#76 — The Path to Impeachment
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Summary
Anne Applebaum and Juliette Kayyem join me to give their thoughts on the latest in the Trump administration's Russia scandal, and the possibility that Donald Trump may be on his way to becoming the first sitting president to be impeached, if not in the next few years. They also talk about why it s not surprising that a president who has a fondness for Vladimir Putin in particular remains at best unexplained, and why that should concern us all. And they offer some thoughts on why we should be worried about what s going on in the White House, and what it means for the country, about Russia and its influence on our politics. Thanks to Anne for her insights, and to Juliette for her expertise in homeland security and intelligence, and for her perspective on the Russia scandal. We don t run ads on the podcast, and therefore, therefore, it s made possible entirely through the support of our listeners, who are making possible what we re doing here. Please consider becoming a supporter of the podcast by becoming a patron. You re getting twice as good at listening to the Making Sense Podcast as we are at making sense of the world, and you re getting 10% off the purchase of a copy of our newest book, Making Sense: The Making Sense Guide to the Trump Administration. by The New York Times bestselling author of The Trump Administration: A Guide to America s Most Powerful Man in the 21st Century. and much more! to help us make sense of what s happening in Washington, D.C., at the intersection of politics, policy, culture, and politics, finance, and culture, politics, and everything else, including the people who make it all things we need to make sense, not less, and more, and how to be more smart, smarter, and smarter, more of it all of it, and we can all be smart, more smart and more smart than we all have it all, more like us, more than we know it, more smarter than we think we all need to be smart and better than we can be more like that, we all get it, we can do more of that, more and more of us, we really do, more, we are making sense, more powerful, we will be more than enough, we know more, more useful, more intelligent, more beautiful, more informed, more interesting, more human, more helpful, more understanding, more fun, more thoughtful, more sophisticated, more profound, more alert, more things like that.
Transcript
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I did not have this on the calendar, but the scandals have been piling up so quickly
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in the White House that it just feels like something needs to be said.
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This is the first moment where the path to impeachment has seemed actually open.
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I have not been one of these people who felt that impeachment was likely, even though I
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dearly hoped for it, but given just how inept Trump and his surrogates have been in containing
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the bleeding here, I feel like I'm beginning to see the possibility that this egregious man
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So I decided to reach out to a few experts who have already been on the podcast to give
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She's been writing fantastic pieces analyzing what's going on in Washington.
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She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics,
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where she runs a program called ARENA, which deals with the problem of disinformation and
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She won the Pulitzer Prize for her book, Gulag, A History.
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So she is perfectly placed to think about the unfolding Russia scandal and the fact that we
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have a president whose fondness for Russia, and for Putin in particular, remains at best
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And my second guest today is Juliette Kayyem, who is one of the nation's leading experts
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She was a former member of the National Commission on Terrorism.
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She served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security,
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where she handled things like the H1N1 pandemic and the BP oil spill.
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She's currently on faculty at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and she's a very frequent
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She was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her columns in the Boston Globe.
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So both of these women have a real depth of experience in the relevant areas.
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And I can't tell you how gratifying it is to be able to reach out to them and bring you
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I'm not really set up to run a news division here.
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So being responsive to a news cycle that's changing at this pace is difficult to do.
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I actually had David Frum, who agreed to be part of this episode, but I can't interview
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And I think things are changing so quickly, it's Thursday now, that I'm going to push that
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interview off and leave him for another episode.
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That is, unless something remarkable happens on Friday, which is certainly possible with this
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But I recorded my conversation with Anne on Tuesday and Juliet on Wednesday.
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And even there, the news had advanced enough so that more facts were in play.
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This is why I usually speak to scientists and philosophers.
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So it doesn't matter when we record our conversations, and it really doesn't matter when you listen to
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Here we have a conversation which will probably not age terribly well.
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If you're listening to this a few weeks from now or a few months from now, the shape of
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The general principle, however, may still be worth talking about.
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And there are general principles here, clearly, of corruption and ineptitude and financial conflicts
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of interest, all of which I'm confident will become more pressing in the coming months.
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Today, I bring you an episode that is narrowly focused on the events of this week.
