Pod Save America - "2 Impeachment 2 Furious.”

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

Donald Trump becomes the first president in history to be impeached twice, ten Republicans break from the party over the vote, and Mitch McConnell weighs a conviction in the Senate. Then Stanford researcher Renée DiResta talks to Dan about online right-wing organizing and the spread of misinformation.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod, one last impeachment for the road. How it all went down, what will happen in the Senate, and what it all means for the post-Trump Republican Party. Then Dan will talk to Stanford researcher Rene DiResta about online right-wing organizing, the attack on the Capitol, and the spread of misinformation. But first, don't miss our other Crooked Pods this week. Representatives Karen Bass and Pramila Jayapal are on hysteria to discuss insurrection and impeachment. And our good friend Samantha Power, who Biden just named as his next USAID administrator, is on Pod Save the World.

Congrats to Sam. We're very happy for you to check out that interview. Also, an announcement. Next Friday, Crooked Media's editor-in-chief, Brian Boitler, is launching the second season of Rubicon, a podcast that will walk you through the Biden administration's first hundred days.

The trailer is out now. New episodes will drop every Friday starting January 22nd. So, subscribe to Rubicon today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Exciting stuff.

Finally, Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So join us for the Presidential Inaugural Committee's National Day of Service. We used to have these on MLK Day back in the Obama administration. For some reason, Trump didn't see fit to have these days of service over the last four years. Now they're back in the Biden administration. some reason Trump didn't see fit to have these days of service over the last four years. Now they're back in the Biden administration. You can find COVID safe volunteer opportunities and ways to get involved at votesaveamerica.com slash volunteer. And we will be off on Monday, but we'll be back with more Pod Save America on Tuesday. All right, let's get to the news. On

Wednesday, House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection against the United States government by a vote of 232 to 197. Trump makes history as the only president to ever be impeached twice. In fact, half of all the impeachments we've ever had have been of Donald Trump. have been of Donald Trump. He also received the most votes from his own party of any impeachment in history, with 10 Republicans voting yes, including Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House,

who said, quote, there has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. That is Liz Cheney's quote. So, you know, Trump leaves the White House with quite a few bragging rights.

Dan, it's now a virtual certainty that Trump will not be removed from office before his term ends on Wednesday the 20th. We will talk about why in a bit. But with that in mind, why was it so important to impeach him anyway? I'm not going to do this often in the history of this podcast, but I'm going to approvingly quote Cheney. This is the highest crime ever done by a president. And even knowing that you were going to get a small fraction of Republicans to support you, even knowing that the odds of removal before he leaves office are virtually nil, and the odds that he is actually going to be convicted in the Senate are long, we think, as we sit here right now, it is still the right thing to do because you said it in your intro. This is a man who incited

an armed insurrection that led to an assault on the Capitol, the deaths of a number of Americans, and the potential deaths of an untold number of people, public servants, members of Congress, staff, aides, police officers. And this is because this president refused to acknowledge reality, refused to abide by the traditions of a peaceful transfer of power. And people died because of it. And if we are fortunate enough as a country, as a planet, as a democracy to survive to the point where people can look back on this moment in history, there needs to be some marker that this represents a low point in American political, moral, social fabric. And this had to be done. There was no other option for Democrats to walk away from this, even as painful as it is, even if it gives terribly bad faith people a

cudgel about how you're being divisive instead of unifying. This had to be done because what the president did was so far out of the bounds of what is acceptable and frankly legal in American politics that it had to be addressed. So I think there's two goals for impeachment that are worthy. One is to ensure that Donald Trump is not allowed to run for office again. That can only happen if the Senate convicts him, which, as you said, those are long odds. We'll talk about that. It may be able to happen if under the 14th Amendment, if you pass legislation.

Brian Boitler also has a great op-ed in The New York Times this week about that. You should check it out. But so that's one goal, to prevent him from running for office again. The other goal is to ensure that he does not incite further violence in the coming days. And I think that whether or not he is convicted in the Senate, impeaching him and holding over his head the possibility that he may be convicted or removed from office in the next week actually may prevent him from inciting more violence. And the evidence for that is, and we'll talk about this in a second too, week actually may prevent him from inciting more violence.

And the evidence for that is, and we'll talk about this in a second too, the fact that he has, you know, succumbed to pressure to record videos where he is telling his supporters to not commit violence, to not break laws, to not engage in vandalism. Like there is some evidence already that Donald Trump is a little spooked by what the Congress is doing. And even if he doesn't get convicted, that means that impeachment will have been a good thing because possibly it could at least reduce the chance that he will incite more violence, possibly. I think that's right. I will say that the normal cycle of when Trump does something that is absolutely horrible is massive blowback, followed by contrite teleprompter reading on video somewhere, followed by a series of insane tweets that reopen the wound and make things worse. and make things worse. He should be very thankful to Jack Dorsey for banning him, at least for this period of time, because he has prevented – Jack Dorsey has taken the matches away from the baby because who knows –

you just imagine Robert Trump is watching, hate watching CNN or even Fox or watching some of the insane shit that's still happening on OAN and Newsmax, and live tweeting it out. So it's hard to know, like, is he actually going to turn it on? I also think, beyond just the— I don't think he's going to trade, because I think it's— Or afraid. Afraid of more consequences. Afraid.

Well, we're seeing it in real time, because the day before the impeachment, he goes to Texas, and he gets off—or he's getting before the impeachment, he goes to Texas and he gets off or he's getting on the plane and reporters are asking him stuff. And he does his usual bullshit, which is, oh, everything I said was perfect. I didn't say anything wrong. Right. I didn't do anything. And he starts firing people up again. And everyone's like, you know, that made a lot of people say, OK, well, now they've got to impeach him because he's clearly doing his typical shit again. And then he pulls back again and does that video. Right. So he's at least in this push and pull right now because he has some fear of what might happen to him. Now, I think it's not just impeachment. It is the Trump brand, his finances, like his his future.

The fact that he can't use Twitter now, like he is afraid of a number of different consequences that go beyond impeachment at this point. I mean, if you were to ask Trump to pick between getting impeached or losing the PGA championship at a Trump resort, he would definitely pick the former. Oh, my gosh, of course. I think one reason is so important is because and we shouldn't lose sight of this throughout this whole conversation, like the danger and the possibility of violence are not over. And, you know, we've got 20,000 armed troops expected in Washington

for the Biden inauguration. We've got National Guard members sleeping on the floor of the Capitol to defend that. The Joint Chiefs are writing a letter so that the military knows its job to defend the peaceful transfer of power and not Trump, which is crazy that they have to do that. The FBI is telling police chiefs all across the country to be on high alert. Like there's new threats and plots being discovered and, you know, what feels like every few hours. So we are by no means out of the woods just yet. And everything that members of Congress, people in government, everyone can do to sort of reduce

the possibility of violence, I think is important to do at this point. And I think impeachment has to be one of those things. Yeah, that's really important because some of the, we are very focused on Trump and the political consequences and what it means about Republicans and what it means for 2024, his post-presidential life. But the way all of the authorities are now acting about the danger at the inaugural is very alarming. Closing the mall.

There is a very, very real threat. closing the mall. There is a very, very real threat. One of the members of Republican members of Congress who voted for impeachment bought body armor because he's very worried for his life. There has been a long history of right-wing, anti-government, white supremacists violent activity in this country. Much of that has been ignored for the last four years because Trump found it insulting to himself or his base to worry about violent right-wing militias. Then you have a president and an entire Republican Party, to be clear, who has egged them on for much of the last four years, but also very particularly in this post-election

period. And just because Trump has lost his Twitter account doesn't mean that threat of violence does not exist. Yeah, that is very important to understand, especially in the weeks ahead. So let's talk about Trump's reaction, which thankfully none of us had to read on Twitter. He did, as we mentioned, film another hostage video from the Oval where Pence and his lawyers forced him to ask his supporters to refrain from committing any further violence. As usual, the real Trump showed up in twin stories from the Washington Post and the New York Times

that say he's isolated and angry, lashing out at aides for not defending him, screaming about Mitch McConnell andccarthy betraying him pissed at rudy giuliani for charging expensive legal fees that trump reportedly is refusing to pay livid at twitter the pga deutsche bank others for canceling him and is still was still on air force one flying to texas the other day telling anyone who will listen that he won the election uh so we're going to spend most of this pod talking about what all this means for Republicans, but I do want to start with what this all means for how quickly and hopefully permanently we can get Donald Trump out of our lives. They apparently tried to convince him to resign a few days early

so he could possibly avoid conviction in the Senate and maybe run again in 2024. He refused. He said resigning didn't get Nixon anything. His lawyers are telling him to be careful what he says and does because they say he faces all kinds of legal exposure for possibly inciting violence and also civil suits for possibly inciting violence as well, not just criminal exposure. He's still talking about trying to pardon himself. So what are some of the possible ways this ends for Trump that are also good for the rest of us at this point? Other than conviction. Right, other than conviction.

