Lies, Politics and Democracy: Jelani Cobb (interview) | FRONTLINE

donald trump comes out after the election and he says frankly i did win this election and there's this period of time where it's not clear which way the republican party is going to go and eventually some of the senior senators and others in the party start to come out and amplify questions about the election what were the stakes at that moment for american democracy for the country at that time and how important was the decision that republican leaders were making at that time so in that moment where donald trump comes out on election night and almost like seemingly on the fly begins saying he says we're on the verge of winning this election then he says frankly we did win this election that was an impossibly dangerous moment you know for anyone that really understands uh democratic societies or authoritarian ones for that matter the reason being the old cliche about democracies holds true that you know in a democracy the first election is not the most important the second one is you know the one in which people have to actually make a transition or to peacefully give up power to their opponent if their opponent is one and there was never really any question about donald trump's willingness to [Music] wreck the institutions of american democracy if it served his own personal and political aims and so that's not the type of language that you hear like elections being rigged or uh that the election has been stolen uh you know precisely because that is how bloodshed begins uh that is how societies slip into uh violent uh conflicts uh and you know at the extreme end of its civil wars and so i don't think in terms of the potential implications i don't think there was anything more dangerous they don't think there was any moment more dangerous than the one that we saw uh that night and how important was it when the republican party comes out and they start to amplify that how important was the decision that they were making there had been a question all along you know from the initial moments when donald trump declared his candidacy in in 2015 uh there'd always been this question about how the gop would react to him and how they would respond to him and over time i think to the horror of many some of whom were republicans themselves the party became increasingly compliant with donald trump's demands and so there was always a question about whether or not there was a line that people would just say this far and no further as it related to trump and almost you know we saw this with the questions around you know russia and meddling uh and you know the we saw this with the questions around strong-arming vladimir zelinski and ukraine and you know the impeachment that that generated and there always was the question of where is the line in the sand and i think that moment at which donald trump was taking a wrench to the machinery of democracy and pushing the society into what i think reasonable observers saw was a highly volatile and potentially violent moment that was the final capitulation for the republican party as you saw senator after senator and republican after republican uh falling in line with statements that were not only exceedingly dangerous but fundamentally untrue so let's go back and talk about that history and as we go back one of the first early signs of this um that we look at in the film is this moment in iowa with ted cruz and donald trump isn't willing to accept that he lost it and there's multiple examples going back through his life of saying things are rigged everything from the emmys to mitt romney losing to obama how important is it to democracy for a loser to accept and in this case what was the warning that you see from donald trump in that moment in him not being willing to accept defeat in iowa if you go back and read the federalist papers the founders particularly hamilton you know fixated on the potential of people to subvert democracy uh whether through their own greed or their own uh the quirks of their own character but they understood that democracy at its best was a still fairly fragile set of agreements and that people had to remain on board people had to be in adherence to these agreements in order for this system to remain viable and so when you look at all of the precursors to the 2020 election and the extent to which uh there was this kind of self-centered uh belief that it was impossible for donald trump to ever fail never was there anything that he ever failed at that he didn't think was indicative of the other person's problem not his own and there was no reason to believe that that kind of character was compatible with the presidency or compatible with a peaceful transfer of power at the end of a presidency and so especially if that presidency was the end of that presidency was a result of losing an election i mean what are the implications for democracy if you have somebody like you've just described donald trump in the system and and you know to what extent was that a warning so if you go back you know even to the earliest days of the republic you know george washington uh was the first and only non-partisan president of the united states uh and so he succeeded by john adams uh and when john adams loses the election of 1800 there's a big question of whether he will willingly give up power to thomas jefferson who has defeated him uh and madison does so and sets this precedent that has been adhered to continually since then which is not to say that we have not had political violence in this country uh we have had a great deal of political violence throughout the history of this country but in terms of simply the transition from one administration to another uh that has been conducted peacefully for the duration of american democracy for the history of it looking at who donald trump was and looking at his reaction to losing in iowa to ted cruz there was never any question that this was going to pose problems and notably in 2016 uh he said that the only he said this outright the only way he could lose to hillary clinton would be if the election was rigged uh now notably he didn't make any complaints about actually winning that election you know he made complaints about saying that the the popular vote was rigged uh but didn't say that in an election it was tainted uh by people cheating uh that the results would be invalid because those results would seem to favor him in that instance uh and so from the outset there were observers in 2016 myself being one of them who said this person will never give up power uh in a peaceful fashion uh just it would be inconsistent with everything that we know about this person uh and if this person won a second term they would not uh be compatible with the idea that they couldn't run for a third uh and that was at least my estimation of him from the beginning so that was obvious to you even then yeah i think it was very obvious when you looked at the pieces that of trump's character uh and how they conformed to what we've seen with authoritarians in other places you know the the complete self-centeredness uh the subjugation of the society to the whims of his individual psychology uh the casting doubt on the political processes the reorienting of the public's trust away from institutions to him as an individual uh most notably when we saw the speech at the convention where he said uh i am the only person who can fix it uh in democracy at least in american democracy in theory uh the