The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: He Wanted the Violence

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

The January 6 committee never wavered from its main goal: to make sure Trump never holds power again. Plus, the Lauren Boebert-MTG feud, and overestimating the power of the internet age to stop political candidates from telling very big lies. Will Saletan joins guest host Mona Charen today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P, dot com.

This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? At work, in social settings, around your family? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self, so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit Better you're hearing is obviously not Charlie Sykes. Charlie is away enjoying some much deserved vacation. I am Mona Charon, policy editor at the Bulwark and syndicated columnist, and I am filling in for

Charlie today. Charlie and I do a secret podcast for The Bulwark once a week, which if you become a member, you'll have access to. And I would also like to mention that I am the host of another Bulwark podcast called Beg to Differ. This morning, I am here with my Bulwark colleague, Will Salatin, to discuss a number of things, but specifically the January 6th committee's actions yesterday, recommending, referring to the Department of Justice a series of criminal actions that it believes Donald Trump is guilty of. And we have a lot to say about this, right? Well, Will, good morning. Good morning, Mona. Nice to talk to you. All right. So the committee voted unanimously to refer to the Department of

Justice, Donald J. Trump and others for inciting or assisting in insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conspiracy to make a false statement. So let's clear the underbrush first and say that there is no particular legal significance to this referral. Anybody can make a referral to the Justice Department suggesting that somebody be charged with a crime. It frequently comes up when judges, for example, are handling civil cases and evidence comes to light that might implicate somebody for a criminal charge, and they'll send a referral over to the Justice Department and say, you might want to look into this. In this case, first of all, we know the Justice Department is already investigating Trump. But in any event, it doesn't require the Justice Department to do

anything. It doesn't make it more likely that the Justice Department will do something because, as I say, they've already started the investigation. So it's symbolic, but symbolism is important, right, Will? Yeah. Well, the symbolism is certainly important and just putting the truth out is important. I mean, we have to remember that legally this case may not end up anywhere near where it ought to morally, right? I mean, to begin with, just the fact that Donald Trump was president of the United States and that he has managed to convince so many Americans that any prosecution of him would be illegitimate. He's already convinced them that it would be caused to attack the Capitol. So the point is that he may not get justice. The justice system may not prosecute him. And in that event, which

I think is a likely event, it is important for the committee to have simply put out the truth, including the truth that the things he did ought to be prosecuted if he were an ordinary citizen. So one of the objections that you hear is that because this committee, even though it contained two Republicans, is perceived to be partisan, that it makes it look like when they make a referral, it makes it look like if the Department of Justice takes it up, that it was responding to a partisan effort on the part of Democrats, you know, to go after Trump, to get Trump. What do you make of that argument? No, I don't agree with that. And I actually don't

think the Justice Department will pay any attention either way to the fact that information that is received from one party or another is publicly known to be associated with this committee. First of all, it is a bipartisan committee consisting of Democrats and Republicans who believe in the rule of law. And in addition to that, you know, I think that what's most important about the committee passing this information along is that it was able to do what you and I were not, which is to use the authority of Congress, such as it is, to summon in witnesses and to collect evidence. And that evidence is really the legacy that the committee is passing along to the Justice Department. Right. We're going to get to some of the evidence in a second. I would just say regarding that argument, my reaction to it is that, look, it's inevitable that if a

Democratic administration led by Joe Biden indicts and prosecutes Donald Trump, that that's going to be tainted. It's going to be considered by some on the right to be political no matter what. So the committee's action doesn't make that any more of a problem than it already was. So I don't think that argument has merit. Let's go to, though, the actual evidence that the committee assembled. I mean, one of the things that has been, and you said this, I mean, one of the things that's been remarkable about this committee is that it has been able to transform January 6th from the narrative that, well, it was a riot that happened on that particular day, and that was unfortunate, but people got carried away and there's nothing more to it. They've been able to broaden it out and show, no, this was actually

