Lincoln Project’s Steve Schmidt “There’s a Battle for Control of MAGA Empire” | Amanpour and Company

and protecting the planet has been a key issue also of course for the california governor gavin newsom and he has just handily beat back a recall challenge from republicans who are pointing to his climate agenda amongst other things newsom has also staked his reputation on mask and vaccine mandates and that's in stark contrast to republican governors from states like texas and florida who have not gop strategist steve schmidt says their anti-science stand is a selfish ploy to woo the far right schmidt who resigned from the board of the lincoln project in february tells michelle martin how democrats should seize the day thanks christian steve schmidt thank you so much for joining us once again it's good to be back with you so i'm going to just start by asking you how do you understand what's going on right now i mean as we are speaking uh a number of republican governors are just furious about both mass mandates and vaccine mandates even though their states are among the most heavily affected i mean at one point one out of seven new infections were coming out of covet 19 infections are coming out of florida at the same time the governor there is suing jurisdictions for imposing mass mandates so how do you understand what's going on in our politics right now i think the proper way to look at this is is part of a uh ongoing series of events at a very momentous time in a in a momentous season and what we're seeing is a home brew of american radicalism extremism a type of nihilism uh for sure ron desantis of harvard university understands completely the advocacy of these life-saving vaccines uh but he has gambled and his gamble is that it is expeditious for him to climb the ladder of power in the republican party to position himself as an heir to trump uh to be [Music] with regard to coven with regard to the mass mandates to cater to an extreme and intense base that he views will be determinative in the next republican primary process now saudi arabia is a good example of how to think about this you have the king the king is trump my view is that trump will certainly be the republican nominee in 2024 but he won't be around forever so when you look at abbott in texas when you look at desantis in florida when you look at gnome and south dakota when you look at others what you see now is a battle amongst the crown princes and princesses for control of the maga empire and the things that they're doing to get to the top very sadly demonstrate a profound callousness towards life uh towards any sense of public responsibility and it all accumulates into what we're seeing right now literally in the history of the country you've never seen people no matter how corrupt they are charged with actual life and death responsibility abdicate that responsibility for their selfish political interest and so we're in this bidding war right now to see how extreme it can get uh to gain favor in this era of negative partisanship where the louder the outrage is from the majority from the majority of normal people such as it is in this country the more fuel they will have to advance their political rise inside of inside of magga i want to hear a little bit more about the saudi arabia analogy like why why do you why do you say that is that because uh you're saying sort of educated elite just because people are educated elites doesn't mean that they have the same world view and the same sense of what the purpose of the nation is like tell a little bit more about why that's the analogy you draw on well i i think it's important that we stop pretending uh that we stop pretending that men like kevin mccarthy ron desantis greg abbott don't understand the efficacy of vaccines don't understand basic american history that they don't understand the lawful authority of government at a federal level at a state level at a county level to enforce quarantines if necessary for the purposes of the public health for the public good this is as old as the country itself the exercise of this type of lawful authority so let's stop pretending that any of these people think it's a good idea to take horse dewarmer or that it's okay to inject some type of household disinfectant they all know this is insanity every one of them knows for sure there was an election fraud they know that joe biden won the election yet every time they speak and they lie about these things we're all supposed to pretend that they're making these statements as part of a conviction or some level of good faith and the evidence contrary to that is their own spoken words over the course of many years so let's stop pretending what we have in this country is an extremist movement that's autocratic that is rejected central pillars of american democracy it's ascendant it's on the march it's both more extreme more powerful and more prepared for victory in september of 21 than it was in january of 21 when the insurrection took place in the first place tom ridge another former governor pennsylvania former head of the department of homeland security called this the taliban wing of the republican party and so the question is why why did that take over so quickly i think you dispute this but i'm sort of arguing is it that identity politics was always more important to the party than perhaps people were willing to admit and by that i mean white identity politics or is it something else is it some sort of continuum of things what do you say what do you think it is at each instance of of black progress or even maybe more devastatingly when there was hope for black progress in the 1870s um until reconstruction ended and it was snuffed out there's a profound white lash a backlash um to that black progress i believed largely for a lot of my adult life that the civil rights movement was largely over and it had been achieved with the election of a black president i i had a profound naivete and i'm not alone in this about the backlash that came for our having a black president in this country and we've seen that manifested over these years from a whisper and maybe people less naive for me were able to hear it better and it wasn't such a whisper to them or even a signal at all but now what we see is loud overt clear as day hundreds of pieces of legislation that are set to break what i thought was an understanding that we all had in this country whether you were republican or democrat which is that we all get a set regardless of our creed our race our gender our sexual orientation this is what's been shattered here this is what trump has broken and so now for the purposes of power you see people claiming that freedom requires that some of us don't get to participate this is always the argument that right-wing authoritarians make so we talked about the dna of the republican party and how it has evolved in in recent years what about the democrats what's what would you say is the dna of the democratic party right now well the democratic party is the majority uh but it is a fragile coalition and i think it's really important to understand that coalition which extends from republicans who've only cast a couple of of votes who are a small part of it but determinative in victory all the way to aoc