, of course, in In hindsight, it's easy to call that naïve or polyanist and think well, of course I was going to do this, why would I have spent a year laying the groundwork to try to subvert

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, only to then back out at the last minute?

That's not Trump's style, but I think this was part and parcel of the whole Trump experience going back four or five years, where so many Republicans had emerged in a traditional political ecosystem and we're not prepared for him to continue. go ahead with some of these teasers some of these threats some of this some of this rhetoric that they expected was just you know, Trump venting and well, why should we intervene? Because you know, just pleasing the guy, what's the worst that could happen. Well, we found out what the worst is. That can happen, we found out there's a downside to going along with it, but in those 48 hours after the election and when Trump shows up at the White House and says he won this election and starts spouting lie after lie and baseless

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. rumors and conspiracy theories Republicans are paralyzed because they're not sure what they're supposed to do about it now.

I could, I could say what I think they should have done. I think a lot of us could say what I think they should have, but the Republicans at the time know that, based on the numbers that are coming up in these battleground states, Trump is going to lose and they also know that they've shared the same ticket with Trump and that many of them have won their races even though he has lost his, so you have a lot of competitive impulses right now, you have some Republicans who say, well, wait a second if I agree with this , if in some way I support it. effort to delegitimize the polls, what happens to my election?

What makes me delegitimize my victory? What kind of can of worms are we opening here? But I think a lot of Republicans just default to the same stance they had taken for the previous four years, which was my base is on his side and who am I to come between him and my base? What makes this ironic, of course, is that the choices are deliberate and brilliant. I should add that they are carried out locally in this country. Elections are administered at the local level and so many of these Republican congressmen know the people in their districts, the county clerks and recorders, the people in charge of running these elections, these are people that members of Congress They have relationships and, by the way, in safe Republican areas, those elections are happening. led by Republican officials, most of them are partisan elected officials, so these Republican members of Congress within 72 hours of Election Day, when, when, when, all these wild claims of a rigged election and a conspiracy to Steal the ballot boxes are turning, you know? that all these Republican members of Congress the first calls they're making are back home to their election officials Republican election officials saying hey, give me something to work with there has to be something there has to be some irregularity something that's out of control there's gotta that there's something we can investigate to at least give this guy a bone and what they're told over and over again isn't really an apology, we don't have anything for you and that's the circumstance in that initial period.

Right after the election, where Trump makes these unprecedented claims, Republicans across the partisan spectrum and from all parties are divided into a kind of stunned and paralyzed silence for a while, but they know that this silence is not sustainable and that they have to do it. choose, they can choose to stand up and say what they know to be true and what those election officials tell them, which is: there is nothing to see here, this election was held as freely and fairly as any other election, or they can choose. side with Trump and they can agree with him or at least they can allow it and continue to pander to him in the hopes of staying on the right side of their political base and obviously the vast majority of Republicans chose the latter ted cruz lindsey graham how The important thing was the moment they came out and started asking questions about the election and how important it was for you to know why they made the decision and how important that was for everything that came after, put yourself in Ted Cruz's shoes for a Minute, it's been a very interesting four years for Ted Cruz and he's been on every side of the Trump phenomenon imaginable and knows what it's like to be kicked out of the party over a railing to be booed off the stage. at the convention he knows what it's like to be in the barrel and have all the power and ugliness of Trump's political apparatus falling on him and by the way, he still wants to be president, right?

Ted Cruz wakes up. You get up in the morning, you look in the mirror and you see the president of the United States, and then you know in this moment where all these Republicans around you are like paralyzed, not sure what they're supposed to do in response to the president's statements. that the elections were stolen from Cruz, that he is nothing more than an opportunist, he sees this as an opening, he sees this as an opportunity, if no Republican was willing to stand up and lead the fight against Obamacare, he was going to do it because there was an opportunity

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there, even if that meant shutting down the government, even if that meant hurting the political system and as we know it, he was willing to take advantage of that opening and this was no different and Cruz looks around and sees that there is really there are no Republicans stepping up to lead this fight on behalf of President Trump and he knows that the president, more importantly, knows that it's not just about humoring Donald Trump right now because let's be clear, Ted Cruz He has argued cases in front of the United States Supreme Court.

Ted Cruz is an Ivy League-educated lawyer. Ted Cruz is one of the smartest men in

politics

when it comes to understanding the Constitution, understanding what it means and what it doesn't mean, so ted cruz understands that donald trump is not going to be the president will come on january 20, 2021, but ted cruz also understands that it's no longer about donald trump, it's about donald trump's voters and what they perceive as a Republican ruling class that is still afraid that is still weak that is still irresponsible Donald Trump I came to power in the first place because many Republican voters saw their elected officials and their leaders as cowards and cowards, and that's why Ted Cruz examines the landscape the days after the election and decide, you know, what my chance is to go to war. for these people in the same way that Donald Trump was willing to go to war for these people and the fact that it was a war fought under false pretenses, a fabricated and fake war that would never lead anywhere, that made no difference for Ted Cruz, no. at that moment he saw the opening and took it, why is it important?

I mean, because Trump was pressuring him, but oh yeah, yeah, right, right, either a gram or a cruise, he comes out and says this. So we've had four years where the Republican Party has largely marched in lockstep with this president, despite some of these little fleeting moments of division, the party is largely unified around him, but here here is the ultimate proof: here comes the president of the United States. addressing the nation and telling them that we live in a banana republic that our elections are no longer reliable that this election was stolen from you that this is a crime of unprecedented proportions and at that moment the Republicans have an opportunity like no other to finally despite of everything that has happened despite everything that they allowed Trump despite all of their subjugation to Trump for all these years, now they have this opportunity to break with him and say listen, this is a bridge too far, this is not American, this is undemocratic, this is It's unconstitutional what you're about to try to do and we're not going to have anything to do with it and if the party split from it decisively and uniformly at that point, I think there's a good chance that the entire narrative revolves around this idea. of a stolen election, sure they would still have some of the president's most ardent supporters, but if you had the entire elected Republican class up and down the ballot, people who had voted with the president 99 percent of the time and who wore red caps to ral

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in their district if they had those people who had credibility with their base if they had come out in unison and said listen, I love this president, I voted for this president, I would like him to be president for four more years like anyone, but what you're saying here is not true and in fact dangerous and un-American if the Republicans had been willing to do that.

