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S4 Ep14: January 6: If They Had Just Told the Truth (with Rep. Adam Kinzinger)

January 6, 2024
Notes
Transcript
To mark the three-year anniversary of the January 6 attack, we’re doing something we’ve never done before. We’re digging deep into our archives to play focus group clips from January 2021, right after the attacks, and showing how the voters have changed three years on.

show notes:

Rep. Kinzinger’s new book: Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country

Rep. Kinzinger’s organizations:
Country First
Country First Academy

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:06

    Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Secret Podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and you are listening to this podcast exactly three years on from the attack on the capitol on January sixth. Now, if you had told me three years later, to the day, Trump would be facing ninety one felony charges, including for his conduct on January sixth, I would have said, good. Great. Glad to hear it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:38

    But if you had told me he’d simultaneously be on the verge of wrapping up the Republican nomination again, I would be shocked, but not surprised. Just my current permanent state of being. Now, I’ve played a lot of clips on this show. If you’re a longtime listener, you’ve heard them, about how many Republicans believed January sixth was an Antifa false flag or an attack by Black Lives Matter, or it was not the Republicans. But for this show, I wanna walk you through how voters have talked about January sixth through the years.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:11

    And whether we can keep it on their minds as we spend the next year trying to keep Donald Trump from returning to power. My guest today is my good friend and former congressman, Adam Kinzinger, a Republican member of the January sixth Committee and author of renegade defending democracy and liberty in our divided country. Adam, buddy, thanks for being here.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:36

    Glad to be with you. I it seems like not three years. I mean, it feels like six months ago that all this went down. So this is just a reminder of how quickly life passes and how crazy things get over a period of three years.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:48

    Yeah. But you had like a lot of life in those three years. Right?
  • Speaker 3
    0:01:51

    If you
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:51

    had a kid, You did the January sixth committee. You left Congress. Like, how are you doing? How’s everything going for you?
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:58

    I’m good. You know, we moved. We live in Texas now, which why Texas Well, why not Texas, I guess? But life’s great. You know, I’m working at CNN.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:07

    I had the book. The book did really well. I’m doing a sub stack now that’s Adam Kinsinger substack. And I’m enjoying life. And and, the kids screaming, and we’ll probably hear them at some point over the next few minutes while we’re talking.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:19

    That’s great. Love to hear the kids. So you also run an organization that I’m a big fan of called Country First. Yeah. Just hit us at the top.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:28

    It’s a little bit about what you guys are doing. What do you have planned for twenty twenty four?
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:31

    Yeah. So country first, it’s country, the number one s t dot com, and it’s a couple of things. So we’re gonna be involved in different races. Basically, think about it as whoever’s crazy. If there’s somebody in a primary running against them that’s not, and has a shot, we’re gonna get involved.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:47

    We have a big grassroots organization. We’ve got some money with that. But one of the things I’m most excited about is the Country First Academy, which just to make quick is trying to recruit and teach people Ron DeSantis, how to run for office, the things they need to know. And the only requirement is are you gonna put the country above your party, whether that’s republican Democrat or, you know, forward or anything else. And, you know, Sarah, we’ve done democracy building overseas really well.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:11

    And, like, through NGOs. You talk about IRI, NDI, these different organizations.
  • Speaker 3
    0:03:16

    Yep.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:16

    We’ve assumed that it was always just gonna be safe here at home. And I’ve come to realize we have to do democracy building at home too. And I know you’re involved with tons of that stuff, and that’s why we’ve had such a great partnership and I’m excited for what the next year holds even if I’m not excited for the next year of politics.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:32

    Yeah. Well, we’ll link to all your stuff in the show notes. Alright. So let’s get into it because I’m actually a little excited about this episode because I’m gonna do something that I’ve never done before on this show. I’m gonna put you all in my time machine, and we’re gonna go back to January twenty twenty one before this podcast even existed.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:52

    Where I did two focus groups the week after January sixth. And one of these was with two time Trump voters who rated him as doing a very bad job. So we were trying to understand for sort of voters who had voted for Trump, kinda holding their nose, but didn’t like him, were frustrated by what had happened on January sixth. And let’s listen to some of the reactions to the attack.
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:14

    Realize what yet I didn’t, if that makes any sense. That there people out there that could do that. There’s just no common sense. There’s no feeling for the other person. It was just You know what?
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:26

    I’m gonna damn well do what I want, and that’s it.
  • Speaker 4
    0:04:28

    My husband and I have completely different views, but we’re of the same party. And I don’t wanna, like, make him sound awful, but he supported capital. He’s prior military. He said it’s about time someone stands up. So it’s very hard in my house to even have discussions, and I know his friends feel the same way.
  • Speaker 4
    0:04:44

