The FRONTLINE Interviews

Darlene Superville

Journalist, Associated Press

Darlene Superville is a White House correspondent for the Associated Press. She has covered politics for the AP for more than a decade.

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE's Jim Gilmore on May 17, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

America After 9/11

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Darlene Superville

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Reaction to 9/11

The film starts with Congress on the Capitol steps on the evening of 9/11 singing "God Bless America."So Republicans and Democrats on the steps.Describe how a unifying moment that was, what that represented to you about the America of that period of time on 9/11.

That moment, when all members of Congress came out on the steps of the Capitol to sing "God Bless America," was, I think, an extraordinary moment of unity in the country.The United States had just suffered its first ever terrorist attack on U.S. soil.Nearly 3,000 Americans and other citizens in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania had just been killed indiscriminately.The country was both hurting and also wanting revenge at the same time.And to see lawmakers from both houses of Congress, both political parties, varying opinions on whatever the issue of the day was come together like that in this kind of "Kumbaya" moment was quite extraordinary.And if you think about today, God forbid something like that were to happen today, I'm not sure you'd see a repeat of a moment like what we saw on 9/11.

Attack on the Capitol

Now skip to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building, the same Capitol building but two decades later.Who are these people?What's driving the people as far as we know that were involved in breaking into the Capitol on that day?

A lot of the motivation for Jan. 6 was then-President Donald Trump.For months leading up to the election, he was talking about fraud in the election, mail-in ballots not being accurate, corruption, that sort of thing.And when the election happened and he didn't outright win on election night, he sort of ramped up his claims of election fraud, none of which were proven.He has a large following, and those were the people that were listening, mostly, to his claims, his fraudulent claims that the election had been stolen from him.

So that day, there was a rally in Washington.He went out and addressed the rally, which is a bit unusual, also, for a president to do, and kind of encouraged them to go up to the Capitol.And so they did.They stormed the Capitol.That was the day that Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden's election, and Donald Trump's supporters went up to the Capitol with the intention of trying to stop that process from happening.

And they broke in.They fought police, Capitol Police, D.C. Police, and tried their best to disrupt what was happening up there.They did not prevail, of course, but that was the motivation for it.

… Talk a little bit about those motivations, how the two decades between 9/11 and Jan. 6 helped to sow the reasons behind what took place.

Yeah, in the years since 9/11, I would say there's been a gradual mistrust or distrust of the government by certain segments of the U.S. electorate or population.And I think in some measure, in some degree, that grew deeper when Donald Trump took office.Even before he took office, he had already been talking about a rigged system and a rigged election, and that theme seemed to carry on through his presidency to the reelection campaign, where he again started amplifying those claims.

I think Jan. 6 did not have as much to do with the wars as it did with just Donald Trump himself and the kind of hold that he seemed to have over his followers, where they would just believe what he said, not question it in any way, just take it at face value.And so when he said the election was stolen from him, none of them stopped and took a minute to try to say, "Well, how could this be?Could this really happen?Could the election really have been stolen?"There was no desire to do any kind of independent thinking, researching to try to figure out if what he was saying was true.They just took it at face value.

Would this belief they had in this one man have been possible if it wasn't for the dissatisfaction that these people felt towards the government, towards institutions that they believed were not fulfilling their needs, were off fighting wars that seemed to be endless.Was part of that a kneejerk reaction, this belief in this man because they believe that he was different from other presidents that had come before him?

Yes, I would say yes, to a degree, certainly.He was not a politician, as most other presidents before him were.He was a businessman.He had never really been in politics before, and that was something I think that attracted a lot of people to Donald Trump.There's also the feeling among some of these people that he was listening to them in ways that other politicians hadn't.On the campaign trail, he talked a lot about listening to the "forgotten men and women" in the United States, and that was a theme that carried on through his presidency.And so because, I think because they felt that he was listening to them, they in turn listened to him.