individual is supposed to be smaller than the institution of the presidency and here we had a individual who was blatantly casting himself as bigger than any institution in the united states and nothing in that reflected the kind of personal or democratic humility that would be required of that office so in that campaign one of the things that we see that maybe you've seen we've seen in american history but maybe not in recent presidential history is the president in the crowd and is the mob and is saying bring him out of here on a stretcher back in the old days sort of encouraging violence what is the signal what does that say when you see moments like that i think that the the moments in the campaign from the outset really uh where trump made the statement about mexicans being rapists and you know the other bigoted you know bile that he served up in that initial announcement of who he was and why he was running you know the point of that was not simply to cater to people's worst instincts although it did do that but to point out that he would not be constrained by any of the rules or guidelines that had heretofore kept people's behavior in check and in a political context always the question is when does this dovetail into violence and so the overt egging on of his followers and his adherents you know to commit acts of violence against people who they saw as outside their fold now that could have been protesters uh that could have been democrats uh in many instances he directed his uh anger at the press and people began booing and harassing uh reporters who were there you know i was on the receiving end of some of that during one of his campaign rallies and so what this really reflected implicitly was a statement that he was beyond the boundaries that the old system and the old dispensation that had uh to his mind into the minds of his followers had not worked well for them was being swept away that they were going to do things differently the people who you were supposed to remain civil to well you can punch those people in the face you can take these people out of here on a stretcher uh and metaphorically it lent itself to this idea that there were two different versions of america uh irreconcilable and hostile and that they were going to take the belligerent approach to people whom they never really viewed as equally american in the first place i mean we're a country that has a lot of violence that has had political violence in the past but when you look at that i mean how unusual is it what do you make of him introducing that into american politics or not introducing to it but playing on it what do you make of that so i think that you know the logic of political parties has always been uh that they they work as a kind of elaborate set of filters you know you can translate popular will into public policy uh but in theory you filter out the worst behaviors you have increasingly uh rational and responsible figures at each tier of you know the party uh and the most volatile elements are going to be at least in theory constrained what was alarming about donald trump was he was a person who was steamrolling his way toward the nomination who didn't reflect any of that it was governance by id the worst you impulses the violent streaks uh the desire to uh you know the time for arguing is done the time for reasonable discourse is done now is the time to punch people in the mouth uh and if you have no check on that it is people refer to that as populism it really wasn't you know it was more of a kind of street corner bravado that was passing itself off as a political movement and so the further he went with this the less capable that filtering system was and you began to see more and more of something had always existed in american politics and had existed in republican politics for a really long time which was a will toward the violent subjugation of people whose citizenship you hold in question in the first place or whose patriotism uh you hold in question in the first place when you see the rallies and you see racist groups nationalist groups attaching themselves to donald trump obviously there's this explicit racial rhetoric that he has but is there something about also his the authoritarian side of who donald trump is that is attracting these groups why are they attaching you know as roger stone says why are they attaching themselves to donald trump in that moment in 2016. i think that donald trump liberated a certain portion of america and you know those elements you know the the hyper nationalist uh reactionary semi military elements um that were kind of floating around in the american ethers you know the republicans had known about these people you know for a really long time and you know for the purposes of retaining legitimacy those people had to be sidelined you know uh in the 1980s and 1990s they began to take refuge in talk radio and so that was an outlet where you would hear those kinds of opinions expressed but by and large the establishment republicans needed to keep distance between those those people uh and themselves you know kind of plausible deniability what trump did was he went beyond the the wink and nod version of this to an explicit endorsement using the language that was common in these these arenas and people recognized that he was one of them or as close to one of them as they'd ever seen in their lifetimes and so at the outset this the fact that he referred to mexicans as rapists you know even if someone believed that even if a republican candidate believed that even any major american political figure believed that they would never say it in public and here you had donald trump that was the first thing he said in public as a political candidate and so there was never really any question about why those people were drawn to trump you know they saw him as the best hope of translating their paranoia their contempt their anxiety their anger into a political platform and into public policy in a primary there's this brutal combat between ted cruz and donald trump and it becomes very personal they're conspiracy theories there are lies it's a very ugly election and and to a large extent republican leaders are just watching you know they're not getting involved in it what does that tell you as they're watching it as they're standing by the sidelines that interaction with ted cruz i think ted cruz was an object lesson in what the trump movement could do even to a fairly reputable rock-ribbed conservative like ted cruz prior to donald trump's emergence there was really no question about uh ted cruz's conservative bonafides but in the midst of that combat in the republican primary uh you saw trump sweep crews onto the sidelines and really that was a lesson for the entire party you know that could happen to ted cruz that could happen to anyone uh and even uh you saw person after person gonna recognize that you know marco rubio you know who criticized trump during the primaries and even ridiculed trump uh during the prime primaries and then uh has to immediately reconcile himself to nikki haley who uh criticized trump and endorsed rubio uh saying that she thought that donald trump was was dragging the country in the wrong direction and then accepted a post in trump's cabinet when he got elected uh and so what you saw in kind of instance after instance was people recognizing that the stakes had changed uh that trump was now calling the tunes uh that his followers would rigorously and zealously enforce his