The FRONTLINE Interviews
Amna Nawaz
PBS NewsHour
Amna Nawaz is chief correspondent for PBS NewsHour. She previously served as a correspondent for both ABC News and NBC News.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on April 28, 2022. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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What Trump Offered Voters
One of the moments we have in the film, and that when you look back on it does seem different, was when Trump comes out and says at the Republican National Convention, “I alone can fix it.”And it seems like a different pitch that he was making to voters than one that a traditional presidential candidate would make.And so, especially looking back now, and especially looking back with all we know about what would happen in the Trump presidency and after the Trump presidency, how do you understand that moment of who Trump was as a candidate in 2016?What was he offering to the people in that hall?
I mean, I think it’s fair to say there was absolutely nothing that was conventional or traditional about Donald Trump as a candidate.And from the moment he stood up and said, “I alone, I alone am the one who can lead this party; I alone am the one who can lead this nation,” that was made very clear to us.
I mean, in truth, that was made clear even before that, just the way he announced his candidacy, the way he came forward down that escalator and laid out just a slate of grievances that basically said, “This is the way I’m going to be running this campaign.This is the candidate I am going to be.You out there who feel disaffected, if you have grievances, if you feel this whole system has left you behind, I am the candidate for you.”
And watching that, I think we in the press knew that this was going to be a different kind of candidate; this was going to be a different kind of campaign.I think what was surprising to see was how quickly, once it became clear he was the nominee, he was going to be the candidate that the party had to put their energy behind, how quickly members of the Republican Party coalesced around that idea; that the Republican Party was no longer going to be about trying to have a big-tent party, about trying to open up to broaden their base, about trying to bring in more people who hadn’t traditionally backed Republicans as candidates and as a party.This was going to be the party that was leaning in to Trump and to his politics of grievance, and that was going to be the direction they took moving forward.
In that campaign, there were things you saw, maybe not for the first time in American history, but in recent American history; you saw rallies where people were fighting and Trump is encouraging it.You see him saying, besides just that he alone can fix it, there’s allegations even going back to the Iowa caucuses that elections were rigged, that the convention was going to be rigged, that Hillary Clinton was going to rig the campaign.Did we recognize at the time that what he was pitching was going—addressed issues of American democracy?Did we understand that, and should we have?
Yeah, I think at the time we used words like “unconventional” and “nontraditional” and “That’s who Donald Trump is as a candidate; he’s an outsider.”On paper, what that means is he’s the very first candidate ever without any political or any military experience in the history of the United States to be elected to the presidency.I mean, that alone is worth noting.
But in hindsight, yeah, looking back, there were red flags left and right about what kind of leader Donald Trump was going to be.He was calling into question the integrity of elections from the earliest days of his candidacy.He was undermining core democratic institutions and values that both parties had adhered to for generations, that have upheld this American democracy.He was seeding doubt in those from the earliest days of his candidacy.
And looking back now, it’s clearer and easier to see a pattern, right?Hindsight is always 20/20.We can always look back now and say, “This was not someone who supported democratic ideals.”This was, in very real terms, an anti-democratic candidate, someone who had very clear authoritarian and autocratic tendencies.
We see the pattern looking back now, but at the time, they were treated like individual statements and individual idiosyncrasies or nonconventional approaches.And those were some of the arguments put forward by the people who were defending him, people within the party who knew this was the candidate they had to back, and so they made excuses along the way to try to explain away some of the behavior they were seeing.
The Democrats’ Response to Trump
... There was alarm on the side of Democrats and on the side of the Hillary Clinton campaign, and there was talk on the left of impending autocracy.And there’s obviously a famous statement that Hillary Clinton makes about the supporters of Donald Trump, and talks about the “alt-right” and “deplorables.”How did the Democrats, how did Hillary Clinton, how did they respond to what they saw in Donald Trump?And was it effective, or was it self-defeating?
I mean, the problem was it wasn’t at all effective, because these were conversations about very real democratic concerns—democratic with a little d. We’re talking about America as a democratic nation.There were conversations about that being had in a wholly partisan environment.When—any conversation within an election environment ends up being, well, it’s being seen through the lens of a Republican or a Democrat; you’re saying it because you want to win an election.And in truth, any time any Democrat raised any concerns about that, the obvious response from Republicans was, well, of course they’re going to say that, because they don’t want this candidate to win, and they’re going to do whatever they can to make sure that he doesn’t win.
And so even though those things were being raised, it’s remarkable now—it is truly remarkable now—to look back and see some of the things that Republican officials were willing to overlook, were willing to enable and were willing to just kind of explain away for the sake of moving the candidate along, because this was about an election.And in the end, it was about a short-term goal, right?This was about winning an election.This was about maintaining power.That’s what this was about.
But in the long term, what we ended up sacrificing were a number of core values at the absolute heart of our democracy.And that’s where the conversation is today, is: What kind of damage was wrought over those four years?
A lot of leaders of the Republican Party don’t expect Donald Trump to win.I suppose that’s part of the reason they felt like they could support him.But he does win, and one of the scenes we may start his presidency with is that first joint address to Congress, which was at this moment when people were still asking, ”Is he going to be presidential?Who is he going to be?Is he a vessel for the Republican Party?Is he going to be a showman?Does he have his own agenda?”Can you help us understand who President Trump is when he walks into that chamber and how he’s seen, especially by the Republican Party?
The remarkable thing looking back now is how optimistic I think so many of us were.As Americans, lawmakers, journalists, everyone, there was always this expectation, I think, or at least the possibility that was kept open, that at some point candidate Trump, who had said horribly xenophobic and racist and bigoted things, who had been credibly accused of sexual assault, who had somehow managed to ascend to the presidency despite all that, that at some point he would realize the gravity of the office and would become presidential.
And every opportunity that arose, like the joint session of Congress, that question was asked: Is this the moment he will rise to the occasion?And without fail, at every moment, Donald Trump proved again and again to be the person he had always been, which was that candidate, which was that president, which was who Mr. Trump was, has been and likely will always be.
And so walking into that joint address, I think a lot of people were asking, ”Is this the moment?We wonder what he’ll say.”And truth to be told, the bar was probably pretty low in terms of what he had to be able to do in that address to appear presidential.But I think any objective observer can look at that and say that evolution never happened.This was never a candidate who was going to assume the office in the same kind of way that previous candidates had.He was never going to fill the role in the way it had been filled before.
The Republican Embrace of Trump
… Can you help me understand what, especially Mitch McConnell, but the Republican leadership felt like they were going to be able to get out of that moment, out of having this man in the White House and whether they could control him to get what they wanted?
The way in which Republican leaders in particular embraced Donald Trump, once it was clear he was going to be the candidate and once he was sworn in as the president, was really striking, because in some cases it represented a complete 180 turn from things that individuals had previously said.
I look at the case of someone like Lindsey Graham, who ran against Donald Trump in 2016, and he basically during that campaign called Mr. Trump a xenophobic, race-baiting bigot.I’m paraphrasing here, but very unkind words.And here you have today, you know, Lindsey Graham, who is probably one of the closest allies of Mr. Trump to this day, one of his fiercest defenders during his presidency, one of the people who saw himself as a power broker, someone who was constantly in touch with the president and able to kind of decipher what he was saying and what he was doing for everyone else, and maybe even in some sense helped to guide the president away from some of those tendencies and impulses that many Republican leaders acknowledged and criticized for him early in his candidacy and early in his presidency.
And so you saw that again and again with a number of leaders who had previously very vocally and publicly criticized President Trump, or candidate Trump at the time, and who came around to be some of his fiercest defenders.
But you saw that really in a couple of ways.There were people who were willing to speak out when it was a very clear violation of either a democratic norm or a moral value of some kind, just something you had to be on the right side of history about one way or the other.And those were just a handful of Republicans.
And then you saw some Republicans who spent a lot of time very carefully walking a line, which was signaling in some way to the president, to his supporters, “I’m with you; I hear what you’re saying on any one of these issues”—whether it was reaction to Charlottesville or perpetuating the big lie about a stolen election or any of those issues.They very carefully walked a line to signal, “I hear what the president’s saying, and I support him, and I’m with him, and we’re saying the same thing, he and I. But I’m also going to say these things that on paper contradict that because it’s the right thing to say.”
And, you know, we as journalists found ourselves in the very difficult position of having to kind of read between the lines on a lot of these tweets.I mean, chasing down lawmakers to say, ”What did you mean by this line in your tweet?,” that’s what we were reduced to, just to kind of make sense of what was going on, because the messaging often was inherently self-contradictory.
