What They Died ForPublisher's Roundup 19, Memorial Day EditionMemorial Day has particular meaning for me. I would not be alive if it were not for the US military. It helped save both my parents in World War II—though in very different ways. In spring 1945, my mom had been in Nazi captivity for a year—transferred from Auschwitz to a slave labor camp in Neuengamme Germany, packing (and when she could, sabotaging) ammunition. When she was flagging, a friendly jailer whispered to her to hang on—the allies were near. But for the US Armed Forces joining the fight, at terrible cost to so many American soldiers and families, my mom would not have survived. My Dad’s connection was more direct: he actually served in those forces. He fled Europe for the US in 1940, arrived here with no papers, and enlisted in the Army to become a citizen. Who knows what would’ve become of him if the Army hadn't welcomed him. While my parents didn’t meet until years after the war (in Israel, of all places), the US military was their godsend, and so mine. I thought of all that this weekend, as I watched a group of veterans process at the Brown University commencement ceremony (I was there for my 40th reunion). The university has a program for veterans to get college degrees. The diverse platoon was composed of about twenty men and women; short and tall; black, brown, and white; all clad in gowns and mortarboards instead of uniforms or camouflage. They were greeted with cheers and whoops for their own accomplishments, of course, but also for the honor of the extraordinary institution they represent. The American idea, which they and their absent comrades fought and died for, is being attacked from within this Memorial Day. How do we honor those who died for freedom when we see liberty under attack here at home? How do we salute the flag and that idea of America it stands for, when its meaning is being assaulted daily by the very administration entrusted with its care? I know some might say we should simply remember our lost soldiers today, without tarnishing that tribute by addressing our political climate. But to my mind, looking away squanders their sacrifice. It is our responsibility to be candid about the crisis and to honor their service more urgently than ever. We can do that by recommitting ourselves to defending our democracy. To memorialize our veterans’ sacrifices is to attend to the fragile, unfinished work of fighting autocracy and building a country worthy of their service. It is to hold tight to the idea of America, even when its practice falters. To do our part, as they did—not on distant battlefields, but on our streets, among our communities, and in our courthouses. For me, that mission is informed by a Jewish aphorism that my parents, both saved by American soldiering, would sometimes say to me: לֹא עָלֶיך הַמְלָאכָה לִיגמוֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חֹרִין לְחִבָּטֵל מִמֶנָה “Your job is not to finish the work—but neither are you, the child of free people, not to do your share.” I think of it often when I’m doing my pro-democracy work here at The Contrarian or my parallel work in the courts of law, which paid subscribers make possible. The challenge is relentless, so it reassures me to know that I need not harbor illusions of finishing the job. By the same token, it motivates me to stay mindful that I must always do my share. “The child of free people.” That’s me and my family—but it is also all of us. We owe our freedom to American soldiers who fought and died for it. Watching those proud, processing veterans at Brown reminded me that Memorial Day is about people—ordinary people who exhibited extraordinary courage so that those they never knew, but also they and their children, could be free. As we lay wreaths and raise flags, let us also file lawsuits and raise voices. And as we enter this summer, let us be realistic: no one can finish the work, so let us each be prepared to do our share for democracy. A lot of you did just that last week, and we covered it here at The Contrarian. Democracy MovementIf you ever find yourself hungry for hope, one of my favorite features at The Contrarian is our daily coverage of the Democracy Movement. We started it to keep you inspired by fellow Americans across the country who are protecting and defending democracy. This week, the bulk of the protests were over the big, hideous budget bill the House passed on Thursday. (As a friendly reminder: call your member of Congress at 202-224-3121. There’s always value in letting representatives know how their voters feel.) This week, we also covered some early planning for No Kings Day, clocked a crowd of 18,000 in the streets of Chicago, and spotted Gabby Giffords joining protesters in Tucson to oppose the GOP tax