The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] This investigation revealed that Donald Trump engaged in years of illegal conduct to inflate his net worth, to achieve, to deceive banks and the people of the great state in New York.
[1] Claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal.
[2] It's the art of the steel.
[3] And there cannot be different rules for different people in this country or in this state.
[4] And former presidents are no different.
[5] And so today we are making good on that promise on our commitment because no one, no one is above the law.
[6] Welcome to the Bullwark podcast.
[7] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[8] That was, of course, New York Attorney General Letitia James filing a massive 220 -page civil lawsuit against the Trump organization, Trump, and his adult children.
[9] And so joining me to talk about all of this, Jonathan Lemire, White House Bureau Chief for Politico and host of MSNBC's way too early, an author of the new book, The Big Lie, Election, Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics after 2020.
[10] Thanks for joining us, Jonathan.
[11] My pleasure, Charlie.
[12] Thanks for having me. So this feels like an evergreen question.
[13] Surprising, shocking.
[14] What is the significance of that civil lawsuit?
[15] And, of course, we ought to mention the criminal reference.
[16] both to SD &Y, the feds, and to the IRS.
[17] So shocking, surprising, same old.
[18] I feel like we've been asking this question for six years now.
[19] It's probably all of the above.
[20] I think when we take a step back and recognize this is a former president of United States, this still remains shocking and stunning.
[21] It's unprecedented because it's Donald Trump and it seems like every day he picks up another piece of legal jeopardy than perhaps it becomes same old, same old.
[22] But this one has been looming for a while.
[23] The Attorney General of New York is a civil lawsuit, as you say, but there are criminal referrals, so there could be action down the road.
[24] But even in the short term, it could be a significant financial penalty for Trump and Trump organization, barred from doing business in the state of New York.
[25] The list goes on.
[26] And I think it was striking in the sound that you just played from the Attorney General, where she said more than once that this proves that no one is above the law.
[27] That is very similar rhetoric we've been hearing from Attorney General Merrick Garland of late.
[28] Garland doesn't attach it to Trump specifically, but he also makes it clear and has repeatedly in public statements of late that no one is above the law.
[29] And certainly reading tea leaves, we know the Department of Justice has their own investigation into Trump and people are making connections there.
[30] But this is, as we know, this is long -loomed as a real problem for Trump and the Trump organization.
[31] Yeah, both Merrick Garland and and Let's Mr. James making the point that no one is above the law.
[32] But let me just push back for a moment because objectively speaking, until now, Donald Trump has been above the law, hasn't he?
[33] I mean, this is a major lawsuit.
[34] He's facing all these other criminal investigations, but this is not a surprise to anybody that has covered or written about Donald Trump, the years -long, decades -long pattern of commercial fraud, of engaging in these various scams.
[35] It is not breaking news that Donald Trump has been doing this for a very, very long time.
[36] And yet, until now, he has never been held accountable.
[37] So she talked about the two.
[38] two -tier justice system that if you or I had done this, if you'd gone out and said, hey, you know, Deutsche Bank, my house is worth $100 million.
[39] Would you like to lend me some money?
[40] You'd have a pretty lavish lifestyle for the short period before you got sent to prison.
[41] But the reality is that Donald Trump has been above the law until now, hasn't he?
[42] There's no question.
[43] I mean, it became sort of almost a running joke in Trump world, which I've covered extensively for years, where it always seemed like Trump could get away with it.
[44] Whether he was president and he dodged the Mueller probe, you know, he was impeached twice, but convicted neither time.
[45] He has certainly no stranger to the inside of a courtroom and lawsuits as a developer and simply celebrity businessman.
[46] But to this point, he's really paid no penalty.
[47] I mean, you could argue maybe some of the bankruptcies during his business career, but he bounced back from those.
[48] He's paid no penalty until now.
[49] And even now, even with these swirling investigations, he's still, without question, the Republican frontrunner for 2024.
[50] So it remains to be seen whether he'll pay a penalty now either.
[51] And then to your point, yes, this is not a surprise.
[52] I live in New York a long time.
[53] The business dealings of the Trump organization is sort of an open secret.
[54] We know even that Trump was willing to inflate the value of even relatively trivial things, not just the size of his penthouse per se, but even how big the building is in which his penthouse sits, where it's 58 stories.
[55] And one day, because another building went up nearby in Midtown, he decided that he wanted to maintain to be the tallest building in the area, and he simply renumbered it.
[56] And the 58th floor suddenly became the 68th floor.
[57] The 57th floor became the 67th floor.
[58] And so on, the building grew not an inch, but he had inflated its value and its size, claiming it could still be the tallest in the area.
[59] This is what he does.
[60] Yeah, this is what he does.
[61] This is pretty much his brand.
[62] obviously the most significant parts about this are the potential of a criminal referral, the question of whether it makes it harder for him to borrow money, whether this would affect his liquidity.
[63] But you made reference to the fact that he hasn't paid a political price for all of this.
[64] After the raid in Mar -a -Lago, rather extraordinarily, Republican politicians very, very quickly rallied around him.
