The FRONTLINE Interviews

Jonathan Martin

Co-author, This Will Not Pass

Jonathan Martin is a senior political correspondent for The New York Times. He also serves as a political analyst for CNN and is the co-author, with Alexander Burns, of This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future.

The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on April 28, 2022. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Lies, Politics and Democracy

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Trump’s Initial Claims of Fraud in the 2020 Election

So let's start that moment after the election, in the early-morning hours, when Donald Trump comes out to address the press and says, "Frankly, I did win the election."Can you bring us into that moment, and how important it is, how consequential it is for everything that would follow?

Well, you have to understand that his aides were saying to reporters in the days leading up to the election that President Trump was going to declare victory.So it was not a secret that when the early votes came in from same-day voting, and before the mail-in ballots were tabulated, that the then-president was going to declare victory.Now, it wasn't clear if that was going to happen at 10:30 at night or 3:00 in the morning, but that that moment was likely.

So I can't say that were surprised to see it.But of course the brazen nature of what he said in that appearance in the White House, and the fact that he did it in the White House itself, is still striking to even think about with the period of perspective now, looking back.

It's interesting that you say that it wasn't a surprise, because what we're interested in is the decisions that the people are going to make and how are they going to respond to it.And especially inside the Republican Party, why were they not ready for that moment?Were they taken by surprise, or were they prepared for what he would come out and say?

Well, there was probably some hope among Republican lawmakers that the president would act more responsibly.That was a mistake on their part, to have that hope.All they had to look at was precedent to sort of know what was the more likely scenario.When the president's prospects seemed dim, they had to have known he was not going to accept that.He's never accepted defeat, has always found some excuse for that, going back before his career in politics even.So it shouldn't have come as a surprise.

Look, I think that there was a lot of wish casting by leading Republicans about President Trump throughout his candidacy and then his presidency.There was always this hope that, OK, now he'll be responsible; now he'll adhere to norms; now he'll stay within the guardrails of the American political tradition.And they should have known better.If they had known anything about this man's career and his conduct and who he is, that he was not going to do those things.And so on those early-morning hours after the election, it should have been utterly predictable for Republican lawmakers that they were about to have to have a crisis on their hands.

And can you help me also with that other man who's in the room and who's going to be a key player in everything that would play out, which is Mike Pence?

Yes!

Who is he at that moment, after Trump makes—

Right.Vice President Pence is sort of playing the two roles that he played throughout the Trump presidency and is playing in the aftermath of the Trump presidency, which is trying simultaneously to be a good lieutenant to the president, who really resurrected his political career, who put him on a trajectory to the vice presidency that he was very unlikely to reach under any other nominee for president.

But at the same time, Pence is trying to stay within the guardrails that the president never stays within, because Pence is a more conventional political actor.He's a traditional, conservative, Christian right-type conservative.And so he was willing to, I think, not concede defeat that night, but of course Pence was never going to use the kind of language that Trump would that night because that's not who he is.

So he was trying to find that balance between not angering Trump, being loyal to Trump, but at the same time, echoing in softer language what Trump was saying.And that attempt to be all things to all people, to try to sort of walk that balance beam, would ultimately prove impossible for Pence, because we know what happened when Jan. 6 arrived.He couldn't please two masters.He had to make a choice.

Response from the Republican Leadership

… And then the other big question for us, there's a period there that's a day, maybe two days, where it's Trump; it's Don Jr.; it's Alex Jones.And, by the end of the week, you start hearing more Republican voices coming out—Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham and others.

… There is this remarkable moment that week, after the election, so it was that week after Tuesday, where Don Jr. goes on Twitter and essentially calls out Republican lawmakers for their silence and asks, "Where are your voices?Why aren't you speaking up about this purportedly stolen election?"And boy, did that get attention.I think a lot of ambitious Republicans saw that message, and they came a-running.And that's a key moment in this, where the president's son says, "We're watching.And we know who's speaking up and who's being silent."And I think that put enormous pressure on the Republicans in Congress, people like Tom Cotton, people like Lindsey Graham, who did then speak up.

And how consequential a decision—I mean, they may not have even realized they were making a consequential decision.But how consequential a decision was it for senior Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton to come out and to be amplifying this?

It was significant, and it sort of gave—it gave President Trump, obviously, a bit of latitude in his own party.Look, I think back to this period, and I recall my conversations with Republican sources, and even their public comments, and there was this sense of, "Let's explore legal options.Let's count all the votes.Let's do a recount if necessary.And let's just make sure.And let's—you know, that's OK.We'll make sure that this was all on the up-and-up, and then obviously President Trump will concede, and we'll swear in President Biden," because of course, that's what defeated presidents do after a recount or after a vetting of the ballots of some kind.They do the honorable thing, and they do the American thing, and they concede defeat, and they move off the stage.

Again, a flawed assumption by Republican lawmakers who should have known that this president was not going to act in that tradition.They had all of the evidence in the world from the last four years to recognize he would not leave gracefully if he was defeated.And I think by giving him that latitude of pursuing recounts and checking the votes and such, it was all for him license to challenge the election in ways that were wildly out of step with any American-style political recount.

A good example of a character from your book who sort of embodies that is Lindsey Graham.Can you describe what role he saw for himself and what it was that he thought that he was doing in that period?

