No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump's Hail Mary scheme sends "shock waves" through his inner circle

Episode Date: December 20, 2020

Trump’s Hail Mary scheme to steal the election sends shock waves through his own inner circle, and some voting systems vendors that were the targets of rightwing smear campaigns are getting back at Republicans. Brian interviews Al Franken about why Republicans are sticking by Trump after he lost, whether certain administration officials should be held accountable in the Biden era, and how to message more effectively 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 Trump's latest Hail Mary play to steal the election that's even sent shockwaves through his own inner circle, how some voting systems vendors that were the targets of right-wing smear campaigns are getting back at Republicans, and my interview with Al Franken, where we discuss why Republicans are sticking with Trump after he lost, whether certain administration officials should be held accountable, and how to message more effectively moving forward. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Remember when people said that Trump would finally accept the fact that he lost the election once the state certified their results, and then he didn't?

Or that he'd accepted after the safe harbor deadline, which is the date when all state-level election challenges, like recounts and audits had to be completed, and then he didn't. Or that he'd accepted after the electoral college voted on December 14th, and then he didn't. Well, now, rather than acknowledge that there's no more meaningful litigation, that there's no more pushing. for faithless electors, no more appealing to state legislatures, no more hope of alternate slates of electors, rather than finally acknowledge he lost. We are up to martial law because, of course, we have Rudy Giuliani trying to have the Department of Homeland Security commandeer voting machines. We have Trump pushing for election lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell as special

counsel to inspect those voting machines. And then we have the newly pardoned felon, Michael Flynn, calling for the military to read minister elections in the states that Trump lost. And this isn't me just saying, oh, this is basically martial law, because Flynn literally said it outright. He could order the, within the swinging states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states and basically rerun an election in each of those states.

I mean, it's not unprecedented. I mean, these people out there talking about martial law, it's like it's something that we've never done. We've done, martial law has been instituted 64. 64 times. Yeah, all those snowflake libs claiming that we shouldn't have martial law. Marshall law's great. Who doesn't want martial law?

Here's what I find fascinating. Republicans said that Barack Obama was a dictator, a dictator because he gave people health care. I'm not even kidding. A dictator because he ensured that 20 million more Americans would be covered through the ACA. And yet now, that same party, the party whose sole obsession with the Second Amendment is that you never know when we might face a tyrannical government is openly supporting the guy calling for martial law. I mean, the cognitive dissonance here is remarkable. Now, as for getting this budding military dictatorship off the ground, things don't seem to be going too well. Rudy Giuliani

had called Ken Cuccinelli the second in command at the Department of Homeland Security to inquire about having the military seize voting machines to which Cucinelli said, no, the military does not have that authority to go in and seize voting machines from states to coddle this far-right conspiratorial fever dream. And what I mean by that is that Sidney Powell, among others, has been claiming for months now

that voting systems vendors like Dominion and Smartmatic are part of this grand conspiracy along with Cuba, China, Venezuela, the CIA, the DOJ, Republican governors and secretaries of state to steal the election from Trump. And it sounds ridiculous, and it is ridiculous,

but at the same time, it's that much scarier because this is who has the president's ear. And so it's hard to really laugh off the ridiculousness of it all because we have the most powerful person in the world who's then getting his advice from the woman claiming that the election was stolen by Cuba, China, Venezuela, the CIA, the DOJ, and Republican officials. At some point, even a Republican party where the Overton window has shifted so incredibly far to the right has to acknowledge that this is just off the deep end.

And yet, here are the reactions we're getting from lawmakers on the right. Here's Utah Republican John Curtis. I want to get your reaction to this stunning reporting out of an Oval Office meeting last night, including talk of martial law and screaming matches. Well, let me just tell you, I've been in Congress for three years, and for three years I keep hearing all of these worst case scenarios. We have to remember it was a conversation, not a revolution. There are far more important things in front of us, and I think we need to move on and tackle them. But that's all you have to say to that? I mean, I understand there far more important issues and we had you on to talk about COVID and we will in a second.

