The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump tells NPR he isn't giving up his 2020 election lies

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

In an interview with NPR, former President Donald Trump made it clear that he hasn't moved on from his 2020 election loss, and it's causing a rift within the Republican Party. Trump maintains his false claims that the election was stolen from him, and while most Republicans have fallen in line, some desperately want to move on. This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Catherine from Berkeley, California, and I'm currently preparing for bed because this year I am resolving to sleep eight hours a night every single night. This podcast was recorded at so luxurious. The time is 2.09 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, January 12th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully I'll wake up well rested. Here's the show. Ooh, sounds great. Oh man, I really wish I could get eight hours of sleep every night. I resolve every night to go to bed early, yeah. I used to be very, very religious about getting exactly eight hours. And even in high school, I was like in bed at 1030. And if my mom wanted to ask me questions, I was like, I'm sorry, I go to sleep. Pass my bedtime. Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And yesterday, our NPR colleague Steve Inskeep spoke with former President Donald Trump. And in that interview, Trump made it clear that he is not moving on from the 2020 election. He's been maintaining his false and debunked claims that the election was stolen from him. This comes as some members of the Republican Party, though, do desperately want to move on. Most, though, have fallen in line with Trump's big lie. So we are going to unpack what the former president said on NPR's air and

what this could politically mean. But first, I want to address why we're having this conversation right now. You know, I will say a lot of listeners, in fact, I've already begun to hear from some of them on Twitter, see this interview and say, you know, we don't want to amplify a lie. They don't want to hear what the former president has to say. I disagree with that assessment. I think there's actually a lot of value in newsworthiness in speaking to him. But Domenico, why don't you kind of take a handle of that? Why are we, why did we decide as a network to talk to him? Well, as I wrote in our story this morning about this, because I agree that this is something that a lot of people often bring up, you know, Trump's just not any former

president. You know, members of his own party have fallen in line with things that he said. What he says matters to them. He really has sort of firmed up his grip on the Republican Party and still hangs out there as the potential frontrunner for the 2024 nomination if he decides to run in 2024. So hearing from him, but also making sure that the facts are presented accurately, was a big focus of ours in this. So the bulk of Steve's conversation with Donald Trump focused on the former president's insistence that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election. And therefore, in Trump's view,

the presidency was stolen from him. We want to make abundantly clear that there is no evidence of that any sort of thing. Republican-led audits in various states showed that the election was free and fair. And Steve pressed him on this. So let's actually take a listen to a bit of the interview. South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds, as I think you know, was on ABC over the weekend. He spoke about the 2020 election and also referred to the election campaign that is now starting in 2022. Let's listen. We simply did not win the election as Republicans for the presidency. And if we simply look back and tell our people don't vote because, you know, there's cheating going on, then we're going to put

ourselves in a huge disadvantage. A couple of things to ask about there, Mr. President. Let's start with the politics. Is it a disadvantage for Republicans to keep talking about the 2020 election in 2022? No, I think it's an advantage because otherwise they're going to do it again in 22 and 24. And Rounds is wrong on that, totally wrong. If you look at the numbers, if you look at the findings in Arizona, if you look at what's going on in Georgia and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, by the way, and take a look at Wisconsin, they're finding things that nobody thought possible. This was a corrupt election.

I just have to point out, Doug Logan, to name one of the states that you just named, Doug Logan, who ran the audit in Arizona that was set up by your allies, didn't find serious problems. This is a quote, the ballots that were provided to us to count in the Coliseum very accurately correlate with the official canvas numbers. He raised a bunch of administrative issues, but didn't find a problem that would have changed the result at all. The ballots may correspond, but look at the ballots themselves. What you really have to do in that report is look at the findings.. What you really have to do in that report is look at the findings. And the findings are devastating for Arizona. They're devastating like nobody's

seen before. And other states are just as bad. Why did Republican officials in Arizona accept the results then? Because they're rhinos. And frankly, a lot of people are questioning that. Why would they? They fought very hard, the Maricopa County people. And people don't understand it because all you have to do is look at the findings. no evidence of fraud. It's that it's been proven false repeatedly in court after court from judges who Trump appointed himself. What's so interesting about this is that you do have a few lonely voices like Mike Rounds pointing out that there was no evidence that Donald Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election and it was stolen from him. And he even went so far as to say, if we tell people don't vote because there was cheating last time, we're going to be at a big disadvantage. That's a debate inside the Republican Party. There are other Republicans who say, hey,

you know, three quarters of our voters believe Donald Trump's lie that the election was stolen from him. And that is a motivator for us. So Donald Trump is the leader of our party. He personifies the base in all its grievances and conspiracy theories. And that's a very important thing for Republicans going forward. I think that the idea that you're going to convince people with facts at this point, 30 million people potentially in America who believe that the last election was stolen from them, it's just not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing about this lie is it's tremendously threatening to democracy because it's not just any lie. It says that the last election was illegitimate. If you don't believe in a free

and fair ballot, then you don't believe in American democracy. And the other thing it does, it creates a permission structure to pass all of these laws allowing Republican state legislatures to subvert the vote, to decertify the vote, to change the results if they feel that there's been, quote, fraud. And that's what's happening now. I mean, the thing is, in Trump's worldview, if you believe that Joe Biden won, I mean, he would make the argument that you're not a real authentic Republican. A rhino, I think is what he called it, right? A Republican in name only. You could argue, yes, the worldview that he has been espousing. Oh, this is the litmus test for Republican identity. There's no doubt about that. And that's why you've never, you know, you see a lot of Republicans trying to straddle a line. Kevin McCarthy, who famously said,