The other thing that happens, just talking about tweets for a second and the Republican Party, is there becomes a thing that almost becomes a joke of, you ask a senator what do you think about the latest tweet, the latest comment from the president, and what would the reaction be?What were the Republican Party leaders doing when he would say something outrageous or that went against democratic norms?
A lot of Republican leaders had a very hard time defending some things that the president would tweet, and the immediate reaction was to say, “I haven’t seen the tweet,” or, ”The tweet speaks for itself.”And that was as much as we were able to get from a number of lawmakers during that time, because, truth be told, it’s really hard to defend a lot of those things that were said.Or they were things that were sort of, you know, policy by tweets that would suddenly upend an entire institution and introduce something that no agency was ready to implement and no one had actually talked about, and no, you know, political or policy principals had actually convened about to focus on and come up with some kind of plan.
And so they couldn’t explain it.We’d ask them to explain it, and they couldn’t.And that was clear time and again.
… If it was a bargain and this is what they were giving, what were they getting from not crossing Trump?What did they hope to get out of the Trump presidency?
I think it’s very clear that they had a specific agenda, right?And this was the chance, when you have your own party’s president in power, you have a chance to push through some of the things that you’ve long believed in, right?And we saw some things move ahead and some things not.
And I think a prime example of something that failed was the Republicans’ repeated attempts to try to completely undo the Affordable Care Act, right?And they weren’t able to do that, but they were able to pass landmark tax cuts, which was something that they’d been trying to do for a very long time.They were able to put into place their own Supreme Court justices.And these were both things that were both, you know, incredibly strong messages, incredibly powerful messages, to be able to deliver to their base, to say, “Look what we did.”You know, we were able to do this for the economy; we were able to do this for the Supreme Court.
And again and again, you know, I went out into the field to talk to people from all parts of the country, including people who had supported Mr. Trump, to kind of track where they were over the course of his presidency.And when you asked them, even if they didn’t agree with him as a candidate, even if they had real personal problems with him as an individual, ”Why did you vote for him?,” these were some of the things that they cited.They said, ”You know, I believe Republicans are better for the economy, and a Republican president will be better that way,” and, “I believe they will have an impact on the Supreme Court.”And both of those things were true.
… Can you help us understand Mitch McConnell in that moment … and what he wants to get out of the Trump presidency and what his approach is, how he understands it?
I mean, Mitch McConnell had a chance to exercise incredible agency and have real impact in both the policy world, in politics, on Capitol Hill, but also on the judiciary, which we know is where he spent a lot of his time focusing on, pushing more judges through than any other modern effort by a Senate majority leader.And it’s clear that those were things he wanted to get done.
Mitch McConnell is the perfect example of something we’ve seen among a lot of Republican lawmakers, though, which was what you saw in public was very different from what was being said privately.And we know now, over time, due to the reporting that’s been done and sources close to him sharing, he did not like Donald Trump as a person.
… He didn’t believe that this was someone who necessarily should be in charge, should be the president of the United States.He had concerns about some of his autocratic tendencies as well.But he believed that this was someone through whom he could see through some of these policy changes, some of these things that he wanted to be able to exercise.
There’s been so much reporting and so many sort of deep dives into the psychology of Mitch McConnell.And I don’t want to do kind of like a phony psychological analysis here, but this is someone who has clearly been driven by an ambition for power and ambition for control.And you have to see, you know, after decades in office and in service, here he was in this position of real authority and power, and to be able to get through some of the things he wants to get through, he’s going to have to work with someone that he doesn’t necessarily like.And that’s a real devil’s bargain in the moment, and that was a decision that Mitch McConnell made and he stuck with for the duration of the presidency.
Trump and Charlottesville
… Now looking back, now that we’ve seen Jan. 6, now that we know where it ends, how do you understand Charlottesville and the president’s response to Charlottesville?
I think we first have to remember that the president didn’t respond quickly to Charlottesville and to what happened.I mean, all of us watched in horror as neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched through the streets with tiki torches, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”In Virginia.In the United States of America.In 2017.It was horrific for anyone watching and understanding what was going on.This was not a scene anyone thought we would ever see in modern history.
And what you’d expect from a leader at that moment is to come out and unequivocally say, “This is abhorrent, and this is unacceptable, and this is not who we are as Americans.”And instead what you had was a fairly tepid statement on the day, I believe, or soon thereafter.And then a press conference that I will never forget as long as I live, which I believe was two or three days after the events, and was not even about the events in Charlottesville.
… So the purpose of that conference was not even to talk about the horrific events that had unfolded just a couple of days earlier and that several Republican lawmakers were already weighing in on.This was to talk about something else that was a priority for Mr. Trump at the time.
And what ended up happening in that press conference was what often happened, which was the press firing questions at the president, trying to get clarity on why he had said or hadn’t said something. The president being very defensive and then becoming pretty frustrated and angry, cutting people off and telling them to calm down, and saying something that is now forever sort of emblazoned in the American collective memory, which is that there were good people “on both sides” that day.Those three words, “on both sides.”
And I think that told you everything you needed to know about what President Trump, and then by default we saw among Republican leaders, what they were willing to enable or what they were willing to look the other way on, in order to not turn away some people who were obviously part of their base.
You know, the president’s statement that day, the way he answered some of those questions, was hailed by David Duke.And when you have a former KKK leader coming out vocally and publicly supporting what you’ve said, you would think that would call into question for a lot of people, ”Which side of history am I on?Am I doing everything I can to quiet and to silence some of the impulses that are very clearly present in this—in this president?”But it didn’t.It didn’t.And to this day, you have people who defend what the president said on that day.
To look back on it, in those groups when there was that moment, as you say, there was this sense of a base or that some of them were his people.And you see a mirror of that on Jan. 6, when the president says, “We love you; go home.”What is it about Trump and about the extreme elements of how he sees his supporters who see political violence as an open option?What does it tell you about Trump and about how he sees his base?
I think we have to be clear about a couple of things, which is that a lot of these forces have been part of the American fabric since its inception, right?These did not appear from nowhere because of a candidate like Donald Trump.But what candidate Trump and then President Trump and by default a number of leaders in the Republican Party did was give them space, was give them oxygen, was give them credibility in a lot of ways with a wink and a nod, that we understand where you’re coming from; that your grievances, even though they are racist in nature or xenophobic in nature or antisemitic in nature, your grievances and the base of them, we think, are valid.
And it doesn’t take coming out and saying that explicitly.It doesn’t take coming out and saying, “I agree with everything they said.”But they are enabled when they are not unequivocally condemned and denounced, which is what every president and every leader in modern history in America has done, because those are impulses that are actually corrosive for American democracy.Those are the kinds of things that have led this country to some of the darkest chapters in all of American history.
And this president was willing to give them a wink and a nod.This president was willing to give them space.And after Charlottesville, you did see a split.You did see some Republican leaders coming out and saying, “There’s no place for white supremacy in America; there’s no place for neo-Nazism,” that these things have to be explicitly and quickly and forcefully condemned and denounced.And those were seen as acts of bravery.I mean, that was the other remarkable thing at the time: that for Republican leaders to come out and say something that seemed to be contradictory, or at least to go further than what the president, the president of their own party, was saying at the time, that that was seen as an act of bravery at the time.
… There was a flurry of Mitch McConnell and others who issued statements condemning what had happened in Charlottesville, some of them mentioning the president, some of them not.… But was that a moment of choice for the party, with Trump as president, about what they were going to do, what they were willing to tolerate?
I think that what happened in Charlottesville and the way leaders in the Republican Party reacted showed that there were at least some fissures, in terms of what people were willing to tolerate.You saw people come out and unequivocally say there’s no place for white supremacy; this is abhorrent behavior.
… So in many ways, yeah, Charlottesville and the reaction to it was—it could have been a turning point for the Republican Party, but it wasn’t.I mean, the statements sort of evaporated into the ether.It became another one of those things where, because no one came out and forcefully spoke out against the president about it, that was it.It was just another one of those examples of things where the president acted in a way that was dangerous for our country, dangerous for our democracy, probably gave, you know, kind of a safe corner for dangerous actors in this nation, and the people who spoke out most forcefully about him are no longer part of the system.
How important was that?You had Jeff Flake, to a different extent Bob Corker, Mark Sanford.You had some people, and others who didn’t say anything but decided to retire.What was the effect of the president going on the attack against some of his critics, and what message did that send to the party?
You know, it became really clear that the reaction you were going to get from Republican lawmakers in many of these instances was less about what they believed or what they thought should happen and more about what they were willing to tolerate in the way of a reaction.And so those who knew that saying something that would anger President Trump and would probably result in him tweeting something about them, maybe giving them a kind of derogatory nickname, if they were willing to tolerate that, if they were willing to expect that, if they were willing to accept that, they would likely say what they thought was the right thing to say.
