The FRONTLINE Interviews
Brendan Buck
Communications Strategist
Brendan Buck served as press secretary to House Speaker John Boehner and as an adviser to House Speaker Paul Ryan. He is currently a communications strategist at Seven Letter.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE's Gabrielle Schonder on Jan. 15, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Trump and the Republican Establishment
I’m going to take you back for a moment to 2016 and the insurgency campaign that Donald Trump is running.You know, the establishment coalesces around him pretty late in the process, of course, and I’m wondering if you can describe for me the bargain that they are making with this unlikely candidate.
Sure.I think it’s important to appreciate in the run-up to the election that even then, really nobody thought that he was going to win, and that I think changed the political calculation that a lot of people were making.You’re not really shooting with live bullets at that point.You feel like Hillary Clinton is going to be president, and really then it’s just, let’s not make sure we upset too many people in the process.You know, obviously the party rallied, the base rallied around him in a way that I don’t think many people ever saw coming.
And so there was a lot of pressure towards the end, when there was a lot of enthusiasm for him to sort of just go along, because what’s the real harm?He’s going to lose, and we’re going to have to regroup.And you didn’t want to have really anybody pointing the finger at you, that you’re the reason that he lost, that you’re the reason that Hillary Clinton was president.And that was, I think, really the biggest dynamic that I don’t think enough people appreciate.And it’s easy to go back and remember, you know, it was a huge surprise.But I think a lot of people were making their calculation to go along because they thought that, in the end, it was still going to be a Clinton presidency.
The decision to select Mike Pence as vice president, what that did for the ticket.Could give me some insight there?
Yeah, I think it gave people a lot of confidence.This was a person that most people in Washington knew or at least knew, you know, of him well, and he spoke to that more traditional conservatism.He was somebody who understood the principles behind conservative thought and why, you know, why we believe the things that we do, where obviously Donald Trump was a populist, and he was leading a cultural movement.His selection of Mike Pence gave us a little confidence that, at least on the policy, he was thinking in the same direction that we long have fought for.And so it was a moment where you thought, OK, well, maybe this is going to be the person that steers him towards traditional conservative policy.
And let me ask you about that first year of the presidency.In many ways, it seemed as though establishment figures viewed him as a bit of a pen, that in many ways, he would help.He was the key, of course, to passing legislation they had their eyes on or wanted to dismantle.And I wonder what the establishment underestimated about Trump and his base and what they wanted.
Well, there was definitely an underestimation of the degree to which they cared about him as a person much more than any particular idea.And he espoused some populist ideas, whether it’s on immigration or trade, that got people excited, but it quickly became clear that, no matter what the issue is, voters, primary base voters, were going to side with Donald Trump, no matter what position he held, and it made it difficult to legislate, because he would equivocate.He would move from one side to the other, and there were so many members of Congress who were trying to listen to what their constituents were saying, and what the constituents were saying, ultimately, became less about whether the ideas were good or the policy was good or bad; it’s whether or not Donald Trump supported it.And that was ultimately the primary ingredient to be able to pass something, was, can you go back home and say I’m doing this because you’re with Donald Trump?It didn’t really matter what the idea was or what the bill was; it really mattered whether he had the stamp of approval.
Trump and Charlottesville
… I want to ask you about a particular moment, which is Charlottesville, and the Republican dilemma, which is how to condemn the violence, how to manage the president’s reaction, and then, if you’re [Senators] Bob Corker or Jeff Flake, how to speak out with your conscience but also face incredible backlash.Can you tell me a little bit about what that sort of signaled about Donald Trump’s grip on the party and the risk in crossing him?
Yeah, I think it speaks to the sort of cult of personality that was built around him.You can say what he did was wrong, and people will agree with you, but they will still prioritize him over anything else.
There became a pattern with voters, where they were always able to rationalize something that he did.In a lot of ways, it was to pivot and talk about Democrats or blame somebody else.And that flowed up to members of Congress.And what they always heard from their constituents was, “I don’t care what he did or said; I want to make sure you’re not helping Democrats or hurting him.”And that became, really, the bar which you had to cross, was: Are you hurting Donald Trump?And that became the thing that every Republican really needed to avoid.
