- In the first months of the Biden administration, we've seen an intentional effort by the new president to return the country's politics to some sense of normal.

Today's guest is a conservative voice who yearns for substance in American politics.

She's S. E. Cupp, this week on "Story in the Public Square".

(uplifting music) Hello, and welcome to "Story in the Public Square", where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes, from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

Joining me, as he does every week, is my great friend and cohost G. Wayne Miller of "The Providence Journal".

Each week, we talk about big issues with great guests, authors, journalists, scholars and more to make sense of the big stories shaping public life in the United States today.

This week, we're joined by S. E. Cupp, who you know as a regular commentator on CNN, and a nationally-syndicated columnist for the "New York Daily News".

S. E., thank you so much for being with us.

- [S. E.] My pleasure, guys, thanks for having me.

- There's so much that we want to talk to you about.

- I wonder what's going on?

- I know, there's a few things here and there, but let's start a little bit with your background.

What was the path you took to become a CNN commentator and a nationally-syndicated columnist?

- A circuitous one, I didn't effort to get to this place, I'm incredibly lucky to be here, but really, I wanted to be a writer, since college, working at my college newspaper, that's really what I wanted to do.

Television, and politics for that matter, were just not on the radar for me.

When I left college, I sought after writing jobs, I got a few, and then in the wake of 9/11, which happened the year I got to New York City, I started writing more and more about politics, and I wanted to write a book, kind of on a whim.

That book got picked up, and published by Simon & Schuster, and then I started making the rounds to publish it, and I think "Morning Joe" was maybe my first television appearance promoting that book.

And after that, it just kind of snowballed.

Once you get on that circuit, I guess if you're not half bad at it, you keep getting calls to come on and talk about the next story, then the next story, so that just kept happening while I was pursuing writing jobs.

And eventually I got my job at the "New York Daily News", more than 10 years ago now, I've had this column, which is incredible to think about.

And as I pursued writing jobs, television kept sort of glomming on, and I found that relationship really symbiotic, and useful, to promote my writing, and to inform my writing.

And eventually, it just became my full-time job, and I've worked at a number of different networks, for a number of different shows, had the pleasure of doing a little bit of everything, and now I'm here at CNN, and I'm covering what is, as you both know, an incredible time in American politics.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

You've been described as a practical conservative.

What does that mean to you?

- [S. E.] I don't know.

(they laugh) - [Wayne] We don't either, so help us out here.

- I've been called a lot of things, guys.

I'm conservative, and for me, that's a set of values.

That doesn't change with whomever is in Washington, or whatever Donald Trump says it is, that's fixed.

I've long identified as a Republican, but I don't identify with this current Republican Party 'cause I don't recognize it.

I think the practical side, I've also been called a non-crazy conservative, that, I think, says more about the people using those terms than it does about me, but I think what it means is I've long taken what I think is an intellectually honest approach to politics, I try to be consistent, so when Republicans are messing up, I say that, even if I'm on their team, when Democrats are messing up, I say it because I think it's true, not just because they're Democrats.

And in my mind, my beliefs feel very conservative, but I think, to others, my support of gay marriage, some other issues, make it seem like I'm, I guess, a bit more progressive.

But again, I haven't changed most of my views despite the Republican party completely shifting on a good number of them over the past five years.

- Like a lot of Americans, we are still taking stock of what happened January 6th, the insurrection.

What's your take on it?

- It was really hard to watch, even though, of course, I did, and the video that was played at the impeachment trial was also very hard to watch, because when you're watching it in real-time, you don't know what's gonna happen next, when you're watching it after the fact, when it's done, and you can see it encapsulated, shrunk down in its totality, I think it becomes even more unsettling and ominous.

And what happened that day, cloaked in conservatism, and patriotism, and love of country, was none of those things, was the opposite of those things.

It's not conservative to go and attack police officers at the US Capitol, it's not patriotic to overturn a democratic election.