But we can't just grow numb to incidents that would happen in a third world country and we would have a state department that would be alarmed about hearing these types of reports. Listen, you're talking about a conversation that reportedly took place. We don't know anything about the details and you just can't get me all riled up about that. Does it bother you? It bothers me that it's such a big deal to so many people who know nothing about the facts. and know nothing about the details. Right.

Trump is just talking about a military coup, but he hasn't actually done a military coup, so what's everyone getting all riled up about? All this is is a conversation among friends about a military takeover. Locker room talk, am I right? Meanwhile, the Army Secretary and the Army Chief of Staff had to issue a statement saying, quote,

there is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election. They had to say that, because someone suggested it. Someone suggested in the United States of America that declaring martial law is an option to overturn the results of a free and fair election. So I get that Republicans,

who I should remind you, called Obama a dictator for passing health care. They like to pretend that Donald Trump is a toddler in a fenced-in yard. And so, yeah, you can leave him out there alone and he'll be fine. But when you have the United States Army clarifying that they're not willing to send in troops to American cities in deference

to bogus fraud claims, then maybe the Republican Party might want to stop deferring to this whole will he'll go away eventually approach, because all it's doing clearly is giving him a permission structure to be an actual authoritarian. Now, the idea that Sydney Powell would be chosen as a special counsel to investigate the election results reportedly sent shockwaves through Trump's inner circle. And mind you, this is an inner circle that survived four years of this administration. Like, think about how bad of an idea something has to be to send shockwaves through an administration after four years of child separations, of exploding the deficit, of extorting foreign countries, of coddling dictators, of undermining NATO, of emboldening white supremacists,

of letting a pandemic rip through this country. Trump probably could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and I doubt his administration would blink. So, yeah, for shockwaves to be sent is a testament to just how off the rails it would be, for Sidney Powell to be litigating any issues. And to that point in Axios's reporting of this story, a senior administration official said, quote, people who are concerned and nervous

aren't the weak-need bureaucrats that we loathe. These are people who have endured arguably more insanity and mayhem than any administration officials in history. Consider, too, that Powell's claims and conspiracies have been so absurd that Giuliani and Jenna Ellis had to release a statement distancing themselves from her. Giuliani and Ellis, neither one of whom had won a single case in this entire post-election period, saw Sidney Powell and were like, yeah, no, she's not with us. And now, beyond that, you have Smartmatic Technologies and Dominion voting systems, two voting systems vendors that are gearing up for legal action against Powell.

And remember, she has used these companies as punching bags for the last two months and claiming that they're responsible for switching votes and that there was massive tabulation error rates. and whatever else she could cook up, all of it completely unfounded. And now, both Smartmatic and Dominion have sent legal notices out to Powell, along with Fox News and OAN and Newsmax, demanding retractions. And the Trump campaign also sent a memo out to campaign officials this weekend, telling them to preserve documents related to Ms. Powell and Dominion in the event of legal action against her. So yet again, the sewing part seemed fun.

The reaping part? Yeah, not so much. So let me just repeat one thing, if for nothing else than the fact that the right is hellbent on claiming that this election was illegitimate and rigged, and because the onus is on us to make sure that we're not just allowing them to flood the zone without any pushback. So I'll say this. There has been zero evidence of widespread fraud. It wasn't proven in a single case of the 59 cases brought forward. Not even one of the judges who Trump himself appointed in Wisconsin and Georgia, the Third Circuit, the 11th Circuit, or the. Supreme Court has sided with him.

Bill Barr's DOJ said there was no fraud. Chris Krebs from the DHS's Cybersecurity Unit said there was no fraud. Republican governors and secretaries of state have said there was no fraud. Even Giuliani admitted in court that he wasn't there on claims of fraud. And finally, it's pretty hard to claim that Democrats rigged the election when you consider that Republicans actually gain seats in the House and state legislatures and didn't lose the Senate. And it would serve the right well to acknowledge these things, because even though it's not

convenient, it's the truth. And at the end of the day, that is all that matters. Next step is my interview with Al Franken. Today we've got my friend Al Franken. Thanks for coming back on. My pleasure, Brian. So let's jump in. We have Republicans all over the country signing on to these lawsuits to help Trump

overturn the election results. The election's over, the litigation's DOA. I'm not worried about any of that. What I'm worried about is how you come back from this. Like, how do you recover when half of the government is fundamentally opposed to the democracy that they're participating in? You expect me to answer that? I don't know. This is, was obscene.

