The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] Welcome to the Bull Work podcast.
[1] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[2] If you're catching up this morning, apparently fist bump diplomacy didn't have the, you know, expected impact.
[3] MBS joined with Vladimir Putin to show the United States on oil production.
[4] The Oathkeeper trial is resuming from, with testimony from new witnesses, big story in the Washington Post this morning, that a majority of GOP nominees, 299 and all, deny the 2020 election results.
[5] We have the gas.
[6] story of the day, the gunman attacking a daycare center in Thailand.
[7] And the Herschel Walker hits just keep on coming.
[8] New story in the Daily Beast.
[9] She had an abortion with Herschel Walker.
[10] She also had a child with him.
[11] Walker says he has no idea who the woman was who claimed she had an abortion.
[12] She had no idea, but apparently he knows her quite well since she's the mother of one of his children.
[13] And on day two of all of this, he's already rolling out the if I did it, defense that, okay, if I did it, you know, I would have admitted it, and I would be forgiven for it, and it would be understandable, but I didn't do it.
[14] And, of course, people like Hugh Hewitt just sort of swallow all of that.
[15] So it's an interesting dynamic that Herschel Walker is lying.
[16] The GOP and the media enablers know that he's lying.
[17] He knows they know that he's lying, and everybody's completely okay with it.
[18] So, hey, happy Thursday, everyone.
[19] Our guest today, Major Garrett, Chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, also the host of the Takeout podcast and the Debrief podcast.
[20] And David Becker, his co -author of a new book, David is Election Law contributor to CBS News, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, and a former trial attorney in election law at the Department of Justice.
[21] And they are out with a new book, The Big Truth, upholding democracy in the age of the big lie.
[22] David Becker, thanks for joining me. Charlie, I was a pleasure.
[23] Thank you.
[24] Great to be here, Chuck.
[25] I'll be really honest with you.
[26] I'm really at the stage thinking, you know, do we need another fucking book about the Trump era?
[27] Do we need another book about this?
[28] But I will tell you that I am haunted by your book, of all the books that I have read, I find myself thinking about the scenarios you lay out, how a Second Civil War could start.
[29] I want to talk to you about that because we had an excerpt in The Bullwark.
[30] And I think there's always that question, okay, come on.
[31] Is it really all that bad?
[32] And yet we wake up this morning, rather timely, to the headline in the New York Times after Mara Lago search, talk of civil war is flaring online.
[33] So how real is this, gentleman?
[34] So I think we have to answer it candidly, even though it's uncomfortable to do so, Charlie.
[35] It is closer than we imagine, and our reluctance to imagine it doesn't make it any less close.
[36] And there was talk of Civil War before January 6th, and the ongoing trial of seditious conspiracy charges for Elmer Stewart Rhodes and others in The Oathkeeper makes that.
[37] clear.
[38] What's different about what happened after the FBI search warrant executed at Mar -a -Lago is that it grew in number and it expanded in visibility in terms of more quote -unquote mainstream platforms.
[39] January 6th, that was sort of the dark web and the corridors where the far -right extremists like to communicate with one another.
[40] Some of it was encrypted, some of it was not, but it wasn't easy to find.
[41] After Mar -a -Lago and the execution of the search warrant, it was very easy to find.
[42] And those who monitor this space brought attention to it instantaneously and said, look, this is happening.
[43] And in the introduction to our book, we quote someone who has experience with what a civil war actually looks like in the modern era, Northern Ireland, Finino Tool, who wrote in the Atlantic, and we took that very seriously.
[44] He said, look, when you talk about civil war, it makes it easier for it to happen.
[45] And when you use the language of violent civil strife to resolve whatever your political differences are, it makes that violence more likely.
[46] And the more likely that violence becomes, the closer it gets.
[47] And when that violence starts, it is very difficult, very difficult to cap it because the level of grievance only intensifies.
[48] And grievance upon grievance, as we know in every civil war, only intensifies until one side is exhausted and negotiates or sues for peace or is very, vanquished.
[49] That's the only resolution.
[50] And we are moving toward that period of time where violence is imaginable.
[51] And I deeply fear the time when we see violence because it feels to me as if it will not turn us away from it, but become a springboard to more of it.
[52] Well, and it's not theoretical.
[53] I mean, you mentioned the Oathkeeper's trial.
[54] It's going on right now in real time where we are hearing about, you know, the way in which this manifests itself and an actual attack on the Capitol in which people died, in which more people could have died.