There's no love of country when you're seeking to undermine the votes of half of it, and endanger lawmakers, and Capitol Hill staffers, and police officers in the process.

So really tragic, disappointing, disorienting, and I think one of the darkest days in modern history.

- You mentioned the video that was shown on the first day of the impeachment trial, I saw that video too, and of course we've all seen other video before, but never put together like that, and some people criticized even showing that.

What was your take on that video?

It really encapsulated it in a way that, certainly for me, that I had not been able to see it so powerfully all put together, it was a film, but unbelievably powerful, what's your take on that?

- It was a film in the way that documentary films are part journalism, and you know this at "ProJo", we in journalism try to put stories together, not just in the moment, but then contextualize them over time, when we know more.

We say that journalism the first draft, the rough draft of history.

Well, once we have a more complete version, a more complete draft of history, we put it together in a more complete way.

And so I think that was what was happening there, and I think that's a really important thing to do.

Think about watching a true-crime trial happen in real-time, you get this day, and then the next day, and more evidence, and it builds up.

If you shrunk that down and made it a story, I think you would see the dots connecting in a bit more compelling way, and I think it is important to connect the dots, not just between what happened on January 6th, but what had happened from the election to January 6th, and indeed from the past four years to January 6th, there are many dots to connect, and I think that's what Congress was trying to do with that video.

It's certainly what we try to do in journalism.

- I wonder if I could connect one more dot on that, because I went back to read some of your previous columns to get ready for today, and you wrote a very powerful column last fall about the indignities, the threats, the verbal assaults that public health officials across the country, particularly female public health officials across the country, have suffered in the course of the pandemic.

And as I read it, I wondered to myself if that was the same mob that had stormed the Capitol.

- I think there are overlaps, for sure, between the anti-maskers, the anti-science, the science-deniers, and the pro-Trump, MAGA, part-QAnon, part-white pride, there's a lot going on in this melange of anger and hate.

I haven't, certainly, looked back to tie any of those people who were going after female healthcare workers to the insurrection at the Capitol, but they are drinking from the same water, in a lot of respects, you do see some overlap in these subcultures.

And it's incredibly important to connect those dots, because if we're going to understand how to dismantle this industrial conspiracy complex that is undermining our trust in myriad institutions, we have to know who they are, we have to know where they are, and what they're saying, and what they're doing, and what their motives are.

- Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed recently on social media that she is a survivor of sexual assault, and that she feared for her life on January 6th, and you wrote about this in a recent column, and I'm gonna read a part of that column, if I may: "In the ugly, divisive, and tribal political hell-scape "in which we are currently living, "AOC is a reviled figure on the right, "ergo we shouldn't expect even the revelation "that she'd been sexually assaulted, "or that she was fearing for her life on January 6th, "cowering in a closet, "and wondering aloud if she'll live to be a mother one day "to be met with basic decency or empathy "by some hardened partisans "who see only enemy avatars, not actual people."

Beautifully rendered in terms of the language, and horrifying in what it says.

This is a damning indictment of the state of American politics, how did we get here?

We could probably do a whole show on that, but maybe you can give a brief answer, how did we get here?

Here we are.

- I think a lot of things, tribalism, partly, our desire to dig our heels, and entrench in our camps, and that tribalism has been fomented, I don't want to both-sides it, because I think, certainly, more by Trump and Republicans, but certainly, on both sides, that has happened to a degree.

I also think politics has become too damn important in our daily lives.

We were not meant to orient our everyday life around politics, and yet we are making decisions about where we live, where we send our kids to school, who our friends are, what we watch on television, based on what team we're on politically, and I think that is completely corrosive.

There was a time when our communities, our faith, our families, our friends, our work was the center of our lives, and not our politics, and it's just become too omnipresent.

I also just think division has become too politically profitable.

It is more profitable to leave problems unsolved, because when you solve them, you can't run on them, you can't fundraise off of them, you can't stoke fear off of them if they're solved.

So whether it's a broken immigration system, or gun control, name your problem, there are reasons why those systems are still broken.

