Lies, Politics and Democracy: Mark Sanford (interview) | FRONTLINE

so in 2015 2016 as you're watching donald trump gain momentum inside the republican primary what do you see in him are there warning signs that you're seeing even back then absolutely the degree to which he was reckless with facts or he called it alternative facts alternative truth they had a variety of different tag names but it was unsettling because at the end of the day there needs to be a vigorous debate between left and right between conservative and more liberal philosophy in the american political system but undergirding it all has to be reality it has to be truth you have to debate facts and this notion that there are no facts there's no reality creates a a quicksand if you will wherein ideas can't be debated and and so this wasn't about left versus right it wasn't about conservative versus liberal it was about do facts matter in in this larger political debate that we're all a part of did you think that others in your party who you were talking to at that time in 2015 2016 did they share your opinions of him your concerns about him i think initially there was a lot of backroom chatter about wait a minute i i remember sadly it made a national you know cnn picked it up or somebody picked it up when he was there talking to the conference just as a candidate and you know he said i'll support uh you know this that that and this in terms of bill of rights and he went down the list and he went beyond the list and i i've sort of casually observed well there is no whatever number it was uh in the list of of the bill of rights and uh that kind of thing people would notice i wasn't the only person in the room to take note of whoa that doesn't exist i may have been the only person that day who made public comment on it um and i i think that that at that time a number of people were just thinking this is sort of a publicity stunt it can't go far uh therefore i'll just look the other way because it doesn't matter and because the the thing that drives 99 of the folks in politics is self-preservation you know to make noise uh might not be good in terms of my own political interests therefore i'll stay quiet now you've seen concerns about democracy at that point i mean the very first contest is in iowa between ted cruz and donald trump and he accuses ted cruz of having rigged the election all the way back then were you did you see concern in that moment or in other moments that made you concerned about american democracy i've seen concern throughout i mean because anybody is a student of history believes in in you know what hayek talked about in the road to serfdom what he talks about is how over time democratic systems get more and more cumbersome the electorate gets more and more frustrated with things that go wrong a strong man comes along says i will take care of this problem for you and you may have to give up a few rights in the process but i'll take care of it for you and the electorate hungary for change says yes and it's a story of hitler's rise to to power in in pre-world war ii germany it's a horrifying story but it's been played out time and time again throughout the the pages of history and so i've said all along i i don't think that he's hitler but i do think that he could be a precursor to a hitler-like figure or uh he could try and grab the reigns of power himself we don't know how the movie plays but what we know is this pattern of deceit where it's embedded into the way that he campaigns is an incredibly dangerous thing in the american political system what was he doing that made you say he could be a potential strong man or he could be a point on a road to autocracy i mean strongman is his personality that's what he embraces i mean uh he's a bully that's sort of the the mark for one who's maybe weak at the inner level but needs to project as much strength as possible that's the the play i remember watching an interview this is back when he was a candidate in charleston uh joe scarborough who i started in congress with back in 1994 had uh he and miko done some show with him and i i i said to joe afterward joe's a pretty alpha guy i said joe he totally out alphaed you and uh to which uh point uh you know joe pushed back a little bit but um but but it's true i mean that's his shtick if you want to call it that is i'm a strong man you don't mess with me we're interested in some of the choices that some of the characters who start out at that moment are going to make it i mean one of them is ted cruz you endorse i think in in february can you help us understand well let's be clear about that endorsement and it's important i had spoken out in different ways at that you know along the train uh against trump um my campaign manager at that point trump i mean cruz was the last guy standing against trump i'm not a fan of ted cruz's but his point was look if you really think that trump is a problem for our our political system then this is the last train leaving the station and you need to endorse so on the night before the primary i mean literally less than 24 hours before the primary i said you know i support this guy over here though again i'm not a particular fan of ted cruz's i just wanted to be on record saying i will support anybody that is going against donald trump but anyway sorry for that sidebar that's that moment where it seems like is the party going to get together in a way to confront trump i mean and was it were you frustrated in watching the party's response to candidate trump at that moment totally and even with ted cruz i mean keep in mind ted cruz's game at that point had been to appease and cajole trump all the way through so that he might be the last guy standing and then he could go against him but prior to that he had been sort of trump's cheerleader throughout the primary process uh anybody had sort of spoken up early let's take somebody like jeb bush was taken out early on in the process and uh and i it was a dangerous game i you know i i'm gonna sort of uh not say anything against this guy uh until it can be the last two of us standing that that's a strange and dangerous political game but that's the game that ted cruz played and it didn't exactly accrue to his benefit you focused in a lot on truth and on lies and in that confrontation between ted cruz and donald trump right he calls ted cruz lion ted and ted cruz says at one point that donald trump is a pathological liar i mean you have your own history with this that you write about in the book i mean as you're watching that moment that conflict between trump and cruz what are you thinking how important is this this accusation of lying and of being truthful it totally matters in our political system and i had a personal experience dating back to 09 where i told a quote little white lie that i thought was going to be you know picked up by maybe one person and it became a national punchline so you know in essence the lessons for me at a personal level of nine cemented my demise later in in the the world of donald trump and the political mess that unfolded with it but i would say it absolutely matters because i go back to what i said earlier if there is not objective truth is there if there is not some objective reality that we can debate from our different political perspectives and different personal perspectives then we have nothingness we can't have a debate and debate is vital to solving the problems that confront us as americans and yet that's not what a strong man wants that's not what putin wants that's not what any despot across the pages of history wants they want it to be about them and what they say period they are so the law and all that falls from it the beauty of our political system was that we would be to be a system based on certain ideological beliefs in terms of here's the framework of how we might have a a robust debate and and again foundational to it all is is truth and so the danger of what was unfolding between cruz and trump at that at that time was you're a liar no you're a liar okay you get a lot of that in politics but in this case what what ted cruz was saying was absolutely the truth and a lot of people in in sort of political circles in dc knew it to be so but weren't saying a word i mean the other thing that's remarkable is you know your story is sort of a conventional story in the sense that there's a lie it leads to consequences i mean in this case donald trump saying in