… So the bottom line, what does Jan.6 say about democracy in America?

I think what it says about democracy in America is that democracy prevailed, right?There was this attempt to undo democracy, and it didn't succeed.And so, while it may be messy at times, it's obviously fragile because what happened is something that a lot of people never, ever thought they would ever see happen.No one could imagine the events of Jan.6 before they happened.But in the final analysis, I think what it means is that democracy prevailed, and it was strong, and it was able to withstand this test.

Support for Bush after 9/11

… After 9/11, soon after, days after, Bush goes up to New York and he goes to Ground Zero and he's got the bullhorn with one of the firemen.He says, "I hear you, and the world hears you, and soon the people that knocked down these buildings will hear you as well."Talk a little bit about that moment, such an essential moment, and what it showed about the resolve of the government and the people and the anger, but also how it empowered George Bush to have that reaction on that day.Talk a little bit about that moment and what it represents for you.

When I think of 9/11 and George W. Bush, that's one of the moments that I will think of.It's one of those iconic moments in a presidency.He's on a pile of rubble.I think it was still smoldering in places, with the firemen, with the bullhorn.And I think in that moment, just being surrounded by all of the destruction fed a resolve in President George W. Bush and a determination to try to go after the individuals, Osama bin Laden, the terrorist organization that was responsible for bringing down the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and slamming the plane into the field in Pennsylvania.I think that's what that moment represents for him. It was the beginning of a determination to go after OBL.

It empowered him?

I think so, yes.

.… I think it empowered him and fed this determination that he had to go after Osama bin Laden and to try to exact revenge for the terrorist attack.Remember, it was the worst terrorist attack ever on the United States, and it happened on his watch.So as president, you do feel a certain responsibility when something as serious as that happens while you're the commander in chief.

Talk a little bit about Washington, D.C., around that time.The fear was palpable in the streets and everybody you talked to in government.It was not only the attacks; it was also waiting for the next attack.And it was anthrax.Nobody understood where it was coming from, but everybody believed it was somehow connected.How does that fear motivate the Bush administration?

In the same way that the terrorist attack, I think, motivated the administration, you just want to try to get to the bottom of what's happening, and you—one of the responsibilities of a president of the United States, you'll hear them say this often, is the safety and security of Americans and U.S. citizens, whether they are on U.S. soil or serving in a country abroad somewhere.And so having the terrorist attacks, having the anthrax attacks, which in the beginning no one seemed to know where they were coming from or who was responsible, where this white powder would show up next in Washington, that was also another motivating factor in what you saw President Bush do in terms of trying to respond to all of this.

Guantanamo

… So you have Guantanamo Bay opened up and detainees brought down there.And there's these pictures that start appearing on the front pages worldwide of the detainees in orange jumpsuits and locked to the floor of big aircraft that are flying them to Guantanamo Bay and with goggles on and such.How does that, those pictures, affect the worldview of what America is doing and set the tenor that we're pushing the rulebook aside a bit in fighting this war?Talk a little bit about how that might have affected the way people viewed Americans and America's values.

Yeah, that was a bit of a contentious time, I would say, because the United States of America, we're known for due process and upholding individual rights, and we're always going around the world and talking to other countries about human rights.But at this period in time, here we were, holding hundreds of suspected terrorists in this prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, just off the U.S. mainland.Many of them had never been tried.Many of them had also never been charged.They were just being held indefinitely, which was not something that we would do in our own criminal justice system.And so the view from outside of the United States was one, I think, of almost shock and indignation on the part of some countries because we were doing this to these individuals.We were treating them this way and ways that if another country was doing this, we probably would tell them, "You can't do that," or, "You shouldn't do that; you shouldn't behave that way."

And the drip-drip-drip of how, for instance, dark sites then became known, and enhanced interrogation.Soon there was more information coming out about enhanced interrogation tactics that were being used.What's the overall effect on how American values are viewed?