[65] I mean, they could have maintained strategic silence.
[66] Instead, they figured, okay, no, this is our moment where we have to defend the guy.
[67] think that the same thing will happen now or will Republicans think, you know, I'd rather talk about inflation.
[68] I'd rather talk about other things at the border.
[69] I'm going to take a pass on this.
[70] Or where are we?
[71] What do you, what do you think is going to happen?
[72] What is their thinking going to be?
[73] Well, certainly, first of all, Trump and his allies have already pushed back to no one's surprise.
[74] His adult sons have already criticized us.
[75] And Trump has taken to truth social, his fledgling social media cash.
[76] Yeah.
[77] As far as Republicans go, you're right.
[78] It was striking in the immediate the aftermath of the of the Marlago search, they condemned it.
[79] But as more came out about what was discovered there and the legal peril that Trump now appears to be in, a lot of those voices have grown quieter.
[80] Right now, in the aftermath of the New York Attorney General's lawsuit, there has been relative silence.
[81] There will be some loyalists who will condemn it.
[82] Others will keep their mouth shut.
[83] There is a sense that Trump is in a new place right now.
[84] Now, that doesn't mean this is the end of his political career, far from it.
[85] But we could safely say this, even as much as we cannot predict the future.
[86] He has never been in such jeopardy as he is right now.
[87] And in many ways, his political standing has probably not been this precarious since, let's say, the weekend of the Access Hollywood tape back in 2016, in terms of his hold on the Republican Party, or, of course, in those first immediate days after January 6th.
[88] But what happened both of those times?
[89] Right.
[90] After Access Hollywood, after January 6th, the Republicans came crawling back.
[91] So I think, we have to assume that pattern will continue here, particularly as polls show that though Trump's standing among Republicans has dipped slightly this summer in the wake of the Mar -a -Lago raid, only slightly.
[92] He's still by far the biggest voice in the party.
[93] So how does this play into his calculation about running for president?
[94] I assume, I don't know whether you agree with me, that he's running, that he's definitely running.
[95] Does this make it more likely, less likely that he's going to run for president again?
[96] Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that he is going to.
[97] barring some sort of health moment or something completely unforeseen.
[98] People that I talk to in Trump world say he has every intention to run.
[99] There had been some talk.
[100] You'll recall, Charlie, that he might even announce this summer as an effort to get out ahead of Governor DeSantis and others in the Republican field.
[101] That's cooled.
[102] There is now a sense he does seem like he has been convinced to wait until after the midterms, which is a relief to most Republicans who don't want to be talking about Trump every single day.
[103] But whether it's come late this year or early 2023, there is.
[104] still an expectation that he will declare his candidacy.
[105] Now, does he, is he fall all the way through to the end of 2024?
[106] That's a different question, perhaps.
[107] But I think there is a sense from people in Trump world that he will run believing that it could, and there's no evidence to this, but it could hold off some of these prosecutions because he wouldn't just be a former president at that point.
[108] He'd be a current presidential candidate.
[109] But also because he does see at least a little bit of insurrection within the party, the DeSantis' types, and he's trying to head that off.
[110] So what happens with him in DeSantis?
[111] I mean, there's been some speculation that with all the attention that DeSantis is getting with his performative cruelty with the migrants, that, you know, Donald Trump's going to say, hey, you're taking away my signature issue of new poll out showing DeSantis with a lead in Florida over Donald Trump.
[112] Do you expect that Donald Trump at some point is going to try to kneecap Ron DeSantis?
[113] What is the relationship?
[114] What's the dynamic there right now?
[115] The relationship has really changed.
[116] DeSantis has admitted previously that it was an endorsement from Trump that led him to the statehouse, got him elected in a very tight race.
[117] That has changed.
[118] There's from Trump, he's felt like DeSantis has grown ungrateful.
[119] He hasn't come to kiss the ring.
[120] He has also not said, like so many other Republicans, that he would abandon his own White House hopes were Trump to run in 2024.
[121] Seems more and more likely that Santos will run, whether Trump does or not.
[122] There's real tension there.
[123] DeSantis doesn't really engage on Trump.
[124] He did speak out on his behalf right after the FBI search, but largely leaves Trump alone.
[125] Trump privately stews about DeSantis.
[126] In fact, told associates that he was upset that he believed DeSantis, quote, stole his idea to send migrants to blue states, whether that's true or not, we'll never know, but he's trying to take credit for it.
[127] So there is real, there is real tension there.
[128] Certainly Trump feels that DeSantis has betrayed him, and we know there's nothing he prizes more than one -way loyalty.
[129] So, yes, I do believe that in the months ahead, the word Dressantis continue to aim his ship towards the White House, Trump will come out and come out swinging.
[130] And I know you mentioned that poll that he is ahead in Florida, but there was another poll today, nationally among Republicans, that Trump led to Santis 52 to 19.
[131] He's still the heavyweight.
[132] Yeah, that is pretty decisive.
