The FRONTLINE Interviews

Lisa Desjardins

Correspondent, PBS NewsHour

Lisa Desjardins is a journalist who covers Congress for PBS NewsHour. She was in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when it was attacked.

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE's Gabrielle Schonder on Jan. 12, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

Trump’s American Carnage

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Lisa Desjardins

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Trump and the Republican Party

Let me begin with the very beginning of the story, which is back to the 2016 campaign, for a moment, and the insurgent candidate that is Donald Trump.… I’m thinking this is around the time of the convention.So this is the old-guard Republicans have decided to step back.Cruz has that dramatic moment at the convention: Will he or won’t he?And then ultimately some of the figures we’re talking about today, Mitch McConnell and others, decide to go all in.What do they see?What are they responding to in the political atmosphere of 2016?

Yeah.Donald Trump was definitely not the candidate that most Republicans in Congress, certainly not congressional leaders who were Republicans, wanted to be the nominee.They were OK with mavericks, but Donald Trump was too far outside of the boundaries for them.And in fact, he had attacked the establishment again and again, beginning with John McCain, their former nominee.And this was very unsettling to some Republican leaders at the Capitol, people who had been around a long time.

As the convention approached, just a week and a half before the convention or so, Trump tells the people organizing the convention he doesn’t even want Mitch McConnell speaking at the convention.He’s not sure he wants Paul Ryan speaking, speaker of the House, former vice presidential nominee.This is how much Donald Trump is pushing back at the establishment, and they knew it.But the establishment also knew something else: that no one else had the same kind of momentum, the same kind of enthusiasm and fire that Donald Trump was drawing for the Republican Party.The Republican Party had had problems for many years because it was divided between trying to reach out to new groups of people—younger voters, Hispanic voters—or was it going to try and become a party with just a smaller message that was a nationalistic message?And for years the party had said, no, we need to reach out; we need to grow; we need women; we need more minorities.Here was Donald Trump going the other way, nationalistic, and it was working.And party leaders got on board.

We now sort of talk about this moment historically and with a lot of insight as though there were choices for the Republican establishment, and I wonder if you think they had choices then.

For another nominee?

Not for another nominee, just about how to go—did they have to go all in on Trump, or was there—you know?

… They were not all in on Trump.You didn’t see Paul Ryan holding large rallies for Donald Trump.And in fact, in October, when the <i>Access Hollywood</i> tapes came out, that was a monumental test for Republican leaders.And in fact, for the first time Paul Ryan makes it clear, he is making a public statement that he is unhappy with, he condemns what he hears in the tape.

So Republican leaders were trying to walk a fine line.And the truth is, behind the scenes, they were hoping that here is Donald Trump, the showman.Once he gets in office, he’s going to work with us.I remember talking to sources in January after—around the time that President Trump was coming into office, and he was speaking with House leadership and House staff, and House Republican leaders at the time were hearing how little knowledge he had, the incoming President Trump, about basics: how the Constitution worked, separation of powers.They felt they had to give him a basic tutorial on the differences between the branches.And this—those—some of those that I was speaking to, some of my sources were saying this gave them hope that President Trump would have to lean on House Republicans.He would need their knowledge to become a strong president.

I remember my sources telling me this, and I remember, having covered the Trump campaign, thinking, wow, I don’t think you know this guy.He’s going to be in charge.He’s not going to lean on you at all.He’s going to do whatever he wants to do.

So there was a calculation where Republican leaders were hoping that Trump would have to lean on them and get their support to legislate.They completely missed everything he was saying in the campaign, which was, I am the one in charge; I am the one who calls all the shots.

And I am running against you all, the establishment; you are the problem.

Yeah, that’s right.He was very clear.In his inaugural address, he said, clearly, the establishment has let you down, America; their victories are not your victories.So he was really speaking to Americans outside of both parties, and he was taking on both parties in his rhetoric, including his own.

It seemed he was drawing a line, whether they saw that or not.

… When you now think back about the inauguration speech—and we may not get to this—but what do you think about that anger and that callout?

… Looking back on that first inaugural speech from President Trump, it really reads differently to me now than when I first heard it.He said clearly, the establishment is not here for you.He said, their victories are not your victories; they are not here to protect you.And at the time, of course, that made—it was a populist sentiment: Washington has let everyone down.But now, after everything that happened at the Capitol, I read that, and I really see the seeds of militantism and really trying to raise anger at our institutions in a way that we saw the repercussions of years later.

Understanding Mike Pence

Did you ever cover Pence when he was a congressman?

I did.I did cover Pence when he was in Congress, yep.

I just wonder if you could very quickly help me understand how different, when he’s selected as the vice president by the campaign, how stark of a difference there was between Trump and Pence.And what did Pence offer?And if you happen to know this, what do you think he got out of the relationship?

That’s harder because I haven’t really covered him since he’s been vice president, so I can speak to that sort of guessing and talking with people at the Capitol who know him.Oh, wow, the difference between Mike Pence and Donald Trump, it’s almost like the difference between a volcano and a large field of grass.Like, it’s so night and day.Mike Pence is quintessential Washington politician who comes from the Midwest, who didn’t really like Washington.He never really liked Washington, but he liked the job; he liked being in Congress; he liked governing.And he had Midwestern values.Above all, that includes being polite.And he was the consummate politician who was not going to make enemies when he was in Congress.Very conservative values.He definitely disagreed strongly with Democrats, but he was not the kind of Republican who made a lot of enemies or went out of his way to make enemies when he was in Congress.