In that instance, I think you saw most people speak out in a way that, you know, they were speaking for their conscience.Most Republican leaders, I think, were pretty quick to condemn what happened.But Donald Trump has shown that he won’t take that sitting down, and he pushed back himself.And that’s when you saw the really—the fury of base voters who came to his defense.And it told people that it really doesn’t matter what he does; they’re going to side with him.And it sticks in your psyche, and, you know, it was a really ugly moment for us, but it also, I think, clarified where voters were and told a lot of elected officials that you need to stick with him, or your political fortunes are in danger.
What do you think Bob Corker and Jeff Flake learned?
Well, I think they learned that it’s only so tenable to continue to be on the opposite side of him, because voters are going to pick Donald Trump over you.These can be voters who voted for you for decades, as in the case with Jeff Flake, but there was no other figure that they respected more or really revered more than Donald Trump.So there’s a limit to how long you can do that before ultimately you’re going to pay the price.And I think both of them understood that it was going to be a very steep hill to climb to be able to get reelected.
Let me ask you about a moment that happens after Charlottesville, which is the celebration at the White House for the Trump tax cuts.There’s hyperbolic praise and pledges of allegiance to the president in that moment.You know many of these figures that are standing behind him.What did you think when you watched?
Well, that was a high moment, I think perhaps the high moment of the Trump presidency, as it relates to policy.It wasn’t just a Trump victory; this was something that Republicans have been talking about wanting to do for 20 years.And this was the one president who allowed it to happen, him being there and signing it.And so everybody was happy, not necessarily because of the president, but, you know, he was—he enabled it to happen in a really good way.
It’s important to appreciate, though, that there was so much currency in having Donald Trump single you out or praise you or being seen with him, and I think that was something that was very apparent.You know, everybody was trying to mug for the camera and put in a good word to see if they could get a shoutout from him at that moment, because that’s the type of thing that they can go back home and sell, and it really solidifies their position in the party.
So it was a celebration of policy, something that we fought for for a long time.But it also was a reminder that being associated with Donald Trump was the number one thing you want to be when you’re a Republican at that point.
That’s really interesting, sort of taking advantage of the glow that he put off in that moment.
It was one of the few moments where you could be proud to have worked on that policy with him, because it was something that Republicans had always wanted, and it was something that he did—that there was really little political downside.You know, there’s so much of the work that you would end up doing with him was fraught, because of the issues or the way he handled it.But this was a relatively, I think, clean win for Republicans.
The First Impeachment
… I wonder if I can ask you about the first impeachment and the unity from members on the Hill around the president, even though these charges are so egregious.What sense did you make of this at the time?
Yeah, it didn’t surprise me at all that only one, I guess, Republican went along with it.To get straight to the politics of it, this is around primary season.This is when most Republican members of Congress are focused on the only election that matters, which is their primary.So it was either in the, you know, sort of filing season, when people declare they’re going to run against you, or early into the primary.
So, the politics of it were so cut-and-dried.There was no demand or even tolerance of supporting impeachment at that point, and that’s why what Mitt Romney did was so remarkable.You know, he was the one person who I think showed he didn’t need this job.You know, he’s been to the highest points of politics and come crashing down from it, so close to being president and not getting there.I think that opens up your eyes and your mind to what’s important.And there was nobody, even Mitt Romney in Utah, for whom the politics were good to support impeachment.And really today, it’s just a matter of fact that people are going to go to the path of least resistance in issues like this.
It’s also important to appreciate that there’s strength in numbers, and when so many Republicans were going to be against impeachment, if you did vote for it, you would stick out like a sore thumb.And that dynamic really keeps people in line, because you don’t want to have that target on your back.
Some senators believed that impeachment could teach the president a lesson.How realistic was that idea, given what we would later see in Georgia?
I don’t think that this president is capable of learning lessons or holding himself accountable.I think that he, deep in his psyche, will always pivot to being able to blame someone else for his problems.I don’t think that a statement of Congress was ever going to convince him that he did something wrong.At the same time, I do think, perhaps, it was another affirmation for him that he was in control of the party and there was very little that anybody could do to him.