This is completely counter to what a country is supposed to be about. This was unprecedented, of course. This is the Republican Party basically saying, if we can't suppress enough, to begin with, we'll do it on the other side. This is terrible. I don't know if we recover from this. I think 75% of Republican voters believe this election is somehow bogus. Yeah. I don't know how you recover from that. I guess the question is like, why do this for Trump? Because he ran behind every other candidate down ballot. He turned out 81 million Americans on the left. He's overseen the fourth biggest mass casualty event in U.S. history, and he objectively lost. So what do you

think the upside is for Republicans who continue to perform for him? They know that his base is the Republican base. Yeah, he's got 74 million votes. He did lose, but it's the second most votes that any presidential candidate has ever gotten. Yeah. And they're afraid that if they don't show this loyalty to them that they'll get primaried and they'll be the end of their political career. That means a lot more to them than any kind of principle. I have some Republican former colleagues who I text to every once in a while, and I was asking them sort of the same thing. And this is a while ago. This is like 10 days ago, 12 days ago. Yeah. And I was saying years in the Trump era is a few years in normal people's lives, yeah.

And I was saying like, say something, say something right now. This is bad for the country. This is bad. This is undermining our system. And they would text back stuff that made no sense. Well, you know, having recounts and audits of the election, that's good. That'll help the legitimacy if you have all. audits. And I'm going like, well, yeah, but the president is, you have the audience,

audits and the recounts. And the president is saying it still doesn't get back. Right. It's still bogus. Still rigged. And then they'd say something similar back. And I go, like, are you like literally pretending not to understand what I'm saying? Yeah. And at a certain point, they wouldn't respond. And it was I'd go like, look, If you want to say, I'm afraid of losing my next primary, fine. Just tell me that. Yeah. That's when I'd stop hearing from.

Yeah. Well, you know, we're seeing now this migration from Fox News. And I like speaking about Fox to you because I know that you have a special affinity for right-wing media. They sued me, Fox News. So we're seeing this migration now from Fox over to OAN and Newsmax because somehow Fox isn't conspiratorial enough. What kind of an impact do you think that's going to have on the GOP, in your opinion? Does Fox go more fringe to compete? Does it cut its losses and go more moderate? What do you think that the right-wing media ecosystem is going to look like moving forward?

Oh, it's just getting worse and worse. Basically, we have two information universes in our country now. One is normal sort of mainstream media, you know, if you get your information from the Dallas Morning News or the Minneapolis Star Tribune, you know, or, you know, maybe from the New York Times and the Washington Post and from CNN and from other sources, maybe you read books or you get it from, you know, social media, you Facebook sends you, whatever it is. you seem to want to read and so and the algorithms they know you better than you know yourself and they will they're all about confirmation bias and they're all about their business model is keeping you on as long as possible so they can advertise more to you so that's their revenue stream that's their business model so if it takes getting you agitated and feeding you information about Democrats, I don't know, being pedophiles who are storing children or, you know, if it's just simply as they all want to defund the police.

We want the Democrats want a country with no police. And I admit defund the police was a stupid thing to say. And it sounds like you're talking about abolishing the police. I think what people were talking about is maybe if there's a, domestic disturbance at midnight, a set of two cops. They should send a cop and a social worker, and they should pay for the social worker. I think that's what they meant. There's other police reform that we need to do.

But no, it's, we have these now two universes of information. You know, when Joe Biden says, I want to unite America, unite people, you know, good luck. Yeah. And, you know, there's a part of me that doesn't blame the people who get their information from these news sources because you can't know what you don't know. You know what I mean? And so much of the information that they get when they regurgitate it. And it's, you know, it's my own loved ones. It's my own friends and family who bring this information back.

