. The Rest is Politics U.S. is powered by our friends at Fuse Energy. Fuse are a green electricity supplier. They generate power from their own solar and wind farms. And Fuse have lined up another giveaway. open to anyone who switches their electricity supplier to Fuse. We're putting some merch bundles together for them, you know, hoodies, sweatshirts, hats.
All you have to do is go to GetFuse.com slash USPolitics. That's GetFuse.com slash USPolitics and use the referral code USPolitics when signing up. But aside from the price, it's well worth considering switching to Fuse. Their tariffs are cheaper than any of the big six competitors, so you'll still be saving money even though the price cap has gone up. And they invest 100% of profit. into building more renewables, which means they're planning for a clean energy future.
They also offer 24-7 support. They promise they'll answer any query within a minute on the Fuse app. Visit GetFuse.com slash USPolitics for the terms and conditions and to learn more. Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US. This is the second episode of our mini-series on the events of January the 6th. I'm Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. What's going to happen in this episode?
Well, we left you with Trump having his early surge on election day, that moment that became known as the red mirage. And even though things were clearly very close and moving towards... Joe Biden's direction in the election. At 2.30 in the morning on election night, Donald Trump came out and declared victory. So in this episode, we are going to look at the time between Election Day.
And the 6th of January 2021, when Donald Trump starts to descend into kind of more paranoia, spreads more and more wild claims about a stolen election and concocts. baseless court cases, all the while convincing his supporters that there's this historic fraud happening in America. The erosion and support for President Trump comes as COVID-19 cases have been surging. Joe Biden is back and taking aim at the current commander in chief. Under this president, we become weaker, sicker.
More divided and more violent. What if Biden wins? Our constitutional rights are to remove a tyrannical government. I'm going to give it to you wrong. Yeah, we're violent. We are getting ready for some big calls. NBC News projecting, as expected, Joe Biden. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. The 700,000 votes Trump was ahead by disappeared. We're going to walk down and I'll be there with you. You'll never take back our country with weakness.
They were peaceful people. These were great people. So he's now flipped out. Can't believe he lost. He is Roy Cohn's adopted son. And just to remind everybody who Roy Cohn is, he is the very infamous lawyer that helped Joe McCarthy in the 50s. And he tried a lot of cases and he was a punishing, vicious, ruthless lawyer for three decades. And his apprentice is Donald Trump. And he is told at a young age.
double down, lie, lie, lie, Donald, lie like a rug, and never, ever, under any circumstances, admit defeat. And so now he's got the American democracy. This great experiment is in his hands and he wants to tear up that constitution. My God, does he want to tear up that constitution? And he's sitting there saying, oh, how am I going to do this?
So what does he do, Caddy? Where does he go? Is he trying to find some votes? What does he do? Well, he starts by coming out and declaring victory when he doesn't have it. with that extraordinary announcement in the East Room that we talked about in the last episode, the Biden team are becoming aware. On the day after the election, this is the 4th of November, they've underperformed.
all of those polls that showed them ahead by nine, 10 percentage points, but they still believe they're going to win. Donald Trump, they don't think has won, and they do think they have won. And they're keeping this extraordinary. running log of their emotions that reporters have got hold of on a laptop, on a joint document. And at 2am on the morning of November the 4th, they're writing,
We are underperforming in rural areas. Race looks like it will be close. So they know there's a red mirage. They know they haven't done so well in the rural areas. But they also know that all they need to do to win on top of having already won Arizona, which has been declared, all they've got to win now is Pennsylvania and Michigan. And by 7 a.m. of... 4th of November, they are pretty sure that they had won.
evening of the 4th of November, Michigan and Wisconsin have been called for Joe Biden. They've got them officially. And their own internal data shows them that they've also got Pennsylvania and Georgia. going for Joe Biden. The problem is their concerns are growing about what Donald Trump's going to do. And it's becoming increasingly clear to them that there is going to be a protracted fight because Trump
is not going to concede. And the day after the election itself, their fears are borne out because Donald Trump's campaign is filing lawsuits to stop the vote count. And I think what's clear is that he's going to use every weapon at his disposal to try to stay in the White House and keep this election in his own hands. Those few days after the election, so the election was Tuesday, we're now on about Thursday, Friday, and the media, the main media organizations are...
hesitating to make the call that Joe Biden has won. The Associated Press has called Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona for Joe Biden. This gave him 264 electoral college votes, but they were unwilling to call the election as a whole. And what happens in the States is that the New York Times and the Washington Post all defer to the Associated Press. So the media has not called the election and there is frustration growing within the Biden camp.
because he doesn't want to come out himself and declare victory before the media has done it, because that's the way it always works, right? The Associated Press calls it, and then the candidate comes out. Biden is wanting to do at that moment is kind of restore faith in the system, say things are normal, this is the way it always works, there's an integrity here to the system.
