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Robert Costa
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The FRONTLINE Interviews
Robert Costa
Co-author, Peril
Robert Costa is the chief election and campaign correspondent for CBS News. He previously reported on politics for The Washington Post and is the co-author, with Bob Woodward, of Peril.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on April 29, 2022. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Trump and Charlottesville
One of the places that we’re looking back at is Charlottesville.And there is a conversation in the book between Paul Ryan and Donald Trump, where he talks about why he’s having so much trouble with it, and how he views some of the people who were involved in Charlottesville.Can you tell us the story of that conversation between Ryan and Trump, and what Trump said?
Paul Ryan is someone who had tried for years to move the Republican Party closer to Black Americans.He comes out of that Jack Kemp school of the GOP, knowing the party needs to make inroads with people of color.When he was watching Trump respond to Charlottesville, Ryan was aghast.He couldn’t believe it.“What was the president doing?Could he really be saying that?,” he asked his aides.They said, “Not only is he not disavowing the protest, the white nationalists; he’s talking about them as if they were counter-protesters to antifa.”
Ryan called up Trump.And Ryan was on vacation—Ryan was with his family on vacation, and he calls up Trump and says, “You have to walk back these comments.”And Trump says to him, “You don’t understand.These people mean well.Most of them mean well.”Ryan says, “I don’t care if some of them mean well.This is a crisis moment.You’re president.You have to speak up.”But Trump wouldn’t budge.It was a breaking point early in the presidency for Paul Ryan.He thought maybe he could nudge Trump toward the political center, nudge Trump toward normal.
But it was during the Charlottesville riot, the attack, that Ryan recognized there was no chance he could ever bring Trump around, that he could corral the president’s conduct in any way.And it was really from Charlottesville on that Paul Ryan realized his own speakership was waning.It would end at some point, likely in the Trump presidency, because he couldn’t connect with someone, not just on a political level but on a moral level.Ryan saw Charlottesville as a moral crisis.Trump couldn’t see it that way, declined to even walk back his comments.
And Ryan’s on a mountainside on vacation with his family, and he turns to them, and he calls his aides, and he says, “I just don’t get what Trump’s up to, who this guy is.Does he not understand what he’s saying, when it comes to white nationalism?"
… One of the comments that’s reported in the book that Trump says now seems to be especially revealing, which is, you know, “These are my people.”What does it reveal about Trump, about how he sees people engaged in political violence all the way back then?
I’ve stood behind Trump when he’s at rallies, watching him watch the crowd.He thinks these crowds, his supporters, are his people.And it doesn’t matter what they say.It doesn’t matter if they have a crude message on their signs.It doesn’t matter if they marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.He sees them as his core supporters, and he won’t break with them.
This is someone who craves political popularity, and if someone is loyal to him, he will essentially stay loyal to them.That is the Trump transactional playbook, and it applies not to just high-ranking political leaders but to his core supporters in the grassroots.He can’t break with people he believes are there with him, who have been with him, not during his political career but during his business career, his time on reality-show television.He believes he has an audience, and he wants to keep the audience, regardless of their conduct.
And just to get it clearly from you, it’s not even speculation.It’s what he actually said, right, to Ryan?
What do you mean?What part?
I mean, did—what I’m trying to get is, is that he actually said to Ryan—
Oh, yes. Right.
As the House speaker’s listening to the president go on and on, he realizes that Trump won’t move at all.Why won’t Trump move?Ryan recognizes it’s because Trump keeps saying to him on the phone, “These are my people.”Trump is on the phone with Paul Ryan and saying to the House speaker, “Paul, you don’t understand me, and you don’t understand my political appeal.These are my people.I’m standing with my people.”
Ryan says, “I don’t care if they’re your so-called 'your people'; you have to disavow the white nationalists.”Trump says, “You don’t get it, Paul.These are my people.”
… I think one of the questions during the period leading up to Lafayette Square was the president’s attitude, especially now, although let’s talk about authoritarianism and how strong and how far he was willing to go.And there is reporting in the book about using active-duty troops.Can you describe what the president wanted to do, as he saw protesters in Washington?
Trump’s closest friends tell me, “Remember, he didn’t serve in the military, but he did go to New York Military Academy."This is someone whose father loved the military, loved military figures.Trump has followed in his father, Fred Trump’s, footsteps as someone who highly regards military leaders—"tough guys," as Trump says.Trump has surrounded himself as president with tough guys, people he sees through the prism of military, gritty leadership.
When he walks across Lafayette Square, he wants to be seen as a strong man, not necessarily an authoritarian.People close to Trump say he never even really uses the word, but he wants to be seen as tough, even if it shatters political norms.He surrounded himself in his Cabinet, in his administration, with retired and current military officials.A lot of people in the military sat up and took notice of Trump early on.This is someone who really likes to be with generals, talks about the generals in a personal way.“My generals,” Trump says often, when he refers to military leaders.
Lafayette Square was an episode that wasn’t an aberration.It encapsulated who Donald Trump is: the wannabe, military-type leader, striding across a square in a chaotic city with two military leaders at his side, Chairman [Mark] Milley and Secretary Mark Esper.It was no coincidence that Trump wanted to walk across the square with Mark Esper, the Defense secretary, and Chairman Milley at his side.This is the image he has cultivated; it’s the image he wanted.
And he even wanted to do more, right?He wanted to have active-duty—10,000 active-duty troops inside Washington.When he tells that to his advisers, what does he say, and how much of a break with American democratic tradition is it, what he’s talking about and contemplating?
In late May and on June 1, Washington was on the brink of warlike atmosphere; the president sitting in the Oval Office and considering bringing in active-duty troops, lethal troops who know how to kill.These are not National Guard troops who direct traffic.These are troops from different regiments, different parts of the military. I believe it was the Airborne.Trump want to bring in the 101st Airborne, up from Fort Bragg, to come into Washington.
His generals, Chairman Milley, other military advisers, are saying to Trump, “You can’t do this.Sir, Mr. President, if you bring these troops into Washington, D.C., if you bring them to Black Lives Matter Plaza, you will have blood on the streets of Washington, D.C.”He holds back, but they are there.Never forget, the troops got as close to Washington as the river.They’re sitting over in Maryland, just waiting for the call from President Trump.
Ultimately, Esper and Milley prevent Trump from making that decision.They stave off Trump going in that direction.But Trump was this close to bringing in active-duty combat troops to the streets of Washington.On the streets that night in Washington—I was there—you would have never known, amid the chaos, that it could have been even worse, that troops were ready to come in at a moment’s notice.
Early Claims of Fraud in the 2020 Election
… I think we should start at the moment when Trump walks out to the microphone after the [2020] election, in the early-morning hours.Could you just help us with what he sets in motion at that moment, when he says that, frankly, he did win the election?And what was he thinking at the time?
Trump didn’t have a coherent plan, but he knew he wanted to fight.He couldn’t stand the idea of losing.Some aides were telling him, “Sir, it’s over.Start heading back to Mar-a-Lago; get ready for running again in 2024.”Trump wanted none of it.Initially, he kind of acknowledged in the few hours after the election that maybe he lost; maybe Biden won.But that tune changed so quickly.
