Lies, Politics and Democracy (2022) Movie Script

1
The Republican Party
enabled Donald Trump as he
convinced his base that
the election had been stolen.
McConnell chooses silence.
Pence says to the
president, "I can't do it."
Liz had given a really
compelling narrative
about why we have
to certify the election.
A good deal of American
democracy relies on simple good faith.
If anything was revealed to us,
it was just how fragile
a system we have.
Now, a Frontline special presentation,
"Lies, Politics, and Democracy."
This program contains
graphic content.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Last night, I congratulated
Donald Trump
and offered to work with
him on behalf of our country.
I have just called President Obama
to congratulate him on his victory.
I had the honor of calling Senator
Barack Obama to congratulate him.
Please.
I spoke to President
Bush and I offered him
and Laura our
congratulations on their victory.
Now the U.S. Supreme
Court has spoken.
While I strongly disagree with
the court's decision, I accept it.
The president is my
opponent, not my enemy.
And I wish him well
and I pledge my support.
And America must
always come first,
so we will get behind this new
president and wish him well.
This nation faces major challenges
ahead and we must work together.
He has won.
We are all Americans.
He is our president.
In bringing about an orderly transition
of government in the weeks ahead.
I congratulate you on your victory.
Congratulations on your victory.
We've got a president-elect.
He's gonna have my help.
Cheers.
I have no bitterness,
no rancor at all.
He will have my whole-hearted
support, and yours, too.
The people have rendered
their verdict, and I gladly accept it.
I urge all Americans
to unite behind you.
And every good American will wholeheartedly
accept the will of the people.
I accept the result of the
election with complete goodwill.
This is an embarrassment
to our country.
We were getting ready
to win this election.
Frankly, we did win this election.
We did win this election.
It was the lie that
sparked an insurrection.
An existential threat
to American democracy.
Created by decisions made over years.
Partisan warfare.
Moral compromise.
(chanting): White lives matter!
Warnings ignored.
I alone can fix it.
Get the host in place.
We've gotta go. 30 seconds.
Let's get quiet in the studio.
The warnings about the threat to democracy
were there from the very beginning.
Some breaking news for you now.
Fox News can now project that
Texas Senator Ted Cruz has won Iowa.
Ted Cruz wins the Republican
contest here in Iowa.
Tonight is a victory for
courageous conservatives
across Iowa and all
across this great nation.
Senator Ted Cruz had
defeated Donald Trump in the
first contest for the 2016
presidential nomination.
Ted Cruz took on Donald
Trump toe-to-toe and prevailed.
Clearly, a majority of Iowans didn't
want to make a deal with Donald Trump.
It's going to be very interesting
to see how Donald Trump
will react to the fact
that he's now been beaten.
The big question now, how is
Donald Trump gonna handle a loss?
Trump's response, a
sign of what was to come.
"Ted Cruz didn't
win Iowa, he stole it."
You have tweeted that Senator
Ted Cruz stole the Iowa election.
Everything about it was disgraceful.
It was a fraud as far
as I was concerned.
"The State of Iowa should
disqualify Ted Cruz from the most
recent election on the basis
that he cheated- a total fraud."
Knowing what we know
now, I think you would go
back to February 1st of
2016 as the beginning.
It's a total voter
fraud, when you think of it.
And actually, I came in
probably first, if you think about it.
That episode was a
bright red blinking light,
foreshadowing everything
that was to come.
And just what a danger to
democracy that this man posed.
This is a pattern for Trump.
He has done this every step of the way
through his career, long before politics.
Money, money, money, money
When "The Apprentice" lost an
Emmy to "The Amazing Race,"
he claimed that the
Emmy contest was rigged.
"'Amazing Race' winning an
Emmy again is a total joke.
The Emmys have no credibility.
The Emmys are all politics.
That's why "The Apprentice" never won.
The public is smart.
They know it's a con game.
I have just called President Obama
to congratulate him on his victory.
He claimed that the election
was rigged in 2012 when
Mitt Romney, whom he had
endorsed, lost to Barack Obama.
"This election is a total
sham and a travesty.
We are not a democracy."
"More reports of voting machines
switching Romney votes to Obama."
"Let's fight like hell and stop
this great and disgusting injustice!"
"We can't let this happen.
We should march on Washington."
Every step along the way,
anything he has ever lost is
because somebody else has
cheated and stolen it from him.
For those watching closely, it
was a signal of trouble ahead.
This certainly was a moment
that set off alarm bells.
To be a small-D Democrat means
to know how to lose elections.
And a democracy
can't survive if politicians
and political parties
don't know how to lose.
I mean, sometimes people have
even said democracy is for losers.
It's a system that allows losers to
come back and fight another day.
And so, if the losers deny that
they've lost, the system can't endure.
In Washington, some in
the Republican Party were
sounding the alarm about
the threat Trump posed.
Bill Kristol was one of what
were called the "Never Trumpers."
I was publicly saying that
Trump was unacceptable.
People shouldn't support him.
They should make clear they couldn't
support him in the general election, even.
They should band
together against him.
Kristol had been born
into conservative royalty.
His father, Irving, the godfather
of the neoconservative movement.
He was chief of staff
for Vice President Quayle
in the George H. W. Bush White House.
Founder of the conservative
magazine, "The Weekly Standard."
Kristol saw danger in Trump's appeal.
He had a real feel
for people's anxieties
and unhappiness about various things.
He was willing to stoke
those anxieties and
hatreds in some cases, resentments,
in ways that other
politicians weren't willing to.
Take three.
Start the recording.
I don't know anything
about David Duke, okay?
I don't know anything about white
supremacy or white supremacists, so...
At the time, we used words like
"unconventional" and "nontraditional."
"Oh, I don't know what I said!
I don't remember!"
But in hindsight, yeah, looking back,
there were red flags left and right about
what kind of leader Donald
Trump was going to be.
This was not someone who
supported Democratic ideals.
This was, in very real terms, an
anti-Democratic candidate,
someone who had very clear
authoritarian and autocratic tendencies.
You see the pattern,
looking back now.
We're gonna be so strong.
We're gonna be so tough.
We're gonna be so vicious.
And we're gonna
knock them for a loop.
We have no choice.
Adding to the never Trumpers' alarm,
a dangerous fervor among
some of his supporters.
Donald Trump liberated a
certain portion of America.
Hyper-nationalist, reactionary,
semi-military elements
using the language that
was common in these arenas.
They saw him as the best hope of
translating their paranoia, their contempt,
their anxiety, their anger into a
political platform and into public policy.
You know, knock the crap
out of them, would you?
Just knock the hell,
I promise you, I will pay
for the legal fees. I promise.
There were many, many signals throughout
2016 that this was not just a showman,
but no, somebody who had
definite authoritarian sympathies.
And there was violence at his
rallies that he openly encouraged.
I mean, it wasn't a joke.
There's a guy totally
disruptive, throwing punches.
I love the old days.
You know what they used to do to guys like
that when they were in a place like this?
They'd be carried out
on a stretcher, folks.
I'd like to punch him in
the face, I'll tell you.
Ah, it's true.
The nastier he got, the
more excited the crowd got.
And rather than trying
to clamp that down and
sort of pull back, he
egged on the crowd further.
And that dynamic of the angry crowd
and the demagogic leader fomenting
anger and using violent rhetoric
was a sign that this is somebody
who had no Democratic core,
liberal Democratic
core, and it was not clear
what the limits of this
style of politics were.
So I think that was very frightening.
With Trump's emerging
embrace of authoritarian behavior,
a moment of decision for Republicans.
They had a choice.
They could have taken steps
to prevent Trump's nomination.
Or if that seemed
illegitimate because he won
the primary, they could
have renounced him.
They could have
refused to endorse him.
The Republican Party was
the one group of individuals
with the power to isolate Trump.
Some tried.
Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud.
His promises are as worthless
as a degree from Trump University.
This is the party of Abraham Lincoln.
This is not the party of
David Duke, Donald Trump.
But most Republican leaders didn't.
I'm gonna continue to avoid weighing in
on the presidential contest at this point.
I don't really know him.
We're gonna obviously get to know
each other if he gets the nomination.
And we'll cross those
bridges when we get to it.
And he could be our nominee.
But I think I don't want to
comment on something hypothetical.
It was vertigo-inducing
because it showed me that
either I had gone crazy or
everybody else had gone crazy.
Mona Charen's conservative credentials
were earned in the Reagan White House.
She was surprised by what she
was seeing among Republicans.
I didn't know what
world I was living in.
It felt really Alice in
Wonderland-esque.
The things I thought
were solid were not.
And it was very disorienting.
Republican Congressman Mark Sanford,
once the governor of South Carolina,
was not as surprised.
At that time, a number of people
were just thinking, this can't go far.
Therefore, I'll just look
the other way because...
it doesn't matter.
And because the thing that drives 99% of
the folks in politics is self-preservation.
You know, to make noise might not be good
in terms of my own political interests.
Therefore, I'll stay quiet.
This makes back-to-back victories
for Donald Trump, dominating his third...
They expected Trump to flame out.
Donald Trump is the
projected winner of the new...
We love Nevada.
We love Nevada.
But in state after state,
he was racking up wins.
Marco Rubio was suspending...
Jeb Bush dropped out,
ending his dream of...
The last viable Republican
opponent: Ted Cruz.
Voters have a right to know...
No, no, you're the liar.
You're the lying guy up here.
It was really ugly.
I mean, it got as deep into the mud as I
can remember any primary contest getting.
I mean, Donald Trump
was, you know, implying that
Ted Cruz's wife was unattractive.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
I don't get angry often.