So what you have to understand about Sen. Graham is he's somebody who relishes political combat.He really enjoys being in the arena.And there's days where he likes cutting deals with the opposition to get pieces of legislation done, and there's days where he is a more partisan figure and enjoys going after Democrats.The common thread: He likes being in the mix.He wants to be in the room.And I think President Trump didn't have a lot of experience in Washington, to put it mildly, and I think Sen. Graham saw President Trump as his opportunity to get in the room.I can be this fellow's Sherpa on Capitol Hill.I can sort of explain to him how Congress works.He is kind of—has a similar sensibility to me.He's a jokester, likes to play golf, likes to kind of talk s---, to be totally candid about it, and this could work.

And the upside for Sen. Graham was, it would make him a player once again and get him in the rooms where he probably wouldn't have been if he had remained a skeptic of President Trump the way he was during the 2016 campaign.I just raise that because I think that's important context to explain who Graham is and why he's this ally of Trump, by November of 2020.

And so I think Graham's motivation is, after the election, is twofold.It's one, I want to sustain my relationship with President Trump.He'll still be a consequential figure in the Republican Party, and I want to try to use my relationship with him to get him to eventually do the right thing.

And it was obviously easier for him to perform the former rather than the latter.He certainly was able to stay his relationship, but of course he was never able to kind of land that plane because President Trump didn't want to land the plane.He was never going to concede.It's just—it's not who he is.And Graham tried.He—he doggedly came up with ideas about how he could get Trump to concede.We have a scene in the book where he is talking to Trump on the phone about a week after the election, and he tells Trump he ought to do a Schwarzenegger-style Tweet, "I'll be back"—although I guess Trump wouldn't do it in Arnold's voice—but sort of a way to both concede but also to do a wink to your voters and to the media that you ain't seen the last of me.

And I think Graham thought he was being pretty, pretty crafty in coming up with that.And maybe, like for a more conventional figure, it would have worked.But there was just no way that Trump was going to leave the stage, even with a catch line like that, from The Terminator.

But, I mean, Graham is doing that behind the scenes, and he may see that that's what his role is.But publicly he's pushing it.He's even calling election officials.

And this is the recurring theme of Republicans in this period, which is the gulf between their public comments and their private behavior.And this is the thread that runs through much of our book, which is in public, Republicans who want to keep their relationship with Trump are acting in ways that they know are irresponsible but they have to do to sustain their relationship with the president.In private, they are hoping and praying and in some cases trying to work on him, to get him to concede.But at the same time, they're also taking steps to prove their loyalty to President Trump and acting in a fashion that was highly irresponsible.And you mentioned the example of Graham called elections officials.He's doing that so he can tell Trump that he did it because he wants to keep that relationship with President Trump going.

It's amazing.One of the other characters who's going to become really central to this story is Kevin McCarthy, who goes out and says early on … he won the election.

Kevin McCarthy, a real beauty, right?

I mean, and the question is, when he's going out there and he's saying that he won the election, and everybody's listening, "Do not be quiet," does he believe that—

That's a good question.

—that President Trump won the election?What is he doing?

Yeah.

I'm not sure he does believe it.I think he is offering comments that he believes will work in that moment on that network and potentially with Trump listening, and he's trying to rally his fellow Republicans.I don't think he put a lot of thought into what he said.I think he's just trying to figure it out in the moment.

Somebody like that is, and often, in a lot of these cases, start making it up as they go, frankly.But you say something like that, and you don't think about the implications of it, and you are laying the ground for precisely what would happen in the weeks and months ahead.

Another character who makes a different calculation is Mitch McConnell, and he is silent for six weeks.What is Mitch McConnell's calculation?What does he know behind the scenes?And what is he doing?

So Mitch McConnell, publicly and privately, is fixated on retaining the majority in the Senate.He knows President Trump lost the election.He is focused on himself and his political power, and central to that is the two runoffs for the Senate in Georgia that are taking place on Jan. 5, which, after the election, in the weeks leading up to the new year, that was the consequential day on the calendar, we all thought, was Jan. 5, because that was going to decide control of the Senate.

And so McConnell is—that is the driving force in his life in this period.He knows Trump has lost, but he does not want to anger Trump and risk the possibility that Trump could torpedo the Republican candidates in Georgia, and so McConnell chooses silence.He does not acknowledge Biden's victory for a month after the election because he's trying to keep Trump happy.He's trying to placate Trump because he knows that Trump is necessary for GOP turnout in the Georgia Senate runoffs that are coming up on Jan. 5.

Behind the scenes, though, McConnell has engineered a conversation between two other senators, Chris Coons from Delaware, who's a loyal ally and a close friend of President Biden, and John Cornyn of Texas, who's a Bush-style Republican who's close to McConnell.And what the McConnell has the two of them doing is sort of acting as intermediaries in sort of working the Biden camp and conveying [to] the Biden camp, "Yes, McConnell is going to recognize Biden as president.He doesn't want to do it just yet, but of course that's coming."

And then eventually, when the Electoral College meets in mid-December, McConnell uses that finally as his pivot to acknowledge that Biden was in fact elected president.He receives a phone call after he gives a speech on the floor of the Senate congratulating President Biden in that moment.It's heated, it's short, it's profane, and they do not speak again.