    I mean, in his mind, it’s the right to speech. So why can one side speak and not the other? And the fact that there was no choice to go and write it.
  • Speaker 5
    0:04:54

    Knowing from a history standpoint that this is the first time in the history of the United States that the transfer of power has not been peaceful and knowing that the first time that history of the capital building that a foreign flag has been in the capital when they took in the the flag from the revolutionary war and things like that and watching with kids and try and explain to them why this would happen. It was heartbreaking. And then all the news coming out later knowing that the National Guard couldn’t be deployed because Trump wouldn’t allow it and Pence had to call it in and knowing that all these other things weren’t happening
  • Speaker 3
    0:05:29

    Trump wasn’t surprised. This was planned. You know, they had a bus. In the beginning, it was funded from the guy from the My Pillow. He’s one of the people that funded a lot of Trump stuff, but it wasn’t Trump who funded it.
  • Speaker 3
    0:05:43

    It was a bust that went across all these states. For, like, weeks to a month. And they were all talking about this thing that they were gonna do at the capitol when they were counting the electoral votes. And they went through and they incited these people. I swear to god, this is true.
  • Speaker 3
    0:06:01

    It was on the news. They incited these people And these people truly believe that what trump and them say about the election being stolen and they truly think. It’s not a show. They truly think that the country is being taken from them, you know, and, that’s pretty scary.
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:23

    I gotta say I went back and watched these focus groups, and I was moderating. This was like me, I did these groups. And, like, they were so upset about the attack on the Capitol, like, right afterwards. And these guys had voted for Trump twice, and they blamed Trump, and they had so many details. Like, one of the reasons we were playing those chumps is they knew, like, who funded it, the mypillow guy, and that people were bringing other flags into the capital.
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:46

    So they had all these details that they found alarming at the time, And I would say that the high level thesis of this podcast is how removed voters are when they talk about January six, from how they felt right then. And here’s the thing that I wonder from you, is how different things might be right now. If back then, when emotions were that raw, Republican elected officials had done the right thing and said, this was an attack on our capital. Donald Trump did this. And many of them did say it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:17

    They just didn’t do anything about it. If more of them had spoken up, and instead of saying the election was stolen, like Kevin McCarthy did, Do you think we’d be in a different place right now?
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:25

    Yeah. I mean, look, I found myself thinking, like, I’d love to go to that focus group and hug all of them and just say, remember this moment. Right? And that’s what’s so frustrating for me. I think that one lady was talking about the confederate.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:38

    Flag because it was actually the she mixed up the revolution, but that was She
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:41

    meant the confederate flag. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:43

    Yeah. And, currently kind of going through Liz Cheney’s book, which is a really good detail. Mine was kind of an overview of where the party’s gone from two thousand nine to today a little about January six. Here’s all this January six stuff. And I’m just reminded in listening to that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:59

    I mean, I had considered leading a vote of no confidence against Kevin McCarthy in the days after January six and thought I could get it asked because people were so upset about what happened and he was kind of obviously a significant part of why this happened. But it was the day he went to Mar a Lago that changed everything. And it wasn’t just him going to Mar a Lago in that picture. That signaled to other leaders who to this point either had spoken out or were trying to stay quiet, you know, and just not be associated with anything. Great leadership, by the way.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:33

    And they just decided once they saw that, that was a signal that Donald Trump has to be our future. And that’s when they all came off the rails. And it was after that. Remember, they started arresting people at the Capitol and everything else and these people that would get arrested would go to jail and be ashamed of what they did. They were putting out statements about, you know, I was misled.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:55

    I’m ashamed. My family’s embarrassed. And when Fox News and these leaders started rallying around them and calling them political prisoners, It changed the narrative from somebody that was in jail being embarrassed about what they did on January six to now being a freedom fighter. I think had Have they just told the truth and just done what their, frankly, their job was to do? We would be in a very different moment.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:21

    I would put all of my money on if we were in a different universe and could see that trajectory work that Donald Trump would be nowhere near the Oval Office or running again. But unfortunately, this is the problem. You know, leadership is exactly that. You’re supposed to lead, and leaders are as much followers as anything, unfortunately, and they all followed Kevin McCarthy right off the cliff.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:44

    Yeah. I mean, this is what’s wild to me, is that I can remember Mitch McConnell talking about trump being morally and temperamentally responsible for the insurrection. Like Kevin McCarthy gave a speech and said that Trump was the cause. And like that you couldn’t get around that. And listening to these voters, you remember that there was a moment when Trump could have been done.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:06