American democracy is stable, but he's trying to sort of project an end of the Donald Trump era and let's get back to normal. I mean, there is this vacuum around the system and the media hasn't called it. Joe Biden himself doesn't want to call it. And the Republican Party at this point is also in something of a kind of spinelessness, I guess is the way that you would.
Describe it. They're in a spineless quagmire. I think that is a fair way to describe it because they don't openly support Donald Trump necessarily, but they're certainly not challenging him. at this point. McCarthy did though. McCarthy got himself on Fox News and said, hey, everyone who's listening, do not be quiet. Do not be silent. We cannot allow this to happen before our eyes.
And Trump called them right afterwards and said, that's great. That's exactly what I needed. And they've got people believing that there's a steal on the way. Stop the steal, Caddy. But what about Mitch McConnell? Because Mitch McConnell, who is the... Republican Senate leader, he takes a bit of a different approach. It seems like he realizes that Donald Trump has lost.
I mean, in many ways, I suppose this is perfect because Mitch McConnell does not like Donald Trump at all. He wants Donald Trump to lose. And yet it also looks like he's probably going to get... a Republican majority in the Senate. He doesn't, but at this stage, it looks like he does. channels to the Biden team that he will recognize Joe Biden as the victor.
Not quite yet, but he will actually come out and say, yes, you've won. So there's something of a split, right, in the Republican Party at this point. Yeah, and it's a split between those who think they have a future in the party. and those who think that they're trailing towards the end. So McConnell knows that this is his last real tenure as the majority leader. And so he's like sort of telling the truth and people are rolling their eyes. They're accepting.
abnormal behavior. Here's one thing that this current crop of Republicans is good at, Caddy Kay, normalizing abnormal behavior, accepting it, mainstreaming it. And that's what these gentlemen do. I've always been kind of interested in this particular moment because if Mitch McConnell knows that Joe Biden has won, I'm assuming Kevin McCarthy who wants to be majority leader in the House, who's not a dummy, also knows that Joe Biden has won at this point. Do you think...
It would have made a difference. I mean, history is full of what ifs. If the Republican Party, if Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell had come out in public and said, Joe Biden has won the election. Donald Trump has lost the election. Would the events of the next few weeks and January the 6th have been very different? I think the answer is yes. So there's one thing about Trump.
He is very good at sizing predictive behavior. Let me push and shove this guy. Oh, this guy's kowtowing. Oh, that's good. Let me push and shove him again. Oh, he's kowtowing. Okay, that's good. I own this guy. And that's what Trump did to every single one of those politicians. And by the way, the weird thing about McConnell, he's writing a book now.
And he's writing about the things about Donald Trump he doesn't like, but he doesn't do that in 2020. He tells Biden, hold tight, they're friends forever. Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, John McCain. All work together, Caddy Kay, all friends forever, know each other forever. They're in the fraternity, the U.S. Senate, and they've got to dance to the tune of Donald Trump.
And dance they do. It is Saturday, the 7th of November, 9 o'clock in the morning, just having our coffees, getting our croissants or our bacon and eggs or our French toast. Describing the moment that the paper bag gets put away in the Scaramucci household. The paper bag is going back in the drawer. No more hyperventilating. No more hyperventilating.
And we have CNN on in our respected TV rooms. And CNN decides that they are comfortable with the results and they call the election for President-elect Joe Biden. They've known about this since the previous day. They knew it was coming. The Biden campaign had actually planned a victory rally for the previous night, but CNN kind of got a little anxious at the last minute.
And they canceled the victory event. And CNN said, no, no, no, not quite yet, not quite yet. You've got to give us a few more hours. But in the morning of Saturday at 9 a.m., Democrats flooded the streets, celebrated the departure of Donald Trump. One person went outside the White House, held up a sign saying eviction notice. Others posed with. That famous line from The Apprentice, you're fired. But all your jubilation, I have to say, even at that moment, I was kind of aware.
