The FRONTLINE Interviews
Steven Levitsky
Co-author, How Democracies Die
Steven Levitsky is a professor of Latin American studies and government at Harvard University. He is also the co-author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of How Democracies Die.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on May 6, 2022. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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The 2016 Election
Donald Trump had talked about rigged elections, rigged Emmy Awards for a long time.And in the very first contest in 2016 when he loses, he says Ted Cruz has rigged the election.Was that an important moment?Was that a warning sign about who he was and what he represented?
It was definitely a warning sign.One of the basic elements of democratic politics is accepting defeat.And any politician, any political party that cannot accept defeat is a threat to democracy.So that was a clear warning sign.In fact, it's one of the early indicators that tipped Daniel and I off and got us into the conversations that led to our first book.
So let's talk about some of those other things that you're seeing.I mean, one of the things in that 2016 period as he's going against Ted Cruz, at the rallies there's violence, and he seems to be encouraging it.Was that something unusual in American politics?Was that something that alarmed you?
It alarmed us a lot.Another key feature of democratic politics, another absolute essential for any politician, any political party in a democracy is to unambiguously reject violence, unambiguously reject the use of political violence by your supporters, by your allies, by anyone associated with you.And Donald Trump's not only toleration of violence but appearance of encouraging violence should've been a flashing warning sign from the very beginning.It's not the first time in American politics.American politics has had periods of extraordinary violence in the Reconstruction era.Even George Wallace in the 1960s at times kind of stoked violence.But it's the first time in certainly generations in American politics where we've had a mainstream politician condoning, even encouraging violence.And yeah, that's the kind of warning sign that should've tipped off Republican politicians from the beginning.
… Ted Cruz himself was seen as an outsider, as somebody who was against the establishment, who the party didn't like the way that he had handled things.But in this contest between the two of them, Donald Trump—my question is, was he using a playbook?Was he appealing to people in a way that even a Ted Cruz wasn't willing to appeal?Was there something about, say, the violence or the lies or these other elements that you talk about that was helping him?
Oh, without question.There was a line in American politics in the late 20th, early 21st century that even the most right-wing politicians refused—to their credit—to cross, which was, more or less, open racism in addition to encouraging violence and other forms of extremism.And Donald Trump, either wittingly or unwittingly—I don't think we quite know—was willing to cross that line, and in that way, he separated himself from all of the other candidates.He separated himself from the most right-wing candidates, the most Tea Party-oriented candidates, the most conservative candidates, what have you.He stood alone in that he was willing to cross that line, and that turned out to be appealing for an important sector of the Republican Party electorate.
And what's the effect of appealing to part of the electorate that others weren't willing to appeal to?Does it change who the party is?Does it change this story that we're talking about of democracy?
Well, sure.First of all, it allowed him to win.I mean, I think all of us underestimated the degree to which the Republican base was sort of stewing in racial resentment.The United States had become a much, much more diverse place.We were transitioning to becoming really the world's first multiracial democracy.That's a dramatic change.And part of the Republican base, a significant part of the Republican base, was very resistant to that.And again, no other Republican politician—people had continued to use sort of dog-whistle politics, but nobody had crossed that line into openly appealing to those Americans who were resistant to multiracial democracy.So what Trump's behavior did first and foremost was allow him to win, and that obviously changed the destiny or changed the path of the Republican Party and the country.
One other aspect about that spring period when he's going against Cruz, one of the things that Cruz identifies about Trump, because he is the person who receives it, the accusation about his dad being involved in the JFK assassination; there's accusations about marital infidelity.And he says, "Donald Trump is a pathological liar."And it was something that was noted at the time, that he didn't seem to mind what he was saying and whether it was true or not.Was that a warning sign?Was that something important to pay attention to, what he was willing to say and his relationship with the truth during that campaign?
Sure.I mean, another key element of democratic politics—and I think American politicians had been fudging this line for a while, but Donald Trump was qualitatively different in the sense that he was, as you said, unabashedly unafraid to lie.Politicians lie a lot in politics.But if you look back at people like, say, Richard Nixon, they hid their lies; they worried about their lies; they were concerned about lying.And Donald Trump was distinct in that he did so unabashedly.