[55] What we noticed in the book, as we document in the book, is that we've become attuned to viewing our fellow citizens more and more as our enemies.
[56] Our neighbors, even our family and friends in some cases, just because they might hold different political views.
[57] And once you get to that point, you start being open to the idea.
[58] that elections are stolen if the outcome doesn't suit you.
[59] It's remarkable that we live in a country that's as closely divided as we are, and yet people seem shocked that they lose an election in a 50 -50 country.
[60] When you get to that point and you hold the rule of law in such contempt, and we've seen the circle surrounding the former president, the losing presidential candidate, have nothing but contempt for the rule of law as they tried to make the case and failed at every level that anything was wrong with the election.
[61] election.
[62] And once you hold that rule of law and contempt, the next stage is violence.
[63] And this is something that concerns us a great deal, as we see some of the supporters of the former president, increase chatter about civil war, whether it's a violent civil war or whether it's more of a dissolution of the union that we enjoy right now.
[64] And we see signs of that in many ways.
[65] We talk about possible outcomes.
[66] And it's very important to note also that, while I think there are some scenarios in the book that are intended to provoke some serious thought, they're not predictions.
[67] And we also hope that we present a potential path out of this direction that we're going.
[68] Yeah, there are a warning, Charlie, there are a warning.
[69] The book opens with a warning.
[70] We say very clearly, and there's been some chatter on social media that we're fan -boying civil war violence, which is completely ludicrous.
[71] Obviously, people who said that haven't read the book.
[72] Yeah, right.
[73] The book says, we don't predict this, we don't want this, but we feel there are dangerous psychic forces in this country that we are not heeding.
[74] And if we don't heed them, we fear, we do not predict, but we fear they will escalate.
[75] And the escalatory direction is universally harmful.
[76] Well, let's go to what the New York Times is reporting this morning, the uptick, what the trend line is, and how quickly this chatter explodes.
[77] Posts on Twitter that mentioned Civil War had soared nearly 3 ,000 % in just a few hours as Mr. Trump's supporters blasted the actions of the Mar -a -Lago search as a provocation.
[78] Similar spikes followed, including on Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, Parlor, Gab, and Truth Social, Mr. Trump's social media platform.
[79] Mentions of the phrase more than doubled on radio programs and podcasts as measured by critical mention, a media tracking firm.
[80] Post -threatening Civil War jumped again a few weeks later after President Biden branded Mr. Trump and MAGA Republicans a threat to the very foundations of our republic.
[81] Now experts are bracing for renewed discussion of civil war as the November 8th midterm elections approach and political talk grows more urgent and heated.
[82] So what is your sense about the danger of the threat of violence?
[83] I have a sense that it's actually grown.
[84] if anything that has grown since January 6th, that we are in a more combustible period today on October 6th than we were on, say, January 5th, the day before the attack on the Capitol.
[85] What do you think?
[86] We completely agree, Charlie.
[87] It's one of the reasons we wrote the book, and it's one of the reasons the book changed as we were writing it.
[88] Because like you, and I think a lot of Americans and even many Republicans I talk to on January 7th, 2021, and January 8th, 2021, even on January 9th, 2021, said, okay, this is it.
[89] I mean, come on.
[90] This is so terrible.
[91] This is so unlike anything the character of this country has ever visited upon itself in the modern era.
[92] This has to be the breakpoint.
[93] This has to be the place where we come back to our senses and lines are re -respected, not redrawn, but re -respected.
[94] And that didn't happen.
[95] There was the effort almost within a month.
[96] or two to recast, whitewash, misremember, put it in the forget -me machine, how bad it all was and to litigate some aspects of it and, well, who didn't do this and who didn't do that, who didn't heed this warning and so on and so forth, and get into all sorts of minutia completely separate from the underlying travesty of the event.
[97] And then from that, it was a pretty quick journey to either nothing happened or it's being politically overused.
[98] I mean, seriously, politically overused.
[99] Your supporters attack the United States Capitol, beat up cops on live television, and your political opponent draws attention to that, and that's dirty politics.
[100] I mean, honestly.
[101] So I think that not only normalizes or attempts to normalize, you can't normalize it, but it attempts to normalize it, and then it attempts to put it in a place of validity.
[102] So if that violence is valid, why wouldn't the next expression of violence be valid?
[103] We're over 700 days since the November 2020 election, as incredible that sounds.