[133] So it's actually hard to keep track of all of the investigations that are going on right now.
[134] Of course, we don't necessarily have transparency about all the grand jury investigations.
[135] But clearly, Trump is facing multi -front challenges, civil lawsuits, the investigation in Georgia, the Mara Lago investigation, the ongoing January 6th investigation.
[136] In Trump world, what is causing the most agitaph?
[137] What are they most worried about?
[138] What is Donald Trump in the middle of the night most concerned about all of these investigations?
[139] It changes.
[140] But right now, it would be the DOJ.
[141] J probe into the 2020 election fraud and what happened on January 6th, that has always sort of been the toughest one.
[142] They know that Fannie Willis, the DA in Fulton County, Georgia, has been proceeding and seems that, you know, aggressively trying to get witness testimony.
[143] Governor Kemp in particular is going to sit down likely after the election.
[144] But more than even one in particular, Charlie, we actually have a new story out just in the last few days about how it's the sheer volume of investigations has finally started to wear down Trump and Trump world.
[145] That for so long that there was a sense that he would get away with it, that he was Teflon, that it became sort of almost running jokes in his inner circle, like about how is he going to get away with this one?
[146] Because he always would.
[147] There's a sense now that might be changing.
[148] There's just so much, so many investigations, so many different fronts, so many people in Trump world who have been, say, you know, called before a grand jury or had their phone seized or were issued subpoenas.
[149] And it's been noteworthy.
[150] Collegs and I have been writing.
[151] about how Trump world has gone largely dark.
[152] The inner circle around Trump has really shrunk.
[153] It's just a handful of people and his adult sons.
[154] And the sort of secondary levels of Trump world, those text chains that light up nightly about the latest happenings, a lot of them have gone quiet because there's a wonder and a fear.
[155] Who might be cooperating?
[156] Who might not be?
[157] See, that's the interesting question because obviously, you know, others have compared, you know, Trump's inner circle to sort of, you know, the mafia dawn and that sort of that, hyper loyalty.
[158] And the Trump organization has always been a very small, very insular organization, you know, as members of the family, you know, lifelong loyalists.
[159] So it's interesting that this investigation, this lawsuit that was filed on Wednesday, really grew out of the testimony of Michael Cohen, who at one time was one of his conigliaries, one of his loyalists.
[160] I mean, I remember being on one of the MSNBC shows, maybe I was on a panel with you, and somebody was talking about Michael Cohen possibly flipping.
[161] And I have to confess, I rolled my eyes.
[162] I thought that's never going to happen.
[163] But here you have one of the loyalists of the loyals who has flipped, who's ratted out, ratted out the boss.
[164] And there has to be this anxiety that this is going to perhaps happen in some of these other investigations with people in the White House.
[165] I mean, there's got to rattle them a little bit that so much of the testimony to the January 6th committee and to the grand jury is coming from people who were inside the room, people who you never would think would.
[166] testify against Donald Trump.
[167] So that's got to be creating a certain level of anxiety because that's a break from the pattern that Donald Trump has created and that he's relied upon.
[168] Right.
[169] Trump, of course, famously would not show loyalty to anyone else, but demanded it from others in his inner circle.
[170] And we have seen a change here.
[171] No one expects the members of his family will flip on him.
[172] But someone like Michael Cohen, you're right, was almost family.
[173] He was He was in the inner circle for such a long time.
[174] And I think if we shift the gear to the White House, a lot of eyes are trained on Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, who, you know, has become, in many ways, in the crosshairs of the January 6th committee.
[175] We know he's been, had a criminal contempt referred to Congress in DOJ, that is he someone who might.
[176] I mean, this is how these investigations work.
[177] They keep moving up the food chain, looking for bigger fish.
[178] There's none bigger than Donald Trump, and there aren't many levels of fish between where they are now and where he is.
[179] So I know it's a cliche at this point to talk about Alco.
[180] and how the feds got Al Capone on the tax issues.
[181] And so clearly, you know, flipping Michael Cohen was crucial, but it does seem like this Letitia James lawsuit has a lot of documentation as well.
[182] Even a lot of this stuff is in black and white.
[183] You know, you see the valuations.
[184] You see the fact that, you know, Trump overvalued certain property when it was to his benefit and then would undervalue the exact same property when he thought that was to his benefit.
[185] And they have the emails, they have the communications.
[186] So I guess if I'm Donald Trump, I have have to worry about the IRS having a black and white case, documented case against me. I mean, I know that there are a lot of people out there that want him to be charged with seditious conspiracy or a violation of the Espionage Act.
[187] But in Donald Trump's world, to be charged and convicted with a felony for tax fraud, I mean, that has the same effect, doesn't it?
[188] It certainly does.
[189] And it's a case that Americans can understand.
[190] It's a case that a lot of people who are arrested and convicted and sentenced for the espionage act as you say sedition these are big lofty political terms perhaps but this is something a lot of americans get and i think that we have had a lot of conversations about whether attorney general merrick garland would sign off on some sort of charge some sort of indictment that stems from the monologue go search but even though there's no question that he should not have had those documents there are questions about whether a past president really should be arrested for that.
