Jonathan Karl | Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show

welcome to the Free Library of Philadelphia I'm Andy Kahan director of author events this afternoon we're joined by Jonathan Carl the chief White House correspondent and chief Washington correspondent for ABC News Carl has covered some of Washington DC's most important beats including four presidential administrations Capitol Hill the Pentagon and the state department he was president of the White House correspondence Association from 2019 to 2020 and has earned the Walter Cronkite award for National individual achievement and Emmy and the Everett McKinley Dirksen award the highest honor for Congressional reporting the author of front row at the Trump show an instant New York Times bestseller Carl peered behind the scenes into the president Trump and his allies unprecedented actions he continues the story with what's sure to be another instant bestseller betrayal the Final Act of the Trump show today he'll be in conversation with Tamela Edwards anchor of six ABC Action News Morning Edition thank you both so much for joining us the screen is yours all right John thanks for being here and it feels like five minutes ago you were one of those young people along with farai today and kellyanne Conway who was kellyanne I think Fitzpatrick on CNN and you've gone on to do some wonderful work including this book uh you had covered the White House for quite a while you did write that first book front row of the Trump show and you get to this last year which is the subject of betrayal and it stood out to me that in a number of instances you say that something shocks you and I wanted you to put that in context because you've covered quite a few people in quite a few places and I would imagine it it takes a bit to shock you yeah well first of all Tim uh thank you to the uh Free Library of Philadelphia and thank you to you being here I mean I go way way back with you we were running around covering a campaign that seems like uh Generations ago and maybe maybe back when it was normal yeah um I covered the events of 2020 as a reporter for ABC News day in and day out um I covered all that unfolded uh and it was truly um I thought I had as good a handle as anybody on on what was going on but when I stepped back to write this book and I knew I was going to write this book um as as I as 2020 emerged and it was quickly apparent by the spring that this was going to be a year unlike any other uh that I needed to I needed to write a sequel to front row at the Trump show so I started taking notes way back then uh but when Trump left the White House I went back and methodically went back to look at almost a day by day for the reporting of this book a day by day Recreation of 2020 so I could know how to kind of put this massive year in the crisis we all faced into some kind of uh context and I went back and interviewed the key players I interviewed um people to find out what was really going on at a big major turning points and what I found out that was shocking and truly shocking and should shock and horrify all of us is that as awful as 2020 was and as awful as the aftermath of the election was in January 6th we were actually much closer to a greater disaster uh than than anything that certainly I realized at the time and I'll just give you one example there are many examples in the book um we all knew that Michael Flynn who was the former National Security adviser and a retired three-star General I went out publicly uh in uh in late 2020 and said uh that that martial law should be imposed and that the election should be rerun I mean really a shocking thing for anybody to say but who cares he's just some crackpot right but what I learned is that he actually reached out directly to one of the most powerful and important officials at the Pentagon who was seen by the world as a Flynn Protege uh Ezra Cohen who was the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security that is the civilian official with direct responsibility for the Special Operations uh forces and and much else and he had worked for Flynn on the National Security Council he had worked under Flint at the defense intelligence agency and Flynn wanted him to activate you know God knows what but wanted him to take steps to use the military to seize voting machines in the states under under consideration under under Trump was contesting it didn't happen because Cohen told him effectively to get lost but Flynn thought it was going to happen and there's nothing in you know Ezra Cohen's background that would lead you to think that he was going to tell somebody who had been seen by the world as his mentor uh you know to to know and and things like that were going on Sydney Powell was in direct contact with the Director of National Intelligence um Mark Meadows was was pushing the Pentagon and the justice department to investigate bizarre and outlandish and Q anon-esque uh conspiracy theories this is all stuff that was not known at the time but I uncovered for this book and you towards the end of the book when you talk about January 6 and it's a last minute choice for them to take the elector's votes in those um old world mahogany boxes if they had left them behind and they'd been destroyed or something had happened we would have been in a world Beyond law because you're supposed to use the originals and nobody knows and it kind of it feels like that was the case at multiple points that if Ezra Cohen had gone through with this if other people had gone through with what they were being asked to do we might have been in a place beyond law or we wouldn't have known what to do and in that place it he might have gotten away with it yes he may have gotten away from he might not have gotten away for it for long it might have taken uh it might have taken a military Clash to stop it uh that there could have been Bloodshed on the street beyond what we already saw uh the demogony boxes is is a small window on all this and something that I became rather obsessed with under the Constitution you know we have a specific procedure that must be followed and has been followed by every election since the election of George Washington for the casting of ballots the counting of of the states sending in those electoral votes the opening of those votes the counting of the votes it goes by a calendar Originals uh must be what are sent in as you mentioned also they must be signed in a specific Way by specific officials in each of the states all of that and when the Senate was evacuated in a rush evacuation uh because the rioters were already inside the building um a young staffer with the parliamentarian's office a woman who does not want her name to be out there um somebody who served the country in ways that most people have no idea uh wait we have to grab those boxes because they contain the balance and she did and they were preserved and if you look at what happened on January 6th the the place that was ransacked the most of any room in the capital was the parliamentarian's office and I believe firmly that the reason why the rioters went to that room is they were looking for those votes and they wanted to destroy them because they knew that those were necessary under our constitution to the uh certification of of Joe Biden's uh Victory so you know that's one moment and and like I said there are there were many others you know that is the work of the house committee right now trying to figure out who knew what when there's a moment in the book where Mark Meadows says something