Stuart Stevens: 'Republicans Only For Democracy If They Win'

the investigation into the attack on our capital the attempt to overturn our election is about to ramp up with subpoenas from the select committee expected within a week they appear to be prepared for pushback adam schiff telling nbc news in some cases we're making requests where we think they'll be complied with in other cases we're going straight to subpoenas where we think we're dealing with recalcitrant parties well with us tonight to talk about it juanita oliver a veteran political strategist to progressive candidates and causes and stewart stevens veteran of the mitt romney and george w bush presidential efforts he's now with the lincoln project his latest book it's important is it was all a lie how the republican party became donald trump well good evening and welcome to you both and uh stewart with your past in your party and in politics in mind do you agree with liz cheney who just this week said that there may not have been any more important congressional investigation than the one underway right now yeah 100 look um this was an attempt to overthrow the peaceful transition of power which is the essence of democracy the key element of democracy is someone has to be willing to lose and republicans have decided that they're for democracy when they win and they're not for it when they lose it means they're not for democracy if you let this slide if you don't get to the truth if you don't hold people accountable um it's a cancer and it will eat at our democracy and i think john meakin was absolutely right about the grave state that democracy is hanging republicans had a chance the whole trump responsible and they didn't and i think it's a moment like the munich accord though chamberlain was a much more well-intentioned person but the ramifications of it are stunning they have to get to the truth do you agree with john's sense of urgency stuart yeah i think john might even be an optimist here um the republican party isn't actively any democratic autocratic force in america and it blows my mind i'm saying that after all the years i worked in the party but those are the the stone cold facts i mean john laid it out um the official position the republican party is that donald trump uh was the legally elected president which means we don't have a legally elected president which means we don't live in a democracy which means we're an occupied country and as john pointed out the last time that happened was around 1860. and how'd that work out um i i think that we all have this great desire for normalcy now um we have a normal president things sort of look normal but if we allow ourselves to think that this moment is normal it's going to be catastrophic because the people who are autocrats in this country they're organized they're patient they're not stupid they have these buffoonish characters out front but they're not buffoonish um and they think they're gonna win and if we don't fight them if we don't come together um and put aside these purity tests and democrats have to really challenge themselves here this is a character test for democrats republicans fail their character test but democrats have to be willing to come together and put us out differences and fight for democracy because they're really the last best hope we have here juanita i've never heard a set up any better for a question to you about whether democrats can put purity testing aside we saw it again today we'll see it tomorrow are they up for the fight as described by john and stewart i think they're already demonstrating that they alone are up for the fight especially in the halls of congress where you had both mccarthy and mcconnell vote against a commission that was negotiated within their own republican conference to get to the truth of what happened on january 6 and so democrats and speaker pelosi took it upon herself to launch a select committee right like they're already doing that i think what comes next though is critical to the success of what we can discover in the selects committee and that's why representative schiff already said we're jumping straight to subpoenas because we're not trying to wait waste time with people who will be resistant to abiding by or responding to the subpoenas and chef knows what he's talking about based on the response he got to subpoenas issued in previous impeachment trials where uh trump administration officials just ignored it essentially and so now with this white house with this doj that are already encouraging trump officials to cooperate with congressional inquiries hopefully we get somewhere and as a chairman thompson said this is about getting to not only the truth of january 6 but making sure it never happens again i think you mentioned it briefly brian the fbi has said there's been a massive increase in the number of uh domestic terrorist threats let's be real that stem from white supremacist themes that were on display on january 6 and i don't see that going in the box anytime soon because these are folks emboldened by trump rallied by trump and encouraged by trump to attack the capital that day but to continue to make threats against our democracy and our country every other day [Music] you

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 13,106

Rating: 4.7601409 out of 5

Keywords: Brian Williams

Id: aHlmP3YFXIM

Length: 5min 42sec (342 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021