Pretty much the same way outside of the United States, right?The rest of the world was also, I would say, and even some people inside of the United States were shocked when word trickled out about enhanced interrogation techniques—waterboarding, for example, depriving people of sleep, all those kinds of techniques, because it borders on torture.And there was a big debate at that time about torture, torture methods, how far to go, should we even be doing that kind of thing?Which again, if we, the United States, had gotten wind that another country was doing this, we would be one of the first to jump up and say, "Hold it, stop it, what are you doing?"But here we were, doing it against these individuals that had been suspected of terrorism.

And not to sound naïve or idealistic, why is that important?Why [is] the ideology behind American values and democratic actions and rule of law so sacred in America?And the effect of things like this, the damage that it's done, why is that an important issue?

Because the United States is looked at around the world as a beacon of morality and high standards and justice and equality, and if we start as a country not upholding those standards or individual rights, then what does the rest of the world have to look up to?And, you know, if they cannot follow our example, the American example, who will they follow?So that's why all of that is important.

I only have a couple more things on Bush.One of them is his speech on the "axis of evil," where he names Iran, Iraq and North Korea together.But it surprised a lot of our allies because it seemed to be an expansion of what they thought the war was over and how extensive it would be.How big a turning point was that?And looking back, why was that speech surprising to some of our allies?

I think it was surprising to some of our allies because here you had the president of the United States addressing Congress and then naming these countries and putting them, lumping them together as this axis of evil, which became a catchphrase for Iran, for Iraq and for North Korea.I don't think at the time, as I recall, I don't think people were expecting to hear that.So then when you do hear that, of course, it's—you perk up, and it's kind of surprising.Even though U.S. policy towards these countries or our posture towards these countries was one of believing that they were sponsors of terrorism—North Korea, Iraq, Iran—just hearing it uttered out loud was a bit of a surprise, as I recall from that night.

Invading Iraq

… Why was the turn to Iraq such a huge turning point in the events of the last two decades?

One of the reasons for the shift towards—towards Iraq was to try to cast what the United States did in terms of responding to 9/11 and cast it in a broader context, the broader war against terrorism.We had just been attacked on U.S. soil, and I think the feeling in the administration and certainly on the part of the president was that—to go after other actors, other terrorist sponsors in hopes of trying to prevent another attack on U.S. soil.And that was one of the reasons for going after—going into Iraq and going after Saddam Hussein and trying to topple him from the government there.

And the long-term effects of it all was what?

You had the U.S. entangled.Some would use the word entangled.You would have the U.S maintaining a presence in Iraq for a very long time, much longer than most people at the time that we went into Iraq thought that we would be there.And so there was a lot of—I think there was something like 4,000 or so lives that were lost, service members, billions of dollars spent in Iraq trying to lift up the government there and make it self-sufficient.And you had people in the United States who thought we didn't need to be there, we didn't need to be sending all of that money there; we could spend the money in the United States.And if we were not there, a lot of those service members might still be alive today.So those are some of the long-term consequences of that.

There's also the element of pushing the view that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.That was the premise under which the United States went into Iraq in the first place, and then it came out that he didn't have any WMD. And so, again, you have this feeling among some people in the country or a certain percentage of people in the country that the government lied to them and that we went into Iraq under a false pretense.And so we had all of this lost lives, money spent, blood and treasure that was just kind of wasted.

And the effect on the morale of people, how people at home viewed their government, the ability of the government to accomplish the things they set out to do?The long-term effects of this are what?

I think the long-term effect was a beginning of a certain level of distrust of the government, people taking a more critical eye toward whatever the government had to say, being more skeptical, more discerning about statements of X, Y or Z. And no longer just wanting to take at face value whatever the government said.And not just the government, but particularly the president of the United States and other top government officials, right, because he said we were going in there, Saddam had weapons, and then it turned out weapons didn't exist.