He was someone who cared a lot about his family.He was very focused on his faith, a classic conservative Republican from the Midwest.Could not be more different than the kind of Republican Donald Trump was, who came to crash through Republican establishment ideology and hierarchy, who didn’t really want anyone’s advice, didn’t really need anyone to be his best friend, didn’t care about being polite, said whatever he wanted, wasn’t careful, versus Mike Pence, who was very careful in every word he said.

So to some, that was an ideal combination.They balanced each other out; that Donald Trump really needed Mike Pence and that Mike Pence needed a little more flash, and Donald Trump gave him a lot more flash.They’re both very ambitious men; that’s what they have in common.And they’re both also very hardworking men; they’re very driven.

So those two goals together with these two polar opposite personalities was a very strong combination for Republicans.

What Republicans Misunderstood

I wonder if I can go back to those early moments in the administration that you were saying before, about the expectations that the president would rely on House leadership, or I should say congressional leadership for—

It was wild.I just couldn’t believe it, yeah.

—kind of those history lessons or civics lessons.Their view of the president during this time period is that he would serve as a pen, that perhaps he would be, in many ways, the answer for a lot of Republican causes.And I wonder, thinking back about this time period, what did they underestimate about the base in that equation?We sort of talked a little bit about that, the seeds of anger that were out there that he references in the speech, but that base seemed to want to raze Washington, and that wasn’t exactly Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell’s specialty.

Right.You know, one of the disconnects for Republican leaders when President Trump came into office was that they thought they understood Trump voters and they thought that Trump voters would want to follow their leadership; Trump voters would understand that Republican leaders had their best future in mind, and their legislation on taxes is something that Trump voters would love, and these kinds of things that Republican leaders had been talking about for years.They thought that Trump voters would understand why it was all so great.

But in reality, what Republican leaders missed is that Trump voters were really angry at them as well and that Trump voters didn’t trust anyone who had been in Washington for a long time; that they were motivated by a few very core issues that had to do with their sense of losing what they believed was important in America, and that includes immigration.

And the truth is that Paul Ryan had been open to immigration reform.So had Mitch McConnell, you know.And they didn’t understand that the president’s base voters, for them that was an existential threat, the idea of a more diverse—more immigrants in this country.And that led to some uncomfortable issues, not just on immigration but on everything.

It’s not that Republican leaders thought they could control Trump voters.I don’t think they ever thought that.But I think that Republican leaders believed that Trump voters would come to see that they were working for them.Trump voters would come along and become loyal to them as well.That was their hope, and that was a miscalculation.For Trump voters, it was about Trump, and it was about Trump’s message.

McConnell and Trump

I wonder if I can ask you a little bit about health care as a case study to what we’re talking about.And I’m talking about the Senate vote at this point.In many ways, Trump believes this is going to be a breeze, it’s going to sail through, and then sort of throws up his hands, like, “Who knew health care would be so hard?”And I’m sort of curious to know if you can help me understand what happens next, which is that the president blames Mitch McConnell publicly, lashes out on Twitter and whatnot.They have this drawn-out feud, or publicly drawn-out feud.And yet McConnell manages to forge a path with the president, and I wonder if you can kind of help me understand after that dust-up, how does he thread that needle?

… The McConnell-Trump relationship was rough, to say the least.But Mitch McConnell knew how important President Trump was to one of his main goals, which was getting conservative judges on benches all across this country, including the Supreme Court.And Mitch McConnell is a very smart politician.I think he understood the Trump base perhaps better than most, and he understood that the Trump base was probably not loyal to him but was loyal to Trump, and he needed them.So what Mitch McConnell did was he very carefully, every time he could, tried to make public statements supporting the president.Either he said something positive or he said nothing after this point in time.And you could tell, Mitch McConnell, this entered a period where McConnell in the hallways was not talking to reporters, and he famously—he made it known: “I’m not going to talk to you in the hallways.”He doesn’t often talk to you in the hallways anyway; it’s part of how he works.

But Mitch McConnell is probably the most disciplined communicator in Washington, and he used that discipline very strategically to try and patch things up with the president, to try and say supportive things as much as he could and say nothing any other time.

Looks like he’s whispering also to that base.

… McConnell and the Trump base is a complicated—that’s complicated.You know, McConnell, he is loved by some in the Republican base, especially the anti-abortion groups, the pro-life groups.They know what Mitch McConnell has done for them.But at the same time, you know, he’s not—he’s never tired to be a charismatic politician.He’s a brain guy.He’s a historian of the Senate.He studies the rules.He sort of thinks of it strategically; he’s a general.And this is an era where everyone wants reality TV, including in their politicians, and Mitch McConnell is like a terrible reality TV show character.He’s not trying to do that.He’s trying to be a lawmaker.So he knows that he doesn’t have that kind of spark that’s going to draw that intangible loyalty that President Trump has.But he does have loyalty among the base, but it just—it doesn’t have the fire to it that the supporters of President Trump have had.

Loyalty to Trump

Let me ask you about Charlottesville, which is another one of these moments that’s so difficult for Republicans to respond to.So I’m asking actually less about the violence and more about the impact on the party.So you see Bob Corker and you see Jeff Flake sort of come out, and others who decry the event, but those two really kind of do the personal attacks on the president, and he attacks back.And I’m sort of wondering what the lessons are to Pence in that moment, to McConnell in that moment, about the dangers of loyalty.

Yeah, you know, that’s right.This was another one of those moments where Republicans again thought, ugh, how could he go this far?How could he say this idea that people behind violence included some very fine people?And surely this is going to be the moment where the party stands up and says, “He’s gone too far.”And then what happens, of course, is the president doubles down, and he lashes back at anyone who’s criticized him.He lashes back at Jeff Flake, in person, in the Senate.Bob Corker.And in that battle, look who wins.President Trump stays in office; his popularity remains about the same overall over the next few months.And instead, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, they’re gone.

