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If it remains that way, of course. The first case of coronavirus has been confirmed here in the United States. The CDC says risk to the general public is low. A dramatic spike in New York state's death toll. 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 will win. 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. You Hello, and welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. This is a series, Katty, right? Yeah, and it is January the 6th, so we are going to be doing something a little bit...
Different, aren't we, Anthony? What do you mean we're not celebrating my birthday, Katty? Oh, damn, I forgot. That's a very unfortunate day to have your birthday on. I'm so sorry. Well, it wasn't for the first 57 years of my life. It wasn't, but now it has become that. So we are doing a series on Anthony's birthday.
Well, you don't have enough time, Katty. There's been a lot of stuff that's happened on that day prior to Trump blowing the day up for me. Well, it is four years to the day since Donald Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol building, trying to overturn the... 2020 election result.
So just like the series that we did last year on how Trump won the White House, we're going to bring you four episodes looking on exactly what happened on January the 6th. We're going to look at the whole story starting off with the 2020 election. itself. and Joe Biden's victory through Donald Trump's attempts to undermine that result right up to January the 6th and those horrifying scenes. So stick with us for the next four weeks if you want to hear just how Donald Trump
Trump tried to defy American democracy. Before we get into what happened and how it happened, Anthony, let's talk about why it was such a shocking moment in American history. What do you think is the significance of January the 6th, 2021? Well, I mean, there's a lot of things. So I wrote some things down in preparation for this. So I just want to...
I'm going to read a few of them to you. You give me your thoughts. But the first thing is, this was tradition defying. He doesn't accept the electoral defeat. He tells his staff they're not allowed to help them with the transition. He tells his supporters in America and the world that the election itself was rigged. and that he won the election, but they came up with fictitious votes, and therefore he didn't win the election because it was stolen from him.
And so this is the biggest part of the story because this fits into the Donald Trump narrative. And my friend Gabe Sherman, if you have interest in Donald Trump, he wrote a great. screenplay. It's called The Apprentice. Jeremy Strong plays the nemesis, which is Roy Cohn. What you learn from that is Trump never backs down.
Tell a lie repeatedly over and over again. It make at least half the people think it's true. And no problem fomenting an insurrection, but just make sure you say enough on both sides. so that there's enough for each other. And so the reason I'm bringing this up is this is the playbook that Donald Trump learned for 50 years, and now he deploys it on January 6th. And it doesn't go well for him. And ultimately, he would probably have gone to jail for what he did on that day.
and the days leading up to it, but he wins the 2024 election, and now those cases have been withdrawn. Yeah. I mean, I think that it is the norm-defying moment, isn't it? That this had never happened before, that you'd had these... peaceful transfers of power in American history, and that the 245 years of American democracy suddenly looked fragile. And the world was watching that day. I mean, I cannot tell you, Antony, that I was on air for the BBC.
covering those events and the number of text messages I was getting from people in the UK, from people in Europe, from people in Asia who were texting me saying, what is happening in America? This is a country we do not recognize. right now. And there was a feeling around the world that would American democracy hold? And indeed,
There is an organization in Stockholm that monitors the state of democracies. It's called the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. And after... January the 6th, it downgraded the strength of American democracy to calling it a backsliding democracy. And I think we all realized after the events of January the 6th.
that it wasn't guaranteed. This experiment in American democracy with peaceful transfers of power every four years are not a guarantee. And yes, America came back and... It looks to all intents and purposes like we're going to have a peaceful transfer of power in a few weeks' time on January the 20th. But those events shocked the world and shocked this country because it made us...
feel nervous. It made us wonder if we can rely on this country. I mean, not to mention the fact that four people died. the scenes themselves. Oh my God. I mean, every time I see those images, do you remember them? I'm sure you were, were you glued to your television set? I'm sure you were. I mean, I was just, I was sitting there in the studio. I couldn't believe what I was watching.
Let's provide some context and layout for people what we both saw. I think we have to start with COVID. And we're going to talk a lot more about that in this episode and the significance of that. Yes. And so I think we have to frame for people why we got to January 6th. It was a series of missteps. It was a series of poor executive decisions.
during COVID. Where I want to start, if you're okay with it, and I'd like to get your reaction and reflect back on what happened, but here was a man that was not ready for COVID. He had fired. Tommy Bossert, who was in charge of the president's pandemic team on the national security side. He fired him in 18. He said, we don't need this. Not going to have a pandemic. Don't need to worry about it. When the pandemic was happening, Tommy went to see him. He sat down in the Oval Office and said, sir.
