Bonus: The Lincoln Project founders on the future of the GOP

the founding members of the Lincoln Project. You might have heard of them this election season. They're a super pac started by former Republicans who wanted to defeat Donald Trump and in fact hold accountable all those who violate their oath to the Constitution, regardless of party. I was joined remotely, of course, by a pool plitical powerhouse trio Jennifer Horne, Reed Gallen and Steve Schmidt. Our conversation was recorded on Tuesday, January.

We're sharing it with you here with just some light editing, so enjoy. Given what has happened in recent weeks and months, do you all feel that our democracy is in fact in jeopardy. Um, Steve, since you're the least opinionated, I'll start with you. What happened on January six was was the following incited to violence, ay election of white supremacist, white nationalists, conspiracy theory theorist Baptist, Proud Boys, extremist militias attact the United States capital um and the capital fell

to them. The American flag was ripped down, Maga flag was was raised in its place, American flag was used to bludge in a Capitol police officer. Why were they there? Why were they there on January six? Well, they were there because there was a constitutionally mandated process. That's a moment of majesty, right, that involves the peaceful transition of power.

It's been uninterrupted in this country since. So when you think about all of the great things that have been invented in America, airplanes, television, spaceships that could land and return from the moon, the Internet, right, the list goes on, the greatest invention in all the history of the country is the peaceful transition of power. George the third asked what would Washington do? And he was told that Washington

would go home. And he said, if he does that will be the greatest man of this or any age. Literally the first human being in two thousand years who could have been an emperor to walk away from the power. John Adams, the first president, defeated, as Reid points out,

an election decided in the House of Representatives. He leaves the process of the transfer of power was not stopped, but it wasn't peaceful, with blood soaked and with blood sooked, because that mob was incited by the president to desertify certified state elections and to different franchise millions of black votes. We'll talk more about that in a in a second. But why were they there. They were there because they

were incited by lying. We should understand something about national socialism, Nazism, and the fascist movement. Anti Semitism was a feature, not the foundation. Foundation of it was the lie, so alies they were incited, and the why they were excited about was that the freest a fair selection in American history was in fact stolen, stolen by who, by those people, those people in the inner cities, Black Americans. So they were incited. Democracy is fueled sustained by faith and belief

in the legitimacy of the system. It's of all the terrible things that Trump did over his four catastrophic years, including his simplicity through his lying in incompetence and malfeasance, the depths of hundreds of thousands of people that didn't have to die because of COVID, including that, including the cajun An orphaning of children, including that. The worst thing he did was what he did at the end, when

he poisoned faith and belief in American democracy. Incited by a president, the capital falls, and then one forty seven members of Congress rise for the purpose of busin enfranchising millions of black Americans with the vote, for the purpose of installing into the presidency for a second term the person who lost as opposed to a person who won, which would have led to the fall of the American Republicans two forty fourth year if that action would have

been successful. So we have the propagandists, we have the financers, we have the cynical elites like Josh Hally, We have all of the ecosystem around the charismatic cult of personality. This is an autocratic movement at of the country we would vote for if the election were tomorrow as a floor. This is this is a serious threat to American democracy

for certain. In fact, read you know, I was shocked when I read these statistics last night of Americans still insist that Joe Biden was not the legitimate winner of the election, and one of Americans say they either strongly support or somewhat somewhat support the stormy of the capital Read I mean this is still today, and Jennifer, I want you to weigh on this, to weigh in on this as well. But how could that be? How could you know? How did we get here? And how could

those those people still respond that way? Well, how we got here, I think is a longer story that needs to be told in its own right. Um. But I think that if you look at this, you know, through even going back to the fall, Uh, when candidate Trump was running, remember that he started to delegitimize the the outcome. Then when he thought he was going to lose to Hillary Clinton. Um, he always made himself, you know, a

victim of the press, a victim of his opponents. Uh. And then as we saw last last year, he started the same thing to delegitimize the process again, whether or not that was absentee balloting, mail in balloting, early voting, um, you know, whatever it was, because again, in case he could lose or would lose, uh, he needed to have an excuse. In fact, Mary Trump, the President's niece, who we spoke with many times throughout the course of this campaign,