[104] During that time, there has not been a shred of evidence, not one single piece of evidence given to any court or law enforcement that indicate any significant problems with the 2020 election, anything that would overcome the outcome.
[105] And yet we have people running on a platform of election denial, not kind of having it in the background, but actually having it be a feature of their campaign, that they will put their thumb on scale for their candidates if they happen to not win.
[106] And already setting the stage to have their supporters believe that the election is rigged if they don't win, in the two years that this division and anger has been stoked, it is not hard to envision political violence, not waiting for 2024 or 2025, but happening in the next few months in some places based on the irresponsible rhetoric that several candidates running for office are using right now.
[107] Well, let's just underline this point.
[108] The Washington Post story that just broke this morning says a majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate, and key statewide offices, 299 and all have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election.
[109] Candidates who have challenged or refused.
[110] to accept Joe Biden's victory are running in every region of the country and in nearly every state.
[111] Republican voters in four states nominated election deniers in all in all federal and statewide races the post examined, although some are running in heavily Democratic areas and are expected to lose.
[112] Most of the election deniers nominated are likely to win.
[113] Of the nearly 300 on the ballot.
[114] 174 are running for safely Republican seats.
[115] Another 51 will appear on the ballot in tightly contested races.
[116] So to your point, this is not one -off.
[117] This is not fringe.
[118] We are not talking about a couple of crackpots on the ballot, you know, running, you know, for state legislature in Southern Arkansas.
[119] This is a national phenomenon, and this is not going away anytime soon.
[120] You're exactly right if you look at this.
[121] If you look at Secretary of State races around the country, we focus often on races in places like Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan, and we should be.
[122] Those are important races, and there are election deniers on the ballot and the Secretary of State's races.
[123] But in places like Indiana and South Dakota, there were very well -respected Republican secretaries of state who sought their nomination again at convention and were defeated at convention and being replaced by candidates.
[124] who now endorse some kind of election denial.
[125] In Wyoming, we have basically an unopposed Republican candidate who has embraced election denial, who almost certainly will be elected in November.
[126] And this is something we're seeing all across the country.
[127] And as you know, not just the battleground states.
[128] It's the deeply red states and even deeply blue states where Republicans even as a minority are running and nominating candidates who endorse election denial.
[129] And this is a very volatile environment we're finding ourselves in.
[130] And Charlie, there's there is one comedic moment in all this.
[131] I mean, if you go back to the Michigan Republican nominating convention, that process, which yielded a statewide nominee running for Secretary of State who denies the 2020 election, had the most irregular ballot processes of any Republican nominating convention, I believe, in Michigan Republican Party history.
[132] They lost ballots.
[133] They couldn't count them.
[134] Everything was askew.
[135] Everything was completely a mess.
[136] I'll just use that terminology to make sure I keep you just didn't want to say fucked up because you're afraid that this is a podcast this is a this is a podcast that gets gets an explicit rating every fucking day so please I don't want you to worry about that and yet this completely garbled convention process is great it's okay you know we don't know where the ballots are we don't know how to count them we don't know what happened oh but we got nominees we're going to go on and we're going to prosecute the case at the 2020 election that Trump lost in Michigan by more than 100.
[137] David, what's the number, 150 ,000 votes?
[138] 154 ,000 votes.
[139] Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[140] That's why I have David.
[141] He always remembers every single number.
[142] God bless him.
[143] Sliver.
[144] 154 ,000.
[145] That's, there's something wrong with that, but our nominating convention that look like four children playing in romper room in terms of election security and believability, that one's good.
[146] I mean, it is almost comical how this actually plays out, and yet, it's not funny.
[147] Well, see, now this is interesting, because as you, as you, pointed out there's not a shred of credible evidence that there was anything wrong with the election.
[148] And then, of course, they have something like this, this completely shambolic clown car of a convention and it doesn't bother anybody, which sort of underlines the point.
[149] This is not really about the facts.
[150] It's not really about the truth.
[151] It's really become a pretext now.
[152] The claims of election fraud are pretext for something else that I think is more dangerous, which is, you know, the refusal to ever allow the other party to win an election.
[153] The refusal to just simply acknowledge the peaceful transfer of power.
[154] That would explain why you come up with a claim.
[155] It is refuted, and yet nothing changes.
[156] They just simply move to something else because it's never about the specific allegation.
[157] It's just about these guys, we hate these guys so much, they are so dangerous, they hate God, they hate America, and we cannot allow them to win.