McConnell knows that Trump is going to be angry that he did this.But McConnell, at this point, is torn between his determination to keep a Senate majority by retaining those two Georgia seats, and a ticking clock.How long can he wait?How much further can he put off recognizing Biden as the duly elected president of the United States?They are friends.They have had a decadeslong relationship.Joe Biden has come to Louisville to speak at Mitch McConnell's institute at the University of Louisville.Their wives know one another.They served together in the Senate, from 1985 until Biden became vice president in 2009.

So it's not just the fact that McConnell is sort of holding out on acknowledging the next president.He's holding out on acknowledging that his longtime colleague and friend has won the presidency, too.So there's that dynamic as well.

And finally McConnell acknowledges Biden has won, and Trump is furious about it.And now they've got to figure out, they being Senate Republicans, how do we keep Trump on the reservation so that he can go to Georgia and do voter turnout for us to keep these two Senate seats, but do so after a lot of us have already acknowledged that he lost the election?

Let me ask you about one other thing inside that period, because at that time, there's a lot of questions, like what is Trump doing?Is it bluster?Is it actually an attempt to overturn the election?But it seems like McConnell, from your reporting, he has actual knowledge that might be useful in this moment of crisis that he's getting from Trump.

Right.So McConnell, in December, receives a phone call from the then-president, who is telling McConnell and a group of other Senate Republicans, you know, fancifully—but this is Trump; he actually believes it—"If we can just get Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia to overturn the results, we've got allies in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania who are going to follow suit, and they will overturn the results."Now, McConnell and the senators in the room don't believe this.In fact, if you could sort of somehow burrow into their internal monologues, they're probably saying to themselves that this guy has lost his damn mind, and they're counting the hours until he leaves office.

But of course they don't want to say that to him, because they just want Trump to be helpful in Georgia And so they just sit there and listen to this rant about how we can, you know, we the GOP can get these results overturned.And McConnell does not go public with what Trump is saying privately about overturning the election, because McConnell's priority above all else is retaining his power as Senate majority leader, and the only way he's doing that is to get a robust Republican turnout in Georgia and win those two seats on Jan. 5.

The Runup to Jan. 6

Of course McConnell does eventually acknowledge that Biden is the winner.And I guess one of the questions, looking back, is what were the consequences in that vacuum?It's Dec. 1 when Gabriel Sterling [Chief Operating Officer in the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State] says, "Somebody is going to die because of what is going on."The details of the allegations are growing.What is the consequence of those weeks?

The silence enabled President Trump to keep contesting the election with no real pushback from his own party.Now, in fairness, there were individual Republican lawmakers who, at that point, were stating clearly that Biden had won the election and offered their congratulations.But putting out a press release saying that and then going on with your business is wholly different from a public pressure campaign and/or a private pressure campaign to get President Trump to concede the election.And that was not happening.It was not happening among Senate Republicans because they were more focused on retaining their majority in the Senate, and it wasn't happening among a lot of House Republicans, because a lot of House Republicans either believed President Trump did actually win the election or had to fake it because they were trying to keep their constituents happy.

And so there is this sort of collective silence among a lot of Republicans in that period that Trump takes advantage of.I want to be clear here.I still think President Trump would have contested the election and refused to concede defeat even if you had the most vociferous campaign among Republican lawmakers to push him to concede.I think he would have probably blown them off and still contested the election because he's not going to concede defeat no matter how many members of Congress in his own party are telling him to do so.But the fact that there was not such an effort of course made it easier for him to try to overturn the results of the election.

One question that comes back, when you look at this period, is it seemed at points to be a joke to people who are watching.And there's Rudy Giuliani, and his hair dye is coming down, and Sidney Powell, and there's the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference.And it seemed like it—it seemed sort of almost a humorous end to Trump.But how serious were they inside the White House about what they were doing?

… This is a recurring theme of the Trump era, how seriously to take it.And in our book, we had so many interviews with Democrats and Republicans alike who personally would interact with Trump and find him amusing, perhaps even charming, and not really a big threat, but more of kind of a blowhard.And I think it was hard for some of them to imagine him as this potentially authoritarian-type figure that he clearly would become in the weeks after the election.

And he was always surrounded by a changing cast of a staff.A lot of them were kind of marginal figures.So for traditional political actors in either party, I think it was difficult for them to summon the kind of concern that a more serious-acting political figure would have demanded.And you can apply this to the weeks after the election.You know, he has these lawyers; he has these advisers who were easily parodied, easily lampooned, kind of born for Saturday Night Live sketches.

And so it elicits kind of more eye-rolls than it does panic.You know, in the book I think we referred to this question as a matter of uncertainty if Trump is more Führer or Friars Club, because he has elements of both.And when you're looking at Sidney Powell, and she's talking about Hugo Chavez, and Rudy's hair dye is rolling down his face, and you've got a person like Jenna Ellis who had been a lawyer in Colorado and fairly obscure, suddenly they're these central figures, well, they're easy to deride.