A relatively quiet seven days or whatever it is that's left where he just gets on an airplane and goes and no one pays attention to him and he doesn't say anything. And he has a lot of thoughts and he would tweet out but can't. I mean that – Right. Without a self-part. Like that is the looming issue here. benefit of the sort of Damocles of conviction hanging over him is he said he did not want to resign because he did not believe Mike Pence would pardon him. Implication being he plans

on pardoning himself, that it would be a massively controversial act that would, at least on paper, potentially increase the chances that he would be convicted. And so the best case scenario is he does nothing, says nothing, stays quiet, and just leaves. And we don't pay attention to him. There's not a bunch of coverage of him leaving. He just gets on an airplane, goes back to Mar-a-Lago, and lives out his days out of our sight without creating any additional constitutional and security crises. So obviously, like the best case is he's convicted and he can't run again. And then we really don't have to worry about him that much. But if he's not convicted, right,

he faces, like you said, he faces all kinds of legal exposure, some that he can try to pardon himself out of, though it's unclear that that will work on the federal level. Other legal exposure on the state level is particularly in the state of New York that he can't pardon himself out of, though it's unclear that that will work on the federal level. Other legal exposure on the state level is particularly in the state of New York that he can't pardon himself out of, that he will still face when he leaves office. He is in a ton of debt. He is losing money left and right because he's losing all kinds of business deals over his conduct. He's got banks shutting him down, saying that they're not going to lend to him anymore. And like you said, he's cut off from communicating with his favorite via his favorite channels, right? Like via Twitter and also Facebook and Instagram. And like how many how many mainstream media organizations are just going to sit down for interviews with Trump now all the time,

right? I'm sure he's still going to be able to call into Fox and Friends whenever he wants. He's going to be able to go on Newsmax, OAN. Who knows? He's going to try to do his own media company. But I think the good case, the best case here, barring conviction, is that he is isolated, broke, and alone for the next couple of years. And like you said, we don't hear much from him, which is a possibility. I sort of, you're not going to know this represent a thing.

But have you ever seen the Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns becomes like Howard Hughes? That's sort of how that's sort of how I imagine Trump is basically by himself, unshaven, wearing Kleenex boxes for slippers and living in paranoid, germaphobic isolation until the end of his days with just Dan Scavino there to clean the latrine. Yeah, I mean, look, the thing that should make us all feel good is he does seem miserable. He seems very, very miserable and angry, which is always, you know, I wish him nothing but suffering

for the rest of his day. I mean, my sense is he's been miserable every day of his life. And that's sort of how we got in this situation. Um, that is true too. The picture you paint is mildly encouraging. I would say,

cause all those things seem real. He has gigantic financial problems. He has gigantic legal problems. He re the being banned from Twitter is a gigantic deal for him. It is like, you can already see the difference in his, his, in, he is, he is afraid to engage with mainstream outlets or even any media outlet right now. And his ability to just shape the conversation or insert himself into the political dialogue has been eliminated. He is. Which, by the way, is why we've been complaining about the media for the last four years and

like not challenging him enough, because when he is challenged by a reporter, he doesn't like it, which is why he uses Twitter because he can get his message out there unchallenged. That's the whole point. That's why he uses the fucking media. I mean, I don't feel like it would be, it's my place to defend the media on this. And I think like this is the problem we always have is the media, right?

We say the media, like, what does that mean? Well, yeah, I was gonna say, look, by the end you had a Jake Tapper interview, a Savannah Guthrie interview, a Chris Wallace interview, a Jonathan Swan interview. Again, those are the interviews where reporters actually challenged Donald Trump and they were disasters for him. And even in the press conference situation, traditional mainstream reporters would ask him hard questions, but he just had the home field advantage that he could pivot to the OAN plant, the fake reporters like John Roberts from Fox, that there was always a home base he could go to. But Twitter was where he got to set the terms of

the conversation, and that is not available to him anymore. And you can already feel the difference after just a few days. Yep. All right. Let's talk about the Republican Party, their relationship with Trump, but before that, their culpability for the attack on the Capitol. Most of them repeated the lie that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. 147 members of Congress voted to overturn the results of the election just hours after right wing extremists tried to overturn the results through violence. Don't want to let that go. Never letting that go. violence. Don't want to let that go. Never letting that go. One of the extremists, Ali Alexander, has claimed that he directly conspired to derail the certification of the election with three Republican members of Congress, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of

Alabama, and Paul Gosar of Arizona. And on Tuesday evening, Democratic Representative Mikey Sherrill of New Jersey made a startling revelation during a live stream with reporters. Let's play a clip. We can't have a democracy if members of Congress are actively helping the president overturn the election results. And so not only do I intend to see that the president is removed and never runs for office again and doesn't have access to classified material. I also intend to see that those members of Congress who embedded him, those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on January 5th, a reconnaissance

for the next day, those members of Congress that incited this violent crowd, those members of Congress that attempted to help our president undermine our democracy. I'm going to say that they're held accountable and if necessary, ensure that they don't serve in Congress. Now that is an sort of explosive charge. She followed up with a number of other members of Congress for calling for a full investigation into that possibility, which means it was not just an off the cuff statement. She made it very seriously. Former military official.

And so that's not something that she says lightly. What can be done about any of this? Republicans who lied about the election being stolen from Donald Trump, all the way to Republicans who were potentially collaborating and helping the people who attacked the Capitol. I mean, these people are going to, these people are set, they're set to be around for years after Trump is gone, at least two years, some of these congressmen. And most of them, because of gerrymandering and polarization, et cetera, are in incredibly safe seats. They are more likely to lose to someone crazier than them than to someone more sane, either in a primary or in a general election. And that is a deeply sad and scary statement about our politics. There needs to be a full investigation into who played what role in this. And if they actually did do what is suggested here and were involved in helping people gain access to the Capitol, helping people understand where people were in the Capitol, like Lauren Boebert, is that her name? Lauren Boebert?

Yeah, Bobert. Who cares? You know what? She's not worthy of a correct pronunciation. The gun-wielding conspiracy theorist, new congresswoman from Colorado, was tweeting out Nancy Pelosi's location during the event, according to reports. Well, she was definitely tweeting it out. And according to reports, she was doing so in contravention of security officials

telling everyone not to use social media. All of those people need to be investigated. And if there is evidence that suggests they played a role in this as part of the conspiracy to overturn an election and take a capital and potentially do harm to members of Congress and the Vice President of the United States, they should be expelled from Congress and brought up on charges. That absolutely has to be done. And that is not a partisan issue. That is a legal issue. More broadly, and this is always the danger whenever Trump is involved in something is, he is such a giant, shiny object that he distracts from the culpability of everyone else.

The Republican Party as a policy position decided to fuel a series of lies to overturn an election. And we have to hold – we can never let that go. We have to hold them accountable for it. We have to ensure that – and we'll talk about this a little bit – but the corporations that have said they're going to stop giving to the purpose to do that, that they don't – as soon as the spotlight goes off, they don't go back to it. It has to be that telling lies about an election for the purpose of undoing the mold of voters is outside acceptable politics and that you will pay a price for doing that. It cannot be just yet another tool in the toolbox to gaining political power. Donald Trump has shifted the Overton window in so many dangerous ways,

but this is the kind of thing, if it becomes acceptable practice, that's it for democracy. That's where it falls apart. I mean, look, you know, Greg Sargent in The Washington Post today has a memo from Trump's own intelligence agencies saying that it is the lie about the election, that somehow it was stolen from Donald Trump, that there was fraud that gave the election to Joe Biden that is inciting domestic extremists, violent domestic extremists in this country. And until Republican politicians step up and refudiate that lie explicitly, get up and say, Joe Biden won this election fair and square. Every Republican

politician needs to say that. And if you don't say that, you should not be taken seriously and you should be driven from office immediately. And you should be, you know, I mean, that's the lie. A lot of these Republicans, and we're going to talk about why they did or didn't vote for impeachment. You know, it's like, did Trump actually incite the vote? No. The root of all of this, the root of all of this is the lie that a free and fair election was neither free nor fair. And it is a lie based on a whole bunch of different conspiracy theories that have been fed to a large part of our population over the last several months. our population over the last several months. And if you hear every single day that you went out to vote and someone stole the election from you, that your vote was, your ballot was thrown out, or that there were machines that did this or that, if you hear that, you're going to be angry. And some people are going to be angry enough that they're going to do what they did last week.