This is going to be a very, very rough thing for the United States. We may have to go through lockdowns. The disease is such, it's that perfect disease, Caddy, damaging enough to spread, but it's not too damaging where everybody dies. I mean, you have to be like Ebola. I was in a meeting with Barack Obama. Obama said, yeah, we're going to be fine with Ebola because the host dies before they can transmit the disease.
COVID is like that purpose stasis. And they tell Trump this and he ignores them. Yeah. And I think up until that moment, and we'll get to the outbreak of COVID. in just a second but before we do so i think it is worth stressing to remind people because
We always look back at history and who won an election, who lost an election, think, oh, well, it was inevitable Trump was going to lose. I don't think that's the case. Because at the start of that year, at the start of 2020, Donald Trump was actually looking very confident. about his election prospects. The economy was doing super well, the stock market was at a near all-time high unemployment.
was low, GDP growth was strong, inflation was low. He was facing an impeachment trial, but his approval rating actually was at, what, 49%, so as high as it had ever been. And so I think he felt he was kind of on track for everything going well. And then, bam, COVID hits. And let's take us back to that beginning of that year. It was the 20th of January, 2020.
I remember reporting on these Chinese towns shutting down because of this mysterious virus and thinking, well, that's never going to happen in America. Nobody's going to tolerate. their cities shutting down in this country, and Americans love their freedoms. They would never accept that, how wrong I was. So on the 20th of January, the news we had all been dreading...
happened. And the first COVID case arrives, it was in Washington state. And from the get go, Trump kind of seemed keen to downplay the virus. I mean, getting to your point about
Him having fired Tom Bossert, who was in charge of pandemics, he didn't really want to know it, right? He didn't. Maybe nobody did. Maybe no leader around the world wanted to say, oh, well, we've got a pandemic coming and this is going to be terrible. But he... in particular, really didn't seem to want to accept that this was going to be a problem. Fair? I mean, he just downplayed all the warnings. But that's the Trump way, Caddy. Or as Kellyanne Conway once said, alternative facts.
Caddy Kay, we're going to deliver to you alternative facts. Don't believe your lying eyes. It's going to be fine. And so there's a fight inside the White House literally every day. between the reality that he's being presented and the reality distortion that he wants to share with the American people. So he is catty. He's completely ill suited as an executive.
to run this process or to manage that crisis. It's important because it leads up to his electoral defeat. And by the way, he's so disorganized that the revolt that he plans on January the 6th. is unsuccessful primarily to his lack of organizational skills and his general laziness when it comes to this sort of stuff. He has these medical officers warning him that he's got to do something, but all through February, he really ignores those warnings and the consensus.
afterwards amongst scientists is that that lost time was devastating for the country. I mean, I was out of the country on the day that he tweeted. I was in Europe on a ski holiday, actually, with my family. And we woke up in the morning and my daughter, who was back here in the United States, texted me and said, Trump has just said he's shutting the borders. I'll see you in a few months. And so we rushed to Zurich airport. We got on a...
flight, we got back home. But this was mid-March, I know, because it was my son's birthday. And all of that lost time. He lost six weeks. And the consensus is that if he had acted sooner, he could have done more to stop. what eventually turned out to be a million deaths in the country. And the problem I think partly is that
He's lost people like you, Anthony. I mean, at the risk of sounding sycophantic, he has lost the people who are going to stand up to him. He's surrounded by sycophants. And so no one is really saying no to him. And he's not used to people saying no to him. So when people like Dr. Fauci come to him and say, you've got to do something now, you've actually got to take urgent action, he sees them, I don't know, I guess he sees them as part of the deep state.
He sees them as part of a political conspiracy against him, and he doesn't need to listen to them. Is that the way he thinks? That anyone who doesn't say yes to him is somehow opposed to him? Yes, is the answer to that. But Jared Kushner was the best at it. So Jared Kushner knew that you could never talk frankly to him while he was president. You could talk frankly to him.
on the campaign, you know, cause he was having fun on the campaign in the beginning. He didn't expect to win when it looked like there was some interesting things going on that he could possibly win. He amped up, but he was looking for guidance. He was looking for suggestions. Frankly, it was his first campaign. You have to think about how successful of a politician he is. He never ran once for dog catcher caddy. He went right for the presidency, right? So he was learning and open to things.