The reason Trump changes his tune, in part, is because he has a phone call with Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, his personal lawyer.Giuliani tells Trump, “Keep fighting.We will have a legal crusade, a political crusade, to keep you in power.”Trump loves the idea.Even though Trump has a campaign apparatus, a legal team that’s ready to fight in certain states and have a court fight to a point, Giuliani wants political and legal war.And that’s when Trump gives the keys, essentially, to Rudy Giuliani, not his campaign lawyers.He says to Rudy, “Do what you need to do to help me stay here.”
And when Trump decides to start fighting, he is really going to create this moment that’s going to cause a lot of people to have to decide, what are they going to do?There’s a number of them that we’ll talk about, and one of the ones that comes out very early on and goes on Fox News and is raising questions about it is Lindsey Graham.Can you describe who Lindsey Graham is and what he thinks that he’s doing in this period, when he’s talking about election fraud and also talking to the president at that time?
Lindsay Graham is as close as anyone can be to Trump inside the Republican Party, a golf buddy of President Trump’s, someone who calls the president early in the morning, late at night.He’s the classic presidential confidant, a bachelor from South Carolina who loves golf and who loves being friends with the president.He was close to the late Sen. John McCain, and after McCain’s death, Trump filled the void for Graham in a personal and political sense.Trump was someone he could work with, he felt he understood.Graham fancied himself the explainer of Trump to the rest of the Republican Party.
Graham knows Trump’s personality better than anyone, and he gets that Trump wants to keep fighting.But Graham is a lawyer.He comes out of the military JAG Corps.He knows that if you’re going to have a legal fight, you have to have evidence.From day one, he’s trying to balance Trump’s instinct, that fighting instinct, with the legal and political reality that Trump has likely lost, unless some kind of evidence is presented that changes everybody’s mind.
Graham encapsulates the balancing act inside the Republican Party.Graham is trying to keep Trump as his best friend, to keep Trump at his side, but he also knows that this entire effort could careen into disaster for the GOP if it stretches on too long.But like so many in the Republican Party, Graham thought he could contain the situation. But he’s usually disappointed, like everybody else, when it comes to those who try to contain Trump.He wants to contain Trump but ultimately realizes it’s probably not possible.
Graham is working in the days after the election to be someone who tells others in the Senate, “Stay cool.Trump will vent for a while.Let him have his grievances, but we’ll get this going.It’s likely he’ll leave the White House.We’re not going to have a problem.”Graham was someone early on who saw this with a sunny disposition, that it was Trump venting more than anything.
I mean, but even while that’s going on, I mean, the price of that—what is the price of that access?Because he’s going on Fox News.He’s calling election officials in Georgia.He’s, in his own way—I mean, isn’t he pushing something that it sounds like he doesn’t even believe there’s evidence for?
Graham, even if he has his own doubts, buys in.He buys into Trump’s belief, this suspicion that the election is stolen.What you see in the Republican Party, even among those who are skeptical, is a readiness, a willingness to buy into Trump’s assumptions about the election, assumptions that ultimately are shown to be a lie.They buy in because they believe Trump has immense political capital, and they also think his personality is one that needs to be allowed to explore all these different ideas, to talk to a million different people before he finally closes the door on election 2020.
Everybody in the Republican Party at the highest ranks, in some respect, fancies themselves an armchair psychologist when it comes to President Trump.They believe he can somehow be managed; that the situation, as long as they have a light touch, can be kept under control.But of course it can’t.
My last question on Graham: He watches this Sidney Powell press conference, and you describe him as saying it’s “beyond bizarre.”He is golfing with Trump, trying to convince him to drop his objections.I mean, for that cost, for the price that he is paying in order to be close to Trump, does he manage to succeed?Does he get anything out of it?
… Graham quickly recognizes that this thing is spiraling out of control.Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, they’re at the wheel, not Mitch McConnell, not Lindsey Graham.It’s Sidney Powell.It’s Rudy Giuliani.And an effort that the Republicans in Congress thought would maybe last a few days, at most a couple of weeks, suddenly becomes something that maybe will stretch into early 2021.
There’s an exasperation with Lindsey Graham, with others close to Trump, that they’re losing control of the president; they’re losing control of the presidency.Graham believed he could make a few phone calls, figure out if there’s voter fraud, and then tell Trump, “Hey, it’s time to close this.”But then Trump decides he’s just going to keep digging in, and Trump starts to listen less to Lindsey Graham, starts to listen less to those around him who are saying, “Hey, there’s not a there there.Where’s the evidence, Mr. President?”
But he keeps hearing from people on the far right and inside his new legal team that there is something there.There is a stolen election that only needs to be further discovered.Trump begins to believe, in an innate way, even though evidence doesn’t back it up.And when people like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani come into his orbit and start telling him that there are affidavits saying that there’s voter fraud in 10 states, or that the election machines are somehow rigged, Trump welcomes those ideas, even if they’re not based in fact.
Graham, his phone calls with Trump, they start to be shorter, his conversations more clipped, because if you’re not in with Trump’s effort in mid- and late November 2020, you’re not in with Trump at all.He wants yes people around him.That’s why it’s Sidney Powell, who starts in late November and early December to go up to the residence, the private meetings, that yellow room up near the residence in the second floor of the White House—that’s where Trump’s huddling with Sidney Powell, huddling with Rudy Giuliani.And if you’re not mapping out a way for him to stay in power, he doesn’t want to hear from you.
… As [Bill Barr] goes into that period, as the president is starting to push this, who is Bill Barr?And what is his relationship with Trump?And, you know, is he a deep state operative, as he gets accused of later?Who is Bill Barr at that moment?
Bill Barr had been attorney general for George H.W. Bush, then went into the private sector, into the private practice of law.But he wanted back in.Barr wanted back into Washington, back to be close to the flame of power, and he got that chance with President Trump.He ingratiates himself with Trump, with a letter that outlines Barr’s position on the Mueller investigation, expressing skepticism about the way the Mueller investigation is moving forward.Trump loves it.He brings Barr in, makes him attorney general.
From day one, Barr builds a bond with Trump.Barr is a loyalist to Trump.And if that’s what Trump wanted at this point in the presidency, someone who was going to do what he wanted at DOJ, who was going to be a tough presence, someone he could count on, not necessarily as a political soldier but as someone who wouldn’t be a problem—Jeff Sessions, the previous AG, had been a real problem, in Trump’s view, and he wanted someone he could count on, a seasoned pair of hands at the Department of Justice.
After the election, Barr is still a loyal figure close to Trump.Barr remains close to Trump in the days after the election, but he grows weary by the day with Trump’s continued complaints about the election and allegations of fraud, allegations Barr knows are not based in fact, because Barr has a team that’s spread out around the country, keeping track of the election and its integrity.Barr went a little bit too far in the eyes of many Democrats and some Republicans in having the DOJ pay so close attention to possible election fraud.
Barr is already doing what Trump wants when it comes to the election.He has a whole team that has a close eye on what’s happening in state after state.But when Trump keeps barreling forward, Barr pulls him aside and says, “Mr. President, enough. The evidence isn’t there.”And when Trump goes on and on about voter fraud in Michigan and voter fraud in Pennsylvania, Barr comes at Trump with the data, but Trump doesn’t want to hear it.