But it's hard to get nervous about them.And I think that amusement—bemusement—that was sort of collectively held by a lot of political actors who were snickering about who these people were does make it more surprising when Trump keeps contesting the election, and then we get to Jan. 6.How could these people, who a lot of folks in the highest levels of politics, thought were jokers, thought were clowns—couldn't deliver a friggin' pizza, let alone a coup—how could they somehow bring the country to the political violence that we saw visited upon the Capitol on Jan. 6?It seemed unimaginable that such a cast could do that.

But this was the dilemma all along with Trump was how seriously to take his threats.Is he just doing this for TV effect, or is this guy a would-be authoritarian figure?That was a struggle that Democrats and Republicans alike had for all four years of his presidency.

And now that you know what was going on behind the scenes in the room, how serious was it?

It was very serious.And just because Mike Lindell sells pillows on cable news commercials doesn't mean he's not pushing for what's effectively a coup in American presidential elections.And I think that's the lesson here.Yes, they may be easily lampooned.Yes, they're good fodder for Saturday Night Live.But that doesn't mean you can't take the threat seriously. …

Let me just ask you about Kevin McCarthy in this period and what his role is and who he is in the run-up to Jan. 6 and how he's seen.

Kevin McCarthy is seen among House Republicans as an amiable, hail-fellow-well-met, not deeply ideological, not somebody who's a profound thinker on policy but somebody who knows his members, recalls the names of their spouses, their hometowns, the politics of their districts and their need for money.And so in that sense, he's a pretty effective leader.

But he's somebody who is not taken that seriously, at least in private, by a lot of high-ranking Republicans.He's seen as somebody who is trying to do his best as a pretty affable fellow to corral an increasingly extreme House GOP Caucus.

And what role does he end up playing for Trump in efforts to overturn the election?How do they see him?

What's fascinating about the difference between McCarthy and McConnell is that McCarthy is somebody who is taken with celebrity.He's taken with star power.This is someone who had been in the Assembly of California when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, and he relished being in the rooms with Arnold Schwarzenegger.And now you have a celebrity president.And so McCarthy, he loves being on Air Force One.He goes to Mar-a-Lago.He poses for pictures with Trump.He really enjoys the trappings that come with office, that come with celebrity.

And that is important to him.It matters to this kid from Bakersfield that here he is, on Air Force One, with the president.And he is one of the president's most loyal lieutenants on Capitol Hill during the Trump presidency, and he's an enabler.And that was certainly the case in the weeks after the election, too.

Jan. 6 and the Aftermath

So let's go to Jan. 6, because I understand that you were there and that some of your reporting was what was going on.And so let me just start with saying, what was it like inside?Because we know what was going on outside.And we know that the president was singling out people like Liz Cheney and Vice President Pence.And what was it like to feel that inside the Capitol as it was happening?

We didn't know it was happening.And we were alerted to the incursion into the building by texts from friends and relatives and from tweets that we were seeing on our phones.I'll just tell you my story, and I'll try to be fast about this.So I was in the Senate.And I was in the Senate press gallery, which is the terrace overlooking the floor of the Senate.And there is a warren of desks and old payphones up there.And I am typing a story, or the first makings of a story, that never turned out to actually run in that warren of desks, away from the actual gallery overlooking the floor itself.

And I hear a colleague walk back in through these sort of bar-style doors, saloon-style doors.And he says, "They pulled Pence from the chair."What that means is, Pence's Secret Service detail physically walked up to the dais of the Senate and removed the vice president from presiding over the Senate.That does not happen unless there's an emergency taking place.

As soon as I heard those words from my colleague—it was Paul Kane of <i>The Washington Post</i>, who's got a Philadelphia accent, but I can still hear him saying that, thinking back to that moment—I closed my laptop, and I raced over to those saloon doors, and I went out onto the Senate gallery, which is about three or four sort of balcony-style rows overlooking the floor of the Senate behind the dais.And I saw a combination of plainclothes and uniformed Capitol Police against the back walls, their arms sort of moving down to where their guns were.And I knew at that point something was going on.The next few minutes are kind of a blur.I'm getting texts from my wife.I'm seeing tweets that the Capitol is being overrun.I know something serious is obviously happening, and you can just—over to watching the floor.And it's rare that the entire Senate is on the floor at the same time, but they were for this historic moment, because they're obviously about to ratify a contested election.So all 100 senators are there.And this is COVID, so they're all wearing masks.

And initially, the decision by the sergeant-at-arms is to move the senators away from the doors, closer to the well of the Senate, so that if somebody does break through a door, presumably the police officers can restrain them.But after about a couple of minutes of 100 senators being sort of herded together close to the well of the Senate, they realized that's not realistic, and that they have to get them out; they have to evacuate.

The order is then given to the senators to evacuate to the basement of the Capitol, at which point they will be given instructions on where to go.Thankfully, security officials turned up at us in the gallery and similarly said, "Go to the basement.Go to the basement."I ran back into grab my laptop, threw it in my bag, went to the elevators.I was with a colleague named Nick Fandos at <i>The New York Times</i>, and he had the sense of mind to hit a button on the elevator that effectively creates an express elevator, where you skip all the floors and go straight to the basement, because the gallery is on the third floor of the Capitol.

And so we went straight from the third floor of the Capitol into the basement and avoided the risk of the elevator door opening on the mob.We got to the basement, came off of the elevators, and I will never forget that moment, because I saw Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont being sort of rushed by uniformed Capitol Police officers through the corridors of the basement, trying to make him jog.And I got a picture of that.I knew that was something that I should be recording for history.

