Bulwark Takes - January 6 Was a Dress Rehearsal For Trump, Not a Finale (w/ Tom Joscelyn)

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Description: Five years after January 6, Bill Kristol sits down with Tom Joscelyn, the lead writer of the House January 6 Committee report, to assess where the country stands today. They give their takes on why January 6 was not an endpoint, but the beginning of a new political reality: one defined by a lack of accountability with sweeping pardons, the normalization of political violence, and a movement that no longer accepts elections or constitutional limits.Go to https://GetSoul.com and use the code BULWARKTAKES for 30% off.

Hi, Bill Crystal here on January 6, 26, a date that Tom and I remember well, and we all remember very well, where we were and what we saw and what we thought at the time and subsequently. So I'm very pleased to be joined by Tom Jocelyn, old friend and colleague, and most importantly for this conversation, the lead writer on the January 6th Committee Report, which was done in the 2022 in Congress, obviously, and released what, at the very beginning of 2023 right and very end of 2022 yeah very end of the year yeah and the report that stands up extremely well still the best single thing to read i would say if you want to understand what happened on january 6th so i thought we would talk for a few minutes about uh not really so much about what

happened but about where we stand five years after this that really extraordinary and terrible day i think for the country so tom what do you think yeah i mean i think it's a day that lives on unfortunately i think we're living in the january sixth world Ultimately, there was no accountability for Donald Trump for trying to overturn a democratically held election for the first time in our nation's history. None of the bigwigs around them really faced any kind of accountability. And then for all those people, extremists, rioters, and others who were arrested, charged and convicted for their actions on January 6th, sort of the smaller fish in the story, Trump pardoned or granted clemency to all of them, including the heads of major extremist groups. So there's been no accountability for January 6 in the long run here for America. And that's a very dire state to be in, I think.

And I think there's a direct line between the plot to overturn the election leading up to January 6 into what we've seen in the first year of this administration. Yeah, no, it's so extraordinary that. Remember we talked, I think we did a Sunday, we'll work Sunday, maybe right after the Sunday after the pardons that first night, almost all pardons, a few clemency, but of everyone, including the most violent protesters. Everyone said, oh, he's not going to pardon the violent ones. He's not going to pardon the proud boy's leaders.

And I remember, I think one of us called it maybe the January 6th administration and thought this could really indicate dire things about the way in which Trump understood what his mandate was and what he could get away with doing. And the pardon was January 20. It's almost a year later. And I do think, did you think that that those, I feel like those January 6 pardons was really a marker, sort of an indicator? Yeah, it showed that we were going to live in that broken reality.

in which they're the heroes and the martyrs and the victims of the government, right? That's part of the anti-government extremism that drives all of this and drives what Trump and his movement are about in a lot of ways. But yeah, you know, I talked to journalists, and I think I even talked on that show. We talked about how I didn't think that they were going to have this sort of scalpel for who they were going to pardon, that they were just going to pardon everybody because that's the Trumpian thing to do. That's the way to do it.

And he wasn't going to have his DOJ go through the case files and see which ones he wanted a pardon, which ones he wanted. He was just going to do a blanket pardon. That's what he did. So he ends up, you know, offering a pardon and granting a pardon to and granting clemency to the heads of major extremist groups like the prowboys, elf keepers, all these three percent are groups around the country, all of whom were involved to one degree or another in attacking the U.S. Capitol. And also pardoning all of the other rioters, including those who assaulted cops, about 140 cops were assaulted on January 6. Some of them suffered very severe injuries. Officer Siknik obviously died the following day. And there's a lot of people in Maga

World who would say that the attack on him didn't cause that. But, you know, the facts stand as they may as they are. And so, you know, the bottom and several officers ended up committing suicide. And some several, a number of officers live with severe injuries to this day. And we now live in the January 6th world where they, the officers are not the heroes or the people to be celebrated or to for us to hold up as a society for standing on the front lines or democracy. We live in a January 6 world where the people who attacked them are the ones who are being celebrated by the government. Are you surprised by how there was an initial reaction? And I think a lot of us thought, oh, this is going to be a pretty big reaction.