And it was a very clear lesson, I think, to Republicans that if you speak out against President Trump, there will be a heavy political cost, maybe the greatest political cost to you.This might end your political career if you speak out against him.

It was a strange time as a reporter, because during that time, there were plenty of Republican senators that would tell you, off record, they had enormous problems with the president.They were very concerned about different things he was saying or doing or his policies.Off the record, they would tell you this.But publicly, they weren’t saying anything at all, most of them.They didn’t feel comfortable.And that snowballed very quickly, and at that point there were some veteran U.S. senators, Republicans, who had been there a long time: Lamar Alexander, Pat Roberts.They had their own heft, their own credentials; they were chairmen of powerful committees.They had the ability to carve out a platform to push back, but the lesson from that time was don’t do it.Just keep going forward, get him to sign your legislation, don’t ask questions.And that’s what they did.

It’s also fascinating.The lesson you and I are not talking about is how far the president could go, I mean, that this was such a new rock bottom.

For Charlottesville?Yeah.I mean, I might not be the right person to ask.I did a big thing on everything the president has said on race.And so the truth is, Donald Trump has said inflammatory things about race for decades.So this was particularly bad because it was a moment of, it seemed, growing crisis for the country, and he wasn’t helping things.He was potentially making them worse.

So in the effect of it, it might have been a low moment for his rhetoric, but I don’t know if it was really even the worst thing he’s ever said, because he’s said a lot.There’s a lot.

That’s right, and certainly Republicans were watching it, and they were witnessing it, and they were deciding to not speak out publicly about it.

Right.I think it really cemented this idea that when we’re under attack, we just have to say we’re right and we have to say they’re wrong.And to some degree, that led to then painting the other side in even, you know, more dark, more inflammatory rhetoric, saying that we don’t just disagree over the president’s words.You heard more and more Republicans starting to say, oh, the left is trying to censor us; this is a free speech issue; we are under attack.That became—that was a fascinating message that happened after President Trump’s response to Charlottesville, that he let it be known that he thought he was under attack, and then quickly afterward you saw many Republicans take that same kind of response and use that same message: “Wait, no, it wasn’t; it’s not them, it’s—.”

And this is a place where we know an extremist had attacked a crowd, but it was Republicans refusing to condemn that who said they were under attack.And that is a message that we hear to this day from Republicans when they are being accused of being inflammatory.They will say that they are being censored, and that has its—that was born from President Trump and the way he handled Charlottesville.

Let me go to a pretty stark moment not too far after Charlottesville, which is—a few months—the tax cuts and the ceremony on the South Lawn and the lavish praise that’s bestowed upon the president.

… Again, I go back to the convention and the elders of the party making lots of warnings about who this guy is, how this campaign was run.We’ve just witnessed Charlottesville, and now we hear at this moment of incredible legislative achievement as a united party, and they are enthusiastic about him.… In short, what is up with that enthusiasm?

I know.Republicans had been waiting decades for a bill like this: $2 trillion in tax cuts.This is Orrin Hatch’s dream.This was the achievement that they had wanted to get from having President Trump in office.So despite all of the discomfort, all of the concern with what was happening after Charlottesville, they wanted to embrace a victory, and this was a big one for them, so you saw senator after senator after House member after House member singing Donald Trump’s praises, giving hugs.It was a literal embrace of President Trump at a time when the truth was, not every Republican was really comfortable with him, but they wanted that bill passed, and it was a very big deal.

It’s fascinating because I’m sort of wondering, again, in sort of looking back from this point, the darkness that we also sort of are seeing in the background in the base and the country and the anger, I don’t know, how out of sync this was.

… Once you get more toward 2020, and we can talk about it later, that some of these Republican leaders were getting threats themselves, right?And so the base starts to turn on them in a way that they were really feeling.But I don’t think that had happened yet at that point.I think it was still sort of like, “Look at what we can do,” and, look at—there was a lot of talk on the Hill at that point about all the regulations that Trump was going to turn back, all the rules that they could turn; all the things that farmers—that were making it hard for them to plant how they wanted to plant, environmental rules that businesses didn’t like.There was a lot of excitement on the Hill about untangling some of those and killing some of this framework of regulation that Obama had put in place.

So there was a lot of excitement about what they thought tangibly President Trump would do.The message from the Trump White House was, we’re winning everywhere; we’re winning all over the place.The reality was that the big wins were harder to get and were taking longer than Republicans wanted, but they still thought they were going to get there.

And there must have also been a relief from Congress, that OK, this is the train we’re on, and look, we’ve got something to show for it.

Yeah, eight years with a president of the other party, which is what Republicans had with President Obama, is tough.You can’t move forward.You become an opposition party.For some members of Congress, the truth is, that’s easier.There’s a lot of ways to divide members of Congress; one of them is people who actually want to do something versus people who just want to push back at the other side and get in a fight.And for those who wanted to get something done, who were Republican leaders, the Obama years were really tough.They couldn’t get much done.Here comes President Trump, and it’s a golden opportunity.So they take it, and they’re excited.But the truth is, there were these big elements, not just in the party but also especially in the House of Representatives, that they really loved getting in a fight.They really loved just pointing out how wrong the other side was.It wasn’t about necessarily moving forward; it was about being right and saying that loudly.

The First Impeachment

Let me jump ahead now to impeachment for a moment.We just talked about Republicans rallying around him on the South Lawn.Now they rally around him in a different way.I think about Lindsey Graham going on the Sunday shows and the way in which those members moved to defend him.What does it tell us?Why did they go along, and what did it look like?You were covering it.