many areas but saying about ted cruz you know his dad may have been involved in the jfk assassination and there's allegations of an affair and there's lots of you know things coming out and are you seeing consequences for political consequences for trump and the way there might be you know conventionally and what did that tell you well it says basically three things one you know the propaganda minister for hitler had made the point to hitler himself if you're going to tell a lie tell a big lie or tell lots of lies because at that point the the regular working person can't imagine somebody would be that audacious to tell a lie that big or that many lies therefore they're going to accept it as truth and so what what goebbels was his name uh was talking about i think is sadly true in in the way that the human psyche works secondly i think that what was troubling about you know this notion of lots of lies and no consequence is it said that the electorate was was incredibly thirsty for change and frustrated they'd be they'd had a lot of little lies told to them over the years by folks of both political parties and you know if you elect me we'll do this i mean for instance on the republican side what what voters had been told primary voters had been told was look if you just give us a house and i was part of this back in 1994 just elect republicans the house and we will make change in fact it was advertised as a quote revolution which was a crazy statement because the very design of our political system is to guard against revolutions but it was called the republican revolution back in 1994 i was a part of it and and there were some changes yes revolutionary changes no because that's not what our system is to give us uh and then they say well look i tell you what if you just give us the senate then we'll get these things done the electorates go out the republican electorate goes out uh captures the uh the the senate and still not the kind of changes uh well if you just give us the white house as well then we'll make changes and so i think that the the republican primary voter was frustrated with the amount of words it changes just over the hill kind of talking and here's a guy who comes along says change in over the hill i'll bring it to you now he's bold in the way he makes statements and people were frustrated and ready for something different and and in fact i had i had voters at that time tell me that the nature of insanity the old saying we've all heard is continuing to try and do the same thing and expect a different result so yeah he's different yeah he's rough around the edges yeah he he you know is a little bit loose with truth but maybe he'll get us the change that we've been hoping for what was being said internally especially in the sort of tea party caucus and was there a difference between what people were saying to you privately and what they were willing to say publicly i'm sorry the freedom caucus at that point yeah yeah yeah fragrance caucus uh you know which again like so many institutions in dc at that time ultimately was completely morphed into a pro-trump uh entity but at that time they were very outspoken about being against trump and how he represented threats to democratic ideals and traditions and how the group ought to make a stand against him again all that evaporated once he became president and people wanted to be relevant want to be in the room and wanted to therefore cozy up but at least prior to him winning the presidency there was active talk about how do we push back against him he gets the nomination and what is the choice that you face that others inside the party face he's up against hillary clinton what's the choice that you face at that moment and looking back on it how do you evaluate the choices you made the choices that the party made yeah so what happens then is you know you have somebody who's much closer to you philosophically in that he says i'm gonna represent these different uh conservative ideals versus hillary clinton and so i was very nuanced in my wording at that time i didn't vote for donald trump but i said i i would support him as president uh i wanted to you know work with whoever became the next nominee and uh and so i remember a reporter in charleston coming to me says you know you know will you support the president yeah i'm gonna support whoever the president is and if it's donald trump i'm gonna support him um but in retrospect looking back on it even then i should have said no he's he's a much bigger threat than even i had realized at that time and again in the same way that i supported cruz as a a last step against him probably should have looked at other things but you know at that point you got a lot of different republican voters coming up to you and saying well wait a minute you know we may not like him but he's our guy and we gotta go with our guy he gives that speech and he says i alone can fix it in that convention speech that he gives right um and you write in your book autocracy sells what was it that he was selling what was the ideology or however you describe it that trump was selling he was selling what a lot of people want to hear which is a fix they're tired they're worn out they're if you look at you know income from sort of the big picture standpoint for most folks out there it's gone down not up in in real terms uh not in nominal terms but in real terms their wages have eroded uh over you know the last 20 years or so and people are worn out with it and they're desperate for something different so he was selling what people wanted to hear which is i'll fix it for you and there's incredible appeal to that in that political philosophy goes out the window when you can't feed your family you can't get a job you can't have the kind of job that you'd hoped for and i think that that was the case sadly with a lot of the republican electorate and and so you look across broad swaths of of of of sort of middle america and you look at where a lot of those folks were on on on on economic terms they're struggling and and they wanted an answer so he he told them what they wanted to hear but more importantly should have sent all the alarm bells in the world off to the rest of us when somebody's telling you what you should not be wanting to hear which is if if i'm the answer then the institutions of the american political system that our founding fathers created over 200 years ago is not the answer and those two don't go together thank you so we talked about ted cruz he goes to the convention and he says vote your conscience were you at the convention by the way yeah this one in minneapolis or somewhere out in the midwest yeah it was 2016. yeah i went by for a day and a half absolutely yes hey were you there when ted cruz gave that speech and i was not no because he's he's booed and the next day he goes and meets with the texas delegation and apparently gets an earful from people from texas and by the end of at least by the fall he actually endorses donald trump what do you think watching that watching and you write a letter to ted cruz in your book what do you think was driving ted cruz's change of heart and how important was that the change of heart is the obvious which is you know blinding political ambition and a lot of folks will give up most anything as they're slaves to their own political ambition um what i wrote about in the book was wait a minute if if a guy goes out and calls your wife these certain things and says these certain things about your your father says these certain things about you how you get up and say it's all cool with me you're my buddy i don't get uh that's not real uh it's certainly theater it's political theater but it's it's all about political theater that that that leads the rest of us out it's about political self-preservation and trying to somehow stay politically relevant and being blinded to one's political ambitions and that's what you saw play out with cruz who's a smart guy but but he's unmoored from the standpoint of being able to stand for what he believes what about the democrats they were warning about donald trump and there was talk of his authoritarian tendencies and but of course mixed up in that message hillary clinton mentions the deplorables did the democrats know how to respond to the threats that they saw and that you were also seeing in donald trump no i mean again i'm not saying the average democrat on the street in charleston or in biloxi