that pricked your ears in your reporting that made you wonder what he knew and when obviously this investigation is going on do you think this was a group of people who had no idea what they were doing or this was a group of people who did have some inside baseball on what to look for and what to do uh it was a group of people that in some sense were colossally incompetent and and that also saved us um you know Mark Meadows uh had a fundamental on misunderstanding of how the process works and at one point he thought that if the uh if the house and the Senate each had a people objecting that there would be a simple vote of the Congressional delegations and that would determine who the president was that that's obviously not the case uh that's not how that's not how it's done and he was actually corrected in real time uh by by Kevin McCarthy on on that point but um you know the the the the ultimate solution that they were out was outlined in another a memo that I was able to see its existence had never been known before uh written by one of the Trump campaign's lawyers and forwarded by Mark Meadows to uh to the chief of staff in the vice president's office on on New Year's Eve about how this was supposed to go down and the way it was supposed to go down was you know Pence was gonna was gonna throw out the ballots basically send them back to the states to be redone on this in the six states that that Trump was objecting to and then nobody would have a full majority of electoral votes and then under that scenario it is a vote by Congressional Delegation in the house for president in the senate for vice president and in the house the Republicans controlled 26 electoral uh debt 26 delegations so theoretically if they all voted for Trump boom he would win but here's what they didn't realize just a basic fact they actually count those votes um by by alphabetical order so young you're Alabama's and Arkansas and um and in Alaska's uh our our first and then you go down you know you get through Pennsylvania and you go down and finally where do you end up what's the 50th state alphabetically it's Wyoming it has a house delegation with one member of the House what's her name oh you're not supposed to do pop quizzes Liz Cheney so hey there's a lot of drama what's Liz Cheney gonna say uh you know she's already oh there's gonna be bad words here in the election so so the these people were were colossally incompetent and one of the one of the really fearful things when you mentioned you know the future is if we were to see this anything like this happen again and Trump were able to somehow mount a comeback something I think is preposterously low possibility but not him but not impossible um this this was a dry run and you know they wouldn't be smarter and better it wouldn't make they wouldn't make the same mistakes again the book is full of lots of points of drama around this and uh that Trump official is Johnny mcentee will talk about him in a moment but there's a moment where Trump is really pressing Mike Pence and they're trying to just throw this legally's at him and the moment turns to me it seems on Pence saying you know what I've got a law degree too and it was just finally you can't get this crap past me but I thought to myself what if he didn't and he turned to his his staffers and said well that kind of makes sense like I'm thinking from here on out every government official needs to have a law degree well and also think about it this way Mike Pence was the most loyal vice president in the history of the American vice presidency he did everything Trump wanted of him he never once publicly disagreed with Trump even in that first campaign when the Access Hollywood tape dropped Pence didn't do anything to distance himself or criticize Donald Trump so there was nothing in Pence's background that would lead you to believe that he would be the one that would stand up and say no to Donald Trump but he did and the meeting you're describing happened on December 4th and it was a last-minute you know Pence had been in in um in Georgia campaigning for those two Republican candidates he had just was just about to land at Andrews Air Force Base and he got a message from the White House the president wants to see you as soon as you get in Trump was going that night to give his own speech down in Georgia Marine one was already on the south lawn the hell you know the the propellers going and he gets there and he's basically sandbagged he you know John Eastman this this wacky outside lawyer uh who had argued during the campaign that Kamala Harris wasn't truly an American citizen and therefore was ineligible to be vice president I mean really these were this was the legal advice he was getting and um and he goes in uh to the Oval Office and they and they start hammering and they say Jefferson did this Jefferson has secured his own uh election Victory you know when he was vice president and you know ruled in ways favorable for himself uh Nixon uh you know uh uh made up his decision on the you know all the all these historical examples that were all bogus and by the way I go through in the book and explain why each one of these things was bogus and Pence knew it as well and he had studied it and he had done his homework and to his credit he'd end up doing the right thing but you're right what would have happened if he didn't okay you know I know everybody who studied the Constitution and is honest about it knows he had no power to single-handedly overturn a presidential election it's absurd but what if he had tried he's presiding over the counting of the votes he's standing next to Nancy Pelosi what's she going to do grab the gavel and start hitting him and say no no no I have I mean what what happens okay we go to the Supreme Court how do you go to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court rules and how do you enforce the Supreme Court's decision you and the Supreme Court and what army if you have the leadership the entire unified leadership of the executive branch basically taking power what do you do like I said I think it would have eventually been resolved but it would have been chaos and it's highly likely there would have been massive Bloodshed as well you know before we even get to this point you talk about the lead up in the months and I think what's hard for some American it's one thing to say that somebody has a point of view they'd rather have conservative government on taxes on foreign policy on social policy but as you read the book you ask yourself at what cost are we willing to go you talk about Johnny mcentee who's running the office of personnel and you're wondering why any grown-up allows this to happen or Deborah Burke's sitting in a meeting and the president is talking about people injecting themselves with bleach and she won't look you in the eye like you're trying to get her attention like are you hearing this and she's just trying to get through and that's the image you paint is of people who know better just trying to get through before we even get to this point and there's a big difference between the people that know better and we're enablers anyway and those who knew better but felt that by staying they could try to prevent total disaster um Anthony fauci is in that latter Camp I mean Anthony faltery was was there and and he was part of the coronavirus task force he was certainly kind of um pushed aside uh as things got crazier and wackier uh but you know he felt that he needed to stay and be part of that and that you know resigning would have been