The Dispatch Podcast - Sleepwalking Into Autocracy | Interview: Liz Cheney

Episode Date: December 9, 2023

What would a second Trump presidency mean for American democracy? Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney is raising the alarm in her upcoming book Oath and Honor, A Memoir and a Warning, and she joins Steve Hayes to discuss: -Trump’s Army -Mike Johnson’s unconstitutional turn -Why Trump’s return to power could spell the death of the republic -Liz for President? Show Notes: -Watch this episode on our YouTube channel -Where Are All the Anti-Trump Republicans? -Opinion | Robert Kagan: How to stop the Trump dictatorship Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes, joined today by Liz Cheney, former representative from Wyoming, and author of Oath and Honor, a Memoir and a Warning. The book is a detailed account of Representative Cheney's political life, her time in Congress, January 6th, what led to that day, what followed that day, her ousting from the Republican House leadership, and eventually ousting from Congress, along with her time on the committee investigating the event. of January 6th, and we had a very good conversation covering as much of it as we possibly could in roughly 30 minutes. I hope you'll stick around. Welcome back to the Dispast podcast. Great to be back with you guys. I always love to be on the Disbat. The book is really interesting to me for about a thousand reasons. I spent a fair amount of time, you know, reading and reporting about these events,

the lead up to January 6th, the stolen election claims, January 6th itself, the aftermath, the committee. And I was talking to you about it. I was talking to a lot of other people about what was happening in real time. And I have to say the thing that jumps out at me most about the experience of reading the book is how much we've forgotten in this short period of time. I want to start with a really big picture question. And it's a question that I've gotten from people who are not fans of you.

They might not be fans of Donald Trump, but they don't see him as the threat that you present him as in this book. So what do you say to people who say that the events of January 6th were really just a rally that spun out of control, that you and the January 6th committee have blown it up? You're obsessed with Donald Trump. he's not a he's not a would-be dictator he's an old guy who's a narcissist and got a little carried away what what's the what's the best response to that claim you know i think there are several things one is um to remind people that uh what he did he didn't just do on january 6th or on january 6th leading up to january 6th but that what we showed through the select committee hearings uh and and what there is really a mountain of evidence that demonstrates

is that this was an overall plan. You know, he was trying every way he could to seize power, whether that was pressuring state legislators to switch votes for Biden, the votes for Trump, whether it was pressuring the Justice Department, to say that the election had been stolen, whether it was pressuring the vice president to take illegal and unconstitutional action. And then ultimately, of course, unleashing this mob on the Capitol. And he knew that the crowd was armed.

He certainly knew they were angry. And then refusing to tell him to go home. home as this was all unfolding. So there's no question that, you know, when Donald Trump woke up on the morning of January 6th, he expected that he would be able to stay in office. He had, you know, put together this plan to do so. And the sixth was the culmination of those efforts. He failed. He failed because there were people around him who stopped him. But, you know, anybody who suggests that somehow he will not attempt to stay in office. beyond his term, if he were to be elected again, is refusing to look at what he did

before. And the other thing that I think is really important is he's demonstrated his willingness to ignore the rulings of the courts. That's the fundamental danger that he poses, that, again, people can't ignore because he's demonstrated that's exactly what he'll do. How central was Donald Trump to these plans? I mean, was this mostly driven by Trump? Or was this Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office saying, hey, I really don't want to, I don't want to leave the White House, go do some work to try to make that happen? How central was he to the planning of this?

He was the central figure. And, you know, certainly there were people who said to him, hey, you know, you could, for example, as Mike Flynn said, deploy the military and rerun the election in key states. And we know that he didn't do that because people around him, like Eric Hirschman, Pat Cipollone, and others were there, stepped in and explained to him why he couldn't do that. But whether you're talking about, you know, the incredible pressure that he personally put on the vice president, whether you're talking about his personal and direct involvement in the fake electors plot, you know, he was on the phone with John Eastman, with Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the RNC.

in this spot that was very much intended to culminate with Mike Pence refusing to count legitimate electors. So, you know, I hear people saying it wasn't that big a deal, and there are different elements of that. Some people say, well, gosh, the violence wasn't really all that bad, which, of course, you know, the evidence shows, and we know, and we've seen the video that day and the horrific attack on police officers. So, you know, that that clearly is a attempt to kind of whitewash what happened. There are others who make the claim that you're making or that you're talking about, Steve, which is, well, it's not really true that he would attempt to stay in power. But the evidence clearly shows that that's exactly what he intended to do.