scam. Also included are protesters outside Trump’s outrageous, unethical “meme coin dinner” (which I covered live), Tesla Takedowns, Batman joining the resistance, and much more. As always, find protests in your area at mobilize.us and send us your photos at submit@contrariannews.org. Also, check here to find a town hall in your area. Dispatches from (and about) the international sceneJen Rubin continued to revel in her much-deserved European vacation, but not without regular dispatches and thoughts on the U.S. place in the world from the other side of the Atlantic. On Trip Day 3 she reminded us that as Trump’s autocratic ambitions falter, Europe’s commitment to democratic values is only gaining strength. In The Spanish Historical Lesson Jen offered delivered the long view of the rise and fall of superpowers, and on where to turn our gazes now—not to the week’s “breathless, heartless, dumb commentary” on the sad news of former President Biden, but towards the crisis raging in plain sight from the current Oval Office occupant. Jen wasn’t the only one surveying international affairs. Brian O’Neill wrote about one weekend, three elections in Romania. Poland. Portugal. For each he posed the same global question: Can democracy still hold the line? And indeed, liberal democracy passed a set of critical stress tests in each country. O’Neill laid out the next defining test: NATO’s summit. Jen once again took a global lens on the American crisis, returning with a question for us. Where is the outrage when Trump goes full Erdoğan? When Erdoğan jailed his top rival, the world noticed, as we did with recent autocratic moves in Chad and Tanzania. Why, she asked, has the reaction to Trump’s arrest of political opponents like a member of Congress and a judge not been greeted with equal outrage? By week’s end, in observing the United States from abroad as we kicked off the Memorial Day weekend, Jen was struck by how much of the world that we know today would not exist, but for American military and financial sacrifice. As she wrote, “If not for young men and women ready to lay down their lives for others, Europe today would not be free, democratic, and devoted to Western values.” For this reason and countless more, this week’s Undaunted column honored veterans. Justice…or the lack of itThe Supreme Court needs to double down on empowering lower courts, wrote Leah Litman, legal expert and author of Lawless, in regards to our highest court’s crucial decision last week blocking Trump’s illegal efforts to deport migrants to a Salvadoran prison. Their ruling delivers a clear message to lower courts: they are the first line of defense against Trump’s overreach. But if the rule of law is to survive, SCOTUS better do its own job. This need came into stark relief when Trump’s DOJ charged a Democratic congresswoman. Mimi Rocah wrote on this abuse of the justice system in plain sight: charging Rep. LaMonica McIver (D, NJ) for allegedly assaulting federal agents—a case that is, in Rocah’s expert opinion, riddled with red flags. Meanwhile, Matthew Boulay took on Avelo Airlines, which has signed a $150 million contract with ICE to operate its deportation flights. This summer, don’t fly deportation airlines, he suggested. “The same airline offering weekend getaways is now helping remove from the United States men, women, and children—many of whom were denied fair hearings and basic protections. Let’s be clear: Avelo is now complicit in one of the most shameful human rights violations of our time,” he wrote. And our ace Democracy Index team analyzed a week when the Trump Administration took new steps in abusing its power of government to attack institutions and perceived enemies. However, this week also featured important instances of the federal judiciary—the institution most strongly protecting the rule of law—pushing back and thwarting these unlawful actions. Race in AmericaContrarian April Ryan was joined this week by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to discuss 5 years after George Floyd. Yesterday marked the somber anniversary of his killing. AG Ellison led the prosecution of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, and he and April had an honest and excoriating discussion of what has changed since then, and what hasn’t. “Whenever you see the racism and the distraction, look for the grift, because that's what they’re doing.” Carron J. Phillips added his view: It took America only five years to forget about George Floyd. Witnessing the death of an innocent Black man caused this country to reflect, he recalled. However, the subsequent “racial awakening” proved to be short-lived. The naked racism of the Trump regime was dissected in Shalise Manza Young’s column on why white South Africans are migrants the Trump