part of a really big effort, a really big conspiracy on the part of Trump to execute an auto coup, right? Yeah. And I mean, think back for a minute to what Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans wanted this committee to do, or what they wanted to be investigated about January 6th. They wanted it to be all about security at the Capitol, right? So that Mona, that would have been exactly what you're talking about, right? It would have been just, just an investigation of what happened at the end of this process, the superficial part, the part that we saw it. And it would have been about, you know, I can't remember. I think it, I think Tim Miller has called this the short skirt theory. You know, you're going to blame the people who were attacked, Congress, for why they

were. Right. Right. So yeah, it's terrific that the committee was able to get under it. And Mona, do you remember how many prongs of this conspiracy, but six or seven different avenues that Trump, where Trump was pulling strings, trying to overturn the election? But that's impressive. Yeah.

So first he spread the big lie about widespread fraud and convinced his followers that the election was being stolen. Then he put pressure on state legislatures to nullify the votes of their states. He organized false slates of electors in states won by Biden. Then he pressured his own Justice Department to just say it. He didn't care about whether it was true or not. He told his Justice Department Department to just say it. He didn't care about whether it was true or not. He told his Justice Department, you just say it was corrupt, and I and the Republicans in Congress will take it from there. Then he pressured Mike Pence to do something that was completely unconstitutional.

And then when all of those things failed, of course, he had the legal efforts to challenge something like 62 legal cases. When everything failed, then he summoned the mob and watched it play out without intervening. Let's hear Adam Kinzinger at the hearing, one of the Republicans, great guy, showing that Trump knew full well that there was no evidence that there was enough fraud to have changed the outcome. In the weeks immediately following the 2020 election, Attorney General Bill Barr advised President Trump that the Department of Justice had not seen any evidence to support Trump's theory that the election was stolen by fraud. No evidence. Over the course of the three meetings in this

post-election period, Attorney General Barr assured President Trump that the Justice Department was properly investigating claims of election fraud. He debunked numerous election fraud claims, many of which the President would then go on to repeat publicly, and he made clear that President Trump was doing, quote, a great, great disservice to the country by pursuing them. So this ties in, Will, with your piece that's up on the bulwark this morning where you sort of evaluate what the committee has shown in terms of Trump's state of mind because in order to successfully prosecute him, you'd have to show the proper mens rea that he knew he was lying. If he was sincere and believed that the election

was stolen, that sort of changes things legally. So talk about that. Well, okay. So Mona, if all of us at the bulwark were the jury for Donald Trump, I'd be the guy you would all be angry at. I'm the one sitting in the corner saying, you know, I'm not so sure that Trump had the corrupt intent necessary to convict him of the crimes that the committee has referred him for here because the guy's delusional, right? I mean, everything I've seen of him is he believes his own BS. So it makes it very hard for me to convict him. And what the committee is trying to show is that he meets those standards of corrupt intent, that he knew he was deceiving the public

and the courts and everyone. And part of the evidence that they present is this evidence that Kinzinger is talking about. We've talked to, we've interviewed a bunch of people who were around the president, including Attorney General Barr, and they all have testified that they told him to his face, this claim you are making about Georgia, about Michigan, about Nevada, whatever it was, is false. We've looked at it. The Justice Department has investigated it. Here's what we've found. One of the interesting things in this report is it goes through 18 of these cases, and it shows in time, in a calendar, that when Trump was told by Bill Barr or by the Secretary of State of Georgia or by other people that a specific claim was false, and then literally within a day, within two days, within a few days, Trump goes out and repeats the

same false statement, knowing that it has just been refuted to him. And so, even if, on my theory that Trump is delusional and somehow that exonerates him from corrupt intent, the fact that he is concealing that he has just been told that the claim is false and goes out and repeats it is evidence of some of this corrupt intent that the committee is trying to show. Yes. One of the great things in the committee report is they say, you know, he heard that there were dead people voting in Georgia and he confronts Raffensperger about this. And Raffensperger says, no, there were not 5,000 dead people who voted in Georgia. We looked into this. There were two.