And he tells us, again, almost every day, frankly. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's one of the things that really sort of stuck with me. You know, there's all this talk now in the press. I mean, Bob Kagan wrote a piece in the Washington Post suggesting U.S. may be on a slippery slope to a dictatorship. There's all this talk about Trump as a, as a would-be dictator. And the debate has really been sort of would he do these things. Would he do the things that would be authoritarian dictatorial, what have you? And in reading this book in the background of this public debate, the thing that is abundantly clear and I think incontrovertible, he's already done it. Right.

But this isn't a theoretical debate that we're having. having, you know, one of the things that really jumps out. And again, you remember these as isolated incidents as they're happening and you look back on and you sort of remember, I don't know, at least for me, there's like this collective fog about it. He tried to basically force out or remove the leaders of the defense department and the leaders of the justice department as part of his effort to remain in power. People have debated whether this is a coup or a soft coup or, you know, what are the appropriate words? But when you do something like that, it's very clear that you have not only authoritarian sort of goals, you're willing to use authoritarian means.

Right. And, you know, I think that one thing that people also need to recognize is, you know, I talk a lot about his willingness to ignore the rulings of the courts. And I think it's important to be specific about what that means. For example, imagine a situation where he concocks an emergency to get state legislatures to decide, well, you know what, we just simply can't hold the election in our state. Or, you know, it's just simply there's been incurable fraud. So we can't send electors to Washington or we can't certify the electors that reflect the popular vote. You can imagine a whole series of things that could be done, which he came very close to doing already.

And people will say, well, yes, but the courts will step in. You know, the federal court will order the secretary of state of a given state or the governor of a given state to count the, to certify the electors or to hold the, make sure that they hold the election on the day at which it's scheduled. It doesn't matter. If a court can step in and issue a compulsory order, But if the president of the United States isn't going to enforce it, who is?

And I think that is where the scenarios are not unrealistic. You can certainly imagine because, as you say, he's made clear his willingness to try to stay in power previously. And a couple of days ago, somebody said, well, you know, how's he going to do it? Which is he going to issue a tweet? you know, what army does he have that's going to help him do it? Well, if you elect a president, he has the United States Army. And as we've seen before, you know, his willingness, and he suggested that Mike Flynn is going to have a place in his cabinet, maybe his national security advisor.

He certainly has already demonstrated the willingness, the capacity to do these things, and ignoring that is simply willful blindness. Yes. I want to spend a moment on Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, both for insights into him, but also for what they tell us about how elected Republicans are halved out with Donald Trump and are dealing with Donald Trump. You liked Mike Johnson, considered him a friend. You were in leadership together, thought he was very smart. And then he offers this amicus brief in a lawsuit, in a Texas lawsuit, challenging the election. Can you just walk us through what happened? happened there, what his role was specifically? Yeah, Mike was somebody that I liked very much. I thought that he was an honorable person. But then when we got to this period of time, December of 2020, and he sent around an email telling members of the House that he had this Samakis brief that he wanted people to sign

on to and that he would be providing a list to Donald Trump of the names, the members of the House who signed on to it, that began a whole series of events where it became very clear to me that Mike was, in fact, willing to do things that he knew to be wrong. And with respect to the brief, he kept claiming that the brief was just simply laying out an argument that the court should hear the president's case, should hear the Texas case. And in fact, that's not what the brief was. The brief contained in it with respect to four states, allegations of really serious fraud in the conduct of the elections in those states. And these were allegations that, you know, had already been heard by lower courts. The courts had already ruled on them. And in addition to

that, people signing on to the brief were making assertions to the Supreme Court, frankly, about facts that they had no basis to know, which I thought, in addition to everything else, presented a real ethical problem for anybody who was a member of the bar. But it also was a fundamentally unconstitutional argument, the notion that Texas could challenge the way that these other states conducted their presidential elections, you know, outside of the constitutional framework. And the court, within a few hours, dismissed the case. But Johnson combined these claims, you know, he kept asserting that he was a constitutional lawyer conveying to the members of the conference that he had some particular expertise and then leading