will and that the trump movement posed a threat to all of their political survival and i think that the moment that you see this most strikingly is when cruz has to make nice with donald trump and the reason for this is that this was not only a political conflict but trump had insulted his father and ridiculously accused his father of being involved in the death of john f kennedy trump had insulted his wife's looks which is far beyond the pale in american politics and he'd done all these things and the public gave uh no leeway to cruz for that at least not the republican public uh they felt like you know these things happen uh but this is our person and you really need to be on the same side as he is do you think republican leaders made a decision about donald trump i mean why are they silent over that period as they're watching what was happening i think there were two things one is that republicans were no different from democrats when it came to underestimating donald trump and at first he was a curiosity and he was this figure a habituate of late night television and reality tv and social media uh none of which were weighty forums for public policy debate or the thoughtful exchange of ideas and so here was this quirky figure who would show up probably get obliterated in the early primaries uh embarrass himself and uh people would move on from it and that doesn't happen the opposite happens he picks up momentum he gains power within the party and then it's switched to well if trump is able to win the nomination there is this machinery in place in the republican party and more broadly in government that will effectively reign him in that we will turn him into a reputable candidate and you know many people believe that on the right even some people in the democratic party believed that uh the responsibilities of the office would cause him to mature and uh become more sober minded uh and then the final part of it is that there is a long tradition of people saying things in political campaigns that they don't entirely mean uh or playing to people's uh worst instincts um trying to give gin up a crowd to give you the kind of applause that you want but that doesn't really reflect how you actually see the world and there was this question you know as we wound our way toward the 2016 election about whether or not donald trump actually did believe whether he was a a skilled puppet master who had this intuitive genius for figuring out what people in his crowds wanted to hear and saying it to them and then there was the slow dawning recognition when it was too late that he meant everything that he said uh and that he was a personality that was not going to be reigned in uh that he was never a person who was humbled in the face of great power or great responsibility and that he would continue with the same sort of blithe unself-aware rule by instinct that had led him through his entire life i mean as they're looking at him too you had said that donald trump was saying things explicitly that maybe there had been a wink or a nod to in the past if a lot of people use the phrase saying the quiet part out loud as they're watching donald trump what is the party that he is taking over and to what extent had the groundwork been laid by decisions that those leaders had made before so when donald trump emerged you know people who observed politics or people who had a sense of history uh you know thought that he reminded them of joseph mccarthy in a few ways particularly in the trafficking of conspiracy theories the easy way in which he found himself at odds with the truth you know lying fluently uh and the thing about mccarthy is you know we have this thing we call mccarthyism um which really did not begin with joe mccarthy you know mccarthy was simply the most visible and most shameless proponent of a set of political practices that existed before he came on the scene the same could be said for donald trump that the elements of trumpism or the things that came to be called trumpism were present long before donald trump took the ride down that gilded escalator in trump tower and gave the announcement speech in june of 2015 that he was running for the presidency what he did was assemble those disparate elements and market them in a way shamelessly boldly overtly the people hadn't seen at least not on that stage of american politics before and so the gop had in the years prior to trump seen figures like pat buchanan in 1996 who ran the nativist america first political campaign for president they'd seen the increasing reliance upon the politics of racial anxiety and racial resentment and that goes back even further to figures like uh strom thurman the senator from south carolina and jesse helms the senator from north carolina they've seen the none too subtle race-baiting of the 1988 presidential campaign where the george bush the elder campaign uh produced the ads about willie horton a black man who had been convicted of sexual assault as a means of saying that michael dukakis the democratic nominee was soft on crime uh and so all of those things were present in the party i mean you go a generation before that to the 1964 presidential election with barry goldwater of being the nominee in his opposition to the civil rights act of that year these things were not new what happened was that donald trump had a particular talent for marketing them and recognized what their political potential could be and that he arrived in a moment where those anxieties were uniquely resonant in american society and the combination of those two things was immensely combustible but when you look at those you know in general terms can you describe what it was at the republican party was tapping into that then donald trump you know just sort of a list of what you were talking about just in more general terms so the elements of trumpism were not unique to donald trump uh and they had been present before donald trump uh i think the the talent that he had was in assembling uh those anxieties and marketing them uh and he did so at a moment that was particularly volatile he tapped into the fear that many white people possessed that this was not going to be a majority white society anymore uh anxiety around demographic change there was a particular kind of anxiety that was associated with the fact that there had been a black president there was a black man in the white house for the preceding eight years and for people many of whom wound up supporting donald trump later uh it felt as if the world was upside down you know and seeing an african-american at the in the presidency uh he was running against hillary clinton uh in a moment in which a country uh with a long history of sexism was countenancing the idea that being a female head of state and you know between the ideas of immigration the ideas of race the ideas of gender a always resonant idea that america had lost its place in the world and was being taken advantage of uh that the nation had been you know suckered and led astray in some kind of way and he bound all of those things up into a neat bundle of anxiety and marketed himself as the antidote for them so the the question of legitimizing donald trump the clearest example of the film is mike pence who makes a decision you know he appeals to evangelicals into the sort of establishment of the party how important is that decision that a pence makes to legitimize a candidate like donald trump one of the notable elements of 2016 was the migration of evangelical voters