And it was something like the next day Trump goes out and says, there were 10,000 dead people who voted in Georgia. I mean, you really don't need to go too much further than that to show corrupt intent. I mean, he was impervious to the truth when it didn't serve his purposes. That call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of Georgia, turns out to be one of the best sources of material about Trump's state of mind. Because the whole thing, unlike all this other stuff where you hear Bill Barr testifying about what he said, or Bill Stepien testifying about what he said, we have the recording of the conversation. We

have Donald Trump's responses. So you can hear every word of what's going on. And throughout that phone call, Raffensperger is going point by point through Trump's claims and telling him evidence. And you get to hear Trump's response. So one of them is, you know, there's the one about the suitcases under the table and the ballot scan three times. And Raffensperger literally says to Trump, you know, what you're talking about is not true. The full video debunks that and shows what really happened. And Mr. President, we're going to get you a link to that video. And Trump says to Raffensperger, I don't care. He says, I don't care about a link.

I don't need it. Trump doesn't want, he's told here's the evidence and he won't go look at it. I will say as a juror, that goes a long way toward convincing me that we have a willful denial of the truth and then an attempt to cover that up. You know, but Will, compared to the moral depravity of what Trump did as the riot was unfolding, the rest of this stuff pales almost to insignificance. Not really. I mean, you know, trying to overturn an election is a big deal. But as a matter of moral depravity, his eagerness to make sure that that crowd was armed, for example, which we know

from Cassidy Hutchinson. And the report cites, you know, just to give an example, that the Secret Service confiscated 242 canisters of pepper spray, 269 knives or blades, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, body armor, gas masks, batons, etc., etc. He knew it. He wanted them to be armed. He did not want them to have to go through magnetometers. And as the violence was unfolding and people, his followers, carrying Trump flags were saying, hang Mike Pence. He puts out a tweet, Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and constitution. That is an invitation to the mob to kill Mike Pence, isn't it? Well, yeah. I mean, and part of what's crucial to that part of the story is remember that Trump's defense, part of Trump's defense is that before the attack,

he has told the crowd, he's used the word peacefully, let's peacefully protest. And so the Republican line in defense of Trump is he never meant it to become violent. So, well, wait, he did both. He said peacefully sometimes. And then at other times he said, if you don't fight, you won't have a country. He said both things in that speech on the ellipse. Correct. Correct. But his defense is that he used that word one time and therefore that exonerates him.

Right. And so what you're talking about, Mona, is crucial because what we have after the attack is underway is we have direct witnesses that Trump was watching the violence. So now he knew it has become violent. After he knows it has become violent, he can't claim that he's supporting a peaceful protest anymore when he proceeds to tell the crowd Mike Pence didn't have the courage and to basically incite them to proceed with what he already knows at this point is violence. Right. And the committee also adduced more evidence. They had testimony from Hope Hicks that was interesting. So in the lead up to this riot, people were getting very

nervous around Trump. And, you know, they were urging him to, you know, because he did summon the mob. By the way, you know, it's the second anniversary yesterday of that. It was two years ago that he sent out that tweet inviting people to come down to the Capitol on January 6th saying, we'll be wild. I know, isn't that amazing? It's only been two years. It feels like a lifetime. But in any event, the people around him were getting nervous because it was clear to anybody with eyes to see the potential for violence. And Trump's rhetoric was certainly encouraging it. And they said he should tweet out messages to stay peaceful. And he refused. So here's Congresswoman Murphy and then Hope Hicks. In the days leading up to January 6th, President Trump's advisors explicitly told him that he should encourage his supporters to be peaceful that day. But he refused. When you wrote, I suggested it several times, and it presumably means that the president say something about being nonviolent. He wrote, I suggested it several times Monday and Tuesday, and he refused.