Again, I don’t know that it would have been any better if more Republicans had voted differently, simply because he, you know, wasn’t going to learn his lesson.But if there was a lesson to learn, it’s that he has full control of the party, and nobody’s going to break with him in any meaningful way.
Trump and the Lafayette Square Incident
… Let me jump now to Lafayette Square, for a moment, and the way that he responds to the protesters.Should this moment have been a warning to other members of the administration and to Republicans about—I don’t know how to finish the sentence—about the violence, about the comfort level and engaging in such an over-the-top way?What was sort of the warning of this moment?
His tolerance for violence and, frankly, barbaric action was remarkable.It was one of the really, truly remarkable, ugly scenes that I think any of us could imagine.But it also then just pivoted to the shirts-versus-skins, us-versus-them tribalism, and because those people who were out there were not his supporters, they were against him.It made it very easy for people to rationalize that they were there to do bad.There had been, of course, the fire at that church days before, and so those people were not necessarily seen as good actors themselves among a lot of people on the right.But at the same time, bringing down violence or tear gas on Americans who were using their First Amendment rights and really celebrating the fact that he did it was stunning.It was one of the most un-American things that I remember from this presidency.And yeah, it absolutely should have foretold what was to come.
Mike Pence does not join him to walk across the park.What do you think he understood about that moment?
Mike Pence—the role of vice president is to stick by the president, and for four years, Mike Pence did that.I know that Mike Pence is not a populist, Donald Trump-style politician, but at some point, you hit your limit, and you don’t have to embrace anything, but by not being there, you’re also sending a signal.I know that a lot of what Donald Trump did made Mike Pence very uncomfortable, but ultimately, there’s really no—there’s no recourse for a vice president, outside of resignation.And I think that he saw himself as someone who was there to moderate the president, to the best of his ability.I don’t know how successful that was; I don’t have visibility into that.But I think Mike Pence did what, you know, a vice president is supposed to do: stick by the president.In this circumstance, it ends up being sticking by some things that are relatively atrocious.But that is the role that he had to play.But, you know, his willingness to, or his unwillingness to be there that day, I think, speaks to how far it went.
We talked to a former Pence staffer earlier who mentioned that the White House viewed that day as a win.Does that surprise you?
No, because so much of the politics of the Trump era is tribalistic.And the way they looked at it, it was: They were taking on the bad guys, and the bad guys were, you know, the Black Lives Matter marchers.In their minds, that’s antifa.In their minds, those are the violent rioters.And then to the people that mattered to them, the voters that support Donald Trump, they saw those people as evil.And so they were taking it to them.And part of the Trump persona is, he’s a fighter, and he’ll fight anybody who gets in his way.And that was all consistent with his brand.I don’t think that they had any concern for what was right or good or the damage that they did or the signal that it sent or the picture that the world saw.That’s of little concern to them.
What was of concern was sending the message to their team?
Sending the message to the world that free speech can be cracked down on, in America, in a way that you don’t typically see and you haven’t seen since, you know, maybe the 1960s in this country.And so that was an ugly scene, and, you know, there are authoritative countries around the world, regimes that were pleased to see the United States violently cracking down on people trying to use their freedom of speech.
Trump Sows Doubt on the Election
Let me ask you about the campaign trail and the lead-up to the election.The president obviously is talking a lot about “Liberate your state,” “Free Michigan.”There’s a ramping up of talk of fraud ahead of the election.Do you think party leaders were paying enough attention to the rhetoric?
No.You know, the president blocks out the sun in a lot of ways, and it’s very hard for any rank-and-file Republican politician to really sway the conversation.And most don’t try to.Most of them try to basically just ride the wave of enthusiasm that he creates.There is undeniable enthusiasm in the Republican Party for Donald Trump.And I think one of the things that most shocked Republicans was his ability to energize people and to do so in a way that felt, at least at the time, cost-free.You can just tell voters whatever they want to hear, and there are no consequences.Obviously, we learned later on that there are consequences to that.But for so long, I think, that is one of the things that made Republicans comfortable being by his side: He gave you the cover; he blocked out the sun and gave you all of the enthusiasm, all the benefits politically, but you never really had to feel the downside.And I think that was a big part of the story.
