A Trump Second Term? with Jonathan Alter

Disclaimer: Unedited AI transcript

Announcer (00:00:06):

You are connected and you are listening to specifically for seniors, the podcast for those in the Remember When Generation.

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Today's

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Podcast is available everywhere you listen to podcasts and with video at specifically for seniors YouTube channel. Now, here's your host, Dr. Larry Barsh.

Larry (00:00:39):

We have a very special guest on specifically for seniors today and a lot to talk about. Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, political analyst, documentary filmmaker, columnist, television producer, and radio host. His most recent book is His Very best, Jimmy Carter ,A Life. Jonathan is a former editor and columnist at Newsweek, a political analyst for NBC News and M-S-N-B-C. He is written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Monthly, the New Yorker, Bloomberg, and The Daily Beast. He hosts a weekly substack newsletter called Old Goats Rumination with Friends, which features his conversations with accomplished people of wisdom and experience. John, it's a privilege to have you on specifically for seniors.

Speaker 4 (00:01:43):

Larry, it's great to be with you. We're, we're on the same beat here, you know, valuing people of our vintage, right? We might have something to say.

Larry (00:01:53):

That's what I'm trying to do with specifically for seniors, and that's why I am intrigued by the, your Substack newsletter.

Speaker 4 (00:02:03):

Yeah, well, you know, I it's it's almost three years old now, and I, I decided after finishing my biography of Jimmy Carter that instead of you know, going back to the kinda mainstream journalism that I'd done for 40 years, really you know, most recently, I guess before, you know, around the time my last book came out, I was, I was writing a column for The Daily Beast, and I could have easily gone back to that or to another news organization, but I got intrigued with Substack and this idea of being able to essentially self-publish. And I also, I've always had this sense that the youth culture that we have in the United States was missing a lot, you know? And of course all kinds of shows wanna have younger people on as well, they should.

Speaker 4 (00:03:12):

But this idea that you reach a certain age and you get put out to pasture didn't really make a lot of sense to me. And so I decided, you know what, why don't I just talk to people I know. Because I, I have crossed paths with a lot of interesting people over the years and interview them, and then intersperse that with my old kind of columns that I write. So sometimes I'll, you know, I'll just write a column about the Middle East or something, and other times I will sit down with somebody sometimes famous, sometimes not. I don't really care whether they're famous. I'm, I'm interested in whether they have something to say. And they've, they've led an interesting life that I can question them about.

Larry (00:04:06):

I've read a bunch of the articles and they are insightful. Do you want to share a secret or two with a <laugh> raging Amateur about interviewing people?

Speaker 4 (00:04:21):

Well yeah, I mean, I guess I could, I guess I could try to say this. 'cause I think this applies to pretty much anybody who wants to talk to people. But it, I feel like from the last, you know, couple of questions you've asked that you don't really need my advice, it, and that's just to be natural, to have it be a conversation rather than an interview. I think the interviews that go badly are the ones where somebody's reading a list of questions, you know, verbatim, that they've nervously prepared beforehand. I mean, I often write out, I, I do, you know, write out questions that I want to cover, but much of the time, maybe most of the time, I don't ask them in order. And I take advice that I got many years ago from Ted Koppel, who I think is really one of the great interviewers of of our era, of the, you know, the last, last half century or so. So, in the eighties, I wrote a, a cover story in Newsweek. This was when Newsweek was a, an important magazine, which unfortunately it isn't anymore. And I think it was called, you know, the Q and A Man or something like that. And I went and I spent a week with Ted Koppel hanging out at Nightline, his famous show, interviewing him a bunch. And I remember at one point I said, you know, Ted, what's your secret? And he gave me a two word answer. I listen.

Speaker 4 (00:06:10):

So Mo most people, when they're interviewing somebody, they're, they're thinking ahead to their next question, or they're you know, worried about their cues. I mean, that, that, that kind of thing comes with experience, being able to juggle the, the cues with the the interview. But if you kind of go with the conversation, go with your curiosity, think, what does my audience want? Because the interviewer is a surrogate for the audience then, you know, you, you have a little bit of a better chance of getting into an interesting free flowing conversation that brings the defenses of the other person down so they feel like they're just talking to a friend. That's why I call my <laugh> my newsletter, my Substack newsletter, old Goats ruminating with friends because I try not to do it with people I don't know at all, almost everybody.

Speaker 4 (00:07:16):

In fact, everybody I've interviewed in the last nearly three years is somebody that I, I knew at least a little bit, and I usually indicate how I knew them at the beginning of the interview. That's not necessary. I mean, I've interviewed many, many strangers, and I've actually, I've interviewed nine of the last 10 American presidents, all except for Reagan, going back to Richard Nixon, who I, I interviewed in 1988 either before, during, or after they left the presidency. So it varied by, by President. But, you know, so you don't have to know the person as I do with my Substack newsletter to interview them. But on that particular, you know, platform, I'm looking for kind of a more informal conversation. It helps that I have some connection to them that I've crossed paths with them in the past. And also I have another kind of purpose, which is I like to sometimes work things in about my own life and my own experience into those interviews, which I do not generally do, you know, if I'm interviewing somebody for a, a mainstream news organization or, you know, I'm mm-Hmm.