Pardon seemed to be constitutionally protected, so to speak, so you can't, couldn't be overturned by Congress. But I guess I am, in retrospect, I think it was sadly revealing that the controversy kind of faded out after a week or two and you don't hear much about it. Now I guess we'll hear a little bit. We'll see today on January 6th if there's a little bit of a revival of concern, you might say. But Trump took a lesson from that, I think, which he could go. He could be bold from his point of view. Grant the pardon you expected, the broad universal really pardon and clemency. And if I can get away with that, I guess is the way I would say it. It speaks to how polarized our country is, right? Half the country is beholden or is voted for this guy, dear leader.

You know, and either it doesn't care about January 6 or, you know, has invested in conspiracy theories about it or is apologetic for it or celebrates for it. And the other half, roughly, was very concerned about it and thought it was a bright red line that Trump had crossed. And the bottom line is in our polarized media, you know, a lot of people aren't going to care about it because they're not going to hear about it and not going to hear the truth about it. And then the people that sort of do know more of the truth of it are sort of in our own echo chamber. So it's a daunting time. You know, it strikes me about the, you've studied the polarized media a lot, and I'd like to hear a bit about that. But there is a part of the media that I would, you know, the Trump adjacent, Trump excusing conservatives, Wall Street Journal, National Review, that world that's called business types. They're not really in, they're not really presumably believers in the crazy conspiracy theories.

They don't celebrate these people who committed violence against police officers and so forth. But the degree to which they didn't balk in any visible way, or maybe they had an editorial slapping Trump, on the wrist and a week later it was all forgotten they didn't see it as indicative of the kind of justice department we were going to have the kind of FBI we're going to have the kind of attitude towards the rule of law we were going to have and they all pretty much rolled over and went along with pan bondi and cash patel and people who've been involved in january six conspiracism right i mean i feel like that was an early indicator again of where the whole where where where the entire conservative movement really in the republican party were going very

early on in the Trump presidency. Yeah, I mean, look, the modern conservative movement has really been extinguished by online reactionary thought and extremism and conspiracism, right? That's really overrun it. This is much more the party now and the thinking of Alex Jones and it is Ronald Reagan. You know, that's where this has ended up. And so the center of gravity is not with the people who would hold the line on something like January 6 or the many things that Trump did that were wrong.

And I would argue illegal and unconstitutional leading up to it. including on that day. It's with the people who come up with crazy conspiracy theories or make excuses for it because they hate the left. Like a lot of people you're talking about, you know, that's where a lot of modern right-wing thinking has ended up. They just hate the left and they hate Democrats and they hate modernity and they hate the media. And they hate it so much that really no matter what Trump does, you know, they're going to, they're going to either eventually look the other way or make excuses for it or just sort of ignore it. But it's that sort of toxic combination of strains on the right is where we've gotten to where something as outrageous as January

6 can happen. And certainly that day, I thought, well, this is the end of Trump. It should be the end of Trump. It should be the end of his political career because this is so completely outrageous. By the way, I thought that before I even saw the attack on the Capitol, I saw that as he was speaking at the ellipse south of the White House, his speech was the most unprecedented speech pretty much ever given in our history. And, you know, it wasn't. It wasn't the end of him. In fact, it was a new beginning for the right, and they have created this broken reality now that they live in that is all about really power and making excuses for dear leader. The House Republicans, I guess, released the Jack Smith transcripts and video, I suppose, on New Year's Eve day. I think that pretty much followed the lines and confirmed the January 6th committee report that you worked on.

But again, that is well happened a couple of days later, to be fair. But it didn't seem to me to be a big, at that point, people, you know, as you say, everything was so polarized, Judge Shiland, Canada, had gotten away with suppressing basically the January 6th case against Trump. Supreme Court had cooperated, obviously, with taking its time and then fighting immunity. So that killed it, killed the whole effort in the courts. I mean, it really, I don't know, I guess that was also a precursor ahead of Trump. winning the election of where things were going, unfortunately.