That is the lie at the core of everything else. And we cannot move past any of this until Republicans repudiate that lie. That's it. What happened in the Capitol is incredibly shocking, but it is also so utterly fucking predictable. When you run not just a campaign, you spend a decade saying that Democrats are radical, anti-American socialists who are going to destroy your way of life. At the same time that we are telling you to buy as many guns as humanly possible to protect yourself from a government staffed by a deep state who are in league with socialists or a ring of pedophiles or global elitists. If you have that end of times message, and then you tell people that the election was illegitimate and stolen, you're going to end up in this situation. Of course. People have been warning about this and warning about it and warning about it. You're like,

oh, crazy, panicky liberals back off. No, this is what happened. This is the exact end result of decisions not just Donald Trump made. Rupert Murdoch made, Fox News made, Mitch McConnell made, Paul Ryan made. This is the end result of more than a decade of right-wing Republican messaging. Yeah, and it's lie built on lie built on lie. And at first they seem like small lies, and then they seem like bigger lies. And election was stolen we don't actually live in a democracy is the biggest that was the biggest lie of all that was the one that finally did it when you tell people that they have that an election was stolen from them it's not that's not a small fucking typical political lie that's a very big lie that has huge consequences and we saw saw those consequences last week. So let's talk about the politics of this inside the Republican Party. There were 10

House Republicans who supported impeachment. Again, most affections from the same party in any impeachment ever, but also less than 5% of the entire caucus at the same time. Were you surprised by the number? And were you surprised by any of the 10 Republicans? Obviously, much has changed since last impeachment in 2019, when zero Republicans voted in favor of impeachment. Now we have 10. So what changed and were you surprised? I mean, it's very hard to even talk about this because when you say it's the most Republicans ever, or most people from the other parties supporting impeachment, talk about a small sample size.

And in part, that sample size is completely skewed because Richard Nixon would have had to face an overwhelming impeachment vote were he to have actually faced that. He just left before that happened. overwhelming impeachment vote were he to have actually faced that. He just left before that happened. And then you say 10 is a lot, but it's such a small percentage of Republicans doing the right thing in response not to the uncovering of some corruption in the face of an assault on their place of work where their lives were at risk, their staffs were at risk. And still, this small number voting for it is alarming on so many levels about where we are as a country and where the Republicans are. I mean, is there one that's surprising? It's Liz Cheney, for sure. Like this is someone who was in a plus 40 Trump district, someone who has designs on

an even more prominent role within the Republican party, either in the Senate or running for something, maybe running for president one day, but she is a Cheney. She is a member of the Republican royalty. And for her to break, not just with Trump, but with her other members of leadership is a big deal. And it gave cover to a lot of these other Republicans who were also in it. Districts that most of them were in districts that Trump won somewhere in, you know, more narrow wins by Trump,

but it gave some other people cover. And I think if Liz Cheney, the number was 10, which is a small number, but if Liz Cheney had not said she was going to support this, that number might've been closer to three or four. I, I was pleasantly surprised by 10 because of the way this Republican Party is and because of the political incentives they have and they operate within. Because like, you know, most of these people, every one of them, every one of the 10 has to worry about a primary challenger from the right at best.

At worst, as you said, they have to worry about harm coming to them and their families. Right. They got the guy from Michigan just is wearing body armor now. Peter Mehar. Right. And in addition to that, Jason Crow, Democrat from Colorado, said that he talked to a number of Republicans who wanted to vote for impeachment, but said they couldn't because they were afraid for their families. So this is it is it is, of course, like the least they can do. The right thing to do is to vote for impeachment. I get that. But I wouldn't underestimate the risk to these members of voting for impeachment. And the fact that that 10 did that, I was actually I was a bit surprised that we that we got all the way up to 10, even though

they were threatened, even though their lives were threatened to happen at the Capitol. I just thought I don't you know, I don't have much faith in this version of the Republican Party, not just because they're cowards, but also because, like you said, I think they're probably worried about their safety. Which, if you are worried about your own supporters killing— Maybe you're in the wrong party. Maybe it's time to look down at the tiger you chose to ride and make another choice. I totally, totally agree with that. Totally agree. Now, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy didn't whip this vote, meaning that he didn't lean on Republicans to vote against impeachment. He told everyone to vote their conscience. He also was critical of Trump and tried to weasel out of this with a censure resolution.

Why do you think even for McCarthy, that is sort of a big deal because he has been one of Trump's most loyal foot soldiers, henchmen. That is sort of a big deal because he has been one of Trump's most loyal foot soldiers, henchmen. You wrote in the message box today he was once upon a time curating starbursts for Donald Trump. From curating starbursts to censure resolutions on the floor. The Kevin McCarthy story. So what happened? What happened with Kevin McCarthy? I think the primary driver with Kevin McCarthy here is money. Since he was on the Capitol,

a number of major US corporations have said they're no longer going to make donations to the members of Congress who voted to overturn the election. Now, that is almost all of Kevin McCarthy's caucus, right? And so he, and we can talk about McConnell a little bit separately, but both of them are trying to, I think, show the other part of the party, not the rabid right-wing base part of the party, but the corporate wing that funds the rabid right-wing base, that they quote-unquote get it and they're going to offer them an on-ramp to reopen donations. I can only imagine Kevin McCarthy thinking we have this great chance to take the House. Democrats are really good at grassroots fundraising. We're really good at raising large donations from rich people and corporations for our super PACs. I imagine the calls from the super PACs, the National Republican Congressional Committee,

to their donor base have gone not well since then. And so this is the a way to give these companies a or these donors a path back to supporting Republicans, as my guess. I think it's money. I think that's right. I also think it's the politics of the House races in 2022. Like, you know, Republicans have a a too good of a chance to take back the House in 2022. Like, you know, Republicans have a too good of a chance to take back the House in 2022, partly because of redistricting. They'll control a lot of redistricting. They'll redraw the map so that it is unfavorable to Democrats. And yet, you know, McCarthy has a bunch of Republicans in districts that are pretty evenly divided, that we had won in 2018 and then they took back in 2020. So like, say you're David Valadao, right, in California, who took back a

seat in 2020 that Republicans lost in 2018. Or say that you're Mike Garcia, right, who beat Christy Smith in the California 25th, another very closely divided district that Democrats can easily Christy Smith and the California 25th, another very closely divided district that Democrats can easily win or should be able to win. So like either you have two of those incumbents who, you know, Valdeo voted for impeachment. Mike Garcia voted to overturn the election. They took different votes. But either you get those you get those members primaried from the right, which makes the general election Republican candidate weaker because they're farther to the right in a pretty even district, or you get a Republican member who is you get an incumbent who doesn't get a primary challenge, but is now unpalatable to a broader electorate because they either voted against Donald Trump's impeachment or voted to overturn the election.

Like, I think he has some political issues ahead of 2022 that does not make this very easy for him to just go on one side or the other, but tries to is trying. He's basically trying to straddle this by saying, like, I criticize Trump, but I didn't totally abandon Trump, which I don't know if that is a move that gets you anything, by the way. But that it seems like that's what he's trying to do. Yeah, I think your political analysis is exactly right about these districts. And Kevin McCarthy is also, it should be noted, a fucking idiot. He's one of the dumber members of Congress who sort of stumbled upwards into leadership by just being simply too dumb to offend most people, or most Republicans at least. I find him particularly offensive. But how this vote or non-vote or censure press release, because that's

what it is. He knew Democrats were going to impeach him, so he could float the censure idea and never actually have to act on it. And it gives his, the number of Republicans who are uncomfortable with Trump generally, and then particularly what happened, is larger than 10. And this gives some of them a place to say, I'm not for impeachment for, it's divisive, it's unnecessary, like whatever reasons, but I would have censured him a place to go. That's the, you know, that's for some of them, whether anyone's remember that care about that in November of 2022. I mean, I'd just be happy to make it to November of 2022, just generally. So, um, you know, I will also say like, if Trump is still a factor, then like Donald Trump and his minions are going to go through the list and every single Republican doesn't matter if you didn't vote for impeachment, but you did say something critical. Any Republican that said

anything critical about Donald Trump during this whole episode will be on his shit list and will be eligible for a primary. So it's like, you're not running away from that. You're not trying to pull some move now where you're yes to censure, no to impeachment, you're going to slip through the cracks here like you're fucked. Right. Or like so that's why I think either you go all in and say, I'm breaking from Donald Trump and I'm going to impeach him. And I think this is wrong. And, you know, damn the political consequences. But we'll see. Or, you know, you decide to be one of those people who's just like, no, he's wonderful. I'm supporting Donald Trump till the very end. I think being in the middle doesn't really get you much politically. Yeah, I mean, that is a lesson in politics outside of this. Pick a side.