    And if Mitch McConnell had signaled that he was willing to do it, we would not be standing where we are today. The Republican Party could have salvaged itself for another date in some direction. And that’s one of the things that you just can’t get over. They chose this because people were with them, but they gave themselves all this time and they became part of trying to sort of reframe it for these voters over time so that they went from being outraged. Like, it was an unalloyed bad thing, an unmitigated disaster for democracy to where they’re taking us today, and we’ll get to that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:40

    Okay. So remember, we’ve also had some trump to Biden voters in our groups who are willing to vote for Trump again. Like, that’s something we’re seeing today, some backsliding from our flippers, as we call them on the podcast, These guys were so the most furious after the January sixth attacks, like, people who had abandoned Trump voted for Biden, and they were scared of some of the people in their lives who were supporting Trump at that moment. Let’s listen.
  • Speaker 6
    0:11:08

    I was very angered about the capital invasion. Of course, that was just absolutely horrific. But, you know, I understand that was bad, but I also try to be a moderate in many respects. And I look at what transpired over the last year in all these cities and the, you know, the mess we had with that as well. And I don’t know where this is all gonna lean into.
  • Speaker 6
    0:11:28

    You know, it’s just it’s just nuts. I never heard of a president not go to an inauguration.
  • Speaker 3
    0:11:33

    A work at
  • Speaker 7
    0:11:34

    a warehouse that is full of conspiracy theorists, and I’m not one. So it’s very for me to, get my mouth shut, but It’s also very scary because they are all on board with the violence. They are all on board. They’re telling each other where they can get ammo right now. And it’s scary.
  • Speaker 7
    0:11:52

    I have very, very red family. Most of them are involved in the KK and they’re also involved in the legions. So the VFW, the American Legion, this is where all the meetings are happening. The motor clubs are meeting in their club houses. And they’re just sharing information.
  • Speaker 7
    0:12:11

    They have the leaders that are texting each other. They were flying off the handle today because they said that Nancy Pelosi was arrested and there’s a new speaker of the house. Thank god. And all they were just saying all this crazy stuff today. They were getting all wound up today.
  • Speaker 7
    0:12:24

    But yeah, if they’d walk past me and be like, you got two weeks worth of food because you’re gonna need it. Oh, we’re gonna take it down, and I stay out of it. I’m just like, yeah, yeah, here. Let me scrape my little part, you know, that part of that.
  • Speaker 8
    0:12:37

    Bye. This was happening all summer with all the violence and destroying people’s livelihoods and businesses and setting things on fire and throwing statues and other historical places had damage all summer And those same people were going along with that violence on the, you know, one side. It’s just all these to come to an end. There has to be some kind of dealing with this on both sides and responsibility taken on both sides before anyone can come together.
  • Speaker 9
    0:13:02

    I just sat and prayed all afternoon. I was just heartbroken So I’m frightened, and I would like to know what those six thousand or whatever people on Wednesday thought they would accomplish. That they think they’d storm the cattle and all the senators and cars would say, you’re right. He’s president. I mean, It can’t do that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:22

    It’s hard to go back and remember because this focus group was on the twelfth of January. And so it’s before inauguration. The summer before had been the Black Lives Matter protests.
  • Speaker 10
    0:13:33

    Right.
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:33

    And how much that ultimately became the what about Yeah. For people. And you can already hear it forming where what this person was saying is, Hey, look, everyone who is criticizing those Bulwark lives matter protests You know, we all thought that was so bad. Now they’re doing violence too. That was the point they were making, but it eventually morphed into, well, why didn’t they put Bulwark Lives Matter people in jail, which, of course, they did.
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:57

    And so I remembered when I was watching it, I remembered this woman talking about all the dudes she knew working in a warehouse in Pennsylvania, were talking about how they were gonna go to inauguration. It was like more violence was on the horizon. Do you remember back then that moment? You must have been like, I mean, so close to you. You were there getting attacked.
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:15

    Like, would you remember this period of time?
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:17

    Oh, fully. And I think you you make a great point, which is The mindset of, let’s say, the rioters were kind of the right at the time on January sixth was There was still some deep anger about what had happened to American cities. I was angry about it. I got activated to work Minneapolis with the National Guard. You know, by the time we showed up, it was peaceful.
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:39

    But, you know, and there was a lot of anger. And I think when this happened on January sixth, It became a I’ll say it wasn’t a legitimate, what aboutism, but it sounds very legitimate, which is why is it that they can destroy all these cities, nobody gets arrested. Of course, they did, as you mentioned, but we can’t do this to the capital. Where we failed, and I say we collectively And I don’t even know if this is a messaging thing you could win, is making the point of recognizing that, yes, the riots over the summer were awful. There is a difference though.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:13