Abu Ghraib

Let's talk about Abu Ghraib for a second.When those pictures first came out, they were on the front pages of newspapers around the world.What was the long-term effect of what Abu Ghraib and the understanding of what Americans had done to detainees in Iraq?What were the long-term effects?

There was shock, outrage over what had happened to a lot of those prisoners.The long-term effect, I would say, was just that, again, this distrust of the military.So you saw distrust in the government with Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction.Now you're seeing or beginning to see a little bit of distrust of the military in terms of the way those prisoners were treated.Again, I don't think there is anyone who ever thought the U.S. military would behave that way or treat people that were in its custody in that way.And to see that splashed on pages, newspapers around the world, it literally sent the entire world up in arms over the—over that treatment.And so there was sort of—there was sort of a new, I think, orientation toward the military.People looked at the military differently.And the reputation of the U.S. military suffered.

The Obama Years

So let's turn to Obama, Obama's campaign in 2008.Certainly his stance on the war, especially Iraq, was a very important part of his campaign.Can you talk a little bit about the way that message was received, why that was such a powerful message back in 2008, how the crowds would react to his statements about the war in Iraq?

Yeah, the crowds reacted to President Obama's statements about the war, they ate it up, basically, because here we were, by the time of the 2008 campaign, five or six years after we had gone into Iraq, we were still there.Many people thought we would have been out already.He wanted to get us out of the war.At one point, not during the campaign but before that, he had called the war in Iraq a "dumb war."¹

NPR: Transcript: Obama's Speech Against The Iraq War

And so he wanted to pull the U.S. out.

And so he was the anti-war candidate that everybody was looking for.And he got great reception with that position on the war.And so the crowds just, you know—it was what they wanted to hear.And they believed that—and they believed that he'd be able to do it.

That's the important point: They had trust in him.Why do you think they had trust?Even to the point that he got the Nobel Peace Prize soon after he became president.Why was there so much trust in his ability to accomplish some of these things that he had spoken about?

I think one thing, probably the primary thing with Obama was that he was kind of a fresh face, right?And he'd only been in the Senate for, what, two years before he started running for president.So contrast President Obama or somebody like President Obama, someone new on the scene, newish to politics, versus the more veteran senators, lawmakers in Congress who went along with the war in Iraq and voted for it, agreed to go into war.

… He just brought something to it that they felt they couldn't get from more seasoned, more veteran lawmakers.I think that worked in his favor.

So to some extent it was a reaction against the system?

I think so, yes.I think it was a reaction against the system, and a system, again, that a lot of people, a lot of voters thought was not working for them and perhaps not listening to them because they had been agitating to get out of Iraq, and we were still there.

… Afghanistan, of course, was the "good war"; Iraq was the "bad war."What were his initial hopes for Afghanistan?

Initially, I think President Obama also wanted to get out of Afghanistan.But then he came into office, and the reality was different.It's easy to say a lot of things when you're on the campaign trail; it's harder to put them into—to implement them once you get into office sometimes.And so he got into office, and the reality was different.And I think, as I remember, early on in his administration, he ended up surging tens of thousands of more troops into Afghanistan, which is not something that he wanted to do, but I don't think he had much of a choice at the time because the conditions there were just deteriorating.The security situation was getting a lot worse.And his advisers came to him with options and scenarios, and he agreed to go along with surging more troops into Afghanistan.

So he kind of had to go against what he wanted to do, what his initial hopes were, which was to try to pull us out.And instead he got the U.S.—he had to get the U.S. a little more deeply involved.

We've been told he basically felt, as much as he wanted to get out, he was being pulled deeper and deeper into the quagmire, and he knew it.But in the beginning at least, there was no other way to go, it seemed, though he had a sour taste in his mouth, and Biden had the same sour taste in his mouth about feeling that they were somewhat manipulated by the military.Do you have anything to add to that?

