And Steve Schmidt with the warning here and please to be able to bring with you today for conversation and apple bomb from warsaw and welcome.
Oh thanks for having me.
So we were just talking for a moment before people started joining about how unprecedented what we are seeing form in the United States. And this has happened, this has been made law. And so when we look at Trump's perversely named Big Beautiful Bill as a propaganda package, it's so gigantic, so immense, it was unfathomable and scale and
size and cost and damage. One part of it that was stopped was the public land sell off and that's an interesting go going forward detail and learning from how you stop Trump because that's the only area where they were stopped cold. But this Philly adds so much to the debt if you care about fiscal issues, it demolishes
indiscriminately and without much thought, the social safety net. It is corrupt with regard to the tax code, inverting it very much into a regressive code, greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in American history. Rural healthcare will be decimated by this. There will be massive amounts of hospital closures, a lessening of access. But all of those things not very long from now and forever more.
As bad as they are, this bill will be remembered, I think, for a singular thing, this bill, without much debate, without any great speeches of denunciation and dissent that will linger in the congressional record. This funded a federal police force which has never existed in the United States. It is by I think any reasonable definition, and you are a sober, serious person, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, if it doesn't meet the definition of a
secret police force. Given that these people are masked, they are badgelets. The totality of this is a budget that would put it in the first rank of global militaries, comparable depending on how you count the money, to the French military and nuclear power, with aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, expeditionary capabilities. The sector lead was being interviewed ice in uniform, full combat kit, in front of an armored vehicle, and he said, and I'm quoting very close, but not precisely.
He doesn't work for Karen Bass. He doesn't care what she says or the people in California say. He's with the federal government and the federal government is there to
stay and that's the new norm. And yesterday the new normal was five armored vehicles in the middle of the day tactical plan code named Operation Excliber supported by the US Army Federalized Forces, and they invaded MacArthur Park and the OPS orders talk about the threat assessment that this is the place where MS thirteen came to life, and
they should expect to be in combat. And there's assessments about the civilian casualties and the elementary schools next door to it, and it is all madness, of course, But I don't think your average American has a handle yet on how transformative this legislation will be any amount of money.
And when I talk about transformation, here the transformative pieces of legislation in the last eight years. You had the GI Bill, you had Medicare and Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Actor, you had the Interstate High Commerce Interstate Highway Act. Those are your most transformative pieces of changing the landscape the complexion of the country until this. And so how do you think about the constitution of a federal police force that is now the largest law
enforcement entity in the United States? Every single person who made a speech twenty four years ago warning about the Homeland Security Department has been proven to be profaned.
How do you see this? So you are right to point to this as the thing in the bill that has the the greatest possibility to do the most long term damage to democracy and to freedom in the United States. What worries me about it is you've already you've named as well, is that it's the first time I've seen how the Trump administration could get around the problem of divided power in the United States. So, in the US
we have checks and balances. We all know that, you know, the courts and Congress are supposed to check the president and so on. But there's always been an additional layer of check of restraint on the federal government. And that additional layer has been the power of states that actually a lot of our laws are made locally or at the state level. State governors are very powerful in our
political system. That's quite different, by the way, from a lot of European countries where there aren't local entities with that kind of with that kind of power and control. And so any attempt to you know, create a national programmer do nationwide arrests on any kind of large scale was always going to be stopped at the state level, and it's I mean, one of the reasons I suspect
why it's never been tried. What worries me the most about this, this ice police force, whatever it's going to be called, is that it seems to be designed to overcome that. As you say, it's a force that, at least so far as it's been used, it's people who are dressed like military combatants, carrying military grade weapons. Many of them have had their faces masked so we didn't know who they are. They are going into residential neighborhoods where they are carrying out mass arrests of some kind.
For the moment, I suppose most Americans are telling themselves, well, it's only it's directed to legal immigrants, you know, so I'm safe. But once you have a force like that in place, what's to stop you from using it in other ways against other kinds of people. And we've already seen people being accidentally arrested. People who are citizens or who have a right to remain in the United States,
We've seen them already be arrested. We've seen this force, you know, you use violence against ordinary people are who are simply standing in their way. And once that begins to happen, you know, you what worries me is this feeling of you know, people will get used to it. They'll become accustomed to it. They'll stop seeing it as unusual or strange. They'll begin to assume that it's normal that the federal government should have that kind of power and be able to wield that kind of violence. And
then they'll begin to make excuses. You know, so, Okay, it's only illegal immigrants, all right, it's only people who violated the law in some way, or it's only people who've come up, you know, who've deserved it. They've done something bad to the president or to the federal government, or they're protesting in some illegal way. I mean, you can you know this is a this is something that
we know from history. You know, there's a there's a kind of mission creep that you get when you have that kind of power, when you have that kind of government power. And that's what worries me the most about this police force, whatever we're going to, whatever it's going to be called. I suppose the other thing that worries me is the I mean, there was there were actually
people making speeches about it. Hakim Jeffreys had that long soliloquy in Congress, and I've heard other Democrats, other members of Congress have spoken both about this ice and about the bill and the damage that the bill is going to do in a lot of places. What to me is disturbing is how many is Republicans, senators and congressmen who are going along with this even though they clearly know what it is, and they clearly know that it's wrong.