    You can have the entire city of Minneapolis burned down and not threaten democracy. The difference is what was the outcome on this. But that was a very important period because there was still a lot of anger about masks. You know, there was a lot of anger because stuff was closed down. And it’s almost like all of that came pouring out at one moment.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:34

    And I I remember of all the excuses for that day. You know, now you you have the Antifa, the FBI of all the, you know, conspiracies That was the very first argument I remember hearing from somebody about why it wasn’t such a big deal was. Well, they did it over the summer, whoever they is. And, yeah, I think it’s an important context to keep in mind.
  • Speaker 1
    0:15:56

    Yeah. I was thinking about this the other day about how there’s this narrative that takes place on the right. It’s kind of like the five stages of narrative grief, right, where the first is is, well, it didn’t happen. Just didn’t happen. This is a lie, whatever.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:09

    And then it’s like, oh, okay. Well, happened, but it was us. It was antifa to, okay, that was bad, but what about what about Bulwark Lives Matter. Right? Now, we’re at this phase where it’s like, Well, heck yeah, it happened.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:23

    It was good and we’re the victims. And it’s like, that has become sort of a a way that it seems like more and more situations on the right play out is almost through that same cadence. But looking back at these focus groups, it’s so apparent how much that was at play with these voters. And I guess one of the things though that’s interesting is how little they talk about democracy exactly, some of them get it. They like understand they talk about they’re not being a peaceful transfer of power, but I do think the concept of democracy, which I think you talk about a lot now.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:55

    I mean, you were just saying it there, right, which is a great point that there was different motivations behind the two protests there were things that were morally wrong with them, things that happened that were bad. You can condemn them. You can put people in jail. Anybody who destroys property. But, like, there is something different about fact that what they were there to do was overturn an election.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:15

    Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:15

    So talk about that. Yeah. I mean,
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:17

    I think the democracy piece is important. And one of the things struggle with is do people care.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:23

    Right.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:24

    You know? And I honestly I think people do generically, yes. You know, what about the right? I don’t know. I think it’s just turned into winning on their end.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:33

    But, yeah, I mean, that was a huge piece of that. You talk about the disparate footage where they’re like, oh, the Capitol Police were opening the doors. And this is where I think and I’ll blame probably a little bit the Democrats on the committee, particularly the January sixth committee, because I was always bringing up all these conspiracy theories And they didn’t run-in those circles. They didn’t see them. You talk about, Ray Eps.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:57

    Right? I’d be talking about Ray Eps and none of them had ever heard of him. And I’m like, guys, we to do a better job as a committee in this narration of pushing back against these conspiracies because they stick. So Like the issue of, well, how come the Capitol Police were welcoming everyone in? Well, it’s the same thing.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:12

    If I show you different pieces of the battle of the Bulge, I can show you where my grandfather who was in it was probably sitting down smoking a cigarette. I could show another video where an American was probably handing a Nazi a cigarette that he had captured. And what people could say by that is, well, why was America helping the Nazis? Why did they care about the Nazis? Well, they didn’t.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:31

    But you can take disparate things from a huge event that you saw with your own eyes and try to turn it into something else. Why did the Capitol Police remove the bike racks because they were being used as weapons against the police, not because they were welcoming the riders in. They had already lost the perimeter to the capitol. Why did they hold the door open for some of them? Because the other option was they were breaking glass.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:53

    And once they got into the capitol, The Capitol Police’s job wasn’t to fight them because they were outnumbered a hundred to one. The Capitol Police at that point tried to call intentions so they wouldn’t destroy the Capitol and go into the house. They were trying to to bring the passions down on the mob, but nobody wants to hear that. And so I think we have to confront those conspiracies head on even now, even three years later. And I tried to do this in one of my hearings and and I don’t know how well it came out.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:20

    But to talk about the fact that the only thing that keeps democracy together is if somebody that takes that oath actually takes that oath seriously, because If everyone in my district had called and said vote against impeaching Donald Trump, that’s totally irrelevant. Their opinion means nothing to me. When it is an issue of oath in Constitution. And I think we have to do a better job of reminding people that and talking about it. The other thing too is, look, the forces of Trump or the forces of the right will try to outlast us.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:52

    They’re gonna try to tire us down because they get energy on doing this stuff. When you fight conspiracies, it’s fatiguing. When you bring up conspiracies, it’s energizing, and their hope is to wear us down. And they’ve worn a lot of people down. But that’s why it’s important for us to double down.
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:08

    We may feel like nobody wants to talk about democracy, but they do. And the young generation, quite honestly, for some reason, seems more concerned about democracy than their parents.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:17

    Yeah. You know, I’ve got a lot of theories on the democracy question. And just on that point about, you know, our parents or even these Republican politicians, so one theory I’ve always had is that people take democracy for granted to such an extent that they think nothing can harm it. Like, oh, what’s the harm in telling the lie about voting. Like, American democracy is unique and strong, and it can’t be fragile, and you can’t really beat it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:42