administration can love. She traced how Trump’s “white is right” approach has shaped which refugees and global victims he chooses to champion—and which he ignores, apropos of a tense meeting with South Africa’s president, in which he once again pushed the claim that white South Africans are facing “genocide.” Shalise also wrote on how Louisiana’s Nottoway fire took us back to when Black Twitter was a time. She bid good riddance to a burned-down former sugar plantation—while giving a fond eulogy to Black Twitter, which celebrated the fire with an online party at the heights of its pre-Musk-takeover heyday. “It was Black joy and Black comedy, a needed release as we watched another fire, the second iteration of a Donald Trump presidency.” Big and Beautiful…Billionaires’ BountyThe week brought us Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” a clear winner for Words & Phrases We Can Do Without, a weekly column on the language GOP spin doctors have rendered meaningless. When you hear this insipid branding, Jen Rubin wrote, “reframe it in your mind to mean ‘morally repugnant, fiscally insane, anti-growth bill.’” If you like your presidential travel mixed with $B self-enrichment for Trump and sons, this week’s “Talking Feds” podcast was the one for you, as a terrific roundtable of all-star policy and legal experts–Peter Baker, Tara Setmayer, and Jacob Weisberg—broke down Trump’s Gulf Coast lucre tour and this benighted “big, beautiful bill” in Art of the Self Deal. This week’s live Q&A, “Let’s Do Lunch” with Jared Bernstein featured a heavyweight guest to answer your burning econ questions: the great Paul Krugman. These budget experts discussed, among other things, how the U.S. dollar may still be the backbone of global trade—but it’s only as reliable as the country behind it. Katie Phang and Congressman Ritchie Torres on GOP’s calamitous cuts to Medicaid Congressman Ritchie Torres joined Contrarian Katie Phang to dig into the GOP’s plan to decimate Medicaid support for millions of people while putting cash in the pockets of billionaires. “Ultimately, this debate is about lives and livelihoods.” In a similar vein, Jeff Nesbit wrote an insistent piece: don’t lose sight of the pain Trump is passing on to American consumers. In it, he shone a deserved spotlight on what Trump’s policies are already costing us—at the store, at the doctor, and in your paycheck. Behind the noise, as always, Trump’s agenda is about gutting working families to reward himself and the rich. While the mainstream media seem trapped in a news cycle about former President Biden’s health and cancer diagnosis, Jeff also explained that Trump’s cuts to cancer research are imperiling Biden’s legacy Cancer Moonshot initiative. The sitting president continues to gut cancer research pretty much everywhere he can, which of course puts at high risk the survival of the initiative that was one of Biden’s most heroic legacies. GOP Self-sabotageLisa Gilbert and I explained why eroding the filibuster would come back to bite Republicans. Senate Republicans undertook that erosion by overruling the parliamentarian this week to wipe away state environmental laws that they don't like. That is as shortsighted as…well, everything else the GOP is doing. Austin Sarat wrote about when government officials are ignorant about the Constitution, noting the stunning lack of basic constitutional knowledge among Trump’s cabinet of toadies. Last week’s special contestant was Kristi Noem. Her claim that “habeas corpus” protection from wrongful imprisonment means the exact opposite and gives free rein to the president to trample our rights endangers the republic she’s meant to serve. Brian O’Neill published his second open letter to the director of national intelligence in sorry, Tulsi Gabbard. You can’t polygraph your way out of this. He urged her to take a step back after 100 days of politicizing—not protecting—the intelligence community with her sweeping changes. When the next failure comes, he warned, Gabbard will only have herself to blame. With the help of our video team, we’ve been taking a clear-eyed look at some of the less savory members of this regime, who must be held accountable for failing to uphold their oaths of office. In doing so we also seek to recognize those unafraid to ask the right questions. Though he’s often cited as the only qualified member of Trump’s cabinet, we didn’t observe that in our look at what happened when Marco Visited Congress. HealthHealth is always front of mind for most of us, and has become even more so with our unhinged Secretary of Health and Human Services. In her piece, making Salmonella Great Again, Jennifer Schulze wrote on how the administration’s gutting of the FDA and CDC is transforming routine grocery shopping into a contamination