Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, it's me Katie Couric. I'm back, but just
Speaker 1: for this bonus episode. The third season of Next Question
Speaker 1: will actually be launching on February and we've got some
Speaker 1: really exciting people lined up for you. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: I wanted to share a very important and fascinating conversation
Speaker 1: I had this week. Great to see you all. I'm
Speaker 1: so happy to be here with my friends from the
Speaker 1: Street Why. I'm coming to you tonight from Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: The Street Why invited me to moderate a talk with
Speaker 1: the founding members of the Lincoln Project. You might have
Speaker 1: heard of them this election season. They're a super pac
Speaker 1: started by former Republicans who wanted to defeat Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and in fact hold accountable all those who violate their
Speaker 1: oath to the Constitution, regardless of party. I was joined remotely,
Speaker 1: of course, by a pool plitical powerhouse trio Jennifer Horne,
Speaker 1: Reed Gallen and Steve Schmidt. Our conversation was recorded on Tuesday, January.
Speaker 1: We're sharing it with you here with just some light editing,
Speaker 1: so enjoy. Given what has happened in recent weeks and months,
Speaker 1: do you all feel that our democracy is in fact
Speaker 1: in jeopardy. Um, Steve, since you're the least opinionated, I'll
Speaker 1: start with you. What happened on January six was was
Speaker 1: the following incited to violence, ay election of white supremacist,
Speaker 1: white nationalists, conspiracy theory theorist Baptist, Proud Boys, extremist militias
Speaker 1: attact the United States capital um and the capital fell
Speaker 1: to them. The American flag was ripped down, Maga flag
Speaker 1: was was raised in its place, American flag was used
Speaker 1: to bludge in a Capitol police officer. Why were they there?
Speaker 1: Why were they there on January six? Well, they were
Speaker 1: there because there was a constitutionally mandated process. That's a
Speaker 1: moment of majesty, right, that involves the peaceful transition of power.
Speaker 1: It's been uninterrupted in this country since. So when you
Speaker 1: think about all of the great things that have been
Speaker 1: invented in America, airplanes, television, spaceships that could land and
Speaker 1: return from the moon, the Internet, right, the list goes on,
Speaker 1: the greatest invention in all the history of the country
Speaker 1: is the peaceful transition of power. George the third asked
Speaker 1: what would Washington do? And he was told that Washington
Speaker 1: would go home. And he said, if he does that
Speaker 1: will be the greatest man of this or any age.
Speaker 1: Literally the first human being in two thousand years who
Speaker 1: could have been an emperor to walk away from the power.
Speaker 1: John Adams, the first president, defeated, as Reid points out,
Speaker 1: an election decided in the House of Representatives. He leaves
Speaker 1: the process of the transfer of power was not stopped,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't peaceful, with blood soaked and with blood sooked,
Speaker 1: because that mob was incited by the president to desertify
Speaker 1: certified state elections and to different franchise millions of black votes.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about that in a in a second.
Speaker 1: But why were they there. They were there because they
Speaker 1: were incited by lying. We should understand something about national socialism, Nazism,
Speaker 1: and the fascist movement. Anti Semitism was a feature, not
Speaker 1: the foundation. Foundation of it was the lie, so alies
Speaker 1: they were incited, and the why they were excited about
Speaker 1: was that the freest a fair selection in American history
Speaker 1: was in fact stolen, stolen by who, by those people,
Speaker 1: those people in the inner cities, Black Americans. So they
Speaker 1: were incited. Democracy is fueled sustained by faith and belief
Speaker 1: in the legitimacy of the system. It's of all the
Speaker 1: terrible things that Trump did over his four catastrophic years,
Speaker 1: including his simplicity through his lying in incompetence and malfeasance,
Speaker 1: the depths of hundreds of thousands of people that didn't
Speaker 1: have to die because of COVID, including that, including the
Speaker 1: cajun An orphaning of children, including that. The worst thing
Speaker 1: he did was what he did at the end, when
Speaker 1: he poisoned faith and belief in American democracy. Incited by
Speaker 1: a president, the capital falls, and then one forty seven
Speaker 1: members of Congress rise for the purpose of busin enfranchising
Speaker 1: millions of black Americans with the vote, for the purpose
Speaker 1: of installing into the presidency for a second term the
Speaker 1: person who lost as opposed to a person who won,
Speaker 1: which would have led to the fall of the American
Speaker 1: Republicans two forty fourth year if that action would have
Speaker 1: been successful. So we have the propagandists, we have the financers,
Speaker 1: we have the cynical elites like Josh Hally, We have
Speaker 1: all of the ecosystem around the charismatic cult of personality.
Speaker 1: This is an autocratic movement at of the country we
Speaker 1: would vote for if the election were tomorrow as a floor.
Speaker 1: This is this is a serious threat to American democracy
Speaker 1: for certain. In fact, read you know, I was shocked
Speaker 1: when I read these statistics last night of Americans still
Speaker 1: insist that Joe Biden was not the legitimate winner of
Speaker 1: the election, and one of Americans say they either strongly
Speaker 1: support or somewhat somewhat support the stormy of the capital
Speaker 1: Read I mean this is still today, and Jennifer, I
Speaker 1: want you to weigh on this, to weigh in on
Speaker 1: this as well. But how could that be? How could
Speaker 1: you know? How did we get here? And how could
Speaker 1: those those people still respond that way? Well, how we
Speaker 1: got here, I think is a longer story that needs
Speaker 1: to be told in its own right. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think that if you look at this, you know, through
Speaker 1: even going back to the fall, Uh, when candidate Trump
Speaker 1: was running, remember that he started to delegitimize the the outcome.
