Steve Kettmann, Anthony Scaramucci, Cynthia Tucker: Life after Trump

become a sustaining member of the commonwealth  club for just ten dollars a month join today welcome to the commonwealth of california this is  our early morning edition for all of those of you   we're really lucky today to have three guests  who are gonna be just outstanding and helping   us understand what's going on in our political  discourse today uh steve ketman uh anthony   scaramucci and cynthia tucker um we obviously  are coming to you by zoom today i find it   interesting to think that back in 1903  when the commonwealth club started   the use of microphones wasn't even in our  technological world and today we're presenting   the commonwealth club over zoom hopefully a  temporary condition but certainly an effective way   to keep the programming going this programming is  so valuable to informing our public discourse and   it only can occur if we get the  philanthropic support of all of the   listeners out there so you will see a prompt  during the program for how to donate to the   club and texting the word donate to a phone  number and we really encourage you to do so   we will have time for questions and since we are  operating over zoom the chat window is the way   to submit them they will be redistributed to me  and i will try to get as many of the questions in   as i can we obviously are bringing you this  program at a somewhat interesting time with   the impeachment literally going on as we speak but  we're going to broaden our discussion far beyond   that current event and the really the genesis of  this discussion is a book that was put together   by steve ketman he called the book now what the  voters have spoken essays on life after trump   but what we're going to do today is talk about the  book somewhat but then go to the what i'll call   now what phase 2 which we might define as starting  on january 6 but continuing into the foreseeable   future so what i'm going to do is start by  asking steve who is the publisher of the book   to describe it to us a bit uh because it's  a really important contribution i think to   freezing the psychology of our state of mind at or  around the election and then we're going to move   forward and discuss our psychology going forward  so steve let me throw it to you and tell us about   the book thanks roy and thank you to cynthia and  anthony for being here today and thank you for the   commonwealth club for this opportunity the thing  i'd really like to emphasize about this book is   we're talking about politics i'm sure  we're going to talk about impeachment   might even talk about donald trump though  i hope he gets to talk more about joe biden   but these essays the 38 essays in this  book are personal essays that was the idea   and to talk about politics is also to talk  about the personal you know i i just am   involved in a book on impeachment i follow  it closely but so much of that discussion   ends up like a dog chasing its tail reporters  telling us they know the vote on uh whether to   convict donald trump in the impeachment hearing  whether it's a pre-ordained or not well spoiler   alert they don't know they're guessing and so much  of that talk all just fades to nothing so um roy   i'm gonna i'm gonna speak for a few minutes here  i hope that's okay because i want to kind of cut   to the heart of what i see the book as being about  it is personal essays and i'll read um even though   cynthia is one of three pulitzer prize winners in  the collection we have a great lineup of 38 people   anthony scaramucci from from anthony scaramucci  to al sharpton as we like to say sometimes with   rosanna arquette dusty baker sandy alderson a uh  protege of roy's back in the day so it's a wide   variety of people but these are personal essays  how do we talk about politics and let me read   one paragraph and then i'll i'll expand on the  thought so here's from my introduction to the book   the essays convey how so many of us felt as the  end of the trump presidency neared what we thought   what we saw and what we did the hope is that in  putting out these glimpses so quickly giving them   an immediacy unusual in book publishing we can  help in the morning for all that has been lost   help in the healing of ourselves and of our  country and help in the pained effort like moving   limbs that have gone numb from inactivity to give  new life to our democracy we stared into the abyss   tattered on the edge and a record-setting surge  of voting and activism delivered us from the very   real threat of plunging into autocracy we have  to celebrate that deliverance and remember it   like luke blowing up the death star we also have  to keep searching for answers and in that spirit   you know roy talks about phase one and phase two  of now what i'm still searching for answers and   i was just thinking about this what i point  to is three qualities we make it complicated   it's not that complicated humanity courage and  passion humanity courage and passion and if we   could have a little bit more of those things  in the public discussion in the conversations   we have with people we'd be a lot better off i  want to give an example of two friends of mine   one i got to be a friend with through this  book denver riggleman was a when he wrote his   essay in the book which i highly recommend he  was a a republican congressman from the state   of virginia this man runs a whiskey distillery  with his wife in virginia near charlottesville   and he performed a gay marriage and for that was  basically thrown out of the leadership of the   republic he was not part of the house leadership  but uh the freedom caucus everyone he became   a persona non grata he then went on to on  the house floor speak out against q anon   and this man has had his life turned upside  down he his own mother has told called him a   traitor to his country denver and i speak every  day he's going to have his own book coming out   but he has shown humanity courage and passion  passion for democracy yes we need a reckoning   i believe we need a truth commission but we also  need to focus on personal quality so this might   feel like a little bit of a digression but i want  to talk about a conversation i had six days ago   with a friend of mine who i wanted to contribute  to the book and he had a lot to say but   unfortunately he worked for espn and uh he's not  allowed to