No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump’s fraud conspiracies come back to haunt Republicans in Georgia

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

From the Wisconsin recount to a Georgia Senate runoff meet and greet to Fox News’ future on the right, things are beginning to backfire for Republicans. Brian interviews Senator Chris Murphy about holding Trump accountable once he leaves office, what Republican Senators are saying about Trump’s loss behind the scenes, and combating the disinformation on the right moving forward.Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/Visit votesaveamerica.com/georgia or votesaveamerica.com/getmitch to do your part for Georgia's Senate runoffs.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about all things backfiring on the right, from the Wisconsin recount to a Georgia Senate runoff meet and greet to Fox News' future with Republicans. And I interview Senator Chris Murphy, where we discuss holding Trump accountable once he leaves office, what Republican senators are saying about Trump's loss behind the scenes, and combating the disinformation that we're dealing with right now as we move forward. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Let's start in Wisconsin because this is hands-down my favorite story. of the week. So, as we all know, Trump is continuing to deny the results of the election,

and in Wisconsin, in particular, where Joe Biden beat him by more than 20,000 votes, Trump had the option to order a recount. The total recount would have cost the Trump campaign $8 million, but Trump's only beefier was with the big cities, which just so happened to be home to Wisconsin's black population. Milwaukee alone is home to about 70% of the state's total black population. So the Trump campaign paid for a partial recount, spending $3 million to recount only Milwaukee and Dane counties. Dane being home to Madison. Those are both the population centers for Democrats, meaning that the Republican votes throughout the state were totally fine. No fraud there. It's only the Democratic areas that must be rife with fraud,

clearly. The recount in Milwaukee County finally concluded on Friday evening, and it turns out that the recount did find a change. It netted 132 votes in Biden's favor, meaning that Trump's campaign paid $3 million so that Joe Biden could increase his lead by 132 votes. At $3 million, that basically amounts to $22,727 per vote for Joe Biden, which is right on par with the guy who managed to bankrupt a casino. Like, really looking forward to reading that chapter from Art of the Deal, where Trump writes about spending $3 million to lose even worse to his opponent. And look, with that said, I also don't want to be so naive here to think that anyone in the Trump campaign actually ever thought that the election results

were going to change. The point here wasn't so much. discovering fraud as it was buying the campaign time to continue perpetuating their disinformation campaign. Just the optics of a recount in and of itself lend itself to Trump's talking points that there was fraud, right? It's this self-fulfilling prophecy where he unilaterally creates out of thin air this idea that there's fraud,

then he pays for a useless recount, and then turns around and points to the fact that there is a recount to back up his claims of fraud. And while most of us realize that this is nothing more than the desperate foot stomping of an impotent lame-duck president, let's not forget that there is a sizable contingent of Trump supporters who actually believe this stuff.

And look, I think that the danger of having a plurality of the population believing in non-existent election fraud is beyond clear, right? The damage that comes with undermining trust in our free and fair elections can't be overstated. If Republicans can just cry fraud

every time they lose and convince millions of people that they're acting in good faith, then we cease to be a functioning democracy. And they know that, by the way, but Republicans don't care about democracy, they care about being in power, period. So, like, I don't mean to be cynical, but I don't even know how you go about, quote,

unquote, fixing this for next time. There aren't structural problems with our system that we can just shore up. Like, it's held for 200 years. The structural problems come with a political party that traffics in straight disinformation. You have Republicans claiming that there was fraud, despite presenting zero evidence of fraud, and literally admitting to judges that there is no fraud. You've got Republicans pretending that there are more votes than people in Detroit. All you have to do is look at the number of people in Detroit and the number of votes cast

and you'll see that there was 49% turnout. This is a level of ignorance that is legitimately dangerous. So in terms of fixing it, I mean, we can add a hundred new laws and we'd end up at exactly the same place. Because none of what the GOP is alleging is based in reality. It is inherently based in disinformation. It is fiction. But in the immediate term, right now, the people, People that are suffering from this are Republicans.