I’ll ask you a little bit about the consequences of that decision.But there’s a cynicism.There’s also incredible violence during this time period.There’s even a plot at one point to kidnap the governor of Michigan.These are not things that we talk a lot about in politics.There was some darker element here that felt very new.How different was this moment?
Yeah.I guess I have no real expertise on this, but my sense is that there have always been unstable people out there who, you know, have violent tendencies or are willing to do the unthinkable.And we’ve seen that, unfortunately, throughout history, and we’ve seen it, you know, as recently as the shooting of Steve Scalise.We know that there are people out there who can be radicalized.What I think was different here was you had a president who, for however he was communicating, gave those people the idea that he was on their side and that it was no longer something that they needed to be ashamed of, you know, their views.And whether you’re talking about white supremacy or anything less than that, there are people who are willing to do bad things out there and in our society had always been shunned, and perhaps now they felt, rightly or wrongly, that they had somebody in the White House who didn’t look down on them and thought that perhaps he was fighting for them.And I think that leads to a lot of people feeling radicalized and willing to take out their aggression, because they feel like they have the ultimate cover.The president of the United States, they believe, is fighting for them.
Trump Alleges Election Fraud
Let me jump now to election night, or I should say election week.The president won’t concede.There’s an increase in talk about fraud.This spills into members of the administration, who are going on cable news and are espousing this idea that the election has been stolen.And then there are members on the Hill that are doing a similar thing.No one seems to be calling Biden the president-elect from this camp that I’m describing, and I wonder what you thought, as you watched the party filter the president’s message.
It was one of the most disappointing periods of this entire era.And it, I think, brought to focus that there are consequences to misleading people.But the president colors the conversation in such a way that there isn’t a whole lot of room to disagree with him, and I think what was happening was, everybody was waiting for him to get to the rational place.But what we’ve learned for so long is he’s not a rational actor, and you can’t ever assume he’s going to accept reality.He creates his own reality, and nobody wanted to get ahead of him.And I think people thought: Give him a week, he’ll get his head around it; give him two weeks, he’ll get his head around it.And they never did—he never did.And it created a political dynamic, where you were now betraying the president if you were willing to say that he lost.
There weren’t a lot of Republicans who were saying the election was stolen; there weren’t a lot of Republicans who were saying that there was any conspiracy or fraud.They were just saying that he has the right to explore it, and I think for a lot of people, that was rational and that was fine, and that, you know, he does have the right to challenge it.The problem is the context in which that conversation was taking place, because they can talk about it as though this is a reasonable thing to explore.The president wasn’t talking about it to try to find answers; the president was talking about it to try to create his own reality, that he won.And what people were hearing was that the election was stolen.And when they hear people say, from their member of Congress, that it should be looked into, it’s more evidence that the election was stolen.
So, it snowballed really quickly to a place where the overwhelming majority of Republicans believed that the election was stolen.And then it’s really hard to come out and tell people that they’re wrong, tell people that everything that they’ve read or heard or seen in, you know, where they get their media is a lie.And so there was really nobody willing to step forward and try to challenge that perception, and it snowballed into disaster.
Well, you know as you’re watching, and some of these guys are doing live shots that, when they say, “Well, the president has every opportunity to take this argument to the courts, but … candidate Biden, Vice President Biden, should be given briefings.”Remember, there was this splitting the baby.And that went on for another week.This wasn’t, like—we’re not talking about 24 hours straight of news in the time period here.And I’m curious to know your take about the danger and the silence, the folks that just didn’t speak at all.Mitch McConnell waited; others waited.What do you think that did to the process, the democratic process?
Well, it allowed Donald Trump to fill the space.And I do think that many of them expected him to come around.And I think that was proven to be a bad assumption that he ever would.They wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, that when all was said and done, and everything was run to ground in the courts, that he would accept it.
And, I think, what they were trying to get at was take away any excuse for the president to say that the loss wasn’t on him, and that if he was allowed to go through this process, run everything to ground, that potentially people would see, OK, the election was not stolen.But that assumes that Donald Trump is ever going to accept blame or fault or anything, or accept reality.And that was the ultimate error in the calculus.He was never going to accept that he lost.