And is that something that you connect with an authoritarian leader, or is that something that's about just who Donald Trump was?
I'm not sure I have a great answer to that question.Politicians … are held accountable in a democracy in a way that they're not in an authoritarian regime, so it's very easy for Vladimir Putin to lie because there's no independent media, no opposition parties to hold him accountable.In a democracy, you're supposed to pay a price for lying.Democracies are supposed to have mechanisms to control and to punish liars.
You get exposed by an independent media, you get exposed or criticized by the opposition, and you should pay a price for lying.The problem is that our system is no longer creating the right incentives.It's no longer punishing politicians for lying because of just how polarized our politics has become.We've gotten so polarized, and particularly, the Republican Party and the Republican Party base has grown so radicalized that they're willing to accept and in some cases even applaud before that in the past we didn't accept, as long as it's used to attack the other side.Basically, the Republicans have fallen into a by-any-means-necessary, win-at-any-cost mentality, and lying is part of that.And Trump sort of made that possible.
Pence’s Decision to Join the Ticket
One of the choices that we're interested in is the choices made by leaders as he secures the nomination in the primaries and he's looking for a vice presidential candidate, and people have told us that Mike Pence was key to his being able to consolidate control of the Republican Party.Can you tell me how you view the decision that he makes and how important it would be for somebody like a Mike Pence to decide to go along with Donald Trump?
Well, early on in the campaign, Trump didn't have a lot of options because most Republicans, most members of the establishment, most people didn't think he could win, didn't think he would win, thought he would end up embarrassing himself and the Republican Party.So most Republicans with a future who were seeking to preserve their reputations didn't want anything to do with Trump.Pence was pretty desperate.Pence's political career was sort of on the ropes, and so he did this largely out of desperation.He didn't have a lot of other options.It helped Trump because it helped to legitimate Trump.But Republicans, from the very beginning, often because they didn't think he would win, refused to go out and condemn Trump, refused to publicly tell their voters, tell their supporters, tell the American people that Donald Trump was beyond the pale; that Donald Trump was not committed to democracy; that Donald Trump was not committed to some of the basic norms that have governed our politics for decades; and that he should not be considered an acceptable candidate.
If Republicans were really interested in preserving our democracy in 2016, they would've effectively expelled Donald Trump from their ranks.They would've treated him as a pariah.Mike Pence was obviously one central figure in legitimizing and normalizing Trump.But really, the whole party ended up doing it.
Trump and the Republican Establishment
You studied countries' democracies that have slipped into authoritarianism, ones that haven’t and have faced similar pressures.I mean, how important was the choice that Republican leaders were facing in that summer of 2016 as they're going into the convention about how they were going to handle Donald Trump?Did they have a choice?Did what they decide matter?
Sure, of course they had a choice.They could have taken steps to prevent Trump's nomination.Or if that seemed illegitimate because he won the primary, they could have renounced him.They could have refused to endorse him.And really, the one way to beat Donald Trump in the U.S. system, which is a solidly two-party system, if Republican leaders had lined up and said, "This is so serious a crisis that we endorse Hillary Clinton, who we disagree with on a million different issues—we endorse Hillary Clinton for the sake of democracy," they could’ve done that.Why didn't they do it?I think they had a lot of reasons.One of them is, tragically, that a lot of them really thought Trump was going to lose so that they could sort of get away with it and put it behind them.And they sort of tragically miscalculated.
But a lot of others either underestimated the damage that Trump would do or were willing to go along with it, were willing to risk the damage that Trump would do to our institutions for the sake of short-term political gain.
I mean, by the time you get to that convention speech where he says, "I alone can fix it," and there's chants of "Lock her up" at that convention and the things that we've talked about previously, it sounds like it was obvious to you what kind of a leader he was, but should it have been obvious to everybody?How clear was it at that point that Trump was a threat to democracy?
I think it was pretty clear.As you mentioned before, Trump had already, on multiple occasions in his career and in the primaries, mentioned not accepting defeat, which is a clear indicator.He had advocated and condoned violence on repeated occasions, and he had shown himself willing to cross lines that no politician in more than a generation on either side of the aisle had crossed.So I think it was pretty clear.And the evidence seems to be, from a lot of journalistic reporting, is most Republicans knew that.They knew and said in private that they considered Donald Trump beyond the pale.They were just not willing to publicly break with him.