When he actually got the job, he saw it as a sign of weakness and he saw it as a potential sign of undermining him. If you said something. that opposed him or you said something that disagreed with him so if he presented an idea or said something you said geez I disagree with that here's why he took it as an affront he took it as a
You're demeaning me in front of these other people. You're trying to make me look stupid. And so this caused tremendous problems. You know, you mentioned Fauci. Fauci's coming to him. 35, 40 years of experience, helped us through the AIDS epidemic, tons of other things, managed SARS and MERS, if you remember those two mini epidemics. And he's trying to explain to the president what we need to do to keep people safe.
to get them back on their jobs again, to signal to the economy so that we don't have a full-scale panic. Where's that plan from? Oh, that's from Barack Obama's administration. dealing with the Ebola pandemic. Throw that in the garbage. Throw it in the garbage. He never liked Barack Obama's plans. Never liked anything that Barack Obama did. We're not doing anything related to Barack Obama. Throw it in the garbage.
And so we're like, okay, well, all right. So now we're going to do the same plan anyway. We're going to call it the- The Donald Trump plan. Right. The Donald Trump 45 plan. And we bring it back into them and show it to them. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. What about the jobs? What about the people? And so the problem is he's now blown up and he's showing something that he hates. He's showing weakness.
And the American public who was like, okay, this is okay. He's a little crazy. The tweets are nonstop. The economy is okay. We haven't gone to war with anybody. He's likely going to get reelected. He's moving, as you said, to the 49%. But this destroys him. It's almost as if the gods come down, deus ex machina, they come down in the machine. And they twist the plot on him and they give him something that he cannot handle himself. And he can't control. But worse than that, Caddy.
There are people that can handle it, but he won't give them the authority to handle it. Well, here's the irony. I mean, the kind of awful irony for him is in a way, he's right. Because the moment he declares that national emergency, as the cases have started to stack up on the 13th of March, and the White House advises against any gatherings of more than 10 people. the economy goes into freefall. Congress passes the CARES Act on the 27th of March, provides a whole load of economic relief.
including direct stimulus payments, unemployment benefits, but the shutdowns are completely devastating to the American economy. down my local high street, my shopping street, and there's just, you know, there's these signs saying we are shut for business, closed, closed, closed, workers stay home. The unemployment rate goes from what was it about?
3% to 15% within the space of just a few days. The stock market has plummeted. Huge parts of the economy just crash overnight. Restaurants, hotels, airlines, cinemas grind to a halt. And I don't know whether Donald Trump was reluctant to impose that national state of emergency because he realized this was going to happen and he realized the impact that it was going to have on his electoral chances and on his political fortunes.
Wow. I mean, that cause and effect. Now, he had to do it because the virus was spreading. You'd had... you know the cases were rising the deaths were rising the new york healthcare system was on its knees we all saw those pictures of the nurses wearing garbage bags for their protective gear because they had nothing else and of the bodies like piled up. This was New York City and the bodies were piled up outside the hospital. I mean, it was terrible. He had no choice to do it.
But the impact on the American economy and therefore on Donald Trump's political fortunes were awful. And the trouble is his management of it in many ways doesn't get any better. Because he is not clear. You may remember this in the state of New York, and it probably hurt Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo decided to have daily press conferences in New York to go over what he was doing.
And I'm very good friends with him. I used to call and talk to him before and after these events and say, Governor, well, you know, I'm doing this. But at the same time I'm doing this, I'm trying to. explain to the president what we're doing here in New York to try to stem the tide of death and to try to get people to relax that we're going to get to the other side of this. But the president can't do it.
He does not have this skill set. And this is a very important part of the January 6th story because all of this is the prelude. And this is where people are like, whoa, we've got the crazy uncle who can't get off Twitter running the country and he can't handle this crisis. And the American people start thinking, well, maybe we got to go with the stable grandfather who probably can't remember our first name at the birthday party, but he is.
somebody that's been in Washington for 50 years. At this stage in the pandemic, we're all pretty scared. I mean, I was scared. I was at home wiping stuff down. We didn't know if we were all going to die. We didn't know how infectious it was. There was no clarity coming from the chief executive. So he says one thing, he does another thing. And then, of course.
On the 23rd of April, there's that very famous press conference. I was sitting in my basement on air broadcasting my BBC show. By that stage, I had my basement television studio, like we all did, set up.
And my son would help me set it up and focus the camera and do the lighting. So we were doing the show and I'm listening to the press conference and every day and you listen to the latest, you know, COVID press conference. And suddenly, and it's Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. and Dr. Birx is sitting there in the press briefing room and suddenly Donald Trump turns and looks at her and says this now famous line about maybe we should inject.
bleach into the body to kill the virus. And you could just see her trying to look stone faced. And he kind of asks her as if it's a question and a good idea. And she just... I felt for her so much in that moment. I mean, I know Dr. Fauci much better than I know Dr. Birx. Dr. Fauci, by the way, came out of COVID and now has six full-time security guards. I've interviewed him. And I spent a day with him interviewing him.
