Welcome to this conversation here on the Warning with Katie Couric, and I'm going to turn it over to you right away and started Katie's asking the questions.
Yeah, I asked.
I have a lot of questions always, But see before we start, maybe you should. I think it might be interesting for people joining us to hear a little bit about how we know each other and kind of our professional history.
Well we go back.
When did we first cross, like in the McCain and Bush years.
Yes, I think especially during the McCain campaign.
And especially during the McCain campaign, and of course the very famous Sarah Palin interview that you did, which you know, I tell people all these years later, you know that everything that was going.
On in that campaign on that day when that interview came.
Out, it was literally the third biggest problem of the day, right, it was the global economy was collapsing, you.
Know, right John McCain was Senator McCain was headed to DC and right for that emergency meeting, remember, and it kind of didn't help him because he didn't see that engaged with economic information.
You know, it was a moment, it was a moment in time. I'm still waiting I was I was thirty, I was thirty seven when I when I was when I was doing the McCain campaign, and I'm fifty four now and I'm still waiting for somebody to tell me what the unfair question it is that you asked Katie Cork. Excuse me that that Katie Cork asked Sarah Palin, that you asked Sarah Palin.
And you know the.
One thing that people really missed in that moment in two thousand and eight, you asked this question of Paling, which is, so what do you read every day? And if you're preparing somebody for any type of national interview on a presidential campaign, this is just a very early, early, early question that you go through. What do you read? Was the last book you read? Childhood? Pets? Basic, basic, basic stuff. And when Sarah Palin answered that question, it wasn't that she doesn't read.
It was her way of telling.
You to go fuck yourself, right, you know from a and so you when you live by that creed, right, you see what happens. So at any rate, right, it was a grievance based answer. And I remember when the campaign ended, and Republicans are out of power, and really the locus of the Republican Party switches to Sixth Avenue in New York, Roger Ales. Fox News is the new head of a party, and Fox News has fundamentally staffed the government.
You these many years later, but you have all these people.
Who were supposedly serious journalists, independent voices that you know, were conservative in their strengths, sitting there.
In the in the months after the McCain.
Campaign ends, talking about Sarah Palin is a serious.
Future presidential candidate.
They engaged in the pretend with it, and all of it takes off from there. Mitt Romney going to get Trump's endorsement in twenty twelve.
Trump is a buffoon. You lived in New York, I grew up in New Jersey.
No one wanted Trump's endorsement for any serious purpose. What what Trump did was tapping into this racist current in the party on the Birther strain. And John McCain was appalled by it and condemned it, and Romney tried to exploit it. And so everybody made their accommodations one step at a time over many, many.
Many years.
And I literally you could unpack, you could unpack sixteen years of comments of mine without contradiction right from the first instance, going back to and my attitude on this was always she failed at a performance level, at a character level, was a terrible pick. But there was no unfairness against hers, no conspiracy against her. There was a conspiracy of stupidity that erupted after the fact in defense
of her. And so we have journeyed many miles down the proverbial river over this last two decades to this to this moment where we are now. But you know, will always be bound up by this. In all you did, you were the third major anchor right to interview her, but you are the one who asked questions that revealed an aspect of her character that people are still talking
about twenty years later, basically. And and the last thing I'll say about it is, there's so few of those types of interviews that are so necessary for the American people to see that take.
Place at all. I mean, I think I could count.
On the I can count on my hand right the number of interviews that that Trump has had that have had deeply been deeply revealing interview.
You know, it's interesting, Steve, because I was thinking about Bill Crystal the other day and he was well I think about him a lot because I read the Bulwark and what they're doing, and he was one of Sarah Kalen's early supporters. I remember reading that he was really
taken by her. And I wonder how you think the Tea Party movement led to the MAGA movement, because I think there is a pretty direct line, is there not from what was happening in that two thousand and eight campaign and Donald Trump sort of taking the mantle of this disenfranchised, grievance written party, you know, portion section of the party.
So let's take a let's take a leap forward from two thousand and eight to two thousand and sixteen. And the craziest answer did anybody give to a.
Question is Jeb Bush?
