Speaker 1: Before we get into it, be advised that this series
Speaker 1: contains bad language and references to violence. It's twelve thirty
Speaker 1: pm on January six. On the east side of the
Speaker 1: Capitol Building. A crowd of Trump supporters is growing in number.
Speaker 1: They're chanting familiar slogans, shouting through bullhorns impossible broth, waving
Speaker 1: banners and Confederate flags. But they are for now peaceful
Speaker 1: as we know. Of course, this piece won't last long.
Speaker 1: This crowd outside the east wing of the Capital will
Speaker 1: soon overwhelm the police barrier, knocking officers to the ground,
Speaker 1: shouting in their faces, advancing on the Capitol Building itself,
Speaker 1: But not quite yet. For now, these protesters are simply
Speaker 1: waving their banners and trying to keep warm. On a
Speaker 1: January morning, It's freezing bro It is so cold. Until suddenly,
Speaker 1: out of the blue, their posture changes. They spot something
Speaker 1: behind the barricades on the police side of the line,
Speaker 1: a boyish looking man in a navy suit emerging from
Speaker 1: a black dad as u V. He's energetic and sprightly,
Speaker 1: booie by the crowd's reaction to his arrival. The young
Speaker 1: man looks out at the protesters. He can't know what
Speaker 1: some of them are about to do, but they know
Speaker 1: full well what he intends to do today. He's been
Speaker 1: telling them for weeks, speaking on Fox News, on the
Speaker 1: Senate floor, posting on social media. His plan has cost
Speaker 1: him many friends, even lifelong mentors, have turned against him,
Speaker 1: but that won't stop him, and that's why the crowd
Speaker 1: cheers him on. In response to their appreciation, the junior
Speaker 1: Senator for Missouri, fourty year old Josh Holly, raises his
Speaker 1: fist and salute. This moment, one of solidarity between a U.
Speaker 1: S senator and a small crowd of protesters, is captured
Speaker 1: by a nearby photojournalist. Before the day's end, the image
Speaker 1: will be plastered on news websites around the world. It
Speaker 1: will become one of the many iconic moments of January six.
Speaker 1: A sitting senator showing solidarity with the very people who
Speaker 1: are about to invade his place of work. Unaware of
Speaker 1: what lies ahead and focused on his day's work, Senator
Speaker 1: Hally gives the protesters a thumbs up and disappears into
Speaker 1: the Capitol. He's heading for the Senate Chamber, where he
Speaker 1: plans to mount a challenge against American democracy from the
Speaker 1: team's at Clues, Own Media, I Heart Radio, and novel.
Speaker 1: This is The Assault on America Episode five, The Inside
Speaker 1: Man MHM. So far in this series, we've dissected the
Speaker 1: vast Stop the Steel disinformation campaign headed by Alley Alexander,
Speaker 1: who came up with the idea of January six and
Speaker 1: spread by the likes of Baked Alaska. We've also met
Speaker 1: a rioter from Rule, Ohio who swallowed Alexander's poison and
Speaker 1: is now facing decades in prison along with his commanding officer,
Speaker 1: the Mercurial Grifters, Stewart Rhodes, who runs the extremest Oothkeeper's
Speaker 1: Militia the necessity of the regular militia. This time in
Speaker 1: The Assault on America, we're moving up the chain. Today
Speaker 1: the virus enters the main frame. This is the tale
Speaker 1: of how the youngest sitting you s Senator, welcome the
Speaker 1: big lie into the political machinery of the United States.
Speaker 1: It's Senator Josh Holly who on December triggers a vote
Speaker 1: on whether or not the election result should be upheld.
Speaker 1: That vote is scheduled for the afternoon of January six.
Speaker 1: That's why organizers like Ali latched on to this day
Speaker 1: as their big chance. By objecting to the certification of
Speaker 1: the election, Josh Holly gave the far rights something to
Speaker 1: focus on. He gave them an event without Josh Holly.