Right. Pick a side. The people who vote present rarely get reelected, right? Exactly. So those are the Republican politics in the House. Let's turn to the politics in the Senate, which is where this is going next. Mitch McConnell is majority leader until the 20th, which means that he controls the calendar until then. And he said he's not holding a trial until Biden is inaugurated. But on Tuesday, the New York Times reported that McConnell, quote, told associates that he believes President Trump committed impeachable offenses and that he is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him, believing that it will make it easier to purge him from the party.

McConnell released a statement yesterday after the story that said, quote, While the press has been full of speculation, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote, and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate. So not knocking it down, not knocking the story down. First of all, what are your thoughts on the timing of the trial and what it means for both Trump's chances of conviction and the first few weeks of Biden's presidency? Every day past the assault on the Capitol reduces the chances of conviction. And every day past Trump getting on an airplane and heading to Florida reduces the chances of conviction. It's just – it becomes easier and easier. The further it fades into memory, the easier it becomes for Republicans to do the wrong thing. The calculus simply changes. And I can see – I

don't agree with him. You can see this world where it's like, he's gone now. Why would I – the danger – if you're in a situation where this man is an existential threat and my vote could make America safer, even if it's for two days, three days, four days, then you can see someone maybe potentially taking a politically risky vote. But if it's just – if the only thing it does is keep him from running for an office that he may or may not run for, then I think the chances of conviction go down. down. I think they go down, but I think that's why I have been saying that that should be the primary message from people who want him impeached is that we should prevent this dangerous man from ever running for president again. Because I do think it's hard to have a message after he's out of office that says we want to convict him just to just to punish him. Right. Just to have him mark on history. Right? Like that's it

is the right thing to do. I want him to have that bad mark in history as well. I want I believe in accountability. But I think you want to frame it as this vote to convict will have an important consequence, which is preventing this danger from happening again in the form of Donald Trump running for president. And so I would start making that the main message in the next week or so, because you're right. Like everyone has short memories. No one fucking remembers anything ever in this country anymore. And so every single day we go, you can totally see it. Joe Biden's going to give an inaugural address. He's going to talk about the country coming together where Donald Trump's going to be gone. And then we're going

to have a trial in the Senate and everyone's going to say it's super important to convict him. Yeah, it's going to be tougher. And so the only the only argument you have is, which I think is an important argument, that we can't let this guy run again. That is the best substantive argument. And it's the best political argument for the country. And it's the best political argument for the country. The problem is, as much as Trump's approval rating has dropped over the past 10 days, his approval rating among Republicans is still north of 80%. represent Republican states to that voted overwhelmingly for Trump to stop the most popular Republican from running again like that, like from a political point of view. Well, this I mean, you know, and we've been we've been doing this over the last couple of days. Like so you look at look at the list of Republican senators. You need 17 to convict. You got Collins,

to convict you got uh collins murkowski romney sass to me i listed those five because they've all said he should resign he should be removed whatever they haven't said definitely yes on a conviction none of them but you would imagine those are the first five so that's five getting from that five to 17 is pretty fucking hard when you start looking at that list. And that and it requires basically, you know, 12 Liz Cheney's people who are in very Republican red states who say, fuck it, I'm going to do this. So which brings us back to Mitch McConnell. How important is Mitch McConnell's vote to the final outcome here? Well, I think if Mitch McConnell votes for it, you will almost certainly get to 17. You get that extra 12.

That is a decision. That is a party-wide decision to throw Trump overboard because they think that is what is best for the party in the long term. That's what that would be. Well, so what I mean, we just talked about how like you could imagine. I had been imagining Mitch's calculations to play out like we just said, look, we just got to get to the inauguration here. Once Biden is inaugurated, people will start forgetting about this. There won't be as much urgency. There'll be other business to do in the Senate. Biden's going to have his confirmations that we can yell about. We can try to obstruct his economic agenda. Do we really need

to be, do people really care at that point if we're convicting Donald Trump after he's gone? I'm just going to wait this out. Why did Mitch McConnell decide to let it be known in the New York Times that he was happy about impeachment, which was not just some leak, was clearly he was happy that it was in the New York Times. He did not refute it. He sort of gave that statement yesterday where he said, oh, I haven't made a final decision yet. But we know McConnell and McConnell world, if they didn't like that story and they thought it was wrong, they would have knocked down immediately. So clearly he was happy that was there. Why? I think it's connected to the point I made about the Republican donor class is a huge part of it. Second, it's a trial balloon. I think he wants to see what the

reaction is. Does he get beat up from the right? Does the parlor crew come after him? Do his member – what do his members say to him? It's a traditional trial balloon because it's done hands-off enough that he can – he has plausible deniability to this point and then can decide in the end to do something different. If you were to do his political calculation, and McConnell only makes political decisions. He has not been shocked into understanding the wrongness of his ways. He has not come to some sort of conclusion about the morality of this. He's not doing it because it's the right thing. He's doing it for the political reason. Mitch McConnell wants to take the Senate back in 2022. He has a very rare opportunity to do that because of the historical advantage that the party out of power has in the first midterm. The challenge he has is he is going to have to hold a bunch of seats in Pennsylvania, which Joe Biden won, narrowly, but won. Wisconsin,

which Joe Biden won, even more narrowly, but won. He's going to have to defeat a Democrat in Georgia. one, even more narrowly, but one. He's going to have to defeat a Democrat in Georgia. He has to hold a seat in Arizona, North Carolina, another narrow seat. And we know from 2018 that the Republicans can win these states with Trump levels of turnout. What does not work is a fired up group of Democrats, plus a bunch of former Republicans, independent suburban voters who have soured on the Republican Party and diminished turnout among rural whites. And so if he thinks he's not going to get, because Trump is, that turnout did not happen even in 2018 in these purple states with Trump off the ballot. But Trump in some sort of diminished capacity in legal proceedings and debt and hiding, he has to solve the suburban problem to take these seats or hold these seats. not underestimate the role that the Georgia runoffs played in McConnell and McCarthy and other Republican politicians' calculations this week. Because in those runoffs, Republicans saw

their future. No Trump on the ballot, and yet Trump is still around trying to make trouble for them. The Democratic coalition is energized and turns out, particularly because now the Democratic coalition has college educated, uh, college educated people who turn out more than any other group. In addition to in Georgia, black voters who turned out more than they ever had in history. And if you combined, uh, college educated voters with black voters, you have a formidable coalition that can win in many of these states, in many of these swing states. And you had Republicans divided and turnout depressed because they were divided and because there was this fight between Trump and Republicans. And that's why they lost two runoffs that Republicans should have run. And I think

Mitch looks at Georgia and Kevin McCarthy looks at districts that look like Georgia and thinks to himself, I have to somehow fucking win these in 2022. And you're right. Like the the states that Republicans are defending also that you named are also may all be open seats. Toomey's retiring in Pennsylvania. Ron Johnson may retire in Wisconsin. Burr's going to retire in North Carolina and then Grassley may retire in Iowa. Carolina and then Grassley may retire in Iowa. You may have all open seats the Democrats could pick up and then the Democrats have to defend Arizona, Georgia and maybe Nevada are the three that Democrats have to defend. So it's actually not an easy map for Mitch McConnell. No, no, it's very hard. Even though, as you said, he has the big advantage he has is that it's,

you know, the party in power. It's an it's an out your election. And so the party not in power tends to do well in midterm elections. That's the advantage he has. But it's, you know, the party in power, it's an out-year election. And so the party not in power tends to do well in midterm elections. That's the advantage he has. But other than that, the map itself is not very favorable to McConnell. So I think that I really think that Georgia is one of the big calculations that he's making right now, which is how do we win back some of these suburban voters? That's right. Georgia is where Democrats get the benefit of the type of turnout that we have seen since Trump was elected and Republicans see the downsides of not having Trump on the ballot. And if that dynamic is in place in 2022, Republicans certainly are taking the Senate and their path to the House, which is easier than the path to the Senate for map reasons and gerrymandering reasons. It gets very narrow very quickly. So the other big Republican leader who's had it with Trump is Mike Pence. May have had something to do with how Trump tried to bully him into illegally

overturning the election results by saying in a meeting, according to the New York Times, quote, you can either go down in history as a patriot or you can go down in history as a pussy. The Washington Post goes on to quote former Romney strategist Stuart Stevens, a saying of Pence, quote, he has no future in the Republican Party. When the base of the party is not booing you, but chanting, hang you. That's a bad sign. That is a bad sign. I do agree with that sentiment from Stuart. Dan, I can't say that I'm too broken up about Mike Pence's political challenges. Can you?