them down this path. And they all bear their own responsibility for this, but his role was really destructive because he was making claims about what the brief was that weren't true and because the brief itself was fundamentally infirm constitutionally. And, I mean, I think the thing that stands out about that episode in your telling is that he himself didn't seem to believe much of it. You write about how he conceded that you were right on the law and write about sort of the moment of peril the country was in. But then to justify what he had done, he set you a Fox News poll and argued that he was really concerned with messaging. Is that representative of how your colleagues in the House were thinking about this at the time, that this was all. about messaging that they needed to avoid, you know, sort of earning the wrath of Donald Trump.

What was the motivation there? Well, there are two points there. I think one is certainly people were worried about the wrath of Trump. They didn't want to be attacked by Trump. But secondly, this notion of these public opinion polls show that people think the election might have been stolen. And that wasn't just Republicans in the House. Of course, we had, you know, Republicans in the Senate led by Ted Cruz and a number

of others who signed on to his also unconstitutional proposal that there be this 10-day audit of electoral votes. And in the press release, the group of Republican senators issued, they also said, well, we have to do this because opinion polls show that people believe the election was stolen, which if you think about it is a completely backwards way for elected officials to operate. Those opinion polls showed that because Donald Trump and those senators and the Republicans, in the House were making the claim. People were saying, well, the election's been stolen. Therefore, the opinion polls showed that people were believing the lie. And then they used the fact of those opinion polls to justify additional lies. And that's how you get pretty quickly

to a situation where you're operating outside bounds of the truth. It just becomes enforcing. Trying to solve a problem that they caused. Yeah. At one point, you described Johnson's attitude as knowing that what he was doing was wrong, but doing it anyway and rationalizing his actions by saying, we just need to do this one last thing for Trump. And you also have a chapter in the book called, quote, just humor him, unquote. I can't tell you how many times I heard that

in the course of my reporting on this. And there was a famous, quote, anonymous quote, in the Washington Post that echoed those same sentiments. Is this the most frequent rationalization you hear for enabling Trump in in this moment, this sense that sort of he's on his way out, we can just do this, not earn his wrath and move on? It certainly was one of the most frequent. And I think before January 6th, and both with respect to this amicus brief, but also with respect to the objections themselves, and it was Johnson's arguments about how, on what basis

he was objecting to electoral votes where Kevin McCarthy's own lawyer told me that she had talked to him and he knew the arguments he was making didn't have any basis in the Constitution. But the justification, not just from him, but from many others was, you know, what harm can it do really? Like, let's just do this one last thing. And I think we've seen how dangerous that is. We know now the harm that that, in fact, can do and led to the violence on January 6th, in part. But I think in some ways, now we've even moved beyond that. Now we're at a place where people are suggesting, well, it didn't really happen. He's not that bad.

We ought to support him again. You know, people who are criticizing him are exaggerating. And that's a whole sort of different, that's new territory we're in. that I think makes the likelihood that we could, you know, sleepwalk ourselves into dictatorship not insignificant. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important.

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You have said, and you write in the book that Trump's re-election would mean the end of the republic. What do you do if he wins? Is the fight just over then? What happens? Well, I don't want to contemplate a Trump victory or post-Trump victory because I think it's so important that we stop him. And I think that we need to make sure that he is not elected in this election cycle.

And then I think after we make sure he's not elected, those of us who really are conservatives, those of us who have been members of the Republican Party for a long time have to build something else. We have to build something new. We have to recognize and admit that the Republican Party itself, I think, is, you know, pretty nearly unsalvageable. And something new has to arise, you know, sort of out of the ashes of this Trump Republican Party. What? Yeah, you have a scene in the book where you're, you're in Kevin McCarthy's office, and he's got a big picture of Ronald Reagan on the wall. And he's, I can't remember the exact book, but he says, in effect, like, those people aren't in charge anymore. People don't really want that anymore. This is a new Republican Party. To your point, I refuse to believe, and maybe this is, maybe this is projection or wishcasting. I've been guilty of that before, that there's not a constituency in the country for sort of traditional, movement style conservative ideas. I guess I'd ask, one, is that right? I mean, is there still sort of an appreciation for a desire for the kinds of policies that Ronald Reagan implemented

as president? And two, where are you on this ideological journey? Have you changed your positions on a variety of issues? I think some people could see, say, like, oh, look at Liz Cheney went out and went went on Rachel Maddow and beat up the Republicans and the Republican president. She's now a left winger. Are you? No. Look, I think that the extent to which my policy positions remain unchanged and the, you know, that feeds, for example, the very real concerns that I have about, the threats we're facing today globally.