mississippi or wherever but i think that the democratic leadership i mean absolutely failed the causes that they allegedly believe in because they were completely tone deaf to the degree of of pain and frustration and angst that people had in both economic terms in in in their their the deterioration of their belief in in our political system to solve problems that they faced in the neighborhood or in their hometown um and that's why people begin to talk about yeah you got the two blue lines on either coast and you've got elites and people are in finance and making a ton but they're not facing the the realities that the people do that are are just trying to make it one day to the next and and so i i think that hillary was particularly tone deaf to how real and and how relevant the frustrations were for a lot of these republican primary voters uh called deplorables but they're anything but they're regular working people he is elected president and he comes in and what is the mood what are the expectations among your colleagues in the house in the house republican caucus about who this president is about what they think his presidency will mean and whether they think that he's a threat you know politicians are kind of like dogs in that it's like dog sniffing dogs when they first get around each other you know politicians at the end of the day are very conservative in burning their own political capital so you didn't see people making moves one way or the other they wanted to just sort of sniff and get a sense of what was coming i was there on the inauguration day and i remember it was just it was sort of surreal the degree to which it was about self-adulation this guy i mean i've never seen anybody with uh as much of a need for sort of outside praise as i saw with trump and it was really weird i remember thinking at one point he went up to the edge of the the the platform because the house the senate and supreme court and and cabinet you know sit behind the president when the uh is inaugurated and i remember at one point he he he walked up alone uh to the edge of the the the platform and all i could think was man back when i was married i mean if i didn't grab my wife's hand and pull her up there with me there would be a hell to pay uh and rightfully so when you know you got home that night i mean it was just weird uh it was all about not them as a couple i mean she was sort of a sidebar not them as a family they were sort of uh pawns on the larger test field but it was about him and him alone and um his moment in the sun i do remember that standing out so you're talking about when trump arrives into office and what the expectations were and people were sort of watching did they think that he could be controlled i mean we've talked to some people who said that they thought trump would be a showman would be there to sign legislation did they underestimate him certainly um but they weren't inaccurate i remember being uh i guess it was a healthcare bill at the time and i remember we'd gone and we were in the um old executive office building we'd met with bannon and um he had said that you know this piece of legisl legislation is a sandwich but you're gonna eat it and a number of us were like who who who is this guy you're not gonna tell us as members of congress that we're gonna eat this piece of legislation and remember at that same day mick mulvaney who was um i can't remember which position he held for the president at that time but he sat me down in sort of you know godfather style said the president hopes that you'll vote against this so he can uh run against you he will crush you and you're like what is going on i've been to the white house many times i've never had conversations like that so it was all kind of weird but the reason i think that people thought that he could be controlled was going back to another visit at the white house where a number of us had been called to the dog house uh he he was there he had absolutely no grasp of the details of the legislation and his point was i just want to win and our point was okay but when it what this isn't a win and his point is i don't care it looks like a win therefore i want to win and so somebody who had that little bit of focus and mastery of the details of a given piece of legislation would be one that frankly a lot of insiders in washington thought well okay this guy will be controlled because he is not watching for the the details that make up any piece of legislation coming down the pike there's a tim albert article which is very early on in the trump presidency about your criticisms of the president why do you do that make that decision and why do others not why are you one of the few examples a number of reasons you know my own personal experience back in 09 uh and the importance of truth absolute truth and how much that mattered a lot of conversations that came with my four sons in the wake of that experience on truth and how much it mattered and you know things that are much bigger than politics and that is how you want to be viewed and remembered by by your sons anyway it just it was sort of a white line and so you make your determination to be where you are but it was very costly i mean the four of us who spoke out early against trump were all exercised from congress so you had you know corker and flake in the senate you had me and amash in the house it was political extinction for all four of us and is that why nobody else there was only four of you yeah i mean they're not dumb i mean uh uh you know they look around and and again people move in waves politicians at the end of the day are very conservative again with their political capital and they look at okay it's not working out so well for sanford i don't think i'll go there and in fact the president at the time of my primary loss i mean came into hc5 which is down in the bowels of the capital for a meeting that was supposedly on policy and uh thankfully my flight had been delayed in coming back to d.c and i wasn't in the room but he's like is sanford in the room yeah uh well i want to boom and he sort of goes about pouring acid on my head and he was doing it intentionally which is to send a signal to every other republican in that room if you mess with me i'm going to mess with you and it's going to be costly and given his degree of political power at that time uh at the front end of you know his presidency it was not to be lightly considered and if politics was your life which it is for all too many people in the political sphere they're not about to give up their life on behalf of a couple of political ideals i mean one of the people who changes in a rather dramatic fashion is lindsey graham who had been so outspoken and who then stops criticizing the president and actually works to become very close personal relationship with him what are you thinking as you watch somebody who you've known for a long time have that transformation can't say anything nice don't say anything at all on on that one you know he's he's he's a hometown guy i'll leave it alone i mean obviously i'm aghast i'm frustrated i'm bewildered but i'm not surprised i mean i go back to the basic of the basics which is for a lot of people the name of the game is staying in the game and was it hard if you don't want to say what you think about exactly about what he was doing was it hard for you to watch believing what you believed and seeing that transformation yeah i mean even to this day you end up wondering as you you watch certain people continue to rise in the political world that are just absolutely unmoored from the standpoint of belief systems but it seems to work for them and you're like well maybe i'm the fool in the equation given that you know i'm now doing other things that aren't nearly as interesting as being in the united states congress but i sleep well at night and i think that's the part that ultimately matters i have a fabulous relationship with my four sons uh and that's ultimately what matters the most and i you know feel good when i go to church on sunday so i mean you know everybody's got their own barometers for what matters to them and and and so i'm still bewildered and uh saddened uh by the the transformation i've seen in a bunch of folks in what they allegedly once believed or supposedly believed you're left with two thoughts you're left with one did they ever believe in the first place is there a belief system that is core to driving