Yeah.So, as impeachment builds up, and it starts moving pretty quickly, you could see that there were a few different camps of Republicans about it.Most all of them were against it, but there were—it was actually complex at the time, I think more complex than people realize.There were different reasons that people had for being against it.There were some—like sort of the Jim Jordan camp, Devin Nunes camp on the House side, those big Republican, sort of like the generals of warfare that they had there—who really felt that this was an assault on the president, and that it was an unfair attack and attempt to remove him that was baseless.So they went into full war mode, which is what they thought was going on on the other end.

There were more Republicans in the middle who slowly were digesting the arguments that were being given and who ended up, after just a few weeks—I remember having conversations with many House and Senate Republicans who said, “I want to hear the arguments; I want to hear all the testimony.”But I remember wondering at the time, from the tone, the way they were talking to me, they didn’t want impeachment to be the outcome.They were looking—it was going to have to be a very high bar, is how I’d say it, for many Republicans to get on board with impeachment.

Now, was that political on their end, because they didn’t want their own president removed?Was that philosophical, because they know how bad an impeachment is for this country?All of that was part of the thinking for Republicans.They were weighing some very difficult issues.I think the vast majority of Republicans who supported the president during impeachment felt either that the arguments were not strong enough or that impeachment was going to be too unsettling for the country and that the crime he was accused of was not worth it.

So while there was politics involved, many more conversations I had with House and Senate Republicans were about very serious concerns and serious questions about the evidence itself.

I know Susan Collins, you know, she probably had the most difficult time of anyone because she was seen as one of the key swing votes, and her process for impeachment is—was intense.I had a lot of reporting on this, but she read, she researched, she read again.She watched all the hearings.I’m not sure anyone processed more than Susan Collins did, of Maine.And that’s her approach to most things, you know.And in the end, I think that she decided that it just—it just wasn’t enough; there wasn’t enough evidence there, and that she had a high bar.And I think that’s where a lot of Republicans ended up.

You know, we can get into the witness question.That’s kind of like a subplot, but it’s hard for me to separate how much was political and how much was substantive, but I think both were in play.I think Republicans were—took it very seriously.I don’t think it was all politics.

I remember Collins at the time saying the president’s learned his lesson, you know, that this is going to be—

Yeah.When Susan Collins said that, when she said, “The president learned his lesson”—you know, I’ve covered Susan Collins a long time.She’s an optimist.She wanted to believe that.And that quote by Susan Collins almost sums up so much of how, especially Senate Republicans, saw the president.They always said: “Oh, well, he’s going to learn, you know.He’s going to—he won’t keep tweeting like this.He’s going to calm down, you know.He’s going to learn his lesson.”But the truth was that they weren’t learning, you know.They hadn’t learned that this is a president who ran by his own instincts, and his own instincts alone, and this was not a president who was going to change.

In fact, he would go to do something nearly identical to this that may result in a future impeachment.Can I ask you about Adam Schiff’s warning in his concluding statements?Do you remember that?

… I was sitting there, and I’d been there for the entire trial and for all of the hearings.And many of us who had been covering it were wondering, how are Democrats going to close this?What is going to be their big closing message?Are they going to really pound after the president?Are they going to be angry?We’ve seen those angry moments.What are they going to do?And it was remarkable to see Adam Schiff, maybe for the first time in the trial, really trying to personally connect with senators.You could watch in that room—and it was astounding to see every senator in their desk for those many hours.And often it felt like the speakers weren’t even really talking to them, but in this moment there was every senator in their desk, and Adam Schiff, you could see him like reaching out with his eyes to individual senators.You could see him looking at Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins sitting next to her and saying: “Please evaluate this evidence.Don’t think about anything else.The evidence here is strong enough.The threat is big enough, you know.You need to vote to convict based on what we’ve told you.”And it was a personal plea.

But I also think, after the way the Democrats had handled the rest of the trial—which had sometimes been pounding; some sources called it bombastic—they hadn’t built up enough good faith from those Republican senators who they needed.And so this argument, which was very eloquent and really came across as authentic if you were in the room, from Adam Schiff, it didn’t have the basis under it that he might have needed. That relationship … with Senate Republicans wasn’t there for him, and it kind of evaporated.

That’s interesting.This wasn’t a case; this was a political battle.

I think so, in the end.I think he—I think that Democrats felt they had so much evidence and they had so much to say about the impeachment case.But I think that senators were very smart; they were paying attention.And I think after the first day or two—I guess I should say after the first day, there was so much repetition that they felt maybe the case wasn’t as strong as Democrats were saying it was.

So in Schiff’s statement he warns them.He says: "You think he’s going to learn, but he’s not going to learn.You guys are going to be fooled on this.This is who he is; this is who the president is."And I’m sort of curious to get your take on now knowing what we know about the call he will later make in Georgia, how will history judge that first impeachment and the senators who voted that way?

I can tell you from the view of a Republican senator how they would hope history looks at this vote, even after everything that’s happened with the Capitol.I think a Republican senator would say—and some of them have said to me—that impeachment is the highest bar, and you may not like a president, you may be scared of what might happen if he’s president, but if he’s elected by this country to be president, removing him requires the highest bar of evidence, and they would say Democrats didn’t meet that bar.So even if there was a fear of a threat later on, if there was concern, what Republican senators would say is there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it and that they were in the right because they just—Democrats didn’t make their case.I think that’s what they would say.

Are there Republican senators, are there Republican leaders who wish Donald Trump wasn’t president?Yes, there are many!There are many.They will tell you that.But they didn’t feel that they could remove him from power.Part of it was politics obviously, but part of it was because removing a president from office is so serious, and they just didn’t feel like the Democrats’ case reached the bar.