And so the idea that this process was ultimately going to provide clarity to voters ended up only reinforcing to so many of them that it was flawed, because it let Donald Trump define everything.
I’m going to ask you about the moment that [election official] Gabriel Sterling down in Georgia goes out and does a pretty sincere plea to say the fraud talk has to stop; somebody’s going to get hurt.As you watch that moment, and as things started to split open in Georgia, what did you think of a Republican secretary of state [Brad Raffensperger] having to come out and say those things?
Well, I was proud of him.I’m from Georgia.I was proud of him, because obviously he was not willing to be pushed around.But it’s not surprising either.What Donald Trump was trying to put these two people in the position of doing was saying that they screwed up, when they didn’t.These are people who devoted themselves two years to running an election.They carried it out in a way that I think everybody, neutral observers would say was as an election should go.And yet Donald Trump was asking him to say that they oversaw a fraudulent election, and they didn’t.And they became the target.And they said, look, we’re not going to have our names and our reputations sullied over what is ultimately pure nonsense.
And I do think that the willingness of local officials to do the right thing, perhaps people who don’t have a constituency that they’re as worried about—and I think that’s probably the thing, the real takeaway here.Gabriel Sterling doesn’t have a constituency of people or voters who are sending him to office, demanding that he do something.He’s just someone who’s doing his job, a guy who was hired to run an election, and he did it to the best of his ability.And he doesn’t face the same political pressures that members of Congress do, who have voters every two years who are demanding that they stick by Donald Trump.
So, you know, some of it was, he’s just a guy who wasn’t going to take crap from anybody, but the other thing is, he faces a much different political dynamic than members of Congress do.
He’s also one of these guys on the front line who is putting the brakes on the conspiracy theories that are out there, right, and is truly between that base that we’ve been talking about and the president’s message, really kind of caught there.
Well, he’s somebody who knew the facts.And what you had going on was so much innuendo and so much—so many vagaries about what somebody may have seen or a video.This is somebody who knew up and down what happened exactly and was going to explain it to people.And if we had more people who were willing to explain to people exactly what took place rather than feeding the notion that there was something wrong, perhaps we could have avoided what ultimately unfolded.
Let me ask you about the call that the president makes to Brad Raffensperger, the idea that this is almost the exact same behavior we saw with the first impeachment.Can you help me sort of connect the two moments?
Yeah, the president doesn’t feel like there are guardrails, and one of the stories of this presidency is people trying to put up guardrails and him trying to knock them down.… So much of what happens in government happens because there are traditions; there are ways that people have always gone about them.They aren’t necessarily written laws or rules.Our system of government relies, in a lot of ways, on people just doing the right thing.You don’t always need to have strict laws about how something can go, because you assume that people in office are relatively decent, honest people who understand.
Here you have a president who really never cared about institutions or the way things work or how they should work, and really only acted in his own political self-interest.And for him, there was no concern about going over the line.There are no lines.And he, you know, as he did with the Ukrainian president, going far over the lines, I don’t think he realized there was anything wrong with that.Something that is so obvious to people who have worked in politics or understand the way that, you know, the United States is supposed to be sovereign and make its own, you know, electoral decisions, and the people here should decide, I don’t think he even thought for two seconds that there was something wrong with calling up a foreign leader and trying to get them to intervene.And, you know, that’s just something that would never even enter anyone else’s thoughts.
Same situation with Georgia.I doubt he even thought for a second that there was anything wrong with calling this person up and pressuring him.And it just shows you how divorced he is from the good government that people just generally take for granted and assume is the way things are supposed to go.
I wonder if I can ask for your perspective on how you think McConnell is viewing the president in his final days and the damage he’s inflicting on the party, specifically in Georgia.