But you mess with my wife, you mess
with my kids, that'll do it every time.
Donald, you're a sniveling coward
and leave Heidi the hell alone.
If Ted Cruz brought
a knife to the fight,
Donald Trump brought a
nuclear-tipped bazooka.
You know, his father was
with Lee Harvey Oswald
prior to Oswald
being, you know, shot.
I mean, the whole
thing is ridiculous.
What is this right prior to...
Cruz had watched as
this man humiliated him,
humiliated his wife,
humiliated his father
in the most brazen
and despicable way.
And he felt at that moment
that if he was going to lose,
he needed to get a
few things off of his chest.
The man is utterly amoral.
Morality does not exist for him.
If this man were to become president,
think about the next five years.
The boasting.
The pathological lying.
The bullying.
Think about your kids coming
back and emulating this.
The danger of what was unfolding
between Cruz and Trump at that time was,
"You're a liar," "No, you're a liar."
Okay, you get a
lot of that in politics.
But in this case, what Ted Cruz
was saying was absolutely the truth.
And a lot of people in sort
of political circles in D.C.
knew it to be so, but
weren't saying a word.
In the end, Ted Cruz would do the one
thing Donald Trump hadn't back in Iowa.
Concede.
We gave it everything we've got.
But the voters chose another path.
We are suspending our campaign.
Ted Cruz was an object lesson
in what the Trump movement
could do, even to a fairly reputable,
rock-ribbed conservative
like Ted Cruz.
You saw Trump sweep
Cruz onto the sidelines.
That was a lesson
for the entire party.
You know, if that could happen to
Ted Cruz, that could happen to anyone.
Presumptive GOP presidential
nominee Donald Trump is celebrating...
Donald Trump is promising
to make a big effort
to unify the GOP over his
presumptive nomination.
Can the candidate who lives by
slash-and-burn calm Republican jitters...
As the presumptive nominee
arrived in Washington...
Trump meeting with Republican
lawmakers on Capitol Hill today...
...closed-door meetings
with a Republican lawmaker...
The Republican
establishment faced a decision.
...which will try to reassure
some members of Congress...
Republicans had a crossroads in 2016.
You can win power...
...but it's going to
be with this person...
...who has said all of these
different things over the years...
...that are offensive... ...who has a
spotty record on business and politics.
You can win power...
...but it comes at this cost.
Senate Leader Mitch McConnell...
...and Speaker of the House Paul
Ryan... ...were both deeply skeptical...
...even as they publicly
endorsed Trump.
In 2016...
I mean, there were countless Republicans...
who were very, very nervous...
...about what a Trump presidency
would mean for the country...
...and for the party.
There was a lot of concern.
One phone call...
...would help change that.
Mike Pence gets the
phone call late one night...
...the familiar voice of
Donald Trump saying,
"Mike, it's gonna be great.
It's gonna be amazing."
And Pence says...
"I don't know if there's
a question in there...
...but if there is,
the answer is yes."
And they laugh, and he
goes on to join the ticket.
Donald Trump making it official,
that Indiana Governor Mike Pence...
...will be his running mate.
The fact that Mike
Pence joined the ticket...
...implicitly said, that if I can
tolerate this man, so can you.
Well, he lent his credibility...
...in Evangelical
Christian circles...
...to the cause of Donald Trump.
I'm a Christian, a conservative,
and a Republican, in that order.
And Pence had his own reasons
for deciding to join Trump.
Mike Pence, the governor of
Indiana, is in deep trouble politically.
It's not clear that he'll be
able to win a second term.
And so, here is Donald Trump...
...with the ability to offer Mike
Pence a lifeline unlike any other...
...and put him on
the national ticket.
Mike Pence would grab
that political lifeline...
For the sake of the
sanctity of life...
Join Trump...
For the sake of the Second
Amendment of the Constitution...
And help win over
conservative Republicans.
For the sake of all the
God-given liberties
that are enshrined in our Constitution.
Ohio, we must decide here and now...
...that the next president
to make appointments...
to the Supreme Court of the United
States will be President Donald Trump.
We often see throughout history,
political leaders contributing to...
...damaging situations for democracy.
Because what they're doing is
giving legitimacy to a political leader
who actually doesn't
deserve any legitimacy.
And so, it's a kind of devil's bargain
that gets made out of personal ambition.
What's so remarkable is
the degree to which that
repeats itself throughout history.
And yet, it seems as if
people often don't learn.
You know, and that's again a kind
of tragic thing about Democratic politics.
It's game time for the Republican
National Convention and...
...the convention expected to
fire up the GOP base behind...
...where Republican delegates
will soon be gathering
to officially nominate
Donald Trump.
By the start of their convention,
Republican leaders had, at least
publicly, come to terms with Trump.
The next time that there's a
State of the Union address...
I don't know where Joe Biden
or Barack Obama are going to be,
but you'll find me
right there on the rostrum
with Vice President Mike Pence
and President Donald Trump.
There was a lot of pressure towards
the end, to sort of just go along...
...because, you know,
what's the real harm?
He's going to lose.
In the end, it was still going
to be a Clinton presidency.
So, with Donald Trump
in the White House,
Senate Republicans will
build on the work we've done
and pass more bills into
law than any Senate in years.
There's just one holdout,
and it's Ted Cruz.
As runner-up, Ted Cruz had a
prominent speaking slot at the convention.
He had to decide what
to say about Trump.
If you talked to Ted
Cruz, he would say
that it was a hard
decision at the time.
I know that he and
his people struggled
with how hard he was gonna
go after Donald Trump...
...whether he was gonna
name him at all in the speech.
His advisers were split.
Most argued against
legitimizing Trump.
They're saying, "Ted, not only did
this man humiliate you and your family...
...but this man is undemocratic.
This man is anti-constitutional.
This man is downright un-American,
the way that he talks about things.
And you want to be on
the right side of history here.
This isn't just about 2016 or 2020.
In the long run, you will be proven right
by standing firm in your convictions...
...and your fidelity to the Constitution
and to the principles that you believe in."
Cruz's campaign manager,
Jeff Roe, was on the other side.
If you're not gonna endorse, then
you probably shouldn't give the speech.
Because it's his convention.
It's his party.
And, you know, just
pass on the speech.
And, you know, if you want to give the
speech, then you probably need to endorse.
It took days for Cruz to decide.
He tells them his decision,
that he's not going to endorse
Donald Trump in his speech.
And they ask him why.
And Cruz looks at them and he says,
"History isn't kind to the man
who holds Mussolini's jacket."
And that's that.
His decision's made.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
In that moment, Ted Cruz
would withhold his endorsement.
We deserve leaders
who stand for principle.
Who unite us all
behind shared values.
In fact, that convention was
in Donald Trump's hip pocket.
And that speech went
down very, very badly.
That is the standard we
should expect from everybody.
The crowd, hungry for an
endorsement, was restless.
Standing on the stage in
front of the Republican Party,
Ted Cruz basically
came out and hanged himself.
Vote your conscience.
Vote for candidates up and
down the ticket, who you trust
to defend our freedom.
The crowd turned against Ted Cruz.
They were suddenly all
with Trump and against Cruz.
Booing him, trying
to get him off stage.
Get off the stage!
Get off the stage!
God bless each and every one of you.
And God bless the
United States of America.
To the surprise of Republican
leaders, a new political base, fervent,
angry MAGA Republicans,
have made its voice heard.
The biggest misunderstanding
of the Trump era is that
he leads the base and the
base goes where he does.
I actually think that he's created a
monster that he doesn't even control.
And he is actually very much driven
by the base, not the other way around.
That night, immediately
following the speech,
Ted Cruz went into a bunker
with his closest advisers.
And I can tell you from talking to two of
the people who were in the room with him
in those moments that
there was a real belief
that his political career
might be finished.
Cruz returned to Texas,
facing an uncertain political future.
He was receiving lots of advice,
imploring advice, saying to him, in effect,
"Ted, this is bad for the party,
it's bad for Trump, but it's also really
bad for you and for your future if
you don't get on board the Trump train."
He made his decision.
He would endorse the man
he'd called "a pathological liar,"
and go out on the
campaign trail for him.
Do you look forward to
calling Mr. Trump "Mr. President?"
Well, I'm here campaigning
for Donald Trump.
I'll make a point. I'm getting ready
to get on a gigantic airplane that
has Donald Trump's name
painted on the side of it.
If a guy goes out and calls your wife
these certain things and says these
certain things about your father,
says these certain things about you,
how you get up and say, "It's all cool
with me, you're my buddy."
I don't get it.
That's not real.
It's about political self-preservation and
trying to somehow stay politically relevant
and being blinded to
one's political ambitions.
And a lot of folks will
give up most anything
as they're slaves to their
own political ambition.
Republican leaders had
backed a risky candidate.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Now, yet another warning,
as Trump offered a vision
of a president as strongman.
The crime and violence
that today afflicts our nation
will soon, and I mean
very soon, come to an end.
He was offering himself
as the strongman.
He was offering himself as
a leader who would do things
that no other leader would
do to bring order to the country.
The time for action has come.
Nobody knows the
system better than me.
Which is why I alone can fix it.
"I alone can fix it" is a pretty striking,
classic strongman statement.
He was making himself the solution.
So that I can be your champion in the
White House, and I will be your champion.
In democracy, at least in American
democracy, in theory, the individual is
supposed to be smaller than
the institution of the presidency.
And here we had an individual
who was blatantly casting
himself as bigger than any
institution in the United States.