Now, think about this right whole campaign? Donald Trump in it, Gold Medal winner. Craziest answer to a question. Jeb Bush gets it, keeps it for all time. I'm gonna tell
you what it is. But even before we get there, think about how insane it seems like Jeb Bush looked into the mirror and came away with the conclusion that there's going to be a third member of the Bush family that was elected to office of the President of the United States, that his father was on a national ticket in eighty and eighty four and eighty eight and ninety two, and then his brother in two thousand. In two thousand and four, he was going to be on
a national ticket in twenty sixteen. It's extraordinary, Hubrius. It was rejected by the country right at a fundamental level. We don't talk about this with regard to Secretary Clinton, and that was an aspect of it. Are we really going to elect somebody's spouse after they had been president for eight years, or somebody's or somebody's brother. But at any rate, jet Bush has asked a question, knowing then what we know now, would we have invaded Iraq again?
And jet Bush answers he says, oh, yes, absolutely, the world is much safer. And Trump looked at him and was basically like, you were nuts, And that's dishonest.
And so you have.
Trump on a constant basis finds himself in situations as the world's most prolific liar, and I mean that literally where in politics he's viewed in these exchanges.
As the more honest of the candidates.
So the Key Party movement embraced this noxious birther racist lie and has all of these toxic elements. But the Democrats have never been able to comprehend, though they're going to in this next election, that the key party movement at its core was a reaction to the Bush presidency. It was a reaction to the spending. It was a reaction to the bailouts, it was a reaction to the lost Wars. And so what Trump did is burned down an institution at the grassroots of the party felt had
been betrayed by the weakness of its elected leaders. And so in two thousand and nine, the Republican Party is in the position that Democrats are now. They are in the minority in the Senate, in the minority in the House. And what happens the locus of the party.
Moves to a television studio.
And Roger Als is the most powerful person politically in the country. Every single Republican that today is terrified of Trump, was terrified of Ales until Trump steamrolled Aales.
Roger Als made.
A move on Donald Trump during that campaign in twenty sixteen, after Donald Trump had said Megan Kelly was bleeding out of our eyes, and Roger Ales had basically said, well that's enough.
We're not going to tolerate that.
I'm not going to let one of our stars be abused by this guy. He's made a run. So this is New York politics, my boss on my boss, so to speak. And Roger Ales proverbially wound up like Costelano outside of Sparkstate House, with the proverbial Trump sitting in the car with Sandy the bullnecks to him. And that's and that's what happened, and and so and so you have the fusion of the party and the network into what I would argue now, I mean, I don't there's
no real debate about this in my mind anymore. It's you know, when I every time we might have talked about this once that I've used the word fascist, you know, it's always with some trepidation because I want to be precise. I don't want to be hyperbolic. I want I want to be I want to be precise and pactful in my use of language. And he is a fascist, and and and I've been right about that, and so we've we've gone on a long journey over over seventeen years
from that moment to this moment. And it's all and it's all deeply connected together.
Yeah, you know, you and I had a pretty dark conversational election night, and I'm just curious, now, six months later, is it worse than you ever believed it would it would be, Steve?
Or did you predict this?
I predicted it. I predicted the violence before the twenty election. I predicted that Trump could be the nominee from the moment he came down the escalator. I predicted it spot on. But predicting it and knowing it is different than experiencing it. And so what you realize when you're experiencing this and you're seeing masked federal Gestapo, and that's what it is. Purposeful use of these masks would still fear amongst the people and the government of the people, by.
The people, for the people.
The consequences of what Joe Biden did and a small team of people around him have been profound. The people who got online to be in support of that delusion did a tremendous amount of damage to predicted it at all.
But you know, there's a saying.
The years are long, the days are long, but the years are short, and so there's a lot of long days right now. And what you realize is that we grew up certainly during times of momentous events. You were on the air during September eleventh, World War two. When we've experienced it, we've experienced it at three hour movies, and we always know how it's going to end. But in nineteen thirty nine in London, or in nineteen forty or nineteen forty one, the days where the same length they are today.
And I don't know what's going to happen next.