talk about politics we were discussing   anthony scaramucci this is my friend pedro gomez  and we were talking about anthony and how again   you can say what you want about anthony he helped  donald trump some of us find that uh offensive but   anthony uh you know worked very hard against the  re-election of donald trump and pedro and i were   talking about it we were talking about how do  they remember you later this is the conversation   i had with pedro what will they remember you for  humanity courage and passion are qualities that   anthony has shown i think we can all agree and  uh pedro of course showed those those qualities   and um i won't go on long but i'll talk briefly in  1999 pedro who was born who was conceived in cuba   was uh and then his mother and father flew to  havana when his mother was eight months pregnant   he um he was a sports writer but he was in havana  for a game uh again sandy alderson arranged a   game between the orioles and the cuban national  team very big deal also in u.s cuba relations   and pedro was there went to the neighborhood  where his family had lived and they recognized him   they'd left in 1962 and they recognized him well  among the things pedro did while he was there was   to write an open letter to bill clinton calling  for the end of the economic embargo of cuba   for a miami cuban to do that uh you know it's  like denver right pedro lost friends over that   but he showed he showed courage so in the baseball  world there's been an outpouring we lost pedro on   sunday um and i wanted to just honor him as well  but it's that heart always speaking with passion   speaking um what you what you stand for knowing  what you stand for and not being afraid to talk   about that even when it's a difficult situation  or qualities that i would point to in anthony and   pedro uh cynthia certainly for a lot of years  but it's on the level of values that i believe   this essay collection really has importance  i know we'll move on to topical matters   but that's the way i wanted to set it up if we  can't talk as people to each other as people   then we can't get anywhere and by the way i'm  not just talking about me trying to talk to a   q anon supporter or someone believes that joe  biden didn't really win i'm talking even about   subtle gradations of world view where in the  last four years even people who know they're like   they're all democrats they all voted for you know  joe biden they still don't want to talk politics   because it becomes so toxic so difficult it  becomes easier and of course we're all in our our   shells because of covid it becomes so much easier  not to talk so for example last week when anthony   and mary curtis were on another event we  did and it got a little edgy at one point   and you know i wasn't sure where it would go but  by the end uh you know it was like they almost   had a hug you know be a zoom and i felt great  about that because that in microcosm is what   i hope this book can help accomplish so thank you  for letting me speak about my friend pedro uh and   i'll kick it back to you thank you steve yes and  i agree we will go to topics but underlying all of   these topics are the concepts that you put forth  and i would probably add the word empathy to your   list but that maybe um is an embellishment the uh  it's a verb actually what you said is a perfect   lead-in to um cynthia because cynthia i  well let me let me lay a foundation for this   many of the essays in the book are basically  people waking up from what they perceived as a   nightmare and describing the feelings of euphoria  on november 7th when the election was called   um some like anthony's was a very um interesting  insight into a human story about donald trump but   there was a third and very important category of  people warning that just because the election had   been resolved doesn't mean that the issues that  led us to experiencing those four years were   suddenly expunged from our uh culture and so  cynthia i would turn it to you and ask you to   summarize for us um and tie al sharpton's essay  in as well because he he addresses the same point   about the concern that you had um thinking about  how we go forward from that november seventh date   well roy when steve contacted me and asked me  to make a contribution i warned him that my take   was somewhat pessimistic that while most of my  friends many of the people i knew were celebrating   our long national nightmare is over i wasn't  so sure because i've always struggled with the   number of people who supported donald trump  and let's remember that he got more votes   the second time he ran than he did the first  time so i wrote in my essay that donald   trump lost but trumpism is still with us and  i think you're seeing it play out every day in   our politics you're seeing it play out in our  personal relationship steve just made reference   to the fact that it's very difficult to discuss  politics well there's a good reason for that   families have been torn apart and um i struggle  quite frankly i have a 12 year old daughter   i struggle with the kind of country that she  will inherit as an adult i have college-age   nieces both the seniors in college  very bright thoughtful young women   who voted of course voted for joe biden  but what kind of country will they inherit   one of the things that i frequently talk about is  that i came of age when the civil rights movement   had changed the country profoundly in marvelously  wonderful ways so it was easy for me to believe in   the quote that martin luther king used so  frequently the moral arc of the universe   bends along but it bends toward justice these days  i'm much more skeptical about that uh when we have   so many americans who seem committed to another  vision um trampling democracy is just fine with   them as long as they get the result that they want  uh believing outrageous lies is fine with them and   quite frankly so many of them seem unfazed by the  deaths of more than 400 000 americans from kobe   so i'm troubled by all of that and i struggle  with how we move forward yes am i relieved   joe biden won absolutely do i believe he's the  right man for the moment absolutely joe biden is   not despite the way he was uh painted by his  opponent during the election he's not a socialist   he's a moderate he believes in reaching across  the aisle he really believes in the unity that   he