I think we would have seen a very different outcome, but instead some of these very opportunistic Republicans had seized upon it. moment to make sure that if there was going to be a fight, they would be the ones to lead it. Who was Ted Cruz's candidate in 2016 against Donald Trump? How did he see himself? How does he offer himself in a way that could be surprising? You're coming off the story that we just heard about what happens in those days after the election, so the irony of Ted Cruz and his campaign for the presidency in 2016 is that he had adequately diagnosed the failures of the Republican Party in the The eyes of the Republican base Ted Cruz saw a Republican establishment that was somewhat fat, complacent and lazy and that did not respond to some of the complaints of the conservative base and that is why Cruz is building his 2016 presidential campaign around this idea of ​​being a fighter and a kind of stepping outside the box and defying political convention and taking the fight from below to a political class in the Republican Party that had become hopelessly disconnected from its constituents, which Cruz, of course, could never have trusted. is that someone would surpass Cruise Cruz, he never, never calculated, never took his considerations into account, he and his team at the beginning of that campaign, could never, ever, have conceived of a scenario in which someone flanked him from the right populist.

Who could be louder? Someone who might be a little less conventional. Someone who was even less bound by the rules of the game, so to speak. Cruz is a guy who, as you know, brings this kind of Tea Party push to Congress in 2012. He wins this Senate seat having really come out of nowhere. One of the things you have to understand with Ted Cruz is that he is a guy who met his wife working on George W. Bush's campaign. He worked in the Bush administration. His wife was a vice president at Goldman Sachs. But Cruz himself was something of a true believer.

Cruz felt much more comfortable in that kind of tea party world than he ever did, perhaps in the world of George W. Bush. This is a guy who, as a kid, memorized the Constitution and went around reciting it. people in sort of performances with a traveling troop, I mean, this is a guy who argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court as solicitor general. This is a guy who in his blood claimed to be a staunch constitutionalist and someone who would always adhere. to the rule of law and who would quote John Adams saying that this is a country not of men but of laws, so this is the Ted Cruz who reaches the United States Senate in 2012. and this is the Ted Cruz who in a Record Time Makes Enemies Out of almost every single one of his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill, this is a guy who not only isn't interested in making friends as a general rule, but he's a guy who understands that making enemies in the Republican Party It is politically advantageous for him because he already intuitively understands that all this was in 2012, he intuitively understands the disgust and mistrust of the grievance that so many conservative voters feel because of the animosity they have towards the Republican ruling class and that is why Cruz wants to take advantage of that.

I don't just want to go to Washington and give speeches in the Senate and then go out to dinner with these guys and pretend to be friends. Cruz actually calculates that his path to power in the Republican Party involves actively antagonizing and alienating his Republican peers. Republican colleagues in the US Senate and it works, it works, it prepares, it prepares teams to run a campaign in 2016 that is not just some kind of anti-establishment issue or intheory, it's not an abstraction, this is a guy whose colleagues have publicly joked about assassinating him and is perhaps their greatest political asset, so let's go to the moment after the Iowa caucuses, this is the moment when the results take a while to come , but once they do, you write Trump's response to their call in your book.

To Jeff Kaufman, can you describe that moment, especially now as we look back through the lens of 2020 and what we see him do in Iowa and whether that might have been an early warning of who Trump was, knowing what we know now? ? I think you would go back to February 1, 2016 and you could see it as the beginning of the end. It's February 1, 2016 and Donald Trump has just experienced something he can't bear to experience: he has lost and this is not just a matter of some sort of defeat, and the statistics and vote share that Trump has built by running for president built their entire image around the idea of ​​being a winner and the notion of not only losing but losing in their first race here after months of brutal political hand-to-hand combat between all these Republicans seeking their party's nomination for president, we finally see voters voting for it's the first time and so what we have in Iowa is really the first test case of whether this reality TV star became a presidential candidate, who has said and done these outlandish things, he has defied political convention at every turn, if this is real, if he can really translate to the ballot box the way many Republicans refuse to believe he could and in this first case of testing whether Trump was real as a political candidate, he loses, he does what he swears he will never do, he loses and it's something he can't tolerate the final results are counted in iowa and ted cruz is the winner and there's a little bit of uproar and a little bit of controversy in around the results due to some harsh tactics, let's say used by the cross campaign. and Trump is furious.

Trump is humiliated. Trump can't stand the headlines that call him a loser and that's why he travels to the Des Moines airport where his private plane is parked and he is furious on that car ride and he gets on his plane and they are about to take off from the Des Moines airport but they don't, they sit on the floor for a few minutes so Trump can make a phone call and he calls Jeff Kaufman, who is the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, and Trump says Kaufman you already know. Jeff, I think you should repudiate the outcome of this election, I think we both knew Cruz cheated and Kaufman says Mr.

Trump, I can't do it right, what do you mean he cheated? We just had an election, the votes have been counted, Cruz won, it's a long silence and Trump says: I really think you should overturn the result, think about it, you hang up the phone now, in the moment, Jeff Kaufman and some people who knew about that phone call, they may have just written it down. to the passion for the high race, Trump is a sore loser, but in the course of history and everything we know now, that episode was a flashing bright red light that foreshadowed everything that was to come and what a danger to

democracy

This man represented what he would have said to Ted. tails on trump when you see trump making public proclamations about rigged elections you know he cheated and there was a rigged election it's groundhog day the truth is with bill murray he's screwed all this is groundhog day because no one took trump seriously when ran for President nobody took much of what Trump said seriously, even when he became the front-runner for the Republican nomination, so around the time of the Iowa caucuses, when Trump was just throwing everything against the wall and when he made this call to Jeff Kaufman asking him to throw out the results of this primary this caucus in iowa because he lost, I think everyone just shrugs their shoulders, you have to understand that at this stage no one believes that Trump is going to be in this for much less that he is going to win.

I think there's a select group of Republicans who are increasingly concerned come the Iowa caucuses because this guy has real momentum, he has a base that is vocal and growing more every day, but there are very few people in the party. who are seriously considering the idea that donald trump will last the entire primary season much less that he will be the party's nominee, as it gets heated between trump and cruz, there has been a lot of talk about the attacks and obviously he, you know, criticizes . Cruz's wife's appearance, but looking back at some of the other incidents that are mentioned in the book, you know, the accusation that he wasn't legitimately capable of being president, like a Birther-type accusation against Cruz, the accusations of extramarital affairs that his father was somehow involved in the JFK assassination, there also appears to be a strong undercurrent of misinformation and lies coming from Trump.