Tell us what happened. Sure. I didn't speak to the president about this directly, but I communicated to people like Eric Hirschman that it was my view that it was important that the president put out some kind of message in advance of the event. And what was Mr. Hirschman's response? Mr. Hirschman said that he had made the same, you know, recommendation directly to the president and that he had refused. Just so I understand, Mr. Hirschman said that he had already recommended to the president

that the president convey a message that people should be peaceful on January 6th, and the president had refused to do that? Yes. So, Will, in addition, I'm not sure it's in the executive summary of the committee's report, and the full report will be released on Wednesday. But we also have, as evidence of Trump's state of mind, his conduct since then, where he has constantly said that the January 6th rioters were being persecuted. He has promised to fund their legal efforts. He has offered to pardon them should he ever return to the Oval

Office. And that also is relevant to his state of mind on that day. It is, it is. And the funny thing, Mona, is, I hate to use the word funny in this context, but the strategy of Trump's defenders in Congress has been to try to separate him from the people who invaded the Capitol, right? He didn't mean for them to go and attack the Capitol. He didn't mean for the violence to happen. That's not him. That's them. And so Trump, by coming out and repeatedly saying that he will pardon these people, knowing what they have done, is basically ruining, as he does all the time, the strategy of his defenders. These people keep saying, you know what? Donald Trump is not nearly as bad as all you libs, as all you fake news people claim he is. And then Trump comes out and says just saying, Will, I think of the people who scoffed and said it was ridiculous to compare Donald Trump to some of the worst dictators in

the world, to a fascist or whatever. And then what does he do? He has dinner after announcing for president in 2024, he has dinner with Nick Fuentes and yay. I mean, it's almost as if he wants to embarrass and humiliate his own defenders. It is. And you know, Mona, it just every day, every week, every month, Donald Trump does something else to show what an awful human being he is. It's really simple. This is a really bad person. If you started with that understanding, everything that has come after makes sense. If you don't, then you have to do all these gymnastics to explain him. And Mona, that quote that you were playing, that testimony from Hope Hicks, just underscores the point. I mean, Trump's defense, again, is he used that word one time,

we're going to peacefully protest. But the committee is producing all of this evidence, including that testimony from Hope Hicks, that Donald Trump was asked before the attack and then after the attack by multiple, multiple people who knew, coming in and begging him, please intervene, say And he wouldn't do it. I don't know how the legal case will turn out, but morally, the evidence couldn't be clearer that he wanted the violence and that he wanted it to continue. No doubt about that. Let's pursue that point a little further. So when we first started talking this morning, you said you don't think that this will ever amount to a legal case. And just now you say you're kind of echoing that. So tell me what you envision will happen as a consequence of this referral, or all of the legal matters that Trump is facing in Georgia, in New York, and from Jack Smith, the Justice Department's new special counsel. I don't have a crystal ball, but I would just distinguish a couple of things.

There are four statutes for which the committee referred Trump for possible prosecution. One of them, which is the insurrection charge, is pretty straightforward. And I think they have as much evidence as they're going to get for that. And either you're going to accept that it's an insurrection and that what he did counts as incitement or not. go after him for the speech on the ellipse inciting an insurrection, you're going to have to run up against the problem of political speech. And do we want to police what politicians say? And politicians often use martial language, martial law, M-A-R-T-I-A-L, not as some of the Trump fans spelled it in the emails that were revealed by the committee, urging him to impose Marshall,

M-A-R-S-H-A-L-L law. But anyway, so that actually is a pretty delicate and ticklish one from the point of view of a prosecution, because there are free speech concerns and so forth. And it's also very hard to prove that the incitement actually is what caused the action. So it's a little bit difficult. I agree, Bona. I agree that it's difficult to make that case based on the January 6th speech. But I think what has happened over the course of the committee's investigation is that they have shifted the timeline backward as they've learned more about what happened before January 6th. Remember, when the impeachment happened, that was at the very beginning, and they talked all about

the president's speech to the crowd of the Ellipse. As the investigation has unfolded, they've moved backward in all of the dimensions that you outlined, six or seven different dimensions, going back at least a month. And so we're back to what you talked about before, which is we're on the anniversary, we just passed the anniversary of the December 19th, 2020 tweet, where Trump said, come to the mall, come to DC, it'll be wild. And what the committee has shown is that it's that tweet that the Oath Keepers and others who staged violence at the Capitol, that's what got them going. And then so there's a whole sequence during that month. And that's where the committee would try to show and presumably where

the special counsel would try to show incitement that ultimately led to the attack. Yeah, well, that's going to be something that the Department of Justice lawyers are going to have to mull over very carefully, because it's, it's going to be a high bar to prove that that tweet, for example, incited the actual violence. I mean, these things are kind of, they're messy and hard to prove. But certainly from the point of view of our politics and of our civic life, this committee is to be commended. I mean, they have really done a tremendous service in laying out the nature of the threat, what happened, the culpability of the people involved, the breadth of this attempt to subvert our democracy.