you know, Trump bore responsibility for January 6th and made up with him at Mar-a-Lago, still hasn't actually come out and said the magic words, Trump won the last election. But he also hasn't come out and said Biden won fair and square either. So you've got still, this has been the case throughout the entire Trump era. Republicans are silent because they want what Trump has, control of the Republican base, and that control has only gotten stronger. But they don't want to identify themselves with a person or a lie that could turn off other parts of the Republican coalition, suburban women, the corporate community, etc. You could tell as the interview went on, the tone of the interview itself changed. No sitting president has ever gotten a number of votes that I got. A lot of sitting president,

nobody believes. You think Biden got 80 million votes? How come when he went to speak in different locations, nobody came to watch, but all of a sudden he got 80 million votes. How come when he went to speak in different locations, nobody came to watch, but all of a sudden he got 80 million votes? Nobody believes that. If you'll forgive me, maybe because the election was about you. If I can just move on to ask, are you telling Republicans in 2022 that they must press your case on the past election in order to get your endorsement? Is that an absolute? They're going to do whatever they want to do. Whatever they have to do, they're going to do. But the ones that are smart, the ones that know, you take a look at, again, you take a look at how Carrie Lake is doing running for governor. She's very big on this issue.

She's leading by a lot. People have no idea how big this issue is, and they don't want it to happen again. It shouldn't be allowed to happen, and they don't want it to happen again. The only way it's not going to happen again is you have to solve the problem of the presidential rigged election of 2020. Mr. President, one more question. I want to ask about a court hearing yesterday on January 6th. Judge Amit Mehta, he's gone. OK. So to be clear there, Steve Inskeep was trying to ask the former president a question, but it seems that Donald Trump abruptly hung up on Steve before the interview actually was supposed to wrap up.

Also, Carrie Lake, who Donald Trump was referring to there, she's a Republican running for governor of Arizona who's been promoting some of the very lies that Donald Trump is. I do actually hear him there, you know, between the lines saying, you know, sure, they could run however they want to run. But if they want my endorsement, they're going to do, you know, speak about it the way I think they should. All right, well, let's take a quick break. And we'll have more to discuss about this interview when we get back. And we're back. So during this interview, our colleague, Stephen Skeap,

also asked the former president about the COVID-19 pandemic. And on the one hand, President Trump does take credit for developing the vaccines. But on the other hand, you know, we've seen many of his supporters strongly oppose taking them and strongly opposing mandates. So let's take a listen to a bit of the exchange between Steve and Donald Trump. What advice would you give to Americans who haven't chosen to get vaccinated? Well, first of all, the mandate is really hurting our country. Now, that's advice to an administration more so than to the Americans. A lot of Americans aren't standing for it. And it's hurting our country. It's hurting our economy very badly. And being very the proud person that did so well with therapeutics and vaccines and everything else

and getting them done in record times. You know, I have a lot to say on the subject. And one of the things I say is they have to start promoting and making the therapeutics more available because we have great therapeutics too in addition to the vaccines. What is the advice on the vaccines though? The vaccines, I recommend taking them, but I think that has to be an individual choice. I mean, it's got to be individual, but I recommend taking them. Many people recommend them. And if some people don't want, they shouldn't have to take them. They can't be mandated as the expression goes. And I think that's very important. Personally, I feel very comfortable having taken them. I've had

absolutely no reverberation. Do you think the pandemic will continue as long as millions of people do choose not to vaccinate? I think it's going to phase out. You know, there are many people that have had it. If you look at the numbers, I don't know why they would be getting the vaccine for the most part unless they were at a certain age group and they had certain problems, whether it's the high blood pressure, the diabetes, and various things in particular. I just want to, before we even dive into analysis, come out of here and just quickly say one thing. From a public health perspective, it is extremely important that even folks who've had COVID do get vaccinated. And I think the clearest case in point of that is the former president has gotten vaccinated. Donald Trump has gotten boosted.

And he's also someone we all know had COVID. Yeah. And, you know, obviously, it's really important to get vaccinated. That's what the health experts have been saying. You know, when you look at just the hospitalization numbers right now, in places across the country with this Omicron spike, you know, we've had record numbers of cases, but who are the people that are being hospitalized? They're mostly the people who are unvaccinated, the vast majority. The thing that's really interesting to me about Trump coming out for the vaccines, remember, he got his vaccine in private, didn't talk about it. There was a moment at the beginning of the vaccines where I think he could have positioned himself as the savior of the nation, that he brought the vaccines on board. He gets credit for that, the Trump vaccine. But he chose not to. He chose not to really push them until this amazing moment in August in Alabama at a rally where he talked about the vaccines being good and the audience booed.

By then, the anti-vax conspiracy theories among his base had taken off to such an extent that they weren't even listening to him. This is a really interesting choice that Donald Trump has made. And I think that he missed an opportunity to take credit, which is something he doesn't often do. One of the questions I've often had about the former president is to what degree has he been a leader of his base of supporters? Or to what degree is he really just an amplifier of what already was out there? Right. And was he just holding up a mirror to various positions that people had? And I don't really know. I mean, is there a degree of sense that maybe he could not actually get his supporters on board with this because there perhaps already was like enough latent skepticism about getting vaccines. And some of that was, you know, no doubt cultivated by

stuff we heard it leading up to the vaccines development. You know, certainly the groundwork, the kindling was started for Trump. I would say going back to the McCain presidential campaign and putting Sarah Palin on the ticket, then the rise of the Tea Party, certainly, you know, mining this white conservative cultural grievance in particular is the thing that gave the kindling to Trump, who then started speaking this message. And it already had been in the atmosphere since the late 90s on Fox News and into the time that he started running. So all of that made for a perfect storm for Trump to be – for the right person, quote-unquote, to come along and really light that match.

And I think that that's what we've seen happen here. OK. Well, we will leave it there for today. If you'd like to hear more of Steve's interview with former President Donald Trump, go to npr.org. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.