You know, people have made fun of Lisa Murkowski because she's a Senator who has seemed to understand the dangers inherent in the bill, and she took a trade off supposedly because of some deal about Alaska, and she decided to vote for it. But actually, I mean, look at the rest of them. I mean, you know, all of everybody who voted for it is responsible for changing the nature of the relationship between the states and the federal government.
You know, everybody who voted for it is responsible for the cuts to healthcare for poor and poor working people. It's not just people who a unemployed, it's people who who who work and don't make a lot of money. They're all responsible for it, and they have done and they have said remarkably little, even even people you know, you think of someone like Ted Cruz or somebody you know,
you know somebody who they're there. There are people who've who've made great drama in their careers about defending states' rights and defend the rights of Americans, and you know that have seemed to be advocates of free speech or sticklers for the Constitution, and you saw them all cave. And I have to say, even though I wrote a book about this, I wrote a book called Twilight of Democracy,
which was about why people are attracted to authoritarianism. I wrote a cover story in The Atlantic a few years ago that was about collaboration and collusion. So I've thought about the subject a lot, and I've written history books that touch on it, and I still don't get it, Like, I still don't see why if you're a Republican senator, you know, someone who has an enormous amount of power and one hundred people working for you and a lot of job security, you know, you get elected for six years.
I still don't understand why you have to vote for something like this. And I.
Look forward to hearing more people explain it to me. Tom Tellis is a perfect example of this. And there's nothing that brings me closer to public and youurysm than when I hear a version of what he said, which is, well, I just haven't had the freedom to vote.
The way I wanted, and you know, I've had to do this. But now I'm going to retire. So now I'm finally free. And I sit there and I think, huh, you're You're a United States Center. You can do whatever you want? And where does that come from?
I mean, I can, As I said, I've tried to explain it. Some of it is a desire to be part of the movement. You know, they feel this movement of history. They think they feel it, and they want to be part of it. They don't want to stand apart from it. Some of it may be in the case and this is very sad in our country. Some of it may be personal fear. I mean they are
you know, we now know that people. You know, if if you're if you're a senator and you vote the wrong way and you go home to your state, you'll have people threatening you or your family. And we know this, among other things, from Romney's autobiography where he or his biography Sorry it was written by my colleague, where Romney describes talking to colleagues in the Senate who say, well, it's all very well for you. Mit, you're rich. You know, you can afford security and I can't. And so there's
there's there's that aspect to it. A lot of them, I think, and you can, you know, Lindsey Graham is a great example, but there are others a lot of them tell themselves a story about how if I stay in this system, if I remain on the inside, I can be influential, you know, if I if I remain in the movement, I can talk to Trump, but I can get something out of him. I can get something done, you know. So there's a there's that kind of story people, which is which is not at all different from the
kinds of stories people told themselves. And you know, occupied France or or you know, or indeed Communis occupied Poland you know, if I remain in the party, if you know, I can do some good. I mean, there's that version. Most people don't like to think of themselves as being bad people, so they have a they'll have an explanation for it, you know. So it's that combination of fear and and and and, as I said, this feeling that you know, the crowd is moving and I need to
stay in the crowd. But but I but you know, I can, But I can, as I said, I can give you these explanations, and I can point you to earlier moments in history when when people made excuses like that, and I can quote you from them. And you know a great book by Cheslow Milos called Captive Mind, which is about exactly that it's phenomenon in communist Poland in the nineteen forties. But even then, I look at I look at people in the US Senate, as I said,
these are you know, many cases. These are wealthy people. They have you know, they have enormous support, They've been elected from their states, they have huge staffs. You know, they don't have the nerve to push back against any of this, or even to go through the bill and say, do we need this measure? Do we need that measure?
You know?
Or or or do or do work in groups to change it. I mean, it's it's even as I said, even though I can I can give you rational explanations it's still harder to understand you.
You. I'm not trying to quibble with something you said, but you use the tense that hit me, and I want to I want to talk about it. You said, the Republicans in the Senate who are going along with this? When are we across the line where they have fully gone along with.
All of it?
And so I and I and I asked you this question about where that boundary is because the second thing I want to talk to you about it is, and just foreshadow the question, is you and I came out of the I think fair to say the right of senator line as it existed an American politics, and every person, most every person like all of them right, not right,
not ninety nine percent right. There is an infinite testinably small number of people and kid singer Liz Chain in Apple Bombs, Steve Schmidt, small small, small, small number of people who have operated at very high levels in the American government, in the republic Party, in the political establishment, who did not get in line with this. And so for us and I think you have to be careful about judging people, the voters too much judgment of the
voters who got conned in had a bad choice. But I have a lot of judgment towards a lot of these people because we all were supposed to believe in the same thing, and we were all in the same places, in the same meetings, where we were in a business that required belief until it became completely hollow in an instant.