Yeah, I mean, Judge Cannon definitely killed the Mar-a-Lago documents case. She was Mar-a-Lago documents, yeah. Right. And then the Supreme Court killed the or delayed the... Basically, yeah, basically the defense team around Trump figured out that they could delay it all the way to Supreme Court, and that would run out the clock. And if you got re-elected, that would be the end of it. And that's what happened, you know, basically because the slow wheels of justice, which never really got going here. But the thing is, when it comes to that, releasing Jack Smith's deposition transcript in the video, right, that speaks to the polarized media. They knew that they released it on New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, whatever is around that time, and didn't allow Jack Smith to testify before the public, in public, in a public hearing, there was no chance that the stuff was going to break through their echo chamber, breakthrough into the cocoon. It's really a cocoon that they've built on the right that doesn't allow any sort of alternative reality, real reality to get in.

And, you know, they live in their own alternative reality. They don't want the real facts to get in. And Jack Smith, I think, would have been a very articulate spokesman for the truth about January 6 and the plot leading up to it. And that's why they didn't want the public to hear from him. In much of his case, I mean, to be clear, at a special counsel, they did their own independent investigation. They developed their own facts that they interviewed their own witnesses.

Yes, a lot of it is consistent with the January 6 committee's findings. I'd argue that's because a lot of this was so open, out in the open and so obvious what they were doing. A lot of this was not part of a super secret conspiracy. A lot of this was very brazen and in the public what they were doing. And it didn't take a lot to see or shouldn't have taken a lot to see that what Trump did was unconstitutional. It really should have been considered illegal. You know, as I think about just sort of the normalization of the whole thing. I guess I remember right after January 6th and that night when the majority of House Republicans voted to disqualify the ballots and, you know, Pennsylvania, remember that was, or at least

to support the challenge to them. And people were saying, well, and then they voted against impeachment and all. And that was going to be a red line where businesses were not going to contribute to them, nonpartisan organizations that were ranked members of Congress had other issues, economics or whatever, were thought that, well, that's a red line, right, line we can't cross. And that eroded so quickly. who you worked with on the January 6th committee, you know, started off as the number three person in the House Republican leadership condemning voting to impeach Trump, condemning him. At first, stayed in that position for the member of the first.

There was that one challenge. She beat back. And then really by what, six months, nine months later, it was, I guess, once she agreed to be on the committee with, yeah, she was out of leadership, primary challenge or supported by Trump. No one rallied much to her defense from the House Republicans with whom she'd served. and then she loses the primary in 2022. I mean, the speed with which out of power Trump was able to control the party or Trumpists were able to control the party, I guess I didn't, I don't know. I appreciate that pretty well, I've got to say.

I never thought, you know, that's why I thought Trump would be the nominee and not DeSantis and all this, but I still looking back on it, I'm kind of astonished, actually. I mean, what leverage did he have that was so great? He was out of power, right? He had lost. The mob. The mob is the leverage he had, you know, his mob, and it's called the personality. And that's what he's leveraged over and over again, you know.

And that's really one of the big secrets to his success in how he bullies people. But, you know, it also speaks to the lack of accountability. You know, we talked about why there was no accountability here. We live in a two-party system. If one of the parties remains beholden to a leader like this who does not have any respect for the constitutional system and is willing to do anything to stay in power and they're not willing to hold them accountable, then the other party is not going to be able to do it by themselves. That's the lesson here. And so we really need two functioning parties in this system to make it. somewhat reasonable in work.

And when one party is beholden to a cult of personality and its leader, well, you don't have much, you don't have much room for accountability and to really hold a line for the law. Yes, right. Well, when that leader isn't interested in the law, if you have party loyalty that's consistent with the rule of law, more or less, as long as the leader doesn't ask his followers to sanction gross abuses of the law. Borg takes a sponsor by soul. Since the new year, everyone's trying to clean up their habits. guy knows I'm trying to clean up mine. And honestly, having one less drink has never felt easier. Instead of pouring a cocktail, I've been reaching for Sol's out-of-office drinks. Same relaxing vibe, zero alcohol, zero hangover. And I still wake up feeling like a functional adult,