casino: pay your money and take your chances on E. coli and Salmonella. Jennifer Weiss-Wolf turned to grim cases like that of Adriana Smith in her piece on how the state of reproductive rights is dire. Smith was pregnant with a fetus declared brain dead, but forced to remain on life support until delivery, possibly months from now—another case exposing the harrowing present reality of women’s bodies being under siege. In addressing matters of health that we actually can do something to prevent, Jehieli Luevanos-Ovalle put forward essential advice: Take care of yourself while the world is burning. Self-care is essential for all of us who want to maintain the endurance to keep up the fight. Culture, Comics & CookingOur friend Pablo Torre was joined by Dan Arrigg Koh for The Contrarian’s weekly show of Offsides with Pablo Torre. They discussed how sports talk wins the manosphere, as well as the need for Democrats to act like real people, Trump’s fake fandom, then back to how sports can serve as a gateway for political engagement for young men. “Sports is the lone monoculture left.” Trump’s Oval Office is Dripping in Gold: Azza Cohen Explains via a fascinating video Trump’s ancién regime approach to Oval Office decor: a gilded study in bad taste (and worse values). Keeping with the subject of optics and perception, Josh Levs wrote on how to dismantle the media’s bothsidesism. Image, rather than journalistic integrity, defines too much coverage, leading to the “bothsidesism” news agencies complain about yet also fall prey to. On the bright side, “where big media fail, we come in and fight the good fight” here at The Contrarian. Culture picks for the long weekend. Meredith Blake gave us recs on what to watch, read, and listen to this Memorial Day. This week is thick with divas of very different varieties: Julianne Moore’s character in Sirens, the inimitable Cher’s memoir, and a podcast on the legendary directors that stick around for…maybe too long? Our roster of brilliant editorial cartoonists were all on point, from Michael de Adder’s vision of the Ahab in Trump in The white whale and his depiction of the…farcical upside to dismantling Medicaid in Good news, bad news, to Nick Anderson’s illustrated double standard in the GOP’s supposed love of the order side of law with Back the blue; to our Friday stalwart Ruben Bolling, whose Tom the Dancing Bug strip offered us a glimpse at The New Sneetches. We always love to send you into the weekend with something new to try out in your kitchen. Jamie Schler has yet to disappoint with her recipes and their context, and this week’s Summer Cherry Berry Cobbler was no exception. Finally, we had our Contrarian Pet of the Week. This week, we introduced you to our new friend MAC (lovingly known among the Contrarian staff as MacOmar, due to his Baltimore roots and our company-wide appreciation for The Wire). Although we discussed the state of our democracy constantly at my 40th college reunion, I was struck again and again by how normal the gathering felt. My classmates and I caught up over Shabbat meals and at dance parties and symposia. At commencement on Sunday, the reunion classes marched down College Hill in order of seniority, with the graduating class lined up on either side as they applauded us. Then we took our places by the side of the road further down the hill, and the new grads (including our military veterans) passed between our ranks as we clapped and hollered for them. The joy was palpable. That, too, is what our absent heroes fought and died for. We honor their memory by fighting for our democracy, but also by living fervently. Have a meaningful Memorial Day, Contrarians. Warmly, Norm |
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Democracy is at stake.
The election in November is the most important election in the modern history of this country. Democracy is at stake.
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Sunday, February 13, 2022
RSN: FOCUS: "Trump Will Get His Comeuppance": Rep. Jamie Raskin Promises Consequences for Jan 6
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Maryland Democrat on his bestselling book, his unbearable personal loss and bringing Donald Trump to justice
I have interviewed Raskin many times for my SiriusXM radio show, and he has always been a thoughtful, measured person when it comes to talking politics of the day. The fact that he's a former constitutional law professor likely contributes to that professorial nature. That's also why we should all take heed of his words when he states point blank that today's Republican Party has launched a "fascist attack against the constitutional order." In his book, Raskin writes that the GOP is now "the party of Trump, authoritarianism, corruption, and insurrection."