And my concern about the Republican Party, while I think Donald Trump is clearly an existential threat and one that we have to defeat, I think there are other aspects of what's happening in the Republican Party today that are really dangerous, one of which is this rising sentiment of isolationism. And, you know, I am very much a Reagan Republican. I believe in strong national defense and limited. taxes, limited government and low taxes. I mean, I think fundamentally, those are the policy positions that caused me to become a Republican in the first place. And I think that what we're

seeing today in the Republican Party is, you know, if you think about what's the most conservative of all the conservative principles, those of us who are conservative bold, what's the most conservative one? The most conservative one is fidelity to the Constitution. That's the bottom line. And the Republican Party of today has abandoned that. Too many of the elected officials have said, you know what, if we have to choose between Trump and the Constitution, we're choosing Trump. Yeah. What about the Democrats, though? I mean, I look at Joe Biden. And I think you and I probably share many policy views. And I think he's been an awful president. Let's not polish it. I think he's been a really bad president, particularly if you believe in limited government

You look at spending, you look at student loans, you look at his foreign policy. Do you think he's been a good president? And if not, shouldn't you be out there beating up Joe Biden and pointing out all of the problems that he's causing the country? Look, I think, in fact, the policies that the Biden administration has adopted are so bad that it's why the danger of Trump is so great. Because I think what happens is, you know, you have people who look at things like, you know, the fact that our border seems to be completely wide open. I think just yesterday or the day before we had more illegal crossings than we've had in any other day, you know, in history since they've been keeping track of the numbers, if I understood the headlines correctly. The extent to which the Biden administration came into office and has decided that they're, you know, they're going to try to sit at the table with Iran, that they haven't. responded to the attacks that we've been seeing, you know, on our forces and our allies in the

Middle East. There are a whole bunch of really big problems with the policies the Biden administration. I'm certainly no defender of those. That's why I'm so concerned because I think what's going to happen is that you'll, you run the risk that you have independence who say, those are really bad policies. And we don't like Donald Trump. We don't like what he stands for. We don't like what he's done. But we don't really, you know, if we have to pick, we're going to go with Trump and people are going to think he's an acceptable alternative. And I think that's what we really have to guard against is I wish the Biden administration policies were not what they are. I think it's really dangerous and bad for the country. I don't know what the choice is

going to be next year in terms of who the nominees are going to be. I think people need to recognize. We don't know that for sure yet. But that's one of the reasons why I'm spending so much time trying to get people focused on the real danger that Trump presents so they don't think of him as an acceptable alternative. What are the people who cheer you on from the left say when they hear you say things like that? I mean, you know, you are sort of the darling of the left. There's this strange new respect for Liz Cheney. I know I've been there a little bit. What do they, what do they say when they hear you be that critical of Joe Biden? I mean, it's interesting. I've because I'm sure you've heard this, too, that quietly Democrats are concerned about Joe Biden

and, you know, concerned about whether or not he can beat Trump. And you look at the polling. And I think that, you know, there's a sense both on the left and among those of us who aren't on the left, but who know the threat of Trump that, you know, can Joe Biden beat him. But I think in addition to that, there's a sense, and I don't think I'm being just idealistic. I know this is how I feel about, you know, those on the left with whom I would never have found myself working in the past. I do think that there's a, there's a real sense of like, look, we got to put partisanship aside. And yeah, we disagree on a whole bunch of things from a policy perspective, but we have to work together to make sure that we don't allow somebody to take power who is going to unravel

the Republic. So two more quick questions. Picking up on some of the headlines today, the article that's at the top of my inbox right now is from Politico's Jonathan Martin. And the headline is, where are the Republican leaders? And he goes through a series of Republicans he's talked to. He was out at the Hoover Institution. He is Jim Mattis, former defense secretary, saying, in effect, we have an obligation to be quiet. Joni Ernst said she didn't want to speak up because she didn't want Iowa to lose its first in the nation caucus status, so she didn't want to be critical of Trump. And Jonathan sort of ticks through a number of these things. Then there's an editorial in the today's Wall Street Journal. This is Friday saying, in effect, the real potential risk with