No, no. I mean, as is pointed out in that argument, the Stuart Stevens quote is, he did the bare fucking minimum. He decided not to illegally, not to engage in an impotent, likely to fail attempt to overturn an election. And his response to the president going to a rally, attacking him, firing up his supporters,

who then stormed the building in which Mike Pence is working, with chance of hang Mike Pence, Mike Pence's bold, courageous response is to do nothing. Nothing, right? Not to speak out publicly, not to invoke the 25th Amendment, not to stop coming to work and licking Trump's boots. It is to do nothing. To be like quietly pissed is basically and to just have quotes from his staff and him to, you know, background reporters that he's really angry and doesn't like Donald Trump anymore.

I mean, so putting Trump aside, which is hard to do, the question is whether a repudiation of Trump, which, you know, obviously the Republican Party is still mixed on, is also a repudiation of Trumpism. Now, of course, it's not always easy to define exactly what Trumpism is, but a bunch of asshole Republicans losing their shit over the fact that they have to wear masks but can't bring guns on the floor of Congress is a pretty good indication of what we're all dealing with here. So what do you think? Does any of this, does any of the actions any Republicans have taken or anything they've said over the last week indicate any kind of repudiation of Trumpism itself? No. There is no suggestion for that.

And this is – if – like in that New York Times story, the quote about McConnell is about purging Trump from the party. If you really want to do that, that is a big project. That involves – you're going to have – That involves de-radicalizing your base. It involves stopping to enable all of these right-wing media personalities. It is a conversation with Rupert Murdoch to stop the shit. It is about getting Hannity and Tucker Carlson off the air or doing some other sort of performative bullshit than what they are doing. It is stopping going to parlor. It's stopping – like ultimately what – the scary thing here is what it may be is Republicans are simply looking for a more capable white supremacist demagogue to run their party. Because what – Trumpism can only exist in a world where our democracy is so rigged that

a minority of the population has a disproportionate share of the political party. There is a path that says, we could maybe win in 2022, possibly, if we're lucky, win in 2024. But over the long run, because of changes in this country demographically, we are fucked. And so what we have to do is we have to change what we stand for. We have to change who we are. We have to change which voices we elevate. We need an agenda that appeals to the majority of Americans. We need to hold ourselves accountable to that by stopping our efforts to stop other people from voting. It requires actually embracing the future of this country. There is nothing that suggests that any Republican of any consequence is open to that level of change in what the party is. No, I mean, that was basically the autopsy after 2012 that they wrote, right? Which is like, there was a future for the Republican Party where you could still be, you know, cutting taxes and getting rid of regulations and still screwing all the poor people you love to screw. But you're going to embrace immigration reform.

You were going to embrace the changing, diversifying America. And you're actually going to try to go after Latino voters, black voters, not just with some like crappy rhetoric, but to actually have policies that would attract those voters to your party. And those Republicans are mostly never Trump Republicans or who've become Democrats now. They have been forced from the party. And I do think that like even some of the Republicans, you know, who've said over the last week, you know, I saw Nancy Mace who beat Joe it beat joe cunningham right and she talked about how

this is crazy and you know uh the q anon members of the caucus are crazy and she was talking to a newspaper about how voters have been brainwashed by republic and she voted against impeachment at the end of the day because she knows where the future of the party is. Right. And so she's like, we have to have this. I'm watching her say in this story, like we have to have this long conversation about how to not brainwash these voters, blah, blah, blah. But like you didn't vote for impeachment. Why? Because you're scared because you think that's where the party is. And so I don't think you're right. I don't think it's a repudiation of Trumpism, at least not for 90% of that party. And that's the real party. Do you still think it creates a divide or a split within the Republican Party that is problematic to their political fortunes? potentially, but what I think you and I were having this conversation via text about McConnell and McConnell's greatest fear is always a divided Republican Party. I think McConnell is betting

that opposition to a democratic agenda will unify various parts of the party and have people put aside their differences, at least until the 2024 Republican primary, as it did for the Democrats. And, you know, as it does as it has done throughout history. That's how politics works. The Republican Party is a coalition that lives in a state of consistent tension between a nationalist base revved up on racially divisive rhetoric and a donor class that funds that base in exchange for tax cuts, less regulation, et cetera. And this event judges for the conservative policies that benefit them economically. And what has happened since the election sort of started to fray that Faustian bargain. And I think McConnell is trying to fix that in the short term on the bet that his party will reunite in

opposition to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, all the AOC, all the Democrats. He's just trying to tread water until then, until they can focus on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. So let's talk about where the voters are, because that's one thing that we haven't really focused on yet. On one hand, Trump's approval rating is nearing record lows. It's between 30 and 40 percent, depending on the poll. And a clear majority of voters blame him for the attacks. And a slightly smaller majority want him removed from office. On the other hand, his approval among Republican voters has taken a hit, but not that much of a hit.

He's still getting between 70 and 80 percent approval. And Frank Luntz conducted a poll of just Trump voters over the weekend with some fairly disturbing results. Ninety one percent said they'd vote for Trump again if the 2020 election was a do over. Nearly 80 percent think the election was stolen. Forty nine percent, a combined 49 percent believe that either Antifa, Democrats or the media were responsible for the attack on the Capitol, while only 11% blame Trump. And 64%, this is the most disturbing one, 64% agree with the statement, quote, the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it. disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it. So I don't know. You're Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, any Republican who wants to run in 2024 or even in 2022 for Congress,

and you look at those numbers, what's your response to that? Well, you can either lead or you can follow. And the recent issue of the Republican Party is the base is the tail that wags the dog. There is an alternative. You can take a different approach. You can try to lead them to a more, not just politically palatable position, but patriotic position. You can look at this and see the danger of where we are and try to change it, or you can try to weaponize it. At every juncture, the Republican Party has tried to weaponize that. Is there any hope they will do anything different? I'd like to think so. There's no evidence of that to be the case, but that is the challenge. And that it's not just,

like Mitch McConnell is a particularly unpopular person, even with his own party. He is an absolutely horrendous speaker. He basically, if you watch him on television, he's basically just like the embodiment of the congressional almanac with marbles in his mouth. Like he is not someone who is going to lead the party to the promised land from a public perspective. This is a larger project that involves the people who fund the party and the Murdochs are at the absolute epicenter of everything that happened here. Well, I was just going to say, like, we talk about, like, the, you know,

Republican politicians are afraid of the base, right? Or they do whatever the base wants. What the base wants is determined more than anything else, not by what Republican politicians are saying, with the exception of Donald Trump,

but by right-wing media extremists. And in fact, Donald Trump is probably the one, the most prominent figure that fuses a right-wing media figureists. And in fact, Donald Trump is probably the one, the most prominent figure that fuses a right-wing media figure with a Republican politician because he comes from the media world. But like,

who is revving up this base? Who is radicalizing this base? It's not Mitch McConnell. It's not Kevin McCarthy. That's not who these people are listening to. It's fucking Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson

and Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh and all the fucking crazy lunatics on YouTube ingram and rush limbaugh and all the fucking crazy lunatics on youtube and facebook and all the rest of them like that's who is revving up this base and until you solve that problem you solve nothing that's exactly right that's exactly right what is what is the what is the scenario in which donald trump comes back for 2024 right so so in that in that lunz poll they also did he also did a trial heat for 2024 trump would get 65 percent in that trial heat

pence 34 cruise 14 don jr 7 nicki haley 7 mitt romney 5 rubio and ivanka at four percent each that's your that's your fucking nightmare already Just giving it to you here in January of 2021. That's the first trial here. So like it does seem like right now, even with all that's happened, Trump is still far and away the front runner for 2024, which again is the good argument for fucking convicting the guy. It is always true that the person who just lost the presidential election is the front runner the next time around in the immediate aftermath. Correct. It was John Kerry. It was Al Gore.