Before I could interview him, I had to spend a morning with his security guards walking through the route we were going to take through Georgetown University to interview him because they wanted to check that he was going to be safe. And that is because of COVID. That is what COVID did.
to this country. Not only killed a million people, but it ripped this country apart politically. And he was one of the victims of the politicization of this process. Somebody who'd been in public service and remains remarkably... optimistic but he cannot open his front door. He can't walk to the corner store to buy toothpaste. It's too dangerous for him. The death threats are continuous.
And I don't know how the public health officials handled that particular moment, but I remember sitting there in the basement thinking, oh, my God, have we gone mad? Not that this is a movie podcast, but I got to bring this up as well. There was a 2011 movie called Contagion. But the reason I'm bringing this movie up is what the movie predicted was the misinformation caddy.
The movie predicted that some people would think that taking bleach would make sense. And some people would say, well, this. common drug here cures it. Everyone's got to get on the common drug, the ivermectin, the hydroxychloroquine, the solutions that were coming from the internet, you know, and so the internet all of a sudden. uh was being adhered to by a very large group of people and people were disavowing the medical community and so trump likes that stuff because trump is
naturally a conspiracy theorist fueler. He will fuel the fire of any conspiracy theory because he's always seen himself as an outsider. And he wants to foment the people from the outside to attack the people from the inside. So what you see before we go to the break, he's developing these ideas. that he eventually uses in January, on the 6th of January. And the ideas are there's misinformation out there. There's lies out there. Let's use these lies as fodder to attack.
the people on the inside. He's doing it with COVID. I think hydroxychloroquine works. You may remember this. I took hydroxychloroquine. Mr. President, you took hydroxychloroquine? Yeah. Yeah, I'm on it. I took it. And this is the beginnings. This is the kernels of what's about to come. And it all starts with COVID and it leads up to this insurrection, or as the president says, a very peaceful.
group of tourists descending upon the Capitol building. It fuels the anti-establishment mood in the United States. Such a good point, Anthony. Okay, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about the next... big crisis that is about to hit America in the election campaign of 2020. This is an advertisement from BetterHelp.
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2020. Some of the states are starting to reopen at the end of May, but there wasn't really any coordination. And you see this spike in cases around the country that hurts Donald Trump in the polling because actually a majority of Americans still don't feel safe about lifting the stay-at-home orders. But Trump really wants... to get on with the campaign trail. He wants to play to his conservative base.
He wants to liberate these states and be the person who says, you know what, to hell with it all, to hell with the science, to hell with what the doctors are saying. We're just going to take off our masks and we're going to have everyone back in public again and life back to normal. He pushes that line and he's just starting to get there, he feels, and then bam.
something else happens that is going to massively impact the election just a few months later. And that is the death of George Floyd on the 25th of May in Minneapolis, who was a... Black man killed by a police officer, Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck for nine minutes. The whole incident was caught on video and the nation... kind of already reeling from the immense disruption of COVID erupts. Everybody watches this video.
They see Derek Chauvin with his knee on George Floyd's neck. They hear George Floyd gasping for air, saying, I can't breathe. Get off, get off, get off. Derek Chauvin doesn't do it, and George Floyd... and tens of millions of people take to the streets in protest around the country. It was... That just thinking back to that period, Anthony, kind of coming from, you know, we're all in the midst of COVID where we've been at home, not seeing anybody and suddenly.
George Floyd gets killed and people are out demonstrating and the juxtaposition of those two things. And it's young people driving this, not just black young people. you know, white young people driving this as well, but going out and demonstrating and this movement against police brutality in the country, it felt kind of, I spoke to civil rights leaders at the time who felt like this felt reminiscent.
of the 1960s in this country. There's a smolder going on in the country. It all ties back to this latent, under the surface, boiling racism. Barack Obama's elected president. Caddy, you lived in this country. A good portion of the country was euphoric. We've broken the color barrier. This is a progressive idea that we're all making progress with each other. There's a very large group in the country, to quote Van Jones from CNN, that sees this as a whitelash.
There's all types of underlying racial tension. Trump is playing on that. Trump is breeding that. This cop, Derek Chauvin, that you're referencing is on the neck of a known drug dealer. In the autopsy report, George Floyd does have drugs in his systems, not the reason that kills him. What kills him is the stepping on his neck that asphyxiates him. And now there's an uproar.