Trump screams at Barr and says, “I don’t want to hear what you have to say.You’re wrong.This election was stolen.”Barr says, “Sir, the election wasn’t stolen.”It was a breaking point.When Barr wouldn’t echo Trump’s claims, Barr knew it was over.It was time to leave.The only question was when.
… How important was Barr as a check at that moment in our constitutional government and everything that was playing out in what could—if the attorney general had decided to go along with the efforts of the White House?What role did he play?
Barr was a check.He kept the president from making wild claims of voter fraud and using the DOJ as a weapon to fight his political opponents and make claims of fraud.But Barr was a check only so far.Barr doesn’t stop Trump from continuing to move down the path of claiming the election was stolen, of moving toward Jan. 6, with the intention of blocking Biden and the certification of the election.Barr is a roadblock to Trump, but he’s not someone that ultimately has a lot of influence.
He leaves the White House.Trump doesn’t seem to care, and he just keeps going.Our system was built to have the attorney general be an independent officer within the Cabinet, the chief law enforcement officer.And this time, that chief law enforcement officer offered facts to the president, but if the president doesn’t accept the facts from the chief law enforcement officer, does the system actually work?Because the president ignored his own attorney general, dismissed him, yelled at him, and the attorney general ultimately resigned.
Barr had power, but he only had power to a point.If the president doesn’t listen, are you really powerful?
I mean, it’s true.And at one point Barr even goes public, when he talks to The Associated Press.You know, how unprecedented a move was that?How did Trump respond to that?
Instead of seeing his own attorney general as the chief law enforcement officer who offers an opinion based in evidence, in fact, in investigation, Trump began to see Barr as a pundit, someone who he disagreed with about the election and could just be shrugged off, not taken seriously.And ultimately they stop talking.Trump stops taking Barr’s calls and stops calling Barr.Trump stops calling Barr.And he says to Barr at one point, “Bill, do you notice I’m not calling you anymore?”And Barr later told others, “I thought that was good.I didn’t want to be talking to Trump at that point.”
Cruz’s Political Calculation
… The president reaches out to Ted Cruz and asks him to get involved.Who is Ted Cruz, and why was he important to Trump in this period?
Oh! Great question.Ted Cruz was supposed to be the next star of the Republican Party, maybe even the next Republican president.He wins the Iowa caucuses in 2016, the favorite of conservative evangelicals.The White House seems within reach.But Trump ruined Ted Cruz’s ambitions.Trump put Cruz’s entire career on the shelf at least for four years when he beat Cruz for the nomination.Cruz had a moment in 2016.Cruz was up on the stage at the Republican National Conventions, and he told the crowd, “Vote your conscience.”It was an opportunity for Cruz to maybe set himself up as not necessarily the anti-Trump but the conservative standard-bearer in the Trump era, to be someone separate from Trump, a conservative voice in a populist time.
But ultimately Cruz doesn’t become the conservative alternative to Trump.He becomes an enabler of Trump, politically an ally of President Trump.Throughout the Trump presidency, instead of setting himself up as a foil, he sets himself up an ally of Trump.By the end of the Trump presidency, Cruz is looking to help.He’s a constitutional scholar, an acclaimed lawyer.He knows Trump can only go so far.And when Trump asks him again and again in the post-election period, “Can you help me go to the Supreme Court?,” he often has to privately throw a bucket of cold water on Trump’s legal dreams.
He says, “Mr. President, you have to do X, Y and Z before you get to the Supreme Court.I’m happy to help in any way I can, but you have to lower your expectations.”Cruz was essentially an outside legal adviser to Trump, offering perspective, not necessarily counsel.
On Dec. 30, 2020, Sen. Josh Hawley decides he is going to object.It’s a monumental moment for the Republican Party.Mitch McConnell had hoped to keep every Republican senator away from objecting, to get this election through Jan. 6, to enable Biden to become the next president.Hawley throttles everybody’s plans.Hawley also creates a vexing moment for Ted Cruz.If Hawley is going to object, what is Ted Cruz going to do?
Cruz had a decision to make.What would he do, object as well?Cruz pulls together his staff, has a conference call after Hawley makes his announcement.Cruz says, “What are our options?”They talked through different steps they could take to help Trump object to the count.Cruz decides to come up with a commission idea, a collective presentation of Republican senators who would say, “We need to now study the election, study election fraud through a commission.”And this becomes the Cruz project, something that gives him a little separation from Hawley’s pure objection, and it’s an idea that shows Trump that Cruz is doing something, anything to help Trump stay in power.
For Cruz, the commission idea was a way to show Trump he was in the trenches with the president.Cruz begins to make phone calls on his way back to Washington, to other Republican senators: “Join me on this commission.Let’s object.But the cover for our objection will be that we’re pushing a commission to study this election.”It was a way to excuse objecting.It was a way to frame their decision to object to the Biden certification, to say to their own voters and their supporters, “We’re doing something.We’re going to try to form a commission.”
McConnell hates the idea.He wants this to move on.He wants the election, the country to move forward.But Cruz and Hawley and others start to buy into the idea that maybe Jan. 6 should be a reckoning.It should be a moment for the election to be studied further by a commission; objections should take place.
How important was Cruz, when Hawley goes out and he says he’s going to do it?… How important was the fact that Cruz signed onto this?
Cruz is a vital figure.Because the Texas senator added his voice to Hawley’s, he made it not just about Josh Hawley being out on a limb, unlike everybody else in the Senate Republican Conference.Cruz gave credence to the effort to object.And he gave an opening for other Republican senators to sign on.Other Republican senators didn’t want to just be seen as objecting for the sake of objecting.Cruz and his commission idea gave them an opportunity to say, “This is why we’re objecting.We want a commission to study the election.”
Cruz gives political and legislative cover to Republican senators who were on the fence, not sure if they were going to object but looking for an opportunity to object and show the president they were fully with him.
One of the things that’s so interesting about Ted Cruz is, you know, Harvard Law School, solicitor general, runs as the constitutional conservative.It’s a large part of his identity that he presents to voters.And in the book, there’s a moment where he and Mike Lee are discussing whether any of this is constitutional.… So, can you tell us about the discussion and what it reveals? …
After the election, Sen. Lee was exploring ideas about how to help Trump look for examples of fraud to contest the election.Lee was texting with Mark Meadows and saying, “Hey, I’m here to help you think through this.There’s a possibility here that this election maybe was stolen or there was fraud in certain states.”But eventually, Sen. Lee comes to the conclusion that the evidence just isn’t there, and he decides, as much as he wanted to help his political ally Trump, he’s not going to object.
Cruz, because of his decision on a commission to study voter fraud, believes he has a pathway, as a lawyer, to make an objection and have an explanation for why he’s doing so.… It’s a crossroads for Lee and Cruz, two best friends.What are they going to do?The two sharpest legal conservative minds in the U.S. Senate.They both know that the evidence of fraud isn’t there, and Mike Lee says to Cruz, “I’m just not going to object.I don’t see where this evidence is.People keep talking about evidence, but I don’t see it.”Cruz, his closest friend, says, “I get your position.I understand it.But a lot of people out there are saying there is fraud, so I want to have this commission, this entity to study the election, and that’s my path forward.”