But I have a lot of faith that, knowing the history of the country, that the country is very resilient. The American people are slow to anger and slow to rise, but are not inclined to tolerate the things that we're seeing happen. And I think it'll be massively repudiated in
the end. I think it's going to be right a period of renewal that that follows this, that is that is pretty pretty profound, right, pretty pretty important, And if there's a big, big fight coming in the country, and it's going to be exciting to be part of it.
Somebody named Deborah Johnson just commented what did Steve say about Biden? And it did want me to dig into Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book with You. You know it has been and gosh controversial, to say the least. I interviewed them. I guess it was last week or the week before in Washington, and a lot of people were very angry at them for writing this book. I know it's been actually I think exploited by right wing media in a way that I don't think they intended.
But what did you think of the book? What do you think of.
Exploring and examining this inner circle and President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden and their decision to stay in the race.
And do you think there's room to.
Legitimately analyze and even criticize their actions?
Oh? I think that what they did is the is somebody just.
Wrote bad timing. Tapper dumbass. That's the kind of comment.
What I would say. What I would say, Well, let me you had an incapacitated president.
I think that's been a little hyperbolic. Steve President.
Advisors quoted in they said President's not ready to function at.
Two a m.
Well, that's true. I don't know. Limited Limited.
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson alleged conspiracy.
There was no conspiracy. Right excuse me. They alleged cover up.
Right there, there was no cover up, because everything happened in plain sight and it was patently obvious.
I thought Dean Phillips saw it, George Clinton.
The Democratic, the Democratic members of Congress saw it. And so what Jake Copper details are the extraordinary.
Actions of five people.
Who put themselves in their power and Biden's ambition for more, his wife's ambition for more ahead of the country, and they created a disastrous situation. Joe Biden promised to be a transitional president and implied strongly he would serve one term from the Geck. They used Trump as the rationale for Biden to break that promise, under the delusion that only Biden could be Trump, when in fact Biden was
probably the only Democrat who could lose to Trump. And the people that are responsible for that are Mike Donald and Steve Verschetti and Joe Biden and Done and her husband. The president was manipulated. He wasn't shown the poll numbers. He didn't know what his standing was in the race.
He didn't know that he was never ahead, not for a day.
Those people lied to the Democratic Party, They lied to the American people. And over and over again they said, they said that they were ahead, and they were not. And so what happened in the election was the most prolific liar and the most dangerous man in American history was elected narrowly because he was viewed as more honest about Biden's health and fitness, about the border, and about
the economy. And so the Democrats shouted down anybody that told the truth about this, me included, and they assassinated their characters, and they canceled the New Hampshire primary, all of it, all of it and a nakedly blatant partisan attempt to put his interests ahead of the countries at
an existential moment, and the country repudiated it. And any person who was materially involved in it who thinks that they're going to be on the ticket in twenty twenty eight or that, in Chuck Schumer's words, we just moved forward, and that there's no accounting for that. Donald Trump, as bad as he is doing and the terrible things he's doing, is far more popular than the Democratic Party. Why the brand of chattered. It's broken because of the gas lighting
and because of the lie. But the omission in the Tapper book is the media role. And so you have someone like like jos Barbara, who's on the record saying, every single person who comes on my show says one thing on camera and something else off camera. What they said on camera was this was the best biting ever, and what they said off camera is I can't believe
he's running again. So there was a conversation that took place off camera between the most powerful people in the country and the media, and another one that took place off camera that the American people didn't get to see.
So that was really I think, I was going to say, Steve, I think it was really uncomfortable for a lot of journalists too. I'm not I'm not justifying it, but I think, you know, people forget journalists are human beings, and I think it was very uncomfortable for them to question Joe
Biden's metal acuity or decline. And I think it's sort of like asking your father to give you the car keys, right, and then when any suggestion was made, like David apselrod right was one of those people who spoke pretty openly about this. George Clooney as someone just said they would get so pummeled. But I think you're right. I'm not, as I said, I'm not justifying it. I think there
was there should have been more focus. And I asked Jake when I interviewed him, do you think the fact that Fox News was sort of mocking and belittling and kind of very cruelly And one might argue how people treat Trump in that way too, but how they were cruelly portraying Joe Biden is tripping and losing, you know, his way on a stage or falling off of you know, you know, tripping on something that it almost something internally
made you discount it in a way. I thought that was sort of interesting because I think sometimes we forget about sort of the human emotional impact that sometimes these issues have on reporters.