Speaker 4 (00:08:41):

<Affirmative>, I'm certainly not going into the Oval Office and interviewing a president, you know, throwing in my 2 cents from my experience <laugh>. But on, on on Substack, I, I do like to give people some, you know, stories from my own life. So I think when I, for instance, when I interviewed Andy Young, you know, who was Martin Luther King's top aide and an important civil rights leader in his own right. You know, I, I mentioned there, I think in that one, maybe in another one, that when I was eight years old, Dr. King came to my house, and I think I asked Andy, were you in Chicago? You know, in the, in the spring of 1966 when he came to my house. And he couldn't remember <laugh>, but so there will be occasions when I'll throw myself in, but, but much of the time I try to recede a little bit and just pick the other person's brain as much as I can.

Larry (00:09:45):

Okay. Since you brought it up, I'm a retired dentist, and most of my conversations in practice got responses like <laugh>. That's a good one. So, so I'm sort of relatively new to this Okay. Being, it's never

Speaker 4 (00:10:02):

Too late. It's never too late. I'm, you know, it's important to do stuff late in life. They say for the neuroplasticity of our brains, as all of us get older and start forgetting names and that kind of thing. You know, the, the experts say that learning to do something new is, is the single, other than diet and sleep or the, is the single best way to keep your brain functioning. So you're on the right track

Larry (00:10:28):

And the ability to talk to people like you that I wouldn't ordinarily have in my own life,

Speaker 4 (00:10:37):

Uhhuh

Larry (00:10:37):

<Affirmative>, it's exciting.

Speaker 4 (00:10:39):

Good. Well, I'm glad <laugh>, I'm glad we obviously are doing a, a really good job at it because, you know, people are really listening, so it's great. Congratulations on how you're doing.

Larry (00:10:51):

Thank you. My earliest recollection of a president was Roosevelt when I was a kid. And since then, we've had good, bad average presidents, but we've never had the divisiveness and hostility in politics like we have today. Yeah. What is there about one man that can cause this kind of chaos in our political system?

Speaker 4 (00:11:20):

Well, first I just wanna give a shout out to Franklin Roosevelt. He was the subject of my first book which is called The Defining Moment, FDRs a hundred Days in the Triumph of Hope. I've, until my, my latest thing that I'm working on now, I've, I've just written about American presidents and Roosevelt Towers above them all, except my boy who had hero in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, and, and George Washington. So Roosevelt's right up there with them. And believe it or not, that book came out in 2006 in the period when I was working on that. There were still people from the Roosevelt Administration who I could interview just a few. But you know, which was really fun for me. So Roosevelt was also divisive. I think any American president is gonna have really hard, bitten enemies.

Speaker 4 (00:12:23):

And he was called all kinds of names. And, you know, if you go back in American history, the election of 1800 was vicious. This was when Thomas Jefferson was elected, and he was, you know, accused accurately turned out of having a slave as his mistress. So this idea of us being at each other is not new. And I think people tend to sugarcoat American history. It's always been rough and tumble. What's different about what's going on now is that for the first time in 250 years, we're coming up on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence 2026. Our democracy is at serious risk. Now, you could argue that that was true during the Civil War. So let's, let's just go back to the Civil War and say, our democracy is at the most serious risk since the Civil War.

Speaker 4 (00:13:35):

And we, we haven't, you know, all you have to do is think about the Civil War to realize that we didn't really, arguably, we didn't really have a fully functioning democracy until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If a large percentage of your population, you know, over 10%, are basically not allowed to vote in large portions of the country, that's not really a democracy. But for the purpose of argument I think you know, a, a democracy can often be defined by a sentence that we've heard a lot since January 6th. And that is the peaceful transfer of power. So, in other countries, you know, people, leaders stick around as long as they can, and they they either die or they're removed in a coup deta. And, you know, that's the way it has been for most of human history. I'm right now writing a political biography of Julius Caesar, you know, so this, this goes back a long time.

Speaker 4 (00:14:48):

And one of one, the reason, really, that our first President, George Washington, even though he was a slave holder and was not our brightest president, but the reason that he is deserves his place in the very, very first rank of American presidents, is that a, after two terms he left, he took a lead from Cincinnatus in the old Roman Republic, and he left, and he established the principle that in our country, we obey the election returns, and we abide by the will of the people, and we don't try to unconstitutionally clinging to power. So what this this President Donald Trump did was it was not just in, in which he's now, you know, claiming wasn't so bad, I don't know, what's he calling it? A tourist visit. And he's saying that if he's returned to office, he will pardon all of the January 6th insurrectionists, what he's doing.