them in politics or not other than saying in the game and you're also sort of bewildered sort of at a cosmic level by i thought that god if you will call it universal powers call it the cosmos whatever you want to call it was sending me certain signals on the importance of truth and its relevance and what it meant in 09 based on my own personal journey and then you watch just a number of years later and the people who are going the furthest to feel from the standpoint of truth are the people most rewarded in politics and you're like is this a cruel joke i mean what is going on so i'm still bewildered by the whole thing and saddened by it but i guess you come back and you simply say it is what it is people in politics is going to do what they think is necessary to staying in office and that's awfully sad these were guys some of them who came in on the tea party wave who said i didn't come to washington for a career i'm gonna sleep in my office right now i'm going home i mean was that even more surprising to you than a lindsey graham or a ted cruz to see the transformation of the people inside the freedom carcass it's mind-blowing it it is bewild i mean beyond bewildering it is like are you kidding me exactly because of what you described i mean it's one thing to have one who's sort of a you know forever politician always wants to stay in the game they're going to bob and weave they're going to do their thing but to have folks that were allegedly from the outside coming in for a chapter of their life to make a difference and then they give up making a difference so they can stay politically relevant is mind-blowing and and particularly as a group it's one thing to have an outlier here or there but as a group i remember at the time that trump came hard at me at that time justin amash i'll never forget this uh stood before you know the the freedom caucus and said look if he if if trump will come after sanford like he did then ultimately he'll come after any one of us and this we need to have a formal statement as a group about how this is wrong and i don't remember what the episode was but but i do remember him standing there and everybody is like looking at their feet uh looking away looking at their toes and and these are the folks that you thought were your friends and you're going oh my goodness where am i and um and uh you live and you learn in life when charlottesville happens what are you thinking as you're watching it it's another point where there is tension and there is some criticism of the president and now i mean looking back and seeing some of those images and seeing the images of january 6 you can see echoes in it what are you thinking as you're watching that moment well a couple of different things you know i went to the university of virginia for graduate school so i'd spent two years of my life in charlottesville and i subsequently had two sons that went to the university of virginia so charlottesville is a very real place to me and and so the idea of that kind of conflict in a a town as pleasant and pastoral if you will as charlottesville was like hey this doesn't fit what in the world is going on and two you were struck by the degree which trump began to show himself a coward that because of this empty vacuum that defined his movement on every day where he just needed constant self-adulation i've never seen anybody as as insecure trying to project security in my life but but you begin to see it in in very real ways and his comment at the time was you know they're good people on both sides what it sounds like a standard politician to me uh on the one hand on the other hand there was not a declarative statement against violence against what had gone on uh which there needed to be but there was not it was an empty vacuum and you're like whoa doesn't fit with charlottesville and who is this non-leader leader that we have who won't even condem in sound uh resounding voice what took place does it surprise you that you know in the woodward book it's reported that trump said those were my people you know he did he didn't want to be more critical because he saw them as part of his base it's true i mean in politics everybody you know they'll always speak out against the other side in politics rarely on either side of the aisle we see somebody go against their base uh clinton did it briefly in the sister soldier moment and and some of the stuff on welfare but outside of that i don't remember anybody i don't remember obama going against his base i don't remember trump going against i mean it just rarely happens and so what you begin to see was more and more of the degree to which trump was a prisoner of this thing that he had tapped into he didn't completely understand it was by no means his personal base here's a manhattanite who had never spent time in the country in his life somehow now becomes the billionaire uh i'm one of the guys guy which he wasn't but but he he struck a chord with them and so he wanted to do anything he could to stay relevant to this crowd is has been observed by many people in the political world he brought in a new group when i'd go to a republican you know meeting a lot of faces i didn't recognize these were not the conventional republicans that you'd seen over the years this was a new group that he brought into the fold and he was fearful of them and what did you think of the party's response there were statements issued condemning certainly the violence by a lot of senior republicans but some of them wouldn't mention the president by name and and you know wouldn't criticize him and by the fall it seems like he's consolidated control what do you make of that moment and the republican response to charlottesville and to trump's response uh just it it it reminded me of the old saying that says the only way that evil prevails in this world is when good people stand on the side and do nothing and there was a lot of do-nothings from the standpoint of republican leadership at that time were in there ought to be outright condemnation um there was relative quiet given the alarm bells that should have been going off with all of us and i mean that's the moment where the open warfare really starts to break out especially with flake and corker are you talking to them you know are the four of you talking at that moment are you watching as the president really is hammering them on twitter he goes to rallies in arizona can you describe that moment and and what you're seeing uh no because you know everybody's got their own political fires to deal with and i was dealing with mine at that point um uh so i wasn't talking with corker or flake um uh i was talking with amash we'd compare notes fairly regularly amash was becoming louder and louder at that point i do remember seeing one scene i don't know exactly when it was but there was some presidential rally and i remember jim jordan who you know who'd been a collegiate level wrestler i mean somebody who was strong i remember him being you know trump had trashed me and this brit somebody sent me the clip trashed me at this rally and then i remember him calling up uh jim jordan and i remember him giving jim jordan a hug and it was like a little boy hugging his dad i remember how real the image was like wait this guy is a college wrestler and supposedly he's my friend he the president just trashed me and he says nothing like what let me take exception i think samford's a good guy or whatever no comment just wanting a hug from daddy i remember seeing that image so vividly um so i just remember being disappointed at that stage by a number of different things that the president would say and and people's reaction to it the one major legislative victory that year is the tax bill did you go to the signing ceremony i did not at the white house have you seen it it's a moment where a lot of senior republicans including paul ryan and orrin hatch and mitch mcconnell stand up and give the president credit for the bill and paul ryan describes exquisite presidential leadership what does that represent in a moment like that when republicans are coming together at a moment of a major victory and it's really very much about praising donald trump i'd say two things i mean i'd say one he had little to nothing to do with the bill he certainly didn't know its contents and you could like or dislike the bill but this is something that paul ryan had worked on for years as had kevin brady in the house who's