Well, listen, we have we have in this country a total collapse of trust in the media. It's so bad that your average person doesn't believe it's possible to know what's real by consuming it. Right, So we live in a country fundamentally where right there is no reality anymore. There's a bit of battle that's gone on in this space between the lie and the truth. It's wrestling out there, and you know, the lie is prevailing in a lot of ways.
But I just.
Fox is extreme and dishonest. Scott Jennings works for CNN. How did we get here? So Jay Tapper is not going to talk about the CNN fight music, before the Trump town hall, before the glorification of Trump. Right, the entire premise of the New York Times coverage has been that Maggie Haberman is an exceptional reporter, uniquely positioned, a Trump whisperer. Entire millions of dollars of brand campaigns alone,
she can interpret. And in the end, I guess they missed the lead, which is that he's a pretty dangerous fascist, which some of us have.
Seen coming for a long time.
And so in the end, everything that I said that would happen if Biden ran for a second term happened. I said it in twenty one, I said it in twenty two, and a lot of people have been brutalized by lying, by powerful interest in the party.
Right there's you know, the media tells the.
Country that the two parties have nothing in common.
They have something in common.
Yet eighty five percent of the country looked at a Biden Trump rematch and said we don't want and the leadership of the two major parties was well, that's the choice you're going.
To get, and it created disaster.
And so so what I would say to some people that are out there, you know, whether it's Cheryl, you are a Republican and I don't know Cheryl, or an apology for being a Republican a party that I left in two thousand and eighteen on a matter of integrity and conviction because the party left me on these on these core issues. But two party system, what party is it that Trump beat? And why did they beat it? Why did so many people who voted for Barack Obama
suddenly turn raisist and vote for Trump? Right in the estimation of so many of the leading experts of the Democratic Party. So we have a situation where we're approaching the last chance elections.
Can we go?
Before we talk about the future, I just want.
To ask you one one more question about the whole
Biden sort of reevaluation. Do you think if Joe Biden had, in fact, as he said, I was going to I'm going to be a bridge to a new generation of leaders, and had made clear maybe halfway through his presidency, granted he would have been laying Duck and said I'm not going to run, and a primary process could have happened, Steve and the American people, even if they didn't know, some of these names, could have, through a series of debates and public appearances, etc. Been exposed to a new
slate of candidates. Do you think, and again, this is pure speculation that Donald Trump would have been defeated by whoever emerged as the strongest candidate in that process.
Absolutely, Donald Trump was a historically weak candidate who beat the only Democrat that he could beat, and that was and that was Biden. And I think Vice President Harris deserves a great deal of credit. I think he performed at the highest deceivable level that she's able to perform at in a political campaign with.
A terrible with a terrible hand of cards.
But every person around Biden saw the diminished capacity, and every person who said, hey, he ought to be president un till he's eighty six, who was reckless.
And it has opened the gates.
To the gravest threat to country faces since the Civil War. And so now right the idea that those saying people who shouted everybody down get to say, now conversations over, We'll tell you who's going to run next time?
Absolutely not, absolutely not.
And so there are some great young Democrats who have no attachment to this, who are unencumbered, untainted by it, did not gasolate the country. And those are the people that are the future of the Democratic Party, not the people that are part of this.
Who are some of the people who you're looking at in terms of twenty twenty eight. I know that Pete Buddhajet's just announced he's not going to run for Senate so he can focus on potentially running for president in twenty twenty eight?
Are there other candidates on.
The horizon that give you real's hope?
I look at somebody.
So first off, I could I think we have to reject the idea as a first principle that the predicate to be elected president requires you to serve in the Senator as governor? Is this does not serve the country. Well, this graduate school approach that you want to get into.
Harvard law, well you got to go to Harvard and then to you know, the right high school. Nonsense.