These two best friends agree to disagree.Lee doesn’t object; Cruz objects.… Trump’s entire effort led to upheaval in the Senate Republican Conference.Even the two guys who were always together, Lee and Cruz, couldn’t agree on whether an objection made sense.They both knew that they didn’t have meat on the bones here, but Cruz wanted to look for it; Lee was ready to say, “Let’s move on.”
McConnell’s Calculation
One of the other figures that’s crucial in this period is Mitch McConnell, who remained silent for a long period of time and eventually goes in and congratulates Joe Biden.Can you describe McConnell’s calculation in that, in remaining silent through that period and where his relationship with Trump ended at the end?
McConnell privately loathes Donald Trump.He can’t stand him.He knows on a political level, on a transactional level, they’ve been able to do a lot together.McConnell prides himself, sees his legacy as someone who has changed the judiciary in the United States.McConnell knows he is someone who has nominated countless judges to federal posts, put people on the Supreme Court, working with President Trump.But beyond their work together on tax cuts and the court, on a personal level there is no love there.There is not even like.
They despise each other.McConnell is seen by Trump as the ultimate insider."Old Crow," he calls him.McConnell sees Trump as an outsider, incompetent, never curious about how the party works or how legislation works, as someone who’s coasting along on celebrity and gut instinct.But they were able to work together closely for four years.But at the end McConnell has had enough.McConnell is silent during the post-election period, letting the president go from thing to thing.McConnell watches as the president pinballs from legal idea to political gambit to another legal idea to another political gambit.He can’t stand it, but he doesn’t want to start having a fight with Trump.
McConnell tells his aides, “Trump wants a fight.He wants to fight the Republican establishment.”And McConnell says to his advisers, “I’m not going to give him that.We’re just going to let this play out.But as long as the election is seen as legitimate, we’re going to move forward with the Electoral College, and we’re going to move forward with the certification.”
But eventually, he comes out and he congratulates Joe Biden.And what is the president’s reaction to that?
… McConnell and Trump speak by phone.The president is furious.He lashes into McConnell, “What the heck do you think you’re doing?”Expletives fly.He says to McConnell, “You’ve never been loyal.You’ve never been someone I could trust.You’ve never really been in my corner.”
McConnell says almost nothing.He’s done with Trump.He says one sentence to Trump: “The election is over;you have lost.”And then the call ends.It’s the last time the two speak.McConnell is over with Donald Trump after mid-December 2020.McConnell’s friends say he relished the call with Trump.He was ready to say good riddance to the president, a president who he had built a transactional bond with but a president who had worn out his welcome with the Senate leader.
… But this idea of loyalty … what is that concept that Trump is invoking when he’s trying to get people on his side, to essentially overturn an election?And how is it different from how we usually understand the role of government?
Trump doesn’t come out of the American political tradition or the American political system, like so many others in his generation who are in politics, who have been presidential contenders.Those who know Trump know he’s never been a political or partisan person.He’s a tribal person.When Trump talks about power, he talks about loyalty, because he was taught about power by Roy Cohn, Roger Stone—people who saw politics as combat and where loyalty was paramount.
It wasn’t about ideology.It wasn’t about your position.It wasn’t about elections.It was about loyalty and power.That is the prism from the New York real estate world of Fred Trump to the New York tabloid fights of Roy Cohn and Roger Stone in the ‘80s.Trump comes out of a tribal, New York political atmosphere where party politics is almost meaningless.What matters is loyalty.Are you someone who can be trusted to not burn the principal, to not burn Trump?
I mean, I think that is part of the whole problem for the Republican Party.The problem for so many Republicans is they come out of the Reagan era, the Bush era, where political loyalty means loyalty to a creed, to an ideology.For Trump, loyalty means loyalty to a person, him, and that’s it.
Pressure on Pence
… How serious was the attempt to overturn the election and use Mike Pence to do it inside the White House?Did they believe that this was a possible way to stay in office?Was this a serious thing that they were undertaking?
I mean, of course. I mean, yes.Jan. 4, 2021, John Eastman, President Trump in the Oval Office, they pull Vice President Pence in.He’s joined by his aides, Greg Jacob and Marc Short.Trump says to Pence, in front of others, “You have to now listen to John Eastman.You have to follow the Eastman plan.Object to the certification.Walk away from the lectern and let the states decide.Let the states send alternate electors.”
This wasn’t some idea that was presented in a vague way.It was memorialized in a memo, two pages, six parts, authored by John Eastman, a conservative lawyer, late December 2020.It was the last option for Donald Trump.… The Eastman plan: Send the election back to the states so they could send alternate electors back to Congress, and the election could ultimately take place in the House of Representatives.
There were all these different scenarios being floated.Ultimately, Trump wanted to stay in power through having alternate electors decide he was the rightful president or to have Biden not reach the threshold he needs, 270 electoral votes.And if some of those electoral votes were contested, that number falls.And if you don’t hit the number, what happens in our system?Most people don’t even recognize it inside the Constitution.The election becomes what’s called a contingent election.It goes into the House of Representatives.And once it’s in the House of Representatives, it’s not a popular vote in the House among all 435 members.It’s a vote by state delegation.And even though the Democrats had the majority in the House in January 2021, guess who had the majority of delegations?Republicans.And that’s where Trump saw an opening.As long as he could try to kick the election into the House, he had a shot.He had a shot at a second term.Trump becomes obsessed with kicking the election into the House, and the way to do it is to follow this plan outlined by John Eastman.Eastman’s telling Trump, “It’s possible.It’s a long shot. It’s a Hail Mary.But here’s the plan.I’m putting it down on paper.The only thing we need is to get Pence to buy in.”
If the vice president walks away and says, “This isn’t a legitimate election,” that will enable states to then have special sessions to try to put forward alternate electors.It would raise questions about all the electors.For Trump, time is of the essence.He’s already failed in the courts.Now, in late December and early January, he needs to refocus, this time on the vice president, Mike Pence.How can he bring Pence in to be the first domino to fall in a line of dominos to keep him in power?
But Pence is the person who has to start the process.Eastman says to Trump, “You need to get Pence to be the one to walk away, because that causes chaos.That causes a constitutional crisis where then you could argue the states need to step in.The House of Representatives might need to vote and have a contingent election.”So Pence is crucial for giving his stamp of approval to this entire legal proposal, a political proposal.
Jan. 4, Trump’s in the Oval.He says to Pence in front of Eastman, “Listen to John. Listen to John.”It’s a pressure campaign.Pence says to Trump, “I’m going to do what I can, Mr. President.I want to help you out, but I’m listening to my lawyers.”He turns to Marc Short; he turns to Greg Jacob, his advisers.And he says, “They’re telling me I can’t do it. I can’t do it.It’s not constitutional.It’s not legal.”
Trump says, “You can do it.Listen to John.”Pence says, “Well, let’s have Greg Jacob, my lawyer, meet with Eastman,” the next day, Jan. 5.Trump says, “Fine.”Trump flies to Georgia the night of Jan. 4 for a rally.And in front of thousands of people in Georgia, Trump makes it clear, through the television screen to Pence in Washington, “You’d better follow the plan.You’d better listen to what I’m saying.”Trump outlines in Georgia that Pence has to buy in or else he risks his entire political career.Everything is on the line for Pence if he doesn’t follow through.