Speaker 1: Then when he thought he was going to lose to
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton. Um, he always made himself, you know, a
Speaker 1: victim of the press, a victim of his opponents. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then as we saw last last year, he started
Speaker 1: the same thing to delegitimize the process again, whether or
Speaker 1: not that was absentee balloting, mail in balloting, early voting, um,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it was, because again, in case he
Speaker 1: could lose or would lose, uh, he needed to have
Speaker 1: an excuse. In fact, Mary Trump, the President's niece, who
Speaker 1: we spoke with many times throughout the course of this campaign,
Speaker 1: said this is what was going to happen. She said
Speaker 1: that something like this was going to happen. And we
Speaker 1: talked to her, I think in mayor June of last year,
Speaker 1: and we started saying we had we had been saying
Speaker 1: to folks, supporters and others, you know, the campaign's over
Speaker 1: when we defeat Donald Trump. We changed that. We said
Speaker 1: this campaign isn't over until Joe Biden takes the oath
Speaker 1: of office on January. Because we understood, and I think
Speaker 1: Mary was hugely helpful to our understanding of this, is
Speaker 1: that so long as Donald Trump feels personally literally physically
Speaker 1: safe in whatever it is he does, he does not
Speaker 1: care about the outside world. And so he gives that speech.
Speaker 1: He watches these people marching, He's sitting in the residents
Speaker 1: of White House, He's in a fortress, surrounded by men
Speaker 1: and women who are dedicated and you know, promised to
Speaker 1: give their lives on his behalf if necessary. He feels
Speaker 1: no compunction, no compunction whatsoever about what he's seeing. What
Speaker 1: is he most upset about that they're not as well
Speaker 1: dressed as he'd like them to be. So where do
Speaker 1: we get to this place? Um, first and foremost, it
Speaker 1: starts with the leader. As you know, Steve has a
Speaker 1: lineup of seven pieces of Trump is M that will
Speaker 1: be making more public here as we go forward. But
Speaker 1: the point is is that he systematically convinced somewhere between
Speaker 1: a quarter and a third of the country that everything
Speaker 1: he said was correct. You had a bunch of otherwise
Speaker 1: probably normal Republicans, as Jennifer can attest to, who just
Speaker 1: decided this the way it was going to go. And
Speaker 1: then I think lastly, Um, you know we something we
Speaker 1: were talking about right before we joined the crowd, which
Speaker 1: you know you cannot underestimate the effect that Fox oh
Speaker 1: in in uh News, Max, Twitter, Facebook especially, I think
Speaker 1: Facebook is a is an open sewer pipe into American society.
Speaker 1: All of these places where these folks gathered, where they
Speaker 1: got themselves spun up, where this information, whether or not
Speaker 1: was Q and on or whatever it was, went back
Speaker 1: and forth, and ultimately what you saw was a bunch
Speaker 1: of people frankly, and you know, in sort of tech parlance,
Speaker 1: jumped the air gap. They went from social media to
Speaker 1: the real world. And what we saw was January six,
Speaker 1: Will you, Jennifer speak on behalf of the normal Republicans
Speaker 1: that read referred to people who might have supported President
Speaker 1: Trump because of policy reasons, who weren't necessarily buying into
Speaker 1: every aspect of the cult of personality. But we're on
Speaker 1: the same page in terms of tax cuts and deregulation
Speaker 1: and stimulating the economy and some of the other positions
Speaker 1: he held. I mean, what percentage of those seventy a
Speaker 1: million people constitute people who who felt more aligned policy
Speaker 1: wise with this with this former president. Um, I would
Speaker 1: like to believe it was the majority of them, that
Speaker 1: it was a large number of them. Um. I think
Speaker 1: when you know, first of all, I'm no longer a Republican.
Speaker 1: You know, a couple of weeks ago, I left the
Speaker 1: party and registered as an independent. And the reason was
Speaker 1: it was before January six, But it was what was
Speaker 1: leading up to it that pushed me to make that move. Finally,
Speaker 1: I believe that the majority of the Republicans who voted
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump fully reject what happened on January six
Speaker 1: that that is not their headspace, that is not what
Speaker 1: they were looking for. But I think it's really important
Speaker 1: as we, you know, to Read's point, the story of
Speaker 1: how we got here is a long story, and that
Speaker 1: could be a conversation all by itself. But how did
Speaker 1: we get to you know, how did we get to
Speaker 1: this moment? How did we have such a rapid deterioration
Speaker 1: over the last four years. It wasn't because of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: It was because of the Republican Party, the Republican Party
Speaker 1: and the activists and the leaders and the you know,
Speaker 1: the Rona Romney McDaniels of the world, and the state
Speaker 1: party chairs and the state party committees. They gave Donald
Speaker 1: Trump a home. They created an arena, a playing field
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump. And they were all in. At any
Speaker 1: time at the beginning of Trump's presidency, Mitch McConnell or
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy, you know, any group of actual Republican leaders
Speaker 1: could have come together with a show of force, a
Speaker 1: show of political force, and reigned this president in. It's
Speaker 1: the Republican Party that empowered him and that welcomed that
Speaker 1: that you were just talking about. They gave a home
Speaker 1: to those people who you know, tore down the American flag,
Speaker 1: who threw um a a a fire extinguisher at a
Speaker 1: Capitol police officer, ultimately killing him, who you know went
Speaker 1: in there with the intention. We have to be really
Speaker 1: clear about what happened on the sixth. Their intention, their
Speaker 1: vocalized intention, was to will overturn a free, fair, legitimate
Speaker 1: American election and kill some of people in the process.
Speaker 1: They hung a noose and went looking for Mike Pence.
Speaker 1: The Republican Party gave those people a home. And what
Speaker 1: we see happening at this moment going forward, even though
Speaker 1: Trump has lost that, you know, that was the party's
Speaker 1: moment to say, Okay, we're going to reset. Instead, they
Speaker 1: are fully embracing everything that Trump stood for, and instead
Speaker 1: of trying to put it behind them, they are building
Speaker 1: the future of the party on those people who stormed
Speaker 1: the Capitol on January six It seems to me, Steve,
Speaker 1: there was a critical moment that would have allowed more
Speaker 1: moderate Republicans to recapture the Republican Party, and that was
Speaker 1: the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives. Now it
Speaker 1: was the largest, the most bipartisan impeachment in history, yet
Speaker 1: only ten Republicans supported impeachment. M can you help us
Speaker 1: understand and all three of you please weigh in on this.