had a ways means committee at that point in time uh and so you know trump was not engaged in legislation he did not care he just wanted wins whatever they were uh but but that was not his focal point a bill like a tax bill has all kinds of intricacy in it he cared little of detail or intricacy and people like paul ryan or kevin brady would have really dug in deep and and did for years of their lives and trying to advance that legislation uh the other thing that really stands out on praise points as you're talking is that that's what trump lived for uh and and people like lindsey graham uh begin to see that wait the way to his heart the way to impact him the way to get in his good graces is simply to load it up and tell him how great he is and and you begin to see more and more people doing that and that again should have given every one of us pause because it's so contrary to what the founding fathers wanted they didn't want any system based around one man or one woman they wanted a system of checks and balances and you begin to see more and more of it's about trump it's about what he's done it's about what he's going to do it's about how he's this that or the other and that is poison in in our political system your primary why do you think he focuses on it so heavily why would the president of the united states get involved in the house primary race it was sort of a perfect storm and and so i remember early on paul ryan coming to me on the floor of the well of the house and i was walking up he grabs me because why why are you shooting at the president i said what are you talking about uh he goes why are you shooting at the president i said i'm not shooting at the president and um and he says yes you are i was just down at the white house and the president has 535 knuckleheads to worry about on capitol hill and he's picking out one name and it's yours what's the deal and so this is before other things begin to manifest and sort of spin but i think that the original friction point with the president with me was a reporter had come to me early on prior to him getting the nomination and asked me the simple question do you think that the next presidential nominee are to release their tax returns that that wasn't an illogical question from a reporter's standpoint because at that point i don't think charlie crist was in so as one of one or maybe one of two former governors who is now in the house of representatives and as a former governor as a former chief executive i had released my tax returns twice when i'd gotten the nomination in both instances and and so pretty logical question here's a guy who's released his tax returns twice uh i'll i'll ask him and so i give a sort of a standard answer about yeah it's a 50-year tradition it's been held by republicans and democrats alike but at the end of the day you're not asking me because of that you're asking me because i've released my tax returns a couple times when i got the nomination in both runs for governor and yeah uh i wouldn't release mine if they weren't doing the presidential level our tradition exists at the gubernatorial level because it exists at the presidential level and um and so i give my answer anyway long story short the president gets the nomination or trump gets the nomination becomes president and um same before comes back and sticks a microphone in my face asked me the same question and i'm not dumb i know that the the right answer is not to give the same answer i gave before but i give the same answer and at that point trump was always hiding something in his tax returns uh and i think he still is there's something in there hidden that he went nuts over and i think that that tax return thing created me as sort of public enemy number one on the house side and things devolved from there did you think he wanted to make an example out of you he did make an example of me what's it like to be attacked by him how do you see it in your district what is it like it's not good when you're a lowly member of congress and fresno united states of your party is coming out against you i mean it's just not a good movie it doesn't work out well and uh and it didn't uh particularly given he was sort of the apex of his own political power at that at that moment in time let me just ask you because this is something that comes up after january 6. i mean did it lead to threats against you or was it mostly a political threat no it was it was it was political threat i mean you know i come from the south maybe it would be different if i lived in new jersey nothing against new jersey but i mean you know and again i've been part of a community for my whole life and so people who know me either like me or they don't like me but but there wasn't a i never got any personal threats you got a lot of political pushback and you had voters who you thought had been with you for i mean a real long time and ups and downs and all that went with it turned the other way in the age of trump and that was again different you're like wow it's this whole notion of people who you think might be your friends in politics in fact aren't uh and you know i had a number of different instances where people would be screaming at you and i mean if if that's personal threat yeah i guess that but you know where it's really unpleasant really awkward uh and uh really uncalled for i mean we can agree to disagree but you got somebody and you're in a football game and somebody's uh screaming at you in a public place a bunch of people are looking at that doesn't feel real good but it is what it is in the world of politics did you feel abandoned by other republican elected republicans by the leadership they were never your friends i mean kevin kevin mccarthy is again uh a pleasant guy affable but he's not your friend he wants to stay relevant he wants to stay in power and you know he'll bet on the next horse in two and a half seconds and did what was his position in those early trump years we've talked a little bit about ryan complete suck-up mode um and just wanting to be again relevant and in the inner circle of of of of the president and would you see that in the caucus meetings how would you see that in that setting there wasn't a lot of conversation pro or you know for against the president it was generally about policy but it was about you know i just spoke with the president and he had this to say it's the oldest game in politics where you're like you know i just spoke to whoever and now you're you know relevant or you're you've raised your stature because you got the inside angle that somebody else doesn't have in talking to somebody that allegedly holds power can you tell me about election night when you've lost and you describe it as an emotional moment and but one where you also see something bigger at play than just your own career take me to that night and the emotions and what you're thinking well i've been involved in politics for 25 years and had never lost an election before so at one level it was like okay and we could see the numbers you know when the president's tweet was up you could just see massive things happening in terms of the way that was being retweeted and whatnot and so at one level is sort of surreal um like okay uh see the tides turning and a lot of folks that had been your folks were no longer your folks and that's that's its own journey in the world of politics so you're relevant until you're not uh you're relevant in one time period and then you're not i mean i've since read about you know winston churchill and being turned out to pastor wait this guy what he he he helped save england and then he's no longer real i mean but that's the way politics goes i get that so so one part was about your own journey of what's relevant what's not and who your friends and who are not but but there was a much more personal much more spiritual journey of my boys coming to me all four sons were with me that night and after the election the cameras leave we went to some little hamburger place and stayed up till three in the morning that night talking and to a boy they're like dad if you gotta go this is the way to go we are so proud of you you've said the politics is about ideals you've tried to teach us these different lessons and if you gotta go this is the way to go and were you concerned about what it might represent for the republican party for american democracy when you saw that power that the president could exert yeah i