And as somebody who grew up in New Jersey that the person who rose to the top of the political culture personality it threatens the Republic is Donald Trumps just another layer of icing of farcical absurdism right on top of tragedy, on top of tragedy, on top of what I don't I don't know, but I don't get a chance to talk to a lot of people right who are in that space. But literally every person right that in that political space that we've known, said Lindsay Graham.
I spend an enormous amount of time with Lindsey Graham, with John McCain in a presidential campaign, lived with him for a year and a half. And how do you feel about that? Is it? Do you ever feel lonely about it? Do you do you ever? Because because you have certainly held the line about what it is that you said, it is that you believe in and so very lonely place.
I suppose. I mean, I'm lucky. I'm not in the US all the time. I have a wide range of friends. I was not in politics the way you were in politics. You know, I'm a I'm a writer and a historian and a journalist rather than a you know, a person who works on campaigns. But I did have a period of realizing that I would have to make new friends.
I mean, and literally, I'm I'm often asked, I you know this this phenomenon that we're describing, which it's sometimes called polarization, you know, as people split apart and a part of the political spectrum becomes radical, and you know, it includes your former friends. I have had a lot of conversations with people in other countries who have had this, and they asked me for advice what do I do?
And my advice always I think it's maybe it sounds superficial, but I say, make new friends, and so I you know, in my case, it all started a little bit earlier. It's a longer story, but you know, I began looking for new friends and new contacts, and I realized that the world that I had lived in for a long time wasn't the same that had in my case, divided in multiple countries in very bitter ways. And I found people who aligned with me, you know, and I moved on.
And so I can't really say I feel lonely. I mean, I actually feel surrounded by a lot of people who agree with me. And it's interesting. Some of them, you know, are people like you who come from the right, or who worked in the Republican Party, or worked on the Polish right, or worked on you know, were part of
the British Tory Party. Some of them come from there, and some of them came from what used to be the left, you know, people who I would have disagreed with about all kinds of things, you know, ten years ago or twenty years ago, and I might not have spoken to or I would have thought they were wrong or they were on the wrong side of something that
I thought was important. But what I what I've found over the last several years, is that there are these set of fundamental values that matter more than whether you think taxes should be high or low, you know, or whether you know, what's your opinion on how healthcare should
be structured. I mean, there's something there's some things that are much more basic, and I found that that those basic beliefs I find people who have them in different parts of the political spectrum, and those are now my friends or my colleagues, you know, or my or my acquaintances.
And so no, actually I didn't feel lonely. I feel like there are a lot of people, again not just Americans, but a lot of Europeans also who feel who who see the same kind of threat, this threat of extremism, the threat of autocracy taking over their political systems, and they, you know, and they and they've joined together to try and think about what to do about it. So that's that's how I feel. But again, I wasn't. I wasn't in the same world that you were in.
Had Off hit in nineteen thirty hits his high water mark thirty eight percent of the vote thirty two, the Nazis are around thirty percent. They have been kept out of government, violence explodes all over the country. Hitler is made chancellor. There's one other Nazi in the in the German cabinet. And then and in that fall of thirty two, Hitler gives his speech in Dusel Dwarf to the industrialists which you know, loosely was the equivalent of the Chamber
of Commerce. And he and he basically, you know, concedes, I know I'm not very popular here, but you don't have anything to worry about with me. The Communists, on the other hand, will kill all of you. And really he lays out this proposition to the broad middle of Germany, and he's institution that don't like the Nazis. You have the German aristocracy, you have the German military, which is comprised a lot of aristocrats, you have the German clergy,
and you had a total collapse of the center. And I think this is where Germany and the United States. And we don't really talk about this very often, but American soldiers who fought in World War Two came to understand the country that was most like America was Germany and that to this day we ethnically we have more Germans than any other population in the United States by
by ethnic heritage. And Germany was never a country that was susceptible to a dictatorship of the left, but a dictatorship and the threat of the left was enough to create a fascist government in the United States. What Trump has benefited from is the stigmatization of the Democrats, some of the extreme policies, being able to define them as extreme, being able to define them as left. Trump loves that a Democratic Socialists as.
One in New York.
He would love to run against a Democratic Socialist in the general election. I don't think a socialist candidate could ever be elected in the United States. I think they was ever conceivable for them to take power in Germany almost one hundred years ago. But the threat or perception, the propaganda that they could is enough to create the fear that Hey, and the fundamental message of the Nazis was we're going to kill them. We're not going to
kill you, They're going to kill you. And there's a lot of that that's inherent in the Trumpian In the Trumpian message, what does a centrist democrat, the tradition of a John Kenny, what does somebody have to step up and say to really get your intention in this moment where you're like, wow, that person just hit the nail on the head. What they said was what was needed to be said in the context is because I don't hear it really anywhere.