[191] This is a little different.
[192] And it's something that people understand.
[193] And obviously, it predates his presidency.
[194] It's something that's been going on for decades.
[195] So, speaking of that investigation, you know, Trump has been a master at dragging out litigation, you know, coming up with roadblocks, trying to slow everything down.
[196] And it seemed like he was having some success by getting a special master appointed.
[197] I think it's fair to say at this point, Jonathan, the special master thing is not working out that well for him.
[198] So I don't know.
[199] I, I couldn't help but speculate that there may have been some catch -up on the wall down in Marilago when he saw the way that Judge Deary was holding his lawyer's feet to the fire.
[200] I mean, that's not, this is not playing out the way that Donald Trump and his lawyers were hoping it would.
[201] It seems not, not in this early stage anyway.
[202] Let's recall, of course, that it was Trump's team that suggested Judge Deary, that he was their idea, and the DOJ signed off on it.
[203] But what we heard from him this week is that he's a no -nonsense judge before to, as by number of people, as a judge's judge strictly by the book.
[204] And he also made it clear he wants to move quickly that he, in fact, is willing to accept a more accelerated timetable than what the DOJ recommended.
[205] And that is a problem for the Trump world because you were right.
[206] Their strategy in every matter before his time of the White House, as president and since then, anytime he gets in legal trouble, it's delay, it's delay, it's delay, it's stall, it stall, it's stall, it's throw things up against the wall to slow things down.
[207] And at least so far, this judge isn't having it.
[208] And Trump has been ratcheting up his not so subtle threats of violence that the American people would not stand for any sort of indictment.
[209] And he's got allies out there saying there would be chaos.
[210] There would be anarchy.
[211] Clearly a threat to the Department of Justice an attempt to intimidate them.
[212] I don't know what your reaction was to Merrick Garland's speech over the weekend.
[213] He went to Ellis Island and gave what I thought was a pretty direct response to, you know, the question, is Merrick Garland going to blink?
[214] Is Merrick Garland going to think that it's not worth it?
[215] He said, you know, very directly, you know, that the rule of law was fragile.
[216] You know, it's our duty to uphold it and we have to do what's right, even if it's risky.
[217] Did you see it the same way?
[218] Because I think that Garland seemed to me to really be pushing back and answering that question about whether he was going to be intimidated by these threats from the former president.
[219] through the same lens.
[220] And he's made this, he did it so powerfully over the weekend, but he's made this argument a few times recently.
[221] It's almost hard to forget that for a better part of a year, Democrats were very angry at Merrick Garland.
[222] In fact, some very important Democrats who work in the White House were very angry at Merrick Garland because they felt like he was moving too slowly.
[223] He was dragging his feet.
[224] That is no longer the case.
[225] And as someone close to the situation put it to me a few weeks ago, as we do have that debate, that existential debate, Will Garland, would he ever pull the trigger for an indictment?
[226] This person said to me, with knowledge of this, said, well, the moment he signed off on that raid and all that it could bring, that's your clue.
[227] I mean, he'll follow the facts.
[228] He'll follow the law.
[229] It doesn't mean an indictment's coming.
[230] But the door to indictment opened that day.
[231] He expressed a willingness that he would do it, if warranted, the moment he signed off on that raid.
[232] If he wasn't going to go down that path, they probably would have taken a different route.
[233] But he's there, and we may get there an unprecedented place as a country in the So you're up for a blast from your past, Jonathan?
[234] I hope it's not too embarrassing.
[235] No, no, no. It is not.
[236] It's this famous, infamous press conference in Helsinki in 2018 when Donald Trump is having that joint presser with Vladimir Putin.
[237] And of course, I mean, that's obviously while we're talking about this today with, you know, Putin, you know, threatening this vast escalation of the war in Ukraine, Trump suggesting that this would never have happened if I would have been president.
[238] But for people who forget, and I'm sure that, Jonathan, and you have not forgotten, you were the guy who asked Trump at that press conference, who do you believe, the who do you believe question about Russian interference?
[239] This is how it went.
[240] Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016.
[241] Every U .S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did.
[242] What, who, my first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?
[243] My second question is, would you now, with the whole world watching, tell, President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016 and would you warn him to never do it again?
[244] And of course, we know what the president said at that point, rather remarkably, siding with President Putin over his country's intelligence agencies.
[245] So giving your thinking, looking back on that relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, particularly now that Vladimir Putin, particularly now that Vladimir Putin is one of the world's great pariahs and is aggressively testing the will of the West in Ukraine.
[246] Well, first of all, note, that's more than four years ago.
[247] Those two guys have certainly managed to stay in the headlines, haven't they?
[248] But no, I mean, the relationship between Trump and Putin, obviously, it was a great mystery during the campaign.
[249] What in 2016, what ties might Trump have to Russia?
[250] What was Russia trying to do on his behalf to try to help him?
[251] And certainly in that moment, the question needed to be put to Donald Trump right there, standing just a few feet from Putin, who he believed.