    And of course, that’s wrong. Like, democracy doesn’t defend itself and raise relentless attacks are a problem. And I also think that part of it is American democracy is sort of unique in the way that other countries have sort of either had to fight for their democracies within living memory, But in America, it was just a given to us. And so it’s like the air we breathe. It’s like the water we swim in.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:04

    It’s just that thing we do here. And so people don’t always recognize it as a concept of something that they have to protect. Right? It’s more ephemeral. It’s more built into the infrastructure of who we are.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:15

    That that makes it hard to pinpoint and recognize defending it. Just watching these groups if you ask, like, nobody ever brings up democracy, if you ask people, who do you think is a threat to democracy? It’s become totally polarized. Or tribalized. Republicans will tell you Democrats are a threat to democracy because they stole the twenty twenty election, and Democrats will tell you Republicans are a threat to because they lied about the election being stolen and attack the capital, and it’s become like a political football in a way, whereas you point out, and I think this is so critical, there used to be a kind of politician who believed that democracy was just a cut above the normal partisan thing.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:52

    And so didn’t matter if you got lobbied on it, you were gonna do the right thing when it came to democracy. And it’s like, that is gone.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:58

    That’s good news. By the way, it’s like let’s take the example of electricity. Right? You and I have been talking for a number of minutes now. We we’ve we’re surrounded by a life electricity.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:09

    And until I just said that word, we never thought about it. Right? But if it went out all of a sudden, you realize, like, oh, we need electricity. Like, that’s an important thing, even though you don’t think about it. And democracy is the same way where it’s in this construct that we’re acting.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:23

    The fact that you know, people could go to the capital and short of entering the capital. They had a legal right to assemble outside of the capital and say whatever they want. And they took that for granted. They went there and they did it and they crossed the line, but it’s only when that’s a threat. And the problem is it’s a good thing in a way.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:40

    We don’t have any real existential threats to America to save this issue, but Canada’s not invading Mexico is not invading. Russia’s not gonna nuke us. And so we have to find an enemy. And our enemy has become each other because I’m gonna tell you political currency is fundraising and fundraising is skyrocketed and accelerated by fear, and particularly when you get into fear of somebody’s life. So if they believe that you have to keep two weeks of food, like that one lady was saying because your life is at stake.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:10

    I can compel anything out of you if you truly believe that.
  • Speaker 3
    0:23:14

    Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:16

    Well, look, you were talking before about the January sixth committee and how you were pushing people. So I wanna play what some of the voters say about the January sixth committee that you served on. And it’s not always what we’d hoped to hear, but I do wanna have this longer conversation, with you about it. So these are all the mixed reaction we heard from Trump to Biden voters to the committee in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. And then the last guy you’re gonna hear from is a two time Trump voter that was not impressed with Trump or the committee.
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:43

    Let’s listen.
  • Speaker 11
    0:23:45

    Something that jumped out at me about the committee is I wanted to see if the Democrats were spinning their own propaganda first of all, but what I ended up coming away from it was I thought they did a good job of organizing and building up to what their accusations were. And the fact that almost all the witnesses were Republicans that came up to talk about what their part was and how they were affected and all that was very compelling to me.
  • Speaker 12
    0:24:12

    I was really appalled by January six when I watched. I actually watched it when it was happening and I couldn’t believe it was happening. So I do believe somebody should be held accountable. I don’t know if this is a trump witch hunt or not. I don’t know.
  • Speaker 12
    0:24:25

    You know, I guess it has to be done. I’m probably not really interested in it either. And trust in the outcome, yeah, it’s very political, so I don’t know.
  • Speaker 5
    0:24:34

    I have followed the trial with January six, and I adore Adam Kinzinger from Illinois He to me is what a Republican should be. He’s conservative, but he’s not overboard. He’s respectful. He’s I just I adore him.
  • Speaker 13
    0:24:51

    Those are two huge, you know, never trumpers. And it’s funny you bring up loose Jenny because You know, I saw some clips of her just this morning. I guess she was making the rounds on some of the weekend shows. You know, why is she still even on TV. You know, I think she lost her last election by thirty six points.
  • Speaker 13
    0:25:10

    Why does her opinion matter? But again, the media will try her out because she’s just someone who’s willing to go on TV and just say negative stuff about Trump. There’s plenty of other people who are in government, whether in the house or the senate now, that I think, you know, have relevant opinions, but they just go find her because you know, they know that she’s gonna tow the company line and, you know, bash trump. If I recall that when they put that committee together, I don’t think they gave the Republicans the correct amount of people or they didn’t give them subpoena power. If I recall correctly, there were some things done with that committee that hadn’t been done in in previous committees.
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:46