But over time, those Republicans became few and far between, and those who were willing to come out and say those kinds of things ended up being not just attacked by the president but also sort of shunned and kicked out of their own party by their fellow Republicans.
One of the people we’ve talked about is Mitch McConnell, who has created, as part of his image and his life story as he tells it, that he’s been a civil rights advocate and that that’s an important part of why he got into politics, and he is critical at the beginning, but he faces a choice.And somebody told us that there was even a meeting in the fall he had with Trump about judges.
… Is he going to fight back to the president who’s attacking him, to the president who had said “both sides” about Charlottesville?He’s the leader of the Senate, and he’s making his own calculation in that fall.And how would he approach that?
Mitch McConnell approached it in the same way he’s approached a lot of big decisions, which was through the lens of power and political prowess.You have to remember, this is a guy from a deep red state where Trump is wildly popular.And Mitch McConnell is not someone who talks about this often, but you know that he’s been processing it all along.The same kind of calculations he made early in the Trump presidency that allowed him to back the candidate, the nominee eventually, and to find a way to work with the president as the leader of his party probably came to play in those moments after Charlottesville.I mean, he did issue a statement saying that these kinds of forces—the KKK, white supremacy, so on—are dangerous for the country.I think he made it specific to Kentucky, if I remember, saying, you know, “They’ve even planned a rally here in Kentucky, and that’s dangerous, and this cannot be enabled.”But at the same time, he continued to stand with the president.He didn’t call out the president specifically in his statements.And that was a choice.That was a choice that the Senate majority leader made in the moment, to denounce what was clearly abhorrent, horrific, awful and dangerous actors in American society, but to not call out the president for failing to do the same.
… They’re celebrating the signing of the tax bill.And one after another—Mike Pence, Orrin Hatch, McConnell, Ryan—get up and praise Donald Trump.More than they’re even talking about the tax bill, it’s about the president’s “exquisite” leadership, as Paul Ryan says.When you look back at that moment, what is that signpost in this transformation?
What we saw over the Trump presidency years was the party shift from a party that messaged that it stood for things: big business, small government, family values, limited interventions, all the kinds of things that had been core Republican ideas.And this was really a party that had coalesced much more around a cult of personally.What Republicans saw was that the way to maneuver around the president, the way to work with this president, was to flatter him, was to speak individually to this audience of one as often as you could, whether it was at press conferences or through tweets of praise, or in moments like the signing of the tax bill.
You saw it even in Cabinet meetings.I can’t tell you the number of times we would sit down to watch a Cabinet meeting unfold where cameras were allowed inside—and this is the place where the policy is made; this is the place where those big decisions are made—and the entire first 20, 30, 40 minutes of that meeting would just be individual members of the Cabinet lavishing praise on the president.And that’s what those meetings became.
So we saw much more of a focus around people making sure that they were publicly messaging this was a president they stood behind, this was a president that they supported, this was one of the best leaders the country has ever had, because they knew that was the way to get support from the president.They knew that was the way to avoid being attacked by the president.
But what it ended up doing in the long run was creating a party that was so inextricably linked with this one person that it’s fair to call it now, looking back, much more of a cult of personality than it was before.
How unusual is that in American history?I’m talking about the democracy and different branches of government.On one hand, it’s an egotistical president who was a reality-TV star, but is there something more important there than that they were flattering the president?
It’s incredibly dangerous.It’s incredibly dangerous not just for this country, for democracy, for any nation, when an entire major political party—and we have two in this country—is so wrapped up in the personality and ego of one individual that it interferes with the work of policymaking, with the work of lawmaking, with the work that’s done in these circles of power every day.
And this is something I’ve seen—you know, I was for years a foreign correspondent, and I covered a number of countries overseas where democracies had failed, democracies were in decline, democracies were crumbling.And it’s not the kind of thing that happens in a moment.You know, it’s not any one decision or any one event.It is a series of decisions.It is a series of events, often over a very long period of time.And before you know it, the system you have before you is not one you can recognize anymore.
And we have here in this country this idea that, you know, America is exceptional, for a lot of ways, but that our democracy is exceptional in some ways, that it is immune in a lot of ways from some of these tendencies.And I think we found over the last few years that we’re not; that a lot of those impulses, a lot of those base human emotions and weaknesses and vulnerabilities exist.They exist right here.They exist in the American public; they exist among our leaders; and they certainly exist in our political parties.
… In the same period, the other question I have about this is the Democrats.They’ve been sort of shut out of power.They’re watching this.What is going on in the Democratic Party in those first couple years of Donald Trump?
… There seems like there’s a lot of energy on the Democratic side of the aisle.How are they approaching it? …
The party that’s in the opposition, the opportunity for them, especially in the first few years of any new presidency, is really, you know, to start to use some of that to gather and mobilize and inspire, re-inspire their base, right?And for the Democrats, they had a lot of material to work with.I mean, you had a president and a party that came out again and again with not only big proposals that forced people to kind of be on one side or the other, right?
I mean, when you come out with a major tax cut in the way that they did, that’s a message for the Democrats to be able to take to their base and say, “Look who this is benefiting.This is largely going to benefit American corporations.This is what we’ve been telling you about this party. …They’re in the pockets of these big banks and corporations.That’s why you need to support us.”
When they come out with the kind of, quite frankly, cruel immigration policies that led to family separation at the border, that led to those heartbreaking images and absolutely inhumane practices, the likes of which we have not seen in America previously in modern history, that gave Democrats a message.That gave them something to be able to run on, to say, “We told you this president was cruel.We told you he’s anti-democratic.You need to do whatever you can to make sure that we are able to take back power.”
And I think a lot of that energy, that oppositional energy, the anti-Trump, anti-Republican energy, is what helped them to win back control.I mean, without a doubt that’s what helped.But they became the oppositional force, you know.It became about using all of those things that were done in those early years and leveraging it for political gain, which in this vicious cycle of partisan politics also becomes a message for Republicans—that they’re only saying this because there’s a political end.
Trump’s Approach to Authoritarian Leaders
… The other thing that’s remarkable when you look back on it is Trump’s approach to people like Putin, to Kim, to very authoritarian leaders.What was it like watching that?And also, just in the context of the Republican Party that had been hawks, especially on North Korea and on Putin, what was it like watching it?How unusual was it to see a president who was critical of leaders of Europe and NATO and democratic countries and was exchanging love letters with the North Korean dictator?
I mean, it was wild.It was absolutely unbelievable in so many ways.Especially as someone who’s covered a lot of these countries firsthand, you understand that there are complicated relationships between the U.S. and a number of nations around the world, right?Saudi Arabia is a great example.We do not have to unpack the fraught relationship between the U.S. and the Saudis.But President Trump chose that as his first place to go to once he was sworn in, and that said a lot.I mean, that said to everybody this was someone who, true to form as a candidate, was not going to adhere to the traditional and conventional relationships and the traditional place of America in the world, and the traditional norms of the kinds of alliances that had quite frankly maintained world order in modern history.
And we saw that again and again.I mean, we saw it not only with the way in which he worked to undermine a lot of the alliances that have underpinned our world order.We saw his attacks on NATO allies.We saw the breaking a lot of those institutional relationships and the weakening of those alliances.But we also saw an embrace of people like Vladimir Putin.I mean, Vladimir Putin, who has jailed and been behind, you know, actual physical attacks on political opponents, who jokes about harming journalists, who does not believe in core democratic values, who is absolutely an autocratic leader.This is someone who the U.S. president sat beside and joked with and then would publicly express praise for.
I mean, these were things we hadn’t seen in an American president before, and they not only upended our political norms and our foreign policy norms, but they really forced all the institutions to kind of work around them, to figure out, wait, what does this mean for America’s place in the world anymore?What does it mean for these relationships?
What message does it send at home?There’s reporting that Trump said he wishes that he had the power that Xi had in China.What message did it send when he was embracing dictators or ignoring human rights issues?What was the domestic message that it sends?What does it signal to his supporters?
In many ways it gave his supporters license to support some of those same kinds of ideas.One of the things that happened during the Trump presidency was people became very clearly one side or the other.And if you were with Trump, you were with him all the way.There wasn’t a lot of nuance around, well, I support him on this, but I don’t support him on that.And if you have someone … who’s publicly expressing support for Vladimir Putin, what you found among the American public was kind of a similar willingness to do so—was, well, maybe he’s not all that bad, and maybe we’ve had it wrong for a number of years.