Can you describe the nature of the attacks that you worked on, which were coming from Trump to Cruz during that spring of 2016. Yes. So as the primary field narrows and it becomes clear that Ted Cruz is really the the only Republican standing between Donald Trump and the Republican nomination, we entered a stage of a kind of zero-sum combat between the two candidates and the two campaigns as something that frankly we had never seen in modern American politics and what set them apart to both of them it was simply the fact that Ted Cruz, despite all his anti-establishment rhetoric, despite his reputation for being kind of a knife fighter and coloring a little bit outside the lines Ted Cruz was still a senator. of the United States who had a rich political pedigree and in some ways understood that there was only one point outside the lines that he could color.

Donald Trump had no lines, there were no limits if Ted Cruz carried a knife. the fight donald trump brought a nuclear tipped bazooka it was just there there was no comparison as to what they were willing to do how far they were willing to go in their kind of escalating attacks on each other so what you'll see in the spring of 2016, as the field winds down and you really have a Cruz versus Trump race, you see Donald Trump become scorched earth in ways we've never seen before, and it's not just that there's a question about whether Cruz is eligible to be president. because, oh well, he was born in Canada, kind of a Birther 2.0 routine, it's not just that he's implying that Cruz's wife is ugly, it's not just that he's floating theories that Cruz's father was complicit in JFK's assassination. , donald trump has a sordid history with some very shady characters, one of them is Roger Stone, he is also very close to people in the tabloid world, people who professionally dig for dirt and who professionally spread misinformation and Donald Trump does not hesitate to deploy those people on his behalf to try to not only end ted cruz's campaign for president but to try to ruin ted cruz's life he is going to continue to amplify trump and you know lies about the election but at that moment you know that the filming more famous de cruz talking about trump says he is a pathological liar.

Virtually every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie. Can you describe what Ted Cruz diagnosed Trump with? What was that attack? What he identified and articulated. It's so early that Cruz knows the end is near. His campaign is running out of funds. steam quickly uh trump has all the momentum cruz had tried to organize a sort of last stand in indiana uh and he really rolled out the red carpet for indiana governor mike pence got his endorsement traveled all over the state spent all the money and resources and time They could to try to steal another victory in Indiana to sustain their campaign, but it was evident within about 48 hours of that Indiana primary, it was evident that Trump was going to win and he was probably going to win big and that Cruz's campaign was indeed ended at that point, Trump didn't need to resort to dirty tricks.

Trump was winning, he was done, but he couldn't help it, so Trump appears on Fox News and starts speculating about Ted Cruz's father being an accomplice in the JFK assassination. And Cruz had already begun mentally preparing for the end of his campaign that night in Indiana, but when he saw what Trump said on Fox News, something snapped inside Cruz, I mean, that's the only way to think about it, he finally did. They had pushed too far. He is smart enough to recognize that many times in Republican politics the second candidate for president in a race is then the nominee four years later and Cruz is a very young man, he has a great future ahead of him and he knows that the smartest thing to do here it's as polite as possible, withdraw from the race, throw your support behind the nominee, act nice, and if Trump loses in the fall the way most Republicans expected him to cross, you're perfectly prepared, he's in the seat of the catbird to be the nominee. four years later, so he knows his brain is telling him not to take the bait, just let this die down, but his gut is telling him: I can't take it anymore, I can't get out of this race without telling the world what I really mean.

He thinks about this guy and does it. Cruz calls a group of reporters and tells them to turn on their cameras and then he unleashes, unleashes six months of pent up anger, six months of pent up animosity and really six months of pent up anger. disorientation cruz cannot understand for the life of him how this man who has spent his entire life as a democrat who has advocated for planned parenthood who has advocated for a government run single payer healthcare system how come this man is outperforming me as a conservative champion for the people, he can't understand it and it's not like cruz's bewilderment about trump's appeal is what drives this cruz had watched this man humiliate him, humiliate his wife, humiliate his father, attack to his family in the most blatant and despicable way and he felt at that moment that if he was going to lose he needed to get some things off his chest and he did.

Who is at the convention? Can you take us in there and first that discussion he has with his advisors? he talks about why he's not going to endorse Trump in the summer of 2016 and you know Trump is the candidate in waiting and the entire Republican ruling class is trying to make a deal with Donald Trump's people who had maintained as speaker. from the house paul ryan uh so many Republican elected officials who had been cold or lukewarm to Trump are trying to get to a place by the time of the Republican nominating convention where they can feel comfortable publicly embracing this guy and endorsing him and projecting unity to the masses and one by one over a period of months the people are lining up there is only one resistance and it is ted cruz you see time did not heal all the wounds i spoke to people close to ted cruz in the days after he left the presidential race and they were worried about him, they were worried about his health and his mental state, this was not just any political loss, it was something that hurt him and tormented him deeply, so here is Ted Cruz being invited to speak at the coronation from the man who devastated him and humiliated his family and put them through hell and once again for cruz it's some kind of battle between the head and the heart the head says just go through the motions do what you have to do pledge your support To this man be a team player and in four years you will be on deck to be the Republican candidate because that's how this works and your heart says I can't do it, I can't subjugate myself to this man, I can't in good conscience I swear my support and I kneel on national television in front of the world to this man who attacked my wife and attacked my father I cannot do it and so Cruz begins to write his speech for the Republican convention and outside of Trump's acceptance speech Cruz knows that his speech at the republican convention is going to be the most watched the most important the most suspenseful moment in cleveland at this convention and as cruz writes the speech, he suddenly finds himself in the middle of a fierce disagreement among his inner circle of advisors you have three or four people here telling you, Ted, you have no choice, you have to support Donald Trump, you can't go to Donald Trump's convention and give a keynote speech in prime time and not support the man to president. your future in the party will be over and then he has these other voices here and they say Ted not only did this man humiliate you and your family but this man is undemocratic this man is anti-constitutional this man is downright anti-American because of the way where you talk about things and you want to be on the right side of history.

This is not just about 2016 or 2020. In the long run, you will be right if you stand firm in your convictions and your fidelity to the constitution. and the principles that you believe in, you should not be willing to compromise those things for the sake of immediate political gratification and that is why cruz finds himself in the eye of this storm, everyone around him, the people who have guided his career policy to date, they see this as a turning point as a turning point.turning point in his young political career remember this man had only been in the united states senate for four years and here was the second contender for the nomination for president the future was limitless for ted cruz unless he fucked up This happened and everyone Everyone around him had a different idea of ​​how he could screw it up and what he ultimately needed to do the day before the convention.