Donald Trump is that he would be bad on policy, wouldn't be able to implement what he said he wants to do and might present political problems for Republicans. I'll just read the end of that. We think American institutions are strong enough to contain whatever designs Mr. Trump has to abuse presidential power. The danger for Republican voters to consider is that his chaos theory of governance would result in a second term that failed to deliver on his promises and set up the left for huge gains in 2026 and 28. It seems that people aren't picking, they're not, you're sounding the alarms and people aren't listening. Republicans seem not to be listening. Is there anything more that you can do to get people to see this the way that you see it?

Well, I think that, first of all, you know, there's no cavalry coming here. So everybody who understands the threat has to speak up. You know, the idea that, and I haven't seen Martin's reporting, but we've certainly been living through this period of time where a lot of Republican officials, most Republican officials sort of say, I'm going to sit on the sidelines. They can't sit on the sidelines in 2024 if they really want to ensure that this country continues to be characterized by a peaceful transfer of power. That's what's at risk. And, you know, whether you're talking about elected officials, whether you're talking about former appointed officials,

everybody is going to have to speak up and, frankly, work together across party lines to defeat him. I also think that it's really important for people to understand the claim that the journal is making about the institutions of our government is just not true. You know, we saw that the institutions held on January 6th and to post the election of 2020, but they only held because there were people in place who made sure they did. Donald Trump will not appoint those same people if he is elected again. He will not have Pat Cipollone as his White House counsel. He will not have Jeff Rosen and Rich Donoghue at the Justice Department. He will appoint people like Cash Patel, who has threatened directly on Steve Bannon's show in the last 48 hours that, in fact, they are going to use the CIA

to go directly after their political enemies, their enemies in the media. They'll appoint people like Jeff Clark at the Department of Justice like Steve Bannon. So I would say to the Wall Street Journal, you know, it's nice to be able to say, to make yourself feel comfortable by saying our institutions will hold.

But if you have the most unstable, radical, craziest people appointed to positions of ultimate power, those institutions won't hold. Donald Trump will not obey the rulings the courts, he will offer pardons to people who work for him, who might express concern about taking action that he's telling them to take. The notion that the separation of powers will help stop his most radical behavior is completely unsupportable. If you look at the Republicans

today who control the House, the Republicans today in the Senate, people like Mike Lee and Josh Hawley, who have thrown away their allegiance to the Constitution. in order to embrace Trump. And so, you know, it might make people feel comfortable to think we don't have to worry, but they need to really step back and think about what are the specific things that actually could prevent Donald Trump from doing the worst? And they shouldn't have any confidence that, that in fact those individuals are in place. You've said in other interviews when asked about your own political plans that you aren't

ruling out a run for president, are you going to run? what would be the factors in your decision making on whether you're going to run? And if you run, how confident are you that you wouldn't pull from Joe Biden or whoever the Democrat is or further split the vote in a way that would enable Donald Trump to be president again? I think that that's a key question. I haven't made a decision yet about what I'm going to do next year. I think that the fact that people are talking about and thinking about, you know, third parties, whether it's me or anybody else, tells you how much sort of the tectonic

plates of our politics have shifted. And my approach and my view to this is, look, we have to do everything it takes to make sure that we defeat Donald Trump. If I felt confident today and I could say, absolutely, you know, I see somebody out there that I know can defeat him and will be a good president, then I would be backing that person. And what I do know is I'm going to do everything that I can boast in terms of at the presidential level to make sure we defeat him as well as working down ballot to make sure we defeat election deniers. And so I guess I don't view this as much through the lens of, you know, what am I going to do or not do as how do we put together the kind of coalition and alliances that it really are unprecedented that it's going to take to beat him

next year. Liz Chaney, the book is oath and honor, a memoir, and a warning. Thanks for spending some time with us. Great to be with you. Thanks, Steve. You know,