    That last guy you heard is from a group of two time Trump voters that we did just this past December, and he’s talking about Liz Shaney, because she’s out on her book tour, so we see in her a lot. But so a year out from the report, did the public receive the committee’s work the way you’d hoped? Feel good about it now while you’re out where it landed.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:04

    I actually I do. And, and thanks for throwing the nice Adam kids
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:08

    on your line there. That
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:09

    was nice. That’s good. That’s good work. No. It’s I do feel good about it because, look, I mean, I can rebut every one of these accusations, you know, the committee was formed right keep in mind, we tried to do a bipartisan one that Kevin McCarthy supported before he opposed it on and on.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:25

    And and I’m happy to make that case. But the one thing I know that happened is DOJ would not be doing what they’re doing without the work of the committee. I know that for a fact. The day we started presenting our findings, it was a kind of a holy s word moment where they’re like, okay, yeah, this is serious. We have to go after it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:45

    So that’s one thing. The other thing is I know that my kid, who’s two years old now, when he is in school and he’s learning about January sixth, he’s gonna learn the truth of what happened because you’re not gonna be able to say it’s the FBI. You’re not gonna be able to say it’s Antifa. Because we proved it. I think Donald Trump’s name in history, maybe not in the next year or two, but in ten years, twenty years, when history is kind of a little more twenty twenty, his name is gonna be a stain and an embarrassment on this country as it should be.
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:17

    And so the last thing I’ll say on that quickly is, look, No congressional committee has ever succeeded. Ever. I can’t think of one. Ours did. And ours did with eight months.
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:28

    We fought cases all the way up to the Supreme Court to get people to testify. And we got the truth as much as we could in that time for the American people. So I look at, as I think Liz does too, I look at my role and the role of that committee, not in today’s context, but in the context of future history. And I’m very pleased with where that is. And I think, you know, that gentleman with respect to him, I think at the end of his, in ten or twenty years, he’s gonna be embarrassed that he ever made that statement or comment?
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:57

    From your lips to god’s ears, I have this alternate negative reality in which Donald Trump becomes the president again. And, you know, we all go to the gulag and What happens do you think if trump gets? I this is not in my notes, but I I’m now that I’m thinking about it, I’m curious yeah, what happens to to you?
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:15

    I think, to me, I don’t know. I think democracy is and I I always try not to, like, overbroad things, but I think there’s a real chance we lose what we have in this country. Because if you think about it, Donald Trump may not be smart. He has a great lizard brain. He knows how to communicate those lizard brain thoughts to other lizard brains.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:34

    But he has really smart people around him. And look, Bill Barr, regardless of what you think of Bill Barr, when it came to defending the constitution, he certainly did that. And he he said we’re not gonna cross this line. When when, Jeffrey, whatever his name is, was gonna be named, you know, attorney general. And the rest of it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:55

    Oh, yeah. Jeffrey, Clark.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:56

    Yeah. That’s it. When he was gonna be appointed, and basically DOJ said, no. We’re all gonna resign. That’s because you had people of honor in that position.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:04

    Donald Trump will interview. Let’s just take DOJ for now. He’s gonna interview ten people for attorney general. The first one to tell him that the constitution is whatever you say, mister president, will be the one who is the attorney general. And you just think about how chilling that is because the Department of Justice has, to this point, been a neutral force enforcing a law, fairly.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:28

    There’s nothing in the constitution that requires it can be a political arm of the president if he wants it to be. And that’s what they wanna do. So when I say this, I almost said it’s not to scare people. It is to scare people. Because this is very true.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:42

    This is literally what’s at stake for our country. I do not think we’re the same country if we even survive as a democracy after another Donald Trump term. So I say that to anybody listening who’s, you know, a Democrat who gets all angry because somebody was pro life once or because once they said something nice about Donald Trump, get over it. Because if you believe in democracy, first off, you believe that there can be people with other opinions in you. And secondly, we’ve gotta get to fifty three percent probably in this vote to win.
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:12

    And that’s gonna take people that don’t all think, like, people on the left do.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:16

    Yeah. As I say, Jonathan Last, we are not building a pro Joe Biden coalition. We are building an anti trump coalition to save democracy, and that’s gonna take absolutely everybody who sees the threat, which, by the way, I just completely agree on this idea. We are, if anything, underreacting to the threat of a second Donald Trump term, I’d listen to some people in this kind of never Trump camp, but like more let’s just say dispatch land where it’s sort of like, oh, well, we don’t wanna overreact. And I’m like, you can’t overreact to this, the extent of the potential catastrophe is so bad.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:47