into the donald trump camp uh there were a number of reasons why this was surprising uh one he was a new yorker not a southerner two he was divorced twice three he had been a figure of tabloid news reportage for the outrageousness of his personal life there was nothing that suggested piety you know was a virtue he pursued in his his personal life and so what was the appeal well the appeal lay in the fact that people thought that he was the best vector to achieve you know particular goals that evangelicals had sought for half a century most notably the reversal of roe v wade but for people who were holdouts you know people for whom trump's personal behavior uh and his personal uh lack of christian conviction uh and certainly not in his his rhetoric or in his uh public speeches does he make great reference to uh his own religious sentiments the fact that mike pence joined the ticket implicitly said that if i can tolerate this man so can you or he lent his credibility in evangelical christian circles to the cause of donald trump and you know political tickets want to serve as much of their coalition as possible with donald trump you could say there was a particular kind of nationalist element that was attracted to him there were isolationist elements that were attracted to him there were protectionist elements that were attracted to him but they really needed the energy and zeal that the evangelical base of the republican party would bring and mike pence facilitated that so many of the republicans didn't expect him to win as you said and we're skeptical about him but he does win and he does arrive into washington as the president and they make a decision that they're going to work with him you know and once estimating what they're going to get out of a deal and at the other time you know further lending legitimacy to who he is as a president what do you make of that moment of the choice that they were facing and of what they decided on how to deal with the new president well there's a conflict implicit in this like people know that trump is not good for democracy it's not shocking people is that this is not simply a perspective that people on the left have um but he's very good for their policy and political interests from the outset there was a sense that this person could make transformative changes to the composition of the supreme court and that's high on the list of priorities and the belief is that you can just reconcile yourself to the parts that you don't like or there's a downsizing a minimization of the really dangerous parts of his character and highlighting the fact that this person will allow republicans to do things that they've wanted to do for decades and that's the bargain you know it's a kind of faustian deal but it's also notable that early on in the trump administration you know there's a kind of give and take you know wherein he takes figures from the republican establishment uh who become part of his cabinet uh who you know have you know central and pivotal roles in policy and guidance of the administration one narrative of trump's growing independence and the increasing volatility of that administration is the arc of how many of those people leave in you know the course of those first two years and so on both sides uh people believe that there is you know a bargain trump needs this establishment in order to gain the presidency and the establishment thinks that they can rein him in enough to achieve their policy goals without doing irreparable damage to the system in the course of that one of the the biggest events of that first year is charlottesville when you look back at that so many people at the time were surprised by what they saw in charlottesville should they have been what was the meaning of seeing people marching with torches you know chanting jews will not replace us what was the meaning of that moment in this story about american democracy i think charlottesville really eliminated any question about who donald trump was or what he represented the reason i say that is all political candidates try to kind of maximize their service area they let people see them in the light that is most advantageous uh if i need to be a populist then with this crowd i'm populist uh if i need to be a elitist figure of the the country club circuit with this crowd then i can be that uh and so there had been this debate about who and what donald trump was and therefore what trumpism was but by the time you get to charlottesville you really couldn't deny that this was a radically nationalist anti-semitic and racist movement because these are people who are overtly supporting donald trump and marching theoretically in a free speech rally but really they're to intimidate and frighten people who don't believe as they do and the demographic anxieties that had been ginned up in donald trump's speech at the outset we talked about that mexico quote-unquote not sending their best people here well that's part of this replacement theory idea the concern that white people will become a minority in the united states which also dates back a century you can find that's not a new idea but it's resurrected and given new valence and these are people literally shouting that jews will not replace us of all the things that you could say about the direction of american politics or specific demands about public policy or claims that you can make on the government to act on your behalf you have the microphone the world is listening and what you announce is jews will not replace us that's your thing well yeah that tells you this is a movement that is not really concerned with tax rates uh this is a movement that is not really concerned but the fine details of foreign policy uh this is a movement that is built upon a particular kind of racial revanchism uh and making sure when people would say you know make america great again the kind of derisive rejoinder was you know make america white again and that is literally what's being said uh at this point there's this conversation with paul ryan where he says you know those are my people he doesn't want to distance himself from it what do we take from that conversation he has with ryan where he says you know he doesn't want to distance himself from my people i mean paul ryan is a figure as as close to the embodiment of the republican establishment as you can come up with uh and when trump says that those are my people he's not inaccurate he knows who has been coming to his rallies uh and who has been lending support to him he knows who he has been in dialogue with on social media and the people amplifying his message and really more implicitly he's saying that these are our people as in this is now the core of the republican party which is something that paul ryan seems to be loath to admit or to recognize and it's really a kind of statement of terms you know these are my people and you know he's the president he's a republican and i mean they issue some statements condemning the protesters condemning the neo-nazis the republican leadership but as a whole the party decides to move on from that moment what do you take from that decision how important was that by the time we get to charlottesville it's almost predictable that the party uh has made the bargain that it has made and that it's not going to pursue any more vigorous response to [Music] the violence and the white nationalist appeals that you saw being made in charlottesville they do deploy tim scott senator simscott african-american