Speaker 1: Some of our elected officials, Republicans who seem so terrified
Speaker 1: about speaking out still against Donald Trump. Is it because
Speaker 1: they do not want to alienate his base, They do
Speaker 1: not want to be primaried, They want to hold onto power.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's it's still shocking to a
Speaker 1: lot of people that morality has not um eclipsed political ambition. Well,
Speaker 1: we live in an age of cowardice. Political cowardice in
Speaker 1: the extreme, the likes of which, despite politics always being
Speaker 1: a business that the American people held in somewhat low
Speaker 1: with scheme right, I mean, character of politicians in a
Speaker 1: free republic has always been fair game. And American people
Speaker 1: have always been hard on on their politicians, and that
Speaker 1: in that regard, what we what we have now are
Speaker 1: people that are faithless to the idea and ideals of
Speaker 1: the country and and to their oaths. They live in
Speaker 1: terror of being tweeted at by Donald Trump, and so
Speaker 1: they sacrifice over the last four years every principle that
Speaker 1: they help. I just want to say something. You just
Speaker 1: go around very quickly the flywheeling. The elements that are
Speaker 1: necessary for an autocratic movement to take root. The first
Speaker 1: is the leader, right, Donald Trump is clearly the leader.
Speaker 1: Second of the propagandist, the people that rely right and
Speaker 1: sustained the leaders lies and turn those lies into lies
Speaker 1: of authority, where what's true is what the leader says,
Speaker 1: despite what evidence reputes it, whether that's evidence before your
Speaker 1: eyes or intellectual evidence about the elections, straight lie from
Speaker 1: trun Spicer's first lie, inaugural lie to the stolen election line.
Speaker 1: Lies of authority that require the suspension of disbelief. Right.
Speaker 1: But that's not enough. It's not enough to have the propagandists.
Speaker 1: Not enough to have the followers. You need the cynicism
Speaker 1: of the elite. You need the Josh Holly's, you need
Speaker 1: the Kevin McCarthy's. You need the Ted Cruz, the people
Speaker 1: who are arrogant enough to believe that they can ride
Speaker 1: the tiger. Josh Barley has contempted like I can't describe.
Speaker 1: For those people that sit outside rest in Viking horns invests,
Speaker 1: it's contempt for them. There an ends to a means right.
Speaker 1: But that's not enough. You need to shoot. I have
Speaker 1: to go along get along people who accommodate this because
Speaker 1: it's easier. I don't want the Trump people calling me
Speaker 1: right if you can, as Republican members said, well, I'm
Speaker 1: getting death threats, then if you can't districtorge your duties,
Speaker 1: resigned from your job because you took an oath to
Speaker 1: the Constitution of the United States. But when you when
Speaker 1: you look at that fly week, right, the cynicism of
Speaker 1: the elites like Holly combined with the sheep gets you
Speaker 1: to where we are. And so when you look at
Speaker 1: the House now, right, the determinative vote is the January
Speaker 1: sixth vote. We're a hundred forty House members voted to
Speaker 1: throw out the election. There are reasons that I profoundly
Speaker 1: disagree with them, where people of good faith could differ
Speaker 1: about the question of impeachment in the final weeks of
Speaker 1: a president's term, not on the vote on the January sets.
Speaker 1: And so what you have in the House is Liz
Speaker 1: Cheney is the leader of the House Conservatives, Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: as the leader of the House Autocrats. Liz Cheney is
Speaker 1: the leader of the Republican Democracy Caucus, which is smaller
Speaker 1: than the House Autocracy Caucus. And so this conflict that
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy seems to be brewing because he's weak in corners,
Speaker 1: because Corporate America is walking away from financing any of
Speaker 1: these people involved. On that January six vote, right, the
Speaker 1: party will get more extreme right in twenty two right,
Speaker 1: the Q and On wing of the Republican Party is
Speaker 1: going to roll over the establishment wing like the RMACH
Speaker 1: did the Belgian Army in n There are fourth day
Speaker 1: parties right growing not shrinking, that are held and controlled
Speaker 1: by Q and On people. The Oregon Party, the California Party,
Speaker 1: the Texas Party, the Arizona Party. Like these of the
Speaker 1: Texas Party has Q and On mottos as its motors.
Speaker 1: So so so Trump holds the party build the levers
Speaker 1: of power in the party. The state parties are increasingly
Speaker 1: controlled by the conspiracy theorists and the grand roots energy
Speaker 1: of the party. And the people who tend to vote
Speaker 1: in the primaries are the people who believe the election
Speaker 1: was stolen. As the next presidential campaign begins, the first
Speaker 1: article of faith used to be you had to go
Speaker 1: to Iowa or New Hampshire and establish your conservative bona fighters.
Speaker 1: Now the third requirement of being a serious candidate will
Speaker 1: be to embrace the big line that the election was stolen,
Speaker 1: that Trump was betrayed, He was betrayed by these apostate
Speaker 1: Republicans like the Secretary of State and Georgia, the governor
Speaker 1: of Georgia, or the list of their villains betrayed. The
Speaker 1: stab in the back theory is always part of this,
Speaker 1: and that's where all of this is going. Buck. Here's
Speaker 1: the good news. It please. There is the good news,
Speaker 1: though that is terrible for the Republican Party. As that
Speaker 1: fire consumes the Republican Party. We want it to burn.
Speaker 1: Let it burn hot, because the hotter it burns, the
Speaker 1: smaller the chances of these people winning a national election
Speaker 1: because they will shrink as part of a national footprint.
Speaker 1: And hopefully over the next six to eight years, this
Speaker 1: movement will disappear or be put back underground because it
Speaker 1: is brought to electoral submission. We can never lose a
Speaker 1: national election to this coalition of people ever again, because
Speaker 1: if we do, it may be the last election we have.