    The idea like, oh, will we survive Trump the first go round? So, like, it would be just like this the second time. If you can’t understand why it would be so different, the second time, and then I don’t know how to explain it to you.
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:57

    And did we survive the first trump in this race? You know? I mean,
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:01

    We didn’t have a peaceful transfer of power. There was a coup. So, like, technically, we’re all still here. And Joe Biden eventually took office, but it was bad.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:10

    Yeah. And look how bad our politics has become even since then.
  • Speaker 3
    0:31:14

    Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:16

    Okay. So like I said, we just did this group of sort of two time Trump voters, but who don’t wanna vote for Trump again. These people are down on Trump. They don’t wanna vote for him. And they, January sixth, comes up about, you know, one of the reasons that they They don’t like him, but the problem is is that even with that, they still think January six is kind of overblown.
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:37

    Like, with the distance, They now look back and think what was the media, and it was just too much, and I don’t think it was such a big deal. Let’s listen.
  • Speaker 10
    0:31:45

    There are bad things that happened in there. There are benign things that happened in there, but to listen to the bluster and the denying and the rhetoric that that came from him in particular and reading the stories that he had to be convinced later in the day to even issue a statement about it. Just made my blood boil. And do I think a lot was made out of what actually happened in the building? I do think a lot was exaggerated about what happened in the building but they were concentrating on a couple events.
  • Speaker 10
    0:32:14

    I mean, people died one way or the other. They died. I don’t care how they died.
  • Speaker 13
    0:32:18

    I just think there’s so much more he could have done on that day. Know, I think we’ve said it before, but to be the adult in the room to try to calm things down. I think the large majority of the people that, you know, storm the capital that day probably I think would have listened to him, you know, but that being said, I do think the coverage of it was over the top when you look at how the media portrayed other events around the country in some of our major cities with protests against certain events that occurred that they were protesting against and then the looting that happened in that sort
  • Speaker 14
    0:32:52

    of thing. And Well, you know, they’re just the voices are trying to be heard. So it was Trump’s responsibility to stop that kind of mob mentality that pushed forward. But on the other hand, I also blame a lot of the media for portraying the events as they did.
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:14

    You know, you’ve talked to a lot of Republican voters in the last few years. And in your book, you talk at some length about the hold the Fox News has on so many Republicans, going back to the early, you know, Obama administration. Do you think that this impulse to rationalize January sixth this way. Is it coming from the voters, or do you think this is sort of a conservative media phenomenon? Because now we’re into the part of the focus groups where people have, like, all their rationalizations at hand.
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:39

    It was bad. They don’t even like Trump, but, like, they got all their ways to explain it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:44

    Yeah. I’ve no. I think it’s completely on the media ecosphere because they get their marching orders and their talking points from it. When that guy said, Do I think what happened in the building was not as bad as portrayed? That’s what you get from Fox News.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:58

    That’s what you get from when they put out those little snippets where they’re eight people walking. And I guess we were supposed to believe that in every square inch of the capitol during this, there was supposed to be fighting. And they found something where there wasn’t fighting. And that was the point Fox News was making. Nobody else would just come up with that unless they were told that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:15

    And to an extent, I sympathize with those folks because They’re putting their trust to some extent in that they’re gonna get quote unquote fair and balanced media. You know, they are shown a video where there’s eight people walking around and there’s not violence and told that this is overreacted, it would be hard to come out with a different conclusion if you’re only watching that. And I also think by the way, the media on the left certainly failed in the prior summer because they did appear in many cases, I believe, to look like they were rationalizing a lot of what was going on in some of these cities in the summer. It was a credibility for them. I mean, there’s always that meme where the guy’s saying, you know, peaceful protests and there’s something on fire in the background.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:58

    I think it’s given rationalization. But it’s complete and utter garbage and false. And this is where things like the dominion lawsuit I’m happy about because At some point, if you claim that you are a news organization and you cause real damage and you tell real lies, Yes. We have a first amendment in this country, but people also have a right to be protected from those lies. And I think that in a in a first amendment environment is gonna be you know, how we have to hold some of these news companies accountable, obviously being careful not to go down the slippery slope.
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:31

    Yeah. You know, I got to circle back to something that you said before that I wanted to put a stamp on and then forgot to, which is that these hearings set in motion the court cases that we are now watching. And that, you know, if you have to go into the future, so we’ve like been, you know, the ghosts of January past. But, like, if you go into the future, Trump is gonna likely be the nominee, I think, and he is gonna be on trial for the January sixth. You know, we have recent news about how they’re gonna try to use his cell phone.
  • Speaker 1
    0:36:04

    And I wonder, do you think it’s possible the January sixth Bulwark you didn’t committee that ultimately led to the court case that it could still be Trump’s undoing.
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:14