Speaker 4 (00:16:05):

And he's even now acknowledging this is trying to move the United States from a democracy to a dictatorship. And this is the greatest crisis we've had in this country. And the stakes are the highest in this election since the Civil War. So in 19, in 1864, when Abraham Lincoln was running for reelection, and he it looked until some important battles in the late summer and early fall of 1864, it looked like he was gonna lose to former general McClellan who hit Lincoln, had mistakenly allowed to be the first general, you know of the Union Army. So, McClellan wanted by 1864, he wanted a negotiated settlement that would've turned the United States into two countries and basically allowed the Confederacy to, you know, exist. He wanted the war to end. And if he had won then that would've been, you know, we would've had a, I guess maybe a smaller republic, but it would've been the end of the, what we think of as the United States.

Speaker 4 (00:17:39):

So now we're, we're in, actually, and this is no exaggeration, Larry, we're in the same position if this next election doesn't go the right way, right way, these folks have made no secret of the fact they want to end our democracy if they win full stop. And we can talk all day if you want, about how Trump plans to do this. And the difference from winning was around the last time is now they have this thing called Project 2025, where they, they've laid it all out, what they wanna do. And he, you know, if you think if he's reelected, if you think he'll leave office in, in 2029 when his second term is over as the Constitution requires you're smoking something, he's not going to leave office until he dies, if he's reelected. And all, all you have to do to understand that is look at the way he reacted to his loss in 2020. So the stakes are immense. And I'll, I'll shut up now and let you ask other questions, but y you, the basic answer is yes, we've never seen anything like this. And the reason we've never seen anything like this is Donald Trump

Larry (00:19:02):

And the threat to democracy during the Civil War was almost limited to the United States. Now, we're on the world stage, and the threat to democracy doesn't just affect us. It's a world problem. Am I correct? Well

Speaker 4 (00:19:25):

Yes, but I wanna put that in a little bit of context. So as you can see over my shoulder the Andy Warhol image of Jimmy Carter you know, <laugh>, I, I, I put the, when I go on TV on M-S-N-B-C, it's kind of the, the habit to have your book right behind you. You know? So I, I have that. And when Jimmy Carter was president in the 1970s there were many, many fewer democracies in the world than there are today. Just to give you a, a quick example south America was all dictatorships, with the exception of Venezuela in the ni early in the mid 1970s, late 1970s. Today, all of South America is democratic except for Venezuela, <laugh>, you know, which flipped. So we, we do, you know, democracy is not dead, but where Trump has put it at severe risk is that he's made common cause with any dictator he can find.

Speaker 4 (00:20:38):

And, you know, it doesn't, you don't have to be a close reader of the news to know that he loves Vladimir Putin. He recently was saying nice things about Xi Jinping in China. He tried to cozy up to the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un and the real threat to democracy, which is also a threat to every American taxpayer, is that Trump doesn't believe in nato. And he's made it very clear that he's not a believer in nato. And if, so, the reason that Putin hasn't gone to the table now in try to have a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine, is he's waiting to see what happens in our election. 'cause If Trump wins, he just goes to ki you know, it's, it's, it's over basically for Ukraine. And you know, Putin will get a green light to do whatever he wants.

Speaker 4 (00:21:35):

The problem is, it won't stop there. And if, if the United States is still the indispensable partner in nato. And so if Trump fulfills what he promises, and you have to believe him, when he says something and gets us out of nato, NATO will collapse. And at that point, it, it will be very easy for Vladimir Putin to fulfill what he said is his dream, which is to reassemble as much of the former Soviet Union as he can. And so, when that starts to happen, what happens in the United States? Well, we then, instead of taking, you know, a tiny portion of our defense budget and giving it to Ukraine, which is what's being argued about in Washington right now, but we will then have to, you know, take the trillion dollars a year that we spend on the, you know, in the Pentagon, and maybe I don't triple it.

Speaker 4 (00:22:38):

We would, we would then have to, I'm making that up. I have no idea what our defense budget would've to go to, but to defend Western Europe, defend the former e part of Eastern Europe from resurgent Russia to defend Taiwan because, you know it's pretty clear that Xi Jinping would get a green light from Trump who doesn't care about Taiwan to, you know, go after Taiwan to defend them. And they would be defended. It's not like Putin, and she would necessarily win, they would be defended by us and the West, but it would cost a ton of money to do it. And in the meantime, you would have democracy on the run in various parts of the world, and it would be a happy day for the Victor Orban of the world. And Orban, just to remind people who don't follow Hungarian politics is the authoritarian leader of Hungary. And he he's the model for the GOP at this point. The Conservative Political Action Committee actually had their annual meeting in Hungary last year. So it's not, this isn't like, you know, liberal, like, oh, the liberals say that conservatives like authoritarians. No, it's a, it's a fact. That's where they go to have their meetings. They say nice things about authoritarian leaders, and they will take this country in a strong authoritarian, dictatorial direction. Should Trump be return to office.

Larry (00:24:24):

Your recent book about, sorry

Speaker 4 (00:24:26):

To cheer you up today, Larry.