There was absolutely a trickle-down effect when it came to some of those things that were being expressed.And if you are calling into question some of those same core democratic values here in America, that also trickled down.I mean, we have more people in America now who do not trust American institutions than at any time before.And again, that didn’t begin with Donald Trump, but it was fueled by him; it was accelerated by him to a point where those divides are bigger now in American society than they’ve ever been before.
The First Impeachment
… What was going on between the two parties and especially among Democrats over impeachment, over starting with the dossier and “Russiagate” and the Mueller report?What was going on on the left that somebody like Liz Cheney was watching and was going to make her skeptical of what would happen with the impeachment over Ukraine?
You mean the first impeachment, right?Yeah.
The first impeachment, yeah.
… I think it was very clear that the same concerns a number of Democrats had expressed about candidate Trump continued through the early days of the Trump presidency, right, that this was someone who did not have American interests at heart; who was all about the politics of me, myself and I; who was driven to power for the pure sake of power.And that’s what Democrats argued again and again.
And so some of the very legitimate concerns that had been raised by intelligence officials in America and senior administration officials even before the election, I think, remained on the minds of a lot of Democrats, that there are people out there in the world who are willing and very much wanting to interfere in American systems—Russia chief among them, but also other actors.And that was something that remained on the minds of lawmakers, Republican and Democratic.
What you saw with the first impeachment trial was Democrats seizing on a moment that a lot of their concerns came into focus in one interaction.You know, they had a chance to give the American public one specific example and say, “This is what we know happened in this moment.This is what was said on this phone call.This is what we believe why it was said, and this is why it’s harmful to America.This is why it’s dangerous.This is why this president is dangerous.”That was the argument they were making to the American people.
And the hope among Democrats was it was specific enough and it was simple enough a narrative that people could see what was happening and clearly feel the same way about it; that here was a president who was willing to hold up military aid, to leverage that power over another nation in exchange for a request for a politically motivated investigation into a political opponent.This was supposed to be the clear arc.
The problem was, by the time that argument was being made, people were so deeply entrenched on one side or the other that even a clear narrative or a clear laying out of what they were arguing were the facts of the case wasn’t enough to sway people one way or the other.And I’m just talking about the American public, setting aside lawmakers.It wasn’t enough to move people from one side to the other.
And the impeachment trial, in many ways, while it was incredibly revelatory for some of the details that we’d been kind of piecing together here and there through dribs and drabs, it was incredibly revelatory to be able to see this actually happen, these things were actually said.The testimony of [Lt.] Col. [Alexander] Vindman, I think, is one of those things that’s going to stay with us in our collective American memory for decades to come; for someone inside the White House, who’s in that position, who had the background he had to come forward and say, “I heard something, and it worried me.It worried me for the sake and the safety and security of our nation.”He will forever go down in history as one of those people who was willing to stand up and say that.
But at the end of the day, the story wasn’t enough.It wasn’t enough for people to share the same concerns that Democrats did.
It’s interesting because we’ve gone back now to read some of the things that maybe were floating around at the beginning.You had democratic institutions and that danger of polarization in a system where you think you have checks and balances between Congress and between the White House.To probe further on this, can you describe what that polarization was like?If you were watching Rachel Maddow and you were a Democrat, and you’re watching Sean Hannity and you’re a Republican, especially over the issue of Russia, what was going on in those years over impeachment, over Russia, and how different were the views between the two?
I mean, the clearest difference on some of these issues between how you felt about it or how you viewed it was whether or not you even heard about it.… There were some days in the impeachment trial when it wasn’t really getting any coverage at all in conservative circles or on Fox or in the kinds of spaces that people who supported President Trump would be going to for their news and information.
So if you’re not hearing about it, if you don’t know what’s going on, you’re not going to feel one way or the other about it.But on the flip side of that, if there was coverage of it, it was largely through a political lens, that this was a politically motivated, sham trial that the Democrats were carrying out purely for political gain.
And that narrative for people who self-identify as Republican or lean Republican was an easy one for them to grab on to, because if you had been told for years and years that the criticism of this president or the criticism of Republicans is purely because Democrats want to get back in power, then everything conveniently fits into that bucket, right?Whether they’re attacking a policy or whether they’re criticizing something he said or tweeted, or whether they’re going through with an impeachment trial, if it’s all for political gain, then it means nothing at all.And so the details of the story really didn’t matter for those folks.
On the flip side, what you had were people watching hour by hour, minute by minute, an impeachment trial unfold and everyday Americans engrossed in some of these details and engaging in some of these details in a way that I don’t remember people previously being engaged in these kinds of things.I mean, yes, it’s historic for a number of reasons, unprecedented for a number of reasons, but Americans cared about the details of this story in a way that they hadn’t before.And it’s because this was a president who made you feel one way or the other.No one was neutral on what was going on here.
And as I mentioned, the acquittal does feel like a turning point.There’s a moment he goes out in the White House, and he holds up a newspaper, and he’s thanking Mitch McConnell; he’s thanking the people who helped make that moment possible.We’re especially interested in this idea of: Can institutions check—and where is our democracy and what are the brakes?And was that a moment when Donald Trump realized that he had a way around those institutional constraints?Was that a moment where he was free?What was going on when he’s celebrating that acquittal?
If the point of the impeachment trial was to hold the president accountable, it absolutely failed.And what it did was raise the narrative and elevate a lot of these concerning details and really bring out into the light details to some of the practices that had long been reported on, some of the tendencies we knew existed in this president, that this was someone who was willing to have these kind of conversations, ask for political favors in exchange for U.S. foreign policy.
But the acquittal was a turning point because, in many ways, if you were already a supporter of President Trump, this seemed to further embolden him.The system hadn’t been able to hold him accountable in that way, and he had been acquitted.And at the end of the day, what it showed—because not a single Republican voted to impeach him—it showed that this was a party that was firmly behind this president, that had so firmly and wholly coalesced around him that nothing could shake them at that moment.
Trump’s Response to COVID and Black Lives Matter
There’s so much that happens in 2020, but let me ask you one question about his response to coronavirus and to COVID.… It seems like there’s a lot of misinformation, and the president is in some ways waging war on his own advisers, on his own scientists.There are conspiracy theories about why there are lockdowns, and "liberate states," and about hydroxychloroquine.What is going on the level of truth and reality—and what the president is able to do in that period of coronavirus?
I think early on in the pandemic, even as—you know, there were only a few thousand cases in the United States.We were all still very much making sense of what exactly this would mean.But the scientists and the experts were telling us this is a problem; this is going to be a concern; this is something we need to act on now.
What we saw open up there was something we saw that basically continued through the rest of the presidency, for the duration of the pandemic, in which Mr. Trump was in power, which was this divide between the facts and the science and the experts and what people were seeing in their everyday lives and what people wanted to believe was true.
It was most clearly, I think, exhibited in some of the briefings.And you have to remember, these press briefings are places that we go as journalists to try to get answers to these questions, which at a time of, you know, a pandemic couldn’t be more important.These are life-and-death matters.We’re trying to figure out, what do we know about this virus?What are you doing as a government to try to keep people safe?
… What you saw at these press briefings were not the scientists and experts front and center.These were not the people who knew about viruses or public health.What you saw was the president himself sometimes or political leaders, people in his office who are interested in keeping him in power, answering questions about why they were doing what they were doing or throwing out random conspiracy theories or ideas about what could potentially work in response to this virus or to keep people safe.
And it was alarming.I mean, it was alarming as a journalist to be covering that.It was alarming as an American to live through that, because this was something we were all going through together.And in a time of absolute uncertainty and, quite frankly, fear for so many people, you didn’t have a clear message.You didn’t have someone who said, “We’re putting the science first.Our goal is to keep Americans safe.”You had people who were downplaying the threat.You had people who were dismissing others’ fears.You had people who were seeming to put other priorities, like keeping the economy going and making sure this didn’t have any kind of political impact on Republicans, putting those kinds of concerns front and center rather than the health and safety of Americans.
How effective was it, an attempt to, in some cases, go up against science and to convince his supporters of it’s not that big a deal, or you could take hydroxychloroquine or whatever the thing is of the moment?How effective was it, and what did it prove about … the media environment, about the truth in America?
You know, in the same way that he’d been seeding doubt in a lot of core institutions, calling into question, you know, the election process, calling into question judges and their decisions and their own political leanings, he did the same with scientists.He did the same with his own scientific agencies.And it was incredibly destructive.It was incredibly dangerous because what it did was, people who were already willing to believe what this president and what, you know, Republican leaders were saying at the time, they went along with this, too.
And when there’s a void in information—I mean, this is the thing to remember that’s true about America, but just any society as a whole—when there’s a void of reliable information, people will naturally gravitate towards the thing that confirms to them what they already believe to be true or makes them somehow feel better about the world around them.