[158] So let's come up with a pretext for not acknowledging a democratic victory by them or a defeat by ourselves.
[159] Denialism has become a pretext for how much you want to own the libs, how much you hate the media, how much you are staunchly opposed to liberalism slash socialism to whatever ism that they want to ascribe to Democrats.
[160] And look, on policy, there are lots of valid disagreements.
[161] I don't want Republicans to give up valid policy disagreements on any front or conservatives or anyone else.
[162] I want that to actually reanimate American political discussion.
[163] What I beg people to do is stop using something like.
[164] of the validity of an election as a litmus test for everything else.
[165] Because once you do that, the other party, your opponent party, will adopt that same tactic, and then we will have an arms race to the bottom of election denialism that will tear apart the fundamentals of conferring authority and legitimacy in a constitutional republic.
[166] And, Charlie, I just add here that there is basically the definition of a secure election in the mind of the election deniers is an election that we want.
[167] That's the only thing that defines it.
[168] And you raise that.
[169] We talk about it a lot in the book.
[170] And there's two aspects of this.
[171] There is the, there is the, they, they want to keep moving the gold posts and playing whack -a -mole and creating new arguments, bamboo ballots, drop boxes, whatever.
[172] And they're just always going to change.
[173] They won't present this to any court.
[174] They'll make money off of their documentaries that they put out online and hold rallies where they charge admission.
[175] But when the courts actually come or law enforcement actually comes and says, show us the evidence.
[176] They don't show anything.
[177] And so there is nothing there.
[178] And instead, one of the other things we talk about in the book, and we think it's really important, is the positive story that no one has been able to refute about the 2020 election, which is that it actually was the most secure, transparent, and verified election in American history with more verifiable paper ballots, more audits of those ballots.
[179] They keep calling for audits.
[180] The problem with that is the audits already happened shortly after the election.
[181] They case.
[182] We had more scrutiny of the rules than ever before.
[183] They can complain about the rules all they want.
[184] The Democrats also don't like some of the rules, but they had a chance to litigate them, and the rule of law held the day.
[185] And we all knew what the rules were on election night.
[186] And then famously, over 60 court cases that looked at the evidence and couldn't find a shred of evidence that there was a problem that would overturn the result.
[187] That's the positive story.
[188] And this is all done by the professionals, the men and women who run elections and did it with the highest turnout in American history in the middle of a global pandemic.
[189] This was heroic.
[190] It was something we should celebrate, and instead they found themselves attacked consistently over the last 700 days.
[191] Well, and David, as you have pointed out, the 2020 elections weren't really all that close, were they?
[192] There were six states that were focused on, and there was a three -state margin in the electoral college.
[193] And again, those major states, the margins were not razor thin.
[194] People need to be reminded of that, you know?
[195] I mean, we have to recognize that in the 21st century elections are just going to be really, really close.
[196] And this was the largest margin of any presidential race in the 21st century where Barack Obama wasn't on it.
[197] And, you know, over a 7 million vote, popular vote margin, a minimum of three states in the electoral college where 2000 and 2004 were both decided by one state.
[198] And the margins in the states, I mean, you know, 10, 11 ,000 looks close.
[199] in states like Georgia and Arizona.
[200] But in reality, I've worked in election law for a long time.
[201] In the world of recounts and audits and challenging elections, that's a landslide.
[202] We've never had a statewide election of over a thousand votes overturned by a recount, let alone 10 times that amount.
[203] And then you look at Pennsylvania, which was decided by a margin twice that of 2016, 84 ,000 votes.
[204] And Michigan, the margin of victory, they're still talking about Michigan.
[205] it was decided by 154 ,000 votes about 15 times the margin of 2016 when then candidate Trump won Michigan.
[206] So, I mean, these margins are not particularly close when you actually look at challenging elections.
[207] And it's time to recognize that election officials did a remarkable job with incredible scrutiny with these margins that were not, that were not close, but they were also not hundreds of thousands of votes with the highest turnout ever in the middle of a global pandemic.
[208] All right.
[209] Well, let's shift gears a little bit.
[210] I want to get to the meat of your book.
[211] And you start, and this is really what's really haunting is you lay out a possible future.
[212] Again, you're not predicting this.
[213] You're warning about it, how a second civil war could start.
[214] And so in the preamble of your book, you write, America's Second Civil War could start with a bang or with a whimper.