The person in the White House cannot handle it. Is there a healing speech, Katty K? Is there a unifying speech? Is there a situation where he gets... cops and African-American teenagers together in the White House in an effort to show the nation that people can get along with each other. No, he fuels the hatred.
He pushes the hatred. And now there's a revolt and it spills. It spills over into Lafayette Park. They're in Lafayette Park protesting in front of the White House. Day after day, by the way. I mean, my kids went down there. two or three times in the space of a week. It was a very organized protest and it was a peaceful protest. There was water being given to people. It was not violent and it was...
Black people, white people, old people, young people, but they were there day after day. They were there in loud voices. shaking the fence to the point where the Secret Service told Trump, you've got to go into the silo. underneath the White House, basically effectively the bomb shelter. Because if there's a run on the White House, we don't have the personnel in place. And if the White House gets overrun in order to protect you...
We got to effectively put you in the White House safe room. And of course, this gets leaked that Trump is down in the White House safe room. And of course, his detractors start calling him a fraidy cat, start calling him a scaredy cat. And he flips out. Caddy, he flips out. He hated that.
He orders Esper and Milley to the White House, gets them in the Oval. Mark Esper, who was his defense secretary, and Mark Milley, who was the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the military. And he says, listen to me. We're going to march defiantly across that park, Lafayette Park, north side of the White House. We're coming through the gate. We're going to march through the park, get the National Guard in there, clear the park.
And if necessary, I want you to shoot at the kneecaps of the protesters. Excuse me, Mr. President? No, no, I want you to shoot at the kneecaps of the protesters. And Esper says, I'm sorry. I can't do that. I'm not going to do that. If you want me to resign, I will. He turns to Milley. He says, okay, well, you're the general here in the room. You do that.
Millie says, no, sir, I'm the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I'm now in an advisory position where I advise people there are no direct troops under my command. And Trump gets very flummoxed and gets very frustrated with the two of them. They both tender or are willing to tender their resignations. It's hot and heated in the oval. He says, well, you're walking with me outside.
And so they are trying to make peace with him, trying to calm him down. And they say, no problem. We'll walk with you. But Millie's got his uniform on, Kenny. He's dressed like a soldier. and they walk out of the grounds of the 18-acre grounds of the White House, and they stroll through Lafayette Park, and they get to St. John's Chapel. Very, very significant American history.
If you are the president-elect on the morning of your inauguration, you go for a benediction at St. John's Chapel. John Kennedy did it. Catholics have done it. Presbyterians have done it. Methodists have done it. Baptists have done it. They all go to that church and Trump is standing in front of the church and, you know.
He had a great line, which I'll share with everybody. I've written more books than I've actually read. And one of the books that he has never read is the Bible. He's holding it up upside down, Caddy. He's got it in his hand. And he's holding it upside down and he's speaking defiantly to the group. And everyone is horrified. It's the low moment of 2020, in my opinion, for Donald Trump. Yes, the electoral defeat is a low moment.
But this is a moment that shows him in disarray, impetuous decision making, personnel pushing back on him, not able to respond to it carefully. And he's there in the park. walking back. And of course, Millie apologizes to people for being with him. That's very significant because Mark Millie then, a day or two later, records a video apologizing to the American troops, to the people he commands saying, I made a mistake.
I should not have been in that position. I should not have been there dressed in my military fatigues in what was effectively a political show of force. And Trump hates that. And I have reporting that... says that That was not the only time that Trump wanted to use U.S. troops to shoot at protesters during this period, because it was not just in Washington, of course, that there were Black Lives Matter protests. There were Black Lives Matter protests in New York. They were all over the country.
And at one point, Trump said, well, can't we just use the Insurrection Act and shoot at these protesters? And Mark Milley responded. according to my sources, saying, well, hold on a second. Yes, there are lots of protests happening around the country, but the vast majority of them are peaceful. A few of them...
have been violent. There has been some looting. But at any one moment, the number of people that are actually being violent is about maximum 1,000. 1,000 people does not, sir, make an insurrection. This is not the beginning of the US Civil War. I cannot have the American forces shooting at protesters. But the president was asked several times, can we shoot at protesters? And I think the reason I'm bringing that up is...
Donald Trump has just been reelected. If that is his instinct, will it be his instinct again? If there is a moment in this country where there are tensions again in his second term, I think we should look. back to that Black Lives Matter period and say, wow, you know, his instinct was to use American forces against American people. I don't know that that instinct has gone away. And will he have a...