I then saw a handful of senators—I think it was Lisa Murkowski, Josh Hawley, Kevin Cramer and Dan Sullivan—striding through the basement of the Capitol, and they're saying, "Where do we go?What's going on?"There's uncertainty.And Hawley, Josh Hawley from Missouri, who of course had been one of the ringleaders here to contest the results of the election, is fairly sheepish now.And he says, "They just said go to Hart," which is one of the Senate office buildings.

And I just followed these senators through the tunnels that lead from the Capitol building itself to the Senate office buildings across Constitution Avenue.And I recall there was some sort of gallows humor, some kind of nervous laughter among the senators.But Sen. Murkowski from Alaska was clearly more alarmed, and she put her arm under the arm of Sen. Dan Sullivan, her fellow Alaskan, and she said, "I've got my Marine right here."And what she meant by that, was that she had protection; that her colleague Dan Sullivan, who serves in the Marine Corps, was there with her to defend her in case there was some kind of an attack.And that sobered me.And I realized, I think at that point, what fully was happening.We got to the Hart—

But let me ask you about the reaction.I mean, it's such an amazing moment.The reaction of Lindsey Graham.

So I get to the Hart building.

Because we talked about him before.

Yeah.I get to the Hart building, go up there.So we're in this large room that a lot of your viewers will recall, because it's where historic hearings have taken place over the years, Supreme Court hearings, Iran-Contra, Ollie North.It's an airplane hangar-sized room, and the entire Senate has been herded into this room.And Sen. Graham is there, and Sen. Graham is agitated.He is really upset.And the Capitol Police and the sergeant-at-arms at various points get the attention of the Senate in this secure location that they have been evacuated to.

And they don't have all the facts.They're trying to figure out what is happening in the Capitol, and rumors are flying.And at one point, Graham speaks up, and he interjects and says, basically, "Do what you have to do.This is the seat of government.And use force if you need to," he tells them, in really heated terms."Take back control of the Capitol," he is demanding of the U.S. Capitol Police.

And some of his colleagues in the back of the room, including Sherrod Brown from Ohio, a Democrat, are sort of catcalling him."Sit down, Lindsey."They don't like the idea of him interjecting and sort of trying to push the Capitol Police, who are clearly uncertain as to what's happening, how to proceed.

And then separately, I spoke to Sen. Graham while we were waiting, and he's trying to sort of, in his mind, game out what this is going to mean.And he thinks that this actually offers an opportunity for Biden to heal the country.He tells me, he says, "How can you not like Joe Biden?And this could be an opportunity for Biden.Trump's gone too far.He's going to pay a price for this."And he clearly is disappointed in President Trump's conduct and is hopeful that Biden can heal the country.

It's remarkable that he's even threatening Trump; that Graham, who had been the Trump whisperer, the Trump ambassador, it feels like, in that sense, maybe things are changing.He's going to give that amazing speech.

Yeah.… Later, on Jan. 6, that evening, returning to the Capitol, I picked up what was then just a rumor but I later confirmed it as accurate, that in those hours after the attack on the Capitol, that Sen. Graham had called Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel to President Trump, and effectively said, "If you don't get Trump to send these people home, to cut a video saying, 'Get out of the Capitol; stop this; end the riot,' that we're going to demand, we being the Republican senators, are going to demand the 25th."And he's talking about the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.He's telling Cipollone, "If Trump does not change his tone and take this riot seriously, we are going to turn on him as Republican senators and demand that Trump's Cabinet deem him unfit for the presidency and effectively turn him out of office 13 days before he's due to leave."

It's an amazing, amazing moment with Lindsey Graham.Let me ask you about one thing.Why does the House—because there are so many people who are going to turn in the days that follow, who are going to seem like they're turning on Trump.But this contradiction of that night is the House, a large, the majority of the House Republican Caucus continuing with their objection.What do you make of that in this story?Because we've been confused by that.

I think a lot of Republican lawmakers in the House have become so convinced, and events in the year and a half since Jan. 6 have proven them prescient, that no offense, that no inappropriate conduct, that no anti-American conduct would fully remove the bond that Trump has with Republican voters, and those lawmakers are simply following what they believe is the will of their constituents.They're not being leaders; they're being followers.And they want to keep their seats and avert a primary challenge, and so they stay in line.And they stay in line even after they've seen the Capitol overrun, after they've been evacuated, and after they've seen images of police officers being beaten, in some cases to near death.

And that's a testament to the grip that President Trump has on the party, but it is most vividly rendered in the House, where you've got a lot of lawmakers who come from conservative districts, where the only impediment to their reelections is the primary.And to win the primary, you've got to stick with Trump.And I think that explains everything about why they came back after the riot and still voted to contest the election.

On the other side, Mitch McConnell that day—and I think you run into him.And how does he see—

So going back a little bit—and I'll be fast about this.So McConnell does not want the results to be contested on the Senate floor on Jan. 6.And going back to December, he has a conference call with Senate Republicans to try to head this off.It's not going to work.Don't bother.It's just going to create headaches for all of us.But Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz clearly don't listen to that, and they ensure that the results will be contested in the Senate the same as they were in the House.So McConnell loses that argument with his own lawmakers.