And removing a president with that base.

With that base.… I mean, I can’t stress enough—I haven’t really spent enough time talking about this, but there was a point where somewhere mid-2017 into 2018, something was happening in the House of Representatives, where they were realizing that President Trump was the party.And the Senate, it took them longer; they didn’t quite realize this.The House was becoming the party of Trump and really building a lot of their messages around that.Even moderates who didn’t like Trump—I shouldn’t say moderates.Even conservatives who didn’t like Trump were realizing that Trump was the party.

Now, the Senate, it took probably another year, but they got there, and they realized that the Trump voters were keeping them in office and that if they broke with Trump, they would face a primary challenge or they would lose in the general election, and none of them were willing to do it.

That was on their minds during impeachment?

… It’s hard to separate—it’s hard to figure out what was really motivating senators, right, because they were telling themselves, all of them, that they were motivated out of substance and that they were evaluating the arguments, that it wasn’t politics.They were all telling themselves that.They weren’t just saying it to us; they really needed to believe that they were evaluating the substance.

They were taking notes.I remember seeing Lamar Alexander, who was considered a swing vote, right below me in the chamber, taking copious notes the whole time and paying careful attention.

But of course politics was involved, you know.Of course it was.Of course, they realized the kind of mass support that President Trump has across the country, but especially in their states.Most Republicans in the U.S. Senate are from very red states, and they know that—they personally know the power of Trump voters.So while they were trying to evaluate impeachment on substance, politics was in the air for everyone, very heavy, very sharp politics.

The 2020 Election and the Mood in the Country

Let me move on to a little bit later, which is as we’re gearing up and headed towards the election, there are signs along the way that there could be violence coming.And we hear sort of the president say, “I won’t promise a peaceful transition.”There’s the ramping up of talks of fraud on the campaign trail.What was this election season like?What were Republicans doing when all of this was going on?

Well, you know, I think that because of the coronavirus, that’s one reason we didn’t quite understand, I think, what was going on with voters.And it was frustrating as a journalist.I was covering the Biden campaign, trying to get my hands around the real dynamics in the country.But we weren’t traveling.We didn’t want to put people at risk, and very few people were traveling.There weren’t rallies.You couldn’t see who—you couldn’t look at the faces of who was showing up for Joe Biden, because Joe Biden was only having very few events, and there were usually just a handful of people or people in cars. …One reason we underestimated the crowd at the U.S. Capitol that attacked it—I don’t know if I should blame myself for that, but I think that the coronavirus led to a situation where we didn’t really see the true dynamics happening in the country.And I think, for example, if we had a normal election season, with normal rallies, knowing what we know now, it seems clear to me we probably would have seen this tension flare up into violence before it did at the Capitol, you know, on the campaign trail.But there really wasn’t much of a campaign trail.The only one out there was Donald Trump.He still was drawing plenty of people, but there was no tension there.

So because of that, I think that people misunderstood that there was this really extreme and violent element of his support that was taking the words he said and was ready to act on them, and was literally—so much, so often you hear President Trump supporters, and I know so many of them, you know, high-level, random voters, they’ll say: “Oh, you know the president. He doesn’t mean things literally.You know, he’s speaking—he’s a New Yorker.He’s a New Yorker.He talks like a New Yorker.”I think that’s true; he does.I think sometimes he doesn’t mean things literally.However, sometimes he does.And whether he does or not almost doesn’t matter because we know now that his base takes his words literally.

I was at a Trump rally in New Hampshire, one of the last rallies I think before COVID really hit.And it was in Manchester, and I was able to sit with the crowd and not in the penned-off journalists’ section, which was important to me, to kind of be with the crowd.And so I just sat next to some nice people and watched.

I’d been to many Trump rallies, but I noticed this time, sitting with the crowd, they all knew the words to his stump speech, you know, and not just the catchphrases.Like, they knew a lot of the speech.He would stop a phrase, and they would finish it.It was like being at a concert, you know.And it was people from all over.And it was—they had filled an arena.And I walked away from that thinking, wow, I don’t—I don’t know how Democrats beat this.I mean, this is—this is passion at the top.It couldn’t—that crowd could not have been more passionate for Donald Trump.

And I think that him telling those people who believe in him and who have made him a part of their lives and their hopes that he’s under attack, they all feel under attack.And I think that’s when we saw things really get haywire.And he’s told them that.He’s told that, “You’re under attack; you’re under attack by the establishment.”He’s literally said that.

So I think you can’t underestimate the fervor from that base, including now.I think we’re still in a very dangerous time.

I think about “Free Michigan” when you say that.

Yeah.And I think there’s so much we don’t know.I think—I don’t know how we move forward from this time.It’s worrisome.… But after we came back into session after the riot at the Capitol, there was a lot of talk by Republicans and Democrats of, you know, unity and thanking Capitol Police, that kind of stuff, but around 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, you know, the lawmakers, you know, the Democrats said something Republicans didn’t like, and they almost got into a fistfight.And it was like, I couldn’t believe I was sitting there after everything we’d all been through and watching—it was like if you’ve seen a bench clear in hockey, it was like that.The one Republican stands up and is like, “Come on!”And then the Democrats all moved to the center aisle; the Republicans all moved to the center aisle.It’s the middle of the night after we’ve all been under attack, and you’re about to get in a fight with each other?

And when I saw that, when I saw Republicans kind of standing up and being not just defiant but—what’s the word?—trying to start a fight over the election and over the riots that had just happened, and whether President Trump is to blame, it worried me that we didn’t learn a thing, or at least we haven’t yet.