said this is what was going to happen. She said that something like this was going to happen. And we talked to her, I think in mayor June of last year, and we started saying we had we had been saying to folks, supporters and others, you know, the campaign's over when we defeat Donald Trump. We changed that. We said this campaign isn't over until Joe Biden takes the oath

of office on January. Because we understood, and I think Mary was hugely helpful to our understanding of this, is that so long as Donald Trump feels personally literally physically safe in whatever it is he does, he does not care about the outside world. And so he gives that speech. He watches these people marching, He's sitting in the residents of White House, He's in a fortress, surrounded by men and women who are dedicated and you know, promised to

give their lives on his behalf if necessary. He feels no compunction, no compunction whatsoever about what he's seeing. What is he most upset about that they're not as well dressed as he'd like them to be. So where do we get to this place? Um, first and foremost, it starts with the leader. As you know, Steve has a lineup of seven pieces of Trump is M that will

be making more public here as we go forward. But the point is is that he systematically convinced somewhere between a quarter and a third of the country that everything he said was correct. You had a bunch of otherwise probably normal Republicans, as Jennifer can attest to, who just

decided this the way it was going to go. And then I think lastly, Um, you know we something we were talking about right before we joined the crowd, which you know you cannot underestimate the effect that Fox oh in in uh News, Max, Twitter, Facebook especially, I think Facebook is a is an open sewer pipe into American society.

All of these places where these folks gathered, where they got themselves spun up, where this information, whether or not was Q and on or whatever it was, went back and forth, and ultimately what you saw was a bunch of people frankly, and you know, in sort of tech parlance, jumped the air gap. They went from social media to

the real world. And what we saw was January six, Will you, Jennifer speak on behalf of the normal Republicans that read referred to people who might have supported President Trump because of policy reasons, who weren't necessarily buying into every aspect of the cult of personality. But we're on the same page in terms of tax cuts and deregulation and stimulating the economy and some of the other positions

he held. I mean, what percentage of those seventy a million people constitute people who who felt more aligned policy wise with this with this former president. Um, I would like to believe it was the majority of them, that it was a large number of them. Um. I think when you know, first of all, I'm no longer a Republican. You know, a couple of weeks ago, I left the party and registered as an independent. And the reason was it was before January six, But it was what was

leading up to it that pushed me to make that move. Finally, I believe that the majority of the Republicans who voted for Donald Trump fully reject what happened on January six that that is not their headspace, that is not what they were looking for. But I think it's really important as we, you know, to Read's point, the story of how we got here is a long story, and that could be a conversation all by itself. But how did we get to you know, how did we get to

this moment? How did we have such a rapid deterioration over the last four years. It wasn't because of Donald Trump. It was because of the Republican Party, the Republican Party and the activists and the leaders and the you know, the Rona Romney McDaniels of the world, and the state party chairs and the state party committees. They gave Donald Trump a home. They created an arena, a playing field

for Donald Trump. And they were all in. At any time at the beginning of Trump's presidency, Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy, you know, any group of actual Republican leaders could have come together with a show of force, a show of political force, and reigned this president in. It's the Republican Party that empowered him and that welcomed that

that you were just talking about. They gave a home to those people who you know, tore down the American flag, who threw um a a a fire extinguisher at a Capitol police officer, ultimately killing him, who you know went in there with the intention. We have to be really clear about what happened on the sixth. Their intention, their vocalized intention, was to will overturn a free, fair, legitimate American election and kill some of people in the process.

They hung a noose and went looking for Mike Pence. The Republican Party gave those people a home. And what we see happening at this moment going forward, even though Trump has lost that, you know, that was the party's

moment to say, Okay, we're going to reset. Instead, they are fully embracing everything that Trump stood for, and instead of trying to put it behind them, they are building the future of the party on those people who stormed the Capitol on January six It seems to me, Steve, there was a critical moment that would have allowed more moderate Republicans to recapture the Republican Party, and that was

the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives. Now it was the largest, the most bipartisan impeachment in history, yet only ten Republicans supported impeachment. M can you help us understand and all three of you please weigh in on this. Some of our elected officials, Republicans who seem so terrified about speaking out still against Donald Trump. Is it because they do not want to alienate his base, They do not want to be primaried, They want to hold onto power.