First of all, there is a there is a really important difference. So actually, at the time of the Hitler takeover of Nazi Germany, there had been a communist revolution in Munich, and there had also been a real, a genuine bullshic revolution in Russia which was throughout you know, in nineteen twenty actually launched a war and tried to invade Poland. And was I mean, it was like a
real threat. There really were communists and they were and they were totalitarians, and they were you know, bloody and war mongering. And so when when Hitler said that he wasn't, I mean, you know, there was there was something real that people were genuinely afraid of her. The weird thing, weird thing about the United States right now is there is no equivalent of the Bolsheviks in the United States. There is no you know, bloody tyrants who are about
to invade America. You know, when we talk about democratic socialists in the United States, we're talking about people who believe in things like universal health care, which is I'm talking to you right now in Poland, which is I mean universal health care is it would be untouchable. I mean nobody and even the Polish far right doesn't want to dismantle it, you know, you know, you're and even even when I hear this, you know, the candidate to be mayor of New York, you know, being vilified because
he to rent control. I mean, I think, you know, Okay, maybe rent control is a dumb policy, and maybe it's a bad idea to have, you know, the city owned grocery stores. Okay, like those are those are silly ideas, but they're not like he's not talking about bringing in the Bolshevik hordes to wipe out the aristocracy or put
people in gulags, you know. So, so what Trump has successfully done, or partially successfully, is He's created this boogeyman about the left, which I think doesn't reflect anything like reality. I mean, and you know, I've written critically about some left wing extremist language, and you know, they're they're there, there are many not smart people out there and so on. But I just don't see that there's a It's not
like there's the equivalent of the Bolsheviks. You know, he uses this language and he talks about the radical Marxist left. You think Kamala Harris is a radical Marxist, you know, let me introduce you to some radical Marxists, you know, or or Joe Biden. Joe Biden's not a radical Marxist, but they've they they've created this sense of of horror and fear and anger, but you know, out of nothing. I mean that's I mean that that's one of the
things that the internet can do for you. I mean, you can you can create almost entirely false narratives, and Trump has been has been a master of doing that. I mean, I do think that there are you know, they haven't all risen to the surface yet, and they haven't all uh you know, not all of them have full national attention. But it seems to me there are actually a lot of centrist Democrats out there. I mean, there's Chris Senator Murphy, there's Governor Pritzker, There's Pete Bodagitch.
If you like him, you know, there's Gavin Newsom. Like him or don't like him. I mean, these are these are not people who are extreme leftists. Uh And as I said, even the people who we call extreme leftists aren't in any international standard all that left wing either. But but I mean, there there seems to me there are a lot of moderate Democrats, probably most of the Democrats in Congress, most of them in the Senate who who stand for the values that I think most Americans
still stand for. And they believe in the Bill of Rights, and they believe in the separation of powers, and they believe in you know, they believe that there should be a safety net for the poor. You know, by the way, the American safety net being much smaller and narrower than what you would find here here in Europe. But but this isn't a way the oddity of Trump is I mean, Hitler also arose in this atmosphere of terrible economic crisis, in this horrific war, and there was runaway inflation, and
there had been this decade of violence. And what have we had? We had, I mean, we had COVID, which may be part of the explanation. But it's not like the United States is collapsing in economic disarray or you know, or we have one hundred percent inflation or we have anything like that. You know, what Trump has done is created the sense of menace just in his language. And he's been allowed to do that by cowardly Republicans and people around him who've gone along with it.
So I think if I was to observe this and try to explain it, to you under the scenario where you had just woken up from a coma after ten years and here we are and have to bring you up to speed.
Is that.
Trump produces a television show and he has a captive audience. He has a set is the White House, he goes other places, but mostly, you know, we see Trump in a couple familiar poses, answering questions. It's not ever really challenged, nor is he particularly effectively responded to. But this, but this show, I mean, I suppose you could measure it right. It's by the account of people who were watching cable
news and all the proliferating elements. But I think there's huge parts of the population that have obviously tuned it all out aren't affected by it. I remember being at my sister's place in New Hampshire, I mean three summers ago, and the television work was on and I was trying to read something and I just looked at her, good Jennifer, like what are we watching? And it was a show about reality show and about people who have disorders, and
a woman was was her compulsion. She was eating the stuffing of her couch and I was like, what are we watching? Like I turned it off right, and it's and it's a version of that.
Right.
But but politics has become a forum for the mentally ill or undiagnosed psychiatric patients right, who found many of them their way into Congress or onto the staffs, or into the pundic class. And in the totality of all of this, I think you can make an argument that, well, you know, reality always finds a way of intruding, right, the suffering right comes and you can't bullshite your way through it. But what is the way to wake up of people from a stupor from a languor from a
apathy as something's bearing down on them? This history offer any lessons at intercession before things get worse and go into the abyss at this stage or at this cycle of government assertion of its power and authority that's arrested them or there you know, are there examples of that?