The jubilation, the excitement that we saw, it was all about Donald Trump, right? It was about the excitement of Donald Trump being beaten much more than it was about Joe Biden. I still remember I was in my TV room. The news was on all day at that point. We had the television on kind of 24-7 in my household.
And the news flashed on CNN. And I remember thinking, wow, they finally called it for Donald Trump to leave. And what is going to happen now? And even though there was kind of excitement amongst Democrats. I still remember this kind of thought in my head of, is this going to go smoothly? Is this going to work out the way it always has worked out? Or is something going to derail this process? Because he just seemed adamant.
It was hard to take because you had a guy who declared victory and yet you knew the polls and the empirical evidence were not with him. And so he is going to spend time. seeing if he can move polls, move numbers towards him, and he's going to spend no time on his success source transition, zero. Joe Biden has won 306. Electoral College votes. Donald Trump has won 232.
Biden won 51.3% of the popular vote. He has made inroads into formerly Republican suburbs. He got high turnout in Democratic cities. He brought back the Rust Belt, and even more extraordinary, he won Georgia, which no Democrat had won since Jimmy Carter. In 1976, he had won Arizona, which had been a red state until recently. But even then, it was clear there were a few ominous signs for Democrats.
Donald Trump had done better than before amongst working class Hispanic voters. And the idea that demography is destiny. for Democrats, the idea that Democrats would perpetually win the White House because they would always get minority voters. I think we saw the seeds of that fallacy. loud and clear in the 2020 election amidst the kind of sigh of relief in the country that Donald Trump had been defeated.
People may not have paid that much attention to it, but the Hispanic vote in particular, when Donald Trump won one third of the Hispanic vote. In 2020, it should have been a loud warning sign to Democrats that the assumptions that they had made, that they were always going to win the popular vote, that they were always going to win the White House because of the growing Hispanic.
population in America, they should have realized that was a problem. They also should have realized that if it had not been for COVID, I think Donald Trump probably would have won that election. It's the thing that I would like to ask you because I... It was maybe too close to it and too sensitized to it. I was absolutely euphoric on that day because I was fighting with him and I was advocating for President Biden. I was at a Starbucks. I had CNN on the radio.
I was coming back into the car with my coffee, and I heard the declaration that there was a president-elect, Joe Biden. Like you, there was a cloud. It was an orange, misty cloud on the horizon trying to block out the sun. And that cloud was about to rain on everybody's parade that wanted Joe Biden in that seat. And what I found the most amazing about Donald Trump during that period of time. was the tenacity. He wasn't giving up, Caddy.
He got up. The election was stolen. He called his buddies. The election is stolen. Who's with me? And there were some people like Rudy Giuliani and others raised their hand and said, yes, I'm with you. This was the travesty of justice. But I know.
As sure as I'm sitting here at this moment in my life, I know that he knows he lost that election. But I know that that is a game plan. That is a manifestation of his career. That is a... success formula that he developed in his 20s to double and triple down on misinformation and lies and never under any circumstances apologize to anybody and never under any circumstances admit defeat.
and I think I may have said this to you, so stay with me. He's apologized to two people in his life. So if you're ever on Jeopardy again and you're beating up on, who did you beat on Jeopardy? Dr. Oz. Yes. So if you're there with Dr. Oz again, and the question is, who has Donald Trump apologized to? There's only two people. It's Melania Trump on the night of the Access Hollywood tape, and it's the original Pocahontas.
for demeaning her by comparing Elizabeth Warren to her. So he just wanted to apologize to Pocahontas, and he's apologized to Malai. That's it. Nobody else. But on Saturday, November the 7th, Donald Trump is in no mood for apologizing. When the news breaks on CNN, he is actually out on the golf course. And he calls around his mates to find out who's with him and who's not with him and what he should do now. And he calls Lindsey Graham and he says, you know.
What should I do? It's freezing cold out there on the golf course. And Lindsey Graham says, carry on fighting, carry on the legal process, but don't do bullshit stuff. And then he speaks to... Chris Christie, another senior Republican, the former governor of New Jersey. And he gives him a different message. He implores him to accept the result that's just been declared on CNN. And Trump says to Chris Christie, Chris.
I'm never going to concede. So what else have you got? And the message that clearly coming from Donald Trump as he's hitting the ball with his golf club into the hole is I'm going to fight. I'm going to keep fighting. Let me tell you what you do if you're Donald Trump on a golf course. You hit your ball, you speed up your golf carts operating at a five mile an hour faster differential.