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or a Defense Secretary who is willing to say to him, actually, no, Mr. President, this is not an insurrection. You cannot shoot at American people. I don't think he will because he's choosing very different people this time around.
Will he get hit with something that doesn't fit his wheelhouse, doesn't fit his skill set? It always does. Every president does. Of course. That's the tragedy of the presidency. You know who we haven't... we haven't spoken about yet and we should do is Joe Biden, of course, who is running against Donald Trump. By this stage, when Black Lives Matter is happening, he is the Democratic nominee. He's won the nomination pretty easily, but he hasn't really kind of launched a campaign.
Trump people keep deriding him for running a basement campaign because he doesn't go out on the campaign trail. He's not very visible. He's sort of sticking to COVID regulations and he doesn't get out very much. But he is five points ahead in the polls. because of the dissatisfaction with Trump. Trump has seen his numbers drop again because of the Black Lives Matter protests. Joe Biden's core message seems to be he's going to unite America.
and defeat this person who is an aberration in American history. But I think at this point, Joe Biden, having run a kind of rather, I suppose, stealth campaign, quiet campaign, COVID campaign, realizes with... Black Lives Matter that he has a moment to be a bit more aggressive in his campaigning and he goes out on Sunday the 31st of May to an area of Wilmington where there had been large protests the previous night and he is
photographed kneeling and speaking to a young black man. And he sends out a tweet. We are a nation in pain right now, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us. And the kind of contrast. Anthony, between Joe Biden out there, you know, kneeling down, speaking to a young black man and Donald Trump, who has not found the resources to... give some soaring speech around race or much empathy at all towards the protesters or to black people in the country, just reinforces the contrast between.
Democrats and Republicans, the Democratic nominee and the Republican nominee at this moment. So I just want to say this one thing to you, and I want to get your reaction to it. If you watch Biden in interviews and statements that he's making in the year 2020. It's like night and day compared to the way he sounds and the way he's interacting with people in the year 2024. He's sharp. He's coherent. He's on message. He's exercising.
experience and his judgment and he cares and he doesn't take any bait from Donald Trump. Donald Trump is sending a barrage of attacks at him and he doesn't take any bait. All the Republican candidates. all of their weaknesses, all their Achilles heels, was they took the bait from Trump. He's a pig. You're told by the farmer, don't fight with the pig. He's going to drag you into the mud, Caddy Kay, and you're not going to like it, and the pig's going to love it.
But all the Republicans go into the mud, not Joe Biden. He's above the fray and he's speaking to the American people like an adult in a crisis situation. It's a very big difference. And what happens to him in the polls, Katty? Well, at that point, he starts to climb in the polls because the contrast that he wants to draw. I mean, I don't know whether this is because Joe Biden is drawing the contrast well or because Donald Trump is drawing the contrast badly.
Joe Biden is going for unity and we are a country united, as that tweet says. We are a nation in pain right now, but we must not let this pain destroy us. Or whether it's because Donald Trump, who is... talking about retribution on the protests. He's calling them terrorists. He's asking his Joint Chiefs of Staff if he can shoot at the protesters. He's using tear gas against the protesters.
I don't know if it's because Donald Trump is handling it badly or because Joe Biden is handling it well, but whatever it is, the polls start to diverge at this point. Trump has gone too far. And there's a very large group of people, particularly suburban women. They've said, whoa, he's gone too far. He's not the right guy right now at this moment in our history. Just before we get on to talking about how the Democrats now start to worry about whether Donald Trump...
will hand over power if he loses the election because they are looking at the polls and they see Joe Biden, who is about 10 points ahead in the opinion polls. I want to point out one other thing in the first half of this. episode when we spoke about COVID, I talked about Dr. Fauci, who is now surrounded by security guards. There is one other character from this period who is also now surrounded by security guards, and that is General Mark Milley.
is another person who is on Donald Trump's current watch list of people that the MAGA team would like to see prosecuted. because they say that he was not loyal to Donald Trump, that he betrayed Donald Trump because of some of the actions he took around January the 6th in trying to calm a world. He called China up. He tried to reassure the Chinese that...
American democracy was solid, that the country was solid, that something crazy was not about to happen. And because of that, he has been labeled a traitor and is now on the hit list of the Trump team. So you've got two big figures that we've spoken about in this. episode who now have to worry about their security because of the actions they took around that time. So it's July of 2020.