So McConnell is already upset about that.He does not want this being contested at all.He gives a fiery speech on the floor of the Senate before the Capitol is breached, saying that American democracy would enter into a death spiral if the results of the election were contested every four years in this fashion.Then the Capitol riot takes place, and McConnell and his fellow GOP leaders are evacuated to Fort McNair, a military installation near the Potomac River.

When they come back to the Capitol that night, McConnell is even more angry than he was earlier in the day and has done some work in the meantime, and he's flipped a handful of the Senate Republicans who were going to vote to contest the election, and they have now changed their minds in the wake of the riot.

So McConnell has seen his Senate majority come to an end on Jan. 5.He's seen the Capitol that he has revered for his entire adult life trashed on Jan. 6.And he believes he has seen a soon-to-be former president disgrace himself and the party in a way that's going to leave a lasting stain on the GOP and frankly, on the country.And so that's McConnell's mindset as he leaves the Capitol late on Jan. 6, early in the morning, Jan. 7.

But there's something else he has in mind: opportunity.McConnell sees Trump as thoroughly "discredited," to use the words that he used early on Jan. 7.As he was leaving the Capitol, I spoke to him.He believes that Trump, once and for all, has gone too far; that the party will move on, the country will move on.And if he dares try to keep control over the party, he's going to whip their ass in 2022 in every election.And he invokes the 2014 election, when he stopped the far right from winning a series of primaries in his effort to take back control of the Senate that year.

And so he thinks this is a moment of opportunity.He feels, he tells me "exhilarated" by what has happened here, because McConnell loathes Trump, and he's loathed him for sometime.And now he believes Trump, for once and for all, is going to be gone.And it's not going to be a matter he has to worry about anymore.He can wash his hands of Donald Trump at this point.

I mean, it's a remarkable moment.And it's a remarkable moment when you look at that timeline, and something else that you report on, which is this Jan. 10 call with Kevin McCarthy and what's going on in the House.And how is McCarthy seeing this moment internally with the top leadership that he's talking about?

What is so revealing about the audio of McCarthy in those days is just he's clearly anguished about what had taken place in the Capitol, and about the risk it could happen again.There could be more bloodshed and violence.And he is fearful that his own members could prompt more violence, and so he's trying to figure out how to sort of take things down, how to cool—cool emotions.And he's just casting about.He's casting about: "What can we do?Is the 25th Amendment an option to remove Trump from office?You know, are the House Democrats going to impeach him?Shall we tell them," as he now memorably says, "Shall we just go to him and say, 'You should resign to head off impeachment'?"He doesn't know what to do.He is panicked in this moment.

And he's panicked both for the Capitol building itself and lives of his lawmakers, but he's panicked about the politics at the moment, too."What should I do?How should I respond?"There's huge pressure on him to take a tough stand on Trump from a lot of donors and from some of the more traditional members of his caucus.But at the same time, he's hearing from hard-liners in his caucus who don't want him to point a finger at Trump, and so he's looking for a way out.

… I mean, the other thing about Mitch McConnell and his view of that is that starts on, I think, the 11th.I mean, these things are all happening in that short period of time.And what does Mitch McConnell see as the Democrats are talking about impeachment?What is he telling his advisers when he meets with them?

The weekend after Jan. 6, McConnell has gone back to Kentucky, and he's watching more coverage of the 6th, and he's hearing from his colleagues, and he's talking to longtime friends and advisers.And his mood is similar to what it was the night of the 6th, that here is an opportunity.We can use this moment to get rid of President Trump, wash our hands of this figure, retain the sort of Republican Party before Trump existed that obviously McConnell knew so well.

And he has lunch.McConnell has lunch on Monday in the office of a longtime adviser of his.And over Chick-fil-A sandwiches, he's talking to a handful of close advisers, and McConnell says, "The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us."And what he means by that is, the House Democrats are going to do a snap impeachment and that once that happens, McConnell can gather the votes in the Senate to convict President Trump, and then subsequently ensure that Trump can't run for office again.

And I think the assumption there that McConnell has made is that there is the will in his caucus.He believes he could get the votes necessary, 17 votes, to convict President Trump, because he thinks that the rest of his caucus is willing to go public where he wants them to go.And in the weeks that follow, he realizes, like Kevin McCarthy realizes, no, there's not the will.Yes, it's a little easier in the Senate because they serve six-year terms, and it's a tad more establishment-friendly and anti-Trump.

But still, the Republican Party has been taken over by Donald Trump, and there's not going to be the votes necessary to convict President Trump on impeachment.And once McConnell realizes that, and that becomes clear to him, he does not push the issue.He lets his members make the decisions on their own as to whether or not to convict, and does not place a thumb on the scale.And in fact, he hears about what could be an escape hatch, which is this constitutional argument that you can't impeach someone who's out of office.And I think he sees that as an opportunity for people like himself, who despise President Trump, who were appalled at what happened on Jan. 6, to not take the tough political vote to convict President Trump, but to hang the decision on procedure rather than the substance of the articles of impeachment.