[252] And, of course, he sided with Moscow.
[253] But it is striking to this day.
[254] Trump still seems remarkably deferential to Putin.
[255] He did throw so throughout his time in office.
[256] Even in moments, his administration could be tough on Russia.
[257] He himself never was, always gave Putin the way out, always seemed to cowtow to him at international summits.
[258] Helsinki, most of all, but others as well.
[259] And even leaving office, reflexively praising.
[260] everything that Putin did, remembering even the early days of the war when Russia launched his invasion to Ukraine, Trump was still very complimentary of Putin.
[261] He's never truly condemned what he did.
[262] He has modified his stance somewhat in saying, well, there shouldn't be a war, but he's never really denounced what Putin has done.
[263] And now his newest is that this would never happen because I'd be president, but it's unclear whether that because he'd be projecting strength or because he would cut some sort of deal with Putin.
[264] That's the unanswerable question.
[265] And of course, we're being reminded again, how critical and skeptical Donald Trump was of NATO membership, all of the speculation that he was going to back off from Article 5, you know, an attack on one is an attack on all, that he might even withdraw the United States from NATO.
[266] We're getting more reporting, reminding us about that.
[267] So if you're Vladimir, I know this is still, you know, getting inside of his head.
[268] If you're Vladimir Putin, though, and you're looking at American politics, you know, yes, right now Putin is backed into a corner.
[269] There's a certain desperation about it.
[270] But he's got to be thinking at some point, if he waits this out, a Trump presidency would completely change the balance of power, including the strength and the resolve and the reliability of the Western Alliance.
[271] That's got to be part of his thinking, don't you think?
[272] Or is that too speculative?
[273] No, I think it's clear that it already has been part of this thinking, that he decided to launch the invasion, in part because he thought the West and the U .S. were too divided to really respond, that we know from intelligence that he saw what happened on January 6th, saw the United States as a divided, broken country, and his estimation, didn't think they could rally behind a common cause.
[274] He also saw the aftermath of the U .S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer, that the U .S. would not have an appetite to support another defense, another armed conflict.
[275] And I was there in Brussels when Donald Trump threatened to walk out of NATO.
[276] He came very close.
[277] So I think Putin is thinking this.
[278] Patience is, the time is in some ways on his side.
[279] In many ways, this war has been a failure for Russia and an unqualified failure for Russia.
[280] Putin, you know, barring some sea change at home, he's not going to face voters.
[281] He's not going to face mass demonstrations.
[282] He has the ability to wait this out for either Europe's alliance to shatter because, you know, of rising fuel costs because they're facing a cold and dark winter or because he can wait out the American presidency.
[283] And if a Trump himself or a Trump -like character were to be elected in 2024, that would completely alter the course of the war.
[284] Okay, let's change gears a little bit to talk about our political environment, where we're at in the midterms, looking ahead to 2024.
[285] And your new book, The Big Lie, Election Chaos, Political Opportunism in the State of American Politics after 2020, you remind us that, you know, this didn't begin after the 2020 election.
[286] the big lie.
[287] And as you point out, all of his lies begin small.
[288] So where do you trace the beginning of the, I can't possibly lose?
[289] It's been stolen from me. I've been cheated.
[290] Where did it begin?
[291] It began at a rather unremarkable rally in August of 2016 in Columbus, Ohio, where for the first time, as the book notes, Donald Trump suggested that the upcoming general election would not be conducted fairly.
[292] August 2016.
[293] August 2016, four and a half years before the riot at the U .S. Capitol on January 6th.
[294] And he proceeded to reiterate that in a general election debate against Hillary Clinton a few weeks later.
[295] And then even after he won that election, he claimed, with no evidence, there must have been widespread voter fraud because how else could he have lost the popular vote?
[296] And what it does, though, is that it's not just that lie.
[297] It is all the lies, how he used them to hijack the Republican Party and much of the conservative media to go along with him to amplify his lies to his supporters would believe only him.
[298] And he laid the groundwork for what would become, of course, his biggest lie of all, that of the 2020 election.
[299] And the book traces that in slow and incremental steps at times how he got the Republican Party to go along with them.
[300] Okay.
[301] So to your credit, you were a reporter for the Associated Press at the time.
[302] And your lead back from August 2016 was Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested Monday that he fears the general election is going to be rigged an unprecedented assertion by a modern presidential candidate.
[303] So in retrospect, and even in the time, you always knew that Donald Trump would never graciously concede defeat.
[304] That's also not his brand at all.
[305] That Donald Trump cannot be defeated.
[306] He can only be betrayed.
[307] He can only be ripped off.
[308] So I guess this still remains the question because a lot of the, the reporting that we're getting and the information we're getting at the January 6th committee is that in his inner circle after 2020, most people, even people who were big supporters of Donald Trump, recognize that no, he did not win the election.
[309] There was that sense.
[310] There was that Washington Post quote from somebody who said, you know, what's the harm of humoring him for a while because eventually he'll get over it and go away.