Because now, with the Georgia Senate runoffs approaching, Republicans have descended upon Georgia only to find that their own supporters don't understand what the point of participating is when they've been brainwashed into believing that the whole thing is already rigged. Here's GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel Romney. Sorry, Ronna McDaniel. I forgot that we're pretending her last name doesn't include Romney anymore because Mitt voted to impeach Trump

and part of being a sycophane is quite literally disavowing your own named a coddle your authoritarian ruler. So, anyway, here's Ronna McDaniel speaking to a crowd of Republicans in Georgia for a meet and greet when things don't exactly go as planned. How are we going to do money and work when

it's already decided? It's not decided. This is the key. It's not decided. First of all, David Perdue still has 100,000 vote lead over John Ossif right now. With the certification. So,

if you lose your faith and you don't vote and people walk away, that's that we'll decide it. She's asked, how are we going to give money and work when it's already decided? And that right there is the direct consequence of having convinced your own base that the election was rigged. I mean, seriously, Ronna McDaniel is simultaneously trying to convince Republicans both to vote in the upcoming runoff and also that the election that they just voted in was rife with fraud and can't be trusted. And so of course their voters don't want to donate. Of course their voters don't want to volunteer. Of course the voters don't trust the system, because that was the point.

When you go on a nationwide campaign to convince people that they just participated in a fraudulent election, then guess what? They're going to think they just participated in a fraudulent election. And meanwhile, what more motivation for Democrats do you need than witnessing a Republican Party actively trying to subvert our democracy? Like, I can only speak for myself, but I have never, never been more motivated to stay engaged than no. knowing that my opponents are actively trying to undermine faith in the electoral process. And look, I'm no political genius like Rona McDaniel Romney, but I'm starting to think that effectively disenfranchising your own voters by convincing them that elections are rigged,

while also lighting a fire under Democrats' asses by waging an all-out assault on democracy, might not be the best political strategy. And by the way, it's not just people like Rona McDaniel Romney who are stuck dealing with what is absolutely a problem of their own creation, but now Fox News is dealing with it too and I spend a lot of time covering Fox so I was especially intrigued by this but what's happening is because some Fox News hosts

are committing the cardinal sin of acknowledging reality Trump has basically waged all-out war on the network Trump's been tweeting demands for his supporters to migrate over to OAN and Newsmax where they won't even pretend to be constrained by those pesky nuances like facts or the truth or objective reality and I will save my breath on commenting on Newsmax or OAN

besides acknowledging that it is outright conspiratorial trash but as for Fox let me just say this for years Fox helped create what can only be referred to as a cult of personality revolving around Trump they supported his conspiracy theories and lies and obfuscations even when they knew that they were false and now we have those same people who are groomed by Fox to take Trump's word as gospel

believing Trump's phony claims that he won the election. And when it comes time for Fox host to report on this, well, clearly you're going to have some straight news hosts, at least, who are going to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election, especially considering their own network called the race for him. But because that same network's opinion hosts have spent years grooming their own viewers to only believe Donald Trump, well, guess what? When it comes to Fox's hosts versus Donald Trump,

they're going to do what they've been taught to do and believe Donald Trump. Like, the sewing part seemed like a great idea these last four years. The reaping part? not so much. But like, this is what that network deserves. They were the ones who molded a political party devoid of any adherence to facts or reality. They ran cover for Trump at every turn.

They served as apologists for him when he committed crimes, when he extorted a foreign country for dirt on Joe Biden, when he tried to orchestrate a cover-up, when he pilfered taxpayers to line his own pockets, when he dismantled the institutions of our government. And so, of course, his supporters believe him now with this stolen election bullshit. Of course, his supporters think he's telling the truth. Only this time, the election results aren't some talking point they can just spin away. Joe Biden has won the race.

It is over. That is objective reality. And now Fox has to deal with the fact that if they're going to acknowledge that objective reality, they're going to incur the wrath of the cult that they themselves helped create. So the good news, hopefully we'll see a less powerful Fox News moving forward, with the network having lost the conspiratorial loons that they themselves bred over these last four years. But the bad news, you'll have more powerful OAN. and newsmaxes of the conservative media ecosystem with even less adherence to facts.

