Clip: Loyalty to Trump’s election claims becomes requirement for administration members

Jeffrey Goldberg: Let's just watch with me for a minute Senator Gillibrand in the hearing for Clayton this week.

Kristen Gillibrand: You can understand why this committee is concerned that you won't say Biden won the election, because it just reeks of this insecurity by the Trump administration about election security.

So, when you say election security is important to you, I want to make sure that you understand the ODNI has a responsibility towards cybersecurity, towards election security, that's not about voter fraud but about the influence of foreign countries on our election security. Do you understand that?

Jay Clayton, Director of National Intelligence Nominee: Absolutely.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Stay on Clayton for a minute. He's not a well-known figure. You can introduce him a little bit in your answer. But what does this tell you, this general atmosphere and this specific hearing, about his ability to be a neutral arbiter and analyst of the facts related to foreign interference?

Laura Barron-Lopez: Right. Well, he has no intelligence experience. Not that stops the president from nominating anyone for positions that have no experience for what they ultimately --

Jeffrey Goldberg: I have no television experience, so here we go.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Right. I know. We can all tell.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes. I know. I appreciate that.

Laura Barron-Lopez: No. But he -- I think that it doesn't bode well for independence because we have seen that, again, with his answers to the committee, he was not willing to give a direct answer. Also, he was behind the subpoenas of The New York Times reporter.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Laura Barron-Lopez: So, I think that he is showing that he is willing to do the president's bidding, and, you know, they're talking to an audience of one.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, Steve, this is a really fascinating question. Now we're getting into the psychology of this. Let's go to previous presidencies. There are certain issues, let's say, that were no-go issues. If you didn't agree with the president on X, you couldn't work for him. You could not be opposed to the free market and go to work for Ronald Reagan, just a random example.

It seems now, and it has seemed for a while, that if you don't play along with the delusion -- the either earnestly felt delusion on the president's part or the manufactured delusion that he won 2020, you can't work in this administration.

Stephen Hayes: Yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: This is what might be called a novel situation in American democracy.

Stephen Hayes: I mean, novel is probably the nicest way to put it. Look, I think it's very worrisome.

Jay Clayton is somebody who's widely respected among Republicans, Republicans not just in the MAGA world, but Republicans who are skeptical --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Serious guy, serious lawyer.

Stephen Hayes: Yes, even Democrats. He has --

Jeffrey Goldberg: He had -- yes.

Stephen Hayes: He has a history. He has a history. They're never-Trump Republicans, think very highly of him. And to watch him, you know, unwilling to answer this very simple question in a straightforward manner, that is what you need to.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Pure speculation I'm asking for, but what are the chances in your mind that Jay Clayton, someone you've studied, believes that Joe Biden didn't win?

Stephen Hayes: I mean, no, zero.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Zero, right?

Stephen Hayes: Nobody serious believes that anymore.

Look, remember, it's important to remember the president's own campaign hands didn't believe that he won the 2020 election. They were the ones who were telling him. His White House counsel was telling him. His attorney general was telling him. Nobody serious believes this. And to watch somebody like Jay Clayton, who's going to be taking the position that you mentioned, not being willing to state the obvious, I think, is really problematic.

It's also the case, we should point out that in interviews, not just the high level, not just in Senate hearings, but in interviews of lower-level employees being hired by the administration, they too are asked usually as the first question, did Donald Trump win the 2020 election? They have to say yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, that's what I mean. It's become the equivalent in 1942 of saying to somebody who wants to work in the administration, you do support our war effort against Japan and Germany. I mean, it's a baseline --

Laura Barron-Lopez: And people are being regularly polygraphed.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Anne Applebaum: It's an authoritarian test.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, this is what I wanted to ask, Anne. You go into this because you have broad experience covering elections and threats to democracy in other countries, including other countries that have experienced authoritarianism. What are you seeing here that's novel, and what are you seeing here that's not novel?

Anne Applebaum: So, it's not at all novel that there is a kind of myth or a lie that everybody has to pay lip service to in order to demonstrate their loyalty. So, Trump also, at some level, knows it's a lie, or he -- and he -- but he's making people go along with the lie because that proves they'll be loyal to him no matter what, and that they won't -- they're not bothered by reality, by law, by anything else.

Carl Hulse: Well, and this went all the way to all the judicial nominees have been caught in the same trap, they have to say it.

Now, the thing about Mr. Clayton, Democrats wanted to support him and move him along quickly because they want to replace the acting director in there. But this -- that hurt him. That hearing hurt him with Democrats. And he's not going to get the Democratic votes that he would've before.

Jeffrey Goldberg: One last question on this, Steve. Does it mean anything that the president didn't outright say last night on Thursday, on his -- in his speech, that the 2020 election was stolen? I mean, he didn't do the usual --

Laura Barron-Lopez: He used the words rigged and stolen.