That has become even more obvious in recent weeks as Donald Trump suggested he would pardon the Capitol attackers if returned to office, and the Republican National Committee approved a resolution describing the Jan. 6 attack as "legitimate political discourse." Raskin, who is a member of the House select committee investigating the events Jan. 6, shared his belief that the panel's upcoming public hearings could be the most important in American history, saying they will "certainly up there with the Watergate hearings." You can watch my "Salon Talks" with Rep. Raskin here, or read our conversation below to hear Raskin discuss the "maddening and frustrating" fact that Trump has yet to be brought to justice.
Your book "Unthinkable" went straight to No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The book is a love letter to your late son Tommy, who took his own life last December, and on some level a love letter to our democracy and what this nation stands for. But I wanted to start with Tommy. You go into detail about his struggle with depression, writing, "Depression, it entered his life like a thief in the night and became an unremitting beast." What do you say to families out there where people are struggling with depression?
Well, I don't claim any particular medical expertise. But I will just say as a dad who's gone through this, that it's obviously important that each person who's facing a mental health struggle be in a therapeutic relationship with doctors and get whatever medication we have that might work. But also, build a close social network to stay on top of the situation. Obviously I've asked myself a thousand questions since all of this happened, but the thing I probably most regret is not talking about the topic of suicide and not confronting it directly.
I think parents probably have an instinct that talking about it will somehow conjure it into existence or cast some kind of spell that will make it happen. But that's obviously just superstition, and it really works in the other direction: To not talk about something is the risky thing, it's to endow it with more power and mystery than it should have. I say that about suicide and I also say that about the word "fascism" in the book. We can't be afraid to talk about that, like somehow that's a breach of etiquette or something.
Switching to politics here, right in the beginning of your book, you talk about how in the week between Dec. 31, 2020, and Jan. 6th, 2021, your family suffered two impossible dramas: One was your son's death by suicide, and the second was the Capitol insurrection. You're not equating the two things, but I can sense your love for this nation. Is that fair to say that: You have a deep love for this democratic republic and what it's supposed to stand for, and you feel compelled to defend it?
Well, I think that's right. It's kind of you to say that. I certainly feel it. And I have felt that Tommy's with me, and he is in my heart. He's in my chest. He was during the impeachment trial in the Senate. And unfortunately we didn't have enough Republican senators to join us in convicting Trump. I mean, it was the most bipartisan, sweeping impeachment result in a Senate trial in American history, but we still fell 10 votes short. And for that reason, we're still in the thick of this struggle.
Like I told the impeachment managers before we went out there, the facts are overwhelmingly on our side. The law is overwhelmingly on our side. I want to make sure that people understand that the passion for our country, the patriotism in your hearts is what's motivating the whole thing. So show your emotion about what just happened to us. They stormed our house.
You write about going into the Capitol on Jan. 6, bringing your daughter Tabitha and your son-in-law Hank with you. So during the siege, you weren't just worried about yourself, you had to worry about your family. We have the footage of this horrific attack on our Capitol by people dressed in Trump regalia and chanting, "Fight for Trump." Yet now we know, thanks to the work of your committee, that Donald Trump, for 187 minutes, watched that and did nothing, even when Ivanka Trump came in twice asking him to intervene. What does that say to you about how Trump viewed this event?
The violence was strategic and political, but it was also sadistic too. He had unleashed primitive impulses in this mass demonstration, which became a mob riot. I view the activities of Jan. 6 as being in three rings of sedition, Dean. There was the mob riot, which surrounded the ring of the insurrection. And that was the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the Aryan Nation, different white nationalist groups, the Militiamen, the First Amendment Pretorians, there were some religious cults in there. These people had trained for battle and they were the first ones to come and smash out our windows and attack our police officers. They helped convert the demonstration into a mob riot and an attack on the officers. But the scariest ring was the innermost ring, the ring of the coup, which is a strange word to use in American political parlance, because we don't have a lot of experience with coups.