You get to the balls where your opponents are. You throw them into the brush or into the sand trap. And then you use what we all call the Trump foot wedge. You kick your ball. a few times to get it in a perfect position. That's what you do when you play golf with Trump while he's on the phone with Chris Christie. So he's spoken to Chris Christie and he's spoken to Lindsey Graham and he's going to ignore both of them because he is going to do bullshit stuff.
And with Trump about to double down on his stolen election narrative, we're going to take a break. And when we get back, we'll see just how we get from this moment to January the 6th. This is an advertisement from BetterHelp. With 2024 coming to an end, it's time to start thinking about what you want your 2025 story to be. I'm thinking about taking up, I don't know, maybe a new sport. I've always got to lose 10 pounds. I've got to develop a new skill, possibly learn Spanish.
But whatever you're planning for 2025, the 1st of January will bring 365 blank pages waiting to be filled. And you can see therapy as your editorial partner. Write these new chapters with BetterHelp and create meaningful resolutions that last past February. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety.
of expertise. Write your story with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash TripUS. That's BetterHelp.com slash TripUS. Welcome back. So let's start this second half by looking at what the Democrats are doing at the end of 2020. And it's kind of strange because they're almost acting like this is a normal. process. Biden and his team have got this kind of slate of appointments ready for the transition, and they're taking this more patient approach to it.
They want to wait for Trump to concede for it to begin, which is what you would normally do. The problem is Trump is not conceding, so they can't announce the slate of appointments, which is... what we've just gone through here in the United States. At this point, I guess it's fair to say, Anthony, that Joe Biden and his team see Trump's behavior as a bit peevish, petulant, kind of Trumpy, but...
not necessarily scary. Do you think that's right? I think they know, you know, he's going, the teams know. So just for everybody's benefit, because I was on Trump's first transition team. You develop these landing teams. So what's a landing team for those interested? You have a treasury landing team. This is a nucleus of people that are going to go work at the treasury.
Should the new administration come to power? The HHS team, a DOJ team. And so believe it or not, we had landing teams in 2016. And guess what? Joe Biden had landing teams in 2020. As you normally would, like a normal process. As you normally would. But the Trump team was told by Trump that he would tweet about them. He would embarrass them and their families. if they under any circumstances interacted with the Joe Biden landing teams. And so now you're getting people named to the transition.
the Blinkens of the world, the Janet Yellons of the world, but they have no access to the department. They have no access to what we have always called in this country a peaceful. transition of power and an opportunity to meet with their predecessors to go over the work.
That needs to be done for the American people. So it's extraordinary, Kat. Here's Trump. It's the middle of... You're laughing because... I have this image of Joe Biden kind of, you know, sitting by the telephone, kind of like...
Is he going to call? Is he going to call? Is that Trump? I mean, you know, waiting for Trump, literally waiting for Trump, because that's what you do, right? You call. The image of Joe Biden sitting there waiting by his phone, waiting for Donald Trump to call and concede, because, I mean, at that point,
I guess at that moment, I sort of assumed Donald Trump didn't have the balls to show up to Inauguration Day. I mean, if somebody had said to me, he's not going to go to Inauguration Day, I'd have said, yeah, of course he's not. His pride won't let him show up to inauguration. He's a sore loser. But I didn't, at that point, we didn't see, and I don't think the Biden team saw January the 6th happening.
They thought it was kind of petulant, but not scary. If they were listening to the Steve Bannon war room, class the vomit blag, they would have said, wait a minute. There's something going on in cuckoo land known as MAGA that is crazy. Well, what is that? Well, Steve Bannon's out there saying the 6th of January is going to be like something you've never seen before.
And, you know, he's always using war metaphors on War Room. It is called the War Room. I know. But, I mean, this blubber has been to war. I mean, I know he was in the Navy. But we're fixing the bayonets, Caddy. I mean, this is how this guy talks. But if you listen to him, you'd be like, whoa, there's a domestic localized violence, domestic localized terrorism.
about to take place that's being fomented by these MAGA people. The reason they're not listening on the Biden side to this is because they're being caught up. in identity politics. I mean they are more focused on the democratic side with How many black candidates do we have in the cabinet? Is the cabinet diverse enough? Do we have enough women in the cabinet? Joe Biden is being pulled between the kind of old...
centrist Obama staffers and a much more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. So I think maybe they just weren't really focusing on... Steve Bannon in the war room in perhaps the way they should. I mean, here you have Trump literally denying the results of the election and the Democrats sort of slightly...
tying themselves up in knots in identity politics, I guess, at that stage. But at this moment as well, and we should turn now to the specific states and what is happening, because a very important state. has been called and Donald Trump goes kind of apoplectic and tries to change it. And that is the state of Georgia.