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You were last on, I think, a couple of months ago.
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But, you know, you are one of these topic experts.
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I guess you have two topics here which are increasingly relevant.
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You are a journalist who can cover the ins and outs of Washington, but you are someone with
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real expertise in Russia and think a lot about things like misinformation and propaganda and
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So, last time we spoke, several things had not yet happened.
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There had not been the Russian photo op and there had not been this recent apparent leak
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of classified information by the president, nor the chaotic attempts to prevaricate about
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Well, if I knew that, then I would be able to solve a lot of other problems.
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I mean, I think the outline of the problem and really the fundamental, the source of this
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problem really is Trump's relationship, or maybe it's better to say the relationship
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Most of what we know about Trump's relationship with Russia is already public knowledge.
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I mean, we may or may not learn something more from an investigation if that goes on.
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But most of what he feels about Russia, he's told us.
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He feels a closeness to the style of Russian oligarchy and Russian kleptocracy.
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He feels, I don't know whether it's ideological or aesthetic, he feels that the system appeals
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He likes the idea of having a relationship with Russia.
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So his, I mean, there were a number of points that may have been slightly overlooked in the
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One is that, you know, the fact that he invited the Russian foreign minister to the Oval Office
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was already, in protocol terms, quite a big concession.
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I mean, he wouldn't have been invited under Obama, and certainly not after the invasion
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of Ukraine would we have given, you know, it's a big deal for a foreign minister to get to
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That's always a gesture because, of course, the foreign minister should meet the secretary
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And he and his staff seemed to be very lax about who the Russians are and what they represent.
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So as you hinted in your introduction, they invited not just Lavrov, but they allowed a
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Russian photographer into the Oval Office, who promptly, after the conversation, put his
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photographs online, which seemed to have surprised the White House, who didn't realize that he was
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And of course, we don't know what else was in his camera.
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Maybe, you know, maybe other kinds of equipment.
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And so it's very unprecedented, both for the foreign minister to be there and for him to
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And then we learned from the context of this story about what he said to the Russians, and
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also from General McMaster's statements today, we learned that he felt very comfortable with
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I mean, he told them some, you know, what he, he may or may not have understood what
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he was telling them, but he told, he gave them some classified information.
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He was bragging about his access to intelligence.
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You know, he would, he treated them the way he treats, you know, people he likes to do business
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with, or he used to like to do business with back in New York, you know, and this kind of
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behavior, which is of course unprecedented in the United States in recent presidential history,
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We are, you know, we, American, you know, American intelligence works by a series of
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And of course, we have our sources and methods and so on, but so do, so do others.
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We work closely with people in the Middle East.
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We work closely with other nations in Europe and they exchange information with us on a mutually
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But the idea that we now have a president who's a security risk, who might blurt out
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anything in a room where he's with people he feels comfortable with, no matter who they
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are and what they might do with that information is, should be a clue or will be understood by
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His sympathies are not with, you know, his understanding of how intelligence works is,
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He doesn't know to whom he should say what he doesn't know who should and shouldn't be
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He doesn't seem to have any sense of it or any feeling for it.
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You know, I often think that the best, you know, conspiracy theories are real ones are
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It requires a lot of people and, you know, everyone has to be quiet and has to be, you know,
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much, much more common in life is the kind of screw up theory of what happened.
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And more and more, it looks like Trump is governed by a kind of, you know, incompetence,
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childishness, inability to keep his mouth shut, need to brag, need to show off.
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And his admiration for rich, powerful people are, you know, like, like Vladimir Putin, who
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seem appealing to him and who, who seem like they should be his friends.
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And that's, um, that's now the governing ideology of this white house and not anything
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theoretical, not anything ideological, uh, not anything else.
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I don't know if you remember the, the book or the film being there, but, you know, I've
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been thinking of Trump as a kind of malignant Chauncey Gardner, just this completely vacuous
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And, you know, and can I just say something funny about being there?
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You know, it's based on a book by Jerzy Kaczynski is a Polish writer.
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And actually the idea of it is an older Polish story.
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There's one that, uh, there's a version of that story that was written several decades
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And there is something, there is a kind of East European story, you know, in these accidental
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messy democracies, people accidentally take power.