a terrible mistake and would have would have removed any option he had of of trying to prevent a greater disaster um Pat cipolloni is a character that I outline in some detail in the book who is a very mixed character um in terms of his relationship with Trump um and he came very close to resigning and at one point uh as January 6th the immediate aftermath he told Trump that unless he got out there and expressed some regret and um you know and and did the right thing uh that he faced removal from Office either through the 25th Amendment or through impeachment um you know he stayed there's there's a guy named Chris Liddell who handled the transition and Biden people spoke very fondly of for for kind of running a clandestine campaign in the second floor of the West Wing he was a deputy chief of staff he had served Trump for all four years but he stayed and did what he needed to do was required to under the law but what he needed to do um to help the incoming Biden team so there are a lot of a lot of these folks mcentee is the most powerful and significant and crucial figure of 2020 that most people have never heard of and he was just 29 years old when he came back into the White House and got this job as the head of presidential personnel and that's basically the most important HR department in the United States it's in charge of all the hiring and firing of every political appointee in the executive branch I mean from the treasury secretary to the ambassador to the Bahamas everybody has to go through the presidential personnel office he cleaned out that office that's like 30 people in it and put his friends in mostly kids in their 20s some of them didn't have college degrees yet and they went out and they systematically while all this was was going was was going on the pandemic the election all of this conducted a purge of the executive branch to get rid of anybody that wasn't sufficiently loyal to Donald Trump often getting rid of people who had a great deal of experience and I'm coming back to this question because we talked to Lawrence Wright of the new New Yorker in this space as well and in his book he focused a lot on Matthew pottinger and Deborah Burks and really laid out what you just said if they were not there where would we be you know they're people who are you politically that it's that to tell the story afterwards isn't good enough that you should have resigned and told the world at the time and I just wonder where you personally having done this reporting come out on that it's you know it's it's I think I think there are cases where that's a totally legitimate question and there are cases where I where I truly understand why the people stayed and um you know Matt pottinger was one of those that took the uh the the virus seriously before anybody else did inside that white house and tried to steer the response in a productive way Matt pottinger I describe a rather Vivid scene involving him he was the deputy National Security adviser um former Wall Street Journal reporter by the way and a very intelligent guy um and he was at a meeting when the riot he was a meeting outside of the White House when the riot started on January 6th and he didn't fully understand what was going on until he got back in the White House and saw the televisions in his office and he saw a report that that the White House was blocking the deployment of the National Guard and so he marched from his office which is just down the hallway from the Oval Office to find out what the hell what the hell was going on and uh he saw chaos he saw people running around in the outer oval the area outside the Oval Office the Oval Office itself was empty um Trump was in this dining room right next to the Oval Office did he often spent time in that had television sets and he bumped and he saw Pat sabaloni running by couldn't really get his attention he sees Mark Meadows frantically going by and he tells Meadows wait a minute we need to get the National Guard deployed is it true that they're being blocked and he said no no no no we're on we're on it and he walked by but pottinger was so horrified by what he saw not just on television but inside the West Wing that he went back to his office he sat down and he wrote his letter of resignation now should he have done that earlier uh I mean I think that that's something that will be debated but you know it can be argued that he did the right thing by staying and trying to ensure that the people that were in charge throwing the greatest crisis of our lifetimes uh we're we're steered in the right direction as much as he was could humanly make so and there are other people you know that um but but then like you said there are others like Mark Meadows who never said no to Donald Trump and did nothing but enable him in all of this but he cried at Elijah Cummings funeral I don't know how you reconcile those two things let's talk about the man at the heart he actually cries a lot you know you you covered this president for four years and in the book you know you go to Mar-A-Lago and talk to him when he's out of office and A lot's been made of that reporting um where he doesn't seem to show any remorse for what happened to Mike Pence you covered him all those days in office and I John it's hard to get a bead on does he really just not care or does he really believe this he really believes this election was stolen um he's all over the place sometimes he's gracious stay for dinner then he's hanging up on you it's hard to tell what you're dealing with and where did you come down on that by the end I got the sense that he's become entirely deluded and he really believes it I don't think it started out that way I think that he looked at this he he feels you know his brand and he's done a tremendous job building a brand over the course of his uh lifetime his brand was built on winning and being portrayed as the ultimate rich guy the winner the guy that never loses the guy that makes all the best deals he managed to create the perception of that even when he was going through four bankruptcies this was his brand and he knows and I dug up this quote that I uh hadn't found until I was doing the research on the book from a from a 2015 interview with uh with Donald Trump and it's it's with it's with a reporter I think he was reporter for Newsday was working on a book project and Trump describes that if you you cannot lose and you cannot acknowledge you've lost because then people will look at you as a loser so it's all about it's all built on the perception of winning even if the reality of winning is not there and that's what he did he realized at least he felt I don't think this is true at all he felt though that all those people out there who would who would support him if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue all those you know fervent Trump supporters were following him because he believed because they believed that he was a guy that didn't lose now if he actually lost oh my God they would run from him and that's why I think initially it was strategic um but as it went on I mean when I saw that guy you know in March of this year in Mar-A-Lago and I looked into his eyes and I heard all the stuff he this was somebody that actually believed it he really believes that that the election was stolen from him there's no way he lost I would imagine at least I frighten you that's more dangerous I moved on to the next deal you know and by the way I think this is a really important Point um roughly 40 percent of the country I don't know if it's 30 or 40 or where