Jeffrey Goldberg: -- full Monty -- no, but it wasn't -- but he didn't go -- and you're right, he didn't go as far.

Stephen Hayes: He didn't go into detail, and he didn't spin the crazy conspiracies. He didn't get into Venezuela, some of the things that we were led to believe he might.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Stephen Hayes: I think it's very interesting.

Jeffrey Goldberg: He stuck to a script that had been written with him, but --

Stephen Hayes: Well, and it comes after the administration has gone to great lengths. I mean, we talked about Tulsi Gabbard going to Georgia to seize ballots, to do deep investigations of what had happened in 2020. And the fact that they've been focused on this, that this is what keeps the president up at night, that they've spent time and attention on this, and that in this moment, the president didn't make that case, I think, is pretty telling.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Although, I will say, in one of my encounters with the president, I asked him, you know, why can't you drop this? You're already the most successful American politician of the 21st century. You've won two elections. And he said, three. And I said, exactly. Why do you have to? And he said, it was very interesting, I thought this was interesting psychologically, he said, I don't want to keep bringing this up, but I believe in the truth so deeply that I feel that I can't let people lie about who won in 2020.

It was -- and to go to your point, we don't know if he believes it or if he believes that he believes it or some kind of -- it's too -- it's a very complicated thing. But the point of the fact is that it is the central preoccupation.

Carl Hulse: And it's influencing a lot of events.

Jeffrey Goldberg: And it's going to influence the midterm.

Laura Barron-Lopez: But if I could just add one more thing, because a source close to the White House who used to work in the White House told me that there are more people like Clayton maybe who don't believe it around him, including in the White House right now. But they will not stick their heads out because they know that this is the one thing that he wants, that he believes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: This is the red line.

Laura Barron-Lopez: So, even if they don't want Pulte in the Oval talking to the president, convincing him to declassify all these documents, they are not willing to fight on it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Carl, I want to turn to the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, the untimely death of Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most influential members of the Senate, one of the most influential allies of Donald Trump. Talk about his legacy for a minute.

Carl Hulse: Well, I mean, definitely a big character in the Senate that has fewer of them these days. You know, he was -- he filled a lot of roles. He was a dealmaker, but he was also a hard right on foreign policy, very, you know, pro-U.S. intervention. He obviously learned at the knee of John McCain and Joe Lieberman traveling the world, trying to insert themselves into all these foreign policy disputes.

The Senate was rocked by this. I mean, people were really kind of stunned. John Thune relied on Lindsey Graham as a conduit to the White House. So, you know, the question about Lindsey Graham is also, what happened to Lindsey Graham, right? Someone who had criticized the president so harshly, ran against him, sort of acted like after January 6th that he was going to break with the president and didn't break with him.

Lindsey Graham, as I said in the story, and a lot of people have also noted, he was in search of relevance. Lindsey Graham wanted to be in the middle of everything on Capitol Hill, and he kind of did what he had to do --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Succeeded at that.

Carl Hulse: -- to stay in the middle of it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Carl Hulse: And part of that was you know, appeasing the president and having a relationship with him.

Now, members on both sides give him credit for keeping President Trump and the administration behind Ukraine when there was a lot of pressure, on the outside, not.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Anne, you've thought about this, last word to you on this. A lot of us met Lindsey Graham when he was the sidekick, wing man, Sancho Panza, to John McCain, a man who loathed Donald Trump and everything that Donald Trump stood for. You've written a lot about this new age of politics. How do you interpret Lindsey Graham's legacy?

Anne Applebaum: I think Lindsey Graham will be remembered for only one thing in the end, and it won't be Ukraine, and it won't be Iran.

Jeffrey Goldberg: His support for Ukraine?

Anne Applebaum: Yes, it won't be about any or anything to do with foreign policy. It will be his decision to abandon the ideals that he held for so long. He was very loyal to the military. He had an idea of, you know, propriety in politics. He had an idea of America playing a role as a leading democracy in the world. He abandoned all of those things in exchange for having power and influence and helping to legitimate Donald Trump. And I really think in the long run of history, that's how he'll be remembered.

Jeffrey Goldberg: One last question to you on the Ukraine piece. This is a blow to the Ukraine cause on the Hill. Is that fair to say?

Anne Applebaum: It's not clear to me that he made that much difference. You know, he had this sanctions bill. Almost everything in the sanctions bill that would put sanctions on Russia can be done without the bill. So, it was more of a symbolic game rather than real influence as far as I could see.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Carl, you're definitely right that he was larger than life in a Senate. That seems to be getting smaller.

Carl Hulse: Yes, the characters aren't quite there the way they used to be.

Jeffrey Goldberg: No?

Carl Hulse: And, you know, and he was actually -- love him or hate him, he was a very funny person, right? And there was a lot of humor with him. And now his sister is serving in his stead, and we'll see what happens there.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. We are going to have to leave it there.