and and what what what that coalition has in common is a is a belief in democracy in the dignity of the human being above the power of the of the state that coalition put nancy pelosi in the speaker's chair in 2018 it fell apart by 2020 it did not hold together below joe biden though it came back briefly together uh for the two senate races in in georgia and and now um this coalition uh is being tested and it will be tested by the type of attacks that donald trump is making that are race-based full of animus um that are essentially this to those white republicans those independent voters republican men republican women what they're saying is you may not like trump but these people over here the ones that are trying to indoctrinate your kids with critical race theory they hate you uh they want to teach your kids to hate you they want to take your possessions uh they are waging a culture war right and they are inciting a passionate minority the democratic party and we'll get a good look at this in california um i i think is not as intense not as focused as the republicans are at taking power right now it's the more docile of the parties it's not fierce enough uh it has not done a good job of holding the extremism uh back over the last nine months so so this coalition while larger is is more vulnerable more diverse more diffuse more disagreeable than the cult of personality that it's facing a number of columnists have sort of said in recent days that you know democrats seem worried about offending republicans and republicans want to win and so how do you understand their sort of reluctance to to for example to take steps that would forestall these restrictions on voter access for example there really at this point there's really only one way to do it and that is through federal legislation so how do you how do you understand the democrats reluctance to to address these issues i don't understand it this was inevitable it was predictable and there's no issue that should make democrats or any person who loves democracy more furious than this um in response to the lie about the stolen election there was an actual vote that took place where 147 republicans voted to nullify and disenfranchise the votes of millions of black americans on the basis of bs what followed next was the first filings of legislation the intent of every piece of legislation is maliced that's because none of it would have ever been filed if donald trump had won the election and every piece is designed to make it more difficult for minorities to vote but most importantly to make it more difficult to certify elections when one side factlessly claims fraud and so this was coming and the only way to stop it was the repeal of the filibuster and from the very beginning the repeal of the filibuster should have been framed by democratic leaders as a moral necessity and a act of last resort should republicans dare try to unravel the civil rights and voting rights acts of 1964 in 1965 and pulled this country back and so across the across the broad front of an un of an unrelenting series of events the democratic party as a whole has done a horrendous job confronting the growing extremism in this country and framing for the american people the terrible place where it where it all leads the filibuster is part of that but i'm asking you why i mean you know these people why do you think that is i'm not a psychologist um what i can tell you about politics is this is restraint in the exercise of power is an underappreciated virtue but the exercise of power at necessary times and times bluntly is a prerequisite for effective leadership democrats have the majority they should pass roe versus wade uh statutorily they should act with all the power they have to bring this pandemic to an end by increasing liability for companies that won't act responsibly democrats will soon be asking their donors for hundreds of millions of dollars they will be asking to elect candidates they must be able to explain to what ends and if the democratic party and its most important loyal constituency black americans cannot count on the leadership of the party to be all in as a moral proposition to defend voting and civil rights 150 years on five years before the 250th anniversary of this country the voters will be disappointed at a level that is beyond my ability to articulate and it will have the effect in the end of propelling a fascist movement back into congressional power in my view in this country i know you've been asked this before but you know the lincoln project tweeted earlier this year that said our mission is clear destroy the republican party but you know i know you've been asked a lot about some of the tactics and i have to ask sort of this again is just this kind of this fight fire with fire approach part of your message to folks is that you're getting screwed and these are the people doing the screwing but the former president's messages to the people that he cared about was you're getting screwed and i'm gonna fix it if everybody's message is you're getting screwed and i'm gonna fix it where do we go from here as a country i think the country's in a lot of trouble um and i want to i want to speak to what i'll call the both siderisms that i think is inherent in in the frame of the of the of the question um in fact um critical race theory isn't being taught to kids in high schools in america um one political party is not lying about a life-saving vaccine one political party is not partly responsible for hundreds of thousands of dead americans because of those lies one political party hasn't whitewashed the insurrection on one six and one political party is not a danger to to american democracy there's not a a symmetry um between the between the two sides the rottenness um and frankly the evil and we don't use that word enough but but but i need to linger here for a second there was a meeting that took place in the white house the jared kushner chair i'm sure with coffee and donuts and all the good stuff and they decided in that meeting that there wouldn't be a covent strategy for the blue states because they could pin it on the blue state governors it's evil killed hundreds of thousands of people in this country we're about to enter into the children's pandemic so anything that we can do grab people by the proverbial collar by the neck hit them in the head get their attention make them laugh make them cry make them think anything to get them to wake up and understand the danger that we face in this country uh from extremists and in the fight for american democracy exhaustion is our enemy the idea that there's not a difference between the two sides everybody is equally corrupt everyone is equally maliced and it's just not true steve thank you so much for talking with us thank you [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Amanpour and Company

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Keywords: interview, CNN, PBS, Christiane Amanpour, world news, news anchor, news show, news, public affairs, late-night TV, journalist, Chief International Correspondent, Steve Schmidt, Lincoln Project, Democrats, Michel Martin, politics

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Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021