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of a healthier unwind. Right now, Seoul is offering our audience 30% off your entire order. Go to get sold.com and use the code bullwork takes. That's getsold.com promo code bullwork takes for 30% off. Talk a little bit. I know you followed this pretty closely, the first year of the Trump administration, the degree to which they are still interested in the question of not simply letting election, the chips fall where they may in the next election, whether 2026 or I think certainly much more likely, 28, and what are they up to on that? And just, well, you know, this fact that Trump mentioned it, it's on Trump's mind, right? He mentions it a lot. It's not like he's dropped it either. And he mentioned it in the context of Maduro, where

was an election cheated in his election, just the way they cheated Trump. And that's sort of which is sort of ominous sounded to me, you know, since he, anyway. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, well, first and foremost, living in the January 6th world means we live in a world in which the leader has no respect for our elections or their outcomes, right? It's a world in which he wants to control things. He wants to control the outcome. And we've seen a whole range of threats here against the election system and our elections in 2026 and 2028. I mean, obviously one of the things that's gotten a lot of headlines is the effort to gerrymander, right, where they wanted to steal these seats in Texas in order to control.

You have Republicans who maintain control of the House, so there where Trump could still have his own. own sort of power base there. And that's, that's one of the parts of the story, too, right? I mean, he refers to himself. Trump refers himself almost as the speaker sometimes, right? He says I'm basically the speaker as well as the president, which shows you how much Mike Johnson is beholden to him and is willing to do his bidding on almost all occasions. But there's a whole range of other threats to our elections in this, this January 6th world we have to worry about now. I mean, you know, one of the things I've written about was that on March 25th, Trump issued this executive order. It was titled Preserving and Protect

the integrity of American elections. And as so often the case in Trump world, the title is the exact opposite of what their intent was. They weren't about protecting the integrity of elections. They're trying to undermine it. And before I go on, I'll just say, look, that executive order has been challenged in the courts on numerous occasions. And litigants have plans of one have really beaten back this executive order. Yet it's still something that he's trying to enforce and something they're trying to move forward with. And I would say, and there are other threats too.

like there's the threats of DOJ trying to to get voter registration data from all these states. They've sued 21 to 22 states now. The Department of Justice has trying to accumulate all this voter registration data and a centralized database. You know, that should spook libertarians on the right, right, about privacy concerns and things. But back to the executive order for a second, what's striking to me about that executive order is, one, we know that in our constitutional system states run these elections. The president doesn't have any power over them. And this executive order relies on the same law. that he told about the 2020 election in order to try and seize power over elections for the federal

government. So there are lies about voting machines and how they supposedly can't be trusted to count ballots. It's nonsense. There's lies about non-citizens voting. Nonsense. That's been shown time and time again. There's no significant non-citizen voting and lies about mail and balloting, how it's supposedly ripe with fraud and right for fraud and needs to be rained in. But these types of lies, this is one of the threats to our elections in 2026 and 2028, right? You have this echo chamber. We just talked about the polarized media. You have this whole right wing apparatus that's willing to amplify his lies and use them to delegitimize elections. And there's been no accountability for those people or very little accountability. Fox News had an $800 billion

settlement for Dominion. But that didn't stop the other agenda overall. They've just sort of moderated a little bit on some of the 2020 lies. But there's still this vast right wing sort of machinery out there to amplify these lies about elections. And that's one of the threats, this disinformation, what people call disinformation. I call it propaganda about our electionism is one of the big threats. But there are many others. I'm sure you're thinking about all the ways in which, you know, he could monkey with our elections and try and prevent himself from losing power. Yeah. And what most concerns me is he's got the federal government and he's got a federal government, including a Justice Department, including parts of DHS, that seems to be willing to

do what he wants and says, regardless of the law, and do it pretty aggressively. And he's got people not just at the very, very tippy top level, but down into the ranks doing this stuff. And that he did not have in 2020. That's why it was a kind of last minute and chaotic and mob overrunning the Capitol and he had to replace Barr and he had to replace the Esper and all that.

And luckily, there were enough people who stood up. But, I mean, the degree to which, if you combine the, let's call it the right-wing echo chamber, the ability to rally the mob, the cult of personality, Trump's own total disregard for the law, the desire, I think, of a lot of people near the top of the Trump administration, hundreds, not dozens, to stay in office because they're worried about what would happen if they lose and if they're accountable for what they've been doing, all the grift and graft and all that. And you add to that the actual powers of the federal government being exercised, I feel like we're in a situation we've just never been in, I think, in that respect.