it is but but there's a good chunk of the country that actually believes the same thing and um believes the election stolen that Trump really won and I think that we have to take that seriously and we have to explain and be very factual and dispassionate about why it's false because there are actually good reasons why so many people believe it they believe it one because you have somebody with a very powerful bully pulpit who has repeated the lies so many times that it sounds like it's true to some people but there are two other factors one if you were if you went anywhere near a trump rally in the in October of 2020. um you would have seen a pact event that people waited for hours to come into you would have seen it particularly in those northern states all all of the rallies were Outdoors because of coronavirus people waited out in freezing cold temperatures uh I recount one event in Nebraska uh where 30 people had to be treated for various forms of hypothermia and Frostbite and and you know went to see this guy and they packed in and they started chanting at those last rallies we love you we love you if you went and you saw you know a Joe Biden event you would have said Biden was taking a much low-key more low-key approach because of kovid he did some events much fewer they were all driving events that were not widely attended uh in comparison to the Trump events because they were driving events and because people were being careful um but watching that dichotomy you thought my God he's going to win but then secondly if you were watching the election results come in you would have seen that at 10 o'clock at 11 o'clock at night Trump was ahead he was got a huge lead in Pennsylvania 200 000 plus votes he was winning in Michigan he was winning in Wisconsin it looked like he was on his way to reelection now you and I know and anybody that's taken time to look at this why that was the case we know especially in Pennsylvania that they had this system that Republicans made pot you know insisted that those mail-in ballots couldn't even be opened and started to process until polls closed and we knew why it takes time because of a verification process we know all of that but again most Americans are sitting there tuning in see Trump's ahead they go to bed they wake up Suddenly is losing what that's going on so it it's important for us as journalists to take time and explain why it's a lie not just say it's a lie explain in detail why it's a lie and that as you know from reading the book I go into some detail on each and every one of those claims the major claims that Trump makes to show why they're can I say BS um okay it's just at 145 friends I think you're you're okay you know uh as as Bill Barr Bill Barr of all people told me it's all but you can't just say it you have to show why and that's what I tried to do but here's a question about that you've been in Washington a long time and the Democrats are faced with an interesting question I mean Ted Cruz got shot down by Margaret Brennan this week on the talk shows because he's still pushing this idea that people don't think that elections have integrity and she kept saying this is based on a lie but for the Democrats is that the wisest course of action to say but this is a lie or to say okay fine we'll change the system we'll write a voter ID Bill we'll come up with these rules and and incorporate some of what you're saying so that we kind of try to you know inoculate ourselves with the smallpox take a little bit of what you're doing you've been there a long time is there something to that or no you can't go down that road first of all something that is very dangerous especially in the current climate is to see at the state level or at the federal level changes made in our election processes or election laws that are made under pure party line process that's a big mistake uh if there's anything that must be nonpartisan it's how we conduct our elections so I think you're on to something really important what we need in this country is a bipartisan group of of of respected and trusted people to take a look at the way we conduct our elections and address some of the uh you know some of the fears of of you know fraud and all that which like I said not all the people saying this are bad people they have reasons they they've been told things that are untrue they've seen things with their own eyes that make them question the system so be transparent and do things like say uh yes voter ID which is something that you know many on the left have objected to for a long time okay voter ID we can do vote we have a big powerful country we can ensure that everybody in this country has an ID they may not have driver assistance minimum we will ensure that everybody has an ID so they can vote and we will require it for voting and then in the process of counting our votes and again It's tricky because it because this is rules are established at the state level I mean that's also under the Constitution but what happened in Pennsylvania is awful that that there was actually a provision that said that the the state was not allowed to start processing mail-in votes until the polls closed why why I mean that created the situation that it took days to really know what was happening and what the results were you can look to Georgia or look to Ohio look to Ohio Ohio is a state where the the mail-in vote the absentee vote uh the early vote is processed not counted but processed as the vote comes in that means they're the ballots are looked at signature match you know barcodes to make sure people aren't voting twice all of that and by the way be transparent about all they're safeguards and all this stuff and so in Ohio the first votes that were counted the Ohio nobody talks about this Ohio is the exact opposite of Pennsylvania Ohio the very first votes that were counted were the early votes so guess what if you looked at Ohio Joe Biden had a big lead in Ohio right after polls closed a big lead because the early votes Democrats are more likely to vote early we're processed first and then it went away and job and and Donald Trump won big in Ohio not because there was fraud but because that's how they process the votes the exact reverse of the system in Pennsylvania let's talk a little bit about January 6 because you go into detail and you really do lay out another vantage point of just how frightening and close it came it's amazing that nobody was killed that we didn't have somebody hung or shot and uh there's a former Congressman who's now a Biden official who's standing in the Old Post Office it's called The Abe Lincoln post office because he used to go there which had a trap door in the floor thank goodness and he's watching these people advance and he's saying to himself I don't understand I'm pretty sure black people were doing this he's a black Congressman they'd be shot by now is he on to something that if the racial makeup of the group had been different the day might have been different or the element of surprise it would have turned out the same no matter what first off the congressman is Cedric Richmond and he is now one of the top officials in the white house uh he was a co-chair of the Biden campaign one of Biden's early and most important supporters and by happenstance he ended up being in this area this this Old Post Office right that is now called the uh the Lincoln room really amazing I mean just just you know like I said history always surrounds you when you walk around the Capitol building but sometimes it's really close and and