And what scientists were saying is, “We don’t know yet.We are learning as we go.Here’s what we know; here’s what we think we should do.”And for many Americans, that wasn’t enough.You know, that nuance was not going to fill the information gap.What was going to fill the gap was someone saying, “Don’t worry about it.If you get sick, you can take this one medication.We’re going to blame this other country for this virus.”And that’s what many Americans clung on to, and still cling to, to this day.
We’re interested in it because it’s a moment for Liz Cheney. Her father’s had a heart transplant; she supports Anthony Fauci.She tweets out a picture of a mask, and there starts to be some separation there.If you know, what was Liz Cheney—why would that be a moment where things would change for her?
Specific to Liz Cheney, what was interesting to see at this moment was, in the same way that, you know, Republicans previously calling out the president or saying something that was absolutely factually true but may have contradicted the president was seen as an act of bravery, the simple act of Liz Cheney tweeting out a photo of her dad wearing a mask was somehow seen as just this moment of courage for a Republican politician at the time, which in hindsight is kind of crazy to think about, that that was seen as this revolutionary moment in Republican politics.
But the truth was, you know, here was a Republican lawmaker who had voted for Trump, who had expressed concerns about him, who was really part of this, you know, political dynasty, the Republican establishment. I mean, the Cheneys are like political royalty in America, in many circles—and whose father was, you know, health-compromised, had just gone through major heart surgery, was absolutely at risk.He was in what you would call one of the most vulnerable populations when it comes to a pandemic in America.And her leader of her party was not taking it seriously—was in fact downplaying the risk and was, by default, putting her own father at risk.
So I think it’s fair to say that it was a real turning point for Liz Cheney, because it was no longer just about Republicans being in charge or holding onto power or using the power of the presidency for some kind of political ends.It was a life-or-death issue, you know.Her father’s own health was at stake.And you did start to see more of a sort of fissure, more of a gap open up, publicly, between Liz Cheney and the rest of the Republican Party, and certainly President Trump.
The other thing that happens is in the wake of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.There’s a number of things that happen, but probably the most visually symbolic is what happens in Lafayette Square: the president walking with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs behind him, sort of reclaiming—after he gives a speech that’s about using the troops against a domestic political enemy.What was that moment, and how do you understand that, in the history of American democracy and what was going to come?
Watching armed officers in the nation’s capital forcefully clear what were largely peaceful protesters calling for racial justice in America, it was a moment I never thought I would see in this country.And I remember watching it as it unfolded and then watching the president walk across the square, watching him stand in front of a church, holding a Bible sort of as, you know, a declaration of a moment of victory that I will prevail, that these forces will not contain me, that I move where I want and when I want, in spite of.It wasn’t sort of in line with—it was in spite of—these people who are here and not recognizing what they were there for.
It was just—it was a stunning moment in his presidency because it spoke to not only the lengths that he was willing to go to be able to have a moment where he declared himself the winner, to have that kind of image that’s now forever seared in our memories, but it was …sort of a complete denial of what was unfolding around him.It was almost as if he were so divorced from the moment, divorced from the issue that was at stake, divorced from, you know, people who were calling for something to be reckoned with in American history that has long been latent and just simmering below the surface.
This was a turning point for the country, for the entire country, regardless of your politics.And it was a president who wasn’t ready to meet the moment and instead used it as a moment of his own, of political opportunism, to have a photo op in front of a church.
… In the U.S. we’ve often thought of other countries being an enemy.And in that summer, in that campaign, in that spring, there’s a lot of talk about the enemies at home and the radical left.What was going on, and where does it fit into that history of American democracy, the way he was portraying protesters or people who he saw as being against him?
One of the core messages for candidate Trump and then President Trump was that the threat to America is right here.It’s internal, right?And various people have fit into that role for him over his years.But it was something that caught hold with a number of Americans who felt the same way, who felt like the country was moving in a direction they didn’t agree with, who felt like they had been disenfranchised or ignored or “left behind,” is the phrase we hear often.
And it’s a very powerful message, because if you feel like the systems don’t work for you, or if you feel like other groups are getting ahead, if you’re not happy with the demographic shifts in this nation, if you’re not happy with the politics of the moment, that’s a really powerful message that says to you, ”The problem is not the way I see the world.The problem is not necessarily threats from the outside.The problem is right here at home.”And we saw President Trump leverage that again and again.
And after the murder of George Floyd, you know, the protests calling for racial justice and for something to be done about disproportionate police brutality against Black Americans, that was a moment for leaders in this nation to sit up and reckon with facts, with absolute reality in this nation of a history of racism and the legacy of enslavement today.That was a moment.It remains a moment.
And instead, what ended up happening was the leveraging of that moment for political gain, to characterize and to paint people who were in the streets, in a pandemic, putting their selves in harm’s way to call for racial justice, to characterize them as dangerous or as terrorists or as, you know, inherently un-American.
That was the choice that the president made in the moment.
And it’s an election year, and it’s the people who are on the other side.We’re running up into a moment that’s going to lead to Jan. 6 and to “Can you accept an election?”Is that part of the context of what would happen later, was an understanding of the other side as an enemy?
So there have been a number of studies that have shown the more you can sort of dehumanize a group, the easier it is to see them inherently as an enemy or as a threat, and then subsequently to carry out violence against them.This is not something that’s American; this is just something that’s inherently human and has been studied for decades and decades.
One of the most concerning parts about what we saw in recent years in American politics was an increased dehumanization of the other side; that if I’m Republican and you’re Democrat, it’s not just that we have different views when it comes to policy or the way this country should be run, it’s that you are inherently evil and you are inherently my enemy, and that I should do everything I can to stop you.
And we did see it in political messaging.And to be fair, we saw it from both Democrats and Republicans, that what was at stake in the election was not just a difference in policy, but it was the soul of the nation that was at stake.You know, the future of America was on the line.And people by association then said, “Well, then the other side has to be my enemy.”
The ultimate culmination of all of that, I think, was Jan. 6.And in many ways, looking back now, of course, you see the drumbeat.You see there were a number of steps, there were a series of events and a series of decisions, a series of things that leaders were willing to look the other way on or to enable or to enforce that absolutely led to that day.
But that was a day we never thought we would see.That was a day, I think, that forever changed the fabric of this nation and what we were willing to tolerate.And we see now there are more Americans who see political violence as a justifiable—what they believe to be a justifiable means to reaching their end goal.It’s a dangerous place for America.It’s a dangerous place in our history.
For the Republican establishment, for Mitch McConnell over that period, over the summer, over making a decision about what he’s going to say about Lafayette Square, whether he’s going to speak at the convention or what his role is going to be, what calculation did they make when they’re seeing this?They’re seeing more violence; they’re seeing disinformation about COVID.What’s their calculation?
I mean, the calculation at that moment is the same as it had been from the moment that Trump became the nominee, which was, “Do what you need to do to keep things moving forward.”And the short-term electoral gains are what ultimately end up taking precedence over everything else.
There are moments and opportunities over the presidency of Donald Trump that Republican leaders could have seized upon to make unequivocal statements on one thing or the other.And the few that you saw make those kinds of statements, whether it was to call out the president for a bigoted statement or to vote to impeach him, as 10 Republicans ended up doing in the second impeachment trial, there are moments when a few people did step up and act in what we now see or what was kind of characterized as acts of bravery, acts of real courage within the party.
But I think we have to pay more attention to the failure of most Republicans to do that, the failure of most Republicans to call out a lie when they hear it or to call out racism when they see it or to stand up for core American values in the face of an anti-democratic president.That was more determinative of where we are today than the few Republicans who did those things in the moment.
… There’s an editorial that Tom Cotton writes about “Send in the troops,” and there are new figures arriving on the stage: Marjorie Taylor Greene and others are in the party.1We’ve talked so much about people who have held their tongue and have been silent about things that they might have had objections to.What do you see in something like that editorial, “Send in the troops”?Is there an actual transformation?Are things changing inside the politics of the party in that period?
1
New York Times: Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops
There were absolutely fissures that opened up in the Republican Party during the last few years, in particular the Trump presidency.What you saw with people like Tom Cotton issuing that kind of op-ed and others even more recently is kind of the jockeying for position.People who work to align themselves as closely as they could to the president for their own political gains or because it allowed them the space to say things they always believed to be true but that hadn’t really had space to say it before.
You know, the fringe elements of the party have gotten a lot of attention, and the truth is those fringe elements have always been there.They’ve always been there since the beginning of our system.The troubling part, and you hear this even from some Republican lawmakers who will say this privately but not publicly, is that there are more of them today than there have ever been in modern history.That they are louder.And that there is momentum behind some of those forces in a way that there hasn’t been before.