[215] It could begin with a skirmish or sneak up on us through a series of small compromises and acts of political cowardice.
[216] Civil War could announce itself loudly and bloodily.
[217] leaving no doubt as to its awful entrance, or it could creep in through the back door, only to be recognized in hindsight as a series of seemingly disconnected events that could have and should have been stopped.
[218] We may be midstream in such a flow of events already.
[219] So, gentlemen, I'm going to turn this platform over to you.
[220] Tell me what scenario concerns you.
[221] And again, you're not predicting this.
[222] You're warning, but so give me a scenario that can lead to an actual civil war.
[223] So first, first, to take that last sentence, we may be midstream.
[224] What do we mean by that?
[225] Charlie, and the audience listening, we already have states that boycott other states right now over policy disagreements.
[226] Okay?
[227] That is an estrangement on paper from one state to another.
[228] Your state does one thing.
[229] Our state does another thing.
[230] And we're not going to either recognize your investigatory rights, whether it's abortion, or we're going to do other things, or we're going to move migrants from one place to another to own you because you're a sanctuary city, and we don't want to recognize that.
[231] So that process, when we say midstream, some of these component parts of the scenario I'm about to describe are here right now and have nothing to do with us speculating about where they might lead.
[232] They're here.
[233] They're present.
[234] And they suggest a kind of alienation that is being entrenched and replicated through political rhetoric and political action.
[235] So that's what we mean by midstream.
[236] So let's play out a quick scenario.
[237] Texas changed its laws after the 2020 election, making already tough voting procedures there tougher.
[238] The primary election in March showed that even experienced primary voters had a hard time complying with some of the mail -in ballot requirements now a part of Texas law.
[239] Texas also did another thing.
[240] It's empowered those who are election observers on site to go to different places and raise more objections.
[241] Texas, of course, is an open -carry state.
[242] So we have a scenario in which we don't put a location, we don't put a gender on the, this person.
[243] We don't put a race on this person.
[244] It is a person.
[245] In a place in Texas, who empowered under this new law and open -carrying, as is this person's right, check something out because this person fears something might be amiss.
[246] And there's a conversation that escalates into a confrontation, which gets even louder and more objectionable and objected to, and there's pushing and shoving, and nobody knows exactly what happened or how it occurred.
[247] but a gun goes off and a voter, innocently, meaning not a part of this, is shot and dies on the floor of a high school gym, which happens to be the voting precinct.
[248] And as almost everything in our modern society is, this is a viral video that moves much faster than any news coverage, and it becomes an instantaneous national sensation, a death in a polling place over fears of something amiss.
[249] national democrats look at this with not only horror but an embedded sense of i told you so horror that this was the inevitable extension of the big lie in 2020 and denialism and violence and threats of violence and they say we have reached our breaking point we can no longer say anything that we have said before we must consequentially act differently and the pressure builds pressure builds, pressure builds, and the Speaker of the House using never before used powers, but uniquely implied in the construction of the House representative says, you know what, this Nancy Pelosi, I'm not going to recognize the entire Texas delegation, Republican and Democrat.
[250] I will regard it as invalid because of this event and everything else that's happened in Texas.
[251] Because, of course, on Election Day, quite separate from this terrible event, long lines and people of color are having a much harder time voting and complying with these new laws.
[252] So taken together, it's just intolerable.
[253] And Pelosi says, I'm not seating it.
[254] Well, guess what?
[255] It's a tight midterm election.
[256] Texas delegation, Republican and Democrat, constitute what would be the majority?
[257] So now we don't know.
[258] And there's litigation in other states because there are close elections.
[259] But taken as a whole, this refusal to seat the Texas delegation leaves the question of control the House of Representatives up for grabs.
[260] Texas says, you know what?
[261] I'm the newly elected governor, reelected governor, Greg Abbott.
[262] no more federal tax compliance my businesses and individuals no longer have to send money to the federal government and if you come to get it we'll stop you and like -minded states say you know what that texas is on to something and we listed like -minded states you can imagine and they agree and they join this compact of non -tax compliance in solidarity with texas state sympathetic to pelosi starting with california you can imagine the rest say we will no longer recognize the rights of citizens from those renegade non -compliant states and on paper and via process and with rhetorical flourishes on both sides of this conversation with expressed rhetoric declaring all these actions are taken in defense of democracy, democracy itself, and the ability to understand the will of the voters and have it render verdicts that confer authority, the great union that we have come to know and appreciate all the benefits from on paper procedurally begins to dissolve.