Election Week and Allegations of Fraud

… I wonder if I could take you to election night for a moment, or election week rather.Now, the language about the rigging and the fraud is really coming out of the White House.There’s a moment where folks on the Hill are quiet about this.Then they’re called out by the Trump family members who say, Lindsey Graham, you’d better get out there and defend us.And I bring up Graham again because he goes back out.But others don’t.Others are silent around this time.And I’m curious to hear what you think about what they’re doing by talking about the rampant fraud.What did it reveal, again, about sort of the president’s [hold] over them, but then also those that have chosen to be silent in that moment?

I almost forgot about that.That was a long moment.That was more than a moment; that was like 20 moments.Yeah, that was a long moment, because I remember, every day for weeks, we were asking, especially Republican senators: “Is Joe Biden president-elect?Will you call him president-elect?Don’t you think he’s president-elect?You know, the election has been called; do you believe the election has been called?”And for weeks, we just got silence.

The answer I remember the most was something like: “We want—there are still questions.We want all the questions to play out.We want the legal process to play out,” you know, which to me, what was going on was that they really—a few members of the Senate really believed that there were problems, but most Republican senators just did not want to speak out against President Trump.They—these are all men and women who have been elected in statewide contests.They know when elections end, you know?They knew this.But, you know, it took a long time.It really wasn’t until the Electoral College met in December that you saw the dam break and you saw Republican senators say, quietly, inch by inch, that Joe Biden would be president.

But it led to real problems.It led to the Biden campaign—the Biden transition was not able to get classified briefings that the president-elect needed, and that put Congress in a tricky position.That was the first time you saw Republicans try to inch out against the president, and they tried to thread this very strange needle where they would say: “We think that Biden should get the classified briefings, but we’re not saying he’s president-elect yet; that’s to be determined.But he might win, so in case he does, he should get the briefings,” you know.And that was a clear sign they all knew how this was going to end, but they just weren’t willing to say it yet.

Why?

Because of Donald Trump.They didn’t want to—President Trump so strongly in his bones felt that he had to have won the election; how could he have lost the election?And remember, many of these senators, the president calls them, you know, tells them: “Hey, this is where I’m at.I won the election.You’ve got to help me here.You know, this is not fair.”It was direct pressure from President Trump and indirect pressure from all of his voters in their states who were their voters, who had elected them, that meant those Republicans were not going to come out and say that Trump lost, even though they knew that he did.

Let’s talk about Georgia for a moment, because effectively the president does what he was impeached for previously.He calls Georgia 18 times.He gets through.There’s this phone call that is later released that we all listened to.He’s taking active steps to overturn the election results.Again, Lindsey Graham gets pulled into it at one point and actually makes similar calls.Now it’s about directly threatening democracy.Can you help me understand again sort of how the Republicans on the Hill are navigating this moment?

There was some very deep concern by some Republicans on the Hill about that Georgia phone call, because they recognized that it could easily be interpreted as the president committing fraud.They knew this.Now, there was also a group of Republicans who were trying to find a way to understand it that didn’t end up with the president committing fraud.

The most loyal Trump supporters, when they looked at that call, the best answer that they could give me was that when he meant, “I want you to find over 11,000 votes”—I had, you know, one member, Barry Loudermilk, tell me: “Maybe he meant literally.Maybe he thinks there’s a box of votes somewhere that they should find.”

So, to me, what was going on is that part of the Trump ethos is you are always right, and find a reason to be right, whatever argument you want to make.You’re never wrong; I’m never wrong.And I think with this Georgia call, the Republicans most loyal to Trump automatically said, OK, we’re going to find a way to say that, you know, this was an OK call.We’re going to argue in favor of this call.

The truth is they really—they had a hard time with it.… They had a hard time defending it, and there were growing calls for censure or impeachment because of it.And honestly, if things hadn’t gotten even worse, that is the conversation that we would have had, probably about censure, in one of the chambers at least.

Trump’s Final Efforts to Overturn the Election

Pence I want to bring back into the fold, because it’s sort of this last-ditch effort.The president puts Pence into this new sort of battle, that Pence is the last sort of stand.What could happen on Jan. 6 is up to Pence to do.Knowing what we know about Pence in your lovely history that you gave us about him, can you help us understand the position Pence is in with his own base …and what he decides to do?

I think before Donald Trump came along, Mike Pence is the kind of guy that the conservative base loved.He was sort of a hero of a big part of the base—the folks who homeschool, folks who are evangelical Christians.You know, that was Mike Pence’s base and a core part of the Republican Party.But then Donald Trump comes, and the base shifts a little bit, you know.It shifts to a more emotional group that feels angry.And Mike Pence, who himself was ambitious, has ambitions to become president after Donald Trump someday, you know, knows that he cannot, especially being Donald Trump’s number two, knows he can’t push away that base.He can’t burn bridges with them.

But on the other hand, while Mike Pence realizes the importance of the Trump base, he also is a man who thinks of himself as having very high integrity, of doing what’s right.And that’s the central conflict, I think, about Mike Pence and the Pence family themselves, is that they really try to act in a moral way.They think of themselves as having high values in the big picture and also in the small picture, how they treat people and how they act.

So Karen Pence, for example, we know, was very uncomfortable with Mike Pence joining the ticket with Donald Trump because she sensed that this was not a man who had values; this was not a moral man.And that’s what they stand for.

So here’s this conflict.Pence is a man of integrity, but he has also sworn loyalty to this president who is advancing important goals, and he’s a very loyal man.Both of those two things conflict right there, as he is the man who will be gaveling and overseeing the final certification of the vote saying that Donald Trump lost.