It was Mitt Romney. It was Hillary Clinton. That's what polls do. He has the highest name recognition. Obviously, people are hepped up on a bunch of lies about it, which boosts those numbers. We're not making predictions. That's not a thing that has changed now that Trump is on his way out. But there are lots of scenarios that show Trump just sort of fading into the background. He lost his ability to communicate. He has massive business and legal trouble that

prevent him from ever running or thinking of running for president again. He doesn't like work. Running for president would be a lot of work, particularly in this situation. But if you were to say, what's the alternative where Trump returns to the good graces of Republicans? It is a bunch of 2022 primaries between MAGA candidates and other Republicans, a world in which Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, faces a primary from Doug Collins, a Trump supporter. Trump storms the country forum, beats a bunch of people, raises a ton of money, and shows that he still has hold of the Republican base. And what happens then is Republicans come back to him. They are now afraid to oppose him. And he

has a chance. He's either a major voice in the party helping shape the agenda, the message through his post on Parler or whatever you call it, what you call a parlay. I don't know what you call those. Or he runs for president again, right? It is, I think the Richard Nixon prior to Watergate, but after losing both the 1960 presidential race and then a subsequent run for governor, returned to power by getting deeply involved in the midterms, raising a bunch of money and having a bunch of his candidates win, which gave him a clean bill. Well, that's the key. The key is that they have to not just win the primary, but they have to win the general. If Trump goes out and

backs a bunch of primaries that take down incumbent Republicans and then the candidates he backed are so far to the right that they then lose the general election, then he's fucked. But if Doug Collins wins in Georgia, if, you know, he, whoever he backs against Liz Cheney beats Liz Cheney in Wyoming, if this starts happening across the country, then you're right. Then there's a clear path back to him. I'm not sure losing in the general election, it would be as devastating as that because if he wants to run for president, because it is a Republican primary. And if he demonstrates his strength with Republican primary voters, and remember what Republicans care most about individually is a potential primary challenge. So if the way to avoid a primary challenge is to be supportive of Donald Trump, welcoming Donald Trump, pretending that he didn't almost

get all of them killed, then that is likely. Now, and he is not someone who is traditionally, at least in his first presidential race, raised a bunch of money from traditional big donors. If you were someone who needed money from big donors, you didn't have a giant list. Yes, it would be very problematic if you seem unelectable, but he could raise money with all of the various lists that he has stolen, scammed from people, et cetera. So I don't think the path back to power for Trump is likely necessarily, but that's just what I think it would look like.

I think the more likely scenario is he is bogged down in a bunch of legal shit and most people don't want to go anywhere near him. He's just become sort of a sad public figure. And you don't hear from him much because he's not on Twitter and you're not watching Fox & Friends every morning. And he may not even be on Fox & Friends. He may just be on Newsmax and OAN,

which most people won't see. So one last very important figure in all of this, Joe Biden, the next president of the United States, who released a statement last night where he urged the Senate not to let impeachment prevent them from also confirming his nominees and passing his economic agenda. And of course, Biden would need at least some Republican cooperation to get non-budgetary legislation passed.

Does what happened in these last few weeks change anything about Biden's ability to work with Republicans? Already, we've seen, you know, in that New York Times story about McConnell, it said McConnell talked to Biden and said he likes the idea of merrick garland as attorney general in support of that marco rubio came out fucking calling on joe biden to support two thousand dollar checks even though joe biden supported two thousand dollar checks long before marco rubio ever did but it shows you what marco rubio is at least thinking here that somehow cooperation and and proposing $2,000 checks with Biden is a good thing for him. So does this change anything about Biden's relationship with Republicans?

On the margins, maybe. Even more interesting, perhaps, than McConnell's comments about purging Trump is the parts about Garland. If McConnell's calculation is he has to improve the party's brand to have success in 2022, that could necessitate some cooperation. I think we should have very low expectations for this. We should just be very – we shouldn't be naive, right? Ultimately, Republicans are Republicans. The political incentives that push them towards obstruction are going to continue. I had a thought, if Republicans had kept the Senate, it would be harder for McConnell to do his step back and let the world burn strategy from 2009 because he would have some agency in it as control of the Senate. Now, that is not necessarily the case. I think the key for Biden is this country is divided in deeply and dangerous ways. He ran on a mantle of trying to heal those divisions. It is just absolutely critical that he makes two points in his inaugural and sort of his general approach here.

One, attempting to heal the divisions in the country is not limited to healing the divisions within Washington. Right. Like that. And I think he can achieve that simply not by being a divisive asshole on a daily basis, right? Just by waking up and being Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, he is going to help heal some divisions in this country because he will not be exacerbating them like Trump did. The second part is he has to make it clear that his pledge is to attempt bipartisanship, but he cannot control whether Republicans agree to that. So he has to get caught trying. And if Republicans agree to things, great. But if they refuse,

that is not a failure on Biden's part. That is a refusal of Republicans to reach out to an outstretched hand. And make it clear that the priorities that he is trying to pass legislatively, that the action he's trying to take on behalf of the country is action that is supported by Americans of both parties. And if Republicans want to work with him, that's great. His door is always open. And if Republicans want to work with him, that's great. His door is always open. If they don't, he's not going to let their obstruction stop him from working his ass off to deliver for the American people. Because that's most important.

And deliver for every American of every party. There is a tone and a way to talk about this that shows that you don't want to further divide the country, but that also you're not going to let the division stop you from acting. And I think that is the sweet spot where he wants to be. I think that's where he already is. Yeah, I was going to say, we're basically pulling a Rubio right now, which is suggesting Biden do something he's already fucking doing. But I think there's a lot of misunderstanding

because I think sometimes Biden left his own devices will get into fantasies about working with Mitch McConnell and sitting down with him. People think, oh, he's so naive. He thinks he's going to work with Mitch McConnell. And I think we both think that the likelihood of Republicans cooperating with Biden is low. But part of this is how you present yourself and your agenda to the country, to most voters who aren't paying attention to politics as much as all the rest of us are. And making sure that everyone knows you're trying to act on behalf of the whole country and not just your party is an important message to deliver, even if you use your majority in the Senate and the House to just fucking steamroll Republicans

if they stand in the way, which he also needs to do. And so it's like a nuanced thing. But I think I guess what we're saying is like Biden is already there. But I think a lot of people think he is in a more naive place than I think he really is. What is interesting about his comments is his post-election comments have been much more realistic about Republicans in line with sort of the message you laid out than some of his before the election comments about. Yes. you laid out than some of his before the election comments about. And I mean, obviously having the other party, including Mitch McConnell, deny the legitimacy of your election result and refuse to even refer to you as president-elect for more than a month probably could. If you had any notions, you could be disabused of them with that. I also believe our view that we're talking

about here about how to talk about bipartisanship is based on lessons we learned in 2009 and 2010 and biden was there for all of those lessons because because here's where the rubber meets the road on this obama had that rhetoric down where he talked about sort of bringing the country together more so than fixing you know the divisions in washington though he did talk about the divisions in washington quite a bit and and bipartisanship we were wrong we like but his actions also you know a lot of the negotiations we had were slowed down because we were waiting for some bipartisan support that never came max bacchus how How long did the Democrat Max Center from Montana, Max Bacchus, wait on the Affordable Care Act legislation for some Republican on the Senate Finance Committee to join and support the legislation when they were never going to support it? How long did we delay the Affordable Care Act because we were waiting for fucking Max Bacchus to wait for a Republican?

Like Joe Biden shouldn't do that again. Shouldn't shouldn't be waiting for Republicans to come around. Right. He's going to propose a package. This is going to happen, you know, in the coming weeks. He's going to propose a covid relief package. He wants to hopefully get bipartisan support. Fine. He can say, you know, I want this to be bipartisan. Great. If he doesn't get it or doesn't seem like he's going to get it soon. Don't wait around. Fucking pass the bill with Democratic votes. I have a high degree of confidence that that is the approach Biden's going to take based on what he said, based on the people who are working for him who are in the rooms with us. And the lesson, Obama said most of the right things. And Max Baucus made

us wait longer than we would have waited on our own, for sure. But you sort of have to swerve out of your lane to make it clear that bipartisanship is our own, for sure. But you sort of have to swerve out of your lane to make it clear that bipartisanship is a two-way street. And you can only walk halfway, and then it is up to Republicans to come the rest of the way. And if they don't, that is on them, and then it is coming upon us to hold them accountable for that and not let the media just say, Obama's leadership failure to not give it to McConnell. Biden failed. Biden couldn't bring

the seditionist over to his side. Yeah, you got to push back. Like the key is for all of us, everyone listening on this podcast to push back on that notion because they want to hoist Biden on his own petard. Okay, when we come back,

we'll have Dan's conversation with Stanford researcher, Rene DiResta. Renee DiResta is the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory and an expert on the spread of misinformation online. Renee, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me. I'm very interested to talk to you about, for a while now, but particularly after what happened last week, you are someone who has studied the spread of misinformation, who is very familiar with what's happening in the dark corners of the internet. In this post-election period, in the run-up to the insurrection of the