from south carolina uh for some sort of sensitivity training with donald trump which is you know almost entirely for media consumption but from there they pivot on you know they are attempting to kind of move on to their achieving their goals they have control of both houses of congress and the presidency there's really no reason uh to their mind no political advantage uh to dwelling on what happens in charlottesville what do you make of the stories that some people do object they are attacked by trump they lose primaries they're sort of pushed out of the party i mean what do you make of that conflict inside the story of american democracy where the republican party is going it's really not that shocking when you see uh you know some republicans uh who raise alarms take issue uh with trump and trumpism uh and get pushed out of the party as a consequence in american history whenever parties have gone through the kind of seismic changes that you see happening in 2016 well 2016 through 2020 they're always individuals who can't reconcile themselves to it the people who can't abide with you know what the new marching orders are and you know that's more likely than not the more notable thing here is that so much of the party remains loyal uh that you don't have mass defections uh from the the party because of what trump is and what he represents uh that the never trumpers are vastly outnumbered by the always trumpers uh and for the individuals who get primaried you know the individuals who get you know personally attacked or he tweets about them and they're embarrassed or they suffer in their fundraising and those kinds of things that's kind of the cost of doing business the democrats try to impeach trump they're not able to succeed at it and so at first i was just wanted to ask you about the sort of democrat side in establishing the polarization that's going on between these two parties was american as you watch it was it becoming more polarized so one of the things that really defined certainly the early period of trump's presidency uh was the fact that you know democrats did not expect him to win you know any more than like most republicans did you know but for republicans they never really had to figure out how to govern as a result of that they just went along with you know what trump was doing and maybe that was a moral decision but it wasn't a tactical and a strategic one for democrats they had to figure out how to navigate this landscape in which the most vile misogynistic xenophobic racist uh violent volatile elements of his rhetoric and his campaign posture were okay with 60 million people and so where does that leave you it was very difficult for them to figure out what they would be outside of opposing simply opposing donald trump an internet vacuum uh came a kind of perpetual outrage system uh the hyper examination of everything that he did uh that was outside of the norm uh or that was potentially a conflict of interest or that was you know potentially dangerous in national or international affairs and you know you saw culturally you know this being taken up by late night television hosts and comedians and those sorts of things but none of which translated into an effective counter strategy for dealing with trump in the white house and so especially for those first two years but it's really wracked by this question of who they are and what they should be you know one part of the party uh thinks that the party has to remain a kind of centrist moderate liberal uh entity and another part of it thinks that the only way to beat donald trump is to move as far to the left as he has taken the republican party to the right and so you know that is being hashed out a battle that's being fought in that time period between 2016 and 2018 uh to try to decide what it is that they should do and they eventually decide whether it's political necessity or they have to or the moment that they're going to impeach the president and that's the first impeachment and the result is this highly polarized moment none of the house republicans including liz cheney and others who would later turn on the president support it only mitt romney does in the senate he ends up being acquitted when you look at the story of american democracy of whether you can hold the president in check what does that first impeachment reveal about american democracy so the first impeachment of donald trump reveals something that we probably should have already known about american democracy uh a particular weakness of american democracy but like lots of things like lots of weaknesses uh almost if you think of them as you know stress fractures a lot of these stress fractures would never be noticed in kind of normal circumstances until you have someone like donald trump who highlights that vulnerability that being said presidents have never faced a credible threat of impeachment or certainly not conviction when their own parties controlled congress and this has only been something that has been deployed by members of the opposing party and even you know with nixon it was the threat that democrats would impeach and potentially convict him and so the fact that democrats uh by the time that trump was impeached did have a majority but they didn't have enough of a majority to convict him in the senate should have almost been a foregone conclusion uh given that you know what he did was egregious and incredible and shocking to the sensibilities and you know met the definitions of the letter uh in federalist papers for what impeachment uh what kinds of acts should generate impeachment but the political reality was always that there was very little chance that he was going to be convicted no matter what he did because democrats did not have a two-thirds majority in the senate for all his reputation in american politics and maybe in american society impeachment has always been a fairly toothless solution to a presidency that's out of control i guess to the extent that there was a threat it was just to have been impeached would be a black letter and now he is acquitted and what message does that would that send to somebody like donald trump what message does that stand about the checks and balances at that moment when he holds up the paper and he's sort of celebrating his acquittal as a victory you after the acquittal in the impeachment uh trial there's really a kind of divided sense uh there are people who are hopeful uh who express hope that he will be chastened by the experience that's not really susan collins you know being you know primary among them i don't think that's the prevailing sensibility generally speaking uh this is seen as something that will embolden him because if he could strong arm a foreign nation uh into being part of the american presidential election hoping to discredit a potential opponent and that doesn't result in him being pushed out of office it becomes a question of whether anything will and in a bigger sense there's a kind of theme in trump's life yeah he had always been able to fill out the rules uh he had always been able to get around things when uh the new york times published his uh tax returns he saw that for years and years he had been able to operate in ways that seemed to be contravening american tax law and suffered no consequences for it each time that seemingly emboldened him to do more of the same and so the acquittal and the impeachment trial really just fit into this bigger pattern uh in which he became more audacious and more