[263] You know, as I was reading that and listening to you, I was thinking about all the other possible scenarios where you can imagine, you know, especially in the current political mood, the federal government doing X, Y, or Z, and a state saying, okay, we are, we're going to just declare that, you know, nullification, we're not going to, we're not going to go along with this.
[264] And then you start to have this, you know, the back and forth between.
[265] the blue states and the red states.
[266] And as you point out, the federal government wants, you know, patience, but these intertwined limbs of interstate commerce start to unwind.
[267] And as you write, America starts to slowly disappear.
[268] Stock prices drop.
[269] Texas starts talking about its own currency.
[270] And then, of course, around the world, opportunistic nations step into the void.
[271] Our allies start worrying about us, devouring ourselves.
[272] I mean, this is kind of a fever dream.
[273] I mean, This is, you're describing a story of national suicide that could come either, you know, very violently, or it could come very, very gradually.
[274] And you know, when you make the point about midstream, this embedded sense of us versus them is already there.
[275] So I guess part of my question is, is a civil war necessarily going to be between states or will it be between Americans within states?
[276] Or is the dividing line just between the states?
[277] Or is there another scenario of just, you know, know, violence between racial groups of violence, but, you know, in evenly divided states, you know, urban versus rural.
[278] I mean, there seems like there's a lot of potential for things to go south quickly.
[279] You know, one of the things that we saw play out starkly, now that we understand what took place in the period of time, you know, between November 3rd, 2020, and January 6, 2021, the Constitution has principles that are very, very strong, but ultimately our democracy and our union depends upon an agreement among citizens, that when that agreement breaks down, violence might become the only option.
[280] I mean, the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the law of the land in the United States, but even the United States Supreme Court has needed the use of National Guard troops to enforce its rulings in states in the past.
[281] This is, we acknowledge this.
[282] It hasn't happened often, but we're getting to the point now where the de -legitimization of institutions, the breakdown of that agreement, of that understanding between citizens, is coming into stark play.
[283] And it is not very hard to imagine a circumstance.
[284] And by the way, this doesn't infect only one party.
[285] This could infect the entire political spectrum where you start believing that if the other guys get into power that is such an existential crisis, that it's so bad that you can start believing any justification, any rationalization, about democracy that you want and ignoring the rule of law and turning towards violence.
[286] And that could come in regional conflicts.
[287] It could come within a state and a closely divided election.
[288] It could come between states.
[289] It could also be nonviolent, but reflect the dissolution of our union and everything that goes with it.
[290] You know, this is something that's not hard to imagine.
[291] We currently live in an environment and Major talked about this a little bit.
[292] We're not only are states boycotting each other, but we have states sending migrants to other states that they view as the other for them to deal with that problem rather than for us to deal with it in a federal national way, as immigration is a national problem.
[293] Those kinds of things are bellwethers for what we could see coming later.
[294] And Charlie, you asked about violence within states.
[295] So let's just understand one thing.
[296] You and I don't know each other well, but we know each other by reputation.
[297] You know I am not a wild -eyed speculative writer.
[298] Okay.
[299] I'm not a novelist.
[300] I'm a journalist who's lived in Washington since 1990.
[301] Okay.
[302] I am by nature cautious about these sorts of things.
[303] David is a lawyer that worked in the Justice Department.
[304] And trust me, it was a very big task for us to say to each other, you know what?
[305] We're going to open up this book with a portrayal of America's next civil war.
[306] That's a heavy thing.
[307] And there was actually a draft of that first chapter in which I had an orientation about the state of Texas beginning to refuse to provide federal revenue and urbanites fleeing Texas because parts of its border were yet to be secured.
[308] And David wisely cautioned me, said, look, that's too dramatic.
[309] That's too out there.
[310] We don't want to terrify people.
[311] We don't want to hyper -alarm them.
[312] Let's keep it within something that has room for their imagination and don't lead them in directions.
[313] but I thought about that and we discussed it intensely and we erred on the side of being cautious in the sense that we leave a lot open to a reader's interpretation.
[314] And I think it's proved to be more powerful than we originally imagined because people have done exactly that and they've come to us and said, that chapter scared me to death.
[315] And we're like, because of what we wrote, no, because what I was imagining on top of what you wrote.
[316] Right, right.
[317] That's the way I read it as well.