talked about during the campaign um i am  hoping he can move us in that direction uh but i   am worried about the future of my country i really  am could you comment a bit on the uh what al   sharpton's comments were he he had i think a very  interesting point that ties into what you said um yes reverend al um wrote about joe biden  about knowing joe biden working with joe biden   over many many years and what a decent man he is  and he talked about the fact that biden has been   tested and shaped by the pain and  tragedy in his own personal life   and um you talked about roy uh empathy um steve  talked about passion i suppose i would have used   the word compassion um in addition to passion  empathy and compassion are very similar traits   and joe biden has those in spades and  sharpton talks about the fact that he is a man   for this moment yeah which is something that  i think has been puzzlingly missing from our   national policy in the last four years that i use  the incarceration of children at the border as   just an example of that anthony that brings me to  a question that maybe you could lay a foundation   for us in moving forward and because many of the  um behaviors that we see now the intolerance the   the anti-intellectual reverence the dislike of  elites etc existed long before trump came on   the scene but in my words uh somehow the trump  administration normalized and allowed people   to openly manifest a lot of these behaviors um  what is in your judgment because you were the   you were close to this for a while what was the  power that allowed this um catalyzation of so   many behaviors that we didn't realize existed  well that i don't want to dramatize it i mean   he's nuts there's something psychologically  wrong with him and a result of which he got   power and the manifestation of his nuttiness uh  was like a ripple effect through a lot of people   and so we all have heard the single man theory  of history or the single woman theory of history   i think there's also a group theory of history  and i'll give you two examples there was a great   group of people that came together and formed  the foundational principles of our constitution   they left the original sin of slavery in it so  i'm not saying that they were perfect they were   obviously very flawed but they were trying to set  up the foundational principles for a republic with   appropriate checks and balances that would broaden  freedom and at least it started a imperfect union   but it led to great human progress if you study  global history flip side of that there was a very   bad group of people in the 1930s that hijacked  a sovereign nation it's a bad group theory   became the national socialist party in germany  uh they wrecked that nation and they murdered   tens of millions of people uh and what happens is  you have a group of people that are in the middle   that see themselves as good people but they're  generally apathetic and so it's like what deidre   bonhoeffer said bad people can do things if  good people remain inactive or don't rebuke   their actions so donald trump is crazy you  don't have to be a psychiatrist to say that   he's crazy everyone knows the goldwater thing and  the blocking of clinical psychology evaluating him   because they haven't met him but some  of us may remember when lawrence taylor   bypassed the left tackle and took out joe  theismann and cracked his leg you didn't   have to be an orthopedic surgeon to know that joe  theismann broke his leg on that play and so prima   facie there's something wrong with president  trump and it permeated and the travesty of it   is that a lot of people conformed their behavior  to him and by the way my myself included   i i supported him and i'm going to explain to you  why i supported them you may not like what i'm   gonna say but you have to hear it because if you  want you got two choices you could carve out 74   million people and float them into the atlantic  ocean if you think that's the solution we could   do that or you can hear what i'm about to say and  then we can try to build a bridge to those people   and see if we can walk them back into our  society and normalize as many of them as   possible those those are our choices but  i will tell you that my family of origin   moved me to believe certain things about donald  trump that were not true and i'll just be very   brief i landed in albuquerque new mexico  there were 9 000 people it was march of 2016   and i crossed the security perimeter out of my  intellectual curiosity to meet those people i   took my secret service pin off and i started  to talk to those people and then it dawned   on me that i was talking to my dad um those were  people that were blue collar they were uneducated   um my father uh uh was born in 1935 uh when he  went to work as a crane operator in the early 60s   he had a very high post world war ii middle-class  blue-collar wage but it was an hourly wage   but he was able to put his kids into a reasonably  good public school system and we lived in a single   family albeit small house but i would never  dishonor my dad by telling you i grew up poor   i did not we were decidedly in the middle class  but those people i met in albuquerque new mexico   uh they were not they had the same skill set  as my father many of them were eager to work   and we through and again i'm not blaming anybody  i'm just making an economic observation we   transformed a group of blue-collar americans from  aspirational working-class families like my father   to desperational working-class families 35 years  later now i'm not blaming anybody i'm just making   the observation and so i really did think and you  could call me stupid you could say whatever you   want about me and there's a lot of hindsight  now because of the more aberrant behavior   over the last two years but i really thought  okay we need a policy solution for these people   the political establishment has left a vacuum of  advocacy for these people for three decades they   were tied to lyndon johnson and their grandparents  were tied to franklin roosevelt but they're tied   to nobody today and so we have to figure this out  and and listen when i eventually broke from donald   trump it was uh it came with death threats it came  with threats of physical violence i'm a former   white house person even though i was there for 11  days i have an fbi agent assigned to me i had to   