So, in the Biden episode, against the entirety of the elected leadership of the Democratic Party, people who showed real integrity and real character, start with George Clooney, I start with Dean Phillips. Now, when I look at somebody who was who was on my program, and I asked him a question, I said, if you were president, what would you do? Jake Auchincloss, who is a congressman, a Rhodes scholar, and a Marine officer, knows exactly what he would want
to do as president. Aot has a thirty percent national approval level, thirty percent. If she gets that up, she could be a formidable candidate. She could be a formidable candidate in the Democratic primary. But is somebody with a thirty percent approval level going to be the person to lead the party out of the wilderness?
Is the party is the country?
Is trying to say something to Democrats looking for a socialist from the bronx.
So JB.
Prisker, Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro, the governors. Gavin Newsom put himself in the position as being one of the chief gas writers for Joe Biden. He Gavin Newsom's position on this was, Hey, I was loyal to Biden, and that's what matters. You weren't loyal to the country when it mattered, right, and you lost your credibility, and so in order to beat Trump, it requires the ability to be honest, to tell the truth about the orgy of corruption going on.
When Chuck Schumer comes out and he says, after Menendez is arrested with the gold bars in his jacket, that hey, Menendez was a great public servant for the people in New Jersey. Right, So what we have is a sort of tribal warfare between these d people and the RPP. And none of the people were with us, by the way, or invited in.
Any of these rooms.
Right, They're not represented, and so they deserve to be told the truth. And when you look at the Jake Tapper book, you know, the fundamental mistruth of the Tapper book is that Tapper says, well, this is worse than Watergate, which I guess makes Tim Bob Woodward, except for there was no cover up, because everything that happened happened in plain sight. There was a conspiracy of people strong arming any descent and cracking down.
On the statement of obvious.
So all the Democrats who looked at Donald Trump and the Republicans were total disdain And.
I didn't stay in line. I got out of line.
So the day that Trump came down the escalator. When I denounced them, every single Republican was with me. When I look around from every person I ever worked with for my entire career, the Republican pray all of them. Every thousands of people, there's like four or five left?
Do you have five left?
And the Democrats watching that did the same exact thing with Biden. They all got online with something they knew was ab third and delusional.
And thank you Winter brightly like Jatie speak, No, I catch your point, and I you know, speaking of moving forward, Steve, do you think we're hearing rumblings by Republicans about the budget bill? You know, Josh Holly and Susan Collins and Ran Paul is worried about the deficit. And then there's
this little known part. I was just talking to Joyce Vance about this hidden provision that says that it will limit the judiciary's ability to use contempt of court rulings to actually force an issue on anyone, including perhaps the President of the United States. Do you think that bill is going to pass? And do you think any Republicans are going to grow a pair? Finally, I don't.
I don't know, but but I would, it's astonishing to conceive of of the question.
And let's use Rand Paul as a as a specific example.
And so however, Ran Paul has been a long however long Ram Paul has been around. Now, right, what's the shick? Right, I'm a constitutionalist. The Bill of Rights spending, spending, spending. So I'm a moderate Republican, always have been, which means right, the moderate Republican, by by path definition, is the most fiscally conservative person in the country. So I like the spending restraint as an argument. It's why I'm a It's
why I was a Republican. So here's the difference between a million and a billion and a trillion, So you understand the five trillion dollar debt that they're talking about adding in this bill. If I say to you, Katie, let's we'll meet up in a million seconds, that's in twelve days. If I say let's meet up in a billion seconds, we will see each other in thirty three years. If I say we will meet up in a trillion seconds, that's a thirty three thousand years.
That's the difference.
When did you spend the time figuring that out?
That's the difference between a billion and a trillion, and they're adding five trillion of debt. Never before has so much been taken from so many.
By so few, with so much.
And if you care about the idea that we shouldn't completely bankrupt the country for our kids, if that strikes you as a moral chord, right, that like when you die at a personal level, right, I'm not going to leave my kids a giant mountain of credit card debt and the amount of stealing from our kids future with this, with this piece of legislation, there's no there's there's never been anything like it.
It is.
It's the most corrupt, single piece of legend in the history of the American Republic in two hundred and fifty years. Any person who has who has any attachment whatsoever to like a conservative trinciple, one thin thread of attachment left right to the size of government, right to restraint, to fiscal order and management, cannot conceivably.
Consider voting for this.