So, first of all, a lot of what Trump does, as you say, this reality show that he builds a lot of it, I think is designed to make people apathetic when you have this constant lying and he lies, you know, many times every day, and he lies about things that we all know he's lying, you know, when he you know, the famous example was at the beginning of his first term when he insisted that there have been more people on the ellipse at the mall when he was when he was inaugurated than there were, and
he made his press spokesman lie about it, even though we all saw it on TV. And then, of course the grotesque example is the is the election of twenty twenty. So he lies constantly and repeatedly, and when that happens, you have the phenomenon of people saying, I don't know anymore what's true. You know, this person says that, and
he's you know, this can't possibly be true. You get people checking out of politics because you know, if there's no if there's no true, and you don't know what's true and what's false, and how can you believe in anything or care about it. And that's actually, I mean, that is a Proutinus tactic. I mean that is borrowed directly from what the Russians do in order to get people to deactivate them, to demotivate them and demobilize them.
You know, you tell lies all the time, you know, you change the narratives constantly, and you make people confused and then they don't want any part of politics. And a lot of actually activism in Russia, at least until the war, and until Alexi Navolney Divide, was about looking for ways to, you know, bil build a community around the things that people knew were true, and in the
case of Russia, that was about corruptions. So Navalney was an anti Alexi Navalne who died in a in a prison camp, was an anti corruption campaigner, and he built a kind of movement around making very high quality, sometimes funny videos about the money that had been stolen and relating it then directly to people's lives. So, look, whot instole this money? Need built a palace, and that's why you have a crappy hospital and you have potholes in
your road. So he constantly was trying to make this connection. But there are many examples of political movements, you know, from countries around the world, including some that aren't quite the same as the US and have different circumstances, but almost all of them need to begin with the understanding that the argument we're having in the United States isn't really the old kind of argument, So we're not really having an argument anymore about policy. It's not about Republican
policies in American and Democratic policies. And you know, will taxes go up or down? You know, will we have this kind of infrastructure bill or that kind of infrastructure bill. You know, we're now talking about we now need to have politics be much more about defending institutions and defending very core values and explaining to people what's at stake. You know, what's the stake is not whether you know, you'll have you know, a thousand dollars one way or
the other to pay in tax. What's at stake is the way your country is going to be run. And finding a way to refocus politics on on that is a is the beginning of the problem. But yeah, I mean there's a I may write something about this in due course. And I coincidentally, I taught a class at Johns Hopkins over the last semester with two colleagues, and the class was about resistance to dictatorship, and we looked
at different movements in different countries. And of course when we designed the class a year earlier, we were about the United States. You know, we were looking at you know, Mexico and Russia and you know other countries. But but but but I but the beginning to think that way, beginning to think about but where is the real argument and what is it about? I think that will that's the most important thing you can do to wake people.
But as I said, I do see democratic politicians talking like that, you know, I do see some of them trying to make those points. I do think it's a wasteland out there with you know, with nobody, nobody saying anything. You know, there's a we also have this tendency I don't know where it comes from, you know, whenever anything is going wrong to blame the Democrats as if it's as if it's their fault that the Republicans are are
destroying the constitution. You know, you listen to some of them, Some of them are some of them are making sense.
Yeah, I mean listen, there's no there's no question about it. But but but to me, what you point out is a political emergency and urgency. And as I listened to you, and as I hope you know that the people who are with us listen to you, that they can appreciate how devastating, devastating the Democratic position was around Biden's fitness, his age, the gaslighting, because fundamentally, what happened and there's a question the Democrats will have to answer running for president.
Areingb asked the question? The question is what happened? And that's not a question about forensic investigation. It's about will you tell the truth to me right now? And what happened is the Democratic Party lost to the most prolific liar in American history two elections on fundamental questions of honesty, and this last one it was honesty about the border,
honesty about the economy, and honesty about Biden's fitness. And when you have a political party that loses an election to Donald Trump on questions of honesty and this is the consequence of that loss, that loss is a very very big deal and that has to be talked about directly, honestly and ruthlessly. And the uh, the fact of the matter is is that whomever the Democratic nominee will be that can win a presidential election, there's going to be a break from the from the past and a break
from having to defend some indefensible stuff. And you know, and we talked about that mythology to the left. I mean, you know, look, Kamala Harris and I think everybody answered looks at this and evaluates it the wrong way. I do. I think that Kamala Harris believes that federal prisoner should receive tax payer funded sexual assignment surgery. I do not. But why did she answer the question like that? And she answered the question like that and failed the massive
character test? And you have a generation of Democratic candidates that have tried to appease some social media, a morphous set of values and issues that have been exploited by a demogogue, by a fascist, by whatever it is you want to think about them, to great, great, great effect. And the Democrats are going to have to offer a reform message and agenda and vision. I think that pulls us into the future.
And offers a.
Pathway out of this and that, and that fundamentally, to me, starts with an ethics reform passage UH ethics reform legislation, and then legislation that talks about how you really weaken the executive But when you look at Republicans in this moment, maga politicians, it appears that they don't think they're ever not going to be in power again. And I find
that to be very very curious, very curious. That they don't, that they don't seem to think that there's an election ahead, that they're underwater on the numbers.