Don't you think it's not like 2020 in that respect? 2020 was scary, but it was now this is being. teed up way ahead of time and with so much more, you know, artillery, so to speak, from the Justice Department, from DHS, potentially at least being employed by them. As you say, the attempt to get the voter rolls, for example, you know. Yeah, I mean, you know, not at the risk of being self-referential. You know, we did this talk last year, you and I did, I think, one of the bulwark Sunday lives that somebody excerpted something I said has made the title, which is the Velociraptors have learned out open their cages, you know?

And that's what we talked about was that coming in. this time, you know, Trump learned in the lead up to January 6 that he needed a DOJ that would be pliable. You know, Bill Barr, for all of his faults, was not pliable when he came to overturning the election. Neither were the men who replaced them. Jeffrey Rosen was the acting attorney general, nor was a deputy attorney general, Richard Donahue, nor was anybody else in the DOJ willing to do what Trump wanted him to do. He made sure that wasn't the case this time around, right? He's got Pam Bonding and people with DOJ, they're going to do what he wants them to do. And I think that that's the, and there were, there, you could see back when it comes to the, the January 6th plot leading up to it, he tries to use the DOJ's power corruptly to overturn the election.

He tries to do DHS's power corruptly to overturn the election, right? There are ways he did that. You know, you've infamously fired Chris Krebs because Chris Krebs told the truth about the, you know, how, how safe election voting was and how there weren't really these cyber threats. You know, these people are now all gone. And then now this time in this, this administration, you know, Trump goes after. Chris Krebs actually, you know, names him to go after him and try and harass him for things that he did that were on the side of justice, really, and the right. So that's the world we're living. And that's what we mean in January 6th world, right?

Is it the government is not the government, as you just said, that it was on January 6, 2021. It's now a government that's staffed mostly with loyalists and subordinates and sycophants who will do as he says. Well, how much it was going to make if Democrats won the House in your opinion or if they won the House and the Senate in 2026? How worried are you about 2026 as opposed to 2028 in terms of really putting major thumbs on the scale for the election? What could be done about this? Well, I mean, I think the Democratic Party needs to become a functioning competitor here, right, in a way that that's the only way this is going to be held in check, you know? I mean, I've never been a registered Democrat, but we can't have a functioning democracy if we don't have two functioning parties. And the first, only the first way back to a functioning democracy to have a functioning Democratic Party that actually wins power and holds this administration in check, right, this regime in check.

And I think that's very important. I think it's all part of a package. I don't think, I think 2026 is very important. It's not just about, you know, what Democrats could or could not do in Congress and Senate. It's about, you know, stopping the Trump regime's monopolization of federal power, which is what they've really been all about. And that's a first step of the 26 elections. And then to deal with 2028, you know. And I don't, you know, we don't know what Trump's going to do.

I take very seriously anyway the threat that he would want to run again, you know, even though it's not, it's prohibited. I don't dismiss that. I think that's something he could want to do. And you've seen rumbling some people like Steve Bannon and others saying that that's what he's going to do. I don't know that he's going to do it, but I certainly take seriously the threat, you know, and we all should.

I mean, the point is the point of January 6, as we sit here on January 6th, what was the point in January 6th? This is a leader and a movement that does not respect elections and does not respect our constitutional form of government. So all hands on deck. That's a chilling but very important message and a discussion we're going to have to continue having in terms of what's actually going on at the Justice Department and some of these lawsuits and other efforts, not lawsuits, but also executive orders and administrative efforts that are a little hard to follow if you're not following this stuff closely but are pretty important. I mean, I guess it was just finally on the raptors, you know, learning how to turn the board door handles. I went back and looked at that scene in Jurassic Park the other day or something.