And there’s also the fact that there’s been a failure of the Republican leadership to hold them accountable for some of the things that they say and that they do.If there are no consequences for Republican lawmakers attending a white nationalist conference, what that says is that this is OK.This is tolerated.It may not be encouraged; it may not be the center of where the party is, but that there’s a place for this kind of activity and these sorts of beliefs within the party.And that’s were the Republican Party is today.
The 2020 Election
… So we will move on to the moment after the election when Donald Trump comes out in the early morning hours and says, “Frankly, I did win this election.”What is that moment, and how unusual is it in history?How unexpected?What do you make of that in our story about democracy?
The truth is, when you look back now, everyone should have seen this coming.I mean, for years Donald Trump had been saying, “I don’t know that I’ll accept the election results if I lose.”For years.And in the flood of headlines and the flurry of other provocative or controversial or unconventional or dangerous things that were said and done, a lot of those statements sort of got lost in the headlines along the way.
But he’d been telling everyone for years, “I’m going to do this.If the election doesn’t go my way, I’m probably not going to accept this.”
And so, as shocking as it was to hear in the moment, for someone to come out and say, “I’m not going to accept these election results,” we’d been told.We had been warned this is what would happen.And so in that way, it was expected.
At the same time, even though we might have expected that behavior from the individual, I think what was incredibly shocking to me was the number of Republicans and lawmakers who quote-unquote “should know better,” right? Who have been participants in past election processes and know how this works; who were encouraging the president; who were standing by him. People like Lindsey Graham who, immediately after the election, were encouraging the president not to concede, were saying, “We will fight with you; we should fight these results.There was absolutely election fraud.”
And what you saw in those days and weeks and quite frankly months that have followed was exactly what you saw previously, was Republicans taking one of two tacks: either forcefully throwing themselves behind this big lie, that there was election fraud, that the election of 2020 was stolen and it was rigged, which was just factually untrue; and other Republicans who were walking a much sort of finer line and messaging,”We should look into the election.There are questions about the election.We should be vigilant about voter fraud,” but not going so far as to say the election was stolen and rigged.
And once again, we reached this remarkable point where just coming out and stating the facts, saying something that election official after election official said—this was the safest, most secure election in modern history; court after court finding absolutely no merit to the claims of voter fraud in various states—for Republicans to come out and say, “Joe Biden won the election,” was somehow seen as an act of bravery and courage, which is really a remarkable thing to say.
… How important was it for Republicans like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham to join in on it, to follow by the end of that week and get to be amplifying it?Was there a choice that was being made at that moment?
I mean, let’s be clear: There’s absolutely always a choice, but the choice for a lot of those Republicans in that moment was less about the president and more about the hold that he had on the party and the base.I mean, the politics of grievance had so taken hold among Republican voters and self-identified Republicans in the country at that time that to forcefully speak out against Donald Trump was to also, in many ways, reject them and their claims and, by default, their potential support for your candidacy down the line.
And so that’s a choice that those Republicans had to make at the moment, because those lies, that idea that the election was rigged, that the election was stolen, that the election process cannot be trusted, had so taken hold within Republicans in this country that to say what was true, to actually hold up the facts, would lose you their support.So that’s a political choice they made in the moment.
And how important was it at that moment, though, because at that moment Trump is just starting to say it.Was it important that the Republicans, senior Republicans, that somebody like a Lindsey Graham or Ted Cruz, were also amplifying?Fox News wasn’t even 100% on board at this point.
Look, I think immediately after, there was sort of a sense among some people that Republican voters, Republicans in this country, needed space to sort of grieve a lost election, right? That so much had been invested in this and it had been—what was at stake was not just the election and not just the presidency but the future of this country, like, what you believe this country should be about, really core values.
For a loss like that to take hold, there was a sense among some Republicans that people just needed space, and if that meant rolling along with some of these conspiracy theories and allowing them to believe that maybe there are some places where voter fraud needs to be investigated, and we’re going to follow up on this, that maybe that’s all it took.
But the calculation and the choice that they made in that moment was something similar to what they’ve done in the past, was a belief that they could somehow control it; that they could at once sort of harness that energy, right, and use it for their own support and their own political gains but then be able to turn it off when they needed to.And what we found over time is that they can’t.They cannot turn it off, because it is so powerful and so strong an undercurrent in Republicans.
… The other big player here makes a different choice, which is one we’ve talked about a lot, which is Mitch McConnell.And the choice that he makes is to wait a month.I think it’s more than a month; I think it was like six weeks before he comes out and congratulates Joe Biden.What is the choice that Mitch McConnell is making, and what are the consequences of what happens in those six weeks?
It was interesting to see Mitch McConnell come out and state the facts, that Joe Biden had actually won, because you know there is some sort of political calculation behind that.Mitch McConnell in that moment is seeing a future Biden presidency.He’s seeing his role shifting, and he’s seeing that he’s going to be able to—he’s going to have to be able to work with this new administration that’s coming in.
He’s also willing in that moment to kind of stand up and say to Donald Trump, you know, “Do what you’ve got to do,” because absolutely, as you’d expect, President Trump ends up attacking Mitch McConnell, and has continued to attack him since then for coming out and saying the truth, that Joe Biden did win the election.
But it’s a calculation for Mitch McConnell in the moment, in the same way it’s always been a calculation for him, which is, what is going to be the best path forward to continue to push them my political agenda?So it was interesting in the moment to see that but not terribly surprising.
… You have a lot of the institutions that keep what Trump’s trying to do from happening—are local officials, are officials in Michigan, in Georgia, in Arizona, both governors and election [officials].And during those six weeks when McConnell is silent, they are being threatened by the Trump team; they are being, some of them, threatened with political violence and have to go into protection, and many of them are Republicans.Can you help us understand the dynamics of that, of what is going on at this local level, the pressure that they’re under, and what they must be thinking when they look up and they see a Mitch McConnell not willing to weigh in on it?
All that frustration and all that energy had to be channeled somewhere, and it’s not surprising that it ended up being focused on the people who were actually doing the jobs on the front lines of seeing through Americans’ elections every year—or every cycle, rather.And in many ways I think it was incredibly disturbing to see just how many front-line election workers and election officials, even some of them self-identified Republicans, members of their own party, come under their attack by the president, being called out by name, and then by default by everyday voters who were around there, who were looking for a place to put that frustration from what they were being told time and again was a stolen, rigged election.
What happened in the weeks and months and years after that now has been a steady decline in trust in those systems, right?If you believe that the person who’s supposed to be overseeing your election process in your county or your state is inherently corrupt, or, you know, not actually a member of the political party that you adhere to, you’re not going to trust that system.
And so the same kind of frustration and anger that Republicans tried to harness in the moment, to say, “We hear you; you believe it was stolen and rigged because the president says it’s stolen and rigged, so we’re going to look into it as if it was stolen and rigged,” they lost control of that narrative along the way, because all of that anger and frustration ended up being channeled towards the same people who were supposed to carry out these elections.
And that system has now been inherently undermined, which is going to impact not just Democrats but Republicans, too.
… When they’re hearing a warning from state Republican officials saying, “There is violence; people are going to be killed; this lie is out of control,” and yet the silence, the effort to not push back on it continues at least for weeks, in the case of McConnell, and for many of the others for longer than that.
I mean, what you saw from Republican leaders in the moment was a willingness to continue to perpetuate that big lie that the election was stolen for the same reasons they sort of enabled it and allowed it and given it oxygen in the first place, right?The leader of the party, arguably the most powerful figure among Republicans, was saying this was true, and for you to say otherwise, even if the facts told you that was true, was not going to work for you.That was basically an act of political suicide in the moment, right, with a few exceptions.
So there’s no incentive for Republican leaders to come to the defense of those front-line election workers, of state election officials who were telling you this was a fair election; you know, “What’s being done is dangerous; I am under attack; my family is being threatened.”There was no political incentive for Republican leaders to speak up on their behalf, because the leader of their party was saying the exact opposite.The leader of their party was saying, “This was absolutely stolen; this was absolutely rigged.”
You could argue that there was a moral imperative for them to do that.You could argue that there was a democratic imperative for them to do that.But they didn’t.
Jan. 6 and the Aftermath
… What is at stake in a moment like that, where the Republican Caucus is deciding whether they’re going to take this vote that they’re going to take on Jan. 6, whether or not to accept the Electoral College results?
What’s at stake in that moment is what is absolutely core to our American democracy.I mean, we’re talking about the legitimacy of our election process.We’re talking about the idea that Americans vote, and Americans trust that their vote ends up counting and goes towards some kind of outcome, and that is the way this country moves forward, whether you like it or not, how the results are.