And the race is swinging towards Joe Biden because of the COVID response and because of the BLM protests. But Democrats have started to worry that... even if they do win this election, Donald Trump might not give up power. He's been sowing the seeds of
about the election result. He's been criticizing mail-in ballots, of course, because of COVID. Some of the rules in some of the states have been changed to allow people to vote by mail so they don't have to go and stand with other people in polling. stations. And he and Donald Trump is now suggesting that the election should be delayed because of mail-in ballots. On the 30th of July, he tweeted,
With universal mail-in voting, not absentee voting, which is good, 2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the election until... people can properly, securely, and safely vote, question mark, question mark, question mark. And it's because of that, you get people like Reid Hoffman, who is a billionaire Democratic donor.
and a very important figure in American politics because American politics is so much about money, going to Nancy Pelosi, who at the time was the Democratic Speaker of the House. and presenting Pelosi with a scenario in which Trump refuses to give up power. So we're in the summer. of 2020. And people are starting to plan for the election of what might happen afterwards. And Reid Hoffman has a whole load of proposals that Democrats should, and he says, could use to fight back.
For example, he has focused in on this date of January the 6th and how Pelosi should refuse to bring the House back into session if the Republicans... were not going to certify the results of the election because it's on January the 6th that they were going to be called into session to sign off on the results of the election. Pelosi, by the way, at this point, thinks, well...
okay, I'll listen to Reid Hoffman. He's an important donor. I'll talk to him, but I don't really think it's a possibility, but she concedes that it's a possibility nonetheless. And she creates a secret committee. under the leadership of Adam Schiff, who you know well, Anthony, a longtime congressman from California, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. And she asked them to...
draw up a kind of investigation, a kind of what could go wrong after the election. And so that, I think for me, this formation, and we had the reporting after this, of this secret committee. shows that the Democrats really were starting to take this much more seriously because Schiff comes up with the same concerns of Hossman. And he thinks that...
There are so many points in the election process that Trump could apply sort of pressure on, areas where he could try and stall the system or break the system. And one of them... of those kind of points of weakness in the system is January the 6th. And I think that now is the point where Democrats are really realizing that they have to focus on what Trump might do afterwards.
It's right there. He says it several months before January 6th. He says it. He said it, by the way, in 2024. He said it in October, September. If it's not going his way, they've got...
legal teams and there's going to be blood, there's going to be violence. He doesn't hide it, Kat. He doesn't hide it. And going into the election, of course, he has said all of that. And actually going into the election, he's just come out of a bad... bout of COVID when, I remember this too, my God, this program, I remember the last series we did on the election of 2016, it gave you PTSD and this is giving me some PTSD because I...
covered all of this. And I sat in the studio covering all of this. And I remember when he got sick with COVID and he was helicoptered off to Walter Reed Hospital and he was really, really sick. We learned afterwards, but he insisted on walking to the helicopter.
himself. After he gets better, he's helicoptered back to the White House and he stands on the balcony of the White House and rather dramatically rips off his mask as a kind of sign of defiance. And it's clear he knows that he's heading into this election as the underdog. angry with covid he's angry that he got sick angry with the black lives matter protesters
But the election is held, even though it's been difficult, even though both conventions have had to be held virtually, even though a lot of people have had to vote in ways they've never voted before. And the first results... start coming in. And I remember sitting there on the night of the 3rd of November and something strange happens because Donald Trump, having been eight, nine points behind in the polls is ahead. In Michigan...
in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, and I'm getting texts while I'm on air anchoring the BBC's coverage from Democrats who are panicking. And Jill Biden is reportedly making kind of calls in the early evening saying, you know, What's happening? What's going on? Because it looks like Donald Trump is winning. It looks like he's defying the opinion polls. Did you think he was going to win at that point, that night when you watched it? I mean, by this time, of course, you're...
two years split from him. He doesn't love you as much as he used to. No, he loves me more, Gaddy, because that's what happens when you split from people. Oh, I see. Okay. He's still tweeting about me, Gaddy. Don't forget that. That's true. Yes. The major loser. Yes. May he be good to you in 2025 and say something mean and nasty about you. But in any event, he is on the ropes. He is in disarray.
And it's spilling over into the campaign. He has somebody running his campaign that was great on data in 16. and was great on fundraising over Facebook and Instagram in 16, but has never really ran a national campaign. And it's a gentleman by the name of Brad Pascal.
And the numbers are going upside down on Trump. And Trump is getting fidgety with the campaign. He's getting fidgety with the people that are working with him. And then he starts mobilizing by bringing people over from the White House. to go over to Arlington where the campaign office is in Virginia, start working with them. And that's when I knew he was in trouble because that's always a tell with Trump. I'm doing great. I'm doing great.