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I mean, funny and sad, I guess that this happened in the United States, but you're right.
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So this Russian photo op slash leak happened the day after he fired Comey.
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You would think you could never recover from how bad this looks.
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And yet this is just one more thing in this cascade of ineptitude and seeming corruption
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He's firing the guy who's investigating his administration for its possible collusion with
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the Russians and then meeting with the Russians, one of whom was the very Russian who torpedoed
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And it's also true that the thing he is supposed to have leaked, again, not based on any apparent
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strategy to divulge secrets, but just because he's bragging about what good intel he gets.
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This is the sort of thing that wasn't even disclosed to our own senators.
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And perhaps this would be a good moment to get your view on the significance of the Comey
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Well, the Comey firing, you know, once again, the most amazing thing about the Trump phenomenon
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is most of what we know about him is stuff he tells us.
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I mean, he has admitted, in essence, in the course of his tweets that he fired Comey because
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He he didn't like seeing Comey on TV talking about him.
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He didn't like the fact that Comey wanted more resources, apparently, for the investigation.
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You know, and he thought, OK, in his cartoon like vision of the world, he thought, OK, if
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You know, I can make this I can get this man off my TV.
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And again, that appears to have been impulsive.
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It appears to have been not it wasn't consulted with anybody else in the White House.
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The White House communications staff were totally unprepared for it.
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And so, well, you know, I don't I don't have any very strong feelings about Comey myself.
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And I think he has made he'd make some mistakes during the election.
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And the manner in which he did this was almost, you know, it was sort of so so screamingly
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You know, this is why people immediately after began to talk about mental illness or some kind
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You know, he fired him to get rid of the story, didn't like the story.
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It had taken over some of his staff and he wanted it off.
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And then, as you say, then the amazing thing was that he didn't it didn't occur to him
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to cancel the Lavrov meeting the following day.
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You know, he didn't seem to see the connection between these two things.
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I mean, this is another oddity of Trump that he you know, it's almost like, you know, as
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I mean, one also thinks of people with amnesia or people who are unable to make connections
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Did he not understand that people would link the firing of Comey to the Russian story?
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Did he not understand that having Lavrov in the White House the next day would seem
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You know, did he does he not make the connections between these things?
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And, you know, one is beginning to think he doesn't.
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He lives each event as if he was in that particular moment and he doesn't see what its relationship
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Why people around him don't see that is mysterious, you know, but but but but he obviously doesn't.
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I mean, it may be that they have concluded that the best way to deal with this Russian
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You know, go on making policy the way they want to.
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You know, being loud in their conversations and their associations with Russia.
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Maybe they think that's how they're going to put it to an end.
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Of course, it may also have the opposite effect.
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You know, an interesting point for you, something that one might think about is what the Russians
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think is going on, which is apparently they find it all hilariously funny, which is also
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disturbing, you know, the most the worst moment for me of that day of Lavrov at the White
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House was I don't know if you saw there was a moment when he he he'd had a meeting with
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Tillerson in the morning at the State Department with the Secretary of State, and he came out
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of the meeting with Tillerson and appeared in front of there were some journalists and
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one of the journalists shouted at him something.
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They shouted at both of them something about Comey being fired and Lavrov, who speaks excellent
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English and is profoundly cynical person, turned around and said, was he fired?
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And then he sort of he stuck his head back and made a sneering gesture.
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And that was that was the Russian political elite saying, we think your press is ridiculous.
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You know, we think your rules and your laws and your democracy are ridiculous.
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You know, we're going to you know, your president thinks you're fake news and we're going to
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So we have we've in a sense, you know, this whole process has encouraged, you know, has
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just encouraged the Russians, you know, if the Americans are going to be more brazen, then
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And that's that's another one of the side effects of this series of stories.
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One of the things I find so depressing about Trump's presidency thus far is and this is again,
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like everything about him, this was predictable.
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You've just made it, I think, today in a recent piece in The Washington Post.
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And yet our capacity for astonishment seems undiminished.
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But one of the most malignant things about him and his influence on the world is that everyone
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in his orbit seems to catch this virus of dishonesty and delusion.