Pence and his advisers are watching Trump in Georgia, and they grow increasingly nervous that this president is not stopping his crusade against Pence.He’s telling his own voters Pence is maybe going to do what he wants.Pence knows privately he can’t do anything that Trump is saying.It’s not constitutional; it’s not legal.
After the Georgia rally, Trump says, “I’m still not hearing enough from Pence.He hasn’t formally bought into the plan.”
Jan. 5, 2021, Trump says to his advisers, "I need Pence over here.Bring him to the Oval."This time it’s not with Eastman or with Marc Short or the other aides.It’s Trump, Pence, one-on-one, Jan. 5.Can Trump get Pence to agree?Trump and Pence sit down in the Oval Office.Trump says, “You have to do this, Mike.If you don’t do it, I picked the wrong man four years ago.I need you to do it.”He says, “Sir, Mr. President, I’ve been trying to look at this.I’ve taken a hard look at it.I can’t do it.I just can’t do it.”
“Mike, you need to do it.The Eastman plan outlines how you can do it.”Trump points to the crowd outside.You can hear them through the walls of the Oval Office.The noise is so loud.They’re walking through the streets, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers.They’re there the night of Jan. 5.Trump and Pence can hear them through the walls.Trump points outside.He said, “If they gave you the power, wouldn’t you want them to do it?They want you to do it, Mike. The people want you to do it.”
Based on our reporting, Pence says, “I can’t do it.”Trump flies into a rage.He needs Pence to buy in, but Pence won’t buy in.Ultimately Pence says to the president, “I can’t do it.I just can’t do it.”And Trump says, “If you can’t do it, I don’t even want to be your friend anymore.”This is a man, Mike Pence, who gave everything to Donald Trump, his loyalty 24/7 for four years, and to hear the the president say, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” Pence’s friends say it was almost crippling to Pence on a personal level.He felt he gave it all.A friend of Pence, Tom Rose, told others that he saw Pence leave the Oval Office that night, and Pence looked as white as a ghost, like he had just been leaving a hospital after hearing bad news.
This was a man who had been nearly broken by a man he had been loyal to.Pence walks up to his advisers, Marc Short and others, and says, “I gave it all in there.I told Trump I’ve tried everything.”And then he ducks into his motorcade and heads home to dinner.It was a critical moment in American history to have the vice president, one-on-one in the Oval Office, tell the president, on what ended up being the eve of an insurrection, that he couldn’t do the president’s bidding and object to the certification of a presidential election.
If the vice president had somehow listened to the siren song of Trump on that night in the Oval Office, the country likely would have changed.You would have chaos and crisis on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6.Pence goes home and has a muted dinner with his friends and advisers at the residence at the Naval Observatory, and he decides that night he’s going to issue a letter the next day, before he heads to the Capitol, sketching out why he can’t do what Trump wants.
Pence decides he won’t even go to the White House on Jan. 6.He’ll go straight from home to the Capitol.It’s over between him and Trump, in terms of discussing any kind of objection.
… It seems like, at the beginning, you know, before even they’re pressing him, Pence is in a difficult spot of being torn between his loyalty to Trump and these election fraud claims and how is he going to navigate it.Can you describe Mike Pence in that period, after the election, leading up into the moment we’re talking about, who he is, his relationship with Trump and how the election is going to be putting him into this difficult position?
Mike Pence is a highly adaptable former talk radio host from Indiana, someone who began his career as a radio host, who called himself “Rush Limbaugh on decaf,” someone who could embrace hard-right conservatism but have a presentable, almost moderate temperament in his articulation of those arguments.“Rush Limbaugh on decaf”—that was how Mike Pence described himself for years and how he described himself once he made it to the House of Representatives.Highly adaptable, because Pence always is willing to understand and change when the Republican Party changes.Pence watches inside the House of Representatives how the party is convulsing during the Tea Party era, and he signs on and he becomes a Tea Party leader.He goes to Indiana, becomes governor, and he watches Trump start to rise in the Republican Party,instead of becoming anti-Trump or being repelled by Trump’s personality.… Even though Pence initially was with Ted Cruz, he ultimately says, “Hey, Trump is someone I can work with.”
Pence is a conservative who is malleable in terms of his political coalitions.When Trump calls him in 2016 and says, “Let’s have you on the ticket,” he’s all in.He has always eyed the presidency as his ultimate goal.Working with Trump as a vice presidential contender, it was a path in that direction.So why not?Some people close to Pence said, “This is a terrible decision.Don’t align yourself with Donald Trump.You’re likely going to lose the election.”But Pence said, “I want to be with Trump because I want to be with where the party is going.Even if it’s more populist than me, I’m willing to change.”
He adapted.He went with Trump, and he was loyal from day one.He wasn’t someone who was going to question the direction of Trump or the party, but ride the tide.
Now, he’s confronted at the beginning of the election fraud allegations, and he has to decide, what is he doing to do?Is he going to amplify it?Is he going to be like a Rudy Giuliani?… What is he deciding?This is in the period before they are asking him to intervene on Jan. 6. …
The clips show everything about Pence.In the days after the election, Pence is essentially echoing Trump in his own way, walking a political tightrope, trying to not be seen as extreme in saying the election was stolen, but not having any room between him and Trump when it comes to having suspicion about the outcome.Pence, at event after event, says to voters, “Don’t worry.We’re digging into this election.We’re looking into possible fraud.”
He’s not someone who is saying to Trump, “Cut it out.”He knows that Trump, as much as anyone around Trump knows, he knows that Trump wants to fight this for weeks if not months, and he’s not going to stop Trump in any way.He remains the loyal soldier, but he couches his rhetoric in a bit of a different way.Pence is always careful.He wants to be seen as close to Trump, but he doesn’t want to be seen as just repeating Trump’s lines.He wants to have a career after Trump, and that means not being seen as Mr. Stolen Election, enabling Trump.But he also wants to be seen as Trump’s ally.
It's never easy for Mike Pence to figure out exactly what to say and what to do.He doesn’t want to lose his bearing as a Republican who’s taken seriously by the leaders of the party, but he doesn’t want to lose Trump’s favor.
There’s a really interesting phone call. …It’s a discussion between [Dan] Quayle and Pence. …Can you tell us about that phone call and what Mike Pence’s, you know, process and anguish that he’s going through at that moment is?
There is no one in the world who understands Mike Pence perhaps better than Dan Quayle.Both Indiana Republicans, white males who have served as vice president for Republican presidents.There are only two people in the world who fit the profile of Mike Pence and Dan Quayle, two male Republicans from Indiana who served as vice president of the United States.
Dan Quayle was at the lectern on Jan. 6, 1993, overseeing the certification of his own defeat.He was someone who had been in the shoes Pence was about to put on.Pence calls up Quayle, vice president to vice president, “What do you think I should do?”Quayle says, “You don’t have any options.There is one thing you do here.You certify the election.”Pence says, “I understand, but you don’t understand the pressure I’m under.Trump wants me to do something.There’s a huge appetite inside of this White House to somehow fight this, to block the certification.”