It's kind of a funny minute, funny, but a little ominous there in the context of a movie, though. So it's one thing, you know, but the people, I do feel, yeah, I think really getting a sense of what handles are being moved, if I can put it that way, who's doing it, and therefore what has to really be fought in the courts and fought in Congress and exposed and fought at the state level, too, don't you think? I mean, states really do have power to stop some of this. But anyway, I feel like a real focus on this, it won't get so distracted and not distracted, it's not fair. It won't get correctly alarmed to add a million other issues, but the election issue is pretty fundamental. It's totally fundamental. And there are power centers across the country, including blue power centers that have to stand up to this. That's absolutely key.

And we don't have time here. We're not going to get into it. But, I mean, the deployments of these National Guard and other troops and ICE to these blue cities, you know, and the potential for, or interfering with elections or creating problems around elections with that is, is ominous. I mean, again, it doesn't mean that's what's going to happen, but it's something that people have to be on top of, you know, and I think that, you know, for a movement, conservatism that ultimately led to Trump that was supposedly so concerned about the concentration of power and the federal government, that's the ultimate contradiction here, right?

Because you're dealing with a leader and a government that is trying desperately to concentrate its own power at the expense of all these other constitutional authorities across the country. And that should be one of the unifying themes for all of us to say, no, you don't have the power to tell the rest of us what to do. Now, that's really well said. I mean, you said this before we were talking the other day that maybe just closed by sort of elaborating on it a bit. I mean, that there's a through line, one through line is the elections themselves and the wish to not abide by them, not abide by peaceful transfer of power, stay in power, a classic authoritarian desire and something they try to do. But the other, or related through line is the broader contempt for constitutional limits, the rule of law. And that goes so deep, doesn't it?

And it cuts across so many different areas. And it's sometimes hard to see that because they are distinct policy areas or, you know, substantive areas. But it is, I think, a red thread. The modern right is a post-constitutional movement. And they have a post-constitutional leader attempting to be. And we don't have time today, but you can go through actions to the first administration and show, how they've threatened free speech and Freeman of the Press on the First Amendment. They threatened due process rights.

This is established by the courts that they did this. They did not honor the due process rights of hundreds of persons inside the U.S. who they detained and deported. You know, they've violated the Fourth Amendment against, you know, unlawful searches and seizures. They've done that time and again. They've gone after, tried to undermine birthright citizenship. You know, I mean, you can go through all these different constitutional rights that,

and of course, Bigley, they've. the executive branch has tried desperately under Trump to end the separation of powers. They want to accumulate as much power as they can in the executive branch at the expense of the judiciary and Congress. So there are all these ways in which this regime really does threaten the U.S. constitutional or constitutional order, and that was entirely predictable after January 6. And once certainly predictable once they won again after after having embraced January 6. After January 6, if they got back in power, if Trump got back in power, it was going to be a

continuation of this post-constitutional worldview. This has been very lucid, if not, and not cheering, but very important to alert people. And obviously, neither of us thinks this is a hopeless fight at all. Quite the contrary, I think it's actually, there's some evidence that they've, you know, they're not having such great success as they had hope certainly in terms of public opinion, maybe more success with elite acquiescence. But this is where I do think, don't you think, I said I was going to close, but I will give you one more chance to, I mean, the, it's so important.

fight on all these fronts, I guess is what strikes me. There's always a wish if you're in politics, you know, this is a good issue. That's not such a great issue. But this is where all, they're all connected in the contempt for the rule of law for the constitution. And you let him get away with one part, then we'll have to get it with. If that's okay, why isn't this okay, right? I think I've become sort of more, a little more dogmatic almost than the need to fight on all these fronts. Yeah, and it's why we need the center left to really own a constitutional form of patriotism, right, and to stand up for it. And I do think there are, people on the center left to do that all the time every day you know but i think that that's to be

a bigger part of that messaging that you can't allow the right to wrap itself in this disfigured patriotism any longer you know and and and and claim that they are the ones who represent america and the flag because they don't right they represent their leader and their post-constitutional worldview and it's up to the rest of us in across civil society and commentators and whatever heck i am you know to uh to stand up for it to stand up for what the what the america's supposed to be yeah well said tom tom tom jocelyn thanks for joining uh me today on this historic i guess anniversary if you want to call it that well it is you know five years after january 6th and thank you all for joining us at the bulwark