But you know, it's it's it's still shocking to a lot of people that morality has not um eclipsed political ambition. Well, we live in an age of cowardice. Political cowardice in the extreme, the likes of which, despite politics always being a business that the American people held in somewhat low with scheme right, I mean, character of politicians in a

free republic has always been fair game. And American people have always been hard on on their politicians, and that in that regard, what we what we have now are people that are faithless to the idea and ideals of the country and and to their oaths. They live in terror of being tweeted at by Donald Trump, and so they sacrifice over the last four years every principle that they help. I just want to say something. You just go around very quickly the flywheeling. The elements that are

necessary for an autocratic movement to take root. The first is the leader, right, Donald Trump is clearly the leader. Second of the propagandist, the people that rely right and sustained the leaders lies and turn those lies into lies of authority, where what's true is what the leader says, despite what evidence reputes it, whether that's evidence before your eyes or intellectual evidence about the elections, straight lie from trun Spicer's first lie, inaugural lie to the stolen election line.

Lies of authority that require the suspension of disbelief. Right. But that's not enough. It's not enough to have the propagandists. Not enough to have the followers. You need the cynicism of the elite. You need the Josh Holly's, you need the Kevin McCarthy's. You need the Ted Cruz, the people who are arrogant enough to believe that they can ride the tiger. Josh Barley has contempted like I can't describe. For those people that sit outside rest in Viking horns invests,

it's contempt for them. There an ends to a means right. But that's not enough. You need to shoot. I have to go along get along people who accommodate this because it's easier. I don't want the Trump people calling me right if you can, as Republican members said, well, I'm getting death threats, then if you can't districtorge your duties, resigned from your job because you took an oath to

the Constitution of the United States. But when you when you look at that fly week, right, the cynicism of the elites like Holly combined with the sheep gets you to where we are. And so when you look at the House now, right, the determinative vote is the January sixth vote. We're a hundred forty House members voted to

throw out the election. There are reasons that I profoundly disagree with them, where people of good faith could differ about the question of impeachment in the final weeks of a president's term, not on the vote on the January sets. And so what you have in the House is Liz Cheney is the leader of the House Conservatives, Kevin McCarthy as the leader of the House Autocrats. Liz Cheney is the leader of the Republican Democracy Caucus, which is smaller

than the House Autocracy Caucus. And so this conflict that Kevin McCarthy seems to be brewing because he's weak in corners, because Corporate America is walking away from financing any of

these people involved. On that January six vote, right, the party will get more extreme right in twenty two right, the Q and On wing of the Republican Party is going to roll over the establishment wing like the RMACH did the Belgian Army in n There are fourth day parties right growing not shrinking, that are held and controlled by Q and On people. The Oregon Party, the California Party, the Texas Party, the Arizona Party. Like these of the Texas Party has Q and On mottos as its motors.

So so so Trump holds the party build the levers of power in the party. The state parties are increasingly controlled by the conspiracy theorists and the grand roots energy of the party. And the people who tend to vote in the primaries are the people who believe the election was stolen. As the next presidential campaign begins, the first article of faith used to be you had to go to Iowa or New Hampshire and establish your conservative bona fighters.

Now the third requirement of being a serious candidate will be to embrace the big line that the election was stolen, that Trump was betrayed, He was betrayed by these apostate Republicans like the Secretary of State and Georgia, the governor of Georgia, or the list of their villains betrayed. The stab in the back theory is always part of this, and that's where all of this is going. Buck. Here's the good news. It please. There is the good news,

though that is terrible for the Republican Party. As that fire consumes the Republican Party. We want it to burn. Let it burn hot, because the hotter it burns, the smaller the chances of these people winning a national election because they will shrink as part of a national footprint. And hopefully over the next six to eight years, this movement will disappear or be put back underground because it

is brought to electoral submission. We can never lose a national election to this coalition of people ever again, because if we do, it may be the last election we have. They don't like them, Okay, Steve hold On free So Steve is saying it's going to take six to eight years for this whole movement to burn out, so that means, I mean, what is going to happen. A lot of people are commenting, Okay, we get it, but what can