turn over legitimate death threats to myself and  my family i had police officers stationed outside   my house on many nights and i've had people uh you  know interviewed by the fbi and some of which were   charged with physical threat of violence to my  safety and so that and that's all for me just   speaking my mind and explaining and exercising my  first amendment right of the systemic danger of   donald trump so you know i you know i love these  uh left-leaning media hosts they want to call me   an opportunist okay well opportunism doesn't  go in that direction opportunism doesn't say   hey this is completely wrong let me put my family  and my self and personal safety risk to speak out   against this disgrace of a person so so we're here  now but you still have that problem you still have   a separation in our society between elites and  people that are really economically desperate   and are struggling and they're all colors and  they're part of the beautiful mosaic of america   but we need policies to solve their  dilemma if you don't get those policies   there will be more social unrest let me let me  um disagree with anthony here um first of all   uh anthony i want to say how much i appreciate  the fact that you did come forward and   and change your mind and you were very public  about what you had observed up close in working   closely with donald trump and you worked very hard  to get him out of office but i think the premise   of your support in the beginning was flawed  you know after donald trump was elected   surprising all pundits including myself in  2016. most journalists went out of their way   to learn more about the white working  class they were absolutely persuaded   that what had elected trump was working class  economic anxiety i never believed that and now   there have been so many studies by political  scientists that show that most trump supporters   are doing okay financially not wealthy necessarily  but doing okay the simple fact of the matter   is these are people who are troubled  by demographic and cultural change   they are troubled by seeing a black and asian  south asian woman as vice president of the   united states they are troubled by gay marriage  uh the congressman that steve talked about earlier   they are troubled that whites are becoming a  smaller percentage of the american population i   would love to be able to reach out to those folks  but i don't know what to say to voters who are   troubled by the fact that my daughter may one day  be a major political figure in the united states i   don't know i don't know how to respond to that you  actually had a word in your essay i thought was   powerful white lash is that what  you're talking about absolutely um   from the moment that trump started well actually  remember that donald trump came onto the   national political stage as a prominent  supporter of birtherism this notion that   barack obama was an illegitimate president of the  united states because he wasn't really born here   how did he run his first campaign  uh building a wall uh talking about   banning muslims from the country and talking  about mexicans as criminals drug dealers and   and rapists yes he also talked about how bad  trade deals were he promised that he would return   manufacturing to the united states he  did very little in terms of returning   manufacturing but he did a lot in terms of  showing his hostility to immigrants and his um   cozying up to white supremacists so yes i  saw the election of donald trump as whitelash   a response to the first black  president of the united states   so tonight can i respond to that roy sure so the  first time i heard that term i think van jones   actually used it on cnn so i did a little bit of  research there's a book by joe lapore called these   truths which won a national book award a few years  ago she's a historian she actually went to my alma   mater tufts university and i would encourage  people to read that book because it will support   what cynthia is saying at every moment where the  african-american community advanced and had some   level of progress they were met with a whitelash  violence they were met with lynchings the kkk   hangings you can go back through the 400 years in  any moment in time particularly right after the   reconstruction there was significant violence  and significant economic suppression of the   african-american community it happened again in  the 20s some of you may or may not remember sacco   vanzetti but they were italian americans that  were hung in louisiana of teddy roosevelt in 1904   my grandfather never liked him because he  signed immigration he signed legislation   that treated italian americans as non-caucasian  when they entered through ellis island and zacco   and vinzetti obviously if you know that case they  were unfairly prosecuted and so whether we like it   or not the history of the united states is loaded  with this sort of nativism and loaded frankly   with white and so you know um there's more of it  coming and so i i do agree with and i accept what   cynthia is saying but i'm also telling you  that he won by a very narrow margin remember   he only won by 43 000 votes in four states  in 2016 and obviously lost the popular vote   and the people that i'm describing they were  immovable cynthia i can tell you that when i   broke from trump i went into white ethnic areas  some of it was economic desperation some of it   is exactly what you were saying whitelash and  they were moving from trump trump could have   shot people on fifth avenue and they were going  to vote for him no matter what and the only way to   really defeat him and rick wilson and i had this  conversation was to go into the inner cities and   to get voter registration up and to push people  away from their political indifference and their   political apathy towards doing something you know  progressive for the society so i agree with you   but i'm saying there is also in my opinion if  there's an algebraic equation for this disaster   maybe your proration and your  weighting of whitelash is higher   than the economic desperation that i'm describing  but i do think it is part of that algebraic   equation that led us to where we are well  anthony you um make my job very easy because you   set up the question that steve so well posited at  the very beginning because we want to move forward   in our thinking here and i think