this was this was rather amazing because he was alone it was just Cedric Richmond and once the rioters came in he barricaded himself in that room and then he was trying to figure out what do I do if they come in and you know try to get me and he he knew because he had given tours to guests you know visitors in the Capitol there is a trap door in that room and he didn't even know where it led but he looked at it and he was ready to go down that trap door if he needed to hide but he his reaction when he saw those rioters come in was one of anger um and as you said he was thinking to himself if these were black people they wouldn't be you know just marching past police barricades you know that they they there would be people that would have been shot um I don't know if he is right or wrong about that but I know that that feeling was one that a lot of people had watching it unfold on television and he was watching it much closer than that it was certainly something that I thought as I was watching all this unfold um you know the Capitol Police uh it's a different kind of police force um and um there an event like that you know they they've had certainly they've had scary events that have happened on the hill but nothing anything remotely like that and they were you know entirely caught by surprise um which is another thing that the January 6 committee should look look into as to you know how that happened um but but Cedric Richmond's um experience I think is one of the most Vivid stories that I heard uh of it all because he was right there that that Lincoln room is right off Statuary Hall all of those rioters went right outside the door of where he was he could hear them banging on the door and they didn't come in because he had locked it he had barricaded it and by the way he got a call from Joe Biden um as the riot was still underway uh to check on him and see where he was um and I just thought that was quite moving because Donald Trump never called Mike Pence you know um who was Target literally the target of the anger and was stuck inside somewhere in that complex and he never heard he got out with seconds didn't realize how close it was yeah it's really really close yes I you know one of the things that you lay out first of all that uh the officer who we've seen at the top of the stairs leading them away from the Senate chamber people didn't realize you know you can see behind them like these elderly old Senators like barely making it out before they realize they're behind them but somebody else who had a close call was Mitt Romney who almost walked right into the rioters and you know you've done some reporting and had some conversations with Ronald McDonald Daniel the head of the RNC did she realize how close her uncle came to potentially being hurt maybe more and did that chasten her in any way affect her in any way has she ever spoken about that um she she has not spoken publicly about that but I I can tell you you know Ronald McDaniel was was I mean like everybody else saw this and was horrified interestingly she was at a republican Retreat down in South Carolina I I believe was South Carolina um uh on January 6th and did not have visibility on it until after it was over uh what was actually going on um and he remembered Trump actually called into that Retreat and got a round of applause um uh shortly after January 6th and but you know I mean now she's still the leader of a party I recap I recount a very dramatic conversation she had with Donald Trump on on January 20th when he was he had just boarded Air Force One for his last trip aboard the plane to go to Florida and Ronald McDonald just calls to wish him farewell and he starts basically yelling at her and saying I have I'm leaving the Republican party you failed me and I'm starting my own party and she you know she's distraught by this and telling him you're going to destroy everything you're going to lose we're going to lose we'll never win again and he said to her that's right you'll never win again and and his his attitude was if I lost you should lose too everybody should lose if I lost um and they were only able to get him to back down from that by threatening him and it happened over the course of the next few days um and I learned that they that they outlined a series of steps they would take they would have cost Trump tens of millions of dollars and he stayed in the party and then I think to Ronald McDaniel's surprise and everybody else's or most everybody in the leadership at that party he basically took it over again even after January 6th and actually we continue to see January 6 be recast um you know it was just a bunch of people who got carried away you know there's been this big fear over the documentary that Tucker Carlson has put out the news today is about two respected Republicans Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes who have said okay that's it we're out of fox we can't do this anymore Geraldo Rivera has spoken out but you keep when you see that the Republican leaders are saying nothing to see here let's move on we get nothing out of discussing this and they're allowing it to be downplayed is not that big a deal after everything you recount how does does that I mean you you spend your life listening to people make political calculations does it make sense to you what they're doing I can understand what they're doing in terms of cold hard political calculation and the calculation is that going into the midterm elections they have a chance of retaking control of the house we take control of the Senate and that the only way they can do that is if Donald Trump is supportive um and it and his supporters are supportive of these Republican candidates that's their calculation um I think it is a dangerous calculation because remembering what happened and and and recognizing the importance of what happened and the significant of what happened is important essential to ensuring it doesn't happen again and they think that once again like they've thought so many other times that they could somehow manage Donald Trump and control him and I don't think that's the case either and if he runs again which I'm I'm actually one of the few people that's doubtful that he will but he might and I mean he certainly sounds like he's running again um you know then one then what do Republicans do they're they're they're they're saddled with a candidate who would likely win the Republican nomination and would almost certainly lose a general election because the way he is alienated everybody else besides hardcore Republican voters um and if he would win I mean then what I mean they all saw the disaster that unfolded they didn't like it they knew how bad it was you can't just ignore it you got to deal with it you got to confront it this is Liz Cheney's passion I mean she she says that her you know two most important objectives right now are one to ensure Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee and two if he somehow is the Republican nominee that he doesn't win again you know as you get into the last six weeks of the election you lay out some of the people you know he keeps going around until he finds people who tell him what he wants to hear Jeffrey Clark Rudy Giuliani Sidney Powell Jenna Ellis John Eastman and the attitude is essentially he's running out of time it's a mess Jared Kushner I don't want to be involved you know just leave it alone and it'll go away and that turns out to not be the right attitude so if you were to run again and he were to win again well we see a continuation