The Democratic Response to Trump
The Democrats—there's a lot of talk about this.There's a lot of talk inside the Hillary Clinton campaign about what Trump represents, and there's talk about the "alt-right," and she uses the term "deplorables."Did the Democratic Party—did Hillary Clinton know how to respond to the threat that was represented by a Donald Trump?
No.I mean, nobody really did.This was terribly new.And again, the really tragic factor in all of this is that everybody on both sides of the aisle believed that Donald Trump was going to lose the election.And in fact, he did lose the popular vote.I mean, Hillary Clinton won the election in terms of the popular vote.She won more votes.So she basically did what she had to do as a candidate.But this was new terrain.Nobody in American politics had really faced someone quite like this, and Donald Trump appealed to a set of voters that nobody expected to vote.I mean, the way he won the election is he mobilized a set of voters that no political strategist on either side of the aisle really expected to be mobilized.So it's a lot, I think, to ask Hillary Clinton to know how to respond to this.This was really a new challenge.
Trump’s Early Presidency
When he's elected and he arrives into Congress—and we've talked to people about how did Republicans view him.And there's a lot of talk about he's somebody that can be managed, that he doesn't know policy.They can get policy bills done.He's inexperienced.They believe they can handle him.When you're watching that moment, how do you understand those explanations from Republicans and their belief that Trump was somebody who could be managed?
I was pretty worried about it because of numerous other examples in history of mainstream politicians, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, who take aboard a popular, charismatic, populist, authoritarian leader who can clearly help the party in the short run, but is dangerous to democracies, not committed to democratic rules of the game.They sort of get on the horse and take a risk.And it very often does not end well.It didn't end well famously for conservatives in Germany who aligned with Hitler.It didn't end well for Italian liberals who initially aligned with Mussolini.It didn't end well for many on the left, social democrats who aligned with Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.There are numerous cases of mainstream politicians taking a bet on a sort of risky authoritarian-leaning outsider and ending up being buried.And so I was worried from the beginning.
… I mean, is there a pattern of underestimating a strongman or an authoritarian?Is that part of the pattern that you've seen?
Yeah, it doesn't happen every time.There are cases where the authoritarian is managed.But it's a high risk.And you're putting—weigh the cost and benefit here, right?You're weighing a possible electoral victory this year against the constitutional order, against your democracy.And so it may not be an absolute certainty that the authoritarian you're bringing on board will wreck democracy, but you're putting something very important at risk.And very often, it ends up backfiring.It ends up destroying democracy.So is it a pattern?It's pretty common.It's pretty common that mainstream politicians who align with authoritarians end up underestimating the impact of that authoritarian.
Trump and Charlottesville
As we get into that year, one of the moments that seems important now when you look back at just the people who were there and you look back at the imagery from Jan. 6 is Charlottesville and the rhetoric around it and the response of the party.How important a moment do you think that that was in Trump's presidency and in this march to Jan. 6 and beyond?
Well, look, this is another really important line that Donald Trump crossed.Charlottesville is not the first indicator or the last indicator.But it was one important indicator that Donald Trump was willing to condone open racism, which is something that really, in many respects, since the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s had been kind of considered beyond the pale in American politics.So Donald Trump was signaling to folks across the political spectrum, especially his supporters and his party, that he was willing to go back and embrace or tolerate a pre-civil-rights-era politics, a politics of open racism.
And replacement theory is a pretty dangerous theory.We are now living in a diverse society, in a multiracial democracy.And we've gotten to a point in the United States where we will either be a multiracial democracy or we will not be a democracy.This is really serious stuff.A rejection of racial equality in this day and age means the end of democracy, and Donald Trump signaled that he's OK with that politics.So again, this wasn't the only time.There were lots of indicators prior to Charlottesville, and there were indicators after Charlottesville.But that was a pretty clear, pretty public pronunciation of where Donald Trump stands on race.And again, what's really critical is the Republican Party looked at that, looked at what Donald Trump said and did, and said, "OK."
And why is that so critical?