[311] So talk to me about, I guess it's not a surprise to me that Donald Trump refuses to acknowledge it.
[312] It's not a surprise to me that Donald Trump lies.
[313] This is what he does.
[314] The real mystery is why so many other Republicans went along with it.
[315] Right.
[316] I mean, when Bill Barr stands up and goes, this is bullshit, there's nothing there.
[317] You know, who more credible within Maga world to say that?
[318] And yet that, you know, here we are.
[319] How did it happen?
[320] Well, yes, you are right that outside of perhaps a handful of true believers, the true conspiracy theorists, maybe some of them do think, do somehow.
[321] think that the election was stolen.
[322] Very few in Trump world do.
[323] But they went along with it out of fear and out of an attempt to cling to power.
[324] Clinging to power, if somehow things could change and Trump were to remain president, that of course would be beneficial to them.
[325] They knew that was unlikely.
[326] But they didn't want to risk his wrath.
[327] They knew that even if he were to be defeated in 2020 and eventually leave the stage, he would remain the most powerful figure in Republican Party.
[328] and he ruled by fear.
[329] He still had his Twitter account at the time.
[330] We know that was the most potent political weapon of the last seven, eight years, to be sure.
[331] Mitch McConnell's a great example, right?
[332] Where he wanted to humor Trump because he thought if he did so, Trump would actively help in his effort to maintain being majority leader because of the two Georgia Senate runoff races.
[333] Now, it turned out that completely backfired on McConnell that when Trump could only be convinced to do one rally in Georgia and when he did, he spent the whole time erring grievances and telling Georgia voters, hey, my election was rigged, this one's going to be too.
[334] So therefore, they didn't bother showing up to vote, and both Republican candidates lost, and McConnell became minority leader rather than majority.
[335] So there was a lot of personal interest, self -preservation, people looking out for themselves, and they used Trump as a vassal for years now to get what they wanted, their own power or conservatives on the judiciary, a tax cut, whatever it might be.
[336] And they saw that even those last few months between November and January, 2020 and 2021, they still operated under that belief.
[337] And frankly, still are to this day where so few Republicans are willing to condemn him because they see the power that he has over Republican voters that they still need if they want to stay in office.
[338] Okay, in your book, you also deal with the most tangled, difficult issue, the question of, is Donald Trump himself, is he knowingly lying or is he talking himself into the lies?
[339] You've interviewed him dozens of times.
[340] So there seems to be these open question, does he know that he lost or has he convinced himself that he didn't lose?
[341] I mean, what is your take?
[342] There are moments when talking to him about other matters where it does really feel like he has convinced himself of a new truth, the power of repetition.
[343] That's how he gets his audience to go along with him.
[344] That's why he's such a good brander.
[345] He just says something or he gives a nickname or whatever it is and he goes over and over and over and over.
[346] In terms of this lie, we know, and I have reported in the book, that in the immediate aftermath of the election day, he would tell AIDS and wonder aloud, how could I have lost to Joe Biden, who he had deemed the worst presidential candidate in history, though it seemed there, there was a space where he was willing to accept, or at least acknowledge, if not accept, that he had lost.
[347] But that changed.
[348] And I think it's important to note one other thing, his surroundings and the days after the election.
[349] So many of the grown -ups, the guardrails had already left at that point.
[350] Others did so immediately after the election.
[351] There was also a COVID outbreak in the West Wing, stemming from a crowded White House indoor election night party.
[352] The West Wing was empty for weeks, and the guardrails were gone, and the only people that left filling that vacuum were the Rudy Giuliani's and Sidney Powell's and Michael Flynn's of the world, telling him what he wanted to hear.
[353] No, sir, you didn't lose.
[354] No, sir, we have this conspiracy, whatever it might be.
[355] And that's when Trump changed his tone as well.
[356] So he began to repeat their theories and people around him say that it seemed like he started to believe them.
[357] Yes.
[358] He talked himself into it.
[359] Yeah, so this was the environment.
[360] We've had some rather compelling testimony of what it was like for some of the grownups to realize there were these meetings taking place in the White House with people that in a rational political universe would never be allowed within several blocks of the White House.
[361] And so you look back on this and you go, Sydney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn, you know, whatever the continuum of grift.
[362] crazy there is there.
[363] These were the people that were there in that vacuum, you know, while other Republicans were giving him space to recover, right?
[364] That's exactly what happened.
[365] And they filled his head.
[366] And now whether he, in his heart of hearts, only he knows what he actually believed, but certainly we're looking at his behavior and his behavior changed.
[367] And those who talked to him around then noticed a shift where in those first couple days after the election, he was willing, angrily, but willing to acknowledge he had been defeated, and then that went away.
[368] And we know that they explored every possible option to try to overturn the election results.
[369] And that is what a fraud is, right?
[370] If you know something is one and you try to perpetuate the other, that's what prosecutors are looking at here in 2020 election as well.
[371] And he is still, to this day, nearly two years later, contesting the 2020 was rigged against him.