And I think whether Trump ever, you know, is convicted of anything in a court of law, they did succeed in what they set out to do. And their main goal from the beginning was to make sure that this man never holds power again, right? Yeah, although it's a little bit awkward to admit that, because it's supposed to be finding the facts, getting the truth out, and then, you know, legally passing along whatever information might be relevant to a prosecution. The Republicans certainly want the committee to be seen as trying to get Trump and trying to deprive Trump of political power. But Mona, I have to agree that ultimately, if we don't get a prosecution out of this, which I am very doubtful about, the most important thing is to make sure

that this man is never allowed near power again, because the evidence shows that regardless of your politics on social issues or economic issues or foreign policy, this guy is extremely dangerous and shouldn't be president of the United States. And Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger had the courage of their convictions and were willing to give up power in order to make that point and drive it home. And that is really, truly profiles and courage. And they deserve tremendous, tremendous admiration. Can I just tell you one funny thing? Watching this on C-SPAN, I think they must have a computer that does their closed captioning

because they're very literal. So back during the summer when these hearings were ongoing, I remember when Pat Cipollone was mentioned, the closed captioning read Patsy Bologna. And yesterday when Adam Kinzinger was speaking, it came up as Adam kissing her. Anyway. All right, let's turn to another big news story this week, which is the amazing George Santos, just elected to the House of Representatives, a Republican from the state of New York. He's a really impressive guy, Will. I mean, he was with Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Then he was with the Devolder organization where he oversaw an $80 million portfolio and earned a salary of $750,000. He was the founder of a nonprofit, an animal rescue operation, really impressive guy, except,

according to the New York Times front page story, not a word of that is true. It is baffling how, you know, so Mona, I will confess that I'm one of the reporters who has gotten lazy. And I assume that if somebody is the nominee for a congressional seat, particularly in New York State, they are going to be exposed by somebody. If not a reporter, somebody is going to hand you. Well, the opponent, maybe. Yes, yes. This is a terrible thing to admit. You know, like we're reporters.

We're supposed to go out and find the truth. But honestly, people, there are 435 of these districts. We expect that the opponent will unearth some basic information about somebody completely lying about who he is and what he's done. And obviously, that just didn't happen here. No. And he said he was a graduate of Baruch College and NYU. They called both universities. No record of him. He's been evicted twice from apartments for failure to pay rent, though he's somehow been able to loan his campaign a huge amount of money. Where did the money come from? I mean, it is just an amazing story. And it is a kind of,

well, I don't know, it is a story of our time. I mean, we just, we've been aware, you know, like just last month, I think, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos was sentenced. And just recently, her buddy, who was her lover and also a criminal co-conspirator in that whole fraud of Theranos. He was also sentenced to a long prison term. And there are just so many frauds out there. But honestly, I just cannot believe that this guy created this entire persona, none of which is true. I mean, it just is mind boggling. The Friends of Pets United, apparently he held one fundraiser for a pet rescue group, and then he never gave the money to the person it was supposed to benefit. He apparently pocketed all the money raised.

Yeah. You know, this is the kind of story that this actually happens a lot in politics. Somebody makes up something about themselves. The difference is you're supposed to find out about this way, way earlier in the process. Somebody like this is supposed to be smoked out in a primary. And the fact that we're finding about it only now is, and Mona, it really does make me doubt, you know, the internet age. This was supposed to be a time when all the information is online. When somebody who lies, you just won't be able to add it up.