Larry (00:24:27):

No, no, no. I

Speaker 4 (00:24:29):

Really, I shouldn't be you know, on my high horse about this. But I think we all need to get on our high horses. And as Liz Cheney, you know, now, there's this really very encouraging meeting of, of people who are a little bit in the center or left of center with somebody, you know, like Liz Cheney, and just a couple of other very conservative people of conscience. But it's, it's positive. And, you know, so her, I think her being interviewed by Rachel Maddow recently, <laugh>, that was a, that was a good thing. 'cause There are people of all different persuasions who are recognizing that this isn't about, oh, do you want taxes to go up or down, or do you wanna do this or that, about this problem or that problem? This is for all the marbles. This isn't about left and right, liberal, conservative, it's about democracy or autocracy. So now I'll, now I'll give my horse, get, as my wife says, I get off my high horse and give a drink of water.

Larry (00:25:36):

<Laugh>. I, I, I was going to say in light of your recent book on Jimmy Carter, I can't help but compare the type of men Jimmy Carter, whose presidency may or may not have been very successful with Trump, and what a second term of office of Jimmy Carter would've been like if he had been reelected to what a second term of Trump is going to be like if elect That's

Speaker 4 (00:26:15):

A really interesting question. So, a couple of things. First, you know Carter led this epic American life that I just found hugely colorful and interesting to write about. And when I was in the Carter Library in June of 2015, I worked on the book basically for except for the work I was doing on the Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamel documentary. I, I worked on the book steadily for about five years. And I got a text from M-S-N-B-C saying you need to go to a, a studio in Atlanta. Trump is announcing his candidacy today, and we need you know, to help us with the live coverage. So I go there, Trump comes down the escalator. I mistakenly say, I say two, basically two things. One thing that turned out to be wrong, which was, I don't think he's gonna win.

Speaker 4 (00:27:22):

The other thing that I said that turned out to be right is that this is a dangerous demagogue. I mean, he started attacking, you know, Mexicans as rapists and just playing from the demagogue playbook from the moment he came down the escalator. And then I finished that appearance, and I went back to the library, and I'm looking through old documents, letters from Jimmy Carter, and it was like a balal for me. And for the next few years, anytime I got, I, I felt that toxic poisoning from Trump, I would just return to Carter because of the core decency. Now, my book has a lot of criticism of it, doesn't have any criticism of Rosalyn Carter, who <laugh> when when they listened to my book on tape. And her comment afterward was well, Jonathan has some very critical things to say about Jimmy, but he only has nice things to say about me, which was true, because she was a tremendously formidable woman, as I think people saw when they saw the obituaries of her not long ago.

Speaker 4 (00:28:39):

And, and they hadn't quite realized just how formidable and influential she was. And I interviewed more than 250 people, not, not a single person, had anything critical to say about her. Jimmy Carter a much more complex story, as you might imagine, not a failed president, but a I describe him as a political failure. He got whooped by Ronald Reagan, but a substantive and often visionary success. And so, just to go to your question about what would've happened in a second term, a subject that I discussed with Carter in one of our many interviews you know, he had put solar panels on the roof of the White House, which Reagan took down. And he had a vision of moving us, not just to e energy independence, which was his priority at the time in which he, with the first ever energy policy, as difficult as it was to implement, he was beginning to move us in that direction.

Speaker 4 (00:29:48):

Now we're quite a ways toward energy independence. But within that context, and he wanted electric cars. By the mid 1980s I think he would have with some mistakes, arguably in between, because he, in order to get energy independence, he, he also wanted to expand coal production. But within that context, he was a strong environmentalist and signed 15 major pieces of environmental legislation when he was president. So he would've continued as an environmentalist. And at the very end of his presidency, his White House issued a report, actually three different reports on global warming. And on each of those reports about other environmental problems that he tackled, he would take the recommendations from the report and turn it into often successful legislation. So I do think it's fair to say that he would have begun to address climate change in the early 1980s, had he been reelected.

Speaker 4 (00:31:03):

And that lends a kind of a tragic dimension to that 1980 election where he lost Ronald Reagan. And, but when I asked Carter about what he most wanted to do in his second term, he brought the conversation back to the Middle East. And he, you know, everybody was giving him big props for the Camp David Accords, which made peace between Israel and Egypt, and is the foundation the, the most durable peace treaty since World War ii. And if you can imagine what things would be like now, if, if Egypt and, and Israel were, were set to fight, what would be, you know, they had four wars between them, between 19 48 and 1973. And so this was a huge accomplishment. But Carter was dissatisfied with Camp David because it did not resolve the problem of a Palestinian homeland.

Speaker 4 (00:32:14):

And he was the first president to ever say pretty early in his presidency, that the Palestinians deserved their own state, and the world wasn't ready for it. In 1978 when he went to Camp David, and if he had invited the Palestinians to Camp David, it wouldn't have worked. They wouldn't have been able to do the deal between Israel and Egypt, which was hard enough as it was. But there were serious misunderstandings about the peace process that they established in at Camp David misunderstandings between the United States and the Israelis. And by the way, Carter thought the Israelis deserved huge credit at Camp David, that they gave away more than the Egyptians did. And that it took a lot of credit a lot of courage for them to turn over the entire Sinai and pull their settlers outta the Sinai.