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I mean, it's like he's he all of his surrogates are like Baghdad Bob, Saddam Hussein's spokesman
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during the war in Iraq, where he's denying that anything is happening.
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You can see American tanks, you know, passing by in the background.
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It's just this tragic comedy to see an otherwise seemingly sane person try to put a brave face
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on the lies and delusions of a man child in the Oval Office.
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But it's spreading to serious people like Tillerson and they keep having to cover for him.
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And then he comes out and says they're actually lying.
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I did it for the reasons that have been alleged, which seems to have just happened in this case.
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Well, this is what he's done several times now.
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He said, you know, the line from the White House was he fired Comey because of something
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And then he said on Twitter, no, actually, I fired him because, you know, I didn't like
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him and, you know, he was spending too much time on this story.
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And he did the same thing today where he was there was an article yesterday saying that
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he leaked a piece of classified information in his conversation with Lavrov.
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And the White House came out and said, no, no, that's absolutely not true.
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And then this morning he said, well, yes, actually, I did.
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He is he he continues to he stabs them all in the back, betrays them and and they keep
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I mean, you know, this this isn't totally I mean, this is pretty new behavior in American
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You know, this is the kind of atmosphere you get in a in the court of a dictator.
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I mean, you know, Lavrov himself plays this role for Putin.
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You know, when after the invasion of Ukraine, you know, Lavrov would get up on a panel and
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You know, or he would you know, he'll he'll deny looking you straight in the eye or looking
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He'll deny something that we know and he knows is absolutely true.
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And this is the kind of behavior you get in kind of dictatorial courts where, you know,
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people feel they constantly have to show their loyalty in order to stay in their jobs.
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You know, maybe, you know, certainly there are some there are some honorable people in
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And it may be that some of them still feel they should be there to prevent Trump from
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doing anything worse or because, you know, they they feel some sense of patriotism and
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But you're right that at a certain point, people become really profoundly compromised.
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You know, after the end of the day, you know, this is the United States.
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It's not Uzbekistan and nobody's going to shoot you if you resign.
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And one of the questions now is why more people haven't resigned.
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It's that's not that's increasingly hard to see.
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Yeah, I think that's a very strong line to push.
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Where are the people with principles and a conscience who just won't submit to having
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their reputations entangled with this moral and political catastrophe?
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It would seem as bad as it in fact is if it were not as bad.
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If he did one tenth the idiotic things that he does, he would seem worse.
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But we just can't even keep up with the cascade of scandal.
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He'll do he'll do something crazy tomorrow and we'll forget what we were even talking
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It's no, it's very funny, you know, because I live in Europe.
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And sometimes these things happen in the evening.
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So I'm asleep, you know, and then I wake up in the morning to pick up my phone or my laptop
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and look at I said, oh, God, you know, and then I you're right.
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I have to spend 30 minutes catching up on this another brand new scandal that I that I wasn't
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But, yeah, I mean, this is another this is a danger.
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I mean, the danger is that, you know, we become overwhelmed by the stories.
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There's a constant kind of fire hose of disinformation and fake stories and twisted versions of what just
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happened coming out of the White House and to some extent coming out of a part of the press.
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I mean, I think Fox, you know, you talk about people inside the White House.
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I think some of the reporting on Fox News bears some responsibility for some of this, too.
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It's very hard to sort through it and deal with it and think it through, you know, and
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They're the real danger is that people just give up and they'll say, well, God, you know,
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And this, by the way, is another thing that happens in authoritarian societies.
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And I think we may begin to see that, possibly begin to see that in the United States, too.
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It's just there's something so seemingly ineffectual about keeping score day after day here.
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And again, as you point out, it was all foreseeable.
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I want to ask you a couple of kind of quick questions.
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I think we spoke about this last time, but it seems more pressing.
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Is there a danger in this narrow focus on collusion with the Russians, in the end, exonerating
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Trump for things that he really should be held accountable for?
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It seems likely that the worst about what is true of him and the administration may not,
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And by narrowly focusing on collusion or appointing a special prosecutor when we could be doing
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something more broad, like an independent commission, we could actually just miss the
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I mean, I think that the worst aspects of the Trump-Russia relationship are the ones that
00:24:03.240
I mean, it may be that an investigation is going to find more.