Let's go back to Jan. 11 and just step back and see what that moment means.As you have McCarthy, who's skeptical about Trump, and you've got McConnell, and there may be a political reality that's going to determine what is going to happen, but I just want to understand what the choice is about the moment, because also we keep talking about Trump and what Trump is in the party and the relationship between them.But it seems like there's something bigger at stake at that moment for the Republican Party when they're making this decision about how to respond to Jan. 6.What is at stake, and what is that moment of decision?

When I think back to that weekend after Jan. 6, I think of a similar couple of days in GOP politics, and those were the days after the Access Hollywood video leaked in the fall of 2016.They are so similar, because in both cases, you had the Republican leaders, the old guard, the pre-Trump figures, who see something that initially appalls them, but pretty soon after it appalls them, their minds turn to political possibility, and they think, OK, this is the one.This will do it.This is going to be it.This will discredit President Trump, and we can safely walk away from him.There's no way that he can survive this.And I think, in both cases, that's the thinking.They don't have the imagination at that point to recognize that this stuff, as bad as it may seem to them, just does not move Republican voters like it moves them.And in both cases, they realized pretty soon after that their view was not shared by a lot of their voters.

Liz Cheney’s Stand Against Trump

And when they explain their decisions, presumably, they're explaining them in terms of a political reality.But, I mean, my question is, was it a choice?We know—we can talk about Liz Cheney if we have time, but did they have a choice of how they were going to respond in that moment?

They did have a choice.Yes, they did have a choice, and they could have made a decision to try to lead their caucuses in a way that would have required some measure of political courage and some daring.And I think they had a window to do that, and they chose not to.And I think it's simplistic to say that if they had only shown courage in that moment, President Trump would be gone forever.That's kind of a fairy tale.

Look, if they had condemned and confronted Trump and convicted him, Trump would have not gone away.He'd still be a major political force.There's no question about it.I think the concern in 2016 was the same as the concern in those days after 2021, which is, what would a radicalized Trump that we shun, that we excommunicate, would he become a kamikaze pilot in a political sense and effectively try to undercut the party?Would he create his own party, sort of a third party Trumpist party?I think those concerns were always relevant because he has this following.

And so I think that yes, there was little courage to be found among GOP leaders in those days, but it's not clear to me that if they had gone after Trump that he would have somehow been erased from the political landscape.And let's talk about Cheney, because I do want to do that before I go.

Yeah.There was one question, and it sort of goes to Cheney, which is, when you talk to people about those decisions, or you talk to them about those decisions, is democracy on their—?Because you talk to Liz Cheney, and she says, "This is about democracy.This is about the system.This is about the Constitution."Is that part of their decision-making for a McConnell?

I think McConnell does factor that in.I think McConnell's view is that American democracy is healthier than people who were concerned about Trump assume it is.McConnell has said time and time again, in public and private, "This country has survived a lot.We had much more serious times and serious threats than this, including the Civil War.We'll be OK.We'll survive this."That's McConnell's sort of view of the Trump era and of these sort of heated and polarized times.He just is not as alarmed about it as a lot of people are on the left and, frankly, a lot of people in his own party are, including Liz Cheney, who, starting on Jan. 6, goes down a path that pushes her further and further from McConnell.

So let's talk about that.Obviously she votes for the impeachment.She's outspoken.And Kevin McCarthy chooses to go to Mar-a-Lago and to meet with Donald Trump.What is that tension between them?How does it develop, and what does it reflect inside as a choice of the party?

Well, Liz Cheney was the third-ranking Republican at this point in January of 2021, but she chooses to vote for impeachment, which obviously is a break from Kevin McCarthy at that point.But Kevin McCarthy, I think, was willing to accept that, because there were nine other House Republicans who also voted for impeachment.But there's someone who was not willing to accept that, and that's President Trump.And of course he's enraged that 10 Republicans in the House would vote to impeach him.

And so almost immediately after that vote, McCarthy is starting to do damage control.How do I keep President Trump on my good side, but also, you know, I don't totally anger the 10 of my colleagues who voted to impeach him?And what's key to walking that fine line for Kevin McCarthy is the 10 Republicans willing to stop talking about President Trump and not talk about impeachment.Drop Jan. 6.Forget.Put in the memory hole the effort to overturn the results, and just move on, and get on message, and talk about Joe Biden.

And most of the 10 are willing to do that, or at least a good number of them.Liz Cheney is not willing to do that.She has been deeply moved by the events of Jan. 6.She believes that President Trump represents a clear and present danger to American democracy and that he shows no remorse about what happened on Jan. 6, and she is not going to stop talking about it.She will answer the questions.She will not drop the issue.

And I think, as the weeks go on, and she keeps talking about it, McCarthy and his lieutenants, like Steve Scalise from Louisiana, his No. 2, they come to recognize that this is not sustainable.Our whole strategy is to just stop talking about Jan. 6, focus on the new administration, and just hope we can take advantage of being the kind of—being in the minority and criticizing the party that does have power.

A lot of rank-and-file conservatives, though, are angry about Liz Cheney, and they can't stand the fact that she keeps criticizing Trump.So in February, there is a snap vote of confidence in the House GOP Caucus, and Liz Cheney wins it overwhelmingly, in part thanks to Kevin McCarthy.I mean, McCarthy supports her.He wants her on the leadership team.And I think McCarthy, at that point, thinks, of course Liz Cheney is not going to keep talking about Trump and Jan. 6.She will, as a good conservative, turn her fire to Joe Biden.