Cruz finished his speech and is talking to his advisors and tells them about his decision not to do it. They go to support Donald Trump in his speech and ask him why and Cruz just looks at them and shrugs and says that history is not kind to the man holding Mussolini's jacket and that his decisions made how that was. speech and the reaction in the The next day, how is that a turning point for Cruz when Cruz makes the determination not to endorse Trump? He has seriously underestimated the blowback. He understands that there will be some people who will not be happy with him and he knows that he could suffer some discomfort. but he believes that he is taking a principled stance, he believes that the people who have supported him to date have supported him because he is not just another politician who gets along and that is why cruz goes up on that stage in cleveland real confidence that Although he is challenging the party's new standard-bearer, he will still have the support of many people in the party who appreciate the way he has campaigned and conducted himself in office and do not believe that this will harm his career in any way. real way cruz underestimated two things he underestimated the ferocity of the reaction from the party's rank and file he also underestimated the extent to which Trump still saw himself as competition with cruz in other words cruz thought their rivalry was over, I lost you for the victor, go to the spoils, now leave me alone When Trump and his team found out beforehand that Cruz would not endorse him at the convention, they decided to turn the convention into a WWE wrestling show that Trump's team got. to the convention floor, they started spreading the word among the delegates before Cruz's speech that Cruz is betraying the nominee, he will not support Trump therefore we should not support him and by the time Cruz takes the stage to give his speech, the ground is already laid and when cruz gets to the crucial moment at the end of his speech where he talks about this november and what's at stake and what you should do as republican voters, he says to vote with your conscience up and down. down on the ballot and I can tell you that I had I moved from the convention floor with my press credentials to the first level and then to the second level and as Cruz was finishing his speech, I went up to the third level in the loan area rapids so I could get a bird's eye view of what was happening below me and the alcohol that started at ground level on the convention floor, they cascaded and cascaded and cascaded and I've been to some of the sporting events loudest in the craziest places in the united states of america i had never heard alcohol as loud as those rained down on ted cruz on that stage and in that moment cruz realized something that would guide the rest of his political career when he doubted the side of donald trump and from that moment on the calculation that I would make to support him in who he would become is a result of what happened there look I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the trajectory of ted cruz's career was permanently changed by being booed out of that prime time stage giving that keynote speech at his party's convention that night, immediately after the speech, Ted Cruz went into a bunker with his team, his closest advisors and I can tell from talking to two of the people who They were in the room with him at the time. that there was a real belief that his political career might be over, Mike Hens, why does he agree to be vice president and what is the nature of that deal and what does it offer Trump and what does he get in return?

You know it's really It's important to understand that in early 2016 Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, is in serious political trouble. He has made a couple of big mistakes in Indiana. His party has turned against him in some significant sense. The business community is furious with him. Close advisors and confidants are deeply concerned about his ability to win re-election that fall and polls confirm that Pence is in real trouble, it is not clear whether he can win a second term as governor and in that context of his own political disgrace pence feels divided over whether to back anyone in a presidential race that's coming to his own backyard remember that the trump versus cruz blood fest is really coming to a head in indiana and pence, who considers himself a constitutional conservative, is very aligned ideologically and otherwise with ted cruz, but pence, who is a very smart political player and has a listening ear, can see the appeal that donald trump has to voters in indiana and elsewhere, which is why pence is very careful about ultimately choosing to endorse ted cruz, but do it. in the least objectionable way in the eyes of donald trump, he goes all out while endorsing ted cruz, he actually says nicer things about donald trump, it almost seems like an endorsement of donald trump and therefore when trump is convinced of entertain the The idea of ​​adding Mike Pence to the ticket.

Donald Trump's first reaction when Pence's name is mentioned to him is that Trump says that he says good things about me, which is very unusual for Trump normally if anyone at the time had endorsed one of Trump's rivals. opponents, the first thing Trump would say is oh, he's, you know, no, he's a traitor, he's a traitor, he's a sob, he didn't have my back, why would I want to have anything to do with him, but with Pence the first mention, Trump says he says nice? things about me that are a testament to pence and his political knowledge and his understanding that, although he couldn't bear at the time to betray his own principles and endorse a man for office that he thought was fundamentally unsuitable for office, which Pence told his friends and allies at the time that he was worried about Trump, but he was also unwilling, given his own political circumstances, unwilling to upset the bear, unwilling to antagonize Trump and invite attacks on himself. same when I knew it.

That his own position was so fragile, what is he offering to succeed politically? this is a master class in political transactionalism donald trump sees that mike pence needs it donald trump sees that mike pence is in trouble in indiana and that he can throw pence the last lifeline to get him out of this terrible political circumstance that he finds himself in in indiana, put him on the national list and put him on the fast track to becoming president of the United States, which you know, Mike Pence is a guy who for decades saw himself as a future president. of the united states had never been shy about it and that's why here is donald trump with the ability to offer mike pence a lifeline like no other and that's what he can offer pence, what pence can offer trump, the The largest block of resistance to Trump and his candidacy comes from evangelical Christians and social conservatives who see Trump as a wolf in sheep's clothing, who see him as a charlatan, who see him as a con artist, who worry that there is a bait and switch. change.

This guy who spent his entire life defending policies and political positions that go directly against the conservative movement and the church, the evangelical church in America, that this guy is going to take their votes and then take office and betray them, so, what could Donald? Trump would possibly do this to signal to them that he will not betray them and that he means business. There were two things that shored up Donald Trump's standing in the conservative movement and allowed him to become president of the United States. One was the publication of a list. of the supreme court nominees and promising that he would choose one of these conservatives to the high court and the other would add mike pence to the ticket; those two things done in unison in the late spring and early summer of 2016 gave donald trump a fighting chance to become president, so let's move on to trump's arrival, he comes to that joint speech and that's what which everyone says, if he's going to be presidential, but it would be useful to know when he spoke to the Republicans, to the Republican members of Congress who did it. they see in that president, you know, they saw this guy as a threat to us, this guy they're watching, he's going to take care of everything, they see someone they could work with at that time, who they saw, who they think Donald .