Speaker 1: January six is just another day in Washington. If you'd
Speaker 1: heard of Senator Josh Holly before the election, you most
Speaker 1: likely heard him discussing a culture war issue, perhaps railing
Speaker 1: against the mainstream media. The New York Times won a
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize for the six nineteen Project, a propaganda campaign
Speaker 1: designed to recast America's founding as an evil event or
Speaker 1: speaking about wokeness or antiva, or some dastardly scheme dreamed
Speaker 1: up by the radical left to destroy America. We've seen
Speaker 1: a literal insurrection in the streets of Seattle, a breakaway
Speaker 1: Antifa enclave ruled by a self described warlord. You cannot
Speaker 1: make this stuff up. You can make it up. I
Speaker 1: was there, and while the chap was a very messy
Speaker 1: and ultimately deadly place, it was not ruled by a warlord.
Speaker 1: But Holly's rhetoric here and everywhere else prior to the
Speaker 1: election sounded like any other Republican senator. He was just
Speaker 1: fresher faced, more eloquent, and judging by his TV appearances,
Speaker 1: angrier than the rest of them. The bitter resentment of
Speaker 1: a professional political class cannot accept the verdict of the people.
Speaker 1: Probuses and distortions, secret meetings, outright lies at time to
Speaker 1: bring this fiasco to a close. But Senator Holly didn't
Speaker 1: always sound so angry. Twenty two years ago, long before
Speaker 1: he got into politics, Josh Holly was a very different person.
Speaker 1: His journey to high office begins at exactly the kind
Speaker 1: of liberal elite institution he now derives from the floor
Speaker 1: of the U. S. Senate, Stanford University. If you're a
Speaker 1: fellow student and made Josh's acquaintance when he was a
Speaker 1: Stanford undergraduate, you would probably have your as the saying
Speaker 1: goes your socks charmed off, meet Professor David Kennedy. If
Speaker 1: there was a video game about coastal liberal elites, he'd
Speaker 1: be the final boss. He's an urbane academic who writes
Speaker 1: books with titles like Freedom from Fear, the American People
Speaker 1: in Depression and War. He won a Pulitzer for that one.
Speaker 1: By the way, When Josh Holly arrived at Stanford in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, David Kennedy was exactly the sort of
Speaker 1: prestigious advisor Holly set out to cultivate. Well. I first
Speaker 1: heard Josh Holly's name when he walked into my office
Speaker 1: in nineteen night as a freshman student and declared that
Speaker 1: he had a very big interest in the American presidency
Speaker 1: as an institution, and he would like me to put
Speaker 1: together some reading a reading list for him so that
Speaker 1: he could learn more about that. Professor Kennedy was kind
Speaker 1: of amused that an eighteen year old would bounce into
Speaker 1: his office in the first week and demand extra reading,
Speaker 1: but he humored the young Holly. He put together a
Speaker 1: list of classic works about the presidency, by the Talkville,
Speaker 1: by James Bryce, by the other people whose books I'm
Speaker 1: never going to read, and he sent Holly on his way.
Speaker 1: That Kennedy thought was the last he'd ever see of
Speaker 1: the over ambitious freshman, But about two three, no more
Speaker 1: than four weeks later, he reappeared in the office and
Speaker 1: he said, well, Professor Kennedy, I've done the reading you
Speaker 1: assigned me, and now I'd like some more. I thought,
Speaker 1: there's no way that this young fellow could have completed
Speaker 1: that pretty heavy duty reading list, and there's certainly no
Speaker 1: way he could have taken it on board in a
Speaker 1: way that he comprehends or really got anything out of it.
Speaker 1: So I sat him down started asking him some questions
Speaker 1: about some of these texts, some of which are a
Speaker 1: bit arcane, and it is really demanding kind of reading.
Speaker 1: And he nailed every question I put to him. It
Speaker 1: was clear that in the brief span of time that
Speaker 1: had elapsed, not only had he done all the reading
Speaker 1: I had asked him to do, but he thought about
Speaker 1: it analytically, critically, synthetically. And I thought to myself, this
Speaker 1: is an unusual student. David wasn't the only person who
Speaker 1: thought Holly was different. Friends and teachers alike had him
Speaker 1: pegged one day to become at least a U S senator.
Speaker 1: It's a crazy thing to say about any student, but
Speaker 1: Holly really was that gifted. I became his academic advisor.