Speaker 1: They don't like them, Okay, Steve hold On free So
Speaker 1: Steve is saying it's going to take six to eight
Speaker 1: years for this whole movement to burn out, so that means,
Speaker 1: I mean, what is going to happen. A lot of
Speaker 1: people are commenting, Okay, we get it, but what can
Speaker 1: be done about this? If anything, Steve, you made it
Speaker 1: sound like a fat to complete that this this you know,
Speaker 1: part of the party is going to continue to rise
Speaker 1: and continue to have more power. Read do you agree?
Speaker 1: And what about the prospect of Donald Trump starting his
Speaker 1: own party, the Patriot Party? What impact will that have
Speaker 1: on the cohesion within the Republican Party? Could have burned
Speaker 1: out faster and could moderates kind of rise up in
Speaker 1: in opposition? Well, I mean, I think I do agree,
Speaker 1: you know, with with what Steve has said. I think look, um,
Speaker 1: Rob Portman, senator from Ohio, long long considered a moderate Republican,
Speaker 1: announced that he's not running for reelection. Um. He's not
Speaker 1: running for re election for a couple of reasons. Probably
Speaker 1: one is because he just doesn't want to hang out
Speaker 1: with these people anymore, and who could blame him, And too,
Speaker 1: because he probably saw what I think we had seen
Speaker 1: for a while, which is he wasn't to win a
Speaker 1: primary in Ohio next year. Whoever Trump's chosen candidate was
Speaker 1: was going to get all of Trump's support. They would
Speaker 1: they would roll over Portman, who is not equipped to
Speaker 1: handle a fight like that. And and they're saying Jim Jordan, right,
Speaker 1: Jim Jordan's might might he might? But I mean, so
Speaker 1: here's some Here's a little bit of good news. Is
Speaker 1: that if if we get truly like q and on
Speaker 1: Maga people running for the U. S. Senate next year
Speaker 1: in primaries, and they win, you could have another two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten like we saw with the with the
Speaker 1: Tea Party, in which these Republicans are so far outside
Speaker 1: the mainstream that even regular human beings such as that
Speaker 1: we have left won't have anything to do with them.
Speaker 1: So I think that that goes to Steve's point about
Speaker 1: them burning out. Look, I think the good news here
Speaker 1: is I think we should look back to this past election, UM,
Speaker 1: at least on Joe Biden's election, which was you know,
Speaker 1: eighty million, one million Americans chose Joe Biden. Now there's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of discussion about why these other seventy
Speaker 1: four million made the choice they did. But let's stick
Speaker 1: with this. Biden built, you know, one of the largest
Speaker 1: broadest and deepest coalitions in American presidential history. UM. I
Speaker 1: think what you're seeing is an awakening by many many
Speaker 1: Americans who may not be Republicans or Democrats, are partisans
Speaker 1: of any kind, even if they're registered, that we have
Speaker 1: taken this for granted for too long. Um that we
Speaker 1: sat back on our heels, We didn't care. We don't
Speaker 1: like our politicians, we don't think it matters anyway, my
Speaker 1: vote doesn't matter. Well, it does matter, and I think
Speaker 1: you're starting to see that. I think you're starting to
Speaker 1: see people of all stripes again, from states and cities
Speaker 1: across the country who are now waking up and understanding
Speaker 1: that we must take control. I thought it was fascinating
Speaker 1: that Josh Holly, who might be the whiniest want to
Speaker 1: be dictator that ever lived, second only to Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: said that he did not believe that it was American
Speaker 1: citizens rights to criticize him as an elected official for
Speaker 1: his actions. I mean, if I mean, this guy's a
Speaker 1: constitutional attorney. He he clerked for John Roberts at the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. He is not a stupid guy. He just
Speaker 1: as a sensitive guy, and he understood that people started
Speaker 1: standing up against him. I think what you've seen with
Speaker 1: corporate America running for the hills from these people is
Speaker 1: a sign that when Americans can individually and then collectively
Speaker 1: stand up. But they can and will take the people
Speaker 1: to account that need it. But again, the thing is
Speaker 1: we cannot allow is we cannot allow a that these
Speaker 1: people to go uh you know, um, they must be
Speaker 1: held accountable, uh and be We must keep folks focused
Speaker 1: on what it is we're doing, which is we must
Speaker 1: must must win in two and we must win in
Speaker 1: twenty four, Steve said. He noted Ronald Reagan once said
Speaker 1: we're only one generation or generation away from losing democracy.
Speaker 1: Were now one election of it. And so is it possible?
Speaker 1: It is? Is the fight going to be easy? It's not,
Speaker 1: and it's not going to be sure. Six to eight
Speaker 1: years is the short run. Twenty years is the long run.
Speaker 1: I mean what we saw here is, um, you know,
Speaker 1: Trump let we invited Trump the vampire into the house,
Speaker 1: and he let all the other vampires into the house too. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to put him all back out again.
Speaker 1: And it's going to be race by race, state by state,
Speaker 1: legislature by legislature, and it's going to take all of
Speaker 1: us who really believe that none of the rest of
Speaker 1: this is possible um, you know when when I mean
Speaker 1: America and bending the arc of justice, the ark of
Speaker 1: history towards justice and a freer and fairer and more
Speaker 1: equitable America or more prosperous America. If you want those things,
Speaker 1: that democracy is the only way, because, as we know,
Speaker 1: authoritarianism never leads to that. More with the founders of
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Project. Right after this, let's return to my
Speaker 1: conversation with the founders of the Lincoln Project. Jennifer, do
Speaker 1: you think I want to ask you about the prospect
Speaker 1: of of Donald Trump forming his own party and how
Speaker 1: that changes the equation at all? And secondarily, demographics are
Speaker 1: changing significantly in this country. By there's going to be
Speaker 1: a majority minority population. Many of these Trump supporters, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, are older, mostly white. Can you address both
Speaker 1: those things, Jennifer. When I was chairman in New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: I used to One of the things I used to
Speaker 1: say to, you know, county committees when I was driving
Speaker 1: around the state is that the party is not going
Speaker 1: to die if we lose. With all due respect, the
Speaker 1: party is not going to die if we lose a
Speaker 1: bunch of over sixty five angry white people. The party
Speaker 1: dies when you lose young people, when you lose um,
Speaker 1: you know, first generation voters, when you lose minority voters,
Speaker 1: when African American voters are Latino voters, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's when the party dies. And we've lost those people.