And they're the butt of jokes now, but that won't necessarily be the case two, three, four years from now. Remember, Tucker Carlson once got so thoroughly humiliated on his show Crossfire in 2004 by John Stewart that the show was canceled. Canceled. So what might seem absurd to us one day might turn into the top-rated cable show the next. And so that right there is why politics can't be a thing that you turn on once every four years because in the months and weeks and days in between,

there is an apparatus on the right working relentlessly to sell disinformation to its own viewers. And yeah, sometimes they get humiliated, sometimes they screw themselves over, but they don't stop trying. And so neither can we. And what we're getting right now

is a daily reminder of that. So please stay engaged because the health of our democracy depends on it. Next up is my interview with Senator Chris, Murphy. Okay, so today we've got U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy. Thanks for braving the holiday break and joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. So we see so much

blatant corruption happening in broad daylight with regard to Trump trying to subvert the election results. Like, he literally brought Michigan lawmakers to the White House to pressure them into not certifying the result of the election that he himself lost. I think something disheartening for a lot of people is this notion that there's going to be a lot more focus on moving forward than there is on holding these people accountable. So what's your stance on the whole accountability versus moving forward debate? Well, I think it's a really important debate to have because the tail of this corruption is substantial, right? The damage that Trump is doing to Democratic norms right now in that he is convincing 30 to 40 percent of the American public that elections are illegitimate

if Democrats win, that doesn't go away, right? This election wasn't close enough for him to steal. He lost by substantial margins in a whole bunch of states. But, you know, what if two years or four years from now, Q&N has taken over Secretary of State's offices and election boards, and there's a U.S. Senate candidate, a Democrat, who's up by 10,000 votes instead of 150,000 votes, you know, that certainly seems stealable if the presumption on behalf of Republicans is that

if Democrats win, it must be because somebody cheated. So your question is, what do we do about it? Well, listen, there's nothing that stops Trump legally from bringing these lawsuits. He's not behaving illegally if he's bringing lawsuits, but query whether there's any illegality in using the Oval Office to try to pressure private sector individuals to do his political bidding. So I don't think the president likely has the power to pardon himself, but he's likely thinking about it because he will be exposed to potential investigation and prosecution after this is all said and done. I'm not a prosecutor. I'm not going to make those calls, but certainly he's engaged in a just cornucopia of action that exposes him legally after he's left

office. To build on your point, basically, isn't not doing anything now basically just tacit permission for Republicans to do this again next time? Yeah. And again, there's a dividing line between the action that Trump's taking this reckless but not illegal and actions may be taking that are illegal. I mean, you know, coming up with conspiracies about, you know, voting machines being rigged by Hugo Chavez is insane, but it's not necessarily illegal. Neither is bringing lawsuits, but there may be a line that he's crossing here.

And if so, I mean, I think all of us should be, you know, should be willing to support accountability. And would you support investigations into Trump himself? and people like Lewis DeJoy, for example, who've obviously got legal exposure? I mean, I have not sort of decided at this point what is necessary for criminal investigation or not. That, frankly, isn't my role. In fact, there's a good reason for me to stay separate from decisions that are being made about criminal investigation or criminal prosecution. Frankly, the minute that, you know, folks in the legislature start, you know, calling for, or judicial prosecutions, you know, that frankly probably hampers their case, not helps their

case. So we've got work to do to investigate via our congressional authority. I don't know that it necessarily makes a lot of sense for me to be calling on prosecutors to be conducting certain investigations or bringing certain claims. So let's move over to the General Services administration. GSA finally ascertained Biden's win. They freed up with $6.3 million for the transition. So now we have the GSA who's acknowledged Biden's win. We have the states that have acknowledged Biden's win, including the secretaries of state of both parties. We have most Americans who've acknowledged Biden's win. Have you spoken to Republican senators privately about this effort to deny reality? I have. I've spoken to a number of my Republican colleagues

about it. You know, their take on this was, you know, pretty simple. I think they acknowledged that Biden won. They are still, four years later, so afraid of Donald Trump that they don't want to cross him publicly, and that they hope it will all go away once the certifications happened and the electors are appointed. So I had a number of Republicans say to me versions of, oh, yeah, you just got to sort of let him go. get his steam out, you know, after the electors are selected, you know, then I think this all disappears. Whether they're doing anything behind the scenes to try to actually make that come true, I don't know. But that is what they say behind the scenes. Biden won Trump's office rocker,

but we can't really confront him on this, at least until the electors are chosen to make their determination. I mean, doesn't even their refusal to publicly acknowledge this, have impacts elsewhere? I mean, you know, this is supposed to be the party of patriots and constitutionalists and it's basically just devolved into, you know, a cult of personality for Trump and it allows conspiracy theories to breed. And I mean, that's what we're seeing happen right now. I mean, you know, it's not as if their actions aren't without consequence. You know, it's hard to kind of categorize the harm done to democracy. over the last four years, given all of Trump's assaults.