Speaker 1: He majored in history, and then I eventually ended up
Speaker 1: as the supervisor of what we here call a senior
Speaker 1: honors thesis that he wrote about the intellectual formation of
Speaker 1: Theodor Roosevelt. And that thesis, I'll say, without qualification, was
Speaker 1: one of the two best senior honors thesis, and I
Speaker 1: supervised an half a century here a Stanford. In two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, Holly turned his thesis into a book. He
Speaker 1: seemed to be on track to become a renowned academic
Speaker 1: like his friend and mentor David Kennedy. Holly even gave
Speaker 1: his book the kind of title that Kennedy might use
Speaker 1: for one of his Theodore Roosevelt Preacher of Righteousness. He
Speaker 1: had what was clear to me, a deep scholarly temperament.
Speaker 1: He had all the attributes of somebody who could develop
Speaker 1: into an absolutely first rate scholar. But Holly always had
Speaker 1: bigger plans than academia. He'd never hidden his political ambitions,
Speaker 1: and he understood that in American politics there is one
Speaker 1: tried and tested fast track to the top. Over one
Speaker 1: third of US politicians started their career this way, including
Speaker 1: half of all U S presidents. So you've guessed it.
Speaker 1: After Stanford, Josh Holly joined a biker gang. Just kidding,
Speaker 1: he studied law at Lee. Yes. After graduating from Stanford,
Speaker 1: the future scourge of US elites headed to Yale University
Speaker 1: to pay fifty thou dollars a year to become an attorney.
Speaker 1: From there, he moved to d C and snagged a
Speaker 1: slew of prestigious clerkships, including with the Supreme Court Justice
Speaker 1: John Roberts. Ten short years later, Josh Holly decides he's ready.
Speaker 1: In two thousand sixteen, he steps into the political arena.
Speaker 1: My background as a lawyer, as a practicing lawyer is
Speaker 1: fighting for businesses and individuals and nonprofit groups farm groups
Speaker 1: against government regulation. Holly leverages his legal background and makes
Speaker 1: a run for Attorney General of Missouri. I'm Josh Holly,
Speaker 1: and I'll fight for Missouri's values as attorneys General. He
Speaker 1: breathes through the primaries and eventually beats his Democratic rival,
Speaker 1: becoming the first Republican to hold the office in almost
Speaker 1: ten years. His former mentor from Stanford, Professor David Kennedy,
Speaker 1: had stayed in touch with Josh. Of course, I was
Speaker 1: proud of Josh having notched those kinds of achievements at
Speaker 1: a very young age, and when he ran for attorney general,
Speaker 1: I actually joked with him. I said, I'd be happy
Speaker 1: to send you a contribution, Josh, but maybe it would
Speaker 1: prejudice the case there for you in Missouri if it
Speaker 1: got out that a California Democrat professor was contributed to
Speaker 1: your campaign. But I wished him well, and I attended
Speaker 1: his inauguration as Attorney General of Missouri in two thousand seventeen. Clearly, then,
Speaker 1: at this point in his life, Josh Holly is still
Speaker 1: the charming young man from his Stanford days. He's willing
Speaker 1: to joke with liberal friends like David and clearly doesn't
Speaker 1: think they're colluding to destroy the United States. Holly was
Speaker 1: a partisan, but not an a rational one. There were, however,
Speaker 1: early signs that he'd started to change. He'd won the
Speaker 1: race for attorney General with the help of a TV
Speaker 1: that blasted career politicians who use state office as a
Speaker 1: stepping stone for their national ambitions. Jefferson City is full
Speaker 1: of career politicians just climbing the ladder, using one office
Speaker 1: to get another. As Holly addresses the camera, men in
Speaker 1: suits are literally climbing ladders all around him. It's a
Speaker 1: real work of art. Conservative outsider Attorney General. I'm Josh Holly.
Speaker 1: I think you deserve better. Seven months after becoming Attorney
Speaker 1: General in Missouri, Josh Holly thought that he deserved better too.
Speaker 1: In August two thousand seventeen, he formed an exploratory campaign
Speaker 1: committee for a U. S. Senate run now he was
Speaker 1: the one climbing ladders. He wins again, this time by
Speaker 1: leaning on his Missouri roots and setting up a theme
Speaker 1: he'll return to again and again in the future, the
Speaker 1: demonizing of elites. Here's a schmulti campaign ad he put out.