For Republicans to be weighing in that moment whether or not to adhere to the actual vote count, whether or not to certify the valid Electoral College counts, that is an absolute turning point in this country, because it says that people within the system, the same people who were given their positions of authority by that system, right, were willing to call it into question, were willing to be able to say, “I hear you.People who have grievances and doubts and concerns, even though they are based on absolute lies, we’re willing to give that space an oxygen because we cannot afford to lose you.”That’s a dangerous moment for this country.
… On the other side, there’s somebody who plays a surprising role—it’s a question of, like, one person, and the decisions that they make and which way they go determine a lot of this—and that’s Mike Pence, somebody who’s not said anything bad about President Trump, who has been by his side for all of these years.And he comes under all of this pressure to really send the whole thing into chaos by objecting.What does it reveal about that moment?What does it reveal about Mike Pence?What does it reveal about the system, when Pence is under this tremendous amount of pressure from the president?
I think the inside/outside perspective on that day is really crucial to understanding Mike Pence on that day.And I was among the crowds of protesters who ended up being rioters outside on Jan. 6, and you have to remember they were chanting Mike Pence’s name.They were chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.”There was a gallows built on the grounds with his name.
These were people who had taken President Trump’s message, that this was where they should focus their energy, falsely believing—which was not true—that Mike Pence could alone overturn the election results in the chamber that day, and focusing their energy and anger and frustration on him.
… You have to remember: Go back a few years; his entire political fortunes turned around by a single individual, right?He’d sort of been on the outs in the party and in political power, an unpopular governor who was plucked from basic obscurity and ascended to the vice presidency, because this was a candidate who needed someone with that kind of political credibility.He owed his office to Donald Trump, and here was Donald Trump basically calling in that favor, cashing in those chips and saying, “You have the power.Overturn the election results, and do as I tell you to do.”
And Mike Pence in that moment made clear he wasn’t going to do that.I mean, if you look at the turning points in American history, you have to believe that could have gone either way.Seeing what Republicans were willing to do and willing to enable and willing to say that may have been absolutely contradictory to the facts on the ground or to political tradition or to democratic norms or values, there were some real questions about what could happen in that day and on that moment.
But Mike Pence knew he didn’t have that authority, and I don’t know that anyone foresaw that the violence that unfolded that day would actually happen, but that was a moment, I think, that absolutely is not only a turning point for the country, but for Mike Pence alone.
… What does it say about the system, about our democracy and about what we’ve been talking about, which is the choices of individuals along the way, that it all comes down to this moment with Mike Pence?
I mean, our system is so much more tenuous, I think, than many of us imagine or believe it can be.We look at some of these individual actors and the individual decisions and individual moments over the last few years, and it’s a real kind of a sliding-doors kind of moment.It could have been completely different had one person done or said something differently than they did, both good and bad.
That moment on Jan. 6, I think, is absolutely one of those moments.What if Mike Pence had done something differently?You know, what if we had actually been thrown into an actual constitutional crisis?Where would we be today?These are questions we have to ask.These are things we have to consider, because we came as close as we ever have to that happening on that day.
So on Jan. 6, as you say, the president speaks.He attacks Mike Pence; he attacks Liz Cheney.You were with the crowds that day.Let me ask you before I get into what happens after it, as you’re watching it, what does that moment mean on this history of American democracy?What does it mean when you’re standing there, watching the Capitol being breached?
I mean, talk about a day that didn’t go the way you thought it would.We were out there ostensibly to talk to protesters about why they had come in, flown in from all corners of the country, driven hours and hours to be there that day in the freezing cold—in the middle of a pandemic, we should note—because they believed what the president had told them.They believed the election was stolen, and many of them believed that something would happen that day, but they couldn’t say what.
Many of them told me, “We think he’s going to do something today that will allow him to stay in power.”And they had no details behind it.This was all the stuff of, you know, internet fantasy and conspiracy theories, all the kinds of things that had taken hold during those Trump presidency years.And people believed it to be true.And they got in their cars, and they drove for hours to be there and stand in support of this president.They got onto planes and flew across the country to be there in support of this president.And that was the one thing they told me they believed.When I asked them who they were listening to, why they believed the election was rigged or stolen, they didn’t believe news channels; they didn’t believe any other lawmakers; they didn’t believe any other officials.They only believed what Donald Trump had to say.
And on that day what we thought we would do was talk to them about why they were there and what drove them out there and what they wanted to happen or what they thought would happen, and what we ended up covering was a moment that I never, ever thought I would see happen in America, which was people using political violence to try to overturn a legitimate election.
And this is something that I have seen happen in countless nations around the world, right, people who are unhappy with where the system has ended up resorting to physical violence because they think it’s the only way forward, because they don’t believe that the system or any other lever can be pulled to try to get them closer to a result that they want or that they’re happy with or that they can even accept.
These were people who were so consumed with the idea that their nation was being stolen from them, who had so deeply bought into the lie that the election was stolen, that they were willing to bear arms to defend that.They were willing to fight police officers.They were willing to throw punches, to break windows.It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in this nation.
And I had to revert to my foreign correspondent days as I was trying to process it, because what I was seeing, with mobs of people storming up the steps of the Capitol, was the same thing I’ve seen in a number of countries across the world.And it told me in that moment that we are not immune.We are not immune from some of those same forces that can weaken and cause our democracy and our core democratic values to unravel.
… There’s two things that happened, and maybe you can help us with both of them and how you understand them.One is in the House.They come back, and the objections continue.And the other is in the Senate.The objections continue, but you also have Lindsey Graham giving that speech; you have Mitch McConnell giving that speech, feeling like things are changing.What do you make of what happens on that day in those two chambers, and what does it tell us?
You mean after they reconvened?
After they reconvened.
So there’s sort of the in-the-moment processing of what we’re seeing, and then there’s the what we’ve learned since.And I think a lot of the lawmakers you heard from on that day expressed exactly what anyone else who was watching the events unfold that day saw and felt, was that this is not who we are as a nation; that political violence is not the means towards the end.
And you heard Lindsey Graham say, you know, ”Enough is enough.I’m out. I’m out.”This was someone who had stood steadfastly by Donald Trump, who said once and for all, "This is a bridge too far. I’m out."You heard people link the violence directly to Donald Trump.You heard Republicans stand up and say, ”The president is responsible for this. You know, this is not who we are.”
And in that moment, it felt as if the lawmakers were aligned with where the rest of the country was, regardless of their party, that they saw the violence unfold; they saw people storming the steps of the Capitol; they saw the sacred halls desecrated and damaged, things destroyed.And they said, ”Enough is enough.”
I think what was interesting to see was, the further away we got from that day, how their views and their perspective changed.A lot of people watched what happened that day, and it stayed with them, and they devoted themselves to making sure that that never happens again, whether it’s as a result of, you know, a leader with autocratic tendencies who’s willing to mobilize violent mobs towards a political end, or a party that’s willing to enable it and allow that kind of thing to happen.
But we’ve also seen people who have moved away from it to a point where they’re downplaying it, and maybe it wasn’t as great a threat as we originally thought it was, and maybe this person was not as dangerous an enabler as we said he was in the moment.
And the truth is that, even in the American public, the further away we get from that day, the greater the feeling is within people who self-identify as Republicans that it wasn’t a threat to democracy, that it wasn’t as remarkable a moment as we all lived through.
And what you saw in that moment, I think, was something we’ve seen again and again, which was a willingness of leaders to tell people, ”What you are seeing, what you’re seeing with your own two eyes is not actually what you think you’re seeing.We’re going to tell you what’s actually happening here.”
… Did it feel like, in that period right after Jan. 6, that this was another moment like Charlottesville, or 2016, or a place where there was a decision to be made which way they were going to go, and that there was a window there?
You know, when you look back, I think one of the questions that was asked again and again, whether it was of Donald Trump as a candidate or as president, was sort of, where’s the line, right?I mean, even before the election you have the revelation of a recording, the <i>Access Hollywood</i> tape, where he’s basically admitting to sexually assaulting women.That line got crossed, but it wasn’t enough to disqualify him.Over the course of his presidency, you have him on the phone, you know, trading U.S. foreign policy and military aid for political favors from a foreign government.That was a line that was crossed, but it wasn’t enough to disqualify him or for his fellow party members to outright condemn him.
The question was asked again and again, you know: When is enough enough?When is that line going to be crossed?