Speaker 4 (00:33:12):

The other things that were required as part of the Camp David Accords. But having said that, you know, he, in the years since, has been at odds with the Israelis on this issue of a Palestinian state. And he believes if he'd been reelected that because of the enormous credibility that he had with both sides, that he could have built on the Camp David of Accord to move toward a true resolution and true peace in the Middle East. Now, I don't know whether he would've been successful in doing that. When you look at all of what's happened since, when you look at the determination to continue with the settlements, which manum be, was already beginning at that time, and how disruptive that is to peace when you look at the you know, Nazi like brutality and butchery of Hamas, which doesn't want, you know, a two-state solution, they want to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews there they could.

Speaker 4 (00:34:30):

When you look at those kinds of impediments, it, it, it's a little bit hard to see how he would've done it. But it's important to remember that in the 1980s, Hamas didn't exist yet. And Carter later developed a very good working relationship with Yasser Arafat. So it's, it's conceivable that he could have brought Mid East Peace in the early 1980s. And this is something that it almost torments him, I think pretty much every time we would start talking about this, it would consume most of our, you know, hour, hour and a half together. And I would switch off the Middle East because I wanted to talk to him about other things. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. But in terms of his own head, his big regret, as he said to me, flatly at one point, his big regret about not getting reelected as he thought he would've been able to bring a regional Mideast piece,

Larry (00:35:35):

I never realized Carter's involvement in climate problems that that has not been discussed before.

Speaker 4 (00:35:46):

Well, it wasn't extensive in, in fairness to the historical record. So, you know, I learned a few things. First when other guys were out playing golf, Carter was at home, like reading scientific journals. He actually did play golf when he was a young man, and was not bad at it, but decided that it would get in the consume too much of his time. And so he stopped playing golf. But I found in his files a journal from 1971, the Journal Science, a very well regarded scientific publication. And at that time, Carter was governor of Georgia, and he underlined this article I don't know if it was by Roger Revelle or one of the other early climate science guys, but about global warming, which was sometimes called carbon pollution. And so he was aware of the issue early, and then at the end of his presidency, he, he, you know, issued a report on the issue, which was the first time anyone anywhere in the world had done that.

Speaker 4 (00:36:58):

But it was still in the scientific community. And it, it's, I I don't think it's actually that likely that that Carter would've grabbed it as a big issue in a second term. But what he would've done is begun to educate the country, and he would have put the power of the presidency behind the scientific community. Jimmy Carter is, you know, he's not just a nuclear engineer. He's very, very knowledgeable about a wide variety of different things. He's one of the most intelligent men ever to be president, whatever his shortcomings are. And he he would have given it an impetus so that even if the technology, say for electric cars wasn't ready in the mid 1980s, which it might not have been, he would've done important what is sometimes called agenda setting work just raising people's consciousness about climate and that that would've happened if he'd been reelected.

Larry (00:38:19):

Well, like you, I would love to spend the rest of the day talking about climate, but I still have a couple of questions about Trump with what's going on in the news with Jack Smith right now. How do you feel about the delay of Trump's January 6th trial? Should it happen?

Speaker 4 (00:38:42):

It definitely should not happen. But I'm monitoring this very closely, Larry, because I've obtained credentials to cover that trial, which I'll do for the magazine that I worked for many years ago. And I'm still associated with, it's called Washington Monthly and for my Substack newsletter. So I'm following this very, very closely. And I I'm actually cautiously optimistic that there will not be a substantial delay in this trial. It might not open at the beginning of March, but it may be a few weeks later. So I'm now if I, if I had to bet, I would say that this trial will take place in the spring of this coming year, and it's extraordinarily important that it do. So the American people deserve to have this trial before the election. If Trump thinks he's innocent and he's presumed innocent, he should welcome having this trial so that he can establish his, his innocence if, if he believes he is. So it's in the interest of the American people that this take place on an expedited basis. And the moves by the Supreme Court this week suggest that they, they get that. And I think we're gonna see a schedule that's more like what we saw in the Watergate tapes case in 1974, where things move very quickly when the Supreme Court wants them to,

Larry (00:40:26):

Would his conviction make a difference to the elect election?

Speaker 4 (00:40:31):

So I have been so wrong about this guy's ability to maintain the allegiance of, if you look at current polls of very large share of the American public, that I, I don't wanna say that predict that it would make a big difference, but I think it would. I, I think there's a difference between being indicted and being a convicted felon. And that when attention, you know, focuses on his effort to overturn the election, and if a, if a jury of his peers are convinced that he broke the law in doing so I think there's enough faith in the system that while his hardcore base will never, they're in a cult. I mean, they're not gonna get off of him. There are quite a large number of independent voters or maybe Republicans who are more in the Liz Cheney category, you know, who aren't members of his cult who might go, you know, I, I was gonna vote for Trump because I thought he did a better job on the economy than Biden.