did that in my concession speech i said you know i don't take one thing back but here is the bigger picture of what's at play here and i did talk about the danger of a strong man i did talk about the the incredible wisdom of the founding fathers and how they set up a balanced system uh a cumbersome system an awkward system um a frustrating system but far better than the world of one man and one voice uh which is ultimately what trump personifies to me there had been some initial pushback as you say there was four of you who were sort of more outspoken by the end of that first year the end of the first two years to what extent has the president exerted a control i mean a lot of people have left congress what's the state of the party of trump's control of the party as you're leaving congress well i mean i think it was it took those first two years to consolidate power so you know i was there for the first two years and then i was gone and then after i left and then a number of other folks uh left as well but i was sort of a early bellwether and and the first republican primary casualty to the to the trump train what you begin to see though after 2000 after that election after the first two years was one you know i was a real uh guinea pig and a lot of folks said okay look at what happened here's a folks who's weathered a fair number of political storms ups and downs all kinds of things but the one thing he he couldn't weather was trump whoa i think i'm going to make sure that i am in line and not on the outs with trump and so i think he really consolidated power in that election cycle and um you know had pretty much free reign the following two years till he took himself out or the american public took him out or the only thing or as he would describe it until the election was stolen those are the years of talk of impeachment and the dossier and the mueller report and what do you make of how the democrats handled themselves in opposition and whether they were effective or self-defeating how do you evaluate the democrats response you know every martyr needs uh an oppressor every villain needs uh i i don't know the right analogy but they played into his hand um uh and and that he was then able to say well the deep state the the the the other team um uh that they're just mounting against me because i wanted yeah it was all smoke and mirrors i think there was legitimacy to what they were getting at but i i i i put it this way nancy pelosi as the figurehead for speaking out against trump is a bad contrast and and so she came across as san francisco an elite it further alienated the more rural voter in south carolina as like if she's for it i'm against it and so so it was not so much the issues it played but but the the the cosmetics uh or the appearances of the way things aligned that i think further ostracized the quote deplorable voting base and it further emboldened trump to to say i'm the guy and i'm being a martyr in this case because of these folks coming after me as they are that's interesting i mean that might help to explain something we've been wondering about which is that first impeachment where only mitt romney votes for it even liz cheney who becomes very critical later doesn't i mean when you look at that do you see that as an example of that polarization inside the congress and the effects that it might have yeah people vote their own political interests and they vote their base and at that point the base is pretty fired up against impeachment and against them coming after trump i mean in other words by coming after trump then a lot of people circled the wagons around trump uh not necessarily because they liked him but because they thought look if this is what nancy pelosi wants i don't want it so the enemy of my enemies my friend or whatever the saying is begin in some cases to apply there were you surprised though that by 2020 there were not more republicans who were outspoken because we talked to people who said in 2016 they didn't think he was going to win or that the warnings about him you know weren't that bad but now you've had three and a half years three years of the trump presidency and seen what it was were you surprised that there wasn't more of an open opposition by the time you get to 2020 amazed i mean why there wouldn't be i mean i mean again i was involved in political process at home for 25 years and and you get to know a lot of folks and you're like either they went out and lobotomized all these people i've gotten to know over the years or they took them off in a spaceship or as john boehner had said at one point the republican party is out there somewhere but it's sleeping i don't know where it is i mean i don't know what in the world happened because people who had met with you know saturday after saturday at you know republican meetings who held beliefs about you know government spending i mean again trump considered himself the king of debt he made it i mean the deficits exploded under the trump administration and yet republicans were not saying a word and why there wasn't more resistance to that both at a philosophic level and a political level i will never know other than it's the king of the hill phenomenon and people circle the wagons around the person that they perceive the whole power because they want to be in his or her good graces and that is not the american political system we've talked about a lot of warning signs and a lot of things that disturbed you about donald trump where on the scale is it that moment after the election when he comes out and he says frankly i did win this election on election night we just know we've completely gone into full blown crazy world at that point um and my point back home was wait a minute we have a a a an incredibly um divided political and electoral system designed to safeguard against elections being stolen and so you're talking about some grand conspiracy where at the precinct level you would infiltrate thousands and thousands of people across the country in different precincts to actually create the quote stolen election that that trump talked about i mean either you just don't believe in our political system uh and it's different safeguards or you do and what what the president was advancing at that point is a line of reasoning that says i don't believe in our political system and if you don't believe in that will katie bar the doors because we're in for real trouble and that is the cancer that has grown because you talk to a lot of republican electorate these days and they'll say you know the election was stolen they've heard it enough on fox news and other places to have believed it because it's been beaten in and beaten in and yet judges who are appointed by republicans have said no that's not the case conclusively and yet it's the grand lie that's out there and it fits very much with what goebbel's talked about if you're going to tell a lie tell a big one because that way people will see this truth and sadly it's seen as truth with all too many republicans across the country these days in the first days after the election it's donald trump it's trump's son don jr alex jones pushing the conspiracy theory and by the end of the week people like lindsey graham and ted cruz are out raising questions about the election how important when you look back on it do you think it was for other elected republicans and republican leaders to amplify the claims that the president started making it's important if you want to destroy our democratic traditions yeah i mean it is absolutely wrong what lindsay did in that instance and what ted and others did because by by doing it it creates a safeguard for others to do it and then it multiplies and it grows from there and so again i just use the word cancerous i mean it is cancerous when this this kind of lie begins to spread because of the way it undermines the very premise of one man one woman one vote in the american political system how many of the house republicans maybe the senate republicans or probably leadership who have been elected as you have know the electoral process know how votes are counted in great detail in some cases how many of them do you think actually believed the president's claims very few because you can't have been a part of the process i mean i was elected twice governor and i had primaries i had run-offs i had generals i mean you're talking about six elections just in those two elections alone and where