Speaker 1: We have lost those voters. Although sorry to interrupt, Jennifer,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Donald Trump did surprisingly well with
Speaker 1: I mean with Latinos and even some black Yeah. Democrats
Speaker 1: need to pay attention to that, do they not? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: And you're right, especially about Latino voters. Absolutely, um, but
Speaker 1: our party is not speaking to the and and here's
Speaker 1: a small piece of it that that I you know,
Speaker 1: you know, we should highlight two because one of the
Speaker 1: things that the Republican Party will tell you is that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump turned out more voters than any other you know,
Speaker 1: candidate and within these parameters. Ever before seventy four million,
Speaker 1: seventy four point two million voters, uh, Joe Biden turned
Speaker 1: out over eighty million voters like we have this. We
Speaker 1: had this tremendous surge of um of interests, of engagement,
Speaker 1: of you know, electoral engagement in this um, in this campaign.
Speaker 1: And I think that that really is a reflection more
Speaker 1: a reflection of where we are as a country. UM,
Speaker 1: that a lot of other things. The division is clear,
Speaker 1: the division is obvious, but I think those people are
Speaker 1: coming forward and engaging. But kind of back to the
Speaker 1: original point that the Republican Party is not speaking to
Speaker 1: those voters who are who are rising up, and if
Speaker 1: they can't, if they continue to not be able to
Speaker 1: do that, they're going to continue to lose elections. UM.
Speaker 1: As far as the idea of a new party, I
Speaker 1: strategically I don't really get it, frankly, from Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: point of view, because if he starts a Patriot Party,
Speaker 1: he doesn't get to put candidates in Republican primaries. Does
Speaker 1: he like It's I'm not sure that it advances his
Speaker 1: influence and his power to the maximum degree possible. But
Speaker 1: there's no question that whether he decides to try to
Speaker 1: poison Republican primaries or you know, roll out some kind
Speaker 1: of new party, there's no question that Donald Trump's influence
Speaker 1: is going to be to weekend, the Republican Party to
Speaker 1: divide Republican voters is Republican candidates who will lose elections
Speaker 1: as a result of what he's doing. What he's trying
Speaker 1: to do, and you know the idea of this Patriot party. Um.
Speaker 1: The problem in bigger and that, however, is not that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is in this moment able to have that influence.
Speaker 1: I'll go back to what I said at the beginning.
Speaker 1: The problem is that the entire the Republican Party leadership
Speaker 1: continues to embrace him. They want to give him that
Speaker 1: party they are they're embracing the idea of Donald Trump
Speaker 1: having that kind of influence. They are taking Trump is
Speaker 1: m forward and making this conscious choice not to leave
Speaker 1: it behind even though he has lost the election. It's
Speaker 1: I guess my point is always I put the responsibility
Speaker 1: on party leaders. It's not Donald Trump. They gave Donald
Speaker 1: Trump the influence that he has. It's the party leaders
Speaker 1: that I hold accountable. Can I just say one thing
Speaker 1: about that, because you brought this up, I mean, the
Speaker 1: one thing you noted, and you're absolutely right, was that
Speaker 1: that Trump gained with with non college educated Latinos and
Speaker 1: African American men. And and I think what we see
Speaker 1: there as a couple of things. One is that I
Speaker 1: think that among Latinos, right, I mean, look, one of
Speaker 1: my best friends, my best man, his parents are from Mexico,
Speaker 1: and he always says, the problem with you white people
Speaker 1: is that you think we're all the same, when, of
Speaker 1: course there's you know, Puerto Ricans, there's Cubans, there's Mexicans,
Speaker 1: there's Hondurans, there's you know what you name it. They
Speaker 1: all have their own cultures, they all have their own
Speaker 1: view of the world that you know, we sort of say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: they're Latinos in Texas, therefore we're just going to talk
Speaker 1: to them like this. Um, we should also understand that,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of Latinos are doing what the
Speaker 1: country has long asked of our immigrants to do. They
Speaker 1: are assimilating. So they may be of Latino descent as
Speaker 1: I am of Irish descent, right, but that may or
Speaker 1: may not any longer sort of you know, indicate how
Speaker 1: I'm going to vote for something. And then I think
Speaker 1: also there's the piece of you know, if they're you know,
Speaker 1: I always use this idea of there's there's a six
Speaker 1: man crew on the I four corridor in Orlando, Florida
Speaker 1: in August. Right, it's nine degrees, Right, there's three white
Speaker 1: guys too. Latinos in an African American they may not
Speaker 1: go to the same place when they go home at night.