And you can see that it is so fundamentally wrong, you know. But if that's the information they're given, then that's the information they know. Yeah. And we don't have enough civic education in our schools. A lot of people don't have the basis which to make those kind of judgments. Also, a lot of it is about geographical, you know, being in an area that's very red or being in an area that's very blue. And we're getting more segmented that way as it is. so this is it's been going in a bad direction this does not help yeah what the republicans have done what trump has done is incredibly destructive and i hope they pay a price for it uh you know i think there were like 17 uh members of congress who signed on to this who said that the their election was illegitimate right you know they were in uh you know, they're in districts that they're saying those elections should be overturned.

I don't think they should be seated. Right. And that's the thing. I mean, if you have to assume that if they are actually acting in good faith, then then why see people who think their own elections were rigged, should be invalidated, you know, like call their bluff. It's a really good argument. I would like to see them make that argument. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Go away. You said your own election was illegitimate. No, no, you can't come in here. I think you're going to have to be reelected in some election that you think maybe two years from now.

You could run again. Yeah. You know, when I was in the Senate, we had a number of members of the House who said that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, was not an American. It shouldn't be a president. And I asked my chief of staff, let's make them go through a metal detector for the state of the union. they can't be in a room with someone who believe is a usurper yeah how do we know that they're not going to do something about it put them at least put them through a metal detector to make a point and my chief says staff said no you can't do that politically yeah i i was kind of not quite

sure why not yeah i mean i you know i i do wish that we would be able to that we would kind of have the you know fight fire with fire and uh and call their bluff and you know if they think their elections rigged and like, yeah, I mean, you can't, you can't seat somebody in the, in the United States House of Representatives. And I'm not even sure that's fighting fire with fire. I think that's fighting fire with something actually kind of legitimate. Yeah. I mean, if we're assuming that they're acting good faith, then like, then yeah, why not? You got, you can only come in here and represent your people if you believe you were elected. Right. I want to move over to the, to the issue of accountability. You know, over the last few years,

We've seen so many abuses from Trump to his kids profiting off the presidency to people like Louis DeJoy who tried to sabotage the post office and almost succeeded. And I'm sure we're going to see, you know, a flurry of pardons that defy every law of justice. But would you want to see accountability for these people in the next administration or are you of the mind that investigations are going to beget more investigations than it will never end? I think that as president, you keep your hands off of this. And if people in the Justice Department have legitimate belief that laws were broken, and they believe those are rise to the level being investigated, then they should investigate it. I just think that the president should stay away from this.

Yeah, yeah, that's fair. So I know you touched on this. And I want to talk about Democrats' messages. because we have a party in Republicans that have overseen a botched response to the pandemic, an economic recession, a jobs crisis, and yet Democrats lost seats in the House. We lost seats in state legislatures. We failed to take the Senate so far. We've heard people like Kelly Leffler call Raphael Warnock, a socialist 75 times at their debate.

So clearly they have a plan and they're sticking to it. What's the Democrats equivalent to what are clearly potent wedge issue messaging on the right? It's interesting. I was talking about this on my podcast about with Maria Teresa Kumar, and we were talking about the disinformation that, you know, she basically signs, registers Latinx folks. And she's talking about all the disinformation that they are getting, including. disinformation. She got a relative from Columbia warning her about the disinformation Latinx folks in Miami-Dade were getting. And part of what they do now is not just register people, but they have people talk to them about what is disinformation, about

correcting disinformation. So we're talking about like, what makes someone want to spend 40, 60 hours a week, spreading disinformation. What is, you know, I mean, you're, Brian, you're trying to get information out there. You're not going like, I'm going to wake up every day and spread disinformation. What kind of person is going like, damn it, I only spent 40 hours this week spreading disinformation. I should be spending 60 hours. Shame on me.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what this is. I do think there's a fundamental difference. Now, are all my former Democratic colleagues, you know, virtuous? Believe me, no. Yeah. But, wow, what is this?