be done about this? If anything, Steve, you made it sound like a fat to complete that this this you know, part of the party is going to continue to rise and continue to have more power. Read do you agree? And what about the prospect of Donald Trump starting his own party, the Patriot Party? What impact will that have on the cohesion within the Republican Party? Could have burned out faster and could moderates kind of rise up in in opposition? Well, I mean, I think I do agree,

you know, with with what Steve has said. I think look, um, Rob Portman, senator from Ohio, long long considered a moderate Republican, announced that he's not running for reelection. Um. He's not running for re election for a couple of reasons. Probably one is because he just doesn't want to hang out with these people anymore, and who could blame him, And too, because he probably saw what I think we had seen for a while, which is he wasn't to win a

primary in Ohio next year. Whoever Trump's chosen candidate was was going to get all of Trump's support. They would they would roll over Portman, who is not equipped to handle a fight like that. And and they're saying Jim Jordan, right, Jim Jordan's might might he might? But I mean, so

here's some Here's a little bit of good news. Is that if if we get truly like q and on Maga people running for the U. S. Senate next year in primaries, and they win, you could have another two thousand and ten like we saw with the with the Tea Party, in which these Republicans are so far outside the mainstream that even regular human beings such as that we have left won't have anything to do with them. So I think that that goes to Steve's point about

them burning out. Look, I think the good news here is I think we should look back to this past election, UM, at least on Joe Biden's election, which was you know, eighty million, one million Americans chose Joe Biden. Now there's a whole bunch of discussion about why these other seventy four million made the choice they did. But let's stick with this. Biden built, you know, one of the largest

broadest and deepest coalitions in American presidential history. UM. I think what you're seeing is an awakening by many many Americans who may not be Republicans or Democrats, are partisans of any kind, even if they're registered, that we have taken this for granted for too long. Um that we sat back on our heels, We didn't care. We don't like our politicians, we don't think it matters anyway, my vote doesn't matter. Well, it does matter, and I think

you're starting to see that. I think you're starting to see people of all stripes again, from states and cities across the country who are now waking up and understanding that we must take control. I thought it was fascinating that Josh Holly, who might be the whiniest want to be dictator that ever lived, second only to Donald Trump, said that he did not believe that it was American citizens rights to criticize him as an elected official for his actions. I mean, if I mean, this guy's a

constitutional attorney. He he clerked for John Roberts at the Supreme Court. He is not a stupid guy. He just as a sensitive guy, and he understood that people started standing up against him. I think what you've seen with corporate America running for the hills from these people is a sign that when Americans can individually and then collectively stand up. But they can and will take the people

to account that need it. But again, the thing is we cannot allow is we cannot allow a that these people to go uh you know, um, they must be held accountable, uh and be We must keep folks focused on what it is we're doing, which is we must must must win in two and we must win in twenty four, Steve said. He noted Ronald Reagan once said we're only one generation or generation away from losing democracy. Were now one election of it. And so is it possible?

It is? Is the fight going to be easy? It's not, and it's not going to be sure. Six to eight years is the short run. Twenty years is the long run. I mean what we saw here is, um, you know, Trump let we invited Trump the vampire into the house, and he let all the other vampires into the house too. Alright, we're gonna have to put him all back out again.

And it's going to be race by race, state by state, legislature by legislature, and it's going to take all of us who really believe that none of the rest of this is possible um, you know when when I mean America and bending the arc of justice, the ark of history towards justice and a freer and fairer and more equitable America or more prosperous America. If you want those things, that democracy is the only way, because, as we know, authoritarianism never leads to that. More with the founders of

the Lincoln Project. Right after this, let's return to my conversation with the founders of the Lincoln Project. Jennifer, do you think I want to ask you about the prospect of of Donald Trump forming his own party and how that changes the equation at all? And secondarily, demographics are changing significantly in this country. By there's going to be a majority minority population. Many of these Trump supporters, uh, you know, are older, mostly white. Can you address both