contemptuous of the rules uh that other people had to abide by uh and more confirmed in the belief that those normal rules did not apply to him what's his response to george ford the whole nation saw this man's life extinguished over the course of nine excruciating minutes and that was an indictment of the system it was an indictment of the society it was an indictment of all the dynamics that made it possible even probable that something like that would happen and trump's reaction was to offer the same sort of response that he offered about protesters at his rallies which is to crack down on them uh to use violent force to not actually think about the moral argument that people are making or the position people are taking but to use force there's no nowhere in there is there in in trump's response is there any recognition of of the moral weight of what happened i mean i think you're right because it's like and it may not even matter what his own personal response is it's what does he do as the president of the united states and how does he respond and and obviously his response is not in solidarity with the protesters or with people who are saying we have to to learn from this moment or empathy it wasn't in solidarity solidarity with empathy or any of this was like a international indictment like the whole world saw what american police do at least in that moment and there was no recognition that the moral authority of the country had been damaged by that video or the fact that it happened or the fact that there was a lineage of these kinds of actions that connected to that moment none of that you know what we saw was the most simplistic ham-fisted crackdown uh bring in the military helicopters uh you know implicitly threatening the lives of protesters you know just nothing that conveyed any sense of leadership like the understanding of the problem beyond use of force he talks about antifa the radical left agitators there's a political rhetoric of an us versus them rhetoric that he's using that the enemies are you know the radical left or antifa are the protesters in the streets he seems to be inflaming it what is he doing when he's using language like that traditionally presidents have at least deployed the rhetoric of unifying the country and that was something that was not central to trump's political rhetoric um because his strength was derived from weaponizing the grievances that one part of the country had about other parts of the country and so in a moment like that that desperately called for someone being able to stand above the fray the only thing that trump was capable of doing was getting into the fray and inflaming it even further and that was evidenced by his reaction to what happened um it was evidenced by his fallback you know not talking about the fact that regular fairly apolitical american citizens saw that video and were sickened by it his rhetoric went to trotting out the familiar sources of contempt you know this is about antifa uh you know this is about the radical left you know this is about uh the people who you already hate and think want to destroy the country and in the midst of that there's really no mechanism for the country to navigate there was no path for the country to navigate its way to anything resembling reconciliation let me ask you this because the enemy right antifa the radical left and in terms even compared to 2016 of an existential threat faced by the other side i mean what does that do for democracy what does that do to a country that has elections and you know results of elections what is that kind of rhetoric that you see in that moment does it pose a threat to democracy so the belief in democracy at least in a partisan democracy uh is that your group represents the best interests of the society at the very least they represent your best interests uh but you have the best ideas and that you're going to move the society forward but your ability to ability to do that is dependent upon you convincing other people that you have the best ideas and that your opponent at least in theory uh has ideas that you disagree with but they are also trying to move in the best direction of the broader society that's a healthy kind of democratic compact what we've seen increasingly in the united states has been a variation of that wherein your opponents not only have bad ideas but they are operating in bad faith and if left to their own devices will generate not only bad outcomes but existentially bad outcomes and so in his campaign rhetoric trump would often use a phrase that you know if this happens we won't have a country anymore uh and there was always these these different contingencies uh if we don't stop the illegal immigration into the country we won't have a country anymore uh or if we don't stop antifa we don't stop there's always a fearsome element that threatened the continued existence of the united states now of course the irony is that you know kind of taking the line from fdr what you should be fearful of is that level of fear of the ability to be manipulated in that way of the ability to think that these other people who pay taxes the same government that you do that serve in the same military that you do that vote in the same elections that you do that these people as opposed to being citizens who understand politics differently are actually some sort of nefarious element trying to destroy the country and it's the rhetoric that was deployed against communists during the cold war or against nazis in world war ii and it's being deployed internally that you know america's continued ability to stand as this shining city on the hill is dependent upon us defeating this enemy except that this enemy also happens to be someone who might live next door to you that's extremely dangerous for democracy the phrase he issues in a tweet he says when the looting starts the shooting starts i mean he says oh i didn't know the history what is he tapping into what does it reveal about american democracy for president of the united states to use that phrase trump had run on um this kind of rehabilitated rhetoric of law and order uh and it was never quite clear what that meant and it didn't have to be you know he was running at the time of at a time of historically low crime but he had cultivated a sense of panic among his following such that in saying that you would provide law and order he appeared to be a kind of savior you know saving people from a problem that really wasn't that prominent in the first place but you know nobody is reading the fine print on this and so when you have something like the unprecedented surge of protests that you saw in the aftermath of george floyd's death he went back to the thing that he knew you know when the looting starts the shooting starts meaning that they would not hesitate to use lethal force in the protection of property oblivious to the fact that this was a conflict that was created by the use of lethal force in the first place but again people weren't reading the fine print and so that language only further certified uh in the minds of his followers and kind of um the like-minded that there would be violence necessary to subdue these people who they disagreed with uh on the other part of the political spectrum when you see the protesters cleared out from in front of the white house the president walks out and holds up a bible you know at that same time there's the helicopters hovering over protesters in washington there's images from around the