Nothing in that reflected
the kind of personal or
democratic humility that
would be required of that office.
I make this promise.
We will make America strong again.
Once an outsider, Trump's politics were
now becoming the Republican Party's.
And we will make America great again.
God bless you, and good night.
I love you.
This was about winning an election.
This was about maintaining power.
That's what this was about.
It is truly remarkable now to look back
and see some of the things that Republican
officials were willing to overlook,
were willing to enable, and were willing
to just kind of explain away for the
sake of moving the candidate along.
The Republican establishment
hadn't expected Donald Trump to win.
And he had already signaled what
he was prepared to do if he didn't.
The election is being rigged in an
effort to elect Hillary Clinton president.
It's one big ugly lie.
In the end, Trump
didn't need to go there.
He defied the odds.
What Donald Trump understood
better than everyone else
is that voters weren't
playing by any playbook at all.
They didn't care.
They liked that Donald Trump
was tearing up the playbook.
They liked that he wasn't
following someone else's rules.
Donald Trump will be the 45th
president of the United States.
His journey to the White House,
unlike any that's come before,
and the first big step
of his presidency...
The Republicans now had the
Senate, the House, and the presidency.
But would they have
any control over Trump?
Trump really
represents a lump of clay
to many Republicans
early in his presidency
that can be formed
and shaped by them.
Many of them still viewed him
as sort of a clown, as a buffoon,
as somebody who was not
to be taken terribly seriously.
But, if they viewed him as an idiot,
they viewed him as a
useful idiot at that point.
Hi.
Morning.
Welcome to the dawn of a new
unified Republican government.
Feels really good
to say that, actually.
They thought he would
be easy to manipulate.
And it turned out he was the
one doing the manipulating.
For me, that's really so much the
bottom line of the Trump presidency
and the Trump episode in terms of the
Republican Party and conservative elites.
They all thought they were going
to manage him, to manipulate him.
And he ended up being the
one doing the manipulating.
(chanting): You will not replace us!
The torch-wielding white
nationalists coming face to face...
The dangers of ignoring
the warnings about
Trump would become
clear in Charlottesville.
...demonstration by white nationalists
at the University of Virginia...
Jews will not replace us!
A moment that would
foreshadow what was to come.
White lives matter!
White lives matter!
Charlottesville was clearly
a harbinger of the future.
Because it was an expression of the white
supremacist part of the Republican base
and of what was stirring in the
country that Trump had tapped into.
The next day, as Neo-Nazis
and white nationalists gathered...
Hi, hello, how're y'all doing?
...former Ku Klux Klan leader David
Duke invoked Trump's campaign.
We are determined to
take our country back.
We're gonna fulfill the
promises of Donald Trump.
That's what we believed in.
That's why we voted for Donald Trump.
Armed militiamen also showed up...
Some of the same
characters and groups would
participate in the
insurrection on January 6th.
Armed militiamen, which
was a very jarring image...
Charlottesville was a long time coming.
When Charlottesville
happened, you could easily
say the same thing you
could say about January 6th.
This was inevitable.
It was always heading toward this.
You have a president
of the United States
who is willing to give
tacit approval
to some of the darkest
elements of American politics.
A lot of these forces have been part of
the American fabric since its inception.
But what candidate Trump
and then President Trump
and by default a number of
leaders in the Republican Party did...
...was give them space.
Was give them oxygen.
A man drives his
vehicle into the crowd
killing Heather Heyer
and wounding others.
This was an incident
that was clearly the tale...
...of these far-right white
supremacist powers,
emboldened and out of control.
Panic and horror in Charlottesville.
A car slams into a crowd
of counter-protesters.
A woman was killed when a man drove
his car into a crowd, injuring 19 others.
For Speaker of the House Paul
Ryan and other Republicans...
...shock at what
happened in Charlottesville.
He wasn't in Washington at the time.
We were needing to kind of
track him down and discuss it.
But it was very clear, obviously, right
away that this needed to be condemned.
And that was clearly one
of the fundamental moments
where you have to make
clear what's right and wrong.
There was no question about that.
Ryan and other Republicans were
watching to see how Trump would react.
So, you know, as far as I'm concerned,
that was a horrible, horrible day.
I think there's blame on both sides.
And I have no doubt about it.
And you don't have
any doubt about it either.
But you also had people that
were very fine people on both sides.
I'm a reporter who has
reported on race for a long time.
And I never would have imagined the person
in the office of the president calling
people who go to a Nazi
rally very fine people.
But you had many
people in that group other
than Neo-Nazis and
white nationalists, okay?
Thank you all very much.
Thank you.
What about the Nazis who support you?
It's probably the first time where the
country realizes this is gonna get bad.
And it is the beginning of a time in
America where people realize that America
is not just a place where
racist ideals can exist,
but it's a place where racist ideals
can be fueled by the White House.
That will have a tremendously
positive impact on race relations.
For Republican outlier
Bob Corker, it was the
clearest sign yet of
the threat Trump posed.
It was very evident that
it was a dog whistle to
the groups who had come
in and done what they did.
Not unlike, by the way,
the first video that was
sent out after the January
6th event at the House.
I mean, we love you, we, you know...
The president evidently did not
want to discourage that type of activity.
As a matter of fact,
wanted to encourage it.
Very fine people, on both sides.
Troubled by Trump, Paul
Ryan tried to walk a fine line.
One of Paul Ryan's
fundamental problems with him
is his racism, the way
that he flirts with racists.
Seemingly, anybody who supports him is okay
in his book, no matter what they believe.
He issued a strong
statement on Twitter,
but didn't mention the president by name.
"We must be clear.
White supremacy is repulsive.
This bigotry is counter to
all this country stands for.
There can be no moral ambiguity."
Trump took it personally.
He called Ryan.
Trump is on the phone with Paul Ryan
and saying to the House Speaker,
"Paul, you don't understand me and
you don't understand my political appeal."
"These are my people."
I'm standing with my people.
Ryan says, "I don't care if
they're your so-called your people,
you have to disavow
the white nationalists."
Trump says, "You don't get it, Paul.
These are my people."
When Trump says that "those
are my people," he's not inaccurate.
He knows who has
been coming to his rallies
and who has been lending support to him.
And really,
more implicitly, he's
saying that "These are our people."
As in, "This is now the core
of the Republican Party."
Which is something that Paul Ryan
seems to be loath to admit or to recognize.
In Washington, Republicans were pressed
to respond about Trump and Charlottesville.
It's a test.
"What are you going
to do or say about this?"
Because almost all of them
disagree with him and felt,
in fact, were disgusted by it.
"The hate and bigotry
witnessed in Charlottesville
does not reflect American values."
Mitch McConnell, some of
the other Republican leaders,
they would come out or
tweet or release statements
that talked about how
much they hated racism.
"Race-based supremacy movements
have no place in our melting pot culture."
But very few, and very few top Republicans,
would say the president was wrong.
Vice President Mike
Pence dodged the issue.
Do you agree with the president
that there were good people
among the
white supremacist protesters?
What happened in
Charlottesville was a tragedy.
And I stand with the president,
and I stand by those words.
He certainly was appalled at
the events in Charlottesville.
I have heard him say
that behind closed doors.
The problem is, this is a White
House where if he said that,
it would be in direct
contradiction to
sort of the sidestepping
that the president was doing.
But by doing that, when you're Mike
Pence, you're enabling it to happen again.
So how do we account
for the limp, listless,
embarrassing silence
from elected Republicans?
No. A tweet doesn't
cut it in this situation.
It just doesn't.
In the end, Paul Ryan and the Republican
leadership would move on,
not confront Trump about the
extremists among his supporters.
They also have to reckon with
a political consequence from
allowing him to define the
party in the way he is doing.
Senator, do you mind
stopping for just 30 seconds?
It was a constant decision we
were having to make every day.
Some things were pretty fundamental,
like Charlottesville, where you had to
speak with a moral voice
about what was right and wrong.
But it was also untenable
to always be at war with him.
You can be fully
against Donald Trump.
You just can't be a Republican
in Congress doing that.
When the Republican
Party didn't push back,
that was the moment you realized
that their surrender was complete.
That they were not ever
going to stand against him.
If you didn't break with Donald
Trump for Charlottesville,
then basically you
were saying, we're done.
That was a...
The acquiescence of Republicans
after Charlottesville, I think was...
...it was really an inflection point.
There were a few elected Republicans
who pushed back against the president,
who warned about the
threat he posed to democracy.
One of them was Jeff Flake.
Jeff Flake had a fundamental criticism of
Donald Trump as an authoritarian leader
who was prepared to
trample on, you know, on the
constitutional norms and
the pillars of democracy.
And he was prepared to stand up and
say that, not just once, but repeatedly.
And he did a book about it.
This is not a behavior
that we should condone.
We shouldn't be okay with this.
This is not normal.
Flake would become an example
of the danger of speaking out.
Well, I'm thrilled to be back in
Phoenix, in the great state of Arizona.
Flake watched as Trump attacked
him in front of his own voters.
They all said, "Please, Mr. President,
don't mention any names."
So I won't.
I won't.
It's about going back to the base.
To demonstrate how popular
it is to be with the president,
particularly in Jeff's own state.
And nobody wants me
to talk about your senator,
who's weak on borders, weak on crime.
So I won't talk about him.
No, I will not mention any names.
I think he knew at that
time that I was out of step
with a lot of the Republican base,
that he represented more
of their feelings than I did.
Thank you, Arizona.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Jeff Flake decided not
to run for re-election.
Every person who came up who
challenged him, Trump sought to destroy.
Lifelong Republicans,
lifelong conservatives.