Trump is yes, so Trump really represents a lump of clay for many Republicans at the beginning of his presidency that can be shaped and molded by them. There is some uncertainty about where his true ideological beliefs lie or whether he even has ideological beliefs, but I think you know a lot about The argument that Republicans used in late 2016 to support Donald Trump was the idea that he was going to be an executive in the business sense, that he wasn't going to meddle in the details, that he didn't have a terribly specific agenda, that he was going to outsource a lot of the policymaking to them, and therefore even some of the Republicans who had been very, very reluctant to support Trump or who had even openly stated their objection to Trump during his campaign, many of them were enthusiastic about it at the time. opportunity now not only with a Republican president but with Republican majorities in the House and Senate to shape a political agenda with uncontrolled majorities in Washington for the first time in a long time and it certainly seemed that even though Trump is this kind of cartoonish, volatile, unpresidential character throughout the campaign and on Inauguration Day and entering the House of Representatives for the first time to give this joint address to Congress, despite all these reservations about Trump, the man, there was a kind of quiet, somewhat inexplicable enthusiasm about Trump. president and I think the only real explanation is the idea among many Republicans that they could control him and that's why, even despite their reservations about him, it didn't go away overnight, many of them still saw him as some kind of like a clown, like a jester. someone who shouldn't be taken too seriously, but if they saw him as an idiot, they saw him as a useful idiot at that time mark sanford, who is he?

Does it represent the approach of most caucus Republicans in those early months? One of the truly fascinating characters to emerge in the early stages of the Trump presidency is Mark Sanford. Now Mark Sanford right now is a congressman from South Carolina. Mark Sanford had previously been governor of South Carolina and at one point in his political career. His race had been the favorite to be the Republican presidential candidate, in fact, at the beginning of the 2012 presidential cycle, Mark Sanford was riding high, having the highest favorability ratings of any governor in the party in which he had the money that flowed in the world. his feet and everyone believed that mark sanford was going to be the man who would challenge barack obama in 2012 and then his political career self-destructed.

He was caught having an affair with a woman in Argentina while he infamously claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail and mark. Sanford later told me that perhaps subconsciously he had been caught on purpose having that affair because he didn't want to be president and he was looking for a way to blow up his career so he wouldn't have to try to live up to it. to these expectations of everyone else and so his career implodes, he leaves the governor's office ashamed and under a cloud of scandal and then, somewhat miraculously, a few years later he is politically resurrected and runs for congress and wins and sanford de in some ways he is the most unlikely character who is criticizing Trump for his falsehoods for his deceptions for his lies because he was defined in his political career by this humiliation derived from the extramarital affair and his lies to cover it up and yet, somewhat ironic, Sanford uses that. the story as a kind of superpower to isolate yourself to say listen I know lies when I see them I know deception when I see them taken away from a guy who practiced it correctly and I've done everything I can to regret it and if I have I I have committed to moving forward and I will never tolerate something like this again.

I'm going to hold myself accountable and hold everyone else accountable and this guy is a liar. It was only a few weeks into Trump's presidency. when sanford invited me to his office and we sat down to talk about donald trump and up until that point there really hadn't been a single republican who was willing to talk about trump and say publicly what everyone had been saying privately and sanford just decided to let it break, he lit Washington on fire by telling me that this man was just a serial liar and that he was manifestly unsuitable for this in this office and how he was defying things like reason and a kindof commitment and nuance. the same things that make a constitutional republic work and sanford told me at the end of that

interview

I said, "you realize how this is going to turn out, you realize what this is going to do to you" and sanford just he smiled and said Yes I'm a walking dead man, turns out he was right, that term in Congress was his last and Donald Trump made a special project to make sure Mark Sanford paid a price for his disloyalty and that was Mark's last Sanford. by the end of that year I want to ask you where the republican party is and we have used that tax ceremony before her where everyone praises it, I mean, at the beginning of that year they issued statements about charlottesville and many of them have moved away. except some people like Flake and by the time you get to that point in December, I think December 20th, when they praise him, where is the Republican party, but they are also enabling Trump, especially after Charlottesville, with that praise of what is inside.

At that moment, what does it reveal? It's becoming clear as the first year of the Trump presidency draws to a close how transactional many of the other Republicans are; In other words, it's not just him, there are many Republican leaders, many rank-and-file Republicans in Congress who see Trump's mistakes as an opportunity and if we look at Charlottesville, for example, and the outrage that so many Republicans felt, but some of They were willing to use that as a kind of bargaining chip, Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the US Senate, marched to the Oval Office and gave Trump a kind of blistering lecture on race relations in America. and the horrible story that had led up to the events in charlottesville and donald trump told him what can i do to make it better and tim scott without hesitation i said, "you can support my provisions in this tax reform bill" and that episode was, i think, More or less generally speaking.

Representative of how many Republicans approached their relationship with Trump, they understood how important loyalty was to him and how he would reward loyalty, so instead of going to the mattresses with him instead of criticizing him at every turn. opportunity instead of highlighting their offenses or their inconsistencies, I would use them as bargaining chips and many times they could exchange those bargaining chips for anything from a ride on Air Force One to the approval of a policy that they could return home and promote himself to his constituents and thus succeed in many ways when he was doing without his daily hyperbole, his bad behavior, his lies and his extravagant rhetoric, it was almost like a central bank of political influence that distributed favors that they could later collect on the condition of unconditional, unwavering loyalty on the part of the Republicans around him, and I truly believe that.

It came to define the party's relationship to success: the more serious the misstep, the uglier the circumstance, the more leverage they had to turn to him and get what they wanted from him. One area we have been trying to understand is the first impeachment trial, because not the details. from the phone call or anything like that, but the fact that there are people like liz cheney adam kinzener basically everyone in the Republican caucus except Mitt Romney in the Senate who opposes it and the question is why and if it's a result of polarization. As a result of the Democrats talking about impeachment and Russiagate and the two-year file, what is the political moment that would lead even Liz Cheney, who is going to be critical, to break with the president so as not to defend him, to attack to the Democrats for launching the impeachment you are going to get tired of hearing me use the word binary but the first impeachment of Donald Trump is an exercise in binary politics you have many Republicans who understand very well that what the president had done was deeply irresponsible and tremendously problematic and if it were committed by a president with a d next to his name absolutely impeachable and yet coming off several years of relentless democratic attacks on Trump and this kind of highly publicized investigation into alleged collusion between the president and Russia during In the 2016 campaign, many Republicans had a sense that, while they considered Trump's actions and conversations, his phone call with the Ukrainian president was completely inappropriate and an abuse of power and, quite possibly, impeachable, if they made this vote now for impeachment after everything the Democrats had done and everything they had put Trump through during the first two years of his presidency that they themselves would be seen as effectively no better than the Democrats that there could be no greater treason than that of the Republicans Having defended Donald Trump against these accusations of having colluded with the Russians in 2016 only to then turn around after that investigation and accuse him of something that, in his opinion, was probably more egregious but much less publicized And are the Democrats responsible for that?