country when you see that scene what does it say about the state of american democracy that demonstration that the president does the thing the interesting thing here is that there's really no protest um that i can think of that represents as big a threat as the president of the united states calling in a military helicopter to break it up especially a non-violent protest as this protest was but even outside of that the deployment of military hardware by the president of the united states in washington dc lends itself to all sorts of authoritarian implications this is not calling out the national guard this is not uh you know the local police this is a sense that we're walking right up to the line of military suppression of dissent and i think that you know one of the things that people noticed was that that event happened right around the anniversary of tiananmen square and had you been able in 1989 to [Music] miraculously show people the images of washington dc in 2020 no one would believe that that was happening in the united states they say oh these are images of you know the authoritarian chinese government um but the parallels were very easy to see in those two instances and yet there's not even the kinds of statements that we saw after charlottesville in fact there's you know tom cotton's editorial about sending the troops there's a lionization of kyle rittenhouse the couple from saint louis is invited to the to the convention right i mean where is the republican party ended up by 2020 on the scale of democracy and authoritarianism where are they going into the 2020 election especially is notable you know that there is like very little soul-searching um that you know around the question of how is it that you have uh an american citizen asphyxiated for nine minutes uh on the street of a major american city and you know the energy is is around people who were contemptuous of the protesters um that's what we see lionized on the right uh we see this immediate attempt to posthumously discredit george floyd as if he had made any statement other than to beg for his life and so by that point the party is pretty close to meeting the definitions of authoritarianism or at least tolerating the authoritarianism of the president and you know this is something that people begin noticing you know notably american democracy is downgraded on all the international indexes that measure like how free societies are or how authoritarian the governments are uh you know we begin to see the united states uh sliding on that scale in the course of these years and this is almost directly a product of the kinds of dictatorial behaviors we see being tolerated by the republican party uh when it comes to donald trump so let's go to the period after the election we've talked a little bit about that initial choice that the republican party made and one of the key people who makes a decision about how to respond is mitch mcconnell who gives no credit to the claims of fraud or that donald trump won the election but who decides that he's going to remain silent until the middle of december what are the implications of that decision that a mitch mcconnell makes to remain silent well there are two things that happen you know one that decision keeps mitch mcconnell out of the crosshairs of trump and trump's people um but more perniciously uh that gives a lead time for the most fantastic and outrageous conspiratorial ideas to really just start circulating and for any of the official elements of the kind of republican establishment uh who have some capacity to blunt that you know it's it's questionable whether or not they could even stop it at that point because you know trump's grasp on the party had metastasized to such a degree at that point but the fact of it is that most don't even try and these ideas begin circulating you know in the body politic unchecked and in that same period too you're seeing there's marches where that turned violent in places this is before january 6. this is in november and december there's threats to local election officials there are threats to even members of congress who are republicans who've spoken up against what the president is saying is it surprising to see violence in that period as the lie about the election is spreading by the time the returns come in and it becomes clear that joe biden has won the election it would have been surprising had you not seen violence everything had led to a moment wherein trump's people were completely unmotivated to accept anything other than unqualified victory as valid and if in fact this is an invalid election and the people who are claiming power represent an existential threat to the nation then why wouldn't you commit acts of violence to defend the country and we'd seen you know this word patriot used in a very strategic sense you know people on the right and on the far right have been using the word patriot to describe people who agree with them and by implication the anti-patriotism or subversion of people who were on the other side of the political spectrum and so here we are none of these people in this crowd believe that the election was legitimate and they have been given an increasingly defined sense of targets these are people in the republican party who have conceded that joe biden won these are administrators uh these are people who volunteers who worked the polls uh during of the election in key places you know atlanta philadelphia uh milwaukee and these are republicans some instances republican secretaries of state who want to certify uh elections in which joe biden won especially in georgia and arizona places that the republican party thought that they would have at least strong a strong chance of winning all of these targets are there uh and in what world would there not have been violence directed these people or at least the threats of violence liz cheney ends up on one side and she's going to go against the president and kevin mccarthy is going to go along with the president what is the implications of two political leaders reaching different conclusions about how to respond to these claims of a stolen election i think that you know it's important to ground the fact that you know liz cheney was very much a republican conservative in good standing uh you know prior to you know this moment and she takes a different position post november 2020 from kevin mccarthy who himself you know flirts with the idea of denouncing uh trump's election rigging rhetoric and then quickly backs away from that reconciles himself goes to mar-a-lago to essentially kiss the ring of trump and you know regain his good standing and liz cheney doesn't do that she goes in the opposite direction and from the outside it appears that you know there are a ton of policy differences you know between the two of them but what appears to be the key difference is that cheney recognizes how dangerous this moment is not simply for her political prospects or for people who were being uh yelled at or people who are being threatened but this is really how societies find themselves enmeshed in protracted bloodshed this is how democracies fail and there's a sense that we are playing with you know explosive elements in this and i'm not sure that other republicans made that calculation uh and and not in the sense of you know can we stick it to the democrats with this but in the sense of if you discredit the system this will ultimately be bad for republicans too the other person is in the middle of all of