of just stay away from the mess or do you think people would behave differently I I had a conversation with a very senior official um who served until the end and and was one of those who I think really stayed because they felt they could they could they could do good things and prevent him from you know going completely off the rails um who you know in a way that was kind of Haunting to me uh said to me I I I just I don't know what would have happened if he had won what would the second term cabinet look like what would what would the second term West Wing look like I mean a trump completely uninhibited and Johnny mcinto who he spoke we spoke about he would be the one helping him choose every single one of those positions and there would be none of those around who would want to you know Reign him in in any way or you know I mean the John Kelly's of the world would be completely gone the mcatees the Stuart Clarks the the Jenna Ellis's the mark Meadows they would be they would be the ones running his running his executive branch I wanted to talk about two other Republican leaders because they're in similar yet different places and you talk about Mitch McConnell who you know it's well known he hates Trump and Trump hates him but he decides after January 6 he makes you know he finally starts to make some a statement six weeks after he perhaps should have but he starts to realize this thing is getting away from him when it comes to that certification vote that he thinks he's put out the word this is what we're doing Josh Hawley defies him Ted Cruz defies him and I wondered about the future tale of that because he sees himself as such a powerful person and when in such a defining moment you see these Young Bucks defy you what does that mean going into the future for Mitch McConnell and his party in the Senate well you know McConnell is is a student of political power and and he is not shy obviously about exercising that power I mean I describe in the book it's it's almost an aside but it's it's a real window about how right after Ruth Bader Ginsburg called uh died uh he he talked to Trump I mean literally right after um and told him okay this is what you do you wait until the memorial is over and then you announce Amy Coney Barrett is your nominee and we push her through that's what happened um so he was able to work quite from McConnell's point of view quite productively with Donald Trump until you know until he went way too far um but now McConnell believes Trump is gone um he's not going to come back I believe that firmly is McConnell's view um but the but that fighting with him would be counterproductive for Republicans gaining control um there's a moment there's a very very poignant moment um where that I learned about in reporting for this book where McConnell has just come out against the independent commission to look into January 6th and Liz Cheney is crushed by this you know Liz Cheney heard what McConnell said and go back and listen to McConnell's speech and the impeachment trial it is as harsh a condemnation of a sitting president than any member of Congress has ever made from the senate floor um and you know he didn't vote to convict and he had his kind of technical reason why he didn't uh but that is a thorough and total condemnation of Donald Trump and Liz Cheney was as that was happening effectively applauding you know applauding it on and then McConnell comes out against the commission so Liz Cheney sends her a quote um uh from about uh about uh about McCullough the uh the uh the great historian talking about the Statue of the Goddess Cleo or the Muse Clio The Muse of History and this is a statue that's in Statuary Hall and it and it's up above the corridor so it Congress men and women see it as they come by and this the goddess Cleo has a notebook and she's taking notes and as McCullough's David McCullough recounts taking notes for history so think about what you do because history is watching so she sent this note to um to McConnell in other words saying you know history is watching how could you do this and McConnell ignores it but calls her a couple of weeks later and she sees the call coming in from Mitch McConnell and thinks maybe he's calling if not to apologize to explain why he did what he did no he's calling in with a very firm admonition telling Liz Cheney stop talking about Trump so stop picking a fight with Trump it's not going to help the party and it's not going to help you move on talk about other things you know and that's that's the kind of divide as as it stands with those who are were horrified by what Donald Trump did but have entirely different approaches about what to do about it and then there's Kevin McCarthy over in the house who is a bit more naked as you lay out in the book whatever it takes to become you know house speaker that's what he's going to do and we find ourselves in a current environment uh we have the Marjorie Taylor greens the Paul gosars all the crazy stuff going on that he seems hesitant to want to deal with as he Cleaves to Trump and I wondered especially you know in our you know I just imagine John Boehner somewhere drinking a glass of wine smoking a cigarette going you have fun with that Kevin um is he making the right deal or you know he's going to be sorry he's going to get that job and it's not going to quite be what he thought it was going to be that he's losing control as we speak so Kevin McCarthy has a view of leadership I believe that is different from what obviously different than what uh somebody like Liz chain you would see but his view of leadership is that he should reflect the opinions and the views of a majority of his of his conference of the Republicans as opposed to lead and direct and put them in in in in in a productive Direction he he wants to truly represent those that elected to him as as the Republican leader and the challenge that that he faces and I outlined I mean you know it's clear from my conversations with him that he wasn't a True Believer in any of this stuff um but he certainly didn't stand up to try to stop it and he didn't stand up to try to stop it uh because he believed it wouldn't have been effective and and he would be out as leader and all the terrible things that were happening would have happened anyway and he points to some things that he did which he think prevented a a greater catastrophe and in one case he's absolutely right which is uh if you remember Donald Trump right around Christmas time last year threatened to veto the coveted relief bill and threaten to veto the spending bill which would a government shutdown so this is just as we're trying to get vaccines up and running just as we're in the midst of the worst stages of the pandemic having a government shutdown and an end to all covered relief and Trump was doing it on a you know on a temper tantrum basically and McCarthy believes I think he's actually totally right about this that he was very instrumental in in convincing Trump that that would have been a disaster and he shouldn't veto it but you know he wouldn't stand up to him on on the really big thing which is try to overturn the election we've had some viewer questions we're down to like the last 10 12 minutes so let's do some lightning rounds here we've got about seven what guard rails are being put in place today to have more oversight in the election process so that it happens as our forefathers plan are there loopholes that can be sealed my guess is yes but where the parties are now it doesn't matter they can't come together on anything I this