Speaker 4 (00:42:02):

And I don't like Biden. But, you know, when I saw that juror and shadow, of course, he'll have to be in shadow because Trump's people would go after him, you know, if they found out who he or she were was. But, you know, I, I can envision a situation when after conviction, if there is a conviction, and we shouldn't take that for granted, that you would see jurors interviewed in shadow, and that when they say to the American public, look, you know, I came in here with an open mind, and this guy is guilty as charged, and these are extremely serious offenses that he was convicted of. They're the most of, I mean, I, I consider this trial area to be the single most significant trial in American history. It's not the trial of the century, it's the trial of <laugh>.

Speaker 4 (00:43:03):

You know, the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries in the United States. You know, we had one, I was talking about the the Jefferson administration. He was elected in, in eighteen hundred and eighteen oh four, and I believe it was in 1805, his former Vice President Aaron Burr, was put on trial for treason, and he was acquitted. And so by my standards, what I call the coup trial, and we're talking here about the January 6th trial in Judge Tanya Kins courtroom in Washington. 'cause I know there are a lot of Trump cases to keep track of the coup trial is the most significant trial since the Burr trial for our Constitutional Republic. Now, is it the Splashiest Now we've had a bunch of murder trials that have been called Trial of the Centuries. Is it the sexiest? No. Is it the most significant? Yes. And I, I just, I, I guess I still have enough faith in the American public that when they understand what this man tried to do, and his crime was against them too, when you overturn or attempt to overturn a legitimate election, as the indictment reads, it's an offense against all voters.

Speaker 4 (00:44:46):

'Cause You're basically saying their vote doesn't count. Your vote doesn't count. 'cause I'm gonna, I think I won the election and I'm gonna just grab it. And when you do that and you put together fake electors and all the other things that he did, I, I, I do think that in the same way that during the January 6th hearings, there was a shift in public opinion against Trump because people recognized that it, it, it, what he did was horribly, horribly wrong. The problem is people lead busy lives and their attention span is short, and all of our memories are short, especially as we get a little older. So you have to keep reminding people of what this grievous offense was. And so a trial in the spring will do that. Conviction and sentencing will do that. Of course, he's not gonna be punished because his appeals won't be exhausted for years. So you won't actually see him, you know, go to jail or, or be sentenced to community service before the election. But what you will see in answer your question, is a big public debate. Well, what, what do we do with a president who's a convicted felon? How does that work? You know, where does the Secret Service sleep in prison? If he's, you know, all of those things will, will be part of the public debate. And I don't think that will help Donald Trump very much.

Larry (00:46:38):

Okay. Then the big question that you almost already answered, will democracy survive another Trump presidency?

Speaker 4 (00:46:53):

So this is where my my faith in this country comes in and, and the people of this country. So I think if you look at the history of democracies under siege around the world there is sometimes a pattern of somebody coming in and acting like a dictator, and the resistance being strong enough that that dictator is not able to end democracy permanently. And so I think that's what would happen is that Trump would end our democracy, but not do so permanently. And that the resistance would be so strong and would gather strength over time that you might have a situation a little bit like that in Brazil where you know, Bolsonaro was basically kind of a tyrant. And they were able to get rid of him and restore some of their democratic traditions, even though Bolsonaro followers recently stormed the Brazilian capital.

Speaker 4 (00:48:16):

And, you know, you have situations where in India, the world's largest democracy around the time of Indira Gandhi there were you know, they lost some of their Democratic freedoms and were able to get them back. They're actually under a little bit of assault in India again now. So these things, it, it's very important that people not get despondent and fatalistic about this. First of all, Trump is very beatable. Like this idea that, oh God, he's gonna win. You know, that's just a recipe for apathy. Anybody who wants to prevent him from winning, all they, all they have to do is you know, call, use these call tools and call into battleground states. And you can, you know, I mean, Barack Obama had a million volunteers in the 2008 campaign. If you, you could see a situation where if a million Americans, and there were Biden had quite a number in 2020 as well, you know, decided they would use these these call tools, it turns out voters don't care.

Speaker 4 (00:49:34):

They don't, they don't even ask, or Do you live in Georgia? Do you live in, you know, Michigan? If you can get the, get out the vote effort in in those battleground states, you know, Trump could very easily lose. And, and you could make the argument that he would lose if people can avoid being despondent about what happens. But if he wins, instead of that being a recipe for people to, you know, do what does sometimes happen when strong men sees power, which is just to bow down in front of the new leader. If that doesn't happen, I think it could be four years of chaos and misery. I think the courts will fight back, and as they did after 20, 20, 60 courts said that he was full of it when he challenged the election returns in 2020, and they will fight back at a, at a lot of what he would try to do as president again.