She does not stop talking about Jan. 6 and President Trump.And we now get into March, and we're going to April, and it's really bothering the House Republicans.And she won't drop the issue.And they all—almost all of them want to drop the issue, and she won't do it.And by now McCarthy realizes this is not sustainable, and we're going to have to dump Liz from the leadership, because she is not willing to sort of fall in line.

And that brings the vote to excommunicate Liz Cheney from the leadership, but effectively from the Republican Party.And she becomes more radicalized, Liz Cheney does, because she can't understand why her fellow Republicans, conservatives, people who value the rule of law, who treasure conservatism, who want to conserve American democracy traditions, the Constitution, she can't understand why they don't view this like she does and why they're willing to put short-term political gain over fidelity to the Constitution.And this leaves her on a political island.

And what does that represent for the Republican Party, for American democracy?More than just the Liz Cheney story, when they make that decision that somebody, that Liz Cheney is not going to be able to be in our leadership and Marjorie Taylor Greene can be in the caucus, what is the decision that they're making?

They're choosing to side with President Trump and the preferences of their Trump-loving voter base, because they believe that that's the short-term play that they have to make to reclaim power and keep their positions.And I think Cheney represents a lot of voters in America who find themselves politically homeless.They're not Democrats.They're certainly not liberals.They generally prefer the free-market traditional conservative values on cultural issues, but they're not Trumpists.In fact, just the opposite.They find Trump abhorrent.

And so you have now this constituency of politically homeless Americans who are reflected by leaders like Liz Cheney, who really have nowhere to go.They're not wanted in the current iteration of the Republican Party, nor do they want to be there necessarily, but they're not going to become Democrats, at least not anytime soon, because they can't stomach the sort of liberal ideology that dominates today's Democratic Party.And so now Liz Cheney is sort of out there on an island all her own.

And you think about Jan. 6, 2022, and there was this remarkable scene that I think you guys should include—I hope you do: Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney sitting on the Republican side of the House floor at the event commemorating the attack on the Capitol.There's a sea of empty seats behind them, and there's nobody there.

In our book, we have this conversation where former Vice President Dick Cheney turns to his daughter, and he can't believe no other Republicans showed up.It's just the two of them.The daughter who defied her party to impeach their outgoing president and her father, the former vice president, long-serving House member, the picture of pre-Bush conservatism, the so-called Darth Vader of the right who was denigrated and belittled by Democrats and the left a mere 15 years earlier, is now sitting there all alone, because the party has gotten away from him that he used to know.

And soon the two of them form this wedding-style receiving line in which they receive these Democrats, like Rosa DeLauro and Sheila Jackson Lee, who were partisans doing battle with the Bush administration, were coming up to Dick Cheney, of all people, and Liz Cheney, his daughter, offering hugs and handshakes and praise for their political bravery.And I think that moment reflects where we have gotten to politically in this country.It's a confused situation where Liz Cheney can be the toast of the left.

It's amazing.I mean, it's amazing, too, because what is at stake in its understanding of Jan. 6, of how the Republican Party—because Liz Cheney, they wanted her to stop talking about it, but talk of election fraud, of Jan. 6 being "legitimate political discourse" inside the Republican Party, right, has continued.And what is the consequence of that for the party?

No, it's a great point, that Liz Cheney's cardinal sin in the weeks after Jan. 6 was that she wouldn't drop President Trump.Well, President Trump's demand of Republicans is that they not drop the 2020 election and that they keep contesting the 2020 election and abet his insistence that it was not legitimate.No, it's fascinating.If you've got one more thing I could happily answer it.If you want me to come back, I can do it again, by the way, if you want me to.

McCarthy, his visit to Mar-a-Lago.What happened there?What did it mean?

Yeah.

It may be the most seminal moment of the weeks after Jan. 6.There's this uncertainty.Everything's up in the air in the Republican Party.What is President Trump's role going to be?Has he now been discredited, or does his retain his grip on the party?And before the month is out, the House GOP leader has gone to Florida, has visited President Trump at his resort there, where he's in a political exile at this point, posed for a picture with the former president.That sends a message that Trump happily conveys by putting out that picture: It's OK.The water is fine.Come on in.We can appear with President Trump again.He's still our leader.He is not to be shunned.And those who would shun him should reconsider.

It's an enormously powerful symbolic moment.And a lot of Republicans in Congress are shaking their heads when they see that picture.They can't understand not just why McCarthy would go to Mar-a-Lago, but why he would pose for a picture that of course would be released by Trump to sort of ratify precisely what the symbolism of that visit suggested.

And there's grumbling.And there's one lawmaker that asks Kevin McCarthy, "Why did you do that?"McCarthy says, "I didn't know he would take a picture."And that tells you a lot about Kevin McCarthy.It was a feeble excuse.He didn't have much to offer.But he did it because he was placating President Trump and placating the hard-right members of his conference who wanted to retain President Trump's leadership in the party, and who Kevin McCarthy needs to be speaker of the House in 2023.

And that's the calculation that McCarthy makes in every turn in the weeks and months that follow Jan. 6: What do I have to do to claim the speakership in 2023, and I will do it.And it really begins with that visit to Mar-a-Lago at the end of January 2021.

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