Because Donald Trump is just one guy.If the Republican Party is a party that, as we know, is big enough to win elections, it's big enough to govern this country—we have a two-party system.If one political party is not committed to democracy, or if one political party in the year 2016 or 2020 rejects multiracial democracy, is openly racist, we are in serious trouble.One guy can't destroy American democracy; one party can.And so the party's willingness to embrace and be led by Trump is incredibly decisive.The Republican Party was the one group of individuals with the power to isolate Trump.They couldn't make him disappear—he could've run as a third-party candidate; he can still do a lot of damage.But without the Republican Party, Donald Trump can't govern the United States.Donald Trump can't do nearly as much damage.
Polarization and the First Impeachment
One of the other dynamics you write about in the book and that we're curious about is the polarization that also happens among Democrats, and you say there's a question like, do you fight like Republicans?When you're watching the politics—and I mean, that's that period where talk of impeachment starts from the very beginning; there's talk of the dossier and Russia and all of these things are going on—what are you seeing on the other side?What is the effect that a Trump is having, or how are Democrats responding to him?
… Democratic Party is an incredibly homogenous [sic] party.The way that politics has shaped up in the last 50 years, the Republicans have become a fairly homogenous, white, Christian party based primarily in small towns.The Democrats are everybody else, which is an incredibly, incredibly diverse party that ranges from suburban, upper-middle-class white folks to every ethnic minority we've got in this country, religious folks, secular folks, working class, upper middle class.It's a very diverse party, which means that it's a very pragmatic, slow-moving party.There's no way that the Democratic Party can get in the ring with the Republican Party and behave in the same way.It can't radicalize as quickly; it can't play dirty as quickly because it cannot agree on any sort of polarizing behavior.The party's just too internally divided to behave the way the Republicans behave.
And so how did the Democrats respond?I think they responded in a relatively pragmatic fashion to Trump.Yes, there were voices on the left calling for his impeachment even before he took office.Yes, there were voices in the party calling for extreme measures.But they were minority voices.Those voices never dominated the party because the party is so heterogeneous.
One of the things that's so interesting is this idea that institutions can be a check, and one of the institutions is impeachment.And when we look at that first impeachment, even people who later, like Liz Cheney, are going to turn on Trump, the entire Republican Party, with the exception of Mitt Romney, is going to vote to acquit him and is going to be arguing against the Democrats.Is that a result of polarization?What is going on in that first impeachment, and what does it say about our institutions as a check on the president?
That's a great question.Extreme polarization has made our institution of checks and balances fairly dysfunctional.Our institutions, our constitutional system was designed without political parties in mind.Founders did not think about political parties when they designed their institutions.For most of American history, for better or worse, parties were pretty—were internally heterogeneous, were internally divided.There were cross-party alliances.Politicians routinely worked across the aisle.And so, rarely in American history have we had two disciplined polarized parties.
It turns out that our constitutional system can work relatively well with moderate heterogeneous, not very disciplined parties.Our system does not work well with two polarized, disciplined parties.And so the institution of impeachment proved to be utterly dysfunctional in the context of polarization, because the cost for a Republican of supporting impeachment was extraordinarily high.… For a Republican to vote for impeachment was viewed as treason.So even somebody like Liz Cheney who privately was very critical of Trump was unwilling to pay the price.It basically risked one's political career to cross the aisle.And that's polarization.
We've talked to people who have reported on Trump's reaction to the acquittal.And he has a ceremony; he holds up a newspaper, and he's sort of celebrating.And they say that at that moment, he's unleashed, and that the reason he's unleashed is he's concluded that there isn't a check on him.Is that accurate?Is he right at that moment, that there isn't?
Yeah.I mean, the House majority, the Republican majority in the House never seriously investigated or provided oversight of Trump during the first two years of Trump's presidency.I don't think that the impeachment was the only indicator, the only signal to Trump that he was effectively impugned.I think Trump has, most of his life—certainly his adult life—he's gone through life believing he can get away with stuff that most people don't think they can get away with.So it's partly Trump's character to sort of boldly go where others don't go in the belief that he will be impugned.But that was a strong, very public signal that he was right.He was impugned.
And as you're watching that, are you saying, "This is what I warned of," or, "This is even worse"?What are you thinking as you were coming into 2020?