You know, and are there false with mainstream media? Oh, boy, yes, yes. Our information is, and our media is kind of screwed up in a lot of ways. but there is a fundamental difference between what you get from one side and from the other side. The way that I've that I've kind of justified it to myself is that Democrats have the more popular agenda to run on and Republicans don't. I mean, lowering taxes for the wealthy is not a nationally popular agenda item. Taking away health care from Americans is not a nationally popular agenda item.

You know who it's a popular agenda or lowering taxes on the wealthy? wealthy, the wealthy? Yeah, yeah, of course. So, I mean, the way I justify this to myself is that they can't run on their agenda. So the lies are all that they have. The disinformation is all that they have because if they were to just be honest about what they're running on, I mean, like lower taxes for the wealthy, you know, squashing a woman's right to choose what she does with her own body, you know, like all of these, all of these items are not popular with the American people so they they have to they rely on the disinformation because it serves as a cover for for having to actually talk about the truth and so that that's why it's just these culture war wedge issue

bullshit items about radical socialism and migrant caravans coming to to rape and pillage and and you know they're coming to we're coming to knock down your door so we can rip the guns out of your pry the guns out of your cold dead fingers because if it was actually a good faith conversation based on the truth, on our actual, on each party's respective agendas, then it would be, okay, well, yeah, we're looking to give liability shields to corporations, vote for us. There are, at one time, there were sort of legitimate issue differences that we had in our country. One thing I say about Democrats is we don't message great. Yeah.

I have this thing that said that our bumper stickers, usually, end with continued on next bumper sticker. Yeah. Now, except to fund the police. Now, that wasn't a bumper sticker, but it is our first catchy phrase, which actually barely anyone was saying it. And the people were saying it, I don't think we're saying abolish the police. They're saying, let's reform the police and maybe spend less money on certain aspects of

the police. But to reform them properly, by it to spend more money, I don't know. We certainly are not recruiting cops in the right place. There's a lot of bad apples. Again, on my podcast, I had Charles Ramsey, who was Chief of Police from Philadelphia, and then from Washington, who was head of the Obama Task Force or commissioned to reform police, which was disbanded, of course, by Trump when he got in. You know, he said there's a lot of bad apples, but you got to look at the apple tree and where we're recruiting from.

And there's a whole list of other stuff, obviously, like training and de-escalation. I was a big champion of crisis intervention training, which saves a lot of lives. So you can the police recognize a situation where they shouldn't be using force. And there's a lot we should be doing. And sometimes we don't message what we're doing correctly. And other times, and we are also a wide party. We have, you know, we have AOC and we have Biden now, AOC, supported Biden. And I think those differences are healthy and good.

And she really, you know, she represents her constituency well. and she's a powerful, the force and spokesman. But that broadness of our party is very different from what I see as a very narrowing of their part. Yeah. And that makes it easier to message. Right. Totally.

Especially if the only dissenter in that party is like you have basically Mitt Romney and then the rest of the Republican Party. And so certainly in Congress, that appears to be what it is in Congress. And then every once in a while. another you know there might be should we not get the Senate and I hope we do and I would encourage everyone to do everything they can this is the finish line for this election and I've been fundraising for unite here which is a ground operation of that union culinary workers in Nevada are a great ground

operation they're part of unite here they are on the ground in in Georgia, doing a great job. Right now in Georgia, it is not a persuasion campaign. It's a turnout to vote. The turnout campaign is going to be very, very close. Door knock for Warnock is why I put it. And COVID stuff, and that's what they're doing. So they're doing that and they are being very careful during COVID.