[318] And, you know, this is, I think, one of the real strengths of the book, because as I was reading it, I was thinking, you know, one of our problems right now, I think, one of the deficits we have is our failure of imagination, that we just have assumed that America was immune to history, that we were exceptional, that none of this could happen.
[319] And so the events of the last few years continually shocks us because we never really imagine so what could actually go wrong.
[320] How bad could it be, including this threat of violence, of Americans hating one another, turning on one another.
[321] And so we're seeing it in real time.
[322] But I do think it's important for us to not have this failure of imagination.
[323] Obviously, as you point out, not to over -hype it, not to, you know, put our, set our hair on fire, but also to understand what could happen.
[324] And the second thing that you emphasize in the book, though, is this crisis of trust.
[325] You write, democracy no longer suffers from a lack of participatory energy.
[326] It suffers from a lack of respect, allegiance, knowledge, humanity, and most of all trust.
[327] We just don't trust these institutions or one another, and, you know, people are unhappy with democracy, with the result.
[328] Here's my question.
[329] If that's where we're at here, where your book is titled The Big Truth, we're living in the era of the big lie, and we don't trust one another.
[330] How do you fix that?
[331] Have we already passed the tipping point?
[332] Are we already, you know, deeply midstream on this?
[333] Because if we, once you've lost trust, that strikes me as one of the most difficult things to recover in your personal life and in your political life as well.
[334] Yeah, I think Major and I probably both agree that we're not past the tipping point, and that's why we wrote the book.
[335] that we think there is time to course correct here.
[336] But the fact that it appears that a majority of the Republican electorate right now believes the lies that the election were stolen, that that has led to, you know, one of the things we haven't talked too much here in this conversation, and we talk quite a bit about in the book, is the just devastating onslaught of abuse, harassment, and threats that the civil servants who run elections, the professionals, men and women, Republicans, and Democrats all across the country have faced for the last two years, not because they did a bad job, but because they did a great job.
[337] They really achieved the greatest triumph of the American democratic process in history.
[338] And I think it starts really with protecting and supporting them in many ways.
[339] They've been working overtime to try to continue to answer questions about the 2020 election that have been answered time and time again.
[340] They have documented the way in which the 2020 election was even more secure than the 2016 election, even though the same people did not raise any concerns about the 2016 election whatsoever.
[341] We point out the fact that many of the election deniers running for office now that you mentioned earlier were on the same exact ballots in 2020 that the presidential race was on.
[342] They possessed the authority to question the election because of the same ballots that the presidential election was on.
[343] More intentional, unintentional comedy.
[344] Yeah, I mean, it's remarkable.
[345] I mean, I can't bring myself to laugh about it because I work with election officials all over the country and there's hardly an election conference that I go to where someone isn't crying because of the just constant harassment that they're facing as civil servants.
[346] I mean, being an election official, there's no fame and fortune that goes along with that.
[347] case scenario for an election official is the Wednesday after an election that they're anonymous, and they faced constant constant harassment.
[348] How close did we come to the edge here?
[349] You know, you talked with Liz Cheney about that, and she said, we all looked into the abyss and responsible public servants and responsible elected officials have a duty to pull the country back from that, and you walk through the events in the weeks after the election, which we're getting a much clearer picture of now.
[350] I mean, it was alarming at the time, but I don't think we had any idea how bad it was, including the preparation of an executive order dated December 16th in which Trump was contemplating ordering the U .S. military to seize ballot boxes and declare a national emergency to hold on to power.
[351] So how close to the abyss did we come?
[352] Very is probably the best way to describe it.
[353] And by saying we were very close to it, Charlie, we are not saying that there weren't guardrails and they did not hold, but they were pressed and battered and bumped into in ways we have never experienced before.
[354] And not only were those guardrails damaged, they continue to be damaged by those who profit either politically or financially from the perpetuation of the big lie.
[355] and that has become something of an article of faith or a litmus test within the Republican Party is not a problem for the facts.
[356] The facts are never going to go away.
[357] The facts about the 2020 election are immovable.
[358] And I do believe this is a passing spasm, deeply dangerous, but a passing spasm for a great legacy party in this country.
[359] I do believe over time, the Republican Party will come to its senses, but I can no longer say that with the kind of conviction.
[360] I would have two years ago because of all the evidence that's in our book and the political dimensions and depth of the big lie.
[361] But I do believe ultimately because it's unsustainable long term, it will go away.
[362] But the damage that will be done in that interregnum, that intermediary period worries us a great deal.