What made me think that things were worse than we anticipated in <i>How Democracies Die</i> was the pretty rapid and thoroughgoing Trumpization of the party.So when we wrote <i>How Democracies Die</i>, we believed and wrote that we thought that a faction of the Republican Party, particularly in the Senate, would be both able and willing to draw a line and contain Trump; that there were a whole set of senators who would not allow Trump to go past certain sort of checkpoints.
And over the course of 2017, 2018, certainly through the impeachment, it became clear, step by step, that that faction was dissolving.The political fate of Jeff Flake when he confronted Trump and saw the end of his political career, in effect, was a clear sign both to observers like me and to Republicans that you could not cross Trump in the Republican Party and live to tell about it.So as we approach 2020, it is clear that, with very few exceptions, the entire Republican Party leadership is going to line up behind Trump, and that Trump's prediction early on that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and that his supporters would back him was not only correct, but understated.I mean, it's not just his supporters; the entire party would back him as well.
Trump’s Response to Black Lives Matter
He goes into that year, and he almost immediately after that faces the crisis of COVID.He's politically—which challenges him politically, and he faces the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd, which brings all of the racial issues we've been talking to the forefront.And the rhetoric seems to be ramping up—the talk of antifa, the talk of the radical left, the talk of enemies within.Can you describe what he's doing, what the language is that he's using, and whether that maps onto this discussion we've been having?
Well, I don't know how much of this is just Trump and how much of it is political strategy.It's very difficult to tell with Trump.But clearly he discovered early on that stoking fear among his base was good politics.It wasn't as good politics as he thought.I mean, if you remember when his response to the Black Lives Matter protests was to go back to 1968, 1969 and to begin to talk about a sort of Nixon-like "silent majority" and take a law-and-order position in the belief that the silent majority would back it.But America's a very different place than it was in 1968 and '69.It's a much more diverse place.And that silent majority no longer exists.It is an intense minority.It is 40-something percent of the population, the white Christian base that is committed to Trump.So Trump stoked fears among his base.He rallied his base, which is sort of a timeworn strategy.But it was not enough to win a popular majority in the election.
It wasn't enough, but it does create this sort of existential fear among some of his supporters.And we talked to people who were at Jan. 6 reporting on it and say they were looking for antifa, and they were looking for the left that they thought was coming to take on Trump.Is that setting up—?
I mean, the Republican base has been radicalizing for a long time.The Tea Party, if you went and interviewed individual members of the Tea Party, this is way before Trump.This is 2009.These are pretty radical folks.These are people who are talking about Obama as a socialist and a Stalinist and a Muslim and a Nazi.The Republican Party base has been radicalizing for quite a while.A survey just a couple of years ago showed that a solid majority of Republicans—55% of Republicans—agreed with the statement that the American way of life is disappearing so fast, we may have to use force to preserve it.That's not all Trump.Trump recognized that base.He fed that base.He reinforced that base.But he didn't create it.I think the deeper problem is we have an intense radicalization of the Republican base that made Trump possible, that Trump stoked and fed, but again, that he didn't create.
The 2020 Election and Trump’s Initial Claims of Fraud
As we go into that moment after the election and Donald Trump walks out and he says, "Frankly, I did win this election," and there's a period of about one or two days where it's just Don Jr. and Alex Jones who are pushing the election conspiracy theories, but by the end of the week, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and others have come out and are amplifying them, was that a moment of choice for the Republican Party, and how important was that moment?
Sure.I mean, Trump's response to the election is one of the most predictable things imaginable in American politics.It was very, very clear that Donald Trump was going to reject the results of the election because he's never accepted defeat anywhere at any time.So that was going to happen.And Republicans should have planned for that.What was a choice and what was so decisive was the Republican Party response.Republicans could have at that point, like they could have at earlier points, walked away from Donald Trump.They could have said, "OK, we were with you, but you lost the election.It's time to move on."That was a clear moment, as was Jan. 6 and Jan. 7, in which Republican Party leadership could have walked away.They didn't because they saw—after each one of these crises, after each one of these anti-democratic moves by Donald Trump, Republicans will climb under the table for a day or two, remain silent, put their finger to the wind, get a sense of where the Republican base is, and if the base is with Trump, they will eventually line up behind Trump.