It's not because they're impossible to solve, it's because it is profitable politically to leave them broken.

I think that leaves people deeply disillusioned with politics, angry at politics, and angry at their neighbors.

So I think those are just some of the contours, but as you say, people will be writing about how we got here, I think, for decades.

- So how do we fix it?

There's another big question for which there's a long answer, I'm sure.

- [Jim] We only have 12 minutes left, S. E.. (they laugh) - Let me solve it in three.

(they laugh) - Good for you.

We've asked this question of other guests, and they haven't been able to in three minutes, so go ahead.

- No, it is elusive, and again, I think there are lots of things that need to happen.

I think, first and foremost, we need to reject, and want to reject the state of American politics today.

I know many of us do, many don't, many want things to stay the same, many are here for the destruction, and the anarchy, so we have to want to make that change, first and foremost.

We have to reject Trumpism, I think, very clearly.

I say that as a Republican and a conservative, I have not seen a more corrosive, ominous, and deleterious political movement, certainly since I've been covering politics, but that I can think of, again, in modern American politics, I think we need to reject that soundly.

And then, I think, we need to get our priorities back in check.

Like I said, politics has become too important.

I think we need to be in control of our own lives again, I think we've let politics co-opt our priorities, and we need to take them back.

Finally, I think, a return to, listen, I'm in national news, I'm on cable news, I'm on CNN, it doesn't get more national, in fact international, than that, but I also work in local news, at the "New York Daily News", which is a big paper, but still a hometown paper, and I think we have lost the value of local news, which can help keep our priorities local, and our communities the center of our lives, instead of national news stories, and national politics.

And our lives are far more impacted day-to-day by what happens at our local school boards, what happens at our sanitation boards, what happens in our backyard, not what's happening in Washington.

And so I think we need to reinvest in local news, which is starving right now, and give the people holding our local representatives accountable more oxygen to do that, more resources to do that, I think that will help reorient our priorities as well.

- I could not agree more, I could not agree more.

- I'm sure, you write for a local paper, one I'm very familiar with, I'm from Boston, my husband's from Rhode Island, I am a fan of local news, and it's so important, and I don't think people realize how important it is.

And just give me 30 more seconds on this riff because I'm super, super passionate about it, local news can very quickly become national news.

If you're looking at the Catholic priest story in Boston, Spotlight, if you're looking at Penn Sate, if you're looking at the Syrian Civil War, those all started as local stories that blew up and exploded, and had huge global ramifications.

So it's not just that the local stories are important to us locally, but huge stories, Jeffrey Epstein was covered brilliantly by the "Miami Herald" when no one else was talking about it, and really broken wide open by local news.

So we all have to care about investing in local news in our communities, because we'll be smarter, we'll be safer, we'll be more informed, and we'll have a level of accountability that is diminishing.

- [Wayne] I have not ever heard it put better, thank you.

- Good, well thank you for giving me that space to go off.

(they laugh) - S. E., that same column that Wayne quoted from about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez struck me for its empathy, which is not something that we hear a lot about, or we see examples of in a lot of American politics, and in the coverage of American politics especially.

I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about the role of empathy in public life?

- I'm very easy to emotions.

In covering some of the worst tragedies we've seen over the past 20 years, I've been unable to keep my emotions in check on television.

Sandy Hook, for example, broke while I was on the air, I had to deliver that news.

That was awful, multiply that by a dozen.

So I'm not good at holding my emotions in, and sometimes I'm embarrassed by that, because, as a journalist, I like to keep things professional, but I think we need to start approaching issues more as humans, less as people from a political point of view, whether that's, again, gun control, abortion, immigration, can we talk about the human aspect first, the emotional aspect first, and then get to the politics, and the machinations around that?

I think we've forgotten how to do that.

I'm not always great at it, sometimes I'm not as empathetic as I need to be, and none of us are perfect, but I think we need to start with that.