Joe Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes. But because it's a very close margin, Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announces on the 11th of November that there's going to be a recount by hand of the vote. This is completed by the 18th of November. It takes a week. And Biden is confirmed the winner of the state on the 19th.
A little bit of a backstory on Brad Raffensperger, who you and I have both met. I've interviewed him. You know him anyway. He's a kind of straightforward, pretty sober. not dramatic person. He's a lifelong Republican, an evangelical. He was elected to be Georgia's Secretary of State back in 2018. Voted for Trump. Voted for Trump. And still actually, even after all of this, my God said he was going to vote for Donald Trump.
He was a successful engineer. He has been independently wealthy. And Trump looks at Georgia and says, I just can't tolerate this. Maybe it was because the vote was so close. Maybe it's because it's Georgia. Maybe it's because it's the South. I mean, maybe it's because he feels he should have won Georgia. Anyway, he starts publicly berating both Kemp and Raffensperger for certifying the result. And as we see later on, Trump will actually go on to try even more extreme.
measures. But his next attempt to overturn the results is for him and his minions to start trying to use the judicial process, the court. Perhaps one of the funniest things that I witnessed was Rudy Giuliani. I was given a mandate by the president to get out there and speak directly to the American people and tell them what a travesty of justice this was. He told one of his staffers to call the Four Seasons.
And get me a place to speak. Very fancy hotel. Good place to hold a press conference. But the staffer didn't know what he meant. So they called the Four Seasons Landscaping, which was adjacent to a porn. shop that was selling porno films and sex toys. And there was Rudy Giuliani at the microphone outdoors. These owners didn't know what the hell was going on when they got the phone call. They said, no problem.
I'll take money from Rudy Giuliani and his minions if they want to speak in our parking lot. And Rudy shows up and said, what the hell is this? You see, you told me to call the Four Seasons. And there was Rudy in the parking lot of the Four Seasons landscaping. decrying that Donald Trump was fraudulently mishandled in the election, the outcome was a fraud, didn't go anywhere. The court cases didn't go anywhere.
So now Trump's going to show Rudy and others how it's done. The thing I remember, I laugh because in that moment where everything was so tense. The fact that Rudy Giuliani couldn't even figure out which four seasons it was and ends up in a garden shop was itself funny. And then this hair dye is dribbling down his face. And the whole thing had this kind of caricature-ish.
Again, it was this sense that these guys are such clowns and caricatures, and you're right, we should all have been listening to The Wall Room and Steve Bannon. But at that Four Seasons event, I think... We just thought it was a joke. It was a stupid joke. And yes, they were contesting the election and Trump hates to lose, but it was never really going to go anywhere because how could it?
If somebody like Rudy Giuliani, who also, by the way, there was this kind of famous muttering amongst everybody, you never wanted to interview Rudy Giuliani too late at night because his words would be slurring. It was this cast of characters that seemed a little absurd. And how could they possibly pull off a huge conspiracy to steal an election? And Sidney Powell, who... was a former US attorney in Western Texas, became a kind of spouter of conspiracy theories.
very dedicated to Donald Trump, also brought into this whole conspiracy to steal the election, went even further than Giuliani. She suggested that some of the voting machines... I keep remembering all the crazy stuff that came out in this period. She suggested that the voting machines run by Dominion, this company Dominion, were created at the direction of Hugo Chavez.
of Venezuela, the leader of Venezuela, who actually, by the way, had died back in 2013, and that you could hack into the voting machines to take votes. It was a backdoor portal. It was like some of the conspiracies these guys came up with were so bonkers that it seemed farcical rather than menacing.
at this point? Or did we read it wrong? No, you read it right, but it fed the beast. That's what it's about. You got to feed the beast. If you want to stay in the beast's good graces, you got to feed the beast. And that's what happened. He really used legal challenges, personal persuasion he tried to use, and then he also used Twitter.