those things, Jennifer. When I was chairman in New Hampshire, I used to One of the things I used to say to, you know, county committees when I was driving around the state is that the party is not going to die if we lose. With all due respect, the party is not going to die if we lose a

bunch of over sixty five angry white people. The party dies when you lose young people, when you lose um, you know, first generation voters, when you lose minority voters, when African American voters are Latino voters, and you know, that's that's when the party dies. And we've lost those people. We have lost those voters. Although sorry to interrupt, Jennifer, I mean, I think Donald Trump did surprisingly well with I mean with Latinos and even some black Yeah. Democrats

need to pay attention to that, do they not? Absolutely? And you're right, especially about Latino voters. Absolutely, um, but our party is not speaking to the and and here's a small piece of it that that I you know, you know, we should highlight two because one of the things that the Republican Party will tell you is that Donald Trump turned out more voters than any other you know,

candidate and within these parameters. Ever before seventy four million, seventy four point two million voters, uh, Joe Biden turned out over eighty million voters like we have this. We had this tremendous surge of um of interests, of engagement, of you know, electoral engagement in this um, in this campaign. And I think that that really is a reflection more a reflection of where we are as a country. UM,

that a lot of other things. The division is clear, the division is obvious, but I think those people are coming forward and engaging. But kind of back to the original point that the Republican Party is not speaking to those voters who are who are rising up, and if they can't, if they continue to not be able to

do that, they're going to continue to lose elections. UM. As far as the idea of a new party, I strategically I don't really get it, frankly, from Donald Trump's point of view, because if he starts a Patriot Party, he doesn't get to put candidates in Republican primaries. Does he like It's I'm not sure that it advances his

influence and his power to the maximum degree possible. But there's no question that whether he decides to try to poison Republican primaries or you know, roll out some kind of new party, there's no question that Donald Trump's influence is going to be to weekend, the Republican Party to divide Republican voters is Republican candidates who will lose elections as a result of what he's doing. What he's trying

to do, and you know the idea of this Patriot party. Um. The problem in bigger and that, however, is not that Donald Trump is in this moment able to have that influence. I'll go back to what I said at the beginning. The problem is that the entire the Republican Party leadership continues to embrace him. They want to give him that party they are they're embracing the idea of Donald Trump having that kind of influence. They are taking Trump is m forward and making this conscious choice not to leave

it behind even though he has lost the election. It's I guess my point is always I put the responsibility on party leaders. It's not Donald Trump. They gave Donald Trump the influence that he has. It's the party leaders that I hold accountable. Can I just say one thing about that, because you brought this up, I mean, the one thing you noted, and you're absolutely right, was that that Trump gained with with non college educated Latinos and African American men. And and I think what we see

there as a couple of things. One is that I think that among Latinos, right, I mean, look, one of my best friends, my best man, his parents are from Mexico, and he always says, the problem with you white people is that you think we're all the same, when, of course there's you know, Puerto Ricans, there's Cubans, there's Mexicans,

there's Hondurans, there's you know what you name it. They all have their own cultures, they all have their own view of the world that you know, we sort of say, okay, well, they're Latinos in Texas, therefore we're just going to talk to them like this. Um, we should also understand that, you know, a lot of Latinos are doing what the country has long asked of our immigrants to do. They

are assimilating. So they may be of Latino descent as I am of Irish descent, right, but that may or may not any longer sort of you know, indicate how I'm going to vote for something. And then I think also there's the piece of you know, if they're you know, I always use this idea of there's there's a six man crew on the I four corridor in Orlando, Florida in August. Right, it's nine degrees, Right, there's three white

guys too. Latinos in an African American they may not go to the same place when they go home at night. Their kids might not go to the same schools, but when they're standing out there and they watched the rich lady in the range Rover drive by, they probably feel

pretty similar about the world. Now, that's not an excuse to storm the Capitol, right, but it should indicate to us that there are a whole heck of a lot of voters in this country who Democrats used to own, lock stock and barrel that now feel like they have no place to go, and with with left nowhere to go, they're making a bad choice. Not all the time, remember, I mean, Trump is still losing African Americans two to