Not much.Just that there was this feeling that the military wanted—the military wanted what happened to happen, which was to pour more troops into Afghanistan.And apparently the scenarios they drew up for him, the advice they gave him was—the options weren't vastly different, in other words.They were sort of all the same, which pointed toward sending tens of thousands of more troops in.It's not as though he got an option that said, no troops or 100,000 troops.They were all some degree of sending in scores and scores more troops to Afghanistan.

By 2011/2012, we've been told that Obama—there were meetings in the White House that were taking place, and eventually his conclusion was that this war was—these wars were unwinnable, and trying to bring democracy to either Afghanistan or Iraq was intensely hard to do.So what was Obama's conclusion by that time, conclusion of what they could achieve, which some other people have said to us is to keep terrorism under control and to eventually hand off to Afghanistan?So what it really was, was attempting to stall until a resolution would come about naturally.How do you view the conclusion that they eventually came to by that point?

I think it was probably the only conclusion they could come to at that point, because after the amount of time that we had spent there, the amount of money that was spent, time, lives lost, blood, sweat and tears trying to help the government be self-sufficient and provide for its own security, at a certain point you do have to decide whether you stay or go.You have to decide whether the government can function on its own, take care of its own security, or do they continue to rely on the U.S.?And how much longer do they need to rely on the U.S.?And I think at a certain point, which is that period in time, 2011/2012-ish, the conclusion was that we have to leave.We have to try to, you know, get out and leave the business of governing Afghan [sic] to the Afghans.Leave the Afghans to take care of their own security situation.

Obama’s Use of Drones

… The embracing of drones and the use of JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command], why is that significant?

That is significant because I think what happened there was President Obama realized that with a drone, he could kill people and—but while killing people, not putting U.S. service members at great risk.And so he latched on to the drone policy, the use of drones.That became more widespread during his administration.And I think at one point he said something to somebody about, you know, just realizing that he could take people out using drones.

Of course, the downside with the drones was the collateral damage.Women, children and even some American citizens got killed in some of these drone strikes.So while it was good from the president's perspective on one hand, it was not good on the other hand because it brought up all of these other issues.

… And so how would you sum it up?Obama inherits a more stable Iraq after the final year or two of the Bush administration and the surge, but he at that point decides to disengage militarily and politically.Did they understand the potential ramifications, the potential of leaving a power vacuum and what results that could lead to?

I don't think so, because there was a period of time after that where Iraq broke down into a lot of sectarian violence, and also I think in that period of time we began to see the rise of ISIS, which I think were two things that the administration just didn't anticipate happening.And so we had to go back in, more troops, to try to deal with the growth, the very rapid growth of ISIS and the threat that it posed to the region and to U.S. interests in the region.

And the significance of underestimating ISIS? Even when ISIS was reappearing, his famous "JV team" quote—the significance of that is what?And the consequences of that is what?

I think the significance of President Obama underestimating ISIS, he, at one point, he referred to ISIS as a junior varsity team, right, sort of trying to suggest they were some kind of Al Qaeda wannabe maybe, but not quite there.And so, by underestimating ISIS, that allowed ISIS to just become this force in the Middle East.At one point, ISIS controlled large swaths of territory in both Iraq and in Syria.I mean, they were literally multiplying and taking over and just spreading.And so that could not—the United States could not allow that to continue to happen.

And so, as much as President Obama wanted to be out of Iraq, because of the just like cancerous spread of ISIS, he had no other choice but to return.

The Trump Years

… So 2016 election campaign.Trump seems to understand the frustrations over the wars.He uses it.He uses the public's distrust in the government and institutions to win, the incompetence, the 15 years of lies, as he would say.Talk a little bit about Trump and his use of the past 15 years to win over supporters and to eventually win the election.