You'll be able to look up, you know, someone claims I went to Brute College, whatever, and you'll be able to go and look it up and see that it's not true. But that seems not to be the case. The internet age has not made it more likely, or it has not made it certain, let's put it that way, that a lie of this magnitude will be unearthed in a timely way. Yeah. And actually to the contrary, it just seems like in the internet age, we have even more frauds and hoaxes than before. So now the Congress is faced with, you know, the guy just got elected and it was a free and fair election. Even if people didn't have all the facts is faced with, you know, the guy just got elected and it was a free and fair election. Even if people didn't have all the facts that they needed, you can't do anything about that.

Do you think it would be smart or not for the Democrats to, like, you know, try not to seat him or, you know, something along those lines? I think that it's a nightmare in any way for Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans. They only have, what, 222 seats? So they're working with a five-seats flip either way, and they lose their majority. So they can't really afford to be alienating anybody or losing anybody, not Marjorie Taylor Greene, not Lauren Boebert, and not George Santos. By the way, after this story came out, George Santos, who had not until then revealed his intentions, announced that he was supporting Kevin McCarthy for Speaker. So, shows you that, yeah, he's got his eye on the main champs. All right.

One more. You mentioned MTG and Lauren Boebert. Did you notice that they are feuding, Will? I did, but I need to hear all the details because I don't know them. So Marjorie Taylor Greene went on offense and she said, she gladly takes our money, three dollar signs. But when she's asked, Lauren refuses to endorse President Trump. She refuses to support Kevin McCarthy. And she childishly threw me under the bus for a cheap soundbite. And Boebert responded, I've been asked to explain MTG's belief in Jewish space lasers, why she showed up to a white supremacist conference, and now she's

blindly following Kevin McCarthy, and I'm not going to go there. Unquote. Shots fired. Mona, is Lauren Boebert triangulating off of Marjorie Taylor Greene? It looks like it. You know, Lauren Boebert almost lost that seat. I mean, it was so, so narrow. She was, it was just like you couldn't have put a playing card through the numbers. So maybe she was scared straight? I thought that, okay, Marjorie Taylor Greene is nuts. Matt Gaetz is nuts.

Paul Gosar is nuts. I thought Lauren Boebart is just another one of these nuts, right-wing, you know, Republicans. Yeah. It certainly sounds like she is expressing some sort of susceptibility to reality. Like she came with, what, 500 votes of losing that seat? Maybe less. Yeah. But she just won.

If she's truly nuts, she doesn't care. seat? Maybe less. But she just won. If she's truly nuts, she doesn't care. She's going to still do the crazy stuff. But Mona, am I right? Are you telling me that she literally used the phrase white supremacist in describing what Marjorie Taylor Greene went to? She did indeed. And you know, this sheds light on your use of the term nuts because these people are not nuts. They are not deluded. They know what they're doing. They are appealing to an audience. And whenever that audience suggests to them that this is not working, they will flip as

fast as you can say whatever. I mean, this is the point. They are very aware of how it plays with their audience. And I include MTG in that. If her constituents in Georgia and around the country, the people who are constantly sending her money, if they stopped sending her money, if they stopped being impressed with this kind of thing, she'd change her tune in a minute. It's all about that.

I would have been suspicious of that, but this is some evidence for it. In my experience, all my liberal friends use the phrase white supremacist. That's how they describe people on the far right, you know, and the way that they talk about immigrants and so forth. A Republican congressperson talking about another Republican congressperson describing an event they went to would never say white supremacist. You would try to dress it up. Oh, you know, that was some group that's concerned about immigration or something like that. They might talk about replacement theory or something. But if you come right out and say, Marjorie Taylor Greene is consorting with white supremacists, you are throwing her under the bus,

deservedly so, deservedly so. But that is remarkable. Yeah. Although I do recall, correct me if I'm wrong, but when they expelled Steve King from the conference, it was for saying, when did white supremacy become a problem or something, words to that effect, right? So that was the thing that tipped them over the edge on him. Right. You're not supposed to come out and say the quiet part out loud. Okay.

Well, to be continued, we will watch it closely. Thank you so much for joining me today to break this all down. Thank you, Mona. I want to mention, if you like this kind of conversation, you can come on over to Beg to Differ, where we have a panel of very smart people once a week to discuss various issues. And so with that, I will say goodbye, and we will return tomorrow and do this all over again.