Speaker 1: You'll see what I mean. The elites you run our nation.
Speaker 1: Call this flyover country, big squares. They only see out
Speaker 1: the windows of jet airport they pull. The lovers of
Speaker 1: power in Washington at Hollywood call the shots on wall streets.
Speaker 1: They're not just distant from our lives, they're distant from
Speaker 1: our values, making decisions to enrich themselves. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what Hollywood has to do with Missouri, but the message
Speaker 1: from privately educated Josh Holly, son of a bank manager
Speaker 1: and a high flying graduate of Stanford in Yale, was
Speaker 1: that the elites have dominated Missouri for too long. On
Speaker 1: the campaign trail, Holly ties his campaign as closely as
Speaker 1: possible to Donald Trump, who had taken Missouri by eighteen
Speaker 1: and a half points only the year before. When I
Speaker 1: think about President Trump, there's one word that comes to mind.
Speaker 1: That word is courage. Do you agree? And well? It works?
Speaker 1: Smash cut to the two thousand eighteen midterm election, and
Speaker 1: I had a very nice call with the President of
Speaker 1: the United States. Josh Holly has just become the youngest
Speaker 1: sitting United States Senator. Thank you, MS President for your leadership,
Speaker 1: Thank you for believing in Missouri. Tonight the people of
Speaker 1: Missouri have delivered, but things were about to take a
Speaker 1: darker turn. Any teacher is proud of students being successful,
Speaker 1: and I was. I was very proud of his success.
Speaker 1: I mean it killed me that he was a Republican.
Speaker 1: That's another one of Josh's former teachers, Professor Elizabeth Bernhardt.
Speaker 1: Like David Kennedy, Professor Bernhardt remained friends with Josh beyond
Speaker 1: his years as a student, even attending his wedding in
Speaker 1: two thousand ten. But as Josh Holly became more involved
Speaker 1: in politics, Professor Bernhardt found herself worrying about the trajectory
Speaker 1: of his career. There was one event, in particular that
Speaker 1: she could not reconcile with the traditional conservative she'd known
Speaker 1: at Stanford Charlotte Sville no question. On August eleventh, two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, a white supremacist rally was held in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Speaker 1: Far right activists and supporters of all stripes marched through
Speaker 1: the city, carrying tiki torches and fighting with counter protesters.
Speaker 1: Back a fuck up like com back a buck up.
Speaker 1: One of their number would eventually drive his car into
Speaker 1: a crowded street, not throw into people, killing a thirty
Speaker 1: one year old woman named Heather Higher. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Oh my god. The event led to
Speaker 1: one of the most infamous comments of Donald Trump's presidency.
Speaker 1: You also had people, very fine people on both sides Charlottesville.
Speaker 1: That is a moment for me when I thought all
Speaker 1: persons need to abandon ship. That is just no. And
Speaker 1: you can't have taken my course and say yes or
Speaker 1: maybe at that moment. The course that Elizabeth Bernhardt is
Speaker 1: referring to is the one that she taught Josh Holly
Speaker 1: back when he was at Stanford. It was called Letters
Speaker 1: and Diaries of Resistance in Nazi Germany. The course was
Speaker 1: about where do you get the strength to essentially sacrifice
Speaker 1: your life for doing the right thing in a situation
Speaker 1: where you know you probably are not going to win.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's course looked at the writings of Germans who knew
Speaker 1: that resistance to Hitler would get them killed and decided
Speaker 1: to resist anyway, the class was focused on the emotion
Speaker 1: I guess of courage. Now this wasn't just any old
Speaker 1: class that Josh Holly happened to take as an undergraduate.
Speaker 1: This was a class that he specifically sought out, deploying
Speaker 1: the same charm and industrious nous that had pressed David Kennedy.
Speaker 1: He wrote in his application, I've already read all of
Speaker 1: this stuff that you're offering in this class. And I said,
Speaker 1: I don't understand. You've applied for this class, but you've
Speaker 1: read everything. Why do you want to be in this class?