there are certain weird spots in hampton county or allendale county yes but you're talking a handful of votes you're not enough to completely overturn or change an electoral result and so are there certain wards within chicago that'll always be weird yes are there certain other places around the country that'll have spots where there's something weird or strange absolutely but that doesn't again tip the balance of an overall election it just means that yeah you got a couple of precincts where there's corruption but it's not it's not whole scale there's no way you can believe in our system and believe that there are enough precinct and poll workers out there to go infiltrate the system in mass to change the outcome of big elections and and so i think that in essence none of them believe it that have been around the political process and really watched their own election results as closely as they would have there's no way but they're foisting it because they again think in this weird time we're living in that it's key to staying relevant in the age of donald trump we know from some of the books that kevin mccarthy behind the scenes was saying mr president maybe it's time to give up but that with the caucus he was indicating he was going to vote not to certify the states what do you make of kevin and he's clashing with liz cheney at that point this is in the run-up to january 6. what do you make of kevin mccarthy in that moment as you've known him as you've seen the reporting around his actions in those days he's a chameleon i mean he just wants to be relevant he will say or do that which will keep him you know in in in the political flow i think that's a sad way to live your life are you surprised by liz cheney who begins in that moment clash with the president that would in some ways ample echo yours are you surprised by what she did and how she responded yeah i mean initially she'd been on the other side of the equation um and and and quite supportive of the president so yeah initially i was surprised but she dug her heels in deeper and deeper uh which very much fits with her father i think the interesting thing about liz is she has a longer political horizon or tradition that i think does impact her view i mean whether you like or dislike her father he was vice president united states of america and his long-term congressman from the state that she now represents and so that that experience gives a context to this larger political debate that's playing out that most members don't have and and it makes it less about her as an individual than about wait a minute you know i'm here yeah but my dad was here before that there'll be somebody after that i think it gives a context that's given her real wisdom in the way that she has indeed dug her heels in um and and i i think having grown up with politics as she did and she's seen some of the pomp and the ceremony and the things that come the things that go also gives her a context that says this fight's worth fighting and i admire the way in which she's done so and what about mike pence i think you didn't overlap in the house right no we did not i think he comes right in right after you leave what do you make of his response because he's seen as somebody who's so you know always praising trump never criticizing him and then this moment of real incredible pressure on him from the president what do you make of how he responds at that time i mean i just made like you know i think what a lot of people think which is finally i mean this is a guy who sat there and looked you know fawningly at the president at a million or is it not a million but literally thousands and thousands of press conferences and you're like how does any guy with just a small degree of sense of self-worth do that you know but you figured okay figures that's the cost of admission but i mean i i i you know i i for years wondered how how do you do that i mean i because i mean we're not just talking being at a side we're talking about looking like uh again fawningly at at his daddy his father is whoever uh and so finally he makes a break which is to say you know as much as he wants to be relevant politically and he certainly proved that over the the his time with with the president there is finally a a fine white line and and and once it crossed he began to push back and i very much again admire it was a long time coming should have come a long time before but it finally got there and he did the right thing in saying no we're not going to go the way the president wants to go on this one i mean it reminds me of that warning that you said amos issued to the members of the freedom caucus you know no matter how loyal you are there can become a moment with donald trump where you could be turned off i mean did you see that in and how trump turns on him right after that he you know he mentions him in the speech and it's crazy we're living in a crazy time with uh a crazy and reckless person in a position of power uh in in in our country and so the degree to which the president has no allegiance to anyone or any ideal save for himself and his own self-advancement is astounding and you saw it play out in the the pence example the guy had just i mean sat there and you know jumped on grenades and stayed silent and you know looked glowingly at the president a press conference after a press conference had been his right-hand guy and yet you know when something comes along that puts the two of them apart forever pence is cast aside because the president has no loyalty to any set of ideals any person safe for himself and that's a scary place to be that's a scary person in whom to place political power and i hope that there are lessons going forward given the president talks about running i hope that's not the case but given the fact that trump has certainly entertained the idea of continuing to to stay in the world of um politics and run for president so january 6 happens and um he used the word sedition talking about trump and his actions presumably over the period before january 6 as well what do you mean by that if you're inciting a crowd with the uh purpose of overturning an election that is sedition period end of story uh and that's what the president did there um with the crowd that day as he sent them up to to the capital pure and simple sedition absolutely textbook style and it ought to be called out as such and he ought to be judged accordingly for it and what are you thinking as you're watching the place you had worked be attacked what are you trying to do in the moment what are you seeing as you see those images yeah i wasn't even aware of it i was busy you know because i'm back in the world of work and and private uh you know free enterprise system all that good stuff and a buddy of mine from uh actually out of the country calls me says what in the world is going on at your old place of work and i have no idea what he's talking about and flip on the television and i was just aghast and so it was like a movie playing out it's like this can't be i mean i've walked those halls i've climbed those steps i i i know every corner i mean i had two different stints in the united states congress and you know i lived there i slept in my office for 12 years uh you know it it not during the day but in the evening time and uh i mean this is a place i spent a lot of time and to see what unfolded was surreal unimaginable and disturbing and to what extent do you think it was the result not just of trump but of the decisions we've been talking about going back all the way to 2016 about how to respond to him about truth about decisions that were made along the way to what extent is their responsibility for other members of your party in the decisions that they made all the way along you know i i i think that they absolutely bear some of the responsibility uh because again it goes back to the old adage of the only way that evil prevails in this world is when good men or good women sit on the sidelines and do nothing so the trump phenomenon grew in in good measure because it was not resisted and people didn't push back in force against it but it always takes a catalyst and we need to be unmistakably clear in recognizing the fact that trump was and is the catalyst for much of what's going on i mean it's sort of an unusual combination of sort of a perfect storm in political terms that sort of brought him to power but he has been a catalyst he's continued to act as a