what i'm hearing  is a consensus that there's going to have to be a   dialogue that can bridge this gap between people  who only you know live in their separate bubbles   and i so i i put to you the general question  all of you are in journalism um how do we create   or restore some form of dialogue not between  people who agree with each other but people who   don't agree with each other and i'm going to start  with the with the media because we've ended up   with i mean go back i'm interrupting myself here  but go back to the vietnam war if you wanted to   form a news judgment about the vietnam  war you generally watched walter cronkite   and that was pretty much it today you choose  your television station depending on which one   comes closest to confirming your preconceptions  and i'm just guilty of it as anybody and i bet   everybody listening to this is guilty of that  um what how the media has evolved into this but   so i'm going to ask any and all of you to come  up with a way that we can address this because   without developing discourse we're just  going to continue to foment each other's   concerns and reinforce each other's opinions i'd  like to answer this one first if i may is that   all right oh yeah okay um what i would point to  is like uh we've been talking for this book and   dialogue about dialogue gets old really fast  right and there isn't there aren't a lot of   ways to get people talking and i think what  needs to happen is what we're talking about   needs to change and the way that that happens is  by government in washington actually taking action   that benefits people and that moves the  country forward i don't think enough has   been written or understood about part of the  republican project and the trumpist project   was to essentially disable government and not even  fill jobs uh to put incompetent people into jobs   to put people for example to head government  agencies when they're against everything that   government agency is supposed to do and you turn  the whole thing into a joke where nothing happens   a there's such a thing as a rudderless ship but  if a ship isn't moving forward the rudder doesn't   matter anyway it's only when you set a course  and you move through the water that you can   chart a course the the washington media is busy  uh you know talking about how's joe biden well   i i mentioned on inauguration day uh as joe biden  was walking down the street toward the white house   ready to go in as president for the first time and  some cnn reporter was yelling at him can you unite   the country mr president and this is supposed  to be uh a tough journalism one it's ridiculous   it's it's a farcical question there there is no  quote-unquote uniting the country what there is   is enacting a number of you know executive orders  legislation get uh fighting the pandemic showing   people that a lot of these conversations about  left versus right liberal versus conservative   are illusory essentially a large percentage  of the american people support what the biden   administration is trying to do i don't care about  labels i care about are you getting to work and   actually getting something done and i think that's  what people care about so if the media would stop   enter in it's it's uh i always called the trump  the uh auto what is it auto auto correct when   you're like trying to type something and and they  take gibberish and turn it into a coherent idea   and then the media does this all the time joe  biden just said this well what he meant was no   and they get wrong what he meant so what we  need is less interference or inference from   washington media and the way to do that is  not to have high-minded discussions it's to   um for government to do things that that impact  people and show that government can work for them   i know bill clinton is not often cited in today's  you know now but one thing that the bill clinton   administration tried to do whether he was being  impeached whatever was happening is they just   they tried to get things done on a daily  basis that sometimes it was incremental   and some of those things did not work out  well um you know the the infamously uh   leading to you know incarceration of black people  etc but the fact was they were acting they were   doing things they had energetic dynamic people in  jobs and i think that is really the story of back   to my ship metaphor of getting it moving forward  in some direction because what we had before was   a reality tv show where we spent all our time  arguing about what we should argue about so that   that would be my take and i'd be very interested  to hear anthony and cynthia comment on it   well i i actually uh very much agree with  what steve just said i think that polls   show that the vast majority of americans  support biden's proposals for fighting the   coronavirus getting the vaccine moving and  also economic aid for people who are hurting   so uh i think just showing people uh what  we have in common in terms of our needs   is a very important step in the right direction  um i would uh suggest a couple of more things   i teach at the university of south alabama and  one of the things i spend more time than you might   think on is teaching my students what a legitimate  source of information is they have grown up in a   social media age sean hannity is a source of  legitimate information where i have to explain   that sean hannity and tucker carlson and  quite frankly some of the talkers on the left   are not the best sources of information um  what is the difference between news and opinion   so i i would urge all of you who have young folk  that you have access to to model that for them   help them to understand that uh because  i think that that is also important   anthony you gotta comment i'll be brief but i'll  say three things i would encourage everybody to   read my friend stuart stevens book it was all lie  oh yes because i think it's very very factual what   what he is saying about the republican strategy  and the republicans decided that as long as there   were more whites than blacks or more whites than  browns they were going to hold the majority and   then when that flipped over they were going  to exercise the tyranny of the minority and   they were going to figure out a way to do that  operation red map being one of those things where   they flooded the zone and produced all these  republican