eighteen or whatever it is. It's an but, but it could be a trend that that Democrats should pay attention to, because, again, as they said, none of this occurs in a vacuum. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Let's jump back into my conversation with the founder of the Lincoln Project. I asked Steve Schmidt what he thinks Donald Trump will do now. Well, I think he's the leader of America's autocratic political movement. I think he controls

the Republican Party. I think he is praying I think he's going to be hunted, um, hunted by jurisdictions in the States, um by his preditors. I think it's gonna be tremendous reluctance to do deal flow with Donald Trump. But I think Donald Trump, um, you know, from the incitement issues, legal jeopardy there, legal jeopardy. I think the tax issues in the state of New York, UM, he has three hundred million dollars with creditors coming to I think it's gonna be very hard for Trump to get

the money he needs. And I think he's pursued for the balance of his of his life. But he will yield considerable political power inside the Republican Party, maybe maintaining his complete hold on it. But that movement should be train game as he does that in the short in the short to medium firm hopefully. Well. I was going to say, you know, he's the one that famously said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose

any supporters. Jennifer, do you think all these the legal repercussions of some of his activities, some all these different lawsuits in different jurisdictions, whether we're talking about Georgia or New York wherever. Do you think it will actually have an impact on Trump is um per se um. I think that he's likely to lose some percentage of support. If you're talking about like polling, do you or don't

you support Donald Trump. I think they're gonna be more Republicans in particular who are willing to say, um, you know, he shouldn't run again, things like that. I don't think it's going to have a significant um impact on his real the real influence that he has over the party, you know, in the in the in the immediate future,

you know, the next s four to eight years. Um. I think that that group of Republicans who are with Donald Trump are to your point, with him no matter what he does, standing out in the middle of Fifth Avenue, um. So I and I think that what we're going to see, um is an expansion of an increase of this conspiracy mentality, this big line mentality kind of growing, kind of making its way through the Republican Party. Everything is going to

have to be a big line now. It's it's it's going to be that the courts and you know, the second District of New York are all conspiring against Donald Trump. That Deutsche Bank is lying to take down don Donald Trump. You know what, it's all going to become part for the for his base. This is all just going to continue to feed that idea that the entire world is somehow lying about and conspiring to take down Trump. I think that's going to continue to fuel the Republican Party

and a great to a great degree. Well read. You know, obviously, the Information super Highway, as we once called the Internet, is the road where the big lie is perpetuated and delivered to people's homes and reinforced. Um, will any kind of tech regulation uh put you know, damp in this kind of messaging and this kind of orthodoxy or is the genie simply out of the bottle? Read? You know? I well, you know it's uh what does it say?

You can't you can't yell fire in a crowded theater like Facebook is like you know, is like yelling fire in a crowded theater the size of the United States. You know, it's it doesn't get to claim I'm just a platform and therefore I can do anything I want and the people on it can do anything they want. And I single out Facebook just because they're the biggest and the baddest. I mean, you have Steve, you have gal like Steve Bannon who says I want to be head the FBI director and Dr Facci, I want to

stick their heads on pikes. And Zuckerberg goes into an employee meeting and says, well, that's not really a violation of our term of service. It's not How is that possible If I said that? Right? If I said it on my Facebook page, which I don't have, my guess

is the FBI would be knocking on my door. But because it's Steve Bannon, it's okay, um, And so I think they do have responsibilit I mean, I like to say this, like Facebook, all of this technology that we're on right now, none of this would exist but for a bunch of nerds in the Pentagon basement forty years ago. Right, So once in a while, I'd like Mr Zuckerberg to remember like that without all of this, he wouldn't be

where he sits now. If he doesn't want to be an American company, he can move to Singapore wherever it's going to be. But I would venture to say that the reason why he was so in on Trump's victory was because he knows it so long as a Trump isn't in power, there's no any trust coming for him under Biden administration. Much harder to say um, and so is it is the genie out of the bottle? It's

it is um. But I would say this is that when you see even Facebook, uh, YouTube and Twitter pushing Trump off of those platforms, uh, it pushes you know, the supporters further and fur and further into the fringes. And here's what I would say is that the amount of friction that is that hap happens when that happened when he's on gab and parlor instead of Twitter and Facebook, I think does dramatically increase the amount of work it

takes for somebody to find what he's saying. And I think those are a lot of places where otherwise sort of what I would call casual Trump supporters and I don't even know what that means, really aren't going to go to those places. Right if you didn't just pick up your phone and see what he's saying, but you've got to go to someplace you wouldn't otherwise go. I think that that could be very harmful to him. And