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And it looks pretty clear, just from what we already know, that there were at least informal
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contacts between some of his campaign staff and some people and various, probably Russian
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PR companies, but also some Russian diplomats and others.
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But the worst aspect of it is his admiration for them.
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The fact that this is the society he likes the most.
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This is the political leader who he feels, you know, most, who he finds most appealing,
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He accepted his meeting with his foreign minister.
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He tells, you know, he tells them intimate stories while they're inside the Oval Office.
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And that's, you know, that's not going to be plumbed.
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We don't need a special prosecutor to plumb that.
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And, you know, what he finds appealing is this authoritarian style, kleptocracy.
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You know, he wants to be like Putin, somebody who does business and does politics and makes
00:25:08.220
He he's you know, he seems to even like the idea of maybe, you know, getting rid of some
00:25:14.840
That's what, of course, you know, famously Putin kills journalists.
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Not all of them, but he but he that select ones have have been have been murdered in
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This is the American president, you know, who instead of, you know, and this and this is,
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by the way, somebody who knows very little about our own constitution, you know, and
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our own political system and indeed our own history, as he's as we also know from from
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many things he's said over the last few months.
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But his his goal, his, you know, his his greatest admiration is for this kind of political
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And, you know, that's the thing we should focus on.
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You know, this is not there's no American tradition of admiring autocracy or trying to
00:26:03.080
But, Anne, is there anything we can do with that focus?
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So that is, for lack of a better word, a political liability for him as distinct from a criminal
00:26:15.240
Can you impeach someone on the basis of their fondness for despots?
00:26:20.380
Well, look, impeachment is, you know, impeachment is political.
00:26:23.980
I mean, at the end of the day, Trump will be impeached if enough Republicans feel that
00:26:29.740
I mean, frankly, you know, I think, you know, he's done things already that if
00:26:35.480
if if the if the Congress was willing to do it, he could be impeached.
00:26:38.480
I mean, I think the fact that he didn't give up he didn't give up control over his
00:26:42.720
businesses, full control is impeachable because, you know, as you're as president,
00:26:46.660
you're the Constitution says you're not supposed to get emoluments, which can be
00:26:51.120
interpreted in the modern sense that he shouldn't be getting any revenues from his foreign
00:26:56.680
So if you want to do impeach him, you could do it now.
00:26:59.180
So it's really impeachment is going to be if it happens, which it still may not, would
00:27:04.960
So I think focusing on the the deeper, you know, the deeper political problems, you know,
00:27:13.500
and the and the implications of what kind of a person he is and what kind of how he's
00:27:17.700
running, how he's running the right house and attempting to propagate those and discuss
00:27:22.220
those and, you know, help people to understand them who don't seem to get it, which is what
00:27:27.720
would be his supporters and both in Congress and in the country.
00:27:33.500
I mean, at the end, if Congress wants to do it, they can do it.
00:27:41.520
And I think they'll only be motivated by by politics.
00:27:45.300
Well, on that point, I have a question that may seem a little out of left field.
00:27:49.140
But, I mean, you know about the rumors that there's apprentice outtakes of Trump using the
00:27:56.280
N-word with an impressive lack of self-consciousness and that these these tapes were not leaked
00:28:02.720
by Mark Burnett and others there based on, you know, some political calculus.
00:28:07.780
I happen to know, you know, to a moral certainty that those tapes exist.
00:28:13.420
Can't really say how I know that, but I'm willing to say this publicly.
00:28:18.900
So this you can imagine something analogous to the Mark Furman tapes during the OJ trial.
00:28:25.220
Would that be enough to move the dial or would that be just the same thing as the Billy Bush
00:28:33.340
It's hard for me to say because, you know, I think so much of what he said is disqualifying.
00:28:38.800
You know, the danger is that if you release those tapes that you would have, you know,
00:28:44.160
this counter reaction of people saying, oh, don't be so PC, you know, or there's a part
00:28:49.820
of his support that doesn't that isn't going to care about that.