majorities at the state level which   then made it very easy for them to gerrymander  and and push things around so that they could   take advantage of the constitutions remember  one one inherent point in the constitution   is to protect the minority that's why rhode  island has the same number of senators as   as california and the republicans used that to  their advantage and one of the things they did   was the the vetoing of the fairness doctrine that  ronald reagan did in the 1980s which led to the   rise of rush limbaugh so the very very bad news  if we're just going to be open and honest about   everything that's going on in our society is  cynthia is correct the demographics are turning   against white people and there's a very very large  group of white people that are angry about that   and they don't want and people are going to  be offended by what i'm saying but i'm saying   it for dramatic effect so please just listen  to me they're offended by the latte drinking   hordes of transvestites that are brown and  black that are coming up over the transom   to take over their government you see that and  i said it that way for a reason because you   need to understand how these people think and so  you're not going to get 20 to 25 of these people   very very bad news you can have 100 seminars  like this you can smoke peace pipes with them   you're not getting them what we have to do and  the reason why i'm so supportive of this trial   going on right now which will likely lead  to an acquittal is the display of the facts   you know chris cuomo said to me last night on  his show well 80 percent of the republicans are   supporting this i said okay but the registration  for the republican party is down to 30 percent of   the americans so 80 percent of 30 is 24 and my  job is to get that to 14 and my job is to get   it to 10. and and so we're gonna break up the  republican party i'm part of a movement with   uh stuart stevens and a very large group of people  where eight to ten twelve percent of that party   is going to splinter to liquidate that  radical extremism that you saw represented   on january 6 but you can smoke as many piece pipes  as you want you're not going to reach those people   uh and that's just the facts our goal  is to try to reach their children and   to reach their grandchildren and by the way  you know you know i'm hoping we can liquidate   that stupidity and that ignorance but we've had  400 years of it so it's not like you're going to   liquidate it tomorrow it's not going  to happen can i just comment by the way   on the phrasing anthony just used because he  also uses that in his essay latte drinking um i had never thought of the culture war and  cultural fears in quite that colorful if i   may use that terminology away anthony um so  i had to pause over that a moment and just   think about it but but i thought it worked  because it made the point you were trying to make   and and by the way i'm saying that dramatically  and perhaps somewhat politically incorrectly   cynthia to provoke i want people to make  it up to what what is going on so that they   they don't allow their sensitivity or their  sensory adaptation to be offended they have to   look at it for what it is so that we can treat the  disease if you will i was just going gonna mention   one of the essays in the collection is from dusty  baker who's a baseball manager but a very wise man   and uh he a lot of people remember a moment when  his young son almost got run over in the middle of   the game uh darren baker darren's at uc berkeley  now where i went to school and uh you know was   gonna graduate soon but dusty's essay is called  darren's generation because uh both cynthia and   anthony are making this point but i absolutely  agree that so much of what we need to do   is to take a longer view and to dusty argues that  it's it's we're not gonna fix this we're not gonna   solve it we're not even gonna be able to move the  needle in some ways but dusty for one is hopeful   that darren's generation understands that this is  on them and that they need to uh to learn to keep   their eyes open and learn from what's going on  cynthia i completely agree that media literacy   uh is is something that we all need to find  ways um i've talked to people through this this   now what project about you know trying to get  involved and going out and talking to young people   but how can you how can you really explain  the difference between you know a news column   and an opinion column when if you're a regular  reader of the new york times or the washington   post you know they haven't quite figured out the  distinction either yeah you know so it's not easy   but definitely taking a long view makes a  lot of sense to me uh anthony you mentioned   where the republican party is going i wonder if  you could expand on that a little bit because   i think that's going to be important it's not that  the democrats are monolithic but right now they're   behaving relatively monolithically  the republicans have a bit of a   bigger challenge on their hands i'll i'll call  it the liz cheney versus marjorie taylor green   syndrome how do you see that developing well my  hope is that people like kinzinger and liz cheney   and my good friend mitt romney win that battle  but i am pessimistic about that because you have   so much political expediency in that party and  you have these political consultants that told   josh hawley and ted cruz take the trumpus lane  and what you're going to do is you're going to   object it'll be a mild objection and you'll look  like a star to all of the trumpus base come 2024.   