Quayle says, “I get it.I understand the president’s angry, but you don’t have options.You’re an overseer of the certification, the emcee, the maître d’, nothing more.”Pence understands.He says—he listens again but says, “This is a tough situation.We’re hearing about voter fraud in states like your own, Arizona.”Quayle now lives in Arizona.Quayle says, “Don’t buy it, Mike.There’s no fraud here.This is not a legitimate claim of fraud.Don’t buy into the claims of fraud.Just do your job.”
Pence listens.He trusts Quayle.They’re friends.They’re both conservative Republicans.But this was a gut check for Pence—call up Quayle, someone who’s done this before, someone who’s overseen a defeat on another Jan. 6, and get the advice.It was a critical moment for Pence to hear it from Quayle himself, another vice president, not a political adviser on the payroll, not from someone close to Trump, not from some random lawyer.He was hearing advice from a former vice president who had been though the same thing.
And Vice President Quayle had one message again and again: “You have nothing to do but certify the election.You stand up there, you smile, you certify it, and you go home.Nothing more.”
Jan. 6 and the Aftermath
… So going to the day of Jan. 6 and to the speech and to mentioning Mike Pence.I mean, he’s tried to get Pence to go along with him.Maybe he holds out hope that he will change his mind, despite the fact that they issued a statement.But what is Trump doing?Is he appealing to the mob in that moment?What do they think that they are doing when they are telling the crowd to fight?What is the plan at that point, and what is going on when he’s talking about Pence to those people?
As someone who has covered Trump for over a decade, there’s no happier moment for Donald Trump than when he’s revving up a crowd.I’ve seen it in Arizona; I’ve seen it in Texas; I’ve seen it in Florida.He loves to have the crowd in the palm of his hands and not worry about the consequence of what he’s saying, just stir them up to show their loyalty through roar after roar.He likes to have the crowd with him.He wants the crowd to be as big as possible.
Jan. 6, 2021, presented Trump with one of his biggest crowds, his most enthusiastic and fervent crowds, and he wanted them to do whatever they wanted to prove their loyalty.Maybe that was marching up to the Capitol.Maybe that was rallying outside of the White House.He didn’t think that far ahead about what it would all mean.But he liked chaos.He likes when the crowd becomes frenzied, because it’s a show of appreciation and fervor for him.
… We can’t read Donald Trump’s mind about what he wanted from that crowd.But it’s certain through his words that day that he wanted action.He wanted people to stand with him and fight—“trial by combat,” as Giuliani said.
Could you take us to the Capitol, into their chanting, you know, “Hang Mike Pence”?He is now a target of the crowds.And what is happening with him?
Once Pence releases his letter and it circulates immediately on social media, Trump supporters erupt.They can’t believe it.Pence is breaking with Trump.He’s not going to do what the president wants.They explode on Pennsylvania Avenue, on the steps of the Capitol, because of the letter.They read it and realize Pence isn’t going to go along.Once the Trump supporters at the Capitol realize that Pence has issued a formal letter saying he’s not going to do what Trump wants, they began to chant, “Hang Mike Pence.Find Mike Pence.Take down Mike Pence.”
They want to find the man they now blame for enabling Joe Biden to become the next president.And anyone who’s going along with the certification is seen as an enabler of Biden.They want to find them and they want a confrontation.
Pence is inside the chamber.Secret Service pulls him out.“The crowd’s in the building, sir,” they say.“We need to move you to a safe location.”They move him to the side, to an office nearby the Senate chamber and then, ultimately, down the stairs to a secure area, where he is waiting by his motorcade.His aides say, “Sir, maybe it’s best we leave.Maybe we should leave the Capitol.”He says to his Secret Service agents, “I’m not going to get in that car.I’m not going to leave.I need to stay,” because he knows, the minute you get in the motorcade, that motorcade will take you away, and it will take you to a secure location.Who knows when you get back to the Capitol to continue the certification of the election?So Pence decides to stay.He declines the offer to leave the Capitol.
And what’s happening at the White House, especially as regards to Pence?The president tweets at 2:24.What is his attitude towards Pence, and what is he doing?
Trump is watching television from the dining room near the Oval Office, processing it all, pleased to see his supporters with him, his supporters at the Capitol.He’s not horrified by what’s happening.People who came in to see him in the dining room say he was watching television almost like he would be watching a golf match, keeping an eye on it all, not really reacting to it in an emotional way, happy to see his supporters out there.When he’s updated on Pence’s condition, that Pence is safe, he shrugs and says, “Oh, OK.Thanks for the update.”
But this is someone who is not really that concerned, based on our reporting, about what was happening with Pence, because he knew Pence had broken with him.Pence was safe.He assumed the Secret Service had him together.But he liked that his supporters were fighting. He wasn’t worried about Pence’s safety.At least that wasn’t top of mind, based on our reporting.But he was someone who was loving that the crowd was fighting.
I mean, to be tweeting about him in the midst of that.I mean, what message was that sending?
Eastman, Trump and others are still pressuring Pence, as the riot begins, to do something, to object to the certification.The pressure campaign led by Trump went till the final moment, on Jan. 6.Even as people are storming the Capitol, the president is unrelenting.He won’t back off of his push to have Pence walk away.He wants Pence to do something.So the pressure campaign continued.Even without Trump being physically there, his people are there, pressuring Pence.And for Trump, it was something to watch, not something, at first, at least, to stop.
Someone we haven’t talked much about but who has made a similar agreement or similar calculation as Lindsey Graham, that staying close to Trump is worth it, is Kevin McCarthy.And at this moment, on Jan. 6, is a moment where he is going to see how much influence he actually has in a phone call to Trump.What is that phone call?What is he asking of Trump, and what does he get as a result?
McCarthy says to Trump, “You need to call these people out of here.You need to get them out of the Capitol.”McCarthy’s office was being bombarded with rocks and pelted by people with metal bars.… In the days after Jan. 6, I walked through McCarthy’s office just to see it, and you could still the cracks in the windows, the trash outside.McCarthy’s office was being ransacked on Jan. 6 by the rioters.McCarthy’s office was ransacked, cracked windows, trash everywhere.
His staff was in fear of their lives being taken.This was a moment of true fear inside of the U.S. Capitol, whether you were a Republican or Democrat, that your life was at risk.McCarthy tells Trump, “You have to get these people out.”… Trump says to McCarthy, “Kevin, these people believe that I won more than you did.”That’s where Trump’s mind was in the conversation with McCarthy, about loyalty, about the election supposedly being stolen in Trump’s view.
It wasn’t about McCarthy’s safety or Pence’s safety.It was about loyalty and political obedience.Trump wanted loyalty and obedience from McCarthy, even as violence consumed the Capitol.
But I mean, talk about loyalty.Kevin McCarthy is somebody who has gone along with Trump from the very beginning.
And he even objected to the election.
And who objected to the election.I mean, does Kevin—I mean, when you look at that situation, does the loyalty only go one way with Donald Trump?How does Kevin McCarthy view—you know, what did he get in exchange for the loyalty that he had provided up until that moment?
By working closely with Trump, McCarthy came closer to the speakership.He has remained the leader of House Republicans because he has remained an ally of President Trump.McCarthy’s political capital inside of the House Republican Party is intertwined with his relationship with Donald Trump.If you take away the relationship with Trump, McCarthy knows you don’t have much of a relationship with your core members who have that relationship with Trump or who have that admiration for Trump.