Republicans say it's Trump derangement syndrome. Is there something on the left that is real that they are reacting to? Oh, yeah, I mean, listen. Former House Speaker John Boehner had this expression that in politics, when someone commits suicide, you don't do it. shoot them and Donald Trump during the first years of his presidency was politically making what seemed like daily suicide attempts and the Democrats couldn't stop shooting him in the process and often the only thing that saved Trump and restored the unity of the Republican party It was the Democrats. exaggerating and overreaching in his attempts to convince the American public of what the American public in many cases already knew, which is that this man is dishonest and that this man is abusing his power, but it got to a point where many Voters who had been reluctant to support Trump in 2016 because of this kind of relentless day-in and day-out attack on Trump, many voters got to a pretty strange point where they came to see an attack on Trump as an attack on them and It's very unique in our politics, it's not something we have a lot of precedent for, and it's a kind of psychological dynamic that I'm probably not trained to diagnose properly, but there's certainly something to be said for the fact that when you talk to a the Republicans, the moderate Republicans triumph over the tired Republicans, during that first impeachment process there were people who told you frankly that what they had done was an absolutely abusive power and that they were probably inclined to impeach, but there was almost no way so that a moderate Republican could do it.

They broke ranks at that point without being seen as a Trojan horse, that they had been manipulated by the Democratic party and that they had effectively changed sides; In other words, there was no objective analysis of that first impeachment vote given. In the context of the times, the amount of polarization on Capitol Hill and in Washington and, frankly, across the country, stemming from the Mueller investigation and this two-year dispute over allegations of collusion with the Russians, which to for Republicans to then turn to the end of that and suddenly impeach the president for something completely separate, would have smacked of deep state to any Republican voter and the last thing any of these Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill were willing to do was feed this sense, uh. feed this narrative of some sort of very dark and well-coordinated attempt to undermine Trump from within.

I think that, more than anything, shaped the approach that most of those Republicans took to ultimately exonerate the president (he is acquitted) and the people who we. I've talked to them so far, they say the president feels emboldened after that and one of the things he has as 2020 approaches is that the issues of greed and black lives matter and he's stepping up the discourse about Antifa, about the radical left, about an existential us versus So, kind of conflict, can you describe what you're seeing and what you're hearing? You're talking to voters and in the run-up to the 2020 election, how were they taking that talk and was it changing things on the ground?

Yeah, so I means two separate things, the first you know you have to get inside Donald Trump's head for a minute and think about how over the previous four years he had over and over again crossed lines that people told him he couldn't. cross. if he had systematically destroyed all the conventions, all the rules, all the boundaries that govern our politics and our government, Trump considered them expendable and there was no price to pay, in other words, every time Trump crossed a line. would move and then cross it again and so on, by the time he claims to be exonerated by the Mueller report and then is acquitted in his impeachment trial and has gotten away with basically doing and saying whatever he wants for the first three years of his presidency he considers himself invincible and understandably this is a president whose own party refuses to hold him accountable and frankly this is a president who has benefited politically from many of the attacks launched against him by the opposition party for one reason or another and creates this environment where trump not only feels invincible but, from the ground up, all the potency that may traditionally be associated with some of the political attacks coming his way simply no longer exists while he's ramping up the apocalyptic rhetoric and Talking About Antifa , what are you seeing as far as talking about civil war and guns and a belief about whether the other side is a cabal of pedophiles or not, I mean, and when, especially when you look back, since January 6th and the people what are they going? to show up, did you see hints of that in the campaign or do you know as you talk to voters?

Look like a personal note. I moved from DC during the Trump presidency, moved to Michigan, and really decided I wanted to cover 2020. I wanted to campaign in a different way than I had covered previous campaigns. I wanted to spend a lot less time with the candidates and their staff and a lot more time with the voters and that's what I did in 2020. I traveled the country much of it driving small towns, big cities, super conservative white voters in rural areas, black voters super progressive in urban areas and everything else, and suffice it to say that when we got to election day I was afraid of where this was all going, I don't know.

I pretend that every other reporter or political observer or politician shared my same set of experiences, but I would say that anyone who was surprised by January 6, anyone who didn't see January 6 coming, they didn't want to see it coming, they decided don't do it. I saw it coming because there were many times when I could be in the middle of a conversation with voters somewhere in this country when, unsolicited, they would start talking about secession or arming themselves or talking about civil war. You could only hear that so many times. Before you started taking it seriously and long before Donald Trump claimed the election was stolen from him and long before he and other Republicans urged people to take back their country and not let this continue, Tinder was already going down. activating and the The fact that we have made it to January 6 without serious civic unrest and without lethal violence is in itself something of a minor miracle from my perspective, but certainly by the time we get to January 6 we will have the ideal conditions for violence on a scale that most people weren't prepared to witness because that's where I want to go, to that post-election period because we started talking about it at the beginning and the first question I want to ask you is why do you write about this in your article, you know the people we're interested in, Graham McCarthy Cruz and we don't have to do them all separately, but my question is are they coming out and at least they are.

They are casting doubt on the elections, they may be even stronger, they may be fueling the belief that the elections were rigged, do any of them believe what they say? No, do Republicans believe? They believe in the leadership I'm talking about. about graham mccarthy cruz, um, those party leaders that are coming out and amplifying this or adding questions, do you believe what they're saying? No, you might be sitting at home during this period watching cable news and you might see one of these. Prominent Republicans go on the air and give an impassioned speech about how America's self-governance is under attack and how this is an existential crisis and if we don't do something to stop this our sovereignty as a nation will be in danger and one might wonder: do they really believe this? and the answer in almost every case is no, they don't believe it, so why are they willing to say it?