He wrote them out of the party.
He made fun of them.
He ridiculed them.
He embarrassed them.
And he destroyed them.
Another target, South Carolina
conservative Republican Mark Sanford,
who had been critical of Trump
and his threat to democracy.
"Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful
to me in my campaign to MAGA.
He is MIA and nothing but trouble."
It's not good when you're a
lowly member of Congress and
the President of the United States of
your party is coming out against you.
I mean, it's just not a good movie.
It doesn't work out well.
And it didn't.
Trump endorsed Sanford's
Republican challenger.
"I fully endorse Katie Arrington
for Congress in SC, a state I love."
Sanford was a member of
the hard right Freedom Caucus.
He believed they would stand by him.
At that time, Justin Amash, I'll never
forget this, stood before, you know,
the Freedom Caucus and said, "Look, if
Trump will come after Sanford like he did,
then ultimately he'll
come after any one of us."
And everybody is, like, looking at their
feet, looking away, looking at their toes.
And these are the folks that you thought
were your friends, and you're going,
"Oh, my goodness.
Where am I?"
It's mind-blowing.
Mark Sanford lost his primary.
More than three dozen Republicans
decided not to run for re-election.
Any particular individual
who popped his head out
above the foxhole was
gonna have it shot off.
What they never did
was all join hands.
And that would have been,
on many occasions,
a much better and a winning strategy.
And they never did see
that if they acted in concert,
they would have a lot
more, a lot more power.
As Trump cleansed the
GOP of his critics,
Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell took notice.
We've known now that he did
not like Donald Trump as a person.
He didn't believe that this was someone
who necessarily should be in charge,
should be the president
of the United States.
He had concerns about some of
his autocratic tendencies as well.
But McConnell had other priorities.
Mitch McConnell needed Donald
Trump's signature on a tax cut.
He also needed conservative nominees
that Mitch McConnell could easily sort of
shepherd through the Senate, and then
he would have his conservative judges.
McConnell traveled to the
White House to make a deal.
McConnell comes in,
sits down in the Oval Office.
And essentially,
they come to a truce.
Essentially, they come
to an understanding.
"Let's not fight because
there's no point in that.
Let's figure out what we can get
done together where we actually agree."
They had decided at that
point that they were gonna
try to shelve everything that
had happened up till then.
And they were going
to focus on two things.
They were gonna focus on judges.
And they were gonna
focus on tax reform.
And they did.
And they did.
In return, McConnell would
give Trump what he wanted most.
Loyalty.
From that October 2017
meeting on, basically,
Mitch McConnell and Donald
Trump made their truce.
Donald Trump, arguably, is the winner
because Mitch McConnell gets judges.
Donald Trump gets the party.
Donald Trump is now the owner, lock,
stock, and barrel, of the Republican Party.
It is under new management.
It's under Trump management.
One of the things that I've discovered
looking at similar situations throughout
history is that the establishment
politician possesses a level of hubris
and sees the outsider and thinks,
ah-ha, this is somebody I can
use for my own personal ambition.
And this is a trend that
repeats itself over and over.
And I think we saw something analogous
happen in the United States where
mainstream politicians
overestimate their own capacities.
It looks like President Trump is
gonna get his Christmas wish.
Trump and McConnell, they've actually had
a pretty successful couple of months here.
The bargain was consummated in public,
as Republicans gathered to celebrate.
Trump setting a record for
getting his judicial nominee...
Judges.
Bill Gorsuch plus a record
number of circuit court judicial...
And a tax cut.
The most sweeping rewrite of
our tax code movement was...
The tax cuts are the payoff, right?
The tax cuts are what you get
for putting up with everything else.
Republicans cheered as they passed the most
sweeping tax overhaul in three decades.
This is what we get
as part of the trade-off.
We end up living with
this clownish, scandalous,
racist behavior in the White House.
But in trade, what we get is this great
freedom to write the bill as we want,
to cut the taxes, and to
finally pass big legislation.
I guess it's very simple when
you think you haven't heard
this expression, but we are
making America great again.
You haven't heard that, have you?
At the ceremony, McConnell and the other
Republicans demonstrated their loyalty,
praising the President.
Well, let me just say, Mr. President,
you made the case for the tax bill,
but this has been a
year of extraordinary
accomplishment for
the Trump administration.
We've cemented the Supreme
Court right of center for a generation.
You've ended the over-regulation
of the American economy.
Thank you, Mr. President,
for all you're doing.
They're saying it because they've been
well-trained by Trump that in order to get
anything that they want,
they have to not just
praise him, but be
obsequious in their praise.
Something this big could not have been done
without exquisite presidential leadership.
Mr. President, thank you for
getting us over the finish line.
Thank you for getting
us where we are.
They were warned over and over and
over again about Donald Trump, who he was,
what he was capable of doing,
and they looked the other way.
They may have known the same thing,
but they thought they could ride the tiger.
They thought that the
trade-off was worth it.
They thought, well, how
bad can it possibly be?
What could he possibly do?
I serve with him every day.
President Donald Trump
is a man of his word.
He's a man of action.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you for your leadership.
Thank you for your love for this
country and the people of this country.
You will make America great again.
Rationalization is a very powerful
force, it turns out, in human psychology.
It was a funny kind of choice,
though, because it wasn't, you know,
we read history books, and it's like, this
is the moment, and you choose this or that.
But there are also ways in which you choose
gradually, you know, and incrementally.
And the choice is more of an accommodation
and a rationalization and an enabling.
It's not a sort of, I'm standing
up here and choosing this path.
Some did that.
But an awful lot went along,
and they kept on going along.
And then they had to rationalize
why they were going along,
so they became sort of
enthusiastic about going along.
And you can rationalize your
way into a series of choices,
which becomes a very
damaging and dangerous choice.
Starting with E17, H.
Okay, we're gonna start
with the tag from the previous...
Good evening from New
York, I'm Chris Hayes.
Almost every day, we see the story
of the corruption of this presidency.
This is a president who has overseen the
most corrupt administration in our history.
On the left, they were attacking
the president at every turn.
For Democrats, they had to figure out how
to navigate this landscape in which
the most vile, misogynistic,
xenophobic, racist,
violent, volatile elements
of his rhetoric were okay.
With 60 million people.
Donald Trump, again,
being a schmuck, thinking...
And so, where does that leave you?
What I have here is a copy
of Donald Trump's tax returns.
The Trump administration's
ongoing challenges with the truth...
And I think that it was very difficult
for them to figure out what their position
would be outside of simply
opposing Donald Trump.
What it means to have a
president stained by racism.
The president of the
United States is racist.
And into that vacuum came a kind
of perpetual outrage system of the
hyper-examination of
everything that he did.
Who can stop him? He's the
president of the United States.
We can, and we have to.
Our job is making sure that Donald
Trump is a one-term president.
The only thing that we can do is
to start that impeachment inquiry.
We must open an impeachment inquiry.
Impeachment.
Impeachment.
-Impeachment.
-Impeachment.
Today I say, "Impeach 45."
Because we're gonna go in there,
we're going to impeach the mother(bleep).
It became a partisan media maelstrom.
Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Their only remaining principle
is hatred of the president.
Democrats in this country hate this
president more than they love America.
Just another example of that,
it's Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The only thing that sort of
saved Trump and restored
Republican Party unity was
Democrats overplaying their hands.
Absolutely. I cannot tell you the amount of
dysfunction that this
president is advancing.
And stretching too far in their attempts
to convince the American public of what
the American public in
many cases already knew.
Because the president
of the United States
is a dangerous, unstable,
lying propagandist.
The racism, the egomaniac that he is.
Because of this relentless day-in
and day-out onslaught against Trump,
it got to a place where many voters
who had been reluctant to support Trump in
2016 came to view an attack
on Trump as an attack on them.
No matter what, you continue
to make excuses for this man.
Doesn't that make you just
as bad, if not worse, than him?
The partisan fever
escalated with impeachment.
I'm announcing the House
of Representatives moving
forward with an official
impeachment inquiry.
The ultimate constitutional
check on a president.
The president must
be held accountable.
No one is above the law.
Republicans were once again
at a crossroads with the president.
Liz Cheney, arch-conservative
from Wyoming, led their response.
Liz Cheney is the sort of
political daughter of Dick Cheney.
The kind of Darth Vader figure in the
Republican Party, despised by Democrats.
And Liz Cheney is a
chip off the old block.
She is very much the
hawk that her father was,
very much the conservative
that her father was.
Cheney became a
staunch defender of Trump.
Against Democrats' charges,
he abused his office by pressuring
the Ukrainian president
to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.
The president pressured Ukraine's
leader about eight times.
Eight times, and that's...
Our Democratic colleagues
have been working to
remove this president
since the day he was elected.
Cheney led the charge in defending Trump
while excoriating Nancy Pelosi and her
Democrats for what she
believed was an unjust process
and essentially a witch
hunt against the president.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say if
you are angry at the president or you are
afraid you can't beat
him in the next election,
that you can just assume
impeachable conduct.
Yet that's what the
Democrats are doing.
Cheney held the Republicans
in the House together.
None of them voted for impeachment.
On this vote, Article 1 is adopted.
It was not just that they like Trump.
It's that they really don't like
the people who don't like Trump.
So if the Democrats are up there
screaming and hollering
and making a big fuss out of it,
then the natural reaction among
a lot of Republicans is to kind of
be contrarian
and say, well, wait a second,
and to look for reasons to justify
their vote to save Trump in office.
Cheney has said she
doesn't regret her vote.
But Republican Congressman
Adam Kinzinger does.