Yeah, Donald Trump, when he ran for president in 2015/2016, he—he was not a fan of either war, and he referred to them again and again and again as "endless wars."And he wanted—one of his selling points in that campaign was that he would be the president that would end the endless wars.And so you have lots of people in this country who thought we had been there long enough; we had been in the Middle East long enough; we'd spent enough money—too much money, some would say—in the Middle East.And so his campaign rhetoric and promises about ending the war, it was like manna from heaven for a lot of these people who really desperately wanted to see the wars come to an end.

And so he capitalized on that and probably in large measure was elected because of those promises.They saw him as the one who would do it in the same way that back in 2008, voters at that time saw Obama as the one who would end the wars.So we were coming full circle, again, on a presidential candidate promising to end the wars.

He attended the 2016 9/11 memorial ceremony at Ground Zero.How did he view the 15 years that had passed?Why was he there?I don't know if you remember that event specifically, but how significant and smart it was to be there, and how very different his point of view was over the post-9/11 era than other candidates?

Well, Donald Trump is a New Yorker, and most of what happened on 9/11 happened in New York.A lot of the suffering and the pain was felt in New York City and in Lower Manhattan where that ceremony took place.So I do think it was important for him to be there, politically and just emotionally for New York to see the presidential candidate from their city come to their commemoration and to—to stand with them and to remember all the people that were lost on 9/11.

He, you know, he obviously had the view at the time that it was important to get out of—to end the wars, and that was something that he wanted to do.But setting that aside for a moment, if you were a presidential candidate in 2016, and your opponent was going to the 9/11 ceremony, you know, you have to go as well.So he may not have wanted to be there; I don't know that for a fact.But there are lots of things you have to do as a politician that you may not want to do, but you have to do them.And that was one of them.His Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton was there, and so, you know, you don't want to give your opponent any kind of advantage over you.

So one of the things he does also is he turns his attention towards the "enemy within."He's talking about eventually policies he will pursue, or is wanting to, [to] lock out Muslims, putting his opponents in the league with the enemy, but making it sort of a domestic threat.Talk a little bit about that and why that was such a powerful thing to do.

Yeah, so at one point late in the campaign, he, Donald Trump, announced that he was for a total and complete ban on Muslims entering the United States.And that, of course, set off all sorts of alarm bells.He equated Muslims with terrorism.I think that's plain and simple; there's no other way to say that.And in doing that, in wanting to push for this ban, he was trying to say to the voters, to Americans, that he was going to protect them, keep them safe, keep them secure.He, when he was president, he would always say that one of his top priorities was, again, to keep Americans safe and secure.And so I think by proposing this ban, he thought that was part of what he needed to do to show voters that he was serious about keeping them safe and secure.Never mind that it was obviously seen as very—a very racist thing to do.

And how did it go over with his supporters?

With his supporters?It went over very well with his supporters, just like his immigration policies went over well with his supporters, steps he took at the border with Mexico went over well with his supporters.Donald Trump was a president who was very—very inward-looking.He didn't want anyone coming from outside, you know, to come to the United States.He had this "America First" mantra, policy, and it was all about doing what was right or best, in his mind, for America.He didn't care much about the rest of the world and how the rest of the world saw the United States or what they wanted from the United States.It was, in his mind, it was all about "America First."

A very different perspective, point of view than any other president ever before?

I would say very much so, very much different than any president before, because most presidents before Donald Trump understood and appreciated the role the United States plays on the world stage: moral leader; distributor of financial aid or monetary support for countries—you know, we would swoop in when a country has suffered a national tragedy to help with money, reconstruction, those sorts of things; diplomacy.Donald Trump just wasn't interested in doing—it didn't seem he was very interested in doing any of that, or continuing keeping the United States playing that same role.Diplomacy was not much of something that he seemed to care to engage in.He didn't seem to want to help other countries very much.And he seemed to just want to close off the borders of the United States and not let anyone outside come in.