And all of a sudden, five people are moving over there. You know, I was at an event this week and got the opportunity to see Paul Manafort. And Paul said something to me. Paul, of course, was one of his campaign managers that was fired unceremoniously. in August of 2016 that paved the way for Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon. He had one of the best lines ever about Trump. The minute he says something and does the opposite.
always think of the opposite, meaning the actions do speak louder than the words. I'm doing great. Then he starts sending people out of the White House. It's a sign from him. that he knows it's slipping from him. It's slipping from him. He thinks he can make it up in the debates, though. Yeah, but he gets to election night, and he gets this kind of temporary boost, right? But it's actually only a red mirage because...
As the mail-in ballots start getting counted, and remember so many people are voted by mail and many of those are Democrats because Democrats are more likely. to adhere to the COVID restrictions and are more cautious about COVID generally. And Donald Trump has been dissuading his followers from, as we said earlier, from... voting by mail. Donald Trump doesn't like mail-in voting, so Republicans vote on the day.
Day of votes get counted quickly. The mail-in votes get counted later. And the picture starts to change. And at 11.20 p.m. Fox News projects Joe Biden as the winner of Arizona, which is a battleground state. But it's a battleground state that's been pretty Republican. So it's kind of amazing for Democrats to win it. And Trump's path to victory is stuck.
starting to narrow, which is a major boost to Joe Biden. At this point, by the way, Jared Kushner was told to call Rupert Murdoch, but he can't get through to him to try to get him to put pressure. on Fox News. Trump had always planned to go out and claim victory in the middle of the night. And despite that result in Arizona, he decides to go out and do it.
And at 2.30 on the morning of the 4th of November, Trump goes into the East Room of the White House and announces to the world, as far as I'm concerned, we've already won it. And it was an extraordinary moment because it has started to become clear in the hour or two before that that he hasn't necessarily won it. There is not a result at that point. And whilst...
Joe Biden hasn't definitely won it. Things have been moving in the Democrats' direction. And I remember interviewing a member, I was on the BBC hosting the... the BBC's election night coverage. And a member of the British cabinet was one of the guests and he came on the program. And I remember...
pushing him and saying, listen, the UK is America's closest ally. What do you think of this, of Donald Trump saying that he has won the election when he hasn't? And doesn't the UK have some kind of responsibility? to say to its closest ally and friend that this kind of behavior is anti-democratic. And I think we all started to realize that, wow, this was not going to turn out in the way that American elections normally do. This was not...
normal behavior. And it sent shockwaves around the world. It threw America's allies into disarray because Donald Trump had done something that American presidents had not done before. He had claimed victory. when he did not have a victory in that election. So, Cady, while you were sitting there on that glitzy, bright TV set, nice and calm, I was on the phone with Rick Wilson and Tara Setmeyer.
And we were doing a live stream on election night and the data was coming in. And for a brief moment, it really did look like Trump was going to win. And I was searching for a lunch bag. A brown paper bag somewhere in the house to breathe into. Because I was like, oh man, this is going to really, really suck. Almost as much as it sucks now that he won in 2024. I really thought he was going to lose in 2020.
I did think he was going to lose in 24, but it was a tighter margin this time than in 2020. So then when he announced to the world that he had won, what did you think and feel? Well, I was up. I was watching him. come out of the red room and the green room area into the east wing, into the east room. And he got up on the platform and he says, we've got really good results and we've won. And I dispute the...
Fox News call in Arizona, blah, blah, blah. And I remember thinking, oh man, he's going to have a large group of people in this country that are going to take him at his word. One thing he knows. He can lie repeatedly. It doesn't matter. 30%, 40% of the country is going to believe exactly what he's saying. He comes out tomorrow and says, the sky is red. The group of people saying, you know, that sky is red. I don't know why you guys thought it was blue.
It's red as red can be. And I just remember thinking, oh, this is going to be really, really bad. There's gonna be a lot of people who believe Donald Trump on election night. Yeah, I think we both knew that this meant trouble. So on that note, We're going to leave it here for the moment, but do join us next Monday for the next episode in this miniseries, where we'll see how Donald Trump summons a band of conspirators, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
to do everything they can to steal the election from Joe Biden and stay in the White House. It's the story that pushed American democracy to the brink. But if you can't wait for that, you can sign up to be a founding member at therestispoliticsus.com to get access to that episode and the rest of the series right now. Thank you so much for listening.