Speaker 4 (00:50:40):

And then, you know, he would try to go ahead and presumably maybe even defy some court orders, and then, then we would have, you know, constitutional crisis of some kind. And it would be a rough period. But there were, you know, there were serious. And as far as like, you know, just in terms of the press, like Trump is now saying, and his people are one of his people Kash Patel just said that they would put critical reporters in prison in a second term. And, and they you know, they might try to do that. But we've, we've seen some of that in the past actually. Nixon wiretap and Henry Kissinger Wiretapped reporters they spied on dissidents. So some of it was done under Nixon. I, I think people might remember reading that Abraham Lincoln shut down critical newspapers during the Civil War, imprisoned some critics, not a lot, but a few to send a message.

Speaker 4 (00:51:54):

And, you know, we survived. So I, I think ultimately we survived, but at what cost? Because every time you go through one of these guardrails, it's harder to repair the guardrail later on. And, and we get kind of numbed to things, you know, he, it just, it still blows me away that Trump said he would suspend the US Constitution, and I think it was on page a 13 of the New York Times, he said he would use the office to, for retribution against his enemies. That's dictator talk again, until recently when there's been a spate of publicity because of his, his, his interview with Sean Hannon, he said he'd be a dictator on day one. Ha ha. It's just a joke. You know, since then there's been a little bit more attention, but not nearly enough. So I guess, you know, the, the larger answer to whether this is gonna happen or not depends on whether we can move at least partially away from this horse race coverage, which I took part in, you know, Newsweek and else for many years.

Speaker 4 (00:53:18):

There's nothing wrong with covering the horse race, but there has to be room for the stakes in the election to be covered. And, and that's a little bit hard for journalists and, and citizens to, to do, but it, we need to return relentlessly to this question of, you know, what happens. And I, I, you know, if, if one or the other candidate wins, I mean, I still hold out just a little bit of hope that Joe Biden won't run. I think he is not the best candidate, the Democrats to put up. He probably is going to run, and at that point, I mean, he is running, I probably is going to stay in almost you put it over 90%, but there's, there's still that little chance, and I think that would be very good that primaries would quickly sort out another candidate, and that Democrat, whoever it turned out to be, would crush Trump because elections are about the future, not the past. And, and whether it was Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom, or somebody else who rose to the top and would have a united Democratic party behind them, that's one way of preventing this all from happening. If it does we'll survive, but by the skin of our teeth.

Larry (00:54:47):

Jamie Raskin

Speaker 4 (00:54:49):

Love the guy. Yeah. What about him?

Larry (00:54:52):

Yeah, I, I asked that Jamie

Speaker 4 (00:54:54):

Raskin, in what context?

Larry (00:54:57):

Running for president?

Speaker 4 (00:54:58):

Oh, no, no, he's not, he's not running for president. He declined to run for the Senate for

Larry (00:55:03):

Yeah, I know. I just

Speaker 4 (00:55:05):

Also, he's not, he would not, and he would be, he's a friend of mine. He would be the first person to in, I mean, he's just been, you know, he just had cancer. He had the same kind of cancer I did 19 years ago, lymphoma. And he so he, he wouldn't be a, a candidate for president. But there's, there's a, a good list of you know, at least a half a dozen Democrats who would make very strong candidates. I think that people like James Carville and David Axelrod, Clinton and Obama's

Larry (00:55:45):

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>

Speaker 4 (00:55:46):

Top political aids, they, they think that another Democrat could win 55% of the vote. That, and that would be the way to put this into the rear view mirror this whole sorted era. But in all likelihood, it's gonna be Joe Biden, who's been a good president, and we're gonna all just need to suck it up and do whatever we can to get him over the finish line.

Larry (00:56:10):

You know, I asked that question because I was born in the thirties and the changes politically that I've lived through in my lifetime from presidents to wars to advancements in science. But we are at a historical moment now that I can't recall I've ever, in my lifetime, in that's,

Speaker 4 (00:56:41):

Yeah. And that's true of you know, e as you know, I like talking to older people, and it's true of everybody I know's led a long life, e everybody's, you know any person of I shouldn't say everybody because I'm not including the Trump supporters in that, but I think that large numbers of people and large numbers of people I, I talk to feel exactly the way you do, Larry, that we're at a kind of a hinge of history, a pivot point, and it's, you know, if it goes the wrong way, there is the chance that, you know, when I said I was hopeful that we would survive a Trump presidency, a second term, when he is gonna do things, as his former chief of staff says, he is gonna do a lot of stuff that he couldn't get away with the first time around when I said I thought we would survive it, I didn't say, we will survive it <laugh>, you know, we, it's gonna be a struggle. And history is always about struggle. And so people, I think there's a, there's a tendency to ring hands instead of ringing doorbells, let's put it that way. Like that, you know, you, you, you, oh God. Oh, this is awful. Oh, okay, well, you know, it's not that hard to go online and figure out what you can do about it. And, and so that, and that's what people have to do because history's always a struggle, and it's, it's not a a place for bystanders.

Larry (00:58:31):

So what can a small podcast like this do?