Why are they willing to tear apart the fabric of American democracy if they don't believe it? I don't believe what they say being able to influence more power may seem reductionist if you've never been involved in politics or if you've never had the kind of proximity to power that these people have, but it's addictive, it's consuming. and it is corrupting and what we saw after this election and the decisionstaken by these Republicans was no different from what they had been doing for the previous four years, it was different in degree, but it was fundamentally the same calculation. either you're with him or you're with them and if you hope to have a career in the republican party you better be with him, it's that simple, you're talking to people during this period and they're like, well, you're hysterical about your worries when you talk to people what they tell you privately about this about what they believe about why they're doing it here's the beauty of American elections is that they're held locally any Republican member of Congress you saw on Fox News criticizing the legitimacy of our elections calling them crooked.

I can guarantee you that that Republican member of Congress knows in his district or in his state the people responsible for administering elections that he knows. the municipal clerks or the county recorders the people who are in the local position to run the elections and count the votes and report the results and guess what in most of these Republican jurisdictions the people in charge of counting the votes are Republicans the reason why we What we know that they were lying to us about the election being stolen is that we know that they are in contact with those Republican election officials in their own backyards starting on November 4th and they are telling them, please, you have to tell me something is wrong. you have to tell me that there is some irregularity you have to tell me that you caught someone doing something you have to throw me a bone so I can throw him a bone there was nothing nothing mitch mcconnell's silence six weeks after the election where many people are saying that please, you'll get over it, what was the consequence of the silence, what was actually happening during those weeks between the election and December 15th for McConnell, but up until January 6th, the country was changing, what were the moments that were happening in that void, yeah, so put yourself in mitch mcconnell's shoes for a minute, you've spent the last four years not commenting on a president who is driving you crazy, who is damaging the reputation of your party, who is often undermining your legislative efforts, he is unintentionally sabotaging much of his agenda in Congress and across the country with his behavior and with his rhetoric and You're at a point where you just wish he would go away, even if that means you have to deal with a democratic president for the next four years.

Well, you just finished dealing with each other for eight years, so that's not it. the end of the world if you are mitch mcconnell and you are you have been around the block several times you have seen what the numbers are like and what they portend you are mitch mcconnell in the days after these elections and you look at the numbers and you talk to your advisors, who are some of the smartest political minds in the country, and you can see that Trump lost and he's not going to recover from this. I really don't want to spit on his grave.

He's buried and the last thing you want to do is be seen dancing on his grave right now, so you're telling yourself why I should do everything I can to get mad at him or even more so to antagonize his voters when inside In a couple of months I will be free of this guy, I won't have to worry about him or at least I won't have to work with him anymore, so for McConnell and for many Republicans during this period they just have this feeling of letting him vent, letting him say whatever he wants to say, let him vent, you know it's not going to change anything, so why bother, why bother correcting him, why bother confronting the lies? uh, you know, ultimately, he's not going to be president on January 20, so what's the harm in just pandering to him a little?

It turns out that there is a lot of harm in pleasing him. Let me ask you a question about the house where Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney now we're in January 1st we're in the lead up to January 6th so a lot of the things that you're talking about have happened now and there's kind of a clash between The two of them and McCarthy and most of the House Republicans are going to vote not to certify at least some of the states how important a moment is and how important the election they face is, so put yourself in the shoes of a member Congressional Republican for the Over the last four or five years you've come to these forks in the road over and over again where you have to make a decision: Is it Hollywood Access Weekend, are you going to support Trump or are you going to support Trump? to separate you It's after charlottesville, whether it's after helsinki, whether it's after the impeachment vote, you've had to make a decision about whether you're with this guy or not, and time and time again the people who have decided that they're not with him . have paid a consequence for it in some cases with their careers now fast forward to the aftermath of the 2020 election and taking into account the fact that almost all of these Republican office holders understood that no, the election had not been stolen, nor Donald Trump had not been lured into a second term and that no Donald Trump was not going to be president on January 20th With all that in mind, if you are one of these Republican office holders, there is a little voice in your head that tells you that You know this is the last fork in the road, this is the last time you're going to have to worry about making one of these decisions that could potentially end your career.

Yes, you know the election wasn't stolen and yes, you know it's a rotten election and the corrupt and blatantly undemocratic thing you're about to do by taking this vote to decertify the election results but once you do it you're safe. It's like being in the mafia, that last favor and then you will be freed from this life and that is how many interpreted it. There was a brand new rookie congressman on the third day of work when the capital was invaded when the discussions began about whether or not to certify the results of the elections. and this freshman congressman peter meyer from michigan told me on the record that a high-ranking member of the republican house delegation came up to him and said listen, i don't believe the election was stolen, i don't believe any of this. , but I'm going to vote to decertify and Meyer asked him why he would vote that way and this member of Congress told him that it's the last thing Donald Trump will ask him to do, so let's go to January 6th and there's something he writes about what I've written about who those people were who were there and you described them as tricked into coming there and not just by Trump.

What is the responsibility? What were the decisions that were made that led to this attack on the capital and the peaceful transfer of power and what is the responsibility for the decisions that individual politicians, congressmen and senators have made that led to that. The tragedy is that so many of these people have been lied to endlessly, lied to by their elected officials. They have been lied to, lied to and manipulated by their favorite media personalities and some of them were willing to die for those lies and this was not a foregone conclusion, they did not have to be elected like this over and over again.

Republican party officials who knew Trump was lying to them, who knew Fox News was lying to them, chose to accept those lies, either to parrot them or to allow them to sit still and say nothing at all because they knew that to object to that lack of crying that is crossing the line and telling their constituents that no, this is not true, no, they are lying to you, don't believe it, that would be the end of their careers and you know you are supposed to be indifferent and objective as a journalist who covers all this correctly, but it bothers me.

I've seen how it happened to my friends. I've seen how it happened to my family. I have seen how it happened to my community. I've seen how this has changed the fabric of American life perhaps forever and it was avoidable it was avoidable it's not a partisan thing it's not an ideological thing people who voted for Trump nine times out of ten and who have conservative values ​​and ideas could still have done it right thing on their own the voters could have been told when it was time for the story, they could have stood up and said, listen, I'm for the guy I voted for, I supported his agenda, but I'm not for this , I will not accept what you are doing right now. because it is dangerous, it is undemocratic, it is anti-American, everyone had that opportunity and almost no one took advantage of it, they took the cowardly exit and then, when the people came to the town house and when the shots were heard and the attackers scaled the walls and the Mob began to beat the police, what did all these people do inside the congress?