And if you listened to Ocasio-Cortez's Instagram Live where she reveals she had been the victim of a sexual assault, and had been cowering in the corner during the insurrection, if you watch that and thought she's a liar, screw her, she's a Democrat, so who cares, we've really lost our way, because the only reaction to that is that is awful, I feel terrible for her, and we can talk about politics later.

To me, that is the only correct response to a story like that, and yet I was appalled at some of the reactions I saw, but perhaps not surprised.

- We're taping this in mid-February, as the impeachment trial of Donald Trump gets underway, so we can't talk about the verdict 'cause we haven't gotten there, but do you think the second impeachment was proper and called for?

- I do, for a number of reasons.

I don't believe Donald Trump's gonna get convicted, but even without a conviction, this impeachment is important, number one, for accountability.

Accountability is still an important thing, it's important to hold the president accountable, lawmakers accountable, any of his allies accountable, Congress accountable, but also, accountability to the voters.

If you were a Democrat or a Republican who did not vote for Donald Trump, you did that for a reason, and I think they deserve a level of accountability for what happened.

Number two, this was the first official accounting of what happened on January 6th, the months after the election, and to determine a consensus narrative of those events is very important, not just for the record of history, but for the way that we talk about it in the future, we need to have a common set of facts, and I think, through the course of sworn testimony, and witnesses, and evidence, and everything that comes up in an impeachment trial, we'll get a lot of that narrative.

And then thirdly, listen, there might be criminal suits, civil suits, that come after impeachment, that are based on a lot of the stuff that comes out here.

So I think impeachment, while it's a political performance, in this case it's still incredibly important for the American people.

- I wonder if we could pivot a little broadly, now we've got about 3 1/2 minutes left, but the future of the Republican Party after Trump.

I guess a more basic question is, are we after Trump, or is he gonna continue to play a huge role in the future of the party and American politics, and where does the GOP go from here?

- Does Trump continue to play a big role?

That's TBD, and I think that relies a lot, in part, on whether Republicans want him to.

If he has no takers, he'll go off into the hinterlands and he can start his own network that's all the QAnon, MAGA, white pride folks; if Republicans still want him to, then they'll continue to elevate him, and make him important, and make him useful for 2022, maybe 2024, that's really up to them.

So far, we have not seen a huge willingness to leave him behind.

You've seen that among some, Adam Kinzinger, someone I know well and have watched his career, Ben Sasse has spoke up pretty strongly against the president, Liz Cheney, obviously, but in toto, you've seen most Republicans really unwilling to completely sever the ties.

And so GOP's thinking more about 2022 than they are 2052, and the way history will look back on this, or the future of the Republican Party, and that project started five years ago, when they decided to marry Donald Trump, they decided, screw the future of the GOP, we care about this moment, and never really looked too much further past their own noses, and what they could get in the immediate.

So folks like me thought, well gosh, this guys really gonna do a lot of damage to the party, and therefore we should not be so embracing of him, but we were in the minority, so here we are.

- Do you- - Go ahead, Wayne.

- Just talking about President Trump, do you think he has a political future?

You speculated he could maybe do his own network, or show, or whatever, but politically speaking, what do you foresee, if anything?

- [Jim] About a minute left here.

- He could run again.

Currently, he is polling first in the Republican primary, the hypothetical primary, I don't think we should underestimate how popular among Republicans he still is, so as of this second, I think he's got a political future if Republicans want it for him.

- What do you think is the secret of, why do so many Republicans continue to support him?

- 30 seconds, are you serious?

(they laugh) So many reasons, and we are still trying to understand that phenomenon, and how someone so offensive, and unlikely, really came along and co-opted the party, and attracted so many Republican voters, and indeed, even disaffected Democrats, that is not something you can answer easily.

- Well S. E., we'd love to have you back to continue that conversation.

She's S. E. Cupp, from CNN and the "New York Daily News", that's all the time we have this week.

If you want to know more about "Story in the Public Square", you can find us on Facebook and Twitter, or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square".

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