But they will because it's a rubber stamp, and it's a pile bureau and it's extraordinary to watch it all unfold.
And do you think it'll be stopped? Do you think it'll be stopped? Steve?
I think I don't know.
I honestly, I honestly don't know. I mean, I don't know. I still don't understand. How you look. Three years ago, I said, Marco Rubio is the type of guy in nineteen fifty nine in QBA he would have been carrying Castro's coat, which is exactly what he turned out doing, except Castro's Trump he got ninety nine votes in the Democratic Senate and Pete Headseth got confirmed, Pulsy Gabber got confirmed,
Robert Kennedy got confirmed, and it's astonished. So if those people could get confirmed, is it possible that bill could pass?
It is possible. But what it will do is trigger.
A level of pain and suffering, collapse of rural health services and hospitals, a great taking of public lands.
Food for kids, food for a hungred kids.
Oh yeah, I mean it's and it's terrible and it's going to be real devastating. And the problem politically is still right, you have to win an election, and the Democratic Party, because it's anchored to this Biden insanity, can't move on.
Well, maybe they will, maybe they can, maybe someone and so so.
So that's so that's the question.
You have to you have to be able to win, you have to have credibility.
Hay, Steve, before we go, you know, it's interesting. I was watching something somewhere. I watch so much and read so much I can't I don't even remember. But there's this guy named Lawrence Britt, and apparently this poster was available at the Holocaust Museum. But it was the early warning signs of fascism. I'm sure you've seen this. This
was written in two thousand and three after this. Lawrence Britt wrote it after researching seven fascist regimes Hitler's Nazi germanying with Selini's Italy, Franco Spain, Salassar's Portugal, Papadopolis is Greece, and Pinochet's Chili Sarto's Indonesia.
So here are the warning signs.
And I just want to go down really quickly and just give me a yes or no with a short statement about each of them. Powerful and continuing nationalism.
Yes, absolutely, disdain.
For human rights, identification of enemies as a unifying cause.
You bet who are the enemies?
Steve Trump talks about the ubiquitous day all the time.
There's always a day in the day.
Is a phantom and amorphous ghost that transit, the corporate space, the media space. Any anybody who is opposed to Trump is a part of the insidious day and.
To be targeted.
And you hear the words that he uses that people are scum, or they're sick, or they're deranged, or they're nasty, that every criticism results in a full on character attack. For example, Scott Pelley, if you tell the truth, you are attacked because in the end, right, this is a fear based system and truth tellers require fearlessness, and so the truth and fearlessness are always married in a way that's a threat.
To the fascists.
Yeah, and I think the vilification of DEI is another way of you know, weaponizing or demonizing, you know, people of color, trans people, anyone who and you know, may not be a white person in America, a white Christian person in America.
All right.
Supremacy of the military absolutely.
Kim Jong Un parade on the June fourteenth, two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the US Army, greatest dessecration in the history of the US Armed Forces, two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the US Army to Trump parade.
It's just great.
It's so gross and I can't believe. I guess they have no choice.
Huh.
They have to demander.
He's the commander, he's the commander in chief, and he wants his parade.
And isn't it going to cost two hundred and fifty million dollars?
I'm sure. And by the way, you know, in my entire government career.
Any time that anybody throws out a number of what's going to cost, it is never one time ever cost less than that amount. It always costs forty percent more one hundred percent of the time.
Rampant sexism, absolutely controlled mass media.
Hello.
Obsession with national security yep. Religion and government intertwined. What we just are seeing in Oklahoma, for example.
You just thought Pete hegsheth conduct a fundamentalist religious service.
Wasn't that crazy?
And it is unconstitutional, It is inappropriate and it is no good.
Yeah, go ahead, wait, let me just free They're only six more.
Corporate power protected yep, labor power suppressed yep. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts big time. Look at the Kennedy Center. Obsession with crime and punishment yep. Rampant cronyism and corruption check check fraudulent elections. I thought that was interesting.
Yep, perception and reality. I mean, it doesn't have to be a fraudulent election. But you're listening with the The original sin in all of this isn't isn't what the people around Biden did. It's it's about the fact that you had a guy who lied about.
The results of a presidential.