Speaker 1: Their kids might not go to the same schools, but
Speaker 1: when they're standing out there and they watched the rich
Speaker 1: lady in the range Rover drive by, they probably feel
Speaker 1: pretty similar about the world. Now, that's not an excuse
Speaker 1: to storm the Capitol, right, but it should indicate to
Speaker 1: us that there are a whole heck of a lot
Speaker 1: of voters in this country who Democrats used to own,
Speaker 1: lock stock and barrel that now feel like they have
Speaker 1: no place to go, and with with left nowhere to go,
Speaker 1: they're making a bad choice. Not all the time, remember,
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump is still losing African Americans two to
Speaker 1: eighteen or whatever it is. It's an but, but it
Speaker 1: could be a trend that that Democrats should pay attention to, because, again,
Speaker 1: as they said, none of this occurs in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Let's jump back into my conversation with the founder of
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Project. I asked Steve Schmidt what he thinks
Speaker 1: Donald Trump will do now. Well, I think he's the
Speaker 1: leader of America's autocratic political movement. I think he controls
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. I think he is praying I think
Speaker 1: he's going to be hunted, um, hunted by jurisdictions in
Speaker 1: the States, um by his preditors. I think it's gonna
Speaker 1: be tremendous reluctance to do deal flow with Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: But I think Donald Trump, um, you know, from the
Speaker 1: incitement issues, legal jeopardy there, legal jeopardy. I think the
Speaker 1: tax issues in the state of New York, UM, he
Speaker 1: has three hundred million dollars with creditors coming to I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be very hard for Trump to get
Speaker 1: the money he needs. And I think he's pursued for
Speaker 1: the balance of his of his life. But he will
Speaker 1: yield considerable political power inside the Republican Party, maybe maintaining
Speaker 1: his complete hold on it. But that movement should be
Speaker 1: train game as he does that in the short in
Speaker 1: the short to medium firm hopefully. Well. I was going
Speaker 1: to say, you know, he's the one that famously said
Speaker 1: he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose
Speaker 1: any supporters. Jennifer, do you think all these the legal
Speaker 1: repercussions of some of his activities, some all these different
Speaker 1: lawsuits in different jurisdictions, whether we're talking about Georgia or
Speaker 1: New York wherever. Do you think it will actually have
Speaker 1: an impact on Trump is um per se um. I
Speaker 1: think that he's likely to lose some percentage of support.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about like polling, do you or don't
Speaker 1: you support Donald Trump. I think they're gonna be more
Speaker 1: Republicans in particular who are willing to say, um, you know,
Speaker 1: he shouldn't run again, things like that. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's going to have a significant um impact on his
Speaker 1: real the real influence that he has over the party,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in the in the immediate future,
Speaker 1: you know, the next s four to eight years. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that that group of Republicans who are with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump are to your point, with him no matter
Speaker 1: what he does, standing out in the middle of Fifth Avenue, um.
Speaker 1: So I and I think that what we're going to see,
Speaker 1: um is an expansion of an increase of this conspiracy mentality,
Speaker 1: this big line mentality kind of growing, kind of making
Speaker 1: its way through the Republican Party. Everything is going to
Speaker 1: have to be a big line now. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: going to be that the courts and you know, the
Speaker 1: second District of New York are all conspiring against Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: That Deutsche Bank is lying to take down don Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: You know what, it's all going to become part for
Speaker 1: the for his base. This is all just going to
Speaker 1: continue to feed that idea that the entire world is
Speaker 1: somehow lying about and conspiring to take down Trump. I
Speaker 1: think that's going to continue to fuel the Republican Party
Speaker 1: and a great to a great degree. Well read. You know, obviously,
Speaker 1: the Information super Highway, as we once called the Internet,
Speaker 1: is the road where the big lie is perpetuated and
Speaker 1: delivered to people's homes and reinforced. Um, will any kind
Speaker 1: of tech regulation uh put you know, damp in this
Speaker 1: kind of messaging and this kind of orthodoxy or is
Speaker 1: the genie simply out of the bottle? Read? You know?
Speaker 1: I well, you know it's uh what does it say?
Speaker 1: You can't you can't yell fire in a crowded theater
Speaker 1: like Facebook is like you know, is like yelling fire
Speaker 1: in a crowded theater the size of the United States.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it doesn't get to claim I'm just
Speaker 1: a platform and therefore I can do anything I want
Speaker 1: and the people on it can do anything they want.
Speaker 1: And I single out Facebook just because they're the biggest
Speaker 1: and the baddest. I mean, you have Steve, you have
Speaker 1: gal like Steve Bannon who says I want to be
Speaker 1: head the FBI director and Dr Facci, I want to
Speaker 1: stick their heads on pikes. And Zuckerberg goes into an
Speaker 1: employee meeting and says, well, that's not really a violation
Speaker 1: of our term of service. It's not How is that
Speaker 1: possible If I said that? Right? If I said it
Speaker 1: on my Facebook page, which I don't have, my guess
Speaker 1: is the FBI would be knocking on my door. But
Speaker 1: because it's Steve Bannon, it's okay, um, And so I
Speaker 1: think they do have responsibilit I mean, I like to
Speaker 1: say this, like Facebook, all of this technology that we're
Speaker 1: on right now, none of this would exist but for
Speaker 1: a bunch of nerds in the Pentagon basement forty years ago. Right,
Speaker 1: So once in a while, I'd like Mr Zuckerberg to
Speaker 1: remember like that without all of this, he wouldn't be
Speaker 1: where he sits now. If he doesn't want to be
Speaker 1: an American company, he can move to Singapore wherever it's
Speaker 1: going to be. But I would venture to say that
Speaker 1: the reason why he was so in on Trump's victory
Speaker 1: was because he knows it so long as a Trump
Speaker 1: isn't in power, there's no any trust coming for him
Speaker 1: under Biden administration. Much harder to say um, and so
Speaker 1: is it is the genie out of the bottle? It's
Speaker 1: it is um. But I would say this is that
Speaker 1: when you see even Facebook, uh, YouTube and Twitter pushing
Speaker 1: Trump off of those platforms, uh, it pushes you know,
Speaker 1: the supporters further and fur and further into the fringes.
Speaker 1: And here's what I would say is that the amount
Speaker 1: of friction that is that hap happens when that happened
Speaker 1: when he's on gab and parlor instead of Twitter and Facebook,
Speaker 1: I think does dramatically increase the amount of work it
Speaker 1: takes for somebody to find what he's saying. And I
Speaker 1: think those are a lot of places where otherwise sort
Speaker 1: of what I would call casual Trump supporters and I
Speaker 1: don't even know what that means, really aren't going to
Speaker 1: go to those places. Right if you didn't just pick
Speaker 1: up your phone and see what he's saying, but you've
Speaker 1: got to go to someplace you wouldn't otherwise go. I
Speaker 1: think that that could be very harmful to him. And
Speaker 1: I think Jennifer was right. I think there were a
Speaker 1: lot of Americans and Republicans, even Trump supporters who saw
Speaker 1: what they saw at the Capital on the sixth then
Speaker 1: were beside themselves. It didn't want anything to do with it.