I think Jennifer was right. I think there were a lot of Americans and Republicans, even Trump supporters who saw what they saw at the Capital on the sixth then were beside themselves. It didn't want anything to do with it. It was It was amazing to meet Jennifer. How quickly conservative media was able to pivot from the insurrection on January six and what happened there to cries of censorship

once Donald Trump was taken off Twitter. And I'm curious if you all think at uh that he should be taken off permanently off social media or is that going to create even more problems and a bigger rallying cry for his supporters. Steve wanted, well, either one of you, Steve or Jennifer, you want to take that. I'll just say that grievance is the high octane fuel of Trump. Is um, always has um. But look, Twitter has terms of service, right, they have policies. He violates the policies.

He's incited violence and insurrection, and they have said, they have said Steve that they're taking him off permanently off to now UM, I do think right, it raises a larger question. Let's say this as a First Amendment absolutist um the concentration of power in the hands of the tech over lords is too much. And so here we

are in the third decade of the twenty century. Right, If you just back up a couple of years, right, and you look at Mark zuckerbrouman tour around America that had the trappings of a presidential campaign, where you look at the speculation around Cheryl Sandberg, where you look even that the society but bestow some type of credibility, some type of wisdom on Mark Zuckerberg, right, because he built Facebook, Right, and so because Mark Zuckerberg is worth thirty five billion

dollars and he's twenty seven, right, Mark Zuckerberg might have relevant opinions on all these other subjects. Um. I think that what we've discovered is he's a pretty shallow thinker about most subjects other than Facebook. And so when we look at the totality of the power of the tech industry at time, as a society, through our political processes, who evaluate that much in the same way slightly over a hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt looked at giving the

American people a square deal. When you look at the concentration of power and wealth into a few YouTube, too few hands, and so I just want to say something real quick. I mean, we're talking about how did seventy four million people vote for Trumped? His country doesn't have

four dollars cash available for an emergency. Their dignity has been stripped away, and so they hear the sirens song of the demi gods who wants to smash everything because the system they were taught to believe in hasn't delivered for I mean, we we need to have the humility great to understand that. And I think we need to look at all of these companies and understand right that we have a problem with big in this country, right, whether it's big business, big media, big tex big finance,

big politics. Everywhere you see big, you see the little guy getting it. And I think the at in this era when we look at these tech companies and everything else, proper scrutiny of big right at the expense of a concept of the public good is an area of politics that's a really fruitful one that we ought to be talking about, because too much of this debate is the same stuff we've been talking about with increasingly little relevance for the last forty years. So so is it worth.

I mean, how do you make some of the disenfranchised voters in this country we feel more included in the process. Somebody is asking, is there really any point in trying to convert any of the seventy four million who voted to re elect the former president. It seems the strategy needs to be outnumbered them at the polls versus trying to convince these people the earth is round when they

believe it is flat. Um, so, you know, I guess they're there are two approaches, right, can you is it is it too late to make many of these people who did support Donald Trump who are angry? You know, I watched this movie nomad Land last night with Francis McDorman, and it's about people who live in vans and my husband and I said, you can understand why people are just so frustrated. They're you know, they're going from place

to place, job to job loading boxes for Amazon. But is there a way to reach out or you know, is that is that futile? Well? Look, I mean I think there are some who are never going to be converted. Um, you know, if it's of the country, whatever they're going to be, they're going to be with Trump or with with the grievance or whatever. Let me just say one thing about the movie you watch. I haven't seen it, but the idea of the folks moving job to job

and these things. If you look at the people who stormed the Capitol on January six, these were did not appear to be people who were suffering from economic anxiety. These are people who who had the money and the wherewithal to get to Washington, d C. Find themselves a place to live, feed themselves, and you know, in some cases where somewhere between five and twenty tho dollars worth

of gear to storm the capital. I mean, these were not These were not folks who you know, you know, you know, left the hollow of eastern Kentucky and and thumb their way east. That's kind of that's kind of a massive generalization, don't you think read well? I mean my point is this is that is that if there were that many angry people, then millions of people would have marched on Washington. The people who chose to march on Washington, who chose to incite violence. Again, maybe you're right,