That's one of my greatest regrets is
not voting for the first impeachment.
One of my criticisms of how the
Democrats handled that was they rushed it.
And I remember it gave us, frankly, it gave
me an excuse to vote against impeachment.
You know, when you're stuck in
that kind of a polarized moment,
you're always
looking for kind of a way out.
And that's to my shame
that that happened.
Donald Trump, just the third
American president to be impeached.
...deeply divided moment
playing out in American history.
In the Senate trial, Mitch McConnell
was in lockstep with the president.
He refused to even hear witnesses.
Donald Trump is his conduit to power,
and he wasn't going to put that at risk.
It was an indication of how far they
were willing to go for Donald Trump.
That they would vote against
even hearing witnesses at a
time when there were some
substantial issues being raised.
But the Republican Party had become
absolutely determined to look the other
way and to enable Donald Trump
and not hold him accountable.
In this article of impeachment, 52
senators have pronounced him not guilty.
Donald John Trump, president
of the United States,
is not guilty as charged in
the first article of impeachment.
This is what the end result is.
It was a disgusting display.
I think there was profanity
used, if memory serves.
It was all bull.
We were treated
unbelievably unfairly.
He thought he was bulletproof.
It didn't constrain him.
He had just beaten impeachment.
And I think that did have an effect on
his future conduct, and not a good one.
And Mitch McConnell, I want to
tell you, you did a fantastic job.
The acquittal in the impeachment trial
really just fit into this bigger pattern,
in which he became more audacious and
more contemptuous of the rules
that other people had to abide
by, and more confirmed in the belief
that those normal
rules did not apply to him.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Everything that happened after the failure
to convict in that first impeachment,
including Trump's attempt to steal
the election,
his fomenting of an insurrection,
a violent insurrection at the Capitol,
it flowed from that permission slip
that he had been given
after the first impeachment.
Our great national wound of
race has opened up once again.
A new wave of grief in
the form of police brutality.
The police killing of
George Floyd sparked a
massive wave of protests
against police brutality.
People demand justice for George Floyd
and call for an end to racial inequality.
Fresh from his acquittal, once again,
Trump was called to
respond to the issue of race.
A nationwide re-examination
of race and justice...
The crossroads of race and trauma.
With the same question,
why does this keep happening?
I can't breathe!
I can't breathe!
I can't breathe!
And once again, his words and actions
would tear at the fabric of democracy.
Trump's instinct is to fuel
the fire, not to put it out.
"These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of
George Floyd, and I won't let that happen.
Any difficulty and we
will assume control but,
when the looting
starts, the shooting starts.
Thank you!"
He's not calming things down.
He's amping it up.
Say his name!
George Floyd!
President Trump making matters worse.
Adding, "When the looting
starts, the shooting starts."
Mirroring a racist phrase
that was used back in the '60s.
"When the looting starts,
the shooting starts,"
meaning they would not
hesitate to use lethal force,
violence necessary to subdue
these people who they disagreed with
on the other part of
the political spectrum.
George Floyd!
George Floyd!
George Floyd!
Our nation has been gripped by
professional anarchists, violent mobs,
arsonists, looters,
criminals, rioters, Antifa.
It's Trump as reality TV star put together
with Trump as strong man
to send a signal of what he had
said in that 2016 convention speech,
that, "I alone can fix it."
I will fight to protect you.
I am your president of law and order.
Outside the White House, protesters
were gathering across the street.
Also massing, law enforcement.
As we speak, I am dispatching thousands
and thousands of heavily armed soldiers,
military personnel, and law enforcement
officers to stop the rioting, looting,
vandalism, assaults, and the
wanton destruction of property.
I saw a ton of Secret Service,
law enforcement, and riot gear.
The Attorney General,
parading around like some sort
of dictator, to be honest with you,
with rows and rows
of law enforcement.
And I thought to myself, I just knew.
My gut told me. I was like,
something bad is about to happen.
I mean, I was there that
day, and all of a sudden,
it was sort of like the running
of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
I just heard this chaos
rumbling down the street.
It was a horrific moment.
It was not a scene we've seen
in America in a long, long time.
Watching armed officers
in the nation's capital
forcefully clear what were
largely peaceful protesters
calling for racial
justice in America.
It was a moment I never
thought I would see in this country.
It was a photo op, and a message.
Trump was in charge.
Seeing that image of him walking
across Lafayette Square and
waving the Bible around at St.
John's Church is really unbelievable.
And it feels like you're
not in America at that point.
And if you saw this, a clip of this on
television from some other country,
you'd think, oh, that's one
of those unstable democracies.
Most Republican leaders, again,
would not challenge Trump's actions.
Senator McConnell, was what the president
did last night the right thing to do?
Was clearing the protesters
an abuse of power?
...walked across the street to the
church. Was that the right thing to do?
Didn't really see it.
...about what happened at
the White House last night?
Sorry, I'm late for lunch.
Was it an abuse of power, what we
saw last night outside the White House?
By the protesters, yes.
By the violence, yes.
By that point, they had
learned a lot from him.
You know, Republicans in Congress
understood that if you were able to point
the finger at somebody else, you
never really had to apologize for anything.
You could always be on offense.
I was grateful to see
President Trump's leadership.
With their support, Trump turned
a moment about race in America
into an opportunity
to project his power.
I have strongly recommended to every
governor to deploy the National Guard
in sufficient numbers, that
we dominate the streets.
Republicans weren't
gonna push back because
they understood this is
who Donald Trump was.
He was enjoying that.
He loved this.
Antifa, the radical left, run down
your streets, riot in your streets,
burn down your stores,
beat you over the...
This kind of talk about
Antifa in the streets
and Black Lives
Matters in the streets
as being this existential
threat to democracy...
This is a strategy, of course,
that authoritarian-minded leaders
have used throughout history.
The kind of threat of disorder,
the threat of chaos, to try to pull
reasonable voters back to your side.
Frankly, we did win this election.
The Fox News decision desk
can now project that former
Vice President Joe Biden will
win Pennsylvania and Nevada.
He is President-elect
Joseph Robinette Biden...
...become the 46th
president of the United States.
The greatest threat to
American democracy
began to take shape in the
hours and days after the election.
The West Wing was a ghost town.
No one was even coming in.
And the president didn't
come down from the residence
for several days after
it was called for Biden.
Alyssa Farah Griffin had
been the communications
director for Mark Meadows
and the Freedom Caucus,
Press Secretary for Vice
President Mike Pence,
and was the Trump White
House communications director.
I passed into the Oval Office just
to kind of see how he was doing.
He seemed just
kind of resigned to it.
There was one moment where he
was watching Joe Biden on TV and says,
"Can you believe I
lost to this guy?"
So there was an acknowledgment, but then
it went completely a different direction.
He had questioned elections before,
with the Emmys and the Iowa caucuses.
And an old friend told him
he'd help him do it again.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New
York mayor, his personal lawyer.
Trump gives the keys, essentially, to
Rudy Giuliani, not his campaign lawyers.
He says to Rudy, "Do what you
need to do to help me stay here."
If we don't fix this, Sean, we'll
never have a free and fair election,
at least for the next 30 or 40 years.
There is strong evidence that
this was an election that in
at least three or four states
and possibly ten, it was stolen.
The reality is dead people voted.
Over 300,000 ballots
were counted in secret...
It was a pivotal moment.
Senate leader Mitch McConnell
had said privately that Trump had lost.
Josh Holmes was
one of his key advisers.
The view at this
point initially is, look,
this looks like it's probably
over from our perspective.
The margins are large enough where
it's not triggering automatic
recounts in some of these places.
It just, it felt off.
It felt like it wasn't gonna
be able to get to the,
you know, a victorious
outcome for President Trump.
But McConnell
wouldn't say it publicly.
He knows Trump has lost, but he
does not want to anger Trump.
Mr. Leader, can you tell us if
you've seen any evidence of
election fraud that you think
might overturn the election results?
All right, folks, let's wrap it up.
-Thank you very much.
-All right, guys, let's go, come on.
But McConnell chooses silence.
-All right, guys, come on, let's go.
-All right, thank you.
He does not acknowledge Biden's victory
because he's trying to keep Trump happy.
He's trying to placate Trump.
I heard from a specific
senator who said,
"Mitch has told us to stay quiet
against the president in this period."
And I think that led to a lot of
what otherwise would be kind of
influential senators, at least countering
the voice of Donald Trump being silent.
And silence is complicity.
He had seen enough over the last five
years of what kind of a person Trump is,
to know that this was a
dangerous indulgence.
He should have been
looking for an opportunity
to defang Trump while
he had the chance.
That decision keeps Mitch McConnell out of
the crosshairs of Trump and Trump's people.
But more perniciously, that gives
a lead time for the most fantastic
and outrageous conspiratorial
ideas to really just start circulating.
"Most fraudulent Election in history!..."
All we get back is, "Shut up.
You're a conspiracy theorist.
You're attacking the
integrity of our democracy."
You think we're idiots? We're not
backing off this one inch. He won.
It will be impossible to ever know
the true, fair, accurate election results.
That's a fact.
"...fake voters and fraud that miraculously
floated in from everywhere!..."
Right-wing media
was amplifying the lies.
They're gonna try to
steal North Carolina next.
We believe these people are thieves.
You have 138,000 votes that magically
appear that are all 100% Biden votes.
I have a lot of family who
are die-hard Trump supporters.
It was frustrating to me to
talk to my family who'd be like,
"Well, listen, no, I think it was stolen.
He's gonna have another four years."