this is mike pence the vice president and trump wants him to sort of unilaterally throw out the votes and believes that that's possible and whether that would be legal or not people told us it would have sent the country into protracted chaos what does that conflict reveal about american democracy between trump and the vice president i think one of the things that uh we have typically thought about american democracy was that uh it was rooted in you know these iron-clad precepts of the constitution uh and that it was enshrined in uh the various parts of election law uh in the united states uh and that there really isn't that much wiggle room you know if you wanted to [Music] damage the machinery in any particular way that's wildly untrue now the fact that mike pence didn't have the authority to throw out votes uh that he you know thought were suspicious uh had nothing to do with donald trump's ability to pressure him to do so and if he made an attempt to do so the entire system would have found itself at odds and we would have plunged into a constitutional crisis immediately and what we learned from that is that a good deal of american democracy relies on simple good faith that the people who are operating the controls of the system will adhere to the norms but there aren't really checks for a lot of the most dangerous things that could happen in that system it only took an intensely self-absorbed relentlessly ambitious and politically amoral sensibility like donald trump to highlight that fact but pence does not go along with it and he goes out the day of january 6 and we now know that he's been told this that's people were trying to get into the speech who had weapons and he tells his supporters to fight like hell what do you make of that is this an american a president appealing to a mob over the constitutional process and in a moment like that what does it say for the president of the united states to say you know we're going to go down to the capitol i'm going with you and we're going to fight like hell yeah i think that this is a call to arms you know what we saw in that speech on january 6 from trump was a call to arms from his people uh if you believe that the system is operating you know as it should why are you telling people to go there and what do you want them to do when they get there uh why you specifically as we now know why are you specifically uh allowing people to keep their weapons what could reasonably come at the very least this is not a prudent decision knowing that these people could potentially uh commit acts of at the very worst it's an incitement to a potential coup d'etat the republican party's response because january 6 happens the attack happens in the house the majority of republicans still vote to not certify the states people have told us that some of those members who might have certified were actually afraid of violence towards them what does the republican party's response that day reveal i think the the refusal to certify the votes marked an almost final capitulation it was the end stage surrender that there was no point at which the danger to democracy would supersede the danger to their own political ambitions uh or you know the tolerance for potential physical danger that they might be in uh being mindful however that members of congress vote to send the armed forces into places where they may get killed in defense of the country and so the argument that people were fearful for their own safety doesn't really hold up the quickest way to assure their safety would have been to not run for congress but if you hold that office then you have taken an oath to uphold american democracy and sometimes that requires risk but the fact that having seen just how dangerous that moment was people still gave more oxygen to the canard that the election had been rigged by voting against certification meant that they were either unaware or terminally unconcerned with the potential implications for american democracy at the end of it kevin mccarthy goes to mar-a-lago and meets with the president how important was the decision being made in that moment after january 6 by the republican party about how they were going to respond to january 6th how they were going to as a party understand what happened you know how important was that trip to mar-a-lago and what it represented i think the crucial thing after january 6 you know was that you know first january 6th had happened on the fly you know people didn't know who was going to win the election they began organizing and plotting for this in the aftermath of joe biden winning the election but the behavior after january 6th was far more significant and the reason it was far more significant was that it was laying the groundwork well in advance for how the party and how a significant portion of our government would respond to a similar challenge in the future if there is no real consequence and there's no uh exile for a political figure who's orchestrated this kind of violence uh and this person remains not only within the fold but still effectively culturally the leader of the party then it only means that it's more likely that given more lead time likely more resources more advantages given what we saw with republican legislatures uh passing laws that would facilitate uh this kind of thing that we would find ourselves in a moment where we actually did have an election that was determined to have one victor but in which another person is able to claim power what is that decision that they're making to eject a list cheney to eject somebody to reject somebody who's saying the election wasn't stolen the january 6 was something that we need to learn from yeah i think there's the decision that people are making in kind of tossing liz cheney overboard is the decision to continue down the road toward authoritarianism or potential authoritarianism it becomes that simple you know it's not really in dispute that joe biden won the election but if you can sow confusion in the minds of people and you can use physical force and intimidation and and witness your colleagues many but not all of whom are uh in the the democratic party having to flee for their lives and that doesn't suggest the need for a changed behavior it almost certifies that we will be back in this situation again so how dangerous is this moment for american democracy um i think that we are and among you know the most dangerous moments that we've seen in american democracy uh i don't think that it's difficult to make that calculation i'm not making the argument that that this would necessarily be expressed by civil war um but when we look at the politics that preceded the american civil war uh you know we see a kind of narrowing and kind of sorting into irreconcilable distinct positions now one of those positions in that instance happened to be the moral position that slavery needed to be contained and ultimately abolished um but the politics themselves indicate the way that a society finds itself moving toward unthinkable levels of violence if we look at uh the cold war if we look at world war ii or world war one uh or the war of 1812 even we don't see you know the same sort of social polarization and disruption on the scale that we see now i think this is as dangerous a moment as we have seen

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

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Id: -Luk8VDv3HY

Length: 80min 14sec (4814 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2022