McCarthy, if anything, is a political operator.He knows where the power is inside the GOP.It’s with Trump.And as long as it’s with Trump, McCarthy is going to be with Trump.
Another moment that’s about Ted Cruz … they’re trying to decide, are they going to continue to object.Is Ted Cruz going to continue to object?And it seems like, once again, it’s a situation of following.And it’s a situation of following Josh Hawley.And can you describe what happens in the calculation that Ted Cruz makes in that moment?
Some of the more moderate members of the Republican Party pull Sen. Cruz and Sen. Hawley aside when they’re in a secure area, and they whisper to the objectors, “Maybe it’s time to lay down your arms politically.Maybe it’s time we just move forward with this entire process.Let’s not object.”But still, even as people are being killed as part of the insurrection, some Republican senators say, “We are going to continue to object.That’s just who we are.That’s what we’re going to do.We’re here to help President Trump object to the election.”
Some Republican senators say to them privately, “You can’t do this.This is an insurrection.Back off.”But they won’t back off.And what a revealing snapshot of the Republican Party.Even at the moment of violence, when they’re in a secure area because the Capitol is being attacked, some Republicans say to their own colleagues, “Sorry. We’re moving ahead with Trump’s agenda, what Trump wants, because that’s where our party is, and that’s where we are.”
So Lindsey Graham, where is he in that moment?
Lindsey Graham is frustrated, he’s emotional, and he says he’s had enough with this entire fight, spearheaded by Trump.But he doesn’t really break with Trump at his political core.It’s a moment of grievance about Trump but not a total break.Graham is someone who is still talking to Trump days later about how he should rehabilitate himself and run for president again in 2024.
There is a momentary spasm of frustration with Trump, but it doesn’t last.Those speeches on the Senate floor, Sen. Graham, Sen. Lee show their frustration with the president taking it to this point, to the point of a Capitol attack, but they don’t want to see themselves distanced too much from the man who has all the power.
I mean, you described that he is confronted by Trump supporters in those days after Jan. 6.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, he must see the power of the base.
Oh, yeah. That’s great. That’s great imagery, too.Sen. Graham feels the heat immediately after that speech, approached in airports, and Trump supporters say to him, “You’re a traitor. You’re the worst. You’re expletive.”Graham nods. He takes it.He grimaces as he makes his way through the airport, and he recognizes that if he wants a future in the Republican Party, he certainly can’t break with Donald Trump.He can have his own position on Jan. 6, his own position on whether Trump went too far, but Trump is the party.And it’s visceral.
There is an almost violent edge to the way Graham is criticized on social media and elsewhere.They see Graham as not just someone who opposes Trump’s position on Jan. 6 at that time but someone who’s a traitor, traitorous.This is the kind of way Graham is cast immediately by Trump supporters.And Graham quickly works to rehabilitate himself with Trump and with Trump supporters.It was a moment of dissent from the Trump position, and he quickly found his way back.
There is an extensive description in the book of Graham in that period after Jan. 6, where he continues to see himself as the Trump whisperer, as somebody who can moderate him, who can get him off talking about the election.And it’s like Groundhog Day.I mean, can you describe what Graham is trying to get from Trump but that he just cannot, you know, for all of the golf games, he cannot get Trump to do?
Graham loves the push and pull with Trump, trying to get Trump to change his personality, but then knowing he can’t and explaining that to other Republicans.He’s the explainer, the best friend, the confidant, the inside man when it comes to Donald Trump.And there’s a sense sometimes that Graham believes he can push Trump in a different direction and a realization that he can’t.
But what Graham wants to be is in the room with Trump, whether that’s on the course at Mar-a-Lago, inside the White House.This is someone who wants to help be an adviser to the person he sees as the center of the Republican Party.
Graham’s colleagues say that he’s someone they count on to give a read of where Trump is; that he is someone who they believe can interpret Trump’s whims, his moods, his different power centers around him.And they turn to Graham, including McConnell, for advice on how to navigate everything Trump is doing.
I mean, and in this period, it seems like the thing Graham really wants is for Trump to stop talking about the election, the stolen election.Can you just describe that argument that he makes and the effect that it actually has on Trump?
Graham wants Trump to focus on 2024, not 2020.He sees so much opportunity on the horizon for Trump, even now.He wants Trump to put down the grievances, stop claiming the election was a lie.But he also recognizes Trump just won’t listen.In golf game after golf game, phone call after phone call, Graham is pleading with Trump, “Stop talking about 2020.”But it never convinces Trump.Trump hears him out.Sometimes they’ll hang up on each other.Sometimes they’ll curse at each other.They’re friends, but he can’t convince Trump to actually move on.
When Kevin McCarthy goes to Mar-a-Lago, can you describe that scene and how important it is and the story of the photograph and telling the—and the press finding out about it.
McCarthy’s colleagues are wondering, “What’s Kevin going to do?”Well, McCarthy flies down to Mar-a-Lago, has lunch with Trump.They’re sitting there having burgers.They’re both trying to lose a little weight.They take the buns off the burgers, and they laugh about that, how they are both friends still after Jan. 6, guys who can exchange diet tips.
McCarthy says to Trump, “I want your help for 2022.Help me win back the majority.”It was an opportunity on the table laid out for Donald Trump to repair himself.McCarthy didn’t need to make it an explicit offer of rehabilitation, but Trump knew it was just that.This was an offer to come back, to begin the Trump comeback.And it was McCarthy, as a congressional leader, who made it happen.
McConnell had broken with Trump, wasn’t talking to Trump.But McCarthy was willing to fly down to Trump’s home to show that kind of respect to Trump, that he would come to Trump’s place, not have Trump come to the Capitol.By going to Mar-a-Lago, McCarthy made so many Trump supporters in the House pleased that the House GOP would remain politically cozy with the former president.But McCarthy’s visit appalled others like Rep. Cheney, who saw McCarthy as someone who is ingratiating to the point of embarrassment with the former president.
Future of the Republican Party
I mean, when we look back on it now, was that a turning point in where the Republican Party was going?
McCarthy and McConnell could have led their conferences to break with Trump. …McConnell could have convinced his colleagues to convict Trump in the Senate impeachment trial.McCarthy could have told his colleagues that Trump’s the past, and it’s time to build a new future.Instead, McConnell said, “People should do what they want in the Senate impeachment trial,” and he did not vote to convict Trump, though he blamed a lot of Jan. 6 on Trump himself. …
McCarthy goes down to Mar-a-Lago and says to Trump, “Regardless of what has happened in recent weeks, I still need your help.I need your help to help me win the speaker’s gavel in 2022.” …Trump sees in McCarthy a politically pliant person who can help him come back, and someone who is not trying to go to war with him, even though there is an opportunity to do just that and to have a full break.
Late January and early February 2021 is a moment historians will look back on as a rare window, where Republicans could have jumped out and gone in an entirely different direction.They did not.
So let’s just skip ahead to the end. …
The anniversary of Jan. 6, when you’ve got Liz Cheney and her father as the only Republicans there.… She’s about to be censured, and the Republican National Committee is going to issue a statement saying, “Jan. 6 was legitimate political discourse.” …Can you also describe the Republican Party that has been transformed by Jan. 6, by the decisions that it’s made since then?Where is the party at that point?And what does that scene represent?