Donald Trump tells him, no, no, you can block this; you’re in charge of the vote.But then again, we come back to this idea that Donald Trump, his understanding of the way that government actually works is not on point.He didn’t really understand what Pence’s role was.Pence knew.Pence knew he couldn’t do it.And so Pence, because he’s a man of integrity, and also because his role was limited, oversaw the vote that ended Donald Trump’s first term in office.

And of course Donald Trump lashes out at him right afterward.

When he tries to do it the first time, maybe we can go to pre-mob for a moment, the president is rallying his supporters, telling him he’s with them, urges them to show their anger, “stop the steal.”

In his speech on the Mall, the president’s speech?

Yeah.Were you there for that?

Yeah, I was in the Capitol.

It seems like he’s activating that base again sort of in a way that we talked about during the lead-up to the election.

Yeah.I think that there’s a lot of different elements to the Trump base, but I think the people who showed up in Washington showed up for a rally that Donald Trump told them was to “stop the steal,” was to stop the normal process of government.This was not a, “Hey, let’s rally around our shared beliefs, you know; let’s rally around four years when we come back, you know, and try again.”This was specifically a rally to stop normal democratic process of U.S. government.It was a rally, “Stop the Steal,” that was intended to oppose the peaceful transition of power.

The assumption was that that rally would be peaceful, but it makes sense in hindsight that people who had come up to that kind of rally, that there would be people in that crowd who were very serious about actually physically stopping the democratic process.

I think most people in that crowd were not violent, but there were enough of them who were.And then it spread quickly into being a mob.And then you—I could see the faces of people.They were—when that mob mentality takes over, they were not really thinking like humans anymore; they were thinking like people in a mob.And then you take them out of the mob, and they could talk to you calmly.But then you put them back into the mob, and they would take a fire extinguisher and hit someone over the head.

And these were all the things that Donald Trump had stoked, these kinds of reactions to basic democratic process, just because he had lost.

McConnell gives that speech right before the mob, and the timing is just extraordinary, that this is now the moment where there’s a new day.What did you think when you heard it?

… That was the strongest statement I had ever heard from Mitch McConnell breaking with President Trump.And clearly McConnell felt strongly that what the president was doing was dangerous to democracy in theory.I don’t think he expected the physical violence that came.But McConnell felt that this idea of objecting to an election on baseless claims was a very serious threat to the democracy, and he stood up and said it.

The Mob at the Capitol

Can I ask you about the mob now?

Yeah.

You’re on site.Can you walk us through how quickly things changed and how you first heard them?

Things changed very quickly.I’m trying to think for your purposes—because a lot of it has to do with Capitol Police and what they knew and didn’t know.I mean, there was—as a reporter roaming the halls, I ended up knowing more than Capitol Police knew, just looking out the window.There was just a complete disconnect between what was happening outside and sometimes the posture right outside the chamber, where I was talking to some Capitol Police officers who were pretty relaxed as the first outside buildings were breached and didn’t believe me that a building had been breached; they hadn’t been told.

So it happened very quickly that the mob ran over the first barricades that were really just bicycle racks and then ran up the steps; and 10, 15 minutes crashed through some of the doors; within a half hour, I think, was inside.The chambers were not ready.And it was incredible because the Senate was nearly full; most of the U.S. Senate was there.The House was not as full, but still, many of the leaders of the House were there.So it was a very dangerous time for our government to be under that kind of threat.But it is astounding that they just—they weren’t ready for it.

One of the things that’s impressed me the most, though, is that there was a small group of young women who were in charge of the actual boxes holding the electoral counts, the envelopes.And they very carefully, like, whisked those out to the undisclosed location where U.S. senators were being held while the mob was attacking.And I’m told from people in the room that those young women took turns guarding those boxes to make sure that no one was getting near them; no senators could look at them.No one was going to mess with the boxes that contained the end of the presidential election.It was amazing.

Were you part of the group that was whisked out?

I ultimately was, but I first was—sort of ended up outside of the lockdown, kind of on accident at first.I heard the banging, and I went to the front doors.I saw the mob using every implement they can to try and break through the door, and I could not believe when they actually were able to shatter glass that I had assumed was bulletproof.They were able to wedge open what I thought was the strongest door on earth.And I even told my husband in the past, I said, “I work in the safest building in the world; no one’s going to get through the door here.”And I personally witnessed a mob coming through that door.

So they came in, and then I interviewed a few of the rioters.And then I ended up—it’s a long story how I ended up there, but I ended up outside the House chamber by myself with the rioters for a while.And then ultimately the police came there, and then I evacuated down the stairs with the members of the House.

Oh, my God, Lisa, what a terrifying afternoon.

You know, it’s getting better.You know, you just did it at the time.You just kind of go with it.

… I can’t believe you were doing interviews with them while this was all sort of playing out.

Most of them were more low-key than you’d expect.They actually didn’t know what they were doing.Like, they were in a huge building.They were lost.They weren’t sure what they were going to do next.They knew they wanted Trump to stay president, but they didn’t know what else they were going to do.Yeah, they were looking for bathrooms.Like, they didn’t know what they were doing.

There was this sort of wonder with some of them early that you see on the footage, where they’re sort of all looking up in the Rotunda.

Yeah, yeah.There were only a few that were very violent and dangerous.There were a few that were violent and dangerous, but most of them had gone along for this ride with the mob and gone along with this ride with Donald Trump and just kind of found themselves in the U.S. Capitol, dumbfounded at their own actions.

And how were members reacting to this kind of unthinkable event?

Right.It was very emotional for members.It has been.That whole next week after was very emotional.I remember talking to members after they came back the following Monday to session and hearing the stories.They were trying to figure out what weapons they could find.I had one House Democrat tell me he was trying to figure out which of his pens might be sharpest because that was all he had to defend himself against a mob.Other people were using like—trying to take apart brass stanchions to use as a cudgel in case the mob came into the chamber.