Election and somehow was able to overpower the society's truth tellers with the lie and convince half the country that an American presidential election that was free and fair and nearly pristine was not one of the great tragedies in the history of the country.
So I want to go back to your to your earlier thing, just to close things out and to make people feel less depressed. You know, you said there is going to be what did you say, There's going to be a reckoning?
Right?
I think you said that and that this these things will not stand in essence. Why are you so confident of that, Steve.
I believe in America. I have faith in the country.
I have faith in the American people, and I understand how it is that Trump won and there's been a terrible cost to the politics of self interest and what I want to say, you know, to everybody who's making comments.
I appreciate you so much.
Getting on taking time out of your taking time out of your day, and I want to do everything I can try to persuade you of something in the next minute, which is that the most powerful people in the world are not owed your fandom. They're not owed your fandom. Stop stop being a fan, be it, be a citizen.
And if you read the Jake Tapper book about the specifics of what people did, and I've been very critical about the book about the omissions about someone like Joe Scarborough told his audience after you if you don't believe it's the best Biden ever, right, all all of this dishonesty, we paid a terrible price for it. In that and that and that crisis. Donald is Donald Trump. And the idea that there's a good party and an evil maga party,
it's not true. Uh, there is two dishonest parties. And the person who is the demagogue with a preternatural ability to lie in the grift is the person in a contest of dishonesty that prevailed. And the answer to get out of this is to be for better. And so there has always been moments of crisis and doubt around the fiftieth anniversaries of our independence. It was true at the fiftieth anniversary, and it's true at the two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary. And so the country came within thirty seconds of not surviving at Gettysburg.
And the moment.
Requires a lot of confrontation right now with some terrible ideas from a place of conviction, integrity, and a recognition that what Donald Trump is smashing doesn't snap back.
Into being when it's all over.
But do we want to live in a country where we got guys with masks running around with FBI jackets, snatching people off of the streets, spreading fear. And the answer to that is absolutely not. And so so what do we gotta what do we gotta do we have to do is we have to let go of the past and specifically fifteen to twenty people who were the architects of the political strategy that led to this catastrophe. That that's what that's what an opposition has to do.
And so all.
Over the country right if you're thinking of running for office, run run for Congress, run for the state legislature, I think that there's going to be a civic awakening after this right, but the idea that you can only see the dishonesty when it's committed by the other party and not inside your own.
What Donald Trump has served to power on.
His hypocrisy, because the one thing Trump is not is not a hypocrite. He's utterly transparent. He revels in his thumbbagger. He doesn't try to hide it. Trump's never ran as a good guy. His run is a tough guy, a punisher for the people that ordinary people in this country feel so aggrieved at. He is the demagogue that the Founders worried about and warned about from the very beginning.
He came to be.
If George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were here, right, if all the founders were here, and we got ten minutes with him, right, and we had to tell him, right what happened, how to work out? I mean, we would definitely want to show them the flag on the moon, right.
I would definitely want to show them Barack Obama's picture, right, And then I would want to talk to them about not the things that they didn't see, but that they would understand pretty quickly how they came to be on a straight line from the vision and how it expanded.
I think they'd get that right away. But the thing I'd want to talk.
To them about is that the demagogue that they saw in the seventeen eighties Kleon was the Athenian demagogue.
That's who they were worried about. He's here.
He rose in over ten years time, beginning with one chant that was lock her up. I remember being on TV at the time. I said, oh boy, banana republicanism, but that's fascism.
And so how did he get there?
One step at a time, one day at a time, and how are we going to recover out of this one step at a time, one day at a time. But the American people are going to have to maybe a decision, right and they're going to get a vote. We get a vote in two years time to either say we want a group of people around Trump to tell him yes everything.
He wants to do, or we want.
To check around this guy. And that's the question. In twenty twenty.
Six, Steve, I love talking to you, and.
I love talking to you Katie.
Anyway, thank you guys for watching. We've taken up a lot of time. I've heard that these conversations are both supposed to be fifteen to thirty minutes, but I can't do that with Steve. You guys, I just we usually go on and on, but Steve, take care. Let's talk against Good to see.
It, Good to see you. Bye everyone.
I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning.
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