We think of a coup as something that takes place against a president, but this was a coup orchestrated by the president against the vice president and against the Congress. And the whole purpose was to get Mike Pence to declare lawless, extra-constitutional powers, to exclude and reject and repudiate Electoral College votes coming in from Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania to lower Biden's total from 306 to below 270. That would have triggered, under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, a contingent presidential election. And you ask: Why would Donald Trump want Speaker Pelosi's Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to decide who's president? Well, in a contingent election, we're not voting one member, one vote. We're voting one state, one vote.
After the 2020 elections, they had 27 state delegations, we had 22 and one, Pennsylvania, was split down the middle. So even had they lost the at-large representative from Wyoming — my new best friend, Liz Cheney — they still would have had 26 votes to declare Donald Trump president and seize the presidency for another four years. I think they were also prepared at that point to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law, and finally call on the National Guard, that had been held back, to put down the insurrectionary chaos he had unleashed against us.
Are you surprised that we don't even hear an inkling that Trump is being investigated by the Department of Justice for potential crimes?
Well, yeah. I mean, I'm a little bit softer on Attorney General Merrick Garland than some people are, because he's my constituent. I still remember, so bitterly, how they prevented him from even getting a hearing when he was nominated by President Obama to the Supreme Court. But look, people were on Garland's case about the fact that there had been no indictments for seditious conspiracy. And then there was a huge indictment on seditious conspiracy against the Oath Keepers, and presumably more to come. They obviously weren't the only group there. There were these overlapping circles of conspiracy to knock over the Capitol and take down our government. I mean, that was the interruption of the peaceful transfer of power, for the first time in American history, for four or five hours. And we didn't know which way it was going to go.
Trump will get his comeuppance. I know how maddening and frustrating it is to people. I share that feeling, having been an impeachment manager. I mean, he's as guilty as sin. He's a one-man crime wave, and it's amazing that his dad's money and this pack of lawyers he travels with have been able to get him off everything up until now. But I'm with Dr. King that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it tends toward justice. It's going to catch up with Donald Trump too.
You write in the book that we can now say that the Democratic Party, whatever its faults, is the party of democracy and that the Republican Party is the party of authoritarianism, corruption, and insurrection. Can our democratic republic continue if one party is embracing autocracy and fascism and the other party is playing by the rules?
It's a good question. If you look at it historically, liberal and progressive parties have never on their own been enough to defeat fascist and authoritarian coups. It's always the liberal and progressive parties, the left and the center-right together. And when they come together, they can reject and defeat a fascist attack against the constitutional order. And that is the importance of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney. We had 10 Republicans vote to impeach in the house. We had seven vote to convict in the Senate. So that's like 14 or 15 percent of the Republican Party. If that block holds and comes our way, and we're able to build a cross-party coalition with a lot of Independents and Greens and Libertarians and Republicans and Democrats to defend democracy, we can do it.
The Democratic Party can't do it alone. It's going to have to be the base of it, but we also need to assemble all the other institutions in American life that are part of democracy, because democracy's not one thing. I mean, it is the legislative branch, yes, obviously. But it is courts. It is the states. It is the press, the media, the universities, the colleges, the schools, civil society. Everybody needs to stand up and reject authoritarianism at this point. When people ask what they can do: You can do things every single day to stand up for strong democracy in America.
After Watergate, Congress passed reforms to try to rein in a runaway president in Richard Nixon. I know some have been proposed now. Is there any hope of legislation that will curtail another potential Trump or another person cut from that cloth, regardless of party, who really tries to abuse their power?