Well, I certainly think that Georgia was a turning point.I think it would be wrong to ignore that there were those two runoffs that were going to decide control of the majority in the Senate—in how Republicans handled him in the days and weeks following the election.This was an election to decide who controls the Senate, ultimately who controls the agenda.And they knew that the president doesn’t really care about party, doesn’t really care about anybody else, and it would not—it would be no skin off his back to come in and really tank the election.And that’s why you saw a lot of them say, we’re willing to go along with him, not rock the boat, ask him—to keep him in a good place, so that before this election he doesn’t undermine it and tell Republican voters not to come out and vote.Obviously, he did that to a certain degree.
But I think the outcome in Georgia cemented that Donald Trump is really bad politics on the national stage.It’s interesting.Following the November election, even though Donald Trump lost, even though there was the rare circumstance of an incumbent president losing, Republicans generally internalized the election as a good night: won more seats in the House than were expected; didn’t lose the Senate majority that night; it seemed closer in the presidential race than people had expected it to be.And what people interpreted was: Maybe Trump’s style of politics can work.Maybe we don’t ever have to really concern ourselves with anybody, other than the Republican base.And that can be a good feeling for—if you’re Republican, you never have to worry about anybody other than Republicans.Maybe that’s a good thing, and you’re excited about it.
I think what happened in Georgia changed that dynamic and the way people perceive Trump politics, that he is not a winner, and that two seats in a state that Republicans should never lose, both going against them, when the election was largely about him again, showed that he was ultimately what cost Republicans the House, the Senate and the White House.
So, you know, the same as with a lot of Republican leaders, the relationship between Mitch McConnell and the president was one of convenience at times, but also necessity to keep the party moving forward.And at some point, I think Mitch McConnell came to the conclusion that Donald Trump was not helping him in any real way, and in fact was probably what ended up costing him the Senate majority.
Trump’s Pressure on Pence
Now let me ask you about the position that Mike Pence finds himself in, in the next stage of this battle over the election results.Donald Trump really kind of cuts him out, in a way that he is really in a terrible position.I wonder if you could help us understand the difficulty of that, especially against the backdrop of being loyal to Donald Trump for the last four years.
Yeah, it’s a really unfortunate outcome for Mike Pence, who, really, I think, bit his tongue, stood by the president every step of the way.And it just shows that loyalty is a one-way street with Donald Trump.You can stick by him for years and years and years, but if you’re not there for him at that moment, he’ll write you off in a heartbeat.
What Mike Pence—the choice Mike Pence was facing was not really a choice.He had no choice to do anything other than count the votes that took place.But at this point, Donald Trump had surrounded himself with people who were feeding him more and more nonsense about how this process worked.It was just another situation of the president creating his own reality, deciding things that can happen that simply can’t, and set Mike Pence up for the fall in a way that he had really no choice in what to do.
So, he followed through with what he knew was right—there were no other options—and showed that, you know, he wasn’t going to sacrifice his commitment to the Constitution in one last act for the president.Unfortunately, I think it probably cost him all of those years of loyalty built up for nothing.And it’s got to hurt, for him, but it just shows that Donald Trump doesn’t care what you did for him yesterday; he only cares what you’re doing for him right now.
McConnell’s Break With Trump
Let me ask you about the speech that McConnell gives right before the violence sort of breaks out.Were you listening to that?Did you watch that?This is sort of his signal that a new day is upon us.Why break with the president right here?What does he understand about this moment?
Well, I think Mitch McConnell had already broken with him, to that point.I think what Mitch McConnell was doing was sticking up for our electoral system at large and our Constitution more broadly.Mitch McConnell actually cares quite a bit about federalism and making sure that we don’t—that states control elections, and I think he saw what the president was doing was undermining the Electoral College system that he cares a lot about.And he knew that if we went down this road, that we were setting ourselves up to potentially federalize national elections.And that matters to him, and it was something that he was not going to tolerate.
And you know, generally, he—you know, there is a caricature built up of Mitch McConnell that he is conniving and always looking out for the—his political interests.And he is a political animal, no doubt, but he cares about this country, he cares about democracy, and he cares about the Constitution.And he knew that the precedent that was being set was really dangerous, and that it could bring down democracy if we continued to go down this road, and in each election Congress were to decide who our next president is.Really dangerous stuff, and he wasn’t going to tolerate it.And he knew that what some senators and House members were doing was dangerous, and he was going to speak up to be on the right side of history.