Speaker 1: He said, very nicely, I'm really interested in knowing what
Speaker 1: other people think about this material. And I eventually hired
Speaker 1: him to work in the class as he became a senior,
Speaker 1: and I took more sophomores in. So he was wonderful
Speaker 1: to work with, wonderful to know. Holly was so taken
Speaker 1: with this class that he mentioned it in a speech
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, saying that what he learned from
Speaker 1: it became a quote so much a part of me
Speaker 1: that I could not help but share it with others.
Speaker 1: But the fact that Holly stuck so closely to Trump
Speaker 1: during his Senate campaign, even after Trump described neo Nazis
Speaker 1: at Charlottesville as very fine people, caused Elizabeth Bernhard to
Speaker 1: ask herself a question, what lessons could Josh Holly possibly
Speaker 1: have taken away from her? Course, there's probably no question
Speaker 1: about him that troubles me more I I would have
Speaker 1: to say none. I'm just stupefied by any support for
Speaker 1: any group of people who would either carry a swastika,
Speaker 1: would wear a sweatshirt with Auschwitz on the front, who
Speaker 1: would yell Jews will not replace us. This is one
Speaker 1: thousand percent at athetical to anything that we discussed or
Speaker 1: read after Charlotte'sville. Josh Holly went about his business as
Speaker 1: a senator. Maybe his friends and mentors thought maybe his
Speaker 1: transgressions up till now were the compromises one has to
Speaker 1: make in politics. But if further proof was needed that
Speaker 1: Josh Holly was willing to move beyond the usual compromises
Speaker 1: required up a politician, it came in November. The really
Speaker 1: bad part then came about the big lie. The process
Speaker 1: is rigged, This whole election is being grigged. After the
Speaker 1: presidential election, Josh Holly was one of the first high
Speaker 1: profile politicians to fall in line with Drump's falsehood that
Speaker 1: the election had been fraudulent times election, But Holly didn't
Speaker 1: approach the lie in the same crass, lazy way that
Speaker 1: Trump did. Not a conspiracy theory post. No, Josh Holly
Speaker 1: has the guile and eloquence to make it sound like
Speaker 1: he's simply doing the job of a responsible elected official.
Speaker 1: I have heard from people like I've never heard before
Speaker 1: over the last month about this election, and they have major,
Speaker 1: major concerns about the integrity the fairness of this election.
Speaker 1: And somebody has got to take their concerns seriously and
Speaker 1: speak up. And that's what I'm gonna do. Holly presents
Speaker 1: himself as someone who's merely trying to start a debate
Speaker 1: about electoral integrity. Meanwhile, he starts publicly questioning whether Joe
Speaker 1: Biden will even become president at all. If Joe Biden
Speaker 1: ends up being sworn as president, if he if Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: if he is the president, if Joe Biden ends up
Speaker 1: his president, any worry Joe Biden, if if? If? If?
Speaker 1: But Holly's next step takes the matter beyond mere rhetoric.
Speaker 1: On December he announces that he's going to challenge the
Speaker 1: electoral College results in the Senate, the Republican leader of
Speaker 1: the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has been dreading this move, understanding
Speaker 1: that it would put other Senators in a tight spot.
Speaker 1: Do they vote with Trump and against democracy, or do
Speaker 1: they go on record accepting Joe Biden's victory. McConnell feared
Speaker 1: that if Holly triggered such a vote, it would breach
Speaker 1: the damn He was exactly right. As soon as Holly
Speaker 1: announced his intentions, a host of Senators and congress people
Speaker 1: followed suit, vowing to challenge the electoral college results on
Speaker 1: January six. At this point, more than ninety federal and
Speaker 1: state judges had rejected Trump's lawsuits seeking to overturn the
Speaker 1: outcome of the election. Trump's own Attorney General, Bill Barr,
Speaker 1: had dismissed allegations that there was widespread voter fraud. There's
Speaker 1: been no discrepancy reported anywhere that's looked at that, and
Speaker 1: I'm still not aware of any discrepidanst That didn't stop Holly.