of course that backfired on those two lunatics and  and what's happening in our society now and i hate   to say this with such levels of cynicism but i  did get 11 an 11 day phd in washington nonsense   and so i know what these people are really like  now and what they're really like is my power   and the preservation of my power and what  is in it for me personally is actually more   important than the country and i'm not here  to serve anybody they call it public service   but i'm not really here to serve anybody i'm  here to rule over people and so you have a very   large group of those people in the republican  party i can't speak for the democratic party   i'm sure human nature being what it is there  are people like that in the democratic party   but here's why i am so optimistic okay i'm often  missed it because donald trump exposed all of them   all of those bible quotes that marco rubio puts  out on his twitter feed are an absolute joke i   mean the guy is a coward he's an intellectual  lightweight and he's miserable and i you know   we got to get rid of people like him okay  and so we're not going to be able to do that   because there's more of them in that party than  there are of stu stevenses or mitt romney's so   so the good news though is because of this  exposure what i predict will happen is that   the party gets liquidated there's a there's a  chance here that mitch mcconnell who signaled this   morning that he's undecided on his vote there's  a chance here that you could get leadership   but i doubt it and i'll leave you with a thought  that should make you laugh a little i'm with kevin   mccarthy a fellow californian uh seven years  ago and i'm at some congressional luncheon   cafe up on the hill and he's saying to me and grew  with great sanctimony in these saccharine tones   that you know anthony we  only have thermostats up here   and they sense the weather and then they report  the weather back to people but you know i'm sorry   thermometers but we need thermostats when  thermostats are they set the coordinates   on the wall and they bring the temperature of the  country they lead people they show people the way   but we only have thermometers up here is kevin  mccarthy a thermometer or what i mean the guy   is a disgusting uh one way selfish he's probably  you know to quote trump he probably does have a   low iq because there's no way you could operate  the way he's operating if you if you have a high   iq so so the bad news is we're going to go into  a nuclear winter in the republican party that's   not going to be good for democrats because what  we've learned in our system you need a two-party   system you need a check and balance of each  other because you've got a radical extremists   on the left that will be able to get more power  as the republican party is being liquidated so   you know but we're going to liquidate that party  there there's 7 to 10 of the people that are in   romney's camp that will say okay no problem we  have to form a new party this way we can prevent   the republican party the party that we used to  be members of from destroying our democracy okay   you know and and you know cynthia is right about  this you have a group of people in this party hey   the white man or the white woman they're not  going to rule anymore okay well let's get let's   get rid of the democracy storm the capital and so  i might just let you know we can't let that happen   you know you're talking about your children  or dusty baker's children or his grandchildren   how could we let that happen how could  good men and women on our society not   call that out for what it is despite the death  threats and allow that to happen okay you know   all of us on this panel right here before me  we may not agree with each other on everything   but i gotta tell you something i'm  guarantee every one of us loves the country   every one of us wants it to be a democracy isn't  that the higher order of principle let's debate   the policy later we can have an argument over  taxation and securities regulation and you know   the minimum wage later we got our saved democracy  that's the number one thing that we have to do   together and for this reason i'm optimistic  because donald trump is the great unifier   he happens to be unifying all of us against him  and that's 20 percent of those people that are   not jobs and we and that's my point yeah and  let me throw out a proposition uh following   on your speculation that we could all agree on  a lot and that is that we are as a country not   as divided as we're told we are that it start  to become a self-fulfilling prophecy i mean   let's say there's 25 on the left and 25 on  the right who do not want to accommodate   any kind of a consensus on on policy but that  leaves 50 percent in the middle and right now   that statistic seems to ignore it be curious your  thoughts on whether maybe we're being sold more   dissension and divisiveness than is really the  case if we could put people in the same room   well i think that uh we all know that um there  are lots of of media outlets that capitalize   on dissension exactly um so uh there is some  amplification of the differences among us uh   but let me throw out something that i keep reading  in the newspapers and it sounds right to me but   anthony probably knows this better than i there  are a lot of thoughtful republican office holders   in the house in the senate who know better than  the nonsense that they are going along with um   they uh in private would agree on a lot of  the principles that i support but they lack   courage so they won't say out loud in public that  they agree with those things they won't vote in a   way that shows that they support those things so i  think they need to find the courage uh to publicly   show the principles that they stand on if in fact  they stand on those principles yeah and courage   means not getting primaried every two years uh  it doesn't being willing to lose that election   right courage is like hey you know what yeah i'm  ready to go into political retirement to stand on   the principles of the democracy i don't care about  it yeah and so and so that's the unfortunate thing   these people uh you know but power is seductive  look i m my many of my mistakes in my life   were born from ego basis and pride basis  ultimately when my wife who probably hates   trump almost as much as melania i mean you got to  give melania her due i think she's the in the in   the primary position but my wife told me not to  go work for him but i had in my head i grew up in   a blue collar family i went to tufts in harvard  i built two successful businesses and now i was   gonna go work for the american president the fact  that the american president was a sociopath i was   using cognitive dissonance and hitting an override  switch because of my pride and my ego and so i   have to own that for the rest of my life and the  other thing i have to own for the rest of my life   and i think it's important for people to hear  this and hopefully there will be others that   come around to this i know general kelly is there  now so is jim mattis uh who are friends of mine i   have to come to grips with