In a certain sense, this is what we've been trying to do with all the voting rights legislation. We've been trying to solidify and protect the right to vote and protect the integrity of elections against these outrageous efforts to convert bipartisan or nonpartisan election commissions into partisan election commissions, or to put them directly under the control of GOP legislatures. The problem is that the Republican Party, which is a minority party and a shrinking minority party — remember, Hillary beat Trump by three million votes and Joe Biden beat him by seven and a half million votes. The young people are coming in our direction.
That demography is totally against the GOP, but they've got this bag of tricks that include the most anti-democratic instruments in the country. It's voter suppression statutes. It's the filibuster. It's right wing court packing and judicial activism. It's manipulation of the Electoral College. It's a race between the will of the majority, trying to defend democratic institutions and liberal democracy, against one-party rule, which is what they want. They are a rule-or-ruin party, and I've been calling that them that for a while. I was glad that President Biden picked that up in his democracy speech because they either are going to rule or they're going to ruin our ability to make any progress as a country.
With the Jan. 6 committee, you're going to have public hearings coming up at some point this year. I'm not sure if there's a schedule that we don't know about. Is there any sense of what we might expect to see, or the types of witnesses that you might bring forward in these hearings?
I'd hoped it would happen in March. I think because of all the obstruction and roadblocks thrown up by the entourage around Donald Trump — Mark Meadows, who's kind of doing the hokey pokey, one foot in one foot out, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone — that it's going to be later in the spring, April or May more likely. But I think these could be the most important hearings in American history, certainly up there with the Watergate hearings. I hope we will do them during prime time. I hope we will see them every single day, so we can tell a complete story to the American people about how this took place. It's obviously enormously complex. But people are following it closely.
The vast majority of Americans who we've approached as witnesses have testified. So most people, including people who participated, are cooperating. They understand that they've got not just a legal obligation but a civic obligation to help us figure out what happened. It's only when you get right to that bullseye core around Donald Trump and his innermost confidants that people think they're somehow above the law and can just give the finger to the U.S. Congress.
The way you envision this, it wouldn't be like the first hearings we saw with the Capitol Police, which was months ago? This would be more like lining up a bunch of nights in a row, as opposed to one hearing and then coming back three weeks later?
Yeah, it would not be episodic. We want to tell the whole story. I felt very strongly that we'd go to the police officers first. That was my great frustration about the Senate trial, that we weren't able to have them come and tell the story of what had happened. We wanted to shock the public into remembrance of what this was about. I mean, this was a violent assault on American democracy, a riot surrounding an insurrection surrounding a coup, and it was our officers who stood between us and losing it all. So there were a lot of heroes on that day and we can't forget who those heroes were.
Newt Gingrich literally said that you and others on your committee are going to jail if Republicans get control of the House. I don't know what the justification would be, but when you hear that, does that ring bells of fascism to you? The idea of threatening to put political opponents in prison simply because they're doing their job.
Well, of course that was the direction that Donald Trump took their party in, because the moment he got in, the Department of Justice was treated like a group of lawyers who were supposed to follow his orders in prosecuting his enemies and excusing and protecting his friends. It was like that from the very beginning, and all through the administration. It doesn't surprise me that Newt Gingrich, who's an utter chameleon and total moral invertebrate, would just follow Donald Trump down into that cesspool.
You mentioned that 10 Republican House members voted to impeach Donald Trump, and seven Republicans voted to convict in the Senate. We heard Kevin McCarthy go on the floor saying, "The president's to blame." But that same Kevin McCarthy now is sucking up. What do you make of this, in terms of that party losing its way? Is it just the pursuit of power at literally any cost?
Of course. I mean, the framers understood this. If you go back and read Federalist No. 1 by Alexander Hamilton, he says that the major threat to the Democratic Republic is going to be politicians who act as demagogues pandering to negative emotions who then come to power and go from being demagogues to becoming tyrants. So, exploiting negative emotions in people, racism, hatred, stereotyping, scapegoating and then becoming tyrants over the people. So that's an old story. It's obviously a different story than Donald Trump was telling, but it's one we can recognize immediately.