And that's what they did.They saw that they—nobody wanted to be Jeff Flake.Nobody wanted to risk taking on Donald Trump.And so they either remained silent or, to varying degrees, lined up behind Trump in his rejection of the election.And there, for the first time, the Republican Party becomes unambiguously anti-democratic, right?They were breaking norms; they were tolerating authoritarian behavior.But the Republicans were not an authoritarian party until November 2020, when they, as a collective, refused to accept defeat in the election.That was incredibly decisive.
So here's what they say, some of them.They say, OK, I knew there wasn't election fraud, but the president needed time to calm down.We've been a democracy for 200 years.There's courts; there's a system.You know, the system's going to resolve—there's no harm in either feeding this or, in the case of Mitch McConnell, waiting six weeks.How do you evaluate that argument that they make?
Well, I think history has evaluated that argument, hasn’t it?I mean, we now know that there was harm.First of all, it directly fed into Jan. 6.There aren’t many Republicans who, on camera, will tell you that there was no harm done on Jan. 6.Maybe some will.Mitch McConnell won't.Mitch McConnell knows that harm was done on Jan. 6.Kevin McCarthy knows that harm was done to our democracy on Jan. 6.Sixty-seven, 70, 71% of Republican voters now believe that the 2020 election was stolen, do not believe that we had a free and fair election in 2020, do not believe therefore that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States.The belief that we no longer live in a democracy, that the election was not free and fair, justifies all sorts of behavior like threats on election workers or efforts to rig or overturn future election results.
What happened between November 2020 and January 2021 was an attempted presidential coup.It was an assault; it was an effort to overturn a presidential election.Those of us who study political regimes, who study democracies, take instances like that and say, "This is no longer what we call a consolidated democracy."Democracy is consolidated when all major parties are committed to democratic rules of the game, meaning all major parties accept defeat; all major parties reject violence; when nobody is seeking power through extra-institutional means.The United States departed that category in late 2020 or early 2021.
And there are all sorts of independent measures of this.The NGO Freedom House, which has long been one of the world's most prominent global indices of democracy, in its global freedom index, the United States' score has plummeted to the point where our democracy—Freedom House considers the United States of America less democratic than Argentina and less democratic than Mongolia.So there was damage done, right?There was damage done to humoring Donald Trump.
Pressure to Overturn Election Results
The other thing that we know now was that there were local election officials—one board member in Michigan who would vote to certify the election results; the secretary of state in Georgia who's under tremendous pressure; the vice president, Mike Pence, who's under pressure.What does it reveal about the importance of individual decisions versus the institutions and the laws that have been erected?
Well, I think you can look at it two ways.One, you could say, you know, thank God for these folks, and individuals like Brad Raffensperger [Georgia Secretary of State] can play an extremely important role in defending democracy, and thank goodness that professionals in state and local government across the country, in the military, in the Trump Cabinet, in the attorney general's office did their jobs and defended the Constitution rather than following illegal orders or illegal pressure from Trump.So you can say, well, thank goodness for these individuals and their behavior.
I think the election, though, and Trump's pressure also revealed the precarity and the vulnerabilities of our system.Most democracies in the world, most democracies in South America, in Western Europe, have independent agencies, professional agencies that are essentially like a fourth branch of government that administer elections.Elections are in the hands of independent professionals, not partisan officials.And in the United States, our election administration has always been in the hands of partisan officials, some of them elected, some of them appointed.That's never been a huge problem in recent decades because the elections weren’t that high-stakes and both parties were committed to democracy.
But in the hands of an anti-democratic movement, this sort of partisan electoral administration system that we have in the United States is incredibly vulnerable.… 2020 was kind of a circus.Nobody really planned for it.Neither Trump nor the people around Trump had any idea how to manipulate or overturn an election.They were running by the seat of their pants.But Republicans learned a lot from 2020, or I should say the MAGA faction of the Republican Party learned a lot from 2020.First of all, they learned a lot about the points of vulnerability in the system.They learned that there are a multiplicity of legal ways to overturn an election, to throw out ballots in your rival's stronghold, to potentially send rival slates of electorates to the Electoral College.So they learned there are a bunch of vulnerabilities that can be exploited.They've begun to put people, Trumpists in positions of authority to potentially exploit those ambiguities.