Speaker 4 (00:58:36):

Oh, I think you can do a lot, Larry. I mean, you can, you can be in, you know, constant touch with your audience in suggesting ways they can, can fight Trump and, and prevent this from from taking place. And, you know, there's grassroots organizing that's going on in, in all of the battleground states. You can also do it for, you know, in wherever you happen to live because you know, you have to you have to fight. Look, I'm a, I'm a believer in a strong two party system, and there been Republicans that I've supported in the past. But it's a diseased political party right now. And I think fighting them at the local level is also helpful, even if it's not directly connected to the presidential. But people have to figure out what the best use of their skills are.

Speaker 4 (00:59:48):

And in your case, in my case, it's, it's about communicating. And so you're just, by having this podcast, you have the, you know, the right kinds of people on who can, and it's not that hard to find them. And they're, you know, who can talk about, in, in more detail about what people in different areas of the country can do and what they can do across geographical borders. As I mentioned, you don't have to live in a battleground state to take part in its politics. And that's something that you don't hear a lot. 'cause It doesn't sound good on tv, you know, to say, Hey, actually, one of the ways Ron DeSantis just totally blew it, his wife blew it for him. She went on TV with him sitting right next to her and said, you don't have to live in Iowa to go to Iowa and vote in the Iowa caucuses.

Speaker 4 (01:00:47):

And that, you know, blew up in their face. The head of the Iowa Republican party said, actually, you do have to be in Iowa, but you don't have to live in Iowa or any other place to make calls in. You do, you do have to be there to vote <laugh>, but you don't have to be there to make calls into that state on, on behalf of your candidate. And, and I, so I think people tend to think, oh, I live in, you know, New York City. I live in Chicago where I'm from, or wherever, you know there's nothing I can do. There is, and, and, and I think, but part of it depends on being smart about it. So it's really important to follow Obama's advice and not make the perfect, the enemy of the good. So what happens a lot of time, and unfortunately liberals are very susceptible to this, is they go, well, I don't like Biden on this or that, you know, so I don't think I'm gonna vote, I'm not gonna vote for Trump, of course, but you know, I, I, he's not, he is not liberal enough for me, or I don't like him on the Middle East, or whatever their particular gripe is, and they lose sight of the higher stake.

Speaker 4 (01:01:58):

This is how we got George W. Bush in 2000, because you had all those people voting for Ralph Nader. Oh, Gore's not liberal enough. I'm gonna vote for Nader. I mean, when I was a kid, I, I ran around underfoot at the 1968 Democratic Convention. My parents were both very active in politics. My mother was working for Humphrey, my father was working for Eugene McCarthy. And one of the things that happened that year is a lot of the McCarthy supporters, not my father, decided, oh, Humphrey, he is, you know, he is connected to LBJ and I, I, you know, I don't like Nixon, but I, I just can't vote for Humphrey. So he lost a Nixon very narrowly because these liberals were making the perfect, the enemy of the good. And so I think one of the things you can do, and anybody else who has access to, you know, talking to other people is just remind people, don't be perfectionist in your politics, especially when the wolf is at the door.

Speaker 4 (01:03:03):

You know, it's just no time to make these distinctions. Now, the good news is, I think large numbers of Democrats, most Democrats get this, and that's why there hasn't been a lot of sniping at Biden within the Democratic Party. And you don't see people like Bernie Sanders, you know, it was still quite the left of Joe Biden. You don't see him attacking him. 'cause They recognize the stakes. I think the democratic politicians recognize the stakes, but there are plenty of voters who don't, you know, voters who might be, I mean, I hear from, I wrote on, on my old goats I wrote, it's actually, I think the best read thing I've written. I wrote an attack on Bobby Kennedy Jr. Who I knew from college. And I, I still get, you know, mail from people, oh, I think I'm gonna vote for Bobby Kennedy.

Speaker 4 (01:03:54):

And I'm like, you know, blah, blah, blah, and Covid, there's a, I said, are you crazy? I mean, Bobby Kennedy is a little crazy himself. He's a crank. But just aside from that, you really wanna vote for a third party candidate and risk getting Trump in back in what, what's, yeah, wrong with you? You're not thinking straight. I'm sorry to be a hard about this, but people who think that way are not thinking straight. They're, they, they're, it's this, like, I think of something like 1976 or 1980 even. Well, let's take 1976. Jimmy Carter's running against Gerald Ford, or take the 2000 and eight election Barack Obama's running against John McCain at that time. If you went, okay, I'm for a third party candidate, fine. You know, but if McCain became president, it's not that big of a deal. If Gerald Ford became president instead of Jimmy Carter, not that big of a deal this time, it really is a big deal, and people have to get their head screwed on right about it.

Larry (01:05:11):

Jon, this has been amazingly terrific. I really, really appreciate you coming on specifically for seniors. Thank you. Thank

Speaker 4 (01:05:22):

You. Well, thanks so much. Thanks, I, I appreciate you having me on there. Take care.

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