is where I think I'm I'm I'm I have bad news there's not enough being done and what's being done is being done on Party Line basis which is not productive and not good uh so I'm going to endorse the Tim Edwards idea which is as you outlined here a bipartisan effort to do some things to reassure everybody that elections are have integrity I don't think they can find people that everybody the respectable means nothing anybody they find somebody will say well that's a rhino or that's a whatever I don't know who would sit on that panel and have the power of let's say the 911 Commission who informed the insurrectionist where the office of the parliamentarian was located it's a great question and it's something that the January 6 commission should try to find out why do you can go do you consider Pence a hero or but for one big thing a fawning sycophant well it's not for me to make that judgment I would just say that in that moment uh he did the right thing and it prevented a much bigger disaster from from happening a number of questions on this one since January 6 may have been a dry run what do you think will happen if Trump they say steals the 2024 election I think I would say if he wins the election and what institution could stop this will the country be transformed as Anna Applebaum is warning us into an autocracy well if Trump runs again he will certainly never acknowledge he lost even if he loses but the difference this time is he won't be sitting in in the Oval Office uh he won't have the power that he had uh to try to overturn it he'll just be a you know a loser sitting down in Mar-A-Lago or wherever he is um but I but I am more fearful and this I guess gets to eat around Applebaum point of if we have a a country where of critical mass of of Voters doesn't trust an election and where different sides of the political Spectrum have it don't agree on the basic facts uh then we have a much bigger problem that is you know more profound than just one man one one figure it's it goes beyond Donald Trump I want you to actually take some time with this next one because it's about us does the media accept any responsibility for how Trump has been able to continue the lie and play down January 6. in your book you're very clear that you have tried especially in your role as a leader in the White House Press Corps to say we should not be the opposition party we should be careful about our language I wonder if you regret that should we have been harsher and say A Lie Is A Lie sooner and how do you assess the media right now in terms of that question you know first of all I'm very uncomfortable with the notion of the media as a as one you know monolithic what is the media I mean you know Tam's got a job I've got a job uh New York Times uh there are different reporters at the New York Times that have very different approaches to how they do it um the uh you know various online Publications television radio I mean what is the media um so I'm very reluctant to to make big generalizations but to try to engage on this um I think it is important for for us as reporters uh to not take sides in terms of of a political uh context but but to never be a reluctant to point out and do to point out lies and to pursue the truth and to and do and to make the truth our our our guidestone I mean we are you know I'm I'm the one who in the White House briefing room back in September of last year asked Donald Trump why did you lie to the American people and why you know how can we trust anything you say now and I I think that we shouldn't mince words when something is a lie it needs to be exposed and we shouldn't use our platforms as a as a way to you know to to allow people to spread those lies but unfortunately we I mean we we live in in in in a world where lies can be spread um and they don't need ABC news or ABC 6 or the New York Times uh and and it makes it all the more important for us to go out there as reporters and say this is what the truth is and this is why and to do it in a very ineffectual basis you know who was it that said was it Mark Twain um that a lie makes its way around the world before the truth can get get it on yeah um I mean that was before Twitter I mean that really can get around and and and and combating that misinformation is is essential and I think it's become maybe always has been a core part of our jobs you know and I everybody gives Fox a hard time but I find myself thinking about MSNBC in this context because so much of what people want to watch opinionated journalism and for months Morning Joe was very cozy with Donald Trump until they weren't and everybody seems to have forgotten this and I wonder if we learned something out of that that whole experience do you think we did yeah I mean I I think certainly and what you're referring to is even before Trump became president during the 2016 campaign um you know I I think that there's been a lot of rethinking and this is largely a cable television uh reassessment um you know CNN carried in the early days of that Republican primary you know Donald Trump's speeches were or were carried start to finish and you know there were even points where before he came out they would have the image of the empty Podium and say coming soon you know Trump is speaking in Grand Rapids uh or whatever um and you know CNN stopped doing that they actually stopped doing that well before the 2016 election um but I think that I think that there's been a lot of reassessment I also I've said this in the past I think that the one thing one problem and the one thing that I think everybody would reassess that works in our business is When Donald Trump first became a candidate nobody took him seriously nobody really thought he had a chance of winning they thought it was kind of a sideshow and he did not face the kind of scrutiny and the investigative reporting that uh that the other candidates received so in other words we had a lot more you know digging into what Marco Rubio did about this or that or Jeb Bush and and there was very little on Trump because you know he was not considered and I'll give you by the way this is a really good example of this um the the group American Bridge this is not a journalism group but this is a this is a a um Pro you know liberal left advocacy group American Bridge who set out to research and document problems with each of the Republican candidates they produced a book going into the 2016 election I have it in my office not my home office here but my office at ABC and it's a great document because it has like something like 22 potential Republican candidates and there's a chapter on each one and it talks about well they voted here they did this they said that there's and you know guess what there's no chapter for Donald Trump because they didn't take him seriously they didn't think he was actually going to run yeah he wasn't going to be a serious candidate um so this tremendous research document you know by a pro-democratic group digging into all the dirt and all the potential uh Republican candidates in 2016 didn't have in this book a single page on Donald Trump somebody asked is Michael Flynn still closely aligned with djt should we be concerned after his recent event in Texas where he pushed the notion of a national Christian religion if Trump runs again do you think he would endorse this way of thinking and do all the Inner Circle family members buy into the big lie a lot in that question there's a lot in that question so um I I I don't know if Flynn has direct contact with Trump right now um certainly he