But there's an argument to suggest that what he has done in the last 30 days is worse for democracy than almost anything that he did during his four years, because the only thing that holds democracy together in the end is a belief in the integrity of elections, the belief that we all have the right to cast votes to determine the course of this country. And as I mentioned at the outset, Brian, what I really really, worry is that you are now going to have 40% of the electorate that believes these elections are rigged, specifically believe that elections are rigged when Democrats win. And so I don't know how the Republican Party recovers from that. And that's why you are right. Even if Joe Biden

eventually becomes president and he will, the damage that's been done to democracy that's being allowed to be done to democracy by Republicans who are running silent through all of this, is potentially permitting. More broadly, does this transition or lack thereof, which basically showed major flaws in the process, is it a priority that these procedures be shored up moving forward? I mean, there's always going to be some element of human discretion involved in these transitions, right?

The transition, right, is not a constitutional mechanism, right? All the Constitution says is that the president is the president until he's not any longer, right? There's a day at which there's a new president. There's nothing in the Constitution that requires there to be this interim period in which one administration is handing over to the next administration. But there are certainly things that we can look at to make this better, right? What we thought we were doing in housing in the GSA, the ability to begin the transition was to insulate the beginning of the commencement of the transition from politics because we generally don't have sort of political hacks at the head of GSA.

It probably does make sense now to look at some other trigger mechanism for the beginning of the transition to try to find some other entity or individual who is even more insulated, maybe is not appointed by the president who can begin that transition. That may be a complicated sort of arrangement, maybe an independent commission, for instance, that lasts for a period longer than one administration. But certainly, I think at this point, we need to understand that what we have now still vest far too much power in the incumbent president to block a transition from happening. And given how big the bureaucracy is now and how high the stakes are with respect to national security and public health protected.

that transition period is really important. You can't mess that up now without some risk accruing to domestic and national security. So let's move over to Georgia. We've seen a number of Republican senators get involved in the Georgia race. Joni Ernst, I believe, was in Georgia this past week. What's being done on the Democratic side to help win those seats? And by the way, I know that you and Brian Schatz have raised a ton of money on Twitter on an almost daily basis. Yeah, I mean, you know, listen, if Warnock and Ossoff want Democratic senators in Georgia, we'll be there, right? If they want us to help raise them money, which I think is their ask right now, then we're going to help them raise money. And so I've been, you know, one of the most active members of the Senate with respect to resourcing those two campaigns as well as fair fight. And I will continue to do that. We also have a role to play in terms of defined. finding mistakes, right? We don't need to be overly apocalyptic about what a Mitch McConnell Senate looks like, but let's be honest, you know, there's very little hope for Joe Biden to be

able to effectuate much at all of his agenda if Mitch McConnell is in charge. Why wouldn't Mitch McConnell do to Joe Biden exactly what he did to Barack Obama in 2009? So, you know, we're in a position, you know, having worked with Mitch McConnell to explain to the country and to explain to voters in Georgia what it is, what the consequences of their choice are going to be. And for all the people who came out in Georgia and voted for Joe Biden, you need to all come back out and support Warnock and Ossov because if either Lawfler or Purdue win, you're essentially asking for gridlock. You are asking to give Mitch McConnell the power to block everything and anything that Joe Biden wants, including a pandemic relief bill.

Yeah, I think that's really well said. And that's also a good segue into the issue of messaging. And this is an issue that I think that you've been especially effective at. And one of the reasons I was looking forward to talking to you. I touched on this last week in an interview with Congressman Schiff, but Democrats are the party of working people, were the party of expanding health care, of raising the minimum wage. And yet, you look in Florida, a $15 minimum wage beat Biden by 13 points. So where's the disconnect and how do we fix it? So you can ask that question this way, how did Donald Trump become the anti-status quo candidates, right, both in 2016 and in 2020? Why are Democrats having a hard time convincing people that we are the anti-status quo party?

And I don't have all the answers to that question right now, Brian, but it is the essential question we need to be asking, because what we know is that the status quo is unacceptable to the American people. unacceptable to the sort of mass of voters that have abandoned the Democratic Party for candidates like Donald Trump and his ill. And they are voting for Trump because they think that he is the most likely to blow up the status quo. Now, he obviously didn't do that. He put the industries that have been bilking individuals and families in charge of the agencies that they make money from. He didn't lead any effort to change laws through Congress that would help ordinary people. Even at the end of all of that, there were still all sorts of people that just didn't believe that we were going to blow up the economic order.