I probably am over generalizing. My point is is that when Mr Buffalo heads main story out of jail is that they wouldn't feed him organic food and he was upset about it. It appears to me that we maybe are over generalizing in the other direction, which is not everybody who voted for Trump lives in a hill build elogy book, but in fact were people who maybe had these longstanding beliefs and Trump opened the door to let them into society. You know, let me. I just want

to I just want to say something. But first off, it's not the case, right that all seventy four million of them would fall into the q and on camp, right to the anti mask camp, right into the craziest stereotypes of it. So let's say the number is what the number is on the basis of the polls, you know, support the storming of the capital or understand it or whatever the number? Right that you know that the dead enders, right, I'm not particularly interested in understanding. Um. What I'm interested

in and is making sure that they don't attain political power. Right. I want them to understand the majority of us in this country, right, we are the majority. Right, Like, and I'll say that again, we are the majority. Right. The president called for unity. Unity does not mean submitting to the delusions of the losers of the election about what

unity is unity. Right, he called for around national purpose the crushiest disease, and to defend democracy, right to grow the economy, to do the things that are necessary to prepare people as best we can for the world that we live in and give them an equal shot at success. Right, That's what our politics is. But I want them to

understand something on behalf of us, the majority. We live in a two hundred and forty four year old constitutional republic that was handed to us through blood sacrifice of thirteen generations of Americans who come to us from every nation in the world, and who built a great country.

We're exceptional, not because our people can shout USA the loudest, because this nation, of all of the people of all of the nations of the world, that come from a people where every language was spoken amongst us founded an idea, has done more good in the world than all of the other countries of the world put together. From the beginning of time. We have fed more people, we have freed more people, we have cured more people. We're the

United States of America. Our gift to the world is the idea that a free people can work together and be sovereign and govern themselves. We are trustees of the greatest inheritance that anybody could receive American citizenship through birth. And those Americans that weren't born here but are here as Americans today that took that out understand this more acutely than most of us who were born here. But my message to those people is this, we have no

compromise to offer you at all. Our goal is to put you into submission, to defeat you, to purge you from our national life. The que and non conspiracy garis the white supremacists, the white nationalists, the racist the violent maligions. Let's stop pretending that they get a seat at the table. Let's stop pretending that they aren't the threat that they are, because they've done exactly what they told us they were

going to do over and over and over again. In the majority of this country have to understand that what unites us more than what ever divides us on an issue difference is this fundamental belief in the continuation of the American Republic, where we decide who to give political power to on a temporary basis, and we evaluated every two years, every four years and decide what direction we want to go in. We are in charge, not the

Trump family. When Matt Gates went out there and he said that Donald Trump is the forever leader of the Republican Party, the leader of the America First movement. Right, I hope he forms a Patriot Party and he splits the Republican Party's power and have it makes it more difficult for them to win. But understand this his Patriot Party, whether he files paperwork or not, it exists. It's a fascistic, autocratic movement within the Republican Party. It's the majority within

the Republican Party. And that fight, right, it's going to be a fight that we are all stakeholders in and we and we need to understand that because if we don't, right, we riffed losing an election to people who may not ever give up that power. Again, I'm gonna let you

have the last word read. So. One of my one of my favorite musicians is a guy named Jason Isabel from from Alabama, and he has a great song called Hope the High Road, and one of the lines in that song is there can't be more of them than us. There can't be and there aren't Well I think that's a good way to end this conversation. Jennifer Reid and Steve,

It's great to talk to you all. I could I could have this conversation for another hour, but maybe we can do it again sometime and kind of take the temperature of the country because things seem to be moving so quickly and changing almost by the hour. But it would be to catch up with you. So I'll talk to my friends Sue Solomon and maybe when we can do this again. Thank you for having us, Katie. Next Question with Katie Couric is a production of I Heart

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