00:28:53.340
I mean, the people, you know, 60 percent of the country will be outraged if they're not
00:28:58.560
And then there's a part who will once again reject it because it doesn't bother them.
00:29:03.500
So I'm not sure that that would be the tipping point.
00:29:06.640
I mean, it might have been during the election, but hard for me to say now.
00:29:10.880
I mean, the other danger is, by the way, that there are other kinds of tapes in other places.
00:29:16.200
You know, I know that this was a rumor that was unproven, you know, about Russian tapes.
00:29:20.200
But, you know, Trump has been around for a long time doing discreditable things in many
00:29:25.180
places, you know, including a lot of countries ranging from, I don't know, Azerbaijan to Dubai
00:29:33.600
And in a lot of those places, he will have been taped.
00:29:36.940
And there may we don't know what's floating around out there.
00:29:43.340
Because this is the thing that I find above all so depressing about what his existence is
00:29:52.880
It's just uncanny to continually hear from Trump's defenders who seem completely oblivious
00:30:02.280
No matter how awful you imagine Hillary Clinton to be and how much you wouldn't want her president,
00:30:09.000
it seems to me that you have to admit that Trump is showing some signs of a dangerous
00:30:18.500
And so what do you make of the fact that there seems to be no path from where we are through
00:30:23.660
the brains of Trump's defenders to an admission of what should be obvious that this person is
00:30:31.140
What would he have to do, do you think, to actually turn the tide?
00:30:34.720
I mean, you know, it may be a combination of promises not kept.
00:30:39.200
You know, you may begin to get people disappointed with him.
00:30:42.940
I mean, on the on the sort of far right that supports him, if you begin to get a different
00:30:48.760
tone on the most important media sources, you know, the television that people watch,
00:30:55.340
which is mostly Fox and the the the websites and, you know, and Twitter feeds and others
00:31:05.880
If you begin to get a different tone, you might be get you might get some change.
00:31:09.760
But, you know, we're we're confronting something that others, you know, this is a this is a
00:31:17.280
You know, it's not a normal political movement.
00:31:20.200
People aren't moved to be part of it by argument.
00:31:25.800
You know, these are people who, you know, they want to call themselves real Americans.
00:31:30.720
They they want to they've they've created almost an online tribe.
00:31:34.960
You know, some countries have real tribes and America now has online tribes and that sort
00:31:40.040
of online, you know, Trump tribe identify with one another, stick together, you know,
00:31:46.040
interpret the world in similar ways and and find some kind of, you know, there's some form
00:31:51.760
of I don't know whether it's security, you know, or a feeling of being part of a gang
00:31:56.020
or a crowd, something that people are getting out of being inside that group and feeling
00:32:00.620
themselves to be beleaguered, you know, by I don't know, by the mainstream media or by
00:32:06.200
And they've you know, they find some kind of new identity being part of this group.
00:32:12.480
And so all the logical, rational arguments that you could make or the ones that used to
00:32:18.280
normally we think move people in politics aren't working because it's not a normal political
00:32:25.760
And, you know, incidentally happening in other countries at the same time, too.
00:32:29.720
I mean, I think it's one of the many unexpected side effects of the Internet and particularly
00:32:34.540
of social media is that people can now organize themselves differently online.
00:32:39.100
And one of the things that happened is that people who feel the same way about about Trump
00:32:44.700
are all in a single group now and they reinforce one another.
00:32:49.000
You know, it may be that the change them will have to be you know, won't be rational arguments.
00:32:54.560
It will be emotional things that happen or it may be, as I said, it may be a change of
00:33:02.320
It may be that you have to deal, find out who the most influential Trump supporters are.
00:33:06.880
But no, I don't have an instant answer for you.
00:33:09.560
I think it's going to be very difficult because it isn't normal politics.
00:33:12.160
It's interesting that any criticism of Trump is perceived by these people as mere partisanship,
00:33:19.820
whereas it's just it's so clearly not what many of us would pay to have Mitt Romney in
00:33:27.700
Well, even odder than that, like, you know, I mean, it's not a choice anymore between Trump
00:33:36.380
You know, whether or not you like Mike Pence, he's not a you know, he's he he's not you
00:33:45.040
He's not, you know, unstable, which the president is.