And I guess I admit that I don't have all the answers here. But you are right that when people have the chance on an issue basis to change the economic order, like instituting a $15 minimum wage, like in Arizona choosing to tax the very, very rich to fund schools, they jump at that opportunity. Legalization of marijuana? Right. They don't just support, but they don't, with the same level of enthusiasm, support the Democratic candidates that back those policies. And, you know, listen, I think Joe Biden in the end was the right candidates on for president this year. But we better learn lessons from the candidates in our party that do have enthusiastic backings across the nation. Frankly, people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, these are candidates who talk about broad, major economic change. every single day, every single hour of every single day. They're a laser-like focus on taking power from people who have too much and giving it to people who have too little. And both are important, right? Both are important, talking about who you are taking power from and who you're giving it to. And that's the other thing that Democrats don't love doing. We like talking about

who we're going to give power to. We don't always love talking about who we're going to take it from. Donald Trump talks about who he's going to take it from all the time. Even if he doesn't, even if he doesn't actually go ahead with it. Yeah. Right. Sometimes, right. I mean, he's, and when he villainizes Mexicans and Muslims, that's another way of just telling people, hey, I'm going to take things from them and give it to you.

That kind of oppositional politics, well, it may make Democrats uncomfortable. It is motivating for voters. And we need to engage in it while identifying the right oppositional force, right? The corporations and the billionaires and the. you know, Fortune 500 retailers that are killing small businesses. And we have to, you know, identify the people who have too much power and need them. Yeah. I think that's a good lesson in, you know, moving forward, not kind of being afraid. Because I think, you know, Democrats have, you know, for better or for worse, that's a little bit of the reputation that we've gained.

But I do want to segue into this issue of disinformation a little bit. A major issue from the last four years has been the spread of disinformation. and Trump and Fox News basically groomed their base to traffic and lies. So how do you reprogram people who've been programmed to believe outright lies? How do we come back to a place where people even acknowledge basic reality? Yeah. It's a great question, Brian. It's a great question.

And again, I think it's hard to sort of start with a question of tactics. I think you have to sort of understand why people are grasping for, these big, broad, overarching theories. And I think it comes from a place of desperation. I think you have to understand how desperate people are to explain what has happened to their lives, right? What happened to go from a world in which, you know, my parents could pretty easily access the middle class and be able to afford health care and a decent place to live and a college education for their kids. And I can't afford any of that, right? And so they often are attracted to these sort of big, easy to understand theories about how that is, how that has happened. Even if they're

conspiratorial or if they're wildly conspiratorial, that there's somebody out there is doing this to me, right? And so if you aren't delivering them access to a different theory and then to a pathway of radical change, then I don't know that you can compete with it. conspiracy theorists. So, you know, we can talk about limiting the, you know, trying to control the Twitters and the Facebooks of the world and trying to limit the aperture for these conspiracy theories to reach mass, to reach big population centers. But we can also understand why people are attracted to those conspiracy theories and offer them some alternative salvation, some way to explain what's happened to their lives and to tell them how

things are going to be different. It also, but if we do want to talk about tactics, understanding that no companies should have the power that a Facebook has or Twitter has, I mean, I do think we have to have a conversation about dramatically downsizing the power of those companies so that if they do make mistakes, that it doesn't ultimately affect as many people as it does today. Yeah. And I think moving forward, like that tactics argument is going to be especially important because as if Fox News wasn't bad enough over the last four years, now we have basically people migrating over to the OANs and the newsmaxes of the world because somehow Fox News isn't conspiratorial enough.

You know, we have Parlor spouting up as an alternative to Twitter, and that's a right-wing echo chamber. So, you know, there is the worry that if these issues aren't addressed kind of head-on at a substantive foundational level, then it can only get worse. Yeah, and it's all an indictment of the political class, right? I mean, they folks don't identify with the way that we talk. They don't identify with our addiction to incremental change, right? And so they want a bigger explanation of what's happening and they want people who are going to enact bigger changes. And so every day that we talk about small adjustments to the tax code or, you know, little, modifications to the health care system, a little extra tax credit for college. It's just another day that we are not connecting with where people are and where these sort of big thing conspirators, these theorists jump in to fill the vacuum.

Yeah, that's a great point. Well, Senator, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. It was great talking to you. Thanks, Brian. I appreciate it. Thanks again to Senator Murphy. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera and recorded in Los Angeles, California.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.