Capitol, what did you see online that you think was related to what happened last Wednesday? Yeah. So first, just to start, it wasn't in the dark corners of the internet, right you think was related to what happened last Wednesday? Yeah. So first, just to start, it's not, it wasn't in the dark corners of the internet, right? It was actually right out there in the open. So we should talk about that, I think. For, you know, the question of when did it start, it's hard to pick a point. But I would say that throughout the campaign, there was a coordinated effort to delegitimize the results of the election preemptively. So the president and his supporters began laying the groundwork to claim that the election had been stolen before election day happened. So for months you had influencers, you had the president's preferred sort of media sycophants, you had the president's surrogates regularly out there saying, you know, pointing to any random incident

of a ballot being found somewhere saying, look, there's massive voter fraud happening, tying isolated disparate incidents into a narrative of overarching fraud. And then you had certain communities turn those narratives into conspiracies by alleging not only was there fraud, but it was deeply coordinated fraud coming from the deep state, coming from the Democrats. And so this progression of incident to narrative to conspiracy was what people who occupy particular, highly homogenous echo chambers, that's all that they were seeing, right? So when you are a member of one of these echo chambers, the media that you trust is saying something, the institutional authorities that you trust are saying something, the president that you trust is saying something, there's a repetition to it. And so over this period of months, people came to believe in this idea that the election had been stolen. Where things began to go really haywire, though, with regard to the events of January 6th specifically, was that for some of these groups, there was then a call to respond to that perceived theft, not only in the form of a march and a protest, but in the form of

retribution, right? If you sincerely, deeply believe that the election has been stolen from you, that your vote has been invalidated, there was a lot of attempts to kind of gin up responses from people who were inclined to respond in the manner that we saw. So there's the mainstream Trump supporters, but then there are also these highly conspiratorial and kind of avowed militia and white supremacist groups that were also at the vanguard of literally breaching the building at that point. A lot of questions about that. When you say it's coordinated, do you think that there was actual coordination or was people following the lead of the president? How do all the people get on this singing off the same song sheet so consistently? Well, that's a function of what is the media that you're consuming, right? So the

media and then we live in a time where for some reason, there's still this idea that there's media and broadcast media and that there's social media and broadcast media and then that there's an online and an offline reality. And that's not true. So media, social media is a channel within media. And it's not only these people are not only getting their cues from social media, they're seeing broadcasters that they appreciate. Tucker Carlson had on a guest talking about how there is a caller revolution happening a month before the election, right? So they see this on their nightly news, then they talk about it in their social communities. There's a lot of reinforcement that happens there. Newsmax and OAN are actively promoted by the president.

They're just repeating what Trump supporters want to hear at that point. And so the entire media and social environment that they're participating in is saying the same thing. So it's not a, you know, back smoky, you know, smoky room, backroom coordinated kind of thing. It's just that you're occupying a space, you're in the same community. And so there are different, we can call them factions, maybe different types of Trump supporters or different types of, for example. Those are actually two distinct communities, but there's some overlap between them because there are some people who are members of both. And so information is being carried by people between those different communities. So this is not a, you know, the head of the Proud Boys is in a Facebook group with grandma kind of dynamic. That's not

what I'm saying. It's that the information that they're receiving is very much the same kind of information. And in American history, people have believed conspiracy theories long before the internet. Right-wing militias were a part of the political extreme in this country before the internet, Oklahoma City bombing before the internet. How has the advent of social media, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera, the internet more broadly changed those dynamics? I'm presuming it has made it worse, but maybe correct me if I'm wrong. Well, there's some interesting dynamics. We're focusing on the negatives, but this is the challenge of a tool in somebody's hands is a weapon in another person's hands, right? So when

you talk about social media, the idea that we would bring people together, the idea that we would help people find people with common interests, independent of geography, for example, right? So you have been, you've created an infrastructure for connection, where somebody who has a particular opinion can find other people who have that particular opinion, whether that's about knitting or conspiracy theories, the infrastructure is the same. And so the, yes, there have been conspiracies, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda. I mean, all of these things are, you know, centuries old phenomenon. What is different today, I would say is the ability to make those connections, right? And then the second thing that I think is really fundamentally different is the affordances

that social media has given anybody. And so it used to be that if you wanted to get a message out, create a slogan, reach massive numbers of people, you had to do the very painstaking work of kind of growing a mass movement over a period of years sometimes. Whereas what happens on social media is there's a virality affordance, right? By clicking the share button, you yourself can personally participate in amplifying and spreading a message. There's a ability to coordinate. So groups of people in these online environments can facilitate that virality by saying, okay, everybody on this day, at this time, we're all going to tweet the same thing, right? To try to dominate share of voice in a particular conversation. So ordinary people have the impact to shape the conversation today in a way that was not true previously. And they have the

ability to find others who are like them to participate in this kind of factional activism process. Renee, we read a lot of reports about how the algorithms, particularly at YouTube and Facebook, push people towards more extreme content. There was a report that Facebook's own research showed that a high percentage of its users that joined extremist groups did so because Facebook recommended those groups to them. Help us understand how that process worked and what role it may have played in the events of January 6th at the Capitol. Yeah. So again, this goes back to the building and bridging of those communities. So I'll use a specific example from my own work. I got into this field of research actually by studying the anti-vaccine movement and how they were coordinating

with other groups and using online infrastructure to do it. And again, that's just, you're entitled to be an anti-vaccine activist. It's a freedom of expression question, you know. But what the platforms were doing that was interesting is as these groups were starting in the kind of capital G group sense of the word, let's use Facebook as a particular example. The recommendation engine, when Facebook began to prioritize groups and wanting more people on the platform to engage with groups. This was a coordinated decision. This was a business decision made by Facebook to try to encourage people to join groups. What it began to do was have this recommendation engine that suggested that people join specific groups. And that was a very personalized set of suggestions based on the

things that not only you had engaged with previously, but people who were like you had engaged with previously. So that's called collaborative filtering. And what it says is, if I have an interest, and someone who is statistically very similar to me, has my interest, I might be interested in other things that they are interested in. So using the example of the anti-vaxxers, what the recommendation engine was showing them was Pizzagate groups and then QAnon groups. And that's because if you have a particular conspiratorial alignment or you believe the government is covering up one fact, you actually might be receptive to this other community. And so what we started to see was QAnon in particular becoming a kind of omni-conspiracy because it was being

recommended to so many other different types of people that had so many different types of conspiratorial sub-beliefs, if you will. So this is how you start to see if you're interested in flat earth content, you might like QAnon. If you're interested in anti-vaccine content, you might like QAnon. If you're interested in anti-government content, you might like QAnon. If you're interested in anti-government content, you might like QAnon. And so this is the way in which just those correlations that the recommendation engine is keying off of, they're not wrong. And so these groups began to grow in response to these proactive suggestions. So Facebook began to recognize that this was a problem. And you started to see, well, Facebook recognized apparently internally per that document you're talking about in 64% of the people who were joining extreme groups were finding kinds of groups from the recommendation engine to try to reduce the extent of that problem happening. The problem is that by this point, you know, those connections have been formed. And just because the platform is now trying to reduce the supply of the content. It doesn't reduce the demand for the content from the people who are already members of those communities. And instead, they see that reduction

in supply as an act of censorship. So I'm glad you brought that up. You wrote a article in the Atlantic right after the election that I would recommend to everyone. I also found it fascinating, but quite disturbing. Because you talk, as you mentioned here, there's a two-sided problem to disinformation, conspiracy theories, et cetera, is supply and demand. I will ask you in a minute about policy responses to the supply problem, but what do we do about the demand problem? This is like, as you say, people are joining these groups because they're being recommended to them, but the recommendation is correct, right?

Like this is something they actually want to do. And so like what could possibly be done to deal with people's desire for these things? Or is the answer actually reducing supply, right? People have desire for certain things that we do not allow in society that are legally prohibited to reduce demand, at least on mass scale. There's some questions about, you know, over what time horizon, you know, certain platform interventions are effective. You know, this was, this is also not the first time we've had this

conversation. And in 2015, there were some questions about what do you do about ISIS's presence on social media, right? The Obama administration dealt with that. Just, you know, how do we think about what to take down, what to leave up, or where certain types of, you know, if you've already created the demand for the content through the repetition and the building of these communities, repetition and the building of these communities. And then all of a sudden, you remove that access or you dismantle the communities by kind of either kicking the users off or disbanding the group. That doesn't just solve the problem. What I think is important to keep in mind here, though, is that that's because the demand is not a function of social media. Social media is maybe the, you know, in this case, we can call it maybe like a pusher almost. But there are kind of deep-seated, very real concerns that people have. There's a loss of trust in media. There's a loss of trust in institutions. There's a, there are kind of

educational gaps related to science and media literacy at this point in the kind of the world that we live in today, there is just so much underlying distrust and anger and distrust between, you know, people and their fellow citizens at this point also. And these are not things that you fix through a social media moderation, you know, paradigm. These are things that require deep interventions. And I think it's also important to note that while the content is carried on social media, this is where media, media, if you will, broadcast media, mass media, you know, have a role to play. The articles that they write, the way that they frame things, the transparency with which they issue corrections is important. And then there's also institutional communications. Don't forget that some of the people who have been pushing this idea that the election was stolen, or, you know, kind of trying to think of a way to put it,