The Assault on the Capitol
And the president that afternoon, that morning?The message he sent to his supporters, that he’s with them, the urge to show their anger, to walk to the Capitol.It reminds me of what we talked about earlier in this conversation, about activating that base on the campaign trail.Is that how you viewed it?
Yeah.It was probably the clearest demonstration that people are devoted to him, above all else, and that when he says things, they’re taking him very seriously in a way that potentially people didn’t necessarily think that they were.There was always this sense that there were no consequences to telling people what they wanted to hear.And that ultimately, I believe, is what led to the violence, that people were told what they wanted to hear; they allowed them to live in their own reality, and they couldn’t be told otherwise, that the election wasn’t stolen for them.
And when you believe that—I think it’s an important thing to appreciate.Those people believe Donald Trump is fighting for them and that the people on the other side of it are trying to end their way of life.Why they believe that and where that comes, we can talk for a long time about.But they believe passionately that there are people out there who hate them and that Donald Trump speaks for them.And the people who hate them hate Donald Trump, too.And because of that, he is their hero.And when someone is threatening your way of life, you’ll go to great lengths.And I think that’s what you saw.And the fact that he was able to get people to come to Washington, to fire them up, and to send them down to do the unthinkable, just reinforces that he was the singular figure for them, and they would do really anything that he says.
What is it about the lies that enraged them?
Well, to them, they weren’t lies.To them, they were the reality.To them, they felt like they had a president who was standing up for them and that there was a conspiracy to take it all away from them, and that the person who had been defending them, standing up for them, was going to have to go away, and that the Democratic liberal establishment was going to come in and end their way of life.That’s personal for them.And they had so fervently believed this, that it brought them to the violent lengths that they went to.
And then a mob breaches the security at the Capitol a little bit later.You’re watching and thinking what—about this crowd and about the rhetoric that had been building for years?
So, there are always protests and demonstrations, and rowdy ones, at the Capitol.You get used to it.But when you saw the actual first confrontation between these people and the Capitol Police, you knew this was something else.This was different.And you saw them scaling the walls, nothing that I could have ever imagined would actually happen.
It made my blood boil.It made my blood boil, seeing what these people were doing, but also knowing that inside the Capitol there were some Republican senators who were putting on a charade on their behalf, who were feeding in to what they knew were lies, to score some political points.And so, it was heartbreaking, but also my real reaction: I was furious.
When some of those members come back in to vote, to still reject the outcome of the election, what do you think the message is that they’re sending long-term?
There were some senators who changed their position after what happened, and I actually thought that’s where this was headed.I thought that there was going to be some clarity, a moment of clarity where people said what we are doing right now helped feed this, and that we need to stop.I believe there were probably a lot of them who wanted to reverse course.
But what it spoke to was how they knew that their voters still expected them to follow through.It tells you how strong that enthusiasm was for their constituents.They were reflecting what their voters believed, and the politics made it such that they had to continue following through.I think they’re glad that there were fewer states that ultimately ended up getting challenged, but for too many of them, they knew that the politics could potentially cost them their job, if they didn’t go along with this notion that there were irregularities that needed to reject the outcome.
A Split in the GOP
Let me ask you about Mitch McConnell one more time.He finds out he’s going to be the minority leader of the Senate while he’s in a bunker, underneath the Capitol, and the folks overrunning the building are members of his party.Can you help me understand the significance of that moment?And when you reflect back on the deal he made with this president, and we’ve now witnessed the fallout of that decision, what do you think of that?
Well, I would argue that those were people that Donald Trump brought into the party.These weren’t your traditional Republicans.These were probably a lot of people who were sitting on the sidelines before, not feeling like they had a party.And it demonstrated how much Donald Trump had changed American politics, that the Republican Party that so many of us knew for many years doesn’t exist anymore.It is the Donald Trump party. …
I wonder if you can help us understand where the party goes from here, whose party this will be, and if you’re Mitch McConnell, how you part ways with the president.