And I'd be like, "Guys, that's
not true. It was not stolen.
He is not gonna have
another four years."
But then you flip on
the news and some other
senior White House
official is lying to the public.
We have what appears in some
sense to be an immaculate deception.
"There is tremendous evidence
of wide spread voter fraud..."
...Detroit about ballots brought in there,
new ballots in the middle of the night.
They miraculously found enough
ballots to call the state for Biden.
Votes being subtracted
from President Trump
and appearing on the
Biden side of the scale.
What was incredibly shocking to me was the
number of Republicans and lawmakers who,
quote-unquote, should know better...
They are setting the stage to
potentially steal an election...
Who were encouraging the president.
Who were standing by him.
...but Trump has not lost.
Do not concede, Mr. President.
Fight hard.
"20,000 dead people on
the Pennsylvania voters' roll..."
You got more than 10,000 dead people
confirmed in Michigan to have voted.
Georgia, we've been told
10,000 dead people voted.
You might see one of these
prominent Republicans
come on the air and deliver
a fire-and-brimstone speech.
And President Trump won this election, so
everyone who's listening, do not be quiet.
Do not be silent about this.
We cannot...
And you might ask yourself,
do they really believe this?
And the answer in almost
every single case is no.
They don't believe it.
I never once talked to anybody
that believed any of this garbage.
99.9% almost of
congressmen and women in the
Republican Party know
that the election wasn't stolen.
They're just too cowardly to say it.
And frankly, in a
republic, that's frightening.
The Republican Party
enabled Donald Trump
as he riled up his base and as he
convinced his base that, that
the election had been stolen.
And there, for the first
time,
the Republican Party becomes
unambiguously anti-Democratic, right?
They were breaking norms.
They were tolerating
authoritarian behavior.
But the Republicans were not an
authoritarian party until November 2020,
when they, as a collective, refused
to accept defeat in an election.
That was incredibly decisive.
This is a contested election.
Many people are nervous.
The president showing no signs that
he's prepared to concede this election...
As the lies spread, so
did the political unrest.
They're trying to put us
under permanent martial law.
You gotta rise up now!
Now, now, now.
Get out on the streets.
Protest. Show them who you are
and that they can't get away with it.
I don't even care if Trump concedes.
I'm not conceding crap.
This means revolution.
This means war.
We have been already
stationed outside D.C.
as a nuclear option in case they
attempt to remove the president illegally.
America is awakening!
Everything had led to a moment wherein
Trump's people were completely unmotivated
to accept anything other than
unqualified victory as valid.
President Trump flew
over the crowd on his way...
Tens of thousands
of Trump supporters...
Over those weeks, Trump's extremist
followers were preparing for a showdown.
We are the Proud boys!
Supporters of the "Stop the Steal"
movement, they're hearing...
Fk Antifa!
Fk Antifa!
Fk Antifa!
-Fk Antifa!
-Fk Antifa!
There you go!
...saying the election was
being stolen from the president.
When everyday American citizens
get together and fight tyranny...
By the time it becomes clear that
Joe Biden has won the election,
it would have been surprising
had you not seen violence.
-No!
-Fk Antifa!
And if, in fact, the people who are
claiming power represent an existential
threat to the nation,
then why wouldn't you
commit acts of violence
to defend the country?
Stop the steal!
The very real cost and risk of the
president's lies about the election.
Election workers have
received threats of death.
Threatening violence
against these officials
who have been honestly
running the election.
It has all gone too far.
The warning from one Republican
in Georgia was unambiguous.
What you don't have the ability to do,
and you need to step up and say this,
is stop inspiring people to
commit potential acts of violence.
Someone's gonna get hurt, someone's
gonna get shot, someone's gonna get killed.
And it's not right.
All that frustration and all that energy
had to be channeled somewhere.
And it's not surprising that it ended
up being focused on, you know,
the people who are actually doing
the jobs, on the front lines of seeing
through Americans'
elections every year.
Mr. President, you have not
condemned these actions or this language.
Senators, you have not condemned
this language or these actions.
This has to stop.
If you believe that the person
who's supposed to be overseeing
your election process in your county
or your state is inherently corrupt,
or not actually a member of the
political party that you adhere to,
you're not gonna trust that system.
And that system has now
been inherently undermined,
which is going to impact not
just Democrats, but Republicans, too.
At the White House, chaos.
Over a dozen Trump campaign
lawsuits have been dismissed already.
Yet another loss as an
attempt to push back...
They were losing
lawsuits, dozens of them.
Turmoil over the next
steps at the White House.
The beginnings of an exodus
of staff that is bubbling behind...
Senior officials were leaving.
Attorney General William Barr is
leaving the Trump administration early.
Alyssa Farah Griffin was one of them.
I resigned when I started
hearing internally much less about,
you know, he's gonna
come around and accept it.
And started seeing very fringe
figures walking into the West Wing.
And at that point, I knew I didn't
have really any sway over him.
I wasn't going to be
able to impact outcomes.
So I thought that
was my time to leave.
One who stayed?
Farah Griffin's one-time mentor,
Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff.
Mark Meadows was very actively
conducting a misinformation campaign.
He was enabling some of the wild conspiracy
theorists to have Donald Trump's ear.
And he was texting with them and he
was helping to promote the election lies.
It's hard for me to understand how myself
as a 32-year-old woman could have more
political courage than
these, you know,
men who've had these
long careers in Washington.
I've unfortunately seen a
lot of grown men put their
political ambitions ahead of
their integrity in recent years.
I'm still just stunned
by people who weren't,
even in that moment,
willing to do the right thing.
It was six weeks after the election
when Mitch McConnell finally
publicly conceded the reality.
McConnell waited until there was,
there could be absolutely no
doubt about the election results
to come out to
congratulate Joe Biden.
It was on December
15th, that is the day after
each state has certified
its electoral votes.
The Electoral College has spoken.
So today I want to congratulate
President-elect Joe Biden.
He knew that his relationship with
President Trump would
forever change at that moment.
He knew that Trump had
increasingly been trying to
rein in any Republicans that
observed reality at this point.
And the significance of McConnell
saying it's over means it's over.
McConnell and Trump speak by phone.
The president is furious.
He lashes into McConnell.
"What the heck do
you think you're doing?"
Expletives fly.
He says to McConnell,
"You've never been loyal.
You've never been
someone I could trust.
You've never really
been in my corner."
McConnell says almost nothing.
He's done with Trump.
He says one sentence to Trump.
The election is over, you have lost.
And then the call ends.
It's the last time the two speak.
Increasingly angry and desperate,
Trump saw one last chance.
The last opportunity the president saw
to be able to get his way and overturn
the election, overturn
the will of the people,
was the vote in
Congress on January 6th,
where the House and the Senate were coming
together to do their constitutional duty.
And certify the vote of
the Electoral College.
He has a meeting on December
21st with a whole bunch
of his most fervent
supporters in the White House.
People like Louie Gohmert and Matt Gaetz,
and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who hasn't
even yet taken office,
but has just been elected.
Just finished with our meetings
here at the White House this afternoon.
We had a great planning session
for our January 6th objection.
It is really, truly an effort to
overturn a presidential election.
This has gone way beyond, you know,
"We're gonna go out there and make noise
and tell people we won, and we're gonna
try to challenge results in the courts,
and we want recounts
in elections that are close."
This is an effort to
overturn an election that
has already been
certified by all 50 states.
We aren't going to let this election be
stolen by Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Now it's, "Can we
use the blunt force of
Republicans in Congress
to turn over the election?"
Trump's plot to overturn the election
required the help of
Republicans in Congress.
He turned to longtime ally Kevin
McCarthy, the top House Republican.
Trump called him, "My Kevin."
The White House viewed Kevin
McCarthy much as it had viewed him
for the previous four years, which
is as a totally willing accomplice
and enabler of Donald Trump.
At no point in the
run-up to January 6th
did Kevin McCarthy say,
"Enough is enough, folks.
The time to question and
challenge the election is over."
Trump needed McCarthy to get
House Republicans to agree to the plan.
But McCarthy's deputy, Liz
Cheney, wouldn't go along.
Liz Cheney, being a Cheney, was a lifelong
Republican, was a steward of this party,
and was not going to let it move in this
other, crazier direction without a fight.
She wasn't simply going to
become part of the surrender caucus.
Cheney recognizes how
dangerous this moment is.
This is really how
societies find themselves
enmeshed in protracted bloodshed.
This is how democracies fail.
And I'm not sure that other
Republicans made that calculation.
Just days before January 6th, House
Republicans debated whether to support
Trump's plan to not
certify the election results.
There's a conference call with the
full House Republican conference.
All the Republican House
members, and they're debating this,
and Liz Cheney is making
an impassioned argument.
"Don't sign on. The election's over.
Biden has won.
This is unconstitutional, this effort.
Don't do it."
Liz had given a really compelling narrative
about why we have to certify the election.
Kevin came on and said, "Liz only
speaks for herself, not the conference."
McCarthy and the majority of House
Republicans would stick with Trump.
Totally reckless.
It was totally reckless.
There's sort of certain moments in the life
of a democracy where it's most vulnerable.
And those are moments of succession,
when there's an election, when
there's a change of power.
And to play recklessly with this is
going to get a democracy into trouble.
And none of these guys clearly knew this,
or if they did, they seemed not to care.
Because by doing this, they were laying the
seeds for a crisis, which is what happened.
The centerpiece of Trump's plan relied
on his loyal vice president, Mike Pence.
There were some people who were telling
the president that Mike Pence could just
object to electors, that he could
declare Trump the winner of the election,
and all would be good.