They were very unsettled, and understandably so.And I think that there’s a lot of anger about that, a lot of anger and a sense that—there’s a sense from especially Democrats that any Republicans that went along with this effort to overturn the election, they are responsible for the violence and need to have—need to have some action taken against them.Some want them removed; some want censure.But there’s a lot of anger, and there’s not—they’re not interested in talking.They feel betrayed by Republicans in their own chamber because of this.

When the vote does happen, when everyone does come back, the members that still vote to reject the electors after the violence, what are they doing here?They’re going along with a lie.What are they risking?What are the long-term consequences of the message they’re sending, even then, at 2:00 a.m.?

Yeah, it was a fascinating moment, because you could see two different ways of thinking.One was by Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who experienced the violence at the Capitol and decided this had gone far enough and she was withdrawing her objection to the electoral count in her state, and she made probably the most important speech of her political career on the floor.The other way to go was the way that Josh Hawley went, which was to continue his objection and to say—and this is the argument he made.He said: “I am doing this because I represent millions of people, Trump voters, millions of people who have doubts about this election.That’s why I must object to it.Their voices need to be heard, and here is where they will be heard.”

The issue that Democrats had with that, and some Republicans, is, we can talk about the problems with the election; we can have hearings about the election; we could even have a commission, as Hawley and others wanted.But to object to this actual electoral count on baseless claims of fraud right now at this moment is to try and destabilize democracy.Hawley said, “No, I feel like these voices need to be heard.”But he was telling himself that he was justified in continuing to object because millions of Trump voters felt that way.And ultimately those millions of voters feel that way because Donald Trump told them the election was fraudulent.

McConnell Loses the Senate

Let me ask you for a moment about Mitch McConnell, who finds out he’s the minority leader while he’s in the bunker, as the GOP base is taking over the building.You had followed his career for many years.You had followed his battle for the courts.Can you help us understand the significance of the moment, the fallout of that moment and the bargain he had made with the Trump presidency?

I wish that—I wish that I had Mitch McConnell’s phone number.I wish I could have a long conversation with Mitch McConnell about what he went through, because from having covered Mitch McConnell for a long time, that had to be one of his toughest days as a politician and as a person, because the institution he cares so much about was physically attacked.His fellow senators were physically attacked.And the Republican Party he cares about so much lost the chamber, the one chamber that it was going to have in the beginning of the Biden presidency to try and balance out Democrats.The Senate was the only thing left Republicans were going to have to try and have some party balance.

There’s no doubt Mitch McConnell knew the way that the Georgia races were going, but for a mob to attack the institution he cares about on the same day that his party loses power in the Senate chamber, and all of that related to President Donald Trump, a president of his own party, I don’t—I mean, that had to be beyond difficult for Mitch McConnell.

… Mitch McConnell achieved so much with President Trump, but on that day it was clear how much it had cost, to him and to his party.McConnell’s office is one of the oldest parts of the Capitol.It’s one of the only parts that survived the War of 1812.And he knows that.He knows—Mitch McConnell knows every time the Capitol has been attacked.He’s a history buff.So this hit his soul, you know.This hit him in a very deep, personal place.

And for Mike Pence who has made this deal, to hear those chants from the crowd with his name—

I don’t know if he heard those or not.I’m sure he knows now.I don’t know if he did.I don’t think he heard them that day.I’d be surprised.But I bet he knew—I’m sure Mike Pence knew that he was being personally threatened.He knew that the Trump voters had shifted on him because the president had shifted on him.I bet that—I assume that was pretty scary for him.But it was quite a decision by the vice president to stay at the Capitol and not leave.His detail wanted to pull him, and he didn’t—he didn’t go.

Do you think they both understood their role in this, McConnell and Pence?

I don’t know.I haven’t—I don’t have enough reporting on that.I don’t know.I think that they’re both very smart politicians, so I think this concept of who is complicit and how much, I’m sure that’s a question that’s crossed their minds, but I don’t know how to answer it.I don’t have any reporting on that.

The Challenges Ahead for Biden

I’m going to ask you my final question and then free you from this chair, which is the challenges that lie ahead for a President Biden.What we’ve been discussing is not just the divisive politics of the last decade; it’s something much different.It’s a crisis of the fragility of our democracy and really of epic political importance.And I wonder what tone that sets for a new president.

Right.You know, I think this country has been going through an identity crisis for a long time, but then overlapping that is we’re really dealing with hundreds of years of racial injustice, and those feelings are all coming to bear at the same time.And this leads to a country that Joe Biden will inherit that is not just fractured, but it’s on the point of breaking.It’s on the point of breaking down.

But, you know, Joe Biden, it’s interesting.He and Donald Trump could not be more opposite, you know.One of them is a man who just—all of his faith is in institutions and governance; Joe Biden believes man is good, you know, and I can be friends with everyone.Donald Trump?He believes institutions are a problem.He believes he is good.He believes his instincts are right.He doesn’t need to be friends with anyone.He doesn’t need to unify people.So I think that it’s interesting in this moment that Joe Biden, who’s a man who is—who has talked about unity his whole life has perhaps the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity to unify this country that we’ve seen in decades, if not 100 years.

But, you know, I’ll say this.It has been—it has been a tough year.It has been a tough few months.I guess I’ll say it’s been a tough time for everyone.But whenever I think that it feels too dark, I honestly remember I think our Constitution has held up, and I think that Joe Biden is someone who knows the Constitution, and I think that our lawmakers are also clinging to the Constitution.And I think there’s a lot of hope there.

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