I think anybody who expects a clean break is going to be very disappointed.The president is not going anywhere.The party follows him more than they do any one idea or principle.One of the reasons he was able to take hold of the party in the first place was that so many Republican voters hate the Republican Party.So many Republican voters had been told for decades that leaders in Washington were letting you down, that they were surrendering to Democrats, that they’re not really on your side.And so it’s a dynamic that has existed on the Republican side in a way that, really, it doesn’t on Democrats.Republican voters don’t trust Republican leaders.And that is certainly true now, after what happened, when you saw Republican establishment figures moving on past him.I think Donald Trump is only going to continue to be able to say that he is on your side and leaders like Mitch McConnell aren’t.
Also, the people who have been elected to Congress in the last four years are really in Donald Trump’s image.The Republicans who have retired in recent years have largely been replaced by Republicans who come from the populist wing and have espoused the same views that Donald Trump does.So you have people inside Washington and people back home who are still much more loyal to Donald Trump.
There is no overarching party anymore.This is not a situation where you have party bosses who decide what the agenda is and who gets elected.For better or worse, the grassroots is so much stronger.Members of Congress can raise money directly from the grassroots, and they don’t need anybody helping them with their fundraising.
Donald Trump, to the extent there is a Republican Party, still is the face.He’s going to be the loudest voice in it.And if I’m a betting man, right now, he’s probably the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee in 2024.So he’s going to continue to be the strongest voice, and I don’t know that there is really a moving on from him.It’s—how do you establish your own identity at the same time, and I think that will be the biggest challenge.
Biden and a Divided Nation
Not knowing what happens next with impeachment, but knowing that that is now moving forward, in some form, what are the challenges that lie ahead for President Biden?What is the country that he inherits?
Well, obviously, it’s deeply divided, and I’m hoping that he’s the type of person who can help heal.Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, even Bill Clinton were all relatively divisive figures in their own way.The other side truly hated them by the end of their terms.I’m hoping that Joe Biden sees his mandate as trying to end that hatred, trying to bring people to realize that the other side isn’t so bad.He’s going to have a really hard time doing that.I don’t think that there is a lot of bipartisan cooperation on the horizon, if only because he’s going to be pushed by his progressive base, as well, to be a transformative president and to swing for the fences and try to do really progressive things in a way that may not fit him well and certainly isn’t going to bring along any Republicans.
So, I hope that his focus is really one of tone and unification, but I worry he’s actually going to end up getting pushed to the left in a way that’s going to make it really hard for us to come together.
And what do you think about, sort of, the Republicans’ decision to work with him—the likelihood of that, the risk in doing that?Is that even a possibility?
I think they’re going to look for areas of common ground.I just don’t know how much there’s going to be.I think Joe Biden wants to be a centrist by his nature, but I think his party in Congress is going to push him to be a progressive in a way that makes it hard to work together.I think that anybody who’s coming to Washington should be looking for opportunities to solve problems with people, but if the opposite side is moving so far to the left, I think that’s going to be really hard to do.
There is also the old adage that the job of the minority is to become the majority.So, I think that Republicans are going to be looking for opportunities to differentiate themselves and try to, in two years, take back control of the House.And I think you do that largely by being on the other side and showing you have a different philosophy.
Yeah.And our institutions, what have we learned about their fragility in the last week?I’m just curious to get your take on the damage that perhaps has been done and where we go from here.
They’ve been put under incredible stress, but they held in a way that I think is encouraging.Members of Congress came back the very night that the Capitol was ransacked and finished the job.Now, not everybody voted to certify the election, but the job got done, and I don’t think that was really ever in question.
Certainly a lot of work is going to have to go back into rebuilding institutions and reminding people of why they’re there in the first place.And I think that is something that we’ve lost touch with.The reason why we have an independent Justice Department, the reason why states have authority to do elections, those things matter for a reason, and I think people probably have lost sight of why they work the way that they do.
But ultimately, I think the spirit of democracy and commitment to our country’s founding ideals overcame the pressure that was faced, the pressure that came down on us.It was really ugly and really painful, and I’m hoping that it can be a moment where we learn from it, where we say we’re never going to do this again.Maybe that’s Pollyannish, but I’m hoping that what happened on Jan. 6 is a clarifying moment, and that people mean it when they say they want to unify.
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