    Yeah. I do. And and I think the tendency is to become pessimistic because every time we were optimistic, we’ve gotten that beaten down. Right?
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:22

    That’s right. But I still
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:24

    believe I still believe generally that evil gets defeated and good wins in the long run. And so let’s think of what’s gonna happen this spring. Now assuming that this goes to trial in in March, as as, Smith is pushing really hard for, Mark Meadows was the most valuable player for the January six Committee, even though he didn’t cooperate because we got some of his texts, and not even most of them, some of them, but those texts to people that were not, you know, politicians or whatever, open for us a Pandora’s box of where to take this investigation. That laid out the initial blueprint of where we needed to go in the short time we had to do it. I believe Mark Meadows is cooperating now.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:07

    So the little bit he gave us is now a huge amount. And I mean, Mark Meadows knew every time the president, you know, went to the bathroom. He knew everything. So if he’s fully cooperating, And then you take the cell phone data that they have on the former president. You take all this stuff together, and now all of a sudden, it put once again in front of the American people, but you can’t ignore anymore.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:32

    Fox News can’t just refuse to carry the hearings like they did last time. Now there’s gonna be well known that the former president did this and that. Is it gonna destroy Trump in the GOP? Maybe not. Or it may not be his complete undoing in the GOP.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:47

    Is it gonna give somebody that may still be in the Republican race, a shot, maybe? Is it gonna make sure that he doesn’t win the general election? I think so. So I think that is a big question is, does this go to trial before we go into the election? You can’t even doubt that he straight up lied and launched this.
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:07

    I think with the information Jack has. Take take how powerful our investigation was in the committee. And now take the DOJ with the resources and the ability to compel witnesses that we didn’t have and add another couple of years on that. Of investigation. I I think he could be in real trouble.
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:23

    I I don’t wanna just look for the pony as Will Saletan says, but I also think there might be one in this.
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:28

    Yeah. You know, I don’t think that even if he’s convicted, I’m not sure he doesn’t go up five points for that, with these Republican primary voters, but in a general election, people underestimate. One of the things I remember very clearly about the January sixth committee is that while it was happening, I was conducting I think I did nine focus groups at the time. And even though people weren’t directly saying, well, the January sixth committee is really making me rethink this, the fact that it was Re raising the salience of January sixth for people, that it was highlighting all these Republican voices against him. I was suddenly having groups where zero people wanted Donald Trump to be the nominee.
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:07

    Like, many groups in a row, it had never happened before. And I remember we were also startled And one of the things we really gave credit to was the fact that January sixth committee wasn’t like convincing everybody that Donald Trump was definitely responsible, but it reminding people of how much baggage he had. And like how exhausting he is and like all the stuff they have to defend. And so I do think that if those quirky are going on during a general election. And people are being reminded, because I I think this is the key.
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:35

    When I listen to these voters, kind of have the distance and the rationalizations lined up. When you put it in the front of their minds, though, They hate it. They hate that it happened. They think it was gross. And I think that that is a problem for him.
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:52

    Whenever I find two time Trump voters who don’t wanna vote for Trump again, January sixth is usually the reason. Sometimes it’s abortion. There’s a few people for whom Ukraine is like a dominant issue, but for the most part, it is because of what happened January six said they’re out after that. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:09

    I agree. And I think I think that’s gonna be the importance is And this is gonna be a lot on Joe Biden, you know, which, to be honest, his communication skills aren’t the best. But to remind people, of what’s at risk. You know, look, I mean, to give you an idea, and I’m not asking for a call from them. But I’ve basically said that if it’s Joe Biden against Donald Trump, I’ll campaign for Joe Biden.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:31

    You know how much I’ve heard from the Biden campaign? Nothing. And I’ve talked to other people that have said the same thing. So for whatever reason, they’re sleeping on this not truly out there trying to put this coalition together. And if we put January six back in front of people’s minds, and they aggressively find a coalition of people of Republicans that may say I’m a Republican for Biden.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:53

    I don’t have to agree with his policies, but that’s not what’s on the ballot. They can win. If they don’t, if they sleep walk, then we could be in real trouble.
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:01

    So I agree with all that. And Joe, if you’re sitting. Give Adam a call. He wants to be a surrogate. I’ve never shut up about the comms frustrations I have with the Biden administration.
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:12

    I never showed up about the frustrations I have with the generals, with Mattis and Kelly and these guys who, like, do one Atlantic article, The former Trump officials who are never gonna work for him again, because of what they saw. It’s really like that old saying, you know, if you see something, say something, they saw something and they need to say something. Like, relentlessly, they should endorse Joe Biden. And I saw