catalyst for things that are ultimately destabilizing not just in january 6 but in in the larger political ethos it's paying out right now there's a more relaxed notion of truth in political debates around this country as a result of trump there's a coarseness in the way that people will attack each other that didn't exist prior to trump i mean there are a number of different things all of which are destabilizing for the american political system and the balance that it's predicated on you think that there's we talked about lindsey graham he has that speech that night of january 6 and he says i'm done right mcconnell gives a strong speech we know privately mccarthy is talking about asking the president to resign we know that now um and he would give a strong speech though not vote to impede did it seem like this might be a breaking point that maybe the party was catching up to where you were yeah how it could not have been a breaking point is just again unfathomable um i mean i watched with great pride i i remember sending an email or a text to lindsay that night after his talk because i thought it was magnificent he's like i'm done sadly just a matter of hours thereafter he was not done and you saw a retrenchment on other folks too who sort of said definitive things based on their personal experience of having hordes of crazy people coming you know into the capitol and them basically running for their lives but but i mean it's it's a testimony to how sadly people will do most anything to hang on the political power and and in that process all of us can be harmed and poisoned in that it degrades the political debate it degrades the strength and value of the political institutions that are so key to balancing power in our system i mean i i i yeah it was it seemed like a tipping point that it turned out not to be i mean was that all that it was i mean if they had gotten together and said we're going to go forward on impeachment and conviction we're going to just as the leaders of the republican party we're going to make clear where we stand i mean did they have a choice at that moment they absolutely had a choice and you know the hard thing about leadership is it requires leadership i mean you have to lead if you want to be a leader and and what we have are a bunch of pastry chefs that that that are basically saying oh you don't like this dessert or how about this one over here i mean people are appeasing and they're cajoling and they're just trying to stay relevant but it's coming at great cost to the institutional fabric of what the founding fathers created so could they have led yes did they know will we be harmed by it we'll find out how much so but absolutely at one level or the other we're going to be harmed by the lack of leadership that came in the wake of january 6. and for those who did speak up mitch mcconnell he does not vote to convict but he gives a strong speech i mean is that enough or is more required of a mitch mcconnell yeah moore's required i mean i i i was mesmerized and you know mitch isn't exactly a great speech maker um uh historically he he could put you asleep pretty fast but i thought his speech was just eloquent it was spectacular um and i was taken by it but ultimately leadership requires more than a speech it requires building coalitions building teams to push back against that which you spoke on and he did not go that next step and kevin mccarthy there's a photo of him not long after he gives his own speech with donald trump at mar-a-lago when you saw that what did that moment represent what did it say about kevin mccarthy well it just cemented what i've always known about kevin mccarthy which is as i said earlier he's a chameleon he'll he'll change any stripe necessary to be relevant he lacks core conviction not to the extent that trump does trump's off the scales on that front but there's not a governing philosophy that drives somebody like kevin mccarthy it is the chance to stay relevant hold and accumulate political power that drives them you write in a book about the idea of major republicans coming to mar-a-lago to meet with donald trump what is going on there why does that image disturb you because it's going to kiss the ring and you know it what what our country was founded on was the notion of not kissing the ring no man was to be subservient to the other we're all out there we can have our fights we can have our debates uh it ought to be robust i might be a conservative you might not be or vice versa and we can have a robust debate but we're equals in the political system that's what the founding fathers created and what we saw and what we've consistently seen with people going down to the palace if you want to call it that to kiss the ring of the king is what we rebelled against as a country a couple hundred years ago but we're seeing that come back in and it it's 100 toxic and it represents a cancer in the american political system that needs to be exercised the last resistance against january 6 and its control inside the party seems to be the moment that liz cheney's voted out of the leadership of the republican caucus what do you see in that moment when they decide that she if she's going to talk about january 6 and talk about the 2020 election can't be a leader of the party anymore acquiescence capitulation the toxic elements that hayek writes about in his book the road to serfdom playing out in real time uh here in our political system dissent ought to be embraced it's a sign of a healthy political system and yet the idea that somebody can't see something differently and if they do they need to be exercised is not the hallmark of a democratic political system and certainly not what we've seen in our system for all its warts and blemishes over the last 200 years and so i think that adam kinzinger people like liz cheney have been um real bulwarks if you will against the tyranny that is represented by people saying if you don't hold our view we kick you out uh but that's what it was at play these days let me just ask you because you would have served with him about adam kinzinger and were you surprised about his response to january 6. you know they say that people are sometimes made by the times in other words the real them of them comes out given an extraordinary difficult situation um adam's a great guy i mean you know he's an air force veteran uh at one point there's a story of there was some skirmish and a man was holding a knife on a woman and he jumps into the fray i mean he's a guy that'll jump into the fray and he's certainly done that in the wake of of the sixth and hadn't backed down one iota and uh and and so i i just say he has lived up to the air force ideals that he swore way back when he became an officer in the air force uh in a way that i think has been extraordinary this is not true of all elected republicans now but many of them speaking up against january 6 speaking up saying the election wasn't stolen has become a very dangerous thing inside the party what is the threat of that of the big lie of the lie about the election being so alive inside the party the threat is if you don't believe in our electoral system then you don't believe in those who get elected and and that there's no real legitimacy to to their hold on power i mean the the the the value of founding father system was we vest power and authority with the individual the individual chooses to loan it to those who hold political power it doesn't come from top comes from the bottom up and you know based on the legitimacy electoral system this power is vested from the individuals that make up america to these different elected leaders if you don't believe that the election is real you don't believe that there's legitimacy to the power and voice that is contained by those who are in elected leadership which is to say what do you believe in well you believe in then a king or a queen deciding things for you because their voice is preeminent their voice is louder they may have a bigger microphone uh and there's no legitimacy to where these other folks are coming that it's just a it sends a cascade of different bad political ramifications in our political system if you don't believe the elections are real and that they're rigged

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

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Id: MbOOeF8L3Kw

Length: 76min 10sec (4570 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2022