His views of Iraq and the Afghan wars.As you said, he basically was promising to get out, and that seemed to be a big part of his policy.But how these views differed from, for instance, the Bush Freedom Agenda that he had pursued, or Obama's talk, the many speeches that he gave of the importance of moral values and democratic values and the responsibility that the United States had to the world.Talk a little bit about how different a point of view Trump had.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bottom line for President Trump was just to get out.He just wanted the United States to get out.He thought the wars were senseless, stupid, maybe.He certainly didn't like the fact that billions of dollars were spent over there.And he just wanted—he just wanted out.He didn't seem to care very much the way some other presidents did about trying to bring democracy to Afghanistan, for example, or helping with good governance or helping the military, the security forces be able to protect themselves.

In his mind, the United States had been in the Middle East far longer than he thought was necessary, and his only motivation was just to get out, and to get out as quickly as he could.It didn't happen as quickly as he might have wanted it to happen, but that is what he wanted.He just wanted to get out.

And the debate within his own administration?The famous debates that took place between him and Gen. [James] Mattis and Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson, the attempts by other Cabinet members and such to try to educate the president in the importance of America's role post-World War II and the establishment of all these institutions that Donald Trump was very often dismissing.Talk a little bit about that debate and why that is important to understand.

The—so Donald Trump surrounded himself with a lot of people who held different views than he did about the war.Some of them obviously saw the reason why perhaps the United States would have needed to stay just a little bit longer and to try to keep at it a little bit longer.And they would try to explain to him or counsel him on policy toward Iraq and Afghanistan, but he, from what I know, he just—he didn't want to hear it.

And so it's interesting, because you see the kind of, like, push-pull within the administration.And this was a running theme throughout the Trump administration, where he would want to do things, he would want to do things very quickly, and it was up to his advisers, people who had been in government a lot longer than he had been, to try to figure out ways to put the brakes on what he wanted to do, or to try to stall him a little bit, because they feared some sort of dire consequence if they actually went along with what he wanted.

And so the significance of that, I think, is just that you—you saw—you could see what you would get by electing someone who had never been in government before, who had never been in politics before, who had never really been exposed to all of these issues, these very serious life-and-death issues that require great deliberation and thought and more than a kneejerk reaction to just say, "Well, we've been there long enough, and it's time for us to get out."

The 2020 Election

Let's scoot up to the 2020 election.As the election is coming closer and the campaign is happening, Donald Trump turns his focus on the war at home.He now defines the enemy, the existential enemy, as antifa and Black Lives Matter and radical socialists.And he uses the tools of the anti-terrorist trade, counterterrorism.He uses the military in Washington at demonstrations, having the National Guard helicopters above and using Homeland Security forces to arrest people out on the West Coast.Talk a little bit about that use of those tactics and this idea of the war at home that he was so persistent on talking about and why that's important.

Yeah.That's important because it was the height of the campaign, or we were getting into the home stretch of the campaign, depending on whether you're talking about stuff on the West Coast or Black Lives Matter over the summer or even after that.But part of it was, Donald Trump was pretty much running or at least attempting to run kind of a fear campaign.And at least when he talked about Black Lives Matter or antifa, the line that he used at the time was that they were coming to take over the suburbs, and that he was the person standing between suburbia as we knew it or the suburbs being overrun by Black Lives Matter, for example, or antifa.

And so that was one issue that he just drove again and again and again to try to score points, if you will, with some of the voters in the suburbs—women, educated women who by that point had started to turn away from him just because of many of his policies.

He also showed that he was not above trying to use the military, for example, to squash these protests that were happening around the country that followed the death of George Floyd in May.People were rightly upset about what happened to George Floyd and had taken to the streets in large numbers.Some of the protests did turn violent.There was looting, fires, that sort of thing.But for the most part, people were just exercising their First Amendment rights to protest and to make their feelings known.

And the example, probably the best example is what happened in Washington, when troops from all—security police from all different agencies in the federal government forced some protesters out of Lafayette Park, and then the president walked across the park and held up a Bible outside of St. John's Church, which is the church of the presidents.So, you know, he showed that he was just not above using the—the levers of government that were at his disposal to present himself as this kind of strong law-and-order kind of candidate.And both of those things, I think, tied together: the antifa coming to take over the suburbs—"I'm saving the suburbs for you"—and "I'm the president of law and order," which he actually declared at one point.