Mike Pence owed his office to Donald
Trump, and here was Donald Trump basically
calling in that favor, cashing in those
chips, and saying, "You have the power,
overturn the election results,
and do as I tell you to do."
Pence was reluctant.
As Trump headed
out to a televised rally,
he decided to pressure Pence publicly.
Well, I see the president
is taking the stage.
Let's check in.
And I hope Mike Pence comes
through for us, I have to tell you.
I hope that our great vice
president comes through for us.
He's a great guy.
Pence and his advisers are watching
Trump, and they grow increasingly nervous.
Of course, if he doesn't come
through, I won't like him quite as much.
Trump makes it clear through the
television screen to Pence in Washington,
"You better follow the plan, you
better listen to what I'm saying."
Nah, Mike is a great guy.
He's a... He's a...
For Pence, this is
the moment of truth.
A man that I like a lot...
For three years and
11 months, he has done
whatever he had to do to
stay on Trump's good side.
And now he has reached
the moment of truth.
There's no way to finesse this.
Yes or no, white
or black, pick a side.
What are you gonna do?
Pence had a clear conflict between
what Trump wanted him to do and what the
Constitution and the rule
of law required him to do.
I think he'd managed to navigate those
conflicts in various ways over four years.
Not always, in my view,
in the right way, but he had
turned a blind eye
to an awful lot of things.
But this was such a blatant,
you know, transgression.
With time running
out, Pence looked for a
definitive legal opinion
to get him off the hook.
His staff knew just the judge.
A retired top conservative judge,
J. Michael Luttig, was once on the short
list of Republican Supreme Court justices.
Pence's lawyer called Luttig
in the early morning hours,
told him it was an emergency,
and they needed a
constitutional opinion immediately.
There I was, on the morning of
January 5th, and I had to do this.
So, I did the best I could,
and what that meant was,
I copied and pasted from my iPhone
an email that included
the text of the tweet.
The Constitution does not empower
the Vice President to alter, in any way,
the votes that have been cast.
Neither the President nor the
Vice President has any higher loyalty
than to the Constitution
of the United States.
Luttig's opinion gave Pence
solid ground to defy Trump.
I said that he has no
such authority at all,
and that he must accept,
and the Congress must count,
the Electoral College votes
as they have been cast.
That night, on the Eve of January
6th, Pence met with the President.
This was a moment for Mike Pence to either
stand up or buckle under the pressure.
Ultimately, Pence says to
the President, "I can't do it.
I just can't do it."
And Trump says, "If you can't do it, I
don't even want to be your friend anymore."
You cannot overstate
what was at risk,
had the Vice President
gone along with the plan.
It would have thrown the
country into a constitutional crisis
of a kind that the Constitution
doesn't contemplate.
There is no way that we would have
had a President on Inauguration Day.
Fight for Trump!
The entire event was
designed to intimidate Congress
from doing its
constitutional responsibility.
Trump wanted, in whatever way he could,
to empower people to disrupt that process.
If that resulted in violence, he
obviously was prepared to let that happen.
This election was stolen from
you, from me, and from the country.
You'll never take back
our country with weakness.
You have to show strength
and you have to be strong.
This was mob rule.
This was mob rule in a nutshell.
Donald Trump's last best
hope, he thought, was to stir up
this mob of his own supporters
outside the White House.
Send them down to the Capitol.
Now it is up to Congress to confront
this egregious assault on our democracy.
And after this, we're gonna
walk down, and I'll be there with you.
We're gonna walk
down to the Capitol.
We're going to try and give
our Republicans the kind
of boldness that they need
to take back our country.
Looking back now, of
course, you see the drumbeat.
Fight for Trump!
Fight for Trump!
You see there were a number
of steps and a series of decisions.
And we fight.
We fight like hell.
And if you don't fight like hell, you're
not gonna have a country anymore.
Fight for Trump!
Fight for Trump!
Fight for Trump!
A series of things that leaders
were willing to look the other way on,
or to enable, or to enforce.
I rise to object to the counting of
the electoral ballots from Arizona.
Is the objection signed by a senator?
Yes, it is.
The ultimate culmination of all
of that absolutely led to that day.
Now they're coming down to
a door here, underneath.
The entire Republican Party is
culpable for what happens on January 6th.
When it was already clear that Donald
Trump was willing to condone violence,
when it was already clear that he was
not willing to accept defeat, Republicans,
with a couple of very honorable
exceptions, "humored" him.
They remained silent.
They enabled him.
Hold the wall!
Fight for Trump!
Fight for Trump!
Mike Pence, I hope you're gonna
stand up for the good of our country.
And if you're not, I'm gonna
be very disappointed in you.
When the people came
for the people's house...
If Pence came, we're gonna drag
mother(bleep) through the streets.
And the attackers scaled the walls.
We've just heard that Mike Pence has
betrayed the United States of America!
Boo!
Hang Mike Pence!
Hang Mike Pence!
Hang Mike Pence!
And the mob started
beating the policemen.
What did all these people
do inside of Congress?
All these people who
had fomented this.
All these people who
had enabled the lies.
All these people who
had invited this violence.
What did they do?
They ran.
They went looking for cover.
Oh, you're scared now, mother(bleep).
Break it down!
Break it down!
He's got, he's got a gun!
Oh, (bleep)!
Oh!
We gotta get E.M.S. here!
I think about the fact
that Ashli Babbitt,
who lost her life that
day, was a veteran.
She served our
country in the Air Force.
But she believed people that she thought
she was supposed to trust, who she thought
were supposed to tell her the truth,
telling her that this country you fought
for is now being stolen
because somebody
stole an election and
your vote doesn't count.
I mean, that's horrible.
She would still be alive
today if people did not lie
to her and inspire her
to be there at the Capitol.
I want to quickly bring in Kevin
McCarthy, the House Minority Leader.
Do you condemn this violence?
I want to be very clear.
I condemn any of this activity.
This is not anything I support.
This is not anything
that I would be a part of.
This is not who we are.
Kevin McCarthy was desperately
trying to get Donald Trump on the phone.
While he was on the phone
with him, Ashli Babbitt was shot.
He heard the gunshot.
He was furious.
He had a screaming, expletive-filled,
yelling phone call with Donald Trump.
Kevin McCarthy says,
"You've got to speak out."
And Trump says, "Well,
Kevin, I guess these people are
just more concerned about
the election than you are.
In other words, he is siding with
the mob over his own Republican ally.
McCarthy gets angry with Trump
and says, "Who are you to say that?
I've been fighting for you."
And he had been, right?
I mean, McCarthy hadn't
crossed Trump at all.
It's one of the most tense
conversations that the two men ever had.
-Whose house?
-Our house!
-Whose house?
-Our house!
-Whose house?
-Our house!
The lesson in all of this is if you
accommodate a demagogue,
someone who is telling untruths and
leading hard-working Americans to a place,
if you accommodate that, it can grow into
something way beyond what you ever fathom.
I don't think people expected
that people would actually,
you know, break into the
Capitol, that five people would die.
But I think it does
demonstrate the fragility
of a democracy and
how what you say matters.
Tensions are still high
following the chaos at the Capitol.
Our nation's Capitol under a state of
emergency, under a city-wide lockdown.
The National Guard has
been called in to the Capitol.
The Capitol is secure now.
In the aftermath of the attack, shock,
and a brief sense that things might change.
Republicans, by and
large, were entirely horrified
by Donald Trump's
behavior on January 6th.
The thing that really solidified it for
a lot of the people who had been the
president's supporters
was the fact that he did
nothing to stop the riot
while it was undergoing.
The fact that he didn't come out until
way too late to tell people to go home.
The fact that he didn't condemn
the attack on the Capitol.
And there was a real
sense that he was done.
For about 48 hours, it
really seemed that this
was the final straw and
that the dam had broken.
People were finally
going to do the right thing.
It was, for me, a moment where I had
some hope that things were going to...
the ship was gonna right itself.
Very late, but still
better late than never.
One by one, Republican
leaders rebuked the president.
Mitch McConnell.
The mob was fed lies.
They were provoked
by the president...
McConnell loathes Trump!
And now he believes Trump,
once and for all, is gonna be gone.
And he can wash his hands
of Donald Trump at this point.
Kevin McCarthy.
I've had it with this guy.
What he did was unacceptable.
He has a phone call with a small group
of Republican congressional leaders.
Any discussion I would
have with him is that...
...it would be my recommendation
that he should resign.
What you hear on that call is that
Kevin McCarthy totally understands
the difference between right
and wrong in that moment.
And he knows that Donald Trump has
done something deeply, deeply wrong.
And Trump confidant Lindsey Graham.
Trump and I, we've
had a hell of a journey.
I hate it to end this way.
Oh my God, I hate it.
All I can say is, uh, count me out.
Enough is enough.
You heard Lindsey Graham say,
"Enough is enough. I'm out."
This was someone who had
stood steadfastly by Donald Trump,
who said once and for
all, this is the bridge too far.
Senator Graham feels the heat
immediately after that speech.
You traitor!
-Traitor!
-You traitor!
You son of a bitch!
It's visceral.
There's an almost violent edge
to the way Graham is criticized.
You won't be able to walk
down the street anymore!
This is the rest of
your life, Lindsey!
Bye, traitor!
They see Graham as a traitor.
Traitorous.
This is the kind of way
Graham is cast immediately.
Anger, vitriol, and threats.
Directed at any
Republican seen as disloyal.
Like messages to
Alyssa Farah Griffin.
"You are a (bleep) traitor."
"You need to be raped."