and the bully pulpit that he had on Twitter to harass the people who he saw as standing in his way. He kind of took it all to try to stay in the White House, to try and overturn the election. But there were Republicans. who stood up against him. And I think that is important to say, that there were individual Republicans who stood up.
and tried to stop him doing what he was doing. Yeah, well, first of all, there were people writing to their congressman, and they were saying, what is going on? The election is over. The empirical data is in. He lost the election. And so you had a very large group of not just Democrats, of course, but also Republican senators and members of the House of Representatives, and also the general public was getting upset.
with Donald Trump, getting upset with what he was doing. And so that had big consequence to Trump because Trump was like, okay. I'm not going to win these people over with my jawboning, but I still want to stay in power. So I have to come up with another way to win this over. Maybe I'm going to have to take this by force now.
And we're getting to that stage where that thought process starts to come in. It's not going well. The Congress is not helping me. Lots of American people have turned on me as a result of this. But no matter to me, I'm still going to find a way to stay in power. When somebody like Chris Christie goes on ABC News... on their Sunday program this week on 22nd of November, and says the conduct of the president's legal team has been a national embarrassment.
and then also says to Trump on the phone that he should be embarrassed by Sidney Powell. Do you think that has an impact, something like that, on Trump, that he loses somebody like Christie, who has been an ally of his beforehand? Only a black mark for Christie.
You're now in the disloyalty camp. Remember, it's that carousel. You come in waving. They hand you the MAGA hat. You're now getting the knife in the back, and you're moving on to another world, but it's not Trumplandia. It's some other world.
And that's the real problem with all of this. Trump knows this, and this is why he's so good at intimidating people, and he's so good at steamrolling the people, because they don't want to deal with his wrath or the pain that he's going to inflict upon them. She, by the way, does go on to plead guilty to six separate charges brought in a case in Georgia of interfering in the election. And he does cut ties with her. It's also worth noting that...
In total, because there are so many kind of different cases going on around the country, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona. But you add them up, in total, Trump and his allies brought 62 separate lawsuits during this period, all of which ended in a loss except for one in Pennsylvania. But I think... The fact that he lost 61 out of 62 lawsuits just goes to show that the courts held up, right? The American system held up. The courts stopped him.
From stealing the election at that point? It was the courts and it was some people in the system, but it was also the people. Trump is not stupid. Trump was sensing from people that they were growing frustrated. And people were telling him, look, America doesn't like a sore loser. And he was getting sore and sore. Yeah. And he has the support of his base. I mean, what's interesting is that all through this period.
The polls are showing there was a poll in mid-December in Georgia that shows that half of all Republican-leaning voters thought it was Kemp and Raffensperger who were trying to steal the election. Not that it was Trump trying to steal the election. It was, they were trying to steal the election. So he's tapped into something and maybe it's...
disillusionment in the system, anti-establishmentism, people who are furious at all the impeachments against Donald Trump. But all through this period, he holds the base with him. And the base is angry and the anger simmers. Anti-election protests begin. You've got them in Michigan. People are swarming the house of the Secretary of State there, chanting, stop the steal. Violence flares up in Washington again. MAGA crowds, stop the steal.
23 people are arrested, four people are stabbed. I remember it well. It was not far from where I live. So you've got the base is furious. And at the same time, you have the establishment of the Republican Party, finally, Mitch McConnell. publicly acknowledging Joe Biden's victory. On the 15th of December, Mitch McConnell publicly recognizes Joe Biden as the victor. Trump calls him and reiterates his view that the election was stolen, but...
McConnell not going to be dissuaded. Apparently it was a very tense conversation. I can well imagine that. And they did not speak for a very long time afterwards. It wasn't, by the way, just a personal rupture between these two men. It had political consequences between Trump and the Republican Senate for quite a long time afterwards. And we are still seeing the impacts of that today.
Because I think there is a strong chance from what I'm hearing that Mitch McConnell is going to be one of the senators who votes against now president-elects. Donald Trump's nominees for the cabinet. And I think you can trace that back to this period. So Mitch McConnell has now formally said Joe Biden is the president. And that kind of seals it officially, but not...
for the MAGA crowd and not for Donald Trump, who tweets out on the 30th of December, January the 6th, see you in DC. And I think that's the first time. that we all start focusing on that date. And people don't know what he's talking about. I didn't really understand what he was talking about. I didn't. Plus, it was my birthday. I'm like, what the hell is he talking about? And then there it is. He's going to see if he can decertify.
the election. And the idea was the elections were fraudulent, decertify the election, throw it to the House of Representatives. And if he's thrown to the House of Representatives, he can win back the presidency. So we can see by this stage that Trump is getting ever more desperate because he also tries, as we mentioned earlier, something very extreme to try to get the result in Georgia overturned. Anthony, what does he do? He picks up the phone.