Speaker 1: It was It was amazing to meet Jennifer. How quickly
Speaker 1: conservative media was able to pivot from the insurrection on
Speaker 1: January six and what happened there to cries of censorship
Speaker 1: once Donald Trump was taken off Twitter. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: if you all think at uh that he should be
Speaker 1: taken off permanently off social media or is that going
Speaker 1: to create even more problems and a bigger rallying cry
Speaker 1: for his supporters. Steve wanted, well, either one of you,
Speaker 1: Steve or Jennifer, you want to take that. I'll just
Speaker 1: say that grievance is the high octane fuel of Trump.
Speaker 1: Is um, always has um. But look, Twitter has terms
Speaker 1: of service, right, they have policies. He violates the policies.
Speaker 1: He's incited violence and insurrection, and they have said, they
Speaker 1: have said Steve that they're taking him off permanently off
Speaker 1: to now UM, I do think right, it raises a
Speaker 1: larger question. Let's say this as a First Amendment absolutist
Speaker 1: um the concentration of power in the hands of the
Speaker 1: tech over lords is too much. And so here we
Speaker 1: are in the third decade of the twenty century. Right,
Speaker 1: If you just back up a couple of years, right,
Speaker 1: and you look at Mark zuckerbrouman tour around America that
Speaker 1: had the trappings of a presidential campaign, where you look
Speaker 1: at the speculation around Cheryl Sandberg, where you look even
Speaker 1: that the society but bestow some type of credibility, some
Speaker 1: type of wisdom on Mark Zuckerberg, right, because he built Facebook, Right,
Speaker 1: and so because Mark Zuckerberg is worth thirty five billion
Speaker 1: dollars and he's twenty seven, right, Mark Zuckerberg might have
Speaker 1: relevant opinions on all these other subjects. Um. I think
Speaker 1: that what we've discovered is he's a pretty shallow thinker
Speaker 1: about most subjects other than Facebook. And so when we
Speaker 1: look at the totality of the power of the tech
Speaker 1: industry at time, as a society, through our political processes,
Speaker 1: who evaluate that much in the same way slightly over
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt looked at giving the
Speaker 1: American people a square deal. When you look at the
Speaker 1: concentration of power and wealth into a few YouTube, too
Speaker 1: few hands, and so I just want to say something
Speaker 1: real quick. I mean, we're talking about how did seventy
Speaker 1: four million people vote for Trumped? His country doesn't have
Speaker 1: four dollars cash available for an emergency. Their dignity has
Speaker 1: been stripped away, and so they hear the sirens song
Speaker 1: of the demi gods who wants to smash everything because
Speaker 1: the system they were taught to believe in hasn't delivered
Speaker 1: for I mean, we we need to have the humility
Speaker 1: great to understand that. And I think we need to
Speaker 1: look at all of these companies and understand right that
Speaker 1: we have a problem with big in this country, right,
Speaker 1: whether it's big business, big media, big tex big finance,
Speaker 1: big politics. Everywhere you see big, you see the little
Speaker 1: guy getting it. And I think the at in this
Speaker 1: era when we look at these tech companies and everything else,
Speaker 1: proper scrutiny of big right at the expense of a
Speaker 1: concept of the public good is an area of politics
Speaker 1: that's a really fruitful one that we ought to be
Speaker 1: talking about, because too much of this debate is the
Speaker 1: same stuff we've been talking about with increasingly little relevance
Speaker 1: for the last forty years. So so is it worth.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you make some of the disenfranchised
Speaker 1: voters in this country we feel more included in the process.
Speaker 1: Somebody is asking, is there really any point in trying
Speaker 1: to convert any of the seventy four million who voted
Speaker 1: to re elect the former president. It seems the strategy
Speaker 1: needs to be outnumbered them at the polls versus trying
Speaker 1: to convince these people the earth is round when they
Speaker 1: believe it is flat. Um, so, you know, I guess
Speaker 1: they're there are two approaches, right, can you is it
Speaker 1: is it too late to make many of these people
Speaker 1: who did support Donald Trump who are angry? You know,
Speaker 1: I watched this movie nomad Land last night with Francis McDorman,
Speaker 1: and it's about people who live in vans and my
Speaker 1: husband and I said, you can understand why people are
Speaker 1: just so frustrated. They're you know, they're going from place
Speaker 1: to place, job to job loading boxes for Amazon. But
Speaker 1: is there a way to reach out or you know,
Speaker 1: is that is that futile? Well? Look, I mean I
Speaker 1: think there are some who are never going to be converted. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's of the country, whatever they're going
Speaker 1: to be, they're going to be with Trump or with
Speaker 1: with the grievance or whatever. Let me just say one
Speaker 1: thing about the movie you watch. I haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: but the idea of the folks moving job to job
Speaker 1: and these things. If you look at the people who
Speaker 1: stormed the Capitol on January six, these were did not
Speaker 1: appear to be people who were suffering from economic anxiety.