has close contact with people that are close to Trump um I don't think Trump would endorse that idea um you know I think that he he relishes his support for instance of uh you know Jewish Republicans and I just I just don't I I don't think that would happen in terms of the family members um it's been very interesting to watch uh Jared and Ivanka have clearly made an effort um and you've seen it in some of the other books that have been written to try to let people know that they opposed uh the effort to overturn the election that they thought it was nuts that you know Ivanka was proud of Mike Pence for what he did all of this they haven't said this stuff publicly that I've seen uh but you know those stories don't come out of nowhere and and what I report in the book is that Jared uh was you know Jared Kushner was Central to the campaign he wasn't the campaign manager but he was more important than the campaign manager and in the first few days he was there as they prepared for their legal challenges and then when Rudy Giuliani came in he pieced out I describe a scene yeah he's gone and he he goes off and he he doesn't have anything to do with it anymore and then uh Mike Pence's Chief of Staff Mark short reaches him right around during the holidays when this talk of Pence overturning the election is is being pushed by Trump and uh and and short reaches out to Jared and says hey you got to help me I mean this is really important you're the only one he'll listen to please call your go and see your father-in-law and tell him that the vice president can't do this that it's nonsense that he's being told lies and Jared's answer was you know I'm I haven't been involved since Giuliani got and got into this and you know I'm really busy right now with the Middle East and middle east peace efforts so I you know it's not really my thing um a couple of quick ones before we let you go is there any decent Republican who could possibly win over the party I guess Define decent is up to you but is I guess any traditional any anyone who could be a consensus candidate anybody that you see that you go I really wish they would run you know I don't know and again that wouldn't be that wouldn't be my place to say that but but I think that it will be interesting to see you know the the the current leadership has entirely exiled Liz Cheney and um you know the conventional wisdom is that she will lose her seat in Wyoming and that she is done as a republican I'm not so sure let's see what she does let's see where it goes um but but I would be watching I would be watching her very carefully and um and then you have other more complicated figures I mean like you know Chris Christie is out there you know there are a lot of people that look at what he's saying now which is critical of trump and and say it's too little too late but I think it's interesting to see it resonates at all with with Rank and file Republicans I don't know um you covered trumpism from the beginning and somebody says is trumpism rooted in race well it certainly seems that it is at times um and and when I watched the way he handled the aftermath of George Floyd it really you know really seemed to be that way when I saw it during the campaign where he couldn't get around to uh condemning David Duke until he was really you know kind of kind of berated and and forced into it it sure looked that way but there's also I mean one of the true truths of 2020 is that Trump's share of uh African-American and Hispanic vote still small but it went up it went up and he did I mean he did better among uh Hispanic voters Latino voters then then Mitt Romney did you know the guy that said send the rapists and the drug dealers back to Mexico the guy that talked about the wall and all this so you know it's a complicated question and I'll end on this one you said something earlier where you said you don't think he's running and I think after you've spent all this time and written this book people I'm sure you get this all the time you know why do you believe that um when there's every reason you know that he could Cakewalk to the nomination why do you think you won't because I don't think that he wants to face the possibility of losing again and by the way I thought and it might I'm sure there are other reasons including financial reasons but he's selling the Trump International Hotel right down the road from the White House um so he's getting rid of a very important asset in Washington DC right on Pennsylvania Avenue 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue um so I like again I may be wrong I I wouldn't be I won't be shocked if he runs people think I think the conventional wisdom is he does wrong people around him say he's gonna run but I just I don't think that he wants to face the possibility of losing again even though of course he would never admit he lost again I don't think he wants to face that possibility when you finish the book and you were done and you were ready to turn it in I wondered what emotion you had because I've heard you privately talk about it I've heard you publicly talk about it and it definitely seems as though the last year affected you and changed you and I didn't know if what I was hearing was sadness if what I was hearing is that you were scared how would you describe you know as you said I'm done what you felt thank you for asking I mean I I felt you know that it this was this is the most important work I've ever done in my life um I I felt that I really want people to read this book and I want people to know what happened and I want this to be part of the history so that it cannot be erased um and so that we can learn and prevent something from this happening again and that may sound I don't know overly self-important or whatever but these this was my feeling I felt like this was this was a mission this was more than a than a journalistic project um I was writing this you know in in a way for my kids um I was writing this with the with the hope and and maybe it's you know I I know this is a tough one but uh I want people who really like Donald Trump to read this book I want people who believe that the election was stolen to read this book and I hope that I can make a contribution to changing some of those some of those misperceptions and some and and and to causing people to see the lies or lies and truth is truth um so I and I also if I can just say I also kind of wished I had a few more months because I um I I worked day in and day out throughout much of most of this year on this book but uh but I felt like there was more I wanted to do um but uh but I was at the same point at the same time I was eager to get it out wanted to get it out quickly well they say the truth will set you free and you hopefully this work that you've put into the world will free people to think critically and hard about where we're going because in the end all we have is each other and that's really what's at stake in the days ahead thank you again John it's an honor to be your colleague and your your friend at a distance and we appreciate your good work good luck with the book and good luck with the tour thank you Tam uh like we said at the start we go back a very long way and uh we were children we were we were just little kids out there but it's great to see you again and I hope to see you in person soon I love that all the best take care bye

Channel: Author Events

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Id: sT7yZkh3d-E

Length: 65min 57sec (3957 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 22 2021