The other thing they learned—really, really important—is that Republicans wouldn't pay a price, a political price for trying to overturn an election.One would have thought before 2020 that it would not be good politics, it wouldn’t be good for one's career to try to overturn an election.In fact, Republicans learned that they'd be rewarded by activists, that they'd be rewarded by Republican voters, and they'd be rewarded by a lot of Republican donors for trying to overturn an election.So I think more than anything, as thankful as I am for the individuals, many of them Republicans who stood up and did the right thing on Election Day, I think the greatest lesson from 2020 is just how incredibly vulnerable our system is.
Jan. 6 and the Aftermath
… But let me just get to Jan. and when you're watching Trump.This is right after the moment when Mike Pence says he's going to certify the vote, and Trump goes—he singles him out; he singles Cheney out.He says—there's talk, "We have to fight."When you see that moment, what is that moment?What are you thinking when you see it, and what is that moment a result of, and who's culpable for Jan.6 and for what happens?
The entire Republican Party is culpable for what happens on Jan. 6.Donald Trump was doing what Donald Trump has done every day of his political career.He has done what's best for Donald Trump in the moment, no matter what the consequences, no matter what the implications, no matter what the law.Donald Trump wanted to overturn the election.Donald Trump was angry and resentful that he was unable to overturn the election two months prior to Jan. 6, and having played his last card with Mike Pence, he instigated a violent insurrection.But the Republican Party, which refused to impeach and remove Trump when it was already clear that he was willing to undermine democratic norms and the law in pursuit of his reelection when it was already clear that he was willing to condone violence, when it was already clear that he was not willing to accept defeat, Republicans across the party, with a couple of very honorable exceptions, humored him.They remained silent.They enabled him for two months as he riled up his base and as he convinced his base that the election had been stolen and put himself in a position to incite an insurrection.
So it's Trump's fault, but I think ultimately, the fact that the Republican Party allowed him to be there on that day doing that is what ultimately did the greatest damage to our democracy.
So there's that question of, what do they do after the election in the run-up to Jan. 6, and then there's the question of, how do you understand Jan. 6?And in that moment, Lindsey Graham comes out.He says, "Enough is enough."Mitch McConnell is leaking that he's willing to impeach.Kevin McCarthy gives a speech, and he says Donald Trump is responsible for this.Was that moment right after Jan. 6 another moment of choice? …
Yeah, I think almost all observers of American politics believed that this might be the sort of point of no return, the breaking point.So just as Election Day when it was clear, crystal clear, to the vast majority of Republican leaders that Trump had lost and the party had an opportunity to say, "OK, that's enough," Jan. 6 was even more clear, and even a more crystal clear opportunity for the Republicans to say, "That's enough."But again, after sort of saying the right things on Jan. 6 and Jan. 7, most Republicans then took a breather, waited, put their finger to the wind, realized that the base was still with Trump, and found a way to back out of their previously democratic position.And you see this most clearly probably with Kevin McCarthy.
Republicans, even when Donald Trump led a coup against the U.S. Constitution and against our democracy, the vast bulk of the Republican Party leadership was unwilling to confront him, unwilling to impeach and remove him, and willing—at least so they say—to accept him as their candidate in 2024.So now we have Republican leaders who yes, had an opportunity to walk away from Trump, to say, "OK, on the grounds that he led a coup, we're going to break with Trump"—no.They are willing to accept a failed coup leader as their standard-bearer in 2024 if he's the nominee.
We're especially interested in that moment where Liz Cheney, who's speaking up against it, is voted out of the leadership.And it seems like McCarthy before, he thinks maybe he can keep her in, and it can be a big tent.But in that moment, they're making a decision about what the party is.What is that decision that they make, and how important are the consequences of that decision?