Speaker 1: His mentor David Kennedy, was alarmed. That was a shock
Speaker 1: to me across the board. Frankly, I thought it was
Speaker 1: a really, really dangerous to be honest, and I was shocked,
Speaker 1: and I dare say appalled that the President stuck with
Speaker 1: that line of our ument, and compoundedly appalled when others,
Speaker 1: including someone for whom I in answers respect that's Josh,
Speaker 1: I got on board with that. David wasn't the only
Speaker 1: person shocked at Holly's decision. His former political mentor in Missouri,
Speaker 1: former Republican Senator Jack Danforth, was also astounded. He publicly
Speaker 1: declared that supporting Josh Holly had been the greatest mistake
Speaker 1: he'd ever made. Holly's biggest donor, a businessman named David Humphries,
Speaker 1: who had donated over six million dollars to Holly's campaigns,
Speaker 1: wrote that Holly had revealed himself as a political opportunist,
Speaker 1: willing to subvert the constitution and the ideals of the nation.
Speaker 1: He swore to uphold. We always allow for a little
Speaker 1: hyperbolean politics, but that strong stuff. And the reason is simple,
Speaker 1: Josh Holly was pushing the big lie harder and harder.
Speaker 1: On January four, he went on Fox News for an
Speaker 1: interview with anchor Brett Bear. I just want to pinion
Speaker 1: down on on what you're trying to do. Are you
Speaker 1: trying to say that as of January that President Trump
Speaker 1: will be president. Well, that that it depends on what
Speaker 1: happens on Wednesday. Wednesday is, of course, January six. Holly
Speaker 1: is implying to Fox News viewers that their actions in
Speaker 1: d C and his actions on the Senate floor might
Speaker 1: still swing the election for Donald Trump. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: Holly pushed things too far, even for Fox News quite
Speaker 1: an achievement. What happens on Wednesday in the States, by
Speaker 1: the constitution, say they certify the election. They did certify it.
Speaker 1: By the constitution, Congress doesn't have the right to overturn
Speaker 1: the certification for this interview and for many others. The
Speaker 1: Senate would later open an ethics inquiry into Holly's actions,
Speaker 1: claiming that he quote lint legitimacy to the mob's cause
Speaker 1: and made future violence more likely. And when the violence starts,
Speaker 1: Josh Holly is in the Senate chamber preparing to mount
Speaker 1: his challenge against the election. He doesn't get the chance.
Speaker 1: At two thirty three p m. Secret Service agents abruptly
Speaker 1: rush into the chamber and remove Vice President Mike Pence.
Speaker 1: Somewhat unsettled, the senators continue debating, ignoring the lingering questions,
Speaker 1: we need to do something. At two pm, with the
Speaker 1: senators still in the chamber, shots are heard from the
Speaker 1: other side of the building, and I will stand in
Speaker 1: recess until the call of the chair. At this point,
Speaker 1: rioters are less than two minutes away from preaching the chamber.
Speaker 1: Protestors are in the Michael Cranish, an investigative reporter for
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, has the inside scoop on Holly's movements
Speaker 1: at this time. As the storming of the capital occurs
Speaker 1: in the Holly's in the Senate with the other senators.
Speaker 1: Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, confronts Holly and he says, quote,
Speaker 1: you have caused this, So there's a lot of tension
Speaker 1: going on. I can't help, but wonder did Holly have
Speaker 1: second thoughts as he stood in the Senate chamber with
Speaker 1: a mob seconds away and a party elder pinning the
Speaker 1: blame directly on him. The senators are then taken away
Speaker 1: to a secure room in an office building near the
Speaker 1: Capitol building, the Senate Office Building, and one senator looked
Speaker 1: over in this room, and every time he looked over,
Speaker 1: he saw Holly standing alone, basically in a corner. The
Speaker 1: question for Holly was simple, should he go through with
Speaker 1: his plan to challenge the election, even in the face
Speaker 1: of a historic ransacking of the Capitol building. There were
Speaker 1: efforts trying to talk him out of going through with
Speaker 1: his challenging of the results, but Holly refused and he
Speaker 1: went forward in fact with the challenging of the results.
Speaker 1: In the end, he was only one of seven Senators
Speaker 1: to vote to challenge those results, so his effort failed.
Speaker 1: But the people who are critical of them would say
Speaker 1: the damage was done. Following the carnage on January six,
Speaker 1: Josh Holly became one of the most toxic politicians in Washington.