Jan. 6, in the moment, felt like that line.How could anyone defend the president after that?How could anyone who heard President Trump call for people to march on the Capitol, call for people to try to overturn a legitimate election, how could anyone stand with the president after hearing him say that and watching events unfold as they did?That was, in the moment, what it felt like, was, this was finally it.This was where the party would break from its spell.The fever dream would be over, you know.Trump’s hold on the party and the cult of personality would dissolve; that was it.In the moment, it absolutely felt like that.
But as time went by, and we have seen, it wasn’t.It wasn’t that moment.
The Second Impeachment
The president is impeached for a second time.And the question is going to be, why does it end up the way it does?And some people we’ve talked to have said it would maybe end up that way anyway.But I guess one question is about the Democrats’ approach to it.They used all Democratic House managers.There’s talk that some Republicans wanted to speak more on the floor, and they couldn’t, and that they were sort of pushing it through.What happened with the impeachment and with the Democrats’ approach?And did it become yet another moment of polarization?
In some ways, the second impeachment did feed into the culture of polarization that had long predated Trump but really accelerated during his time in office.But in other ways, it offered an opportunity for some Republicans to really lean into the fissures that had already been growing: people like Liz Cheney, for example, right; people who had sort of had a growing sense of discontent with both the president but also the direction of the party, and who felt like this was the moment for them to make that stand.
And so you saw 10 House Republicans choose that moment to make that stand, to vote to impeach the president, the leader of their own party, and to do so for the same reason that most Democrats did, right.They believed that he was responsible for inciting that violence, and they believed that someone like that shouldn’t hold the office of president.
We’ve seen what happened since then, right?And we’ve seen the place that they hold within the Republican Party, which is to say they don’t hold one.There’s, at this moment, no future, no political future for Republicans who want to hold the president accountable or believe that he was responsible for the events that we saw unfold on Jan. 6.
… What’s the calculation that Mitch McConnell makes in that period?What does he see initially, and where does he end up, at the end of it?
Initially, for any Republican going into that second impeachment trial, this could potentially be the moment where they take a stand, to say that this was a bridge too far; the president’s words and the actions that followed as a result of those words were too much, and this is not who we are.And so you saw Republicans both in the House and the Senate make that decision, right?
… But people like Mitch McConnell make a different calculation.The calculation for them is that over time people will forgive; that over time people will forget; that the longer we move beyond the events of Jan. 6, and the more that Democrats will likely lean into it as another moment of accountability,right—”We’re going to form a committee to investigate what happened; we’re going to really unpack the details and see who was held responsible”—it was going to be a reckoning drawn out over a number of weeks and months.
Mitch McConnell makes the decision that it’s not in his interest to separate himself from the president in that moment.He is betting on the fact that President Trump will continue to have a hold over the party and, as a result of that, over the base.And that’s a base that he needs.
… Kevin McCarthy makes a different decision.He’s quite critical, at least in that one speech, but it’s only days later that there’s a picture of him at Mar-a-Lago with the former president.What is going on with Kevin McCarthy, and where does he end up after this?
The thing you have to remember about Kevin McCarthy is that he is a survivor.I mean, you look at some of the key players who rode the Tea Party wave and who really leveraged a lot of that early anger and frustration and kind of insurgent force within the Republican Party, and most of them aren’t around anymore, right?John Boehner isn’t there, and Eric Cantor isn’t there.Paul Ryan even isn’t there anymore.Kevin McCarthy’s still there.And Kevin McCarthy has his sights set on the next thing, which will be, in his view, to be the speaker of the House.
So in that moment, I think we have to remember that none of these events are happening in a vacuum, and they are all happening in a larger political context, and usually that political context is which election is next.
So even days after the events of Jan. 6, even days after watching those horrific events unfold, even days after issuing a very critical statement of the president and his comments and the violence that we all saw that day, Kevin McCarthy again makes a political decision, which is betting on the fact that President Trump will continue to have a hold over the base and the party, that he’s going to be one of the key fundraising leaders when it comes to future elections, and that there are midterms coming up.There are midterms coming up in which Republicans have a chance to be able to win back control, potentially, of both chambers.And that’s a political decision and a calculation he makes in the moment.
Liz Cheney and the Future of the Republican Party
… The other [thing] that happens that may be a slower realization for McCarthy in that period is that, in February, there’s a lot of members of the caucus who don’t support Liz Cheney, now that she’s being outspoken.And over that next period of months, there’s this question: Can you have a caucus that has Marjorie Taylor Greene and has Liz Cheney in it?It seems like, at first, he seems to believe you can, but the idea of the big tent by the end of it is gone.What happens over that period for Liz Cheney, for Kevin McCarthy, for who the Republican Party is?
The Republican Party and the energy and the focus has clearly coalesced around one end or towards one end of the spectrum.And the spectrum side that was willing to criticize President Trump, that was willing to even go so far as to vote to impeach him, is clearly no longer welcome within the party, certainly not within its leadership ranks.
And Liz Cheney is the sort of prime example of that.After speaking critically about President Trump, more forcefully, you know, later in his presidency, after voting to impeach him, Liz Cheney was basically persona non grata within the Republican Party, censured by her own state Republican Party, eventually kicked out of the leadership of the GOP.This is someone who has decided which side of history she believes she wishes to be on but that the Republican Party has basically said is not welcome within their ranks.
… I think one of the biggest questions, of course, is still ahead for Republicans—is exactly what kind of power former President Trump exerts over the party.Do his candidates actually end up winning?Is that control and influence still there?Liz Cheney is one of the people who’s banking on the side of no.She believes that the Republican Party can be different to what it is today.
… The other thing that’s happened since Jan. 6, with this division of how they see it, is a divide over voting itself, over elections, over how states are going to run their elections or who’s going to run their elections.What are the consequences for our democracy of the fallout of Jan.6 and how the two parties see it so differently?
I mean, the consequences are enormous.I think people have more distrust in our electoral processes, right?The actual core of our democratic systems, they are more distrustful of them today than at any other point in modern history.And it’s dangerous for a number of reasons, right?
You look at not just the fact that there are midterms looming, but you look at any future contest.You look at the ability and sort of the efforts within Republicans, in particular, to change the staffing around who oversees election rules and the carrying out of election processes in different states.I mean, the fact that we basically have 50 different systems, right, instead of one overall federal system leaves us vulnerable to that.And that’s a concern that a lot of people, election watchers, have been expressing for a long time.
We’re at a point now, I think, where turnout suggests people still believe in this system.They still believe that that is the best way to exercise their voice and agency within our democracy, is to show up and to vote.I think there are real questions ahead about very real threats that are more present today than they have been before, which is, once people have cast their ballots, what’s the process after that, you know?Are the safeguards all in place to prevent any kind of changes to that outcome?Are the safeguards secure enough to resist anyone’s urges to not adhere to the will of the people?
What we saw after 2020 were those questions being raised.Could this happen?The assumption was always the votes get counted, and that’s what ends up being the result.And I think people now are wondering, is that always going to be the case?Can we trust that that will always be the case?
… As you look at, not just the system and not just the voting and how the votes are counted, but the people who are involved in the system, does it seem a lot more fragile to you than it did?What is the threat to democracy, and how much does it rely on choices made by individuals along the way at all of these levels, from Congress certifying them to local officials?
You know, if anything was revealed to us and made absolutely plain over the last few years, it was just how sort of fragile a system we have that relies wholly on people trusting and participating in it in a consistent way, right?We look at it as a big system, this big overwhelming kind of system of democracy and our system of elections.But it’s made up of people, and it’s made up of people making individual decisions, and people who we assume are going to act by the rules and function in the way that they are meant to be functioning; that they’re going to follow those traditions and conventions and norms of a democracy.And I think what the last election, in particular, showed us is that that’s not always the case.And it may not always be the case.
And one of the things we saw with, in particular, Mr. Trump’s efforts to try to overturn those election results and the various levers he was willing to pull and, you know, staffing changes he was willing to make, pressure he was willing to apply, in each of those moments there was an individual who made a choice to adhere to the democratic norm, to say, "I will not find these few thousands votes that you want me to find"; to say that "I will not rule in your favor, because I don’t believe that there was voter fraud"; to say that "I will not go along with this lawsuit, because I don’t believe there’s merit to it."
Those were individual people.Those were individual people making individual decisions in the moment that somehow safeguarded our democracy.And I think the concern is, what if those people aren’t there?What if any one of those individual people weren’t there?What would that mean for that one county or that one state or that one court, that one lawsuit?Those are real questions, and those are real concerns, because in many ways, the efforts put forward by Mr. Trump were sort of haphazard.Maybe they weren’t strategic, maybe not carried out with great capability.But there could be somebody else down the line who’s better at it than he is, who is more capable and more strategic and more intentional and more deliberate.And that’s a real threat to our democracy.
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