the Ted Cruz's and Josh Hawley's with, well, we really just need to ask this question, you know, this idea that the kind of disingenuous, well, I'm just asking questions model of, of giving credence to a conspiracy rather than telling the truth to these people and saying, no, there is no vast evidence of election fraud, and you may be concerned about it, but it has not happened. It did not happen. Instead, you have the, well, we're going to, you know, I serve my constituents, and so I'm going to air their grievances on the floor of the Senate. Problem is that that's a kind of a tacit acknowledgement or endorsement or, you know, framing of those concerns is somehow legitimate. And that's just

not what the evidence and the facts have borne out. So you do have so many different facets to the problem of how who people get their information from, how reliable it is, the extent to which they trust it, and then the willingness to believe that all of these evil things have happened is not a function of something someone saw once. It's a gradual buildup over time. As the social media companies make decisions about what content to not allow, what content to penalize, what content to de-emphasize within the algorithm, some people are leaving the platform. And we've been having this large conversation about since Twitter and Facebook banned Trump, everyone's going to Parler. And now, obviously, that's a

much smaller community. I think I saw a report there's 9 million people who have downloaded Parler compared to the billions who are on Facebook. What is the impact of people moving off of the larger at-scale platforms to the smaller, more potentially ideologically homogenous platforms like Parler? Yeah. So there's always been message boards and communities that are ideologically homogenous platforms like Parler? Yeah, so there's always been message boards and communities that are ideologically homogenous, right? Any given interest group, pick one, Google it, you'll find a message board for it. And so that's not an inherently disturbing or bad phenomenon. What's interesting about, first of all, this again is indicative of demand, right? People who believe that the mainstream platforms are censoring them, even if there's no evidence

to back that claim, as a lot of the early influx to Parler in 2019 happened when Twitter began to label the president's tweets. Not to take them down, not to prevent them from being amplified, even just to put just a pending a fact check label was interpreted by prominent conservative leaders again let's let's just point to Ted Cruz here as censorship follow me on parlor where I can speak freely so there was this this kind of equivocation is the saying that a a contextualization label all of a sudden was being interpreted as evidence of censorship. So the demand, you know, was perpetuated in some part by this grievance, this claim that even a label was an affront to free speech. And so that was where some of the early demand for Parler

kind of came out of that. Then it was increased by, in the days following the election, there came to be a phrase, stop the steal. And you may have heard people chanting it on January 6th. the idea that the election had been stolen. And there were some groups that popped up on Facebook. And one of them was started by Women for Trump, which is not an extremist organization, but Women for Trump. And it amassed several hundred thousand people in a span of about 36 hours. I think some somewhere upwards of 300 and some odd thousand people joined this Facebook group because they were convinced that the election had been stolen. They were looking to form a community around this. But some percentage of the people who were in that group were using inflammatory and violent rhetoric already, even just the morning after the election.

And so Facebook made the decision to take down the group. So that in turn became a, again, this, you know, folks have been hearing for a very, very long time that social media platforms are biased against them. And so this was seen as yet one more piece in that evidentiary chain, that the problem was not the violent speech of that sub-community, but that rather it was Facebook trying to silence the voices alleging that the election had been stolen. And so those people moved to Parler, where they could continue to talk about the election being stolen over on Parler. But this is what I was referring to in kind of

the beginning of our conversation. The problem is not that homogenous groups of people form communities online. The challenge is that Parler does not provide any of the contextualization for any of the claims or fact checks or anything like that, and instead believes that people can go and inform themselves. And that was the belief on social platforms for years and years and years that, yes, somebody might see some fake news, but they could then go and Google it and fact check it for themselves. And that just was not what was actually happening. And so belief in conspiracy theories and sharing of conspiratorial content, absent any of those fact checks or labels or, you know, attempts to address what people were seeing, people were not, you know, thoughtfully looking at a headline, reading the article,

going to Google, evaluating the source, looking for, you know, for counterfactual evidence to dispute a wild claim to decide whether or not to believe it. Instead, it was, I'm seeing this thing that someone I like has shared, and therefore I'm inclined to believe it. I'm already primed to believe it. So this is where you get to the idea of echo chambers, where there is no opposing voice. There is no marketplace of ideas discussing the wild claims in an article and saying, hey, maybe this isn't true. It's just a very homogenous community where no outside kind of counter evidence is going to make its way into the conversation. kind of counter evidence is going to make its way into the conversation.

For at least the last six or seven years of my life, almost universally every time I have watched a focus group of undecided voters, and you hear someone repeat some completely obvious false thing, the election was stolen, Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Joe Biden has dementia. Things that just – just a brief visit to a newspaper or CNN or whatever would tell you is not true. You ask those people where they learned that information, and the answer is almost always Facebook. I recognize that Facebook is in some ways just a proxy for the internet writ large for a lot of people. It is, but, and then people like me yell,

Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, do better, right? And basically, do you have a view of what these social media platforms could do to quote unquote, do better to stem the spread of misinformation and disinformation online? Yeah, so two things. One, I think curation really matters, right? That is, I think, that is where this conversation is going to go. What gets seen and when? And there is, I think, a misguided belief among people who believe that the algorithms are viewpoint-based,

that have viewpoint-based bias. When they say like, well, I didn't see everything that my friend shared or my friends don't see all my posts, ergo, the algorithm is biased against me. No, I think people have to understand how algorithmic curation works. And then the platforms responsible for it have to be both more transparent in how it's happening, but also there has to be a lot more attention paid to what is proactively pushed to people. Because that is where it's not, you know, with the formation of things like QAnon, the cross-pollination into other communities, people weren't looking for that content, it was being sent to them. And that's a very different thing. So I think sorting out our understanding of how to curate ethically and

responsibly so that good information rises to the top is important. And, you know, what the definition of good is even is debatable at this point. I think the other challenge, though, is the platform moderation is also quite opaque. And it has a, you know, many people feel that it's quite subjectively applied. And I don't think that that's wrong. And so Facebook has the ability to do things like temporarily throttling content that is going viral to give a fact check or contextualization time to happen. What we've seen instead is oftentimes it will go viral, and then it will come down. And that perpetuates the idea of censorship. So rather than allowing it to stay with an appropriate contextualization, and kind of a framework around

it that that puts, you know, that helps people make that decision about whether or not to trust this as a reliable information, right there on the platform where they're seeing it at the same time that they are seeing it. That's where I think we need to be going with moderation, not takedowns after 8 million people have seen something because there's a public outcry against it. That looks very reactive. And I think that that's a turns whatever the content was into some kind of forbidden knowledge and in some ways makes it more appealing. And this will be my last question. I'll let you get back to your day. But given what you just said there, do you think it was then an error by the social media companies to ban Trump in the sense that it will foment more of the idea

of censorship and less trust in the platforms? Or was it a necessary step given some of the dangers? I think there was a very significant trade-off in that moment based on the events of the 6th. So I watched the live stream as that was happening. And one of the things that I recall happening was that when the president made his speech, there were people in the crowd, literally at the doors. I was watching a live stream that someone was sending from the doors. Somebody came over with a video and said, Trump wants us to go home. Trump wants us to go home. And there was this, some percentage of the people were like, okay, the commander in chief has given us our order. It's time for us to disperse.

And then there was a smaller, much smaller community that said, well, I'm not here for Trump, you know, I'm here for, and then whatever the, the, the sort of more extreme elements who decided they were going to continue to stay and keep trying to, you know, bang on the doors and get in the building. But there was this, you know, you sort of watched it play out this, people were, they felt that they were taking marching orders. And so the potential for additional incitement in that moment at that time was what ultimately made that determination. And so the, you know, Jack Dorsey put out a thread about the permanent ban last night where, you know, they expressed how they felt that it was a very unprecedented thing to do. At the same time, I feel like the decision in that moment at that time, and it remains to be

seen if Facebook, you know, allows the president back on after President Biden is inaugurated, President-elect Biden, that's what I think, you know, the question becomes, should the ban be permanent? In the immediate term, I think it I think, you know, the, the question becomes, um, should the ban be permanent? Uh, in the immediate term, I think it was absolutely the right call largely because of the incitement and ongoing violence. Renee, thank you so much. We, I could talk about this with you for literally days. Um, super fascinating, uh, quite alarming in a lot of ways.

And thank you for being with us on Potsdam America. Thank you. Thanks to Renee for joining us today. And everyone have a good weekend. And again, we will have another pod on Tuesday. We'll be doing some fun stuff on the inauguration for the inauguration on Wednesday.

And then we'll have another pod on Thursday. So we'll see you then. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed,

and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.