Speaker 1: These are people who who had the money and the
Speaker 1: wherewithal to get to Washington, d C. Find themselves a
Speaker 1: place to live, feed themselves, and you know, in some
Speaker 1: cases where somewhere between five and twenty tho dollars worth
Speaker 1: of gear to storm the capital. I mean, these were
Speaker 1: not These were not folks who you know, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, left the hollow of eastern Kentucky and and
Speaker 1: thumb their way east. That's kind of that's kind of
Speaker 1: a massive generalization, don't you think read well? I mean
Speaker 1: my point is this is that is that if there
Speaker 1: were that many angry people, then millions of people would
Speaker 1: have marched on Washington. The people who chose to march
Speaker 1: on Washington, who chose to incite violence. Again, maybe you're right,
Speaker 1: I probably am over generalizing. My point is is that
Speaker 1: when Mr Buffalo heads main story out of jail is
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't feed him organic food and he was
Speaker 1: upset about it. It appears to me that we maybe
Speaker 1: are over generalizing in the other direction, which is not
Speaker 1: everybody who voted for Trump lives in a hill build
Speaker 1: elogy book, but in fact were people who maybe had
Speaker 1: these longstanding beliefs and Trump opened the door to let
Speaker 1: them into society. You know, let me. I just want
Speaker 1: to I just want to say something. But first off,
Speaker 1: it's not the case, right that all seventy four million
Speaker 1: of them would fall into the q and on camp,
Speaker 1: right to the anti mask camp, right into the craziest
Speaker 1: stereotypes of it. So let's say the number is what
Speaker 1: the number is on the basis of the polls, you know,
Speaker 1: support the storming of the capital or understand it or
Speaker 1: whatever the number? Right that you know that the dead enders, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not particularly interested in understanding. Um. What I'm interested
Speaker 1: in and is making sure that they don't attain political power. Right.
Speaker 1: I want them to understand the majority of us in
Speaker 1: this country, right, we are the majority. Right, Like, and
Speaker 1: I'll say that again, we are the majority. Right. The
Speaker 1: president called for unity. Unity does not mean submitting to
Speaker 1: the delusions of the losers of the election about what
Speaker 1: unity is unity. Right, he called for around national purpose
Speaker 1: the crushiest disease, and to defend democracy, right to grow
Speaker 1: the economy, to do the things that are necessary to
Speaker 1: prepare people as best we can for the world that
Speaker 1: we live in and give them an equal shot at success. Right,
Speaker 1: That's what our politics is. But I want them to
Speaker 1: understand something on behalf of us, the majority. We live
Speaker 1: in a two hundred and forty four year old constitutional
Speaker 1: republic that was handed to us through blood sacrifice of
Speaker 1: thirteen generations of Americans who come to us from every
Speaker 1: nation in the world, and who built a great country.
Speaker 1: We're exceptional, not because our people can shout USA the loudest,
Speaker 1: because this nation, of all of the people of all
Speaker 1: of the nations of the world, that come from a
Speaker 1: people where every language was spoken amongst us founded an idea,
Speaker 1: has done more good in the world than all of
Speaker 1: the other countries of the world put together. From the
Speaker 1: beginning of time. We have fed more people, we have
Speaker 1: freed more people, we have cured more people. We're the
Speaker 1: United States of America. Our gift to the world is
Speaker 1: the idea that a free people can work together and
Speaker 1: be sovereign and govern themselves. We are trustees of the
Speaker 1: greatest inheritance that anybody could receive American citizenship through birth.
Speaker 1: And those Americans that weren't born here but are here
Speaker 1: as Americans today that took that out understand this more
Speaker 1: acutely than most of us who were born here. But
Speaker 1: my message to those people is this, we have no
Speaker 1: compromise to offer you at all. Our goal is to
Speaker 1: put you into submission, to defeat you, to purge you
Speaker 1: from our national life. The que and non conspiracy garis
Speaker 1: the white supremacists, the white nationalists, the racist the violent maligions.
Speaker 1: Let's stop pretending that they get a seat at the table.
Speaker 1: Let's stop pretending that they aren't the threat that they are,
Speaker 1: because they've done exactly what they told us they were
Speaker 1: going to do over and over and over again. In
Speaker 1: the majority of this country have to understand that what
Speaker 1: unites us more than what ever divides us on an
Speaker 1: issue difference is this fundamental belief in the continuation of
Speaker 1: the American Republic, where we decide who to give political
Speaker 1: power to on a temporary basis, and we evaluated every
Speaker 1: two years, every four years and decide what direction we
Speaker 1: want to go in. We are in charge, not the
Speaker 1: Trump family. When Matt Gates went out there and he
Speaker 1: said that Donald Trump is the forever leader of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, the leader of the America First movement. Right,
Speaker 1: I hope he forms a Patriot Party and he splits
Speaker 1: the Republican Party's power and have it makes it more
Speaker 1: difficult for them to win. But understand this his Patriot Party,
Speaker 1: whether he files paperwork or not, it exists. It's a fascistic,
Speaker 1: autocratic movement within the Republican Party. It's the majority within
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. And that fight, right, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a fight that we are all stakeholders in and
Speaker 1: we and we need to understand that because if we don't, right,
Speaker 1: we riffed losing an election to people who may not
Speaker 1: ever give up that power. Again, I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: have the last word read. So. One of my one
Speaker 1: of my favorite musicians is a guy named Jason Isabel
Speaker 1: from from Alabama, and he has a great song called
Speaker 1: Hope the High Road, and one of the lines in
Speaker 1: that song is there can't be more of them than us.
Speaker 1: There can't be and there aren't Well I think that's
Speaker 1: a good way to end this conversation. Jennifer Reid and Steve,
Speaker 1: It's great to talk to you all. I could I
Speaker 1: could have this conversation for another hour, but maybe we
Speaker 1: can do it again sometime and kind of take the
Speaker 1: temperature of the country because things seem to be moving
Speaker 1: so quickly and changing almost by the hour. But it
Speaker 1: would be to catch up with you. So I'll talk
Speaker 1: to my friends Sue Solomon and maybe when we can
Speaker 1: do this again. Thank you for having us, Katie. Next
Speaker 1: Question with Katie Couric is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Katie Curreic Media. The executive producers are Katie Kurik,
Speaker 1: Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen.
Speaker 1: Our show producer is Bethan Macaluso. The associate producers are
Speaker 1: Emily Pinto and Derek Clements. Editing by Derrek Clements, Dylan
Speaker 1: Fagan and Lowell Berlante, Mixing by Dylan Fagan. Our researcher
Speaker 1: is Gabriel Loser. For more information on today's episode, go
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