[363] And this executive order is the most malevolent, legally unjustified manifestation of an idea, I lost.
[364] No, wait, I didn't lose.
[365] It was stolen.
[366] How do I stop that?
[367] What are the tools?
[368] Invent me something.
[369] And in addition to that executive order, there was memoranda dispatched to state legislature.
[370] Say that your election was invalid and we will step in and fix it.
[371] I mean, those are tools of the federal government never before contemplated by any chief executive at this country by several orders of magnitude.
[372] So it was close, closer than we imagined on January 6th when people still thought, reasonably, it was spontaneous.
[373] No, we really can't say that anymore.
[374] And I think the difficulty in coming to that conclusion is an emotional place that a lot of Republicans simply can't get to because it's too painful.
[375] It's simply too painful.
[376] So I'd only ask them, imagine if this scenario played out under the Obama Justice Department and Hillary Clinton was the litigant.
[377] What would you've said about that?
[378] I think we can imagine.
[379] What would have been your sense of the rule of law under that scenario?
[380] You'd have said, we have to protect it.
[381] We have to protect it.
[382] Yes, we do.
[383] You would have been right then, just as those who criticize extrajudicial and unconstitutional mechanisms to hold on to power in regards to former President Trump our right to vehemently criticize him.
[384] But to David's point as well, yes, that there were the guardrails that held, but what we're seeing in real time now is the ongoing effort to dismantle those guardrails, to get rid of those election officials, to make sure that the next time around, that there are not people who are going to resist all of this.
[385] And, you know, David, you've been talking about, you know, these courageous election workers, but right now around the country, we've had multiple reports about the threats of the intimidation, the number of them who just throw up their hands and say, I don't need this shit and who are leaving.
[386] So 2024 might look very different.
[387] You're getting at the crux of it, I think, of the concerns that we have.
[388] I mean, we have a very decentralized election system in this country.
[389] We rely upon hundreds of thousands of professional election officials and 10 ,000 jurisdictions and volunteer poll workers from across the political spectrum.
[390] And it's actually remarkable.
[391] They've been pressured.
[392] They've been exploited.
[393] People are traveling the country trying to get them to violate their oaths of office, to violate the law, to give access to voting machines that is illegal and would yield no evidence of any problems whatsoever.
[394] And despite that, we only know of a handful of those hundreds of thousands of people.
[395] I can literally count the number of places where there's been some success by the election deniers on one hand.
[396] It's really remarkable how they've stood fast, regardless of their political party.
[397] But I do know in talking to election officials all over the country that there are unprecedented numbers of people who are retiring in the two years since 2020.
[398] And that would be a problem in and of itself.
[399] We're losing a generation of professionalism in that.
[400] And we have become more professional in that in election administration than ever before.
[401] Just think about Florida.
[402] In 2000, Florida was an international laughing stock for election administration.
[403] And in 2020, thanks to the county supervisors of elections largely in Florida and their staffs, Democrats, Republicans throughout the state, Florida was actually a model.
[404] No lines, no problems, reporting out election results early.
[405] And that's a great example of the professionalism we've seen nationwide.
[406] And yet we're losing a generation of that.
[407] And then the other question becomes, what does it get replaced with?
[408] And I'll tell you honestly, I'm, even if election deniers get into those positions.
[409] I think thanks to the professional standards that have been created, thanks to paper ballots, audits, and other laws that have been placed around the country, we have greater transparency and security in elections than ever before.
[410] It's really difficult for a corrupt election official to anoint the loser of an election as the winner.
[411] The judiciary held up largely, I think that's going to be very difficult to do.
[412] It's not impossible, but it's difficult to do.
[413] But we do see an erosion of these, an attack on these guardrails of democracy that could create an environment that is ripe for political violence.
[414] And if you have an election denier as Secretary of State who doesn't support his or her local election officials, who raises questions about an election in which the candidate of his party lost post -election without any evidence whatsoever, it could incite violence in a way that we've never seen before, post -election could validate the view of a stolen election in a way we've never seen before.
[415] Again, this keeps me up at night.
[416] The book is The Big Truth, Upholding Democracy in the Age of the Big Lie by Major Garrett and David Becker.
[417] Major and David, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.
[418] Charlie, thanks so much.
[419] Yeah, thanks, Charlie.
[420] And thank you all for listening to today's Bullwork podcast.
[421] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[422] We will be back tomorrow.
[423] We'll do this all over again.