And the consequences of using those tactics is what?

It leads to more mistrust of the government.If you see people who are, again, just exercising their right to protest, walk down the street in a group, hold up some signs, chant whatever it was they were—they happened to be chanting at that time, and then all of a sudden police are throwing tear gas or flash bangs or some of the other things they used that day to clear the park, you have to sort of question and wonder why.Why is the government doing this?These people have a right to be in the street.And so that just breeds more distrust of not only the government, but also of the law enforcement.

… His claims about the election was stolen, before the Election Day, that the election could be or would be stolen, and then afterward that it was stolen.How did the distrust of government that we've been talking about for the past hour and 20 minutes, how did the distrust of government play into that?Why did his supporters believe him when he made these statements that seemed to be so outrageous, especially when Republican authorities state after state were claiming that indeed there was no election fraud?

That's a very good question.They just took his word, seemed to take his word without— without question, even though, as you say, there were numerous Republicans state officials around the country who were standing up and saying there was no fraud here, there was nothing wrong, this election was aboveboard and fair and square.Donald Trump seems to have or had, and still has to a degree, some type of very inexplicable hold over his supporters.And I think that manifested itself, obviously, on Jan. 6 when they went up to the Capitol to try to overturn the election, to keep him in office. …

Was he cleverly using fear and the distrust of his supporters in the government that had been—that he had helped increase the heat on that had been growing for 20 years?

I think some of it was fear, certainly, because this goes back to the campaign where he talked about, again, like he was the only thing standing between the suburbs as you know it or being overrun by antifa.He talked a lot about socialist Democrats, quote/unquote "socialist Democrats," and you don't want them coming in and taking over.He talked about his immigration policy at the border and keeping the borders closed and keeping illegal, undocumented people out of the country.

So all of it did, I think, lead to a certain fearmongering on his part, if you will.You know, he was the one who that was going to preserve the United States, preserve the U.S. in ways that someone like Joe Biden, in his words, would not, right?The country would fall apart if you elected Joe Biden.But if you kept Donald Trump in office, everyone would be safe, your 401(k)s would be skyrocketing, we would get out of these endless wars, that kind of thing.

So there definitely was a fear aspect to all of it, yes.

And the Jan. 6, once again, to some extent a natural outgrowth of the frustrations, the fears, people's disbelief in the ability of the institutions to accomplish what they have said that they can accomplish is something that had been growing for 20 years?

Yes.I think definitely you could say that.It was—it was kind of a culmination of two decades of mistrust, growing mistrust in the government, feeling like the government doesn't listen to you, that your voice, that your opinion doesn't matter, and here along—here came Donald Trump, and he's listening to me, and if he's not reelected, then who's going to listen to me?So we've got to do everything we can to keep him in office.And so off they went to the Capitol to try to do that.

What Biden Inherits

So the country Biden inherits, is this country a weaker country than before 9/11 as seen by the world?Does the world view America much differently in 2021 than it did back in 2001?

I think the world does look at the United States a lot differently now than it did back in, just after 9/11.But I would also say that I think the worldview of the United States is changing, is beginning to change under Joe Biden.He is engaging with countries again.Diplomacy is back.One of the first things that President Biden said at one of his events at the White House recently, he had an event with foreign leaders.It was a Zoom event with some foreign leaders, and he declared that America is back.So it may take some time, but the view, the world—the way the world looks at the United States will change once again, because the U.S. is no longer inward, as inward as it was under Donald Trump.President Biden, for example, has rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement.You know, he wants to bring Iran back into the Iran nuclear deal.And he's reaching out and engaging again, which was not something—we didn't see a lot of that under President Trump.

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