00:33:48.600
So why are you know, I mean, this is what I don't understand about the Republicans.
00:33:52.420
Isn't this the moment to say, right, we prefer Mike Pence?
00:33:58.980
So that that's the that's the stranger question to me.
00:34:01.880
Just to spell that out so that it can't possibly be ignored.
00:34:06.440
Everyone who is hoping for impeachment is hoping for President Pence.
00:34:11.000
Now, given my job description, President Pence is a nightmare scenario.
00:34:25.220
He doesn't you know, he doesn't have this bizarre thing that Trump has of not remembering
00:34:29.540
from one day to the next what he said and he doesn't seem to lie.
00:34:36.040
You know, he's not he's he doesn't build his whole existence on completely false views of
00:34:41.560
So that's, you know, so it's in that sense, he's reassuring.
00:34:50.340
No, I mean, he's got the background problem of of real ideology.
00:34:54.220
I mean, I view him as a kind of theocrat, you know, his level of Christian fundamentalism
00:34:59.940
But it does come down to, as you say, his temperament, his personality.
00:35:04.420
I mean, there's something wrong with Trump as a person.
00:35:10.280
And it's the reason why he got elected in some sense.
00:35:15.300
They love the grandiosity and the the sense of his own competence in areas where he is so
00:35:21.300
clearly incompetent, he can't even appreciate his incompetence.
00:35:24.940
I mean, it may be that people like the entertainment.
00:35:27.980
Look, you know, we we, you know, national news has suddenly become a reality show.
00:35:32.460
You know, we crash from one bizarre story to the next, you know, each day trying to figure
00:35:37.200
I mean, it's a it's practically, as you say, it's a full time occupation just to keep up
00:35:41.520
You know, that's how people feel about soap operas or reality television.
00:35:45.160
You know, it's a it's now a it's a pastime and that might appeal to people.
00:35:51.300
Well, let's hope we don't entertain ourselves to death.
00:35:59.980
I hope to never speak to you again on this subject.
00:36:19.440
I think, although given the subject matter, it's it's difficult times.
00:36:25.320
But you are a woman who has met her moment because it's just so much fun to see you on
00:36:31.920
I mean, it seems like every time I turn on CNN, you're there and you're cutting through
00:36:36.520
some partisan miasma that is thrown up in defense of the indefensible.
00:36:43.540
And there was this there's this adorable moment I caught a few days ago, I think, which I don't
00:36:48.120
know who you were talking to, but some someone who was essentially in defense of Trump playing
00:36:53.440
the usual obscurantist game began to kind of interrupt you.
00:37:05.180
And it's like, like, you know, we don't we all know how this game is played.
00:37:07.640
But right now, the American people need to hear some facts and I'm going to give them
00:37:14.820
It's it's, you know, when when Trump won for a lot of us who, you know, I care about public
00:37:21.980
I'm in safety and security, which, you know, obviously, there are Democrats and Republicans,
00:37:25.780
but we we you know, we tend to be agree on more rather than less.
00:37:31.440
You know, a lot of us struggled with what's our role in this day and age.
00:37:37.460
And, you know, some people, you know, hit the streets, which is great.
00:37:43.820
And and I took a little while to figure out sort of what lane would be helpful to people.
00:37:48.900
And I appreciate you saying that because, you know, maybe it's working, which is just
00:37:54.460
you know, there's I just sort of call out the BS quota, but also make it clear that a lot
00:38:07.060
And and the actions by the president in what is is we're talking on a Wednesday really is
00:38:14.220
only a 10 day period, starting with the Sally Yates hearing.
00:38:17.860
It's just remarkable for its its disruption to our norms, its its dissolution of respect
00:38:38.260
And again, we're talking about events that have moved really quickly.
00:38:41.980
But I think we should start on this issue of partisanship, because there's something
00:38:46.240
truly perverse about the allegation of partisanship that gets hurled against anyone who spots
00:38:55.480
any sort of problem here with the president's behavior.
00:38:59.080
My criticism of Trump from the beginning has been just about is.
00:39:05.100
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