All these people who had fermented this. All these people who had allowed the lies. All these people who had invited this violence. What did you do? They ran, they went to look for cover. They weren't celebrating They weren't joining the mob They ran from the mob and got cold feet That's all you need to know about them I'm sorry I shouldn't be so mad but I am mad Let me ask you about the day after or the days after, because Lindsey Graham utters his famous speech, McConnell is floating around that he might be willing to impeach, eventually McCarthy is going to say, you know, he says certain things privately, but even publicly he says the president was responsible for this, I mean.

Did the story you're telling end on January 6th or was there a moment of choice for the Republican party in those later days about how they were going to understand January 6th and how they were going to understand during the election what the I mean, there was really a moment when things could have been different, when I felt like things were going to change. Yeah, you know, if it's the mafia, right after January 6th, that was the moment where you're like, You're out, you're back because you thought well, if I cast this vote to decertify the election then you know I'm done. , that's my last message to Donald Trump, they'll never call me again, but then after January 6, there's another fork in the road.

Do you condemn this type of extremism, this type of violence? Do you condemn the president for his role in inviting this attack? Are you willing to accuse all these poor people of this so suddenly? sapps who thought to themselves that casting a vote to decertify the election would be their final act of servitude to Donald Trump and that they would finally be free of him and somehow liberated from this four-year mandate of constant and a kind of uh subjugation that perpetuates herself to donald trump suddenly the beauty of her story is that it's not over, that it wasn't the last favor she ever had to do to donald trump, now there's another favor and it's not just a matter of appeasing trump, it has never happened that once again it is about appeasing his base, it is about appeasing the people who stormed the capital on January 6th and, more importantly, it is about appeasing the millions more who sympathized with it, are you willing to come out publicly and say that these people were violent domestic terrorists who simply embarrassed the institution of the United States Congress and are you willing to say that this president, this outgoing president who was legitimately defeated, has shamed his office and committed absolutely impeachable crimes by inciting this violence? not to mention that he committed impeachable crimes by calling the Georgia Secretary of State and asking him to find votes and a dozen other things he did after the election that are clearly impeachable.

Are you ready now that you have seen this violence? close and everything that your behavior and your enabling have achieved for this country, are you now willing to come out and say what needs to be said? and for most of them the answer was shocking, no, I know you're surprised, the spoiler alert even on January 6th was It's not enough to at least publicly change what these people were willing to say about Trump, about the party, about extremism, above all, about the theft of elections, and in many ways you would think that having that kind of brush with political violence would be the consequence.

To call, some of these people would have to say, "Okay, this has gone too far and you know what I had a role in this and I can't have a role in this anymore. I need to say some things and I need to repent here and I need to try." to do this right, but if anything, their proximity to that political violence intimidated them even more, made them less likely to come out and condemn Trump, condemn the people involved with the January 6th campaign to delegitimize the election. You know, a member of Congress told me that these people were willing to chase us inside the United States Capitol building.

What are they going to do to me when I'm home with my wife and kids, so if January 6th was. political terrorism, I think they have to say it worked, it seems like a real turning point in the party comes with the way they view Liz Cheney in this period, you know, at the beginning, in February, McCarthy seems to think that she can still keep. the big tent and Cheney may be part of it, but by the end ofspring it seems that because of this, how is January 6 understood, how is the 2020 election understood, she will be ousted from her leadership position, the fate of liz cheney.

What does it say about the Republican Party? Liz Cheney committed the cardinal sin of the Trump era, which was saying publicly what she said privately, and what she said privately after January 6 was what hundreds and hundreds of Republican lawmakers said privately at the time. At the time it was that this can never happen again, this was an abhorrent attack on American democracy and that the president was directly responsible and we must not only purge Donald Trump from the party, purge his influence from the party, but also the need to investigate and expose all the bad actors who were involved in the lead-up to January 6 and make clear to the American public that this type of demagoguery has consequences, that there are deadly implications to this type of deception, these lies, and this campaign. of mass disinformation that had taken hold, and chaney interpreted the events of january 6 as a wake-up call that he now had a mandate, that he had a mission to ensure that the people involved were held accountable first and that, second, the american public could see this for what it was to make sure it never happened again and liz cheney could be excused for believing in the early days of those efforts that there would be a groundswell of support and that there would be a small army of republicans who even At the time she had been loyal to Trump, but now, faced with the choice between defending Trump and defending democracy, she would choose the latter, but she was wrong and I think to this day she is still shocked by how wrong she was and has the Republican Party as a party.

The result of that becomes a party that believes the election was stolen, that believes future elections will be stolen, that believes January 6 is legitimate political speech, what the outcome of that means and, if that is true, so what are the consequences of that? Well, I think you know. Think about it this way before the 2020 election gallup did a poll showing that between 2018 and 2020, in a span of two years, there had been a 35 percentage point decline among Republicans who believed our elections were accurate and fair and that the ballots The counted reflected the will of the voters with a decrease of 35 points, so by the fall of 2020, before the elections, before stopping the steel crusade, before January 6 and the consequences, Long before all that, less than 50 percent of self-identified Republicans told Gallup that they believed our elections were legitimate and that the trend line had been declining sharply during Trump's presidency before.

Things really went off the rails and there were plenty of opportunities to slow that trajectory and maybe even bend it in the opposite direction, but time and time again, Republican leaders, Republican officials agreed with Trump, they didn't talk. They turned a blind eye and allowed their assault on the legitimacy of our systems, so despite all the damage that had already been done when January 6th rolls around and all these people can see with their own eyes the consequences, there was still an opportunity then to really have this moment of conversion on the road to Damascus where you say okay, now I see how dangerous this is and we have to do something about it, we can't go on with this anymore, right, it's not a partisan thing. , it's a The American thing is that we have to restore faith in our democracy, but the number of people who said that and followed through on it was almost non-existent, I mean, it's unfathomable looking back and as cynical and jaded as we can be having seen to the Republicans.

Making these decisions over and over again until January 6th, even knowing all that, it's still unfathomable that so few of them reacted publicly to January 6th the way almost all of them did privately, and as a result, you can now See in Survey after survey, a whole body of research and evidence shows that voters' faith in our democratic election system is significantly diminishing and declining even more by the day. Practically the erosion of trust in our elections is an existential crisis for the United States of America. There is no other way. say it