This was another important step in the Republicans becoming a pretty uniformly anti-democratic party.So those of us who study democracies have long argued that political parties, democratic political parties must systematically expel from their ranks extremist anti-democratic forces.So whether it's left-wing parties or whether it's right-wing parties, when violent, extremist, anti-democratic forces emerge, as they periodically do, they need to be called out, denounced, expelled from the ranks.What the Republican Party did was the opposite.They basically expelled from their ranks or are in the process of expelling from their ranks the few Republican leaders who stood up for democracy and who tried to hold Donald Trump accountable for a coup.
The party has changed dramatically.The personnel of the Republican Party if you look at the House caucus has changed dramatically since President Obama was elected in 2008.The Tea Party election brought in a much, much more radical group of Republicans.And those even from the George W. Bush era, there are very few of them in the House and the Senate.It's a new, much more radical party.And the purge of—the post-2020 purge in which those—most of those who voted for impeachment or who publicly denounced and continued to oppose Donald Trump after Jan. 6 are being pushed out of the party and being pushed out of politics.
So Donald Trump is not the president.The Republicans are not in charge.Jan. 6 happened, and the transfer of power happened.Are we in a more or a less dangerous moment in America now than this period we've been talking about?
That's a tough one to evaluate.It is always a very positive thing for democracy when one removes from the presidency an anti-democratic figure.The election of Joe Biden, the electoral defeat of Donald Trump and his removal from office was incredibly important.Anytime you've got an authoritarian figure in the White House, your democracy is obviously at risk.
That said, the Republican Party has continued to radicalize.It's continued to radicalize since the 2020 election, and it is converging around openly anti-democratic positions.And if you think what I just said is an exaggeration, keep in mind that Republicans will tell you they cannot fundraise and they cannot get nominated in most districts in the country unless they endorse the "Big Lie," unless they refuse to accept the result of the 2020 election.
Again, the most elemental aspect of a democratic party, of a political party in a democratic system is accepting defeat.You cannot make a career in the Republican Party today unless you explicitly refuse to accept defeat in the 2020 election.So that is a level of radicalization and that's an authoritarian turn that goes way beyond where the Republican Party was even in 2016.So yes, they don't control the White House, but the Republicans are an even more dangerous party in 2022 than they were in 2016.
… So the one thing I missed that we didn't talk about is the role of the media, the role of Fox news, the "enemy of the people."During the Trump presidency, how important was that?
I'm of a couple of minds on that.I mean, there's no question that right-wing cable media and social media helped to amplify Trump's extremism and Trump's views and helped to stoke fear and resentment and extremism.And there's no question that the changing media technologies, the rise of social media, and the rise of political cable news is reinforcing our polarization.There's a lot of evidence that that's the case.But it didn't create our polarization.It didn't create Trump.
We have to remember that—we have to keep our eye on what the underlying causes of polarization are, and it's not Fox News.Fox News is Fox News because there's an audience for Fox News, because there's a market for Fox News.And when Fox News stopped being Fox News, when Fox News accepted Joe Biden as president, it started quickly to lose viewers to people who were running off looking for what they really wanted, which was the Big Lie.
Spain did not need a Fox News or it didn't need Twitter or Facebook to descend into civil war in the 1930s.The United States did not need Twitter, YouTube or Facebook to descend into civil war in the 1860s.Countries like Chile in the early '70s did not need mass-media cable news, Twitter to rip themselves apart.I think more than anything else, our extremist media is a reflection of an extremist wing of our society, and our polarized media is a product of underlying societal polarization.And until—Fox News makes it worse, but it's not the root of the problem.
And when he says "enemy of the people," is that just him amplifying that polarization?
"Enemy of the people" is a pretty extremist thing to say, right?This is something that communist dictators used to say.This is something that even Khrushchev walked away from.It's a reflection of—Donald Trump is an authoritarian character, and he's pretty unique in that sense.I mean, that wasn't necessarily a strategy.It wasn't a product of—some organic product of the Republican Party.Donald Trump is just an authoritarian guy, and that's how he thinks.Again, what is really striking, really disturbing and really consequential is that he gets away with it within the Republican Party; that the Republican Party doesn't—that the first time he calls the media the enemy of the people, the Republican Party didn't grab him by the collar and throw him to the street corner, because that's not what you do in a democracy.The fact that they either remained silent or somehow condoned it or accepted it, tolerated it—in some cases, echoed it—is what's wrong with our democracy today.
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