[372] And most dangerously, as a final note, so are so many other Republicans, including those who are on the ballot this year, who, if they were to win, would have incredible control over our elections going forward.
[373] Yes, and that's obviously, we're going to, you know, continue to be talking about that.
[374] And look, there are some people that, you know, when you ask, do you really believe it or are you going along with it?
[375] I mean, there are some people like, you know, Doug Maastriano and Carrie Lake, well, you know, who knows, you don't even want to go into that, that tangled thicket of their own minds.
[376] It does strike me, though, watching this play out, how much the claims of election for are just pretexts because it doesn't seem to require actual verifiable facts to keep this alive.
[377] I mean, there's the big lie out there, but what is the big lie?
[378] And you keep asking, well, give me some details.
[379] Give me an example of fraud.
[380] And, you know, examples are raised and then they are refuted.
[381] They are debunked.
[382] It doesn't seem to make any difference.
[383] So I wonder, you know, is the big lie about the actual belief in fraud, or is it just a pretext for saying we just simply cannot tolerate letting the other people get into power.
[384] We are simply not going to ever seed power.
[385] I think it has, there's been a metamorphosis, and I do think you've hit on something there, that for some, probably there's still a conviction, as misguided as it was, that something was wrong in 2020.
[386] But I think for others, it has become, it's become an excuse.
[387] It's become a reason to act in a way in which you cannot ever acknowledge a defeat or that the other side has scored a victory.
[388] that it's something is always right now, that something is always a conspiracy against your side.
[389] And it is deeply worrisome for the future of our democracy.
[390] The peaceful transfer of power is probably the most sacred thing the American democracy has, and it is in grave danger going forward.
[391] And there's certainly, if Donald Trump were on a ballot again, whether it's in a Republican primary or in a 2024 general election, certainly no one thinks he'd ever conceded defeat.
[392] So talk to me about the way the media, has handled Donald Trump going back into the beginning because it struck me starting in 2015 and 2016 that in many ways Donald Trump sort of broke the model of journalism because he just lied so much.
[393] And it seemed like the media was having a very, very difficult time sort of catching up with how do we handle somebody like this?
[394] And you, of course, remember when the cable networks thought that it was be a smart idea to run all of his rallies, just unedited, just air them, which now look, I don't know what you agree, but it seems like one of the cases of historic media malpractice.
[395] So talking about your evaluation of the media coverage of Trump and what it was like for you as a reporter who spent the last six years covering Donald Trump.
[396] What are the challenges?
[397] Yeah, the media made a lot of mistakes and we've learned from them and we can get into it.
[398] At first, you're right.
[399] There was a sense that we didn't know what to do with him.
[400] We've never encountered someone like Trump before.
[401] you mentioned running rallies unedited there was at least one time when a cable network simply ran a live shot of his empty podium waiting for his rally to start uh you know and other in other republicans in that primary field uh vehemently complain say it was unfair how much more media attention the trump got but trump was good for ratings and that was that was a problem and we also know that like other media outlets newspapers the ap the ap where i worked you know we had to change how we covered him too no longer could you just just kind of quote him verbatim.
[402] Like we had to learn how to read, we had to redouble our fact -checking efforts because he would lie so much.
[403] You no longer could even just in a tweet, you know, say like a snippet of a quote because it would be so out of context and it would seem completely wrong and it wouldn't have the other side attached to it.
[404] So we all had to adjust.
[405] I do think we got better.
[406] By the end of 2020 networks were not carrying Trump rallies live, where if they did, there was real -time fact -checking.
[407] Either the anchor would cut in or there'd be something on the quiron of the bottom of the screen.
[408] there.
[409] Certainly after the election, when it was just election lie after election lie, no one took Donald Trump live, a remarkable statement about a president of the United States.
[410] Now, I know the media is not perfect.
[411] We improved, but were he to run again?
[412] We're going to be presented a whole other host of challenges because not only those lies going to still exist, we have to ask ourselves, how do we cover an insurrectionist candidate?
[413] How do we cover someone who defied the basic tenets of democracy?
[414] And that's going to be a test for.
[415] all of us.
[416] I think it's a very, very difficult test because the, as we've seen, that when the media would say, this is a liar, this is not true, then that becomes, then that is spun by Trump world as saying, well, this is an example of your bias.
[417] And, you know, they, you know, he has succeeded rather dramatically in discrediting and delegitimizing much of the fact -based media for much of his base.
[418] I mean, to an extent, this, you know, obviously he was a pre -existing condition, but, you know, the fact that he flipped the whole concept of fake news around on any news that was embarrassing to him.
[419] And so he effectively insulated himself against a lot of that coverage.
[420] That's exactly right.
[421] That fake news no longer became a story that he could claim rightly or wrongly there was something wrong with it, but rather just a story he didn't like if it was critical.
[422] He conditioned his supporters to not believe the media.
[423] And all right, look, the trends of polarization existed before Trump, but he dramatically accelerated them where it's team red, team blue, it's us versus them.
[424] There's very little common ground.