the fact that i  worked for somebody and as a result of that   i contributed to a lot of pain in our society  i contributed to a person that was racially   charging the society whether i'm a racist or  not is inconsequential the fact was that we   were accomplices of his and we have to acknowledge  that pain if we don't do that in my opinion it's   almost the way like a drug addict has to turn  to his family members and say hey you know what   my actions have caused a lot of pain and i'm sorry  about it and if we don't do that we're not we're   not going to heal and so what happens is you  get your ego in there you talk to somebody like   general kelly he's like well i did it for country  i did it for this i did it for that yeah you did   it for those things but we did contribute to this  and we needed you know i started speaking out   right after the congressional midterms but  i needed to have spoken out earlier than   that frankly and i have to own that for the  rest of my life but but but you know we got   to get more people to own it and we got to  get more people together on the side of the   republic on on the side of the democracy well  let me take that in that a little time we have   left and um date stamp our talk today by saying  this is the second day of the impeachment   hearing and let me just start anthony by i want to  get everybody's thoughts about it but if you had a   secret ballot what do you  think the result would be   it would probably be 90 10 in the senate uh  there's still 10 of those people that secretly   you know they're they would support him yeah but  i think that you know he's going to get acquitted   but i love what's going on and i love the  prosecution's narrative and the advocacy   of the prosecution because they're laying out the  facts and normal people good people and there are   more of us that are good than bad and ultimately  the good people of the united states will realize   how abnormal and how sick this is and uh and  i'm very optimistic about that so i love the   fact that they're doing this and that we're in  day two cynthia your take on the impeachment   i agree you know i i have to tell you that  um in the very beginning right after the riot   uh some democrats started talking about a second  impeachment i was a bit skeptical uh because i   just thought uh he's not gonna be convicted and  it gets in joe biden's way uh but i've changed   my mind i think that um the ability of the  house impeachment managers to lay out the case   to lay out the facts before the american public  is crucial um he won't be convicted uh but i think   that so many americans will now completely  understand his role in this and i think that   matters yeah and we won't get distracted  by the quality of the legal representation steve um you started us off you created this book  so i'm going to let you have the last word on   the impeachment and whether it helps  your long-range goal of getting people to   think and communicate and look at facts very much  so i mean we have to be storytellers that's what   writers are that's what journalists need to be  and that's what a good prosecutor is i know eric   swalwell for example uh prides himself on telling  a good story as a prosecutor i know this team has   done a very good job of presenting a narrative  because in a way that's what it is it's a battle   of narratives and um we talked about courage  but a quality i would point to is imagination   and you know absolutely no one thinks  that mitch mcconnell is sitting around   wondering what his uh you know boy scout leader  would uh suggest that he do as the right thing   mitch mcconnell is thinking about his own  power and his own future political power   what if mitch mcconnell at some point over  the next few days makes the calculation that   voting to convict donald trump and bringing along  enough votes to do that which mitch mcconnell   knows about how to get votes in the senate if he  really wanted to do that he could get us there   so that's why i find it laughable to read repeated  references to a pre-ordained result when nobody   even knows what mitch mcconnell is going to do  and i think the big problem again is the desire   to appear to appear omniscient and to have it  all figured out which is a pose in washington   when people don't know things roy again we're both  baseball men you know uh one thing about baseball   is you go to the stadium and you don't know what's  gonna happen right and you know politics is more   like sports than people like to acknowledge i  enjoyed anthony's football reference earlier yeah   and i for one think if we can all tell stories  the way that the contributors and i think   anthony and cynthia for being part of it the  38 contributors in this book now what have all   told compelling stories that bring alive issues  in a way that i think makes them relatable   and i think gives them a permanence that will  be resonating and if we can tell a story about   an america that is appalled by the crimes of  donald trump that can have staying power and   it is a majority of the country the new york  times again referred to something like narrowly   uh when you know eric buller and others have been  pounding away the numbers are actually pretty   strong donald i mean that joe biden's approval  rating right now is significantly better than   donald trump's ever was the american people  are behind this this new president and they   are i get they are in favor of impeaching donald  trump so right there we've already won something   and you know what i think we've got a few twists  and turns i think it's going to be a lively week   maybe you'll have to put out volume 2 of  your book in that 12 months from now and   everybody can because it'd be it'd be a good  hindsight well i want to thank all of you and   each of you for i think what you know we may be  just a drop of sand on the beach but conversations   like this aggregate and hopefully people who have  received something to think about one kernel of   thought builds on the next and so we thank  the commonwealth club for hosting this   and i thank you cynthia steve and anthony for  such great participation so uh thank you to   our audience and all right this session of the  commonwealth club is hereby adjourned thank you you

Channel: Commonwealth Club of California

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Published: Mon Feb 15 2021