"We know where you live, bitch."
After I spoke out on January
7th, I started receiving
death threats on a variety
of social media channels.
It was the first time in my life that
I had and I never had expected to.
"You deserve to be killed."
"(bleep) piece of (bleep)."
"I know where you live."
And there were voice messages
on election officials' phones.
(bleep) election-stealing bitch.
You rigged my (bleep) election,
you (bleep) piece of (bleep).
Lying, corrupt pieces
of (bleep) (bleep).
Your day is coming.
Whereas, in 2016, it required
political courage to stand up
to Trump and to this kind of
nationalist, authoritarian cult.
They're going to hang
you for treason, you (bleep) bitch.
What are you going to do then?
By 2020, it required physical courage
because things had gone to such a point
where people did fear for their own
safety and for that of their families.
See you in hell, you (bleep).
And even in the Capitol building...
Do swear or affirm that I
will support and defend the
Constitution of the United
States against all enemies,
foreign and domestic,
so help me God.
So help me God.
The specter of violence remained as
Congress decided whether to impeach the
president for his role in
the January 6th attack.
We know that the president
incited this insurrection.
He must go.
He is a clear and present danger
to the nation that we all love.
The second impeachment was somewhat
like the first impeachment but on steroids.
The revulsion over what happened
on January 6th and Trump's role in that
struck people as so
beyond the pale that, again,
something had to be done
to hold him accountable.
On this vote, the ayes are...
But at the vote...
The nays are 197.
Kevin McCarthy was among
197 House Republicans
still not willing to take
action against Trump.
A lot of them didn't do
it because, quite frankly,
they were afraid of their
own physical well-being.
I mean, they were getting death
threats, their family was being threatened.
I mean, to me, this is the
essence of authoritarianism.
It's actually being intimidated into
voting a certain way, not by any debate,
not by any political calculation, but
by the threat of physical intimidation.
You know, I had a member
of Congress say to me,
these people were
willing to come after us
inside the United
States Capitol building.
What are they gonna do to me
when I'm at home with my wife and kids?
If January 6th was political terrorism,
I think you have to say that it worked.
I, Joseph Robinette Biden,
Jr., do solemnly swear...
Refusing to attend Biden's
inauguration, Trump left Washington.
So help me God.
Congratulations, Mr. President.
The question, would his
hold on the party remain?
There's this uncertainty.
Everything's up in the air
in the Republican Party.
What is President
Trump's role gonna be?
Has he now been discredited, or
does he retain his grip on the party?
On his last flight on Air Force One,
he made a final threat to the party.
He spoke to RNC chair Ronna McDaniel.
I got this account from multiple
sources, including a source
that directly witnessed
the phone call.
Trump lays into her and
says, "You failed to fight for me.
Republicans abandoned me.
The election was stolen.
You did nothing about it.
I'm leaving.
I'm done.
I'm leaving the Republican Party.
I'm creating my own party."
Amid the transition of power,
Republican leaders
made a critical choice.
The Republican leadership is absolutely
freaked out that if Trump leaves,
the party will fragment.
There will be no hope
for the Republican Party.
Republican leaders always
had that in the back of their mind.
That if Trump walks away, he
will bring millions of voters with him.
And you can kiss the idea of a Republican
majority goodbye for a long, long time.
As Trump hunkered down at his
Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida,
it didn't take long before he
was visited by a special guest.
They took a photograph.
McCarthy says to Trump,
"I want your help for 2022.
Help me win back the majority."
It was an opportunity on the table laid
out for Donald Trump to repair himself.
It was like when somebody's in
cardiac arrest and you take the paddles,
and you bring 'em back to life.
Trump's political career
was in cardiac arrest,
and Kevin McCarthy brought
the paddles and resurrected him.
Kevin McCarthy makes a political
decision, which is betting on the fact that
President Trump will continue to
have a hold over the base and the party.
That he's going to be
one of the key fundraising
leaders when it comes
to future elections.
And that there are
midterms coming up.
That's a political decision and a
calculation he makes in the moment.
As if January 6th and all that
came before hadn't happened,
Republicans made the
pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago.
Even Lindsey Graham was back.
We see Lindsey Graham trying to
get back in Trump's good graces.
And I think that that's symbolic of
what's happened to the
Republican Party writ large.
Mitch McConnell also
wasn't done with Trump.
There'll be a lot of talk
this weekend about 2024.
If the president was the party's
nominee, would you support him?
The nominee of the party?
Absolutely.
Trump won!
Trump won!
Trump won!
Trump won!
Trump won!
Trump won!
Trump won!
Trump won!
If there is no real consequence,
and there's no exile for a political
figure who's orchestrated this kind of
violence, and this person remains not only
within the fold, but still effectively,
culturally, the leader of the party.
My fellow Americans, our
movement is far from over.
In fact, our fight
has only just begun.
It only means that it's much more possible
that we would have an election where a
loser would be able, through
political subversion and use of force,
to actually gain power
and become the president.
For Liz Cheney, who had
voted for impeachment,
January 6th was a turning point.
She crossed the Rubicon.
She experienced January
6th to a point where it
was so traumatic she
can't come back from it.
She made the decision that,
"I'm going to fight this battle.
If it costs me my job, so be it.
The verdict of history
is worth it to me.
This is what I'm willing to do."
Kevin McCarthy and his allies
voted Cheney out of the leadership.
Congresswoman, do you feel betrayed?
Congresswoman, do you feel
betrayed by today's vote?
I think that it is an indication of
where the Republican Party is,
and I think that the party is in a place
that we've got to bring it back from.
We cannot be dragged backward by the
very dangerous lies of a former president.
-Thank you.
-Thank you very much.
In her primary, McCarthy and other
Republicans endorsed Cheney's opponent,
and ultimately helped to defeat her.
The Republican Party
is in a very grave place.
The Republican Party
is the party of Trump.
And what comes with that is
that you are the party of the Big Lie.
You are the party of
undermining American democracy.
It's the party that swiftly
pivoted back to this man,
and it's gonna end up
hurting them in the long run.
One more time.
Here we go.
January 6th has continued to overshadow
Washington, and American politics.
With the House January
6th committee set
to hold its first hearing
tonight in primetime,
a TV spectacular.
Democrats say the future
of democracy is on the line.
A critical moment for our
democracy after nearly...
Democrats convened primetime hearings
detailing the assault
on American democracy.
The committee is hoping to make sure
the country never forgets that day
and that the people
responsible are held accountable.
What I saw was just a war scene.
An armed revolution.
I mean, people died that day.
We were watching the Capitol
building get defaced over a lie.
But I had to be faithful
to the Constitution.
And that's what I
swore an oath to do.
Which is antithetical to
everything in our democracy.
Today, we'll focus on a few
officials who stood firm against...
I don't know if we're gonna
convince anybody to change their mind.
My hope is that we can just give a
historical record to the American people.
And so that's what's important to me,
is the legacy we're leaving for the truth.
Adam Kinzinger...
Some of these same Republican
members requested pardons...
And Liz Cheney...
He refused to defend our
nation and our Constitution.
...were the only two Republicans
serving on the committee.
There were only two of them and 200-plus
other Republicans who were willing to,
you know, whether for
reasons of cowardice,
calculation, you know,
lack of conscience,
were willing to just sort
of go along because they
didn't need the hassle
of defying Donald Trump.
And that just shows how unique a figure
Liz Cheney has become in a time like this.
Tonight, I say this to my
Republican colleagues
who are defending the indefensible.
There will come a day
when Donald Trump is gone.
But your dishonor will remain.
Ready six, take...
A full-on Hollywood
multimedia extravaganza.
The effect was North Korean.
Every channel the same.
Nothing like it has ever
happened in this country.
And the blowhard of the
evening award goes to Liz Cheney.
Republicans attacked the committee despite
the fact it exposed powerful evidence.
...last night's hearing
was a prime-time dud.
Nothing came out of it
that we didn't know before.
And it didn't change anybody's minds.
The January 6th committee will be seen
through the same partisan lenses that so
much of what we've seen over
the last several years was seen.
...partisan committee has
weaponized the investigatory powers.
This is a partisan
political committee.
People on one side will take
it as proof and hard evidence.
They're using it to advance
their political agenda.
And people on the other side will say,
it's just part of a continuing witch hunt
on the part of Democrats to hurt Donald
Trump and to hurt the Republican Party.
This is the only hour on
an American news channel
that will not be carrying
their propaganda live.
They are lying and we are
not going to help them do it.
What we will do instead
is to try to tell you the truth.
All right. Thanks everybody.
You can stop the records.
Most Republican voters now believe
the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Voters' faith in our
Democratic system of elections
is diminishing further
by the day, practically.
The erosion of confidence
in our elections is an
existential crisis for the
United States of America.
There's no other way to say it.
A lie that Trump and other Republicans
continue to promote, with midterms looming
and another presidential
election two years away.
One of the things that we have typically
thought about American democracy
was that it was rooted in, you know, these
ironclad precepts of the Constitution.
And that there really isn't that much
wiggle room, you know, if you wanted to
damage the machinery
in any particular way.
That's wildly untrue.
A good deal of American
democracy relies on simple good faith.
That the people who are
operating the controls of the system
will adhere to the norms.
But there aren't really
checks for a lot of the most
dangerous things that
could happen in that system.
Go to pbs.org/frontline
for extended interviews
from the film, part of
our Transparency Project.
This is how democracies fail.
And silence is complicity.
You cannot overstate
what was at risk.
He had just beaten impeachment.
He thought he was bulletproof.
The Republican Party
is in a very grave place.
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