Speaker 1: Even some Republicans were calling for his resignation. But the
Speaker 1: truth is his political prospects have only risen since the riot.
Speaker 1: Any donors he lost after the riot were more than
Speaker 1: made up for by the flood of cash that poured
Speaker 1: from Americans who bought the big lie to them. Josh
Speaker 1: Holly is a patriot, one of the few suits in
Speaker 1: Washington brave enough to take a stand against the biggest
Speaker 1: fraud in American history, the of a presidential election. Now
Speaker 1: our man. Josh Holly has said that if Donald Trump
Speaker 1: runs again in he'll fight for the former president with
Speaker 1: everything he has. But if Trump doesn't run, then perhaps
Speaker 1: Josh Holly will. I mean, his clean cut, youthful looks,
Speaker 1: his ivy league eloquence, it all kind of makes him
Speaker 1: just a much better version of Donald Trump. Has his
Speaker 1: dedication to the big lie made him Trump's heir apparent.
Speaker 1: There's another question that those who know him well are
Speaker 1: asking themselves. Is there any chance he believes what he's saying.
Speaker 1: His former professor Elizabeth Bernhardt doesn't think so. This is
Speaker 1: a person who has every talent and skill to find
Speaker 1: the information, the data if that election were stolen and
Speaker 1: we've never seen it. There are a bunch of his
Speaker 1: call as that I suspect aren't smart enough to be
Speaker 1: able to look for a lot of that kind of information.
Speaker 1: That's not true of Josh Holly. Ultimately, his mentors are stumped.
Speaker 1: That was not the person I knew, and knew pretty
Speaker 1: well as a young man, when anger just wasn't part
Speaker 1: of his makeup. I don't understand what you're thinking. Tell
Speaker 1: me what I really would like to know. Tell me
Speaker 1: what you're thinking, I asked Michael Cranish for a more
Speaker 1: dispassionate view. He's a journalist, after all, we're very impartial people.
Speaker 1: There's some people look at Josh holly'd say, gee, what
Speaker 1: happened to him? But I look back at his history,
Speaker 1: his writings and so forth, I saw that it was
Speaker 1: pretty consistent from the time he's fifteen years old and
Speaker 1: even earlier, actually up until today. Michael spoke to some
Speaker 1: of Josh Holly's friends and mentors in the wake of
Speaker 1: the Capital riot. He also noticed that many of the
Speaker 1: people in Ally's life had only encountered the smooth talking
Speaker 1: moderate and not the ruthlessly ambitious hard miner until he
Speaker 1: reached the Senate. They've only seen him on his best behavior.
Speaker 1: They had a view of him, and they helped him along,
Speaker 1: and now they feel deceived, betrayed. They uw some pretty
Speaker 1: strong language to describe Holly. Michael argues that the real
Speaker 1: Josh Holly has always been hiding in plain sight. You
Speaker 1: just have to look back into the past. Before his
Speaker 1: days as a charming Stanford grad and pro bono Washington attorney,
Speaker 1: Josh Holly grew up in a small city called Lexington
Speaker 1: in northwest Missouri. Lexington's about an hour from Kansas city.
Speaker 1: It's right on the Missouri River, and if you go
Speaker 1: there today, it looks pretty down on its heels. The
Speaker 1: area is known even today as a little Dixie. Dixie
Speaker 1: is basically synonymous with the Deep South during the Confederacy era,
Speaker 1: and as it happens, Lexington, Missouri, before and during the
Speaker 1: Civil War, was the center of slavery in Missouri. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of slavery in Missouri, and the greatest
Speaker 1: concentration of enslaved people happens to have been in Lexington.
