‘This Will Not Pass’ shines light on 2020 election, GOP tensions and Biden’s first year

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Even before it was published today, a new book has been making waves in Washington with its revelations about the fallout from the January 6th insurrection, and the first year of the Biden administration.

  The authors are "New York Times" reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, and their book is "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future".

  Jon Martin, Alex Burns, welcome to you both. Congratulations on this book. So much reporting here. So much to ask you about.

  But I do want to start with the news that has come out today. This extraordinary leaked opinion from the Supreme Court, the both of you have done so much political reporting over your careers.

  Let me start with you, Jon, what do you see — assuming this is where the court ends up, what do you see is the political fallout from this, especially from the midterm election?

• Jonathan Martin, The New York Times:

  Well, it's going to galvanize Democratic activists, who a lot of people in the Democratic Party theretofore were not terribly excited about this midterm election. President Biden's approval ratings were obviously dismal. There's not been enthusiasm from younger voters and from some people of color for Democratic candidates this year. And, obviously, this potential decision offers Democrats the chance to turn that narrative around, Judy.

• Judy Woodruff:

  We will see where that goes. But I do want to ask you, there's so much to ask about the book. Jon Martin, you document how much power former President Trump wields over the Republican Party. My question is how he does that.

  I mean, you know, there has already been a lot of reporting about what you found out about Kevin McCarthy and what he said in the immediate aftermath of January 6, and what he did. So few Republicans are able to stand up to former President Trump. Why is that? How does he wield power?

• Jonathan Martin:

  Well, this is one of the central themes we have chronicled in "This Will Not Pass". And that is the grip, the iron grip that President Trump has had on the Republican Party, since he first arrived on the political scene into 2015. We get into depth, though, with a lot of inside stories that you have not seen before about how he controls the party.

  And even in his exile, in the weeks and months after January 6, that period, Judy, where for a few days it was unclear if he was going to be the dominating force in the party. Sort of why and how he was able to reclaim the control that he has to this day over the GOP and why people like Kevin McCarthy came back to his embrace.

  I think the short answer, Judy, is that he simply has great popularity among rank-and-file voters. Being a political leader, it basically offers you a test. You can try to lead your voters and steer them in a direction you think is best for the country or for your party, or you can basically follow them and bow to their preferences, real or perceived.

  And that's what a lot of GOP leaders in Congress have done with Trump. They just believe he is popular among their voters and it is not more complicated than that.

• Judy Woodruff:

  But, Alex, you know, just picking up on what Jon just said, this relationship that Trump has with the Republican leadership in Congress. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell on the one hand, you have him basically doing what Donald Trump wanted. But then having a very frosty relationship with him, right after January 6, he was upset too, then he ended up not voting to impeach.

  How do you explain the Trump-McConnell dynamic?

• Alexander Burns, The New York Times:

  Well, Judy, frosty is, if anything, an understatement in terms of the antipathy between those two Republican leaders. They still have not spoken since December of 2020 after Mitch McConnell publicly recognized Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. A report in our book that they had a hostile phone call that day, Trump raised his voice at McConnell and the two men have not spoken since then.

  But, as you say, McConnell has not exactly waged all-out war on Trump, despite in that brief window after January 6 when he sounded like he was prepared to purge Donald Trump from the Republican Party and from the political system, that has not happened at all. And that reason, Judy, is a pure electoral politics, that Mitch McConnell acknowledges to people in private, that he sees that Donald Trump has been a more enduring political figure than he expected him to be.

  That he said on the night of January 6, that Trump had finally discredited himself. He acknowledged to his Senate colleagues, some of them anyway, months later that things had not turned out as he expected they would.

  And for Mitch McConnell, the paramount political goal is retaking control of the Senate in 2022. And so, he has decided, and it is really this simple, to subordinate his genuine moral outrage about the way Trump behaved on and around January 6, to the short-term political imperative to not have conflict in the party.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And the two of you, it's not just Republicans. You, of course, have a lot of fresh reporting about President Biden during the election and the year and a half since.

  Jon Martin, the ups and downs of his first year, including what turned out to be, you know, someone who ran as a centrist when he ran for president, but then appeared to be catering to the progressives in the Democratic party for the longest time. How did that happen? How much debate was there inside the Biden circle?

• Jonathan Martin:

  I think Joe Biden his inner circle, after he got elected, saw coming into the presidency at a time of crisis, they saw a reckoning taking place on matters of race, they obviously saw a public health crisis going on, and they still to this day believe that there was a climate crisis. They wanted to use that opening to try to do big things and create an enduring legacy. There was always this tension, Judy, we talk about it in the book, between Biden's imperative of running as not to Trump.

  But a lot of Americans voted for him because he was not Trump. And the imperative of Biden wanting to unify the country, and Biden wanted to do big sweeping progressive things as president, and obviously, those two goals have come now into conflict.

  I think there's something else at play, Judy, that we talk about in the book, and that is Biden's possibility as a one term president. He is obviously going to be 80 years old later this year. He may just serve one term. He wants to have a big legacy.

  He sought this job for 40 years. Now, he finally has it, and he wants to create an enduring moment for himself as a consequential American president. And one, by the way, who could be more consequential than the president he served with. Yes, Barack Obama.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And, Alex, I want to come to something you reported, part of what so much of what you reported about was what happened with the pullout from Afghanistan. As we now know, this is seen as a — as a really one of the — one of the moments in the Biden presidency that has hurt him politically. You reporting is that the president was blaming it on bad information from his — the people around him. Explain that.

• Alexander Burns:

  That's right. You know, Joe Biden went out early in the summer and said, this is not going to be like Vietnam. It's not like our allies in Afghanistan are going to be overrun by the enemy immediately. And, of course, that's exactly what happened just a few weeks later.

  And for all the Americans out there who watched that unfold and thought, that is not what I was told was going to happen here, the president was sort of with them on that. He hasn't gone out in public and blamed his advisors, blamed the intelligence community. But in private, he definitely felt he had not been well-served by the people briefing him on what to expect from Afghanistan, and the people around him, his political advisers and his allies on Capitol Hill really look back at that moment last summer as a turning point politically for his presidency.

  He came into office saying that he was going to be — we would put the adults back in the White House, the experts would be back in charge, all of the amateur, sort of corrupt government under Trump was going to be gone. And after the Afghanistan pullout, it's very clear that a whole swath of the American people really start to question the basic competence of the administration.

  And when he tries to pivot out of Afghanistan and go back to selling his domestic agenda, one of the things that we captured in the book, is that he is just never quite able to regain his footing.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Jonathan Martin, Alex Burns, the book is "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's future."

  Thank you both. We appreciate it.

• Alexander Burns:

  Thanks, Judy.

• Jonathan Martin:

  Thanks, Judy.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And with that, that's the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Judy Woodruff. Join us online and again here tomorrow evening.

  For all of us at the "PBS NewsHour", thank you. Please stay safe and we'll see you soon.