Jan. 6 will live in infamy as a moment where Republicans had to make a decision about who each of them are.What does it mean to be a Republican?Your reaction to Jan. 6, an insurrection, tells us everything.There was an attack on the U.S. Capitol after a rally held by the president of United States, who was pushing his supporters in Congress and elsewhere to object to an election.
The Republican Party for years was in the wilderness, watching President Obama win election after election, watching Democrats win power.When Mitt Romney loses in 2012, many Republicans believed the party is dead.It won’t come back.Paul Ryan and his vision of Medicare and Social Security reform doesn’t land with most American people.It doesn’t land with the working class.
After 2012, the Republican Party thought the working class was lost and that the future of the party had to be centrist, that maybe it should move in a different direction.You saw that from Jeb Bush and so many others who ran in 2016.But there was one person on that 2016 stage who said, “I actually don’t want to go after entitlement reform.I want to limit immigration, and I want to have a hard-nosed nationalist appeal to the voter.”Trump revolutionized the Republican Party, a free-trade party protectionist.He made a party that was trying to moderate on immigration a party of border hawks and restrictive on immigration.
Trump changed an entire party.He made overtures to working-class union Democrats, and he made Republicans think inside the halls of Congress that maybe they could have a new paradigm for the Republican future.But they had a crossroads in 2016.You can win power, but it’s going to be with this person, who has said all of these different things over the years that are offensive, who has a spotty record on business and politics.You can win power, but it comes at this cost.
They took the bargain in 2016.And ever since January 2017, when Trump took the oath of office, the Republican Party has essentially been in lockstep with Donald Trump.The anti-Trump movement, the Never Trump movement, has been on the relative fringes of American politics.It has a large media footprint from time to time but not a political coalition out in the states.
Trump took a searing message on cultural and political issues and made it something that was real to Republicans, a path to power.Power, more than ideology, now drives the Republican Party.This is a party that argued for years.It came out of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, a conservative Republican Party.Now, it’s not really even a Republican Party in ethos or necessarily conservative, but populist and power-driven.Where are the people on the right of American politics and even the center moving, center left, how can we appeal to them on issues like immigration and trade?
And so much of the Republican Party now is about passing policy and winning power behind a personality, not necessarily behind an ideology.The ideology of years past has cracked and fallen away.Now at the center is a personality who perseveres even through defeat, even through chaos, even through two impeachments, Donald John Trump.And he still lingers on the scene, in control, out of office but in power.
… So that party, on that moment and when you see that image of just Liz Cheney and her father.
I watched them carefully that day and wondered, "Are these two people, these Cheneys, the future, or are they relics of the past?"And they might be the latter, because the Republican Party has remained with Trump.The ghosts of Cheney and Bush and Reagan haunt the halls of the Capitol but have very little influence.This is a party that has moved toward Trump.Rep. Cheney desperately wants the Republican Party to come back to the ethos and politics of the past, to get away from Trumpism and try to re-create some of the political coalitions and arguments that elevated the party for decades.
But she is waging a lonely battle.The image of her with her father tells you everything.The Cheneys in Republican politics have retained some respect among the seasoned, more moderate and conservative people in the party, but they don’t have power.Where are the followers?Where are the followers for the Cheney model of Republican politics?She might run in 2024 and try to galvanize Republicans who have been slumbering politically for years from that Reagan-Bush wing.But she might fail to galvanize people in the coming months as well, in the coming years.
The Cheneys are seen by many Republican voters as relics of the past, a past that led the Republican Party into war in Iraq, intervention in Afghanistan, to an expanded government during the Bush years.Even if they see the Cheneys as morally respectable, they don’t want to return to the politics they represent. …
[Voice of FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk] We’re talking about democracy.What’s the state of democracy, given the state of the Republican Party that you’ve talked so eloquently about?
It’s a great question.American democracy is perhaps more fragile than ever.How healthy can a democracy be if a lie is now at the center of a major political party?How healthy can a democracy be if many Republicans, millions of them across the country, won’t accept Joe Biden as the rightful president?This is not about red and blue anymore.Those were simpler times, easier times.This is now about democracy, whether people believe in the system that exists or want to overturn it.That’s where we are as a nation.
I see it as a reporter in all my travels that this country is now just divided.That’s an easy way of framing it.It’s not a divided country; it’s a chaotic country without a rulebook.If people aren’t following the rules of democracy, also called the Constitution, if that’s not the rulebook for the whole playing field anymore, then what happens?What happens in a soccer match or on a baseball field, if everybody decides to stop following the rules?Chaos.American democracy is at a moment of chaos.This is a reckoning for democracy, when a former president refuses to concede and had pressured his own vice president to disrupt the certification of an election, an effort that many have seen as a possible coup in the United States.
To even have the word “coup” thrown around in the United States of America, a country that began in Philadelphia, forged over shared values and philosophies about a stable system.This was a country that was forged on values, constitutional values, by leaders who wanted a functioning democracy, a country that would have a peaceful transition to power, a country that wouldn’t have a military general somehow become a king, but a country where a general could return to Mount Vernon after being president, and someone else would just quietly take his place.
Jan. 6 gets at the core of the founding of America, which is the peaceful transition of power, a presidential system where the next person in line, even if you don’t like them, is accepted.We now have a country and a Republican Party that doesn’t accept that the transition of power that took place in 2021 was legitimate.It’s not just a crisis for American democracy; it’s a tragedy.
Let me ask you one more thing.You used to talk to Trump with great regularity ...when you were reporting on him.You generously told us about those conversations many times.If you talked to him now, and I don't know whether you do or not, but how is this Donald Trump different than the Donald Trump you used to talk to?
Let it be known, those close to Trump now say he hasn’t changed at all.The presidency usually changes people who sit in that office.It hasn’t changed Trump.He remains the same person he was who sat around with Roy Cohn in Manhattan in the 1980s and came up with different legal and business schemes.He’s the same person who sat on the 26th floor of Trump Tower with Roger Stone in the 1990s and thought, how could I map out a political career?He's the same Trump who sat with Steven Bannon in the Oval Office in January of 2017 and said, “Let’s have a disruptive presidency.”
The Trump who worked with Cohn, with Stone, with Bannon is the Trump of 2021.He’s the Trump of 2022.This is Donald Trump, unchanging, unflinching.Even with Lindsey Graham, he won’t change his mind on the election.His supporters beg him to just move on to a different topic.He won’t.He’s on the march.
Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager, says, “Not only will Trump run again, but he’s going to run again with vengeance on his mind.”This is a former president who wants vengeance.It’s such an unusual moment in America.Usually former presidents go home.Jimmy Carter goes back to Plains.George H.W. Bush after one term goes back to Texas.Former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton start to do civic work in the days after their respective presidencies.Donald Trump goes back on the campaign trail, rally after rally, revving his people up, promising, hinting, winking that he’s going to be back in 2024, vengeance at the top of his mind.
And at the center of his agenda, if you think it was bad on Jan. 6, just follow what is happening in the states where so many Republicans are passing voter laws and are saying, “Come January 2025, we’ll be ready this time.We’ll be ready this time to help out our side.”
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