You be Trump and I'll be Raffensperger. Mr. Secretary, how are you? Very well, Mr. President. Okay, listen, you know, I need a favor. You know how these things are. It's a very close election. Lots of votes were stolen from me. Lots of things were rigged in this election. But I need you, just the same way the Democrats are doing in these other states, finding votes to serve their interests, I need you to find me.
11,780 votes. Not one vote more. I don't need another vote. I just need 11,780 votes. Well, Mr. President, we had a recount and... It was a very good recount and our state held a very fair election. And we are satisfied with the results of our election, Mr. President. did not go down very well. I can't take the improvisation any better because the stumbling and the fumbling and the gaffawing and Trump pushing him. You know, Michael Beshlov had this great thing about 25 years ago.
where he had actual tapes of FDR talking to people and the way FDR jawboned people. I mean, he was talking to the CEO of Hagar Slacks and he was telling her how fat he gets. And can you put bands? On the belt straps, you know, so I can go up five or six inches depending on if it's Thanksgiving or Easter. And yes, yes, Mr. President. Yes, Mr. President. But that's not lawbreaking. He's on the phone.
And he's trying to convince the Secretary of State of Georgia to break the law. And Brad Raffensperger, to his eternal credit, and I think it's worth remembering this, that the 20... election result was saved really because of individuals who chose to do the right thing and stand up. to Donald Trump. He could have caved. He was a lifelong Republican, the governor of Georgia.
Brian Kemp, a lifelong Republican, certified the election result and confirmed that Joe Biden was the winner. They stood up for democracy first and they put their party second. And everyone has always asked what would happen if Brad Raffensperger, in that phone call, had said, OK, Mr. President, I'll find you 11,780 votes. And history could have been different. But Trump never forgave him. And they then later testified.
in the January 6th investigation in the House of Representatives. And he had got death threats. He had to have security. His daughter-in-law had death threats. I mean, they went through the ringer because of Donald Trump. Now, Katty, this goes public when it is leaked to The Washington Post the next day. How are the Democrats reacting? So as we said earlier, back in November, the Democrats hadn't seen Trump's behavior.
as scary. It was more that they saw it as kind of peevish. That calculus changed right now. January the 6th had suddenly become a big, important day and a focus. of MAGA anger at the election. It was the day that Congress was due to certify the election result. Now, normally that's a kind of boring administrative process, which I guess is why Anthony and I... didn't really know why he was singling it out. At least that's our excuse and we are sticking to it. But he felt, Trump felt,
This was his last chance to stop the election going to Joe Biden. Once Congress had certified the result, that would be it. Up on Capitol Hill. the Democrats start making plans for how to protect the process. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, the head of the Intelligence Committee, who we spoke about earlier,
are gaming out various ways that Republicans would try to block the certification of the election and how they could counter them. The biggest concern that they have... was that Mike Pence, who, as the vice president, is also the presiding officer of the Senate, would do Trump's bidding. and Pence would refuse to certify the Electoral College votes for Biden. In fact, Pence had told Trump...
just the day before, that he had to certify the votes. He told him it was part of his constitutional duty, to which Trump, ever the grown-up, responded, I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this. We're going to learn that he not only doesn't want to be his friend, he wants him dead, basically. And so I'm not only going to turn off our friendship, but I'm going to suggest that there's...
People in my MAGA support group come up to the Capitol and hang your ass. And they turn my birthday. into one of the most infamous days in American history. You'll learn all the gory details here with me and Caddy in episodes three and four. And of course, Caddy, you can get it right away.
If you sign up to be a founding member of the Rest is Politics U.S. Now, you weren't there on election night when Dominic Sandbrook and I were going back and forth on ad reads. But how am I doing? Am I drawing in? potentially new founding members, Katty K? Or do I absolutely suck at this? Go ahead. You could grade me right now before we say goodbye. It's not just crypto. You are a great salesman of the rest is politics, U.S., Anthony. Thank you. See that? I need the boost.
Michael Lewis is always on my mind, Caddy. Always on my mind. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll see you next week.