[425] We can't even agree on the same set of facts.
[426] And that's a dangerous place for democracy.
[427] And Trump has used that to his advantage, where he has conditioned his supporters to believe him and only him.
[428] And of course, the irony here is that Donald Trump actually desperately courts media attention and approval.
[429] And certainly I know I've been the recipient of many a note from Donald Trump or his inner circle trying to sway my coverage or convince me that he was right about something he had said or to criticize something I said on television.
[430] At the same time, he deemed us the enemy of the people, the enemy of the state.
[431] And while every president complains about their media coverage, no one has put the media at the center of his entire existence like Donald Trump.
[432] Well, I think that's what's interesting is, you know, in one side of his mouth, he's referring to you as the enemy of the people, but then he's sending notes through Kaylee McEnany about complaining about something you said on Morning Joe or that you wrote for the AP and of course, you know, again, sending a signal that there's the president of the United States watching Morning Joe and reacting to it.
[433] Now, you actually were the target of some of this criticism and you, like many other reporters, you received threats as a result of this.
[434] Tell me about that.
[435] Yeah, I did.
[436] Trump has called me a sleaze bag once.
[437] He's thrown me out of a number of his events because of questions.
[438] he did not like that I had asked, obviously, after Helsinki, I received a lot of attention for what happened there.
[439] And yes, like so many members of the media, those who've had high -profile positions and high -profile exchanges with him, I mean, threats became very commonplace, one in particular escalated to the point where the FBI had to get involved.
[440] You know, I'm not alone in that.
[441] A lot of our colleagues have had to experience that as well.
[442] It's scary stuff.
[443] And I think that, you know, especially now in the wake of January 6th, in the wake of law enforcement warnings about how violence has entered the political discourse like it perhaps never has before.
[444] That's something we're all thinking about going forward.
[445] What do you make of his implicit slash explicit embrace of QAnon over the weekend?
[446] I mean, this is a president who's played footsie with some of these militia groups, you know, wink winked at some of the conspiracy theorists and people like, you know, the Mike Pillow guy and Mike Flynn.
[447] But it did seem like he crossed crossed several lines over the weekend, really associating himself with one of the most extreme and dangerous conspiracy there's, where is that going, Jonathan?
[448] Well, I remember, I was flashing back on this.
[449] It was a, it was also Ohio.
[450] It was a midterm election rally.
[451] I want to say that's summer, August of 2018.
[452] And that was when the Q &ON movement was really starting to take off.
[453] And that rally in particular, a lot of people showed up wearing Q insignia on their shirts or holding up signs.
[454] And the Trump campaign made them go away.
[455] Like they were like, we don't want anything to do with this.
[456] We don't know what it is.
[457] Like you can't, you know, the White House staffers are like, no, you can't do this.
[458] It goes to show you how far things have changed.
[459] It's reminiscent, frankly, of how Trump has dealt with some of the far -right white supremacist groups, the proud boys, the oathkeepers, where he has never fully condemned them.
[460] For a while, he seemed to keep them at arm's length, even though he wouldn't totally denounce them.
[461] We remember, of course, the proud boys.
[462] He told them to stand back and stand by at that debate.
[463] And now we know the proud boys, were dealing with some of his associates, including Roger Stone, in the hours before the January 6th riot in which they participated.
[464] It feels like a similar evolution here with Q &A, where at first he kept them in arms distance, though he never condemned them.
[465] He was pressed by Savannah Guthrie late in the 2020 campaign about Q &N.
[466] He, again, claimed he didn't know what they were, but then said, well, if they support me, they can't be all bad.
[467] And here we are, seemingly a all -out embrace at that rally, very strange and disturbing rally over the weekend.
[468] Okay, I may have missed it, but has there been any pushback at all from fellow Republicans, including the good Republicans, the normal Republicans against his implicit threat against the Department of Justice or his embrace of Q &N because all I'm hearing is crickets.
[469] Are you, are I missing something?
[470] It's been crickets.
[471] Certainly nothing on the Q &N part of it, perhaps the calculation being made by Republicans and, hey, QAnon voters vote for me too.
[472] We did hear, we have heard the occasional pushback when he has been critical of the FBI and of DOJ, particularly.
[473] There were a few Republicans who did, to their credit, Mitt Romney, even like Pence in the immediate aftermath of the Mar -Lago search, when there were so many threats against FBI agents, there were some Republicans who said, hey, knock this off, we can't be doing this.
[474] But on terms of this latest flirtation with QAnon, I haven't heard any.
[475] Jonathan Lemire, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
[476] I appreciate it very much.
[477] My pleasure.
[478] We'd love to come back someday.
[479] Jonathan is the White House Bureau Chief for Politico, host of MSNBC's way too early author of the new book, The Big Lime.
[480] election chaos, political opportunism, and the state of American politics after 2020.
[481] If you get up very, very early, you can see him on MSNBC tomorrow morning.
[482] And thank you all for listening to today's Bold Work podcast.
[483] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[484] We'll be back tomorrow, and we'll do this all over again.