On another point, you have a documentary, "Loving the Constitution," coming out on MSNBC. It was shot over three years, following you through everything. What can you share about this?
Madeline Carter was someone who was a college classmate of mine, and she kept bugging me for more than a year that she wanted to make a documentary about me and Trump. The constitutional law professor who gets elected the same night as the would-be authoritarian dictator of America — following his story and mine. Of course history takes us places we never imagined going. But I finally relented, I said, "Fine, if you think there's something there, you can make the movie about us." Of course she ended up filming a lot of stuff I wish had never happened, along with some things I'm proud of and some things I regret. But it is what it is. I confess I have lived, as Pablo Neruda said. It is what it is, and I'm curious to see what it's all about.
When Justice Breyer had his press conference, talking about retiring, he mentioned the Gettysburg Address and talked about the experiment this country is. I went back and read the Gettysburg Address, and the very last line is that the government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth. That was the hope of Lincoln. You get the sense that some of our fellow Americans just believe it won't perish from the earth and they don't have to do anything to preserve it.
I mean, I don't blame those people. Most of us grew up with the sense that there was stability and durability in our democratic institutions and that they would grow stronger over time. But of course there are people who also have much more of a tragic sensibility and understand the ebb and flow of history. There are periods of progressive evolution and change, and then periods of profound reaction and destruction, and we obviously just witnessed one of those with these nihilists who took over and tried to destroy everything that had been built for decades. I mean, they just put the civilizing movements of our time in their crosshairs: the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the LGBTQ movement, the human rights movement, the environmental movement, the climate movement and so on.
So yeah, I don't really blame those people. But I think Lincoln was trying to say, if democracy's going to survive, we all have to fight for it. And there will be a spectrum of sacrifice. Some people will give their lives, like the thousands who were killed in the battle at Gettysburg. But all of us have got to be engaged in this. I mean, that's what democracy is. It's something that we take care of together.
Lincoln was posing that as a real question, not as just some kind of rhetorical flourish. I mean, for most of the history of our species, people have lived under despots and tyrants and dictators and bullies and kings and queens and all that. So our American experiment began with some very high ideals. They were compromised from the beginning, with the viciousness of slavery and other kinds of repressive political features. But at least the ideals were there and successive social and political movements have been able to transform the country. And that has left us, even through Donald Trump, the greatest multiracial, multiethnic, multi-religious constitutional democracy that's ever existed. So that's our legacy. That's what we're fighting for now.
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Saturday, February 12, 2022
Donald Trump’s raised over $122 million
In the last few days, Donald Trump has falsely claimed voter fraud in 2020, said Hillary Clinton and Adam made up Russia’s interference… and called Adam a watermelon head.
“Respectfully,” he added. Yeah, sure thing, Donald.
Trump may no longer be on social media, but the more he stirs up controversy and spreads lies, the more donations pile into his political organization. By the end of January, his team announced he’s stockpiled over $122 million in campaign funds — and that number is growing every day.
Not since Grover Cleveland has a president who lost re-election come back four years later to run again. Trump’s unprecedented amount of cash and his unique disdain for democracy and the rule of law makes him more than a historical anomaly, but a dangerous one, too.
He’s endorsing Republican candidates and shaping the terms of political debate around conspiracy, lies, and rage. If Trump’s efforts lead to Democrats’ defeat in 2022, make no mistake, it will fuel his comeback in 2024.
We can’t let that happen. We just can’t. We need to fight back.
With our first mid-quarter deadline of the year only four days away — can you chip in $10 right now to help Adam win re-election and support Democrats across the country? We need to keep Kevin McCarthy and other Trump enablers in the minority so we can continue building on the progress we’ve already made.
Thank you for your support — it really means a lot that we can always count on you. — Team Schiff |
PAID FOR AND AUTHORIZED BY SCHIFF FOR CONGRESS |
Schiff for Congress
150 E. Olive Ave.
Suite 208
Burbank, CA 91502
United States
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
The American people deserve to know the truth
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