Every one of their canvassers from that town has this, is her own hook hotel room. They travel in their own car. That's expensive. So if you can go to help them and unite here, that'd be something you can do because this is the finish line. This is it. The 2020 election went into overtime. And what's at stake is the United States Senate. Talking about the simplicity of our messaging as opposed to, you know, the continued on next bumper sticker messaging, why not go out and say, and this is what I think. we should do, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, is just go out and say, simply enough, we will give you a $1,200 stimulus check, period. We'll pass a $15 minimum wage. We will legalize

marijuana. These are simple, instant gratification issues as opposed to telling a 22-year-old that, like, you know. That was already three times longer than their message, but, you know, It's funny about the marijuana, legalizing marijuana, in Minnesota, there are two legalized marijuana parties that are on, get the line on the, you know, general election tick ballot. And because of them, we were two seats away from taking the state Senate, which meant we would have had both the Senate, the House, and the government, and also we would have had the governor, so we would have been able to pass anything that we could agree on. as a party. Because these two legalized marijuana parties were on the ballot, we fell short by two seats because they took votes away from the DFL, Democratic Farm of Labor candidates for state Senate. And so we don't have a majority in the state Senate. So we will not have a legalized marijuana law voted on in Minnesota because of the legalized.

marijuana. All right. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about marijuana, I don't know what does. First of all, that's an argument for rank choice voting. And second of all, I mean, look, if there are enough votes to siphon votes away that people will vote on that as a single issue to the point where they will blindly, you know, cut off their nose to spite their face, so to speak, that speaks to the potency of that issue. So, I mean, like, there are simple issues that aren't so convoluted as like, help us protect the ACAs so we can protect coverage for pre-existing conditions as opposed to like here's the thing for example uh i think we've discussed this before medicate expansion the last five states to pass medicaid expansion by

referendum in their states are idaho nebraska Utah Oklahoma and Missouri all very red states why because Medicaid expansion is what great for rural america yeah so how do we not win on that issue. How do people in rural Minnesota not know that issue? Well, because we don't message it well enough. Yeah. We have to, we have to be smarter too. We have a large Latino community in Minnesota. They don't turn out and they should be turning out for us. And we don't do good enough job messaging to them. We can do a lot better job. That's for sure. And what you're saying, I think, is something we have to be looking at, simplifying the message. But what I'm saying right here isn't very simple. No, but what you're saying is right in the sense that

regardless of what wing of the party you belong to, if you look at someone like, and this was, I discussed this in an interview with Chris Murphy, Senator Chris Murphy a couple weeks ago, but if you look at someone like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and they are laser focused on on their issues. And that's why, you know, that's why they have such a, such an enthusiastic following. It's because every day it is hammering down on the issues that they care about. It is taking, you know, everybody knows that if you talk about taking money away from the top, you know, one-tenth of the top 10 percent, you're talking about Bernie Sanders because he's focused on those issues. And so, so whatever the issue might be. He's a champion on those issues and in many ways

he is to the right of a lot of Europe. But if you look at where he and Elizabeth were on single payer, they were for single payer without any ability to get private insurance. Now, politically, that is not a winner. We picked up 41 seats in 18 on health care, basically. And that's because, in 17, Americans got to see what getting rid of the ACA would do. But I love the idea that because Joe Biden wanted a public option, he was a socialist who really, really wanted communism, which is what Trump says. And it's just like the social, I mean, the public option is communism? Joe Biden, the Marxist, you know, the radical left.

They will say that, man, oh, man, they will say that. Pete Buttigieg said it best. He said they're going to call a socialist regardless of what we do. So we might as well do what's right. Well, or the argument, I mean, Pete was more in the middle there of everybody. So if he says that, then Bernie might as well go, okay, so then let's be socialists. I'm listening to you, Pete. That only makes sense.

All right. So I do have one last question. That is, and that is, do you wish, you know, is there, is there any, any part of you that hurts that, that you're not still on SNL in the, in the midst of basically, of these Sydney Powell, Cracken, DOJ, CIA, Republican governors and secretaries of state, Cuba, China, Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, all conspiring to steal the election from Trump? I wish I was in the Senate. Yeah.

All right, Al, well, thanks so much for joining. It's always great. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure, man. Thanks again to Al Franken. Have a very Merry Christmas, everyone. Be safe, and I'll talk to you next time. 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 briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.