Speaker 1: This is interesting because if you visit Lexington, Missouri now,
Speaker 1: you will find no trace of this history whatsoever. It's
Speaker 1: just not something that people talk about. This historical blindness
Speaker 1: of the town seems to have imprinted itself on Holly's
Speaker 1: own worldview. Josh Holly, when he was fifteen years old
Speaker 1: and it started going to private school in Kansas City,
Speaker 1: wrote a series of columns for the local Lexington newspaper
Speaker 1: called State of the Union. And I was fifteen, I
Speaker 1: was playing dungeons and dragons to each his own I
Speaker 1: guess anyway, Josh Holly had some heavy hitting opinions for
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old son of a bank manager. He
Speaker 1: said that affirmative action programs which helped blacks, for example,
Speaker 1: who have been subject to discrimination and other people who
Speaker 1: have just suffered the overall effects of general discrimination, even
Speaker 1: if not directly. He said that affirmative action was a
Speaker 1: quote perverted racial spoils system, and he said that Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King Jr. The great civil rights leader, would have
Speaker 1: been turning over his grave over affirmative action, would have
Speaker 1: been repulsed by it. Punchy stuff. But is it in
Speaker 1: any way accurate. It's just not true at all. King
Speaker 1: clearly favorite of front of action programs, and in fact,
Speaker 1: he was specifically asked about these and said, you know,
Speaker 1: this was needed to give people some equality, to make
Speaker 1: up for all the centuries of racism and for what
Speaker 1: happened during the era of slavery and so forth. So
Speaker 1: Holly just did not have a proper understanding of that history. Now,
Speaker 1: why are we critiquing a newspaper written by a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old, even if he is a future U. S. Senator.
Speaker 1: The reason is that there's a version of Josh Holly
Speaker 1: that has been remarkably consistent throughout his life. This is
Speaker 1: a Josh Holly who wrote in defense of the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City bomber Timothy McVeigh he Lambastad the media for stereotyping
Speaker 1: militia members like McVeigh as radical right wing pro assault
Speaker 1: weapon freaks. This is after McVeigh murdered a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty nine people. This is also the Josh Holly who
Speaker 1: made popcorn in anticipation of the bombing of Baghdad during
Speaker 1: the Allied invasion of a rat in two thousand three.
Speaker 1: And it's a Josh Holly who pushed a lie to
Speaker 1: ingratiate himself with millions of Trump voters who might be
Speaker 1: looking for a new candidate to send the White House
Speaker 1: in four the moderate Republican and all around good fellow
Speaker 1: that he inhabited at Stanford, That was only half the story.
Speaker 1: Since the election, it's clear which version of himself Josh
Speaker 1: Holly has settled into. When Josh Holly cast his vote
Speaker 1: to challenge the election results at eight pm on January six,
Speaker 1: the blood on the marble floors of the US capital
Speaker 1: was practically still wet. Hundreds of police officers and rioters
Speaker 1: were seeking medical attention. Four people were already dead. Three
Speaker 1: more all police officers would perish in the next forty
Speaker 1: eight hours, and things aren't looking any better. For the future,
Speaker 1: we can only guess at what further harm is being
Speaker 1: stored up by the continued falsehood spread by Holly and
Speaker 1: his allies. What is the future in a nation where
Speaker 1: almost a third of the population believe that their democracy
Speaker 1: is functionally dead. Your guess is as good as mine
Speaker 1: on that one. But I can tell you this that
Speaker 1: mass illusion serves Josh Holly very well. Hell, it might
Speaker 1: even take him to the White House. For the rest
Speaker 1: of us, well, for the rest of us, it screws
Speaker 1: things up beyond comprehension. I don't know whether it's more
Speaker 1: accurate to frame Holly as a symptom or a cause
Speaker 1: of our current social ills and the rise of political
Speaker 1: violence in the United States. He has certainly played a
Speaker 1: role in making those problems worse. But he's also someone
Speaker 1: who grew up in a society that the fifteen year
Speaker 1: old kids published political rants aimed at pushing fringe agendas.
Speaker 1: He's someone who grew up surrounded by people who convinced
Speaker 1: him to have sympathy for a man who detonated a
Speaker 1: truck bomb next with daycare, and so at the end
Speaker 1: of this episode, I'm left thinking that, in some ways,
Speaker 1: the story of Josh Holly is the story of the
Speaker 1: inevitability of the Capitol riot. In the next episode, we
Speaker 1: go to the front line of the mayhem as police
Speaker 1: battle rioters, bear spray and bomb threats the guard. He
Speaker 1: leans over and he takes a look at the device,
Speaker 1: and he recoils immediately and says, holy shit, it's a bomb.
Speaker 1: Join me in episode six, Hugs and Kisses