I find that equally curious. I don't have a you know, I can't tell you that they're going to steal the election or you know, I don't want to be apocalyptic, but you're right, they aren't acting like people who are planning to lose. I mean, even I've said to a couple of people, I don't even really understand this drive to build huge amount of executive power, to give more and more power to the president, to make him a king, to depride him, you know, to make sure he's not
blocked or by any courts or by anything. I mean, okay, what are they then going to be happy to give up that power to I don't know, President Ocasio Cortes or I don't know, President some other person whom they don't like. Are they willing to hand that power over to someone whose views are very different or even President Gavin Newsom? I don't know. It's it's it does feel like they're doing something that they're not going to ever
want to give up. And I and I don't have a I'm not going to lay out a scenario there, but it is it's an extremely odd way to behave you know, the point about our constitution, and the point about which you know has many it's it has many flaws, but the point about it was is it was a set of rules that were possible for both parties to live with more you know, up until recently, more or less, you know that you that you there was a set
of rules. You've played by the rules when you when you won, you didn't change them, and that gave the other side the opportunity to compete for power once again. And when you lost, well at least you knew that the person who won had some constraints on him. You know, there was there was you know, you weren't. You were never seeding over total power to your political opponents. You know, there was always some some room for you know, room for opposition, and room for minority views and and checks
and balances and so on. If they're going to take away all the checks and balances, then we're entering a very different political world. And you know, in that world, why would anybody ever want to give up power? It's
too dangerous. You know, if you give up power, then you know, you can be arrested, or you can lose or you can have your money taken away or you know, I mean and and and that's what you know, that's the you know, that's the that's the danger of what they're doing, is there is there making it too tempting to to to never want to for the for this Republican Party, not to ever want to lose power.
I just saw someone on the on one of the comments saying Kamala had the election stolen from her, and that person's as crazy as as any of the MAGA people. But right, I mean, what's what what's the what's the chances that you think I mean if the center and I don't I don't mean a center political position as a compromise between two points on the line. I mean the Tenison sense, the center of holding or values our institutions. But a reciprocal extremism that answers Trump I don't think
will ever succeed. They will have a right wing dictation, will never have a left wing one in the United States, and so that would be that would be crushed. And there you go. And as I read the comments, anytime you talk about the Democratic Party and what happened in twenty four the fact that the national Party is at twenty seven percent approval level. People simply say no, don't
want to hear it. And as one of the people that walks with no hypocrisy on the subject walking, Dean Phillips out to make a principal stand, I think it's a huge problem, you know, for for Democrats, there is a there is a deep, deep intolerance on the left of people that just don't want to hear it, that you know, are are in a bubble and there's a good party and an evil party. And the reality of it is that the American people can't stand hypocrisy, and
they see a lot of it. They see it when Chuck Schumer goes out and when US Senator Menendez is arrested with the gold bars, he says, well, you know, he's a great public servant for the people in New Jersey. And so all of that has poison trust, don't I don't know how you restore trust other than to tell
the truth and the idea that there is. You know, the choice is the choice, and people didn't want the choice, right in eighty percent of the country saying we don't want the choice between these two guys, and the choice is what the Democrats gave there. You know, campaign was supposedly a defense at democ Perce. There was no democratic there was there was no there was no democratic process for picking her in. You know, it ended in disaster.
And I think it was all predictable. And so I when I objectively look at this, I think we have two elections, right, and we have we have two elections before the country is forever transformed. And so that that the first ones are in twenty six, we're gonna have an indication in twenty five by the size of these victories. And in New Jersey and Virginia, what portends the Republican Congress, You're gonna have stalemate for two years and.
Then you're gonna have jd.
Vance is likely to be the be the Republican nominee, though it could be Tucker Carlson or it could be Don Junior right where it could be Marco Rubio, but but whatever, Uh, it's a small list of no known quantities there, and the next president's going to have to act with a lot of strength and then a lot of restraint to repair all of these all of these institutions. Very very quickly. And do you see anybody on the on the horizon who was saying things that inspire you
that that person gets it. I'll give you an example. One for me is Jake Aukincloss, right, Jake Jake Aukincloss, member of Congress from Massachusetts, comput the Marine Corps officer completely understands the necessities, the necessities of the moment. Is there anybody for you that's like speaking to you, that's that's resonating with you, that things are saying. JB. Pritzker says a lot of things that resonate with me. Pritz Ker,
Chris Murphy. I wrote a piece last year before the election about that a group of Democrats who had entered most two of them had entered Congress in twenty eighteen. And I really like and admire a lot of this. Is Abby Spanberger, Mikey Cheryl, Jason Crowe. There's a you know, there's a It seems to me there are quite a
few people like that. They're not all at the very top level, but there are plenty of people in the party who seemed to me to have you know, as you say, it's not about being centrist in the way of being halfway in between the left and the right. It's about people who very deeply believe in American values and who understand the importance of institutions, and who want to defend and protect them. And I feel like I do hear that from from from from enough people. You know.
The issue is presumably whether in a culture that values outrage and celebrity, partly because that's the way our media and social media are now constructed, can those people rise to the top? Can they? You know, can a normal person, you know, a normal honest American who has had experience in the military or who has you know, who's thought deeply about policy. Can someone like that still become president? That that, to me is it is the deeper question,
because I do see people like that out there. What's your dot tell you?
I think it's possible, Yeah, guy, Like for me, right, like, the ideal is right, It's tough for me to like, I can't right, I just have that there's a cord of American idealism, and may that right? And one thing that it's true is that the country has produced the right people in the right moments, almost almost providentially.
Out of out of nowhere.
Lincoln Lincoln. Lincoln Well Grant is an example of that. Sherman is an example of that, the three of them together, the you know, uh Dwight Eisenhower is an example of that. You know, all of the World War two generals. And there are you know, people who deeply believe in in the American States that I don't think want to see it, uh slip away and go go gently into you know, into tonight. I just say, you know, we're talking about you know, we're talking about you know, these these candidates
in the future. If somebody just says, you know, Obama and you know, there's it's it's the hours over right, in's fact, the World War two, post World War two hours over whatever whatever we're going into, you know, whatever we're going going into. Now, who who speaks about freedom in a in a way that reminds you at any level of how John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan talked about freedom? Is there is there anybody who does that? And if not, why why do you think that is?
I mean, once again, i mean, I'm not sure what you know what you mean by speaking about freedom. And if you were to listen to Abbie Spenberger, who doesn't have a huge national profile. I saw her speak at a backyard event in northern Virginia, and she she speaks, she would she would be someone who would speak about duty, about responsibility, about the need to defend values and the need to defend freedom. I don't I don't suppose she's
you know, she she's, she's. She's not making speeches in front of the Berlin Wall yet, but I would I would guess that in the Democratic Party and that you would find a couple of dozen people who would be beginning to think along those lines. I didn't know whether you've heard them all speak nationally yet, but but they're they're.
No, she's, she's, she's, she's excellent. And I agree with you, right there are there are you can you can look at you know, probably I could, you know, you probably go off one hundred and fifty, one hundred and fifty people. But they just it hasn't broken through in a way connected to the moment, And maybe it's just early in
in that I think early I am. I'm very frustrated by the lack of a response organized by the Senators and by the by the members of Congress that that that highlight their most effective their most funny members, right, that I think need to be engaged in the politics. In the message of this moment to moment, I wanted to ask you one one thing that is for sure, there needs to be a vast coalition of Americans that
stands opposed to this. And I feel it right, you know when I write that, there's a demand and you see some of it on the comments today. There's a demand that, for example, my positions conform right to their positions, right, And that's a function of an element of the Democratic Party. All right, that's just intolerant. And you see some of
the comments on here about this all starting with Ronald Reagan. Right, there's a fetish about Ronald Reagan, who was elected in nineteen eighty, right, so it's forty forty four years ago. He left office with a sixty percent approval level after winning an election with forty nine states. You're in you're in Poland. I don't think Ronald Reagan has a reputation
for dictatorship in Poland. But there's a lot of Americans who admire Ronald Reagan who don't like Donald Trump, but probably don't like being screened at about Ronald Reagan by someone in the opposing political party who needs their votes uh to win an election. And so in a state like Texas where a Democratic candidate hasn't won in thirty years in a statewide election, right, the the cultural condemnation of you know, all this stuff right on a on
a constant basis doesn't help. But I don't think right, build that, build that type of type of coalition. But you know, so we have an audience, you know, on this that's probably a left of center audience. What would you say about Ronald Reagan and about freedom? You know, the last speech, you know, I just saw a comment Ronald Reagan was a crappy president after eight years.
You know.
The last thing that Ronald Reagan talked about in his farewell address was the importance of immigration to the United States and that the majesty of the country was that we were made up of all the peoples of the world, that it was our inherent strength. And so like his message on that subject would be something that you would think Democrats would want to embrace, but a lot of people don't want to ever write. Show any grace to anybody who's got that letter of an opposite party next
to their name. Right in our tribal society, and we can't get out of that. The country's done. And so I wonder on any given day, right like if we're if we can, if we can get out of that, and I just get I get depressed when I read
the comments. It just shows right to keep warrior, the absence of grace, right, really, the ignorance of history, right, any appreciation for for who these guys are, and it's just really, uh, you know, we got Blue Maga and you got Trump Maga, and you know too, two magas right in in competition like scorpions in a in a bottle. You know that that dynamic is a is a very is a very very depressing one.
For me. It's a very oppressive dynamic. But I'm not sure that it reflects the entire country. I think most people are more nuanced. Social media has has. I mean, it's literally deliberately designed. It's set up to create polarization. That's what it does. You know, you get more likes, you get more clicks, you get more popularity by having more extreme views, by by by embodying not a policy debate but an identity. You know that, you know what
we now have is politics. It's not real about political It's not about how our healthcare system should be structured, you know, or what should we really do about immigrants. It's about having these identity groups that people click and feel part of. So, you know, a part of the solution is finding people who can rise above that or move beyond that. And as I say, I've now said, I think four times in the last forty minutes, I think there are people who are trying. I do take
your point about coalitions. I mean, one of the in the in the many conversations that I've had with people who have fought dictatorships in other countries, almost all of them talk about coalitions, and not just left right coalitions, but thinking in terms of which parts of society are the ones who need to be moved. How do you what's the best way to This doesn't apply so much to unite it. What's the best way to talk to
the police or the military. How do you put together different audiences with different interest around a set of similar themes. And as I said, everybody who's ever been a successful opponent of a dictatorship has thought that way. Because what you need to do, as you rightly say, is move beyond just being really angry, even though anger is important motivation, and begin to think more broadly, how do we bring people in, how do we how do we how do we build a movement? How do we how do we
work together? I mean my instinct, and this I think it's reflected by polling, is that the majority of Americans are already uncomfortable with Trump. You know, they're already uncomfortable with even you know, with with the idea of an
ice police force it's larger than the Marines. They didn't like tariffs, you know, they didn't like this this foreign policy that moves back and forth and has no strategy, and you know, and so I don't think I don't think it's unthinkable that you could that people could unite around common value, use and even in a positive vision for what the country should be, without arguing about whether Ronald Reagan was good or bad forty years ago.
I mean, it's great. I think it's crazy.
I think it's possible. And yeah, you're right here here in Poland Ronald Reagan is a hero. And there's actually a statue of him not that far from from where I'm sitting.
There's a there's a spot in poll and this is the last thing I want to I want to ask you. But there's a there's a moment coming, and I think it's going to come before this midterm election where Pope Leo makes his inaugural visit to the United States. And you know, I can't I can't help but think that the College of Cardinals in their elevation of him, uh, you know, there's some synchronicity with the elevation of kyl
Willtila and to Pope John Paul the second. And when Pope John Paul comes to Warsaw, a million polls in the in the square and that sign the cross there and John Poul says to the to the assembled crowd in a in a in a quote that as much as any help bring down the Berlin Wall, which is, do not be afraid, and not be afraid. And fear is such a element in all of this purposeful right.
Never an hour lifetimes have we seen a government purposefully invoke fear, spread fear, use anxiety, try to try to terrify people, to augment its power, the illusions of its of its power. I just wanted to let you close out today and thank you so much for joining me for the conversation, but just to talk about fear right as a as a tool and an element, and the recipes to fight back against fear right. How do you how do you stand up right against against fear.
I've known so many people who have done really brave things, who have led movements or risked jail or gone to jail in countries like Russia or Venezuela or China, you know, and and almost all of them have the same thing in common. I mean they have they have some ability to believe that in a some value that's greater than themselves. You know, what happens to me doesn't matter what happened. What matters is what happens to the country, what happens to my society. I mean almost all of them are
ultimately motivated. I mean some of them actually, as as in Poland in nineteen seventy nine. Some of them are religiously motivated, but not not necessarily. I mean, some are motivated by their their belief and faith and hope for their country and their and their society. And so you know, I would just urge people, you know, to not just
don't be afraid, but remember how piddling and silly. The things that are being used to make you afraid are You're being made afraid with rhetoric and games and junk
you read online. You know, it's important to rise above it and remember what what's more important, you know, an insult that someone wrote to me, or a threat that someone said to me, or something that happened to be at my office or it was more important is the way my society is functions, and the way my children are going to live, and what kind of country will be. So keep your keep your mind on on bigger things, and then you will be afraid.
Just before I sign off, one of the things that Anne has talked about today is those rising voices. And just for the three thousand people that are on with us, Abigail Spamberg are running for governor of Virginia, going to be the governor of Virginia. Mikey Sheryl, Navy helicopter pilot, going to be the governor of New Jersey, Jocelyn Benson another rising star in Michigan, Elise slock In a important voice, Jason Crowe in Colorado, Jamie Raskin, of course, indefatigable, Chris Murphy,
the Fighting Democrats Jake Auchincloss. There are many, many more. There are going to be a lot of candidates who are getting into these races. And then there are the celebrity candidates, and they come always from the wings of the party, very rarely from the people that could appeal to the nation right, could appeal to a majority. And so what we could do today is appeal to you to inform yourselves about who those people are. Jake Awkin
class A substack is called easy. No, sorry, it's called simple, not easy. Please follow an Applebaum at The Atlantic on substack. One of the foremost academic thinkers, writers and advocates for freedom in the world, and important voice and one who will be over the decade ahead as this fight, and it is a fight rages on. And one of the things that is always true against any aggressive force, against any fascistic force, the aggressor always has that first move
or advantage. And it's the side that supports freedom, because it is involved in enjoying their freedoms, is usually slow to rise in defense of it. The rise in defense of it we have to give. In this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary year the birth of the United States, pocal event in the history of the world, and so we'll leave it there today. Thank you so much. Keep the faith, believe in your country, and understand things will get worse, but then they will get better. And that's
the way it has always been. We are in a test, and we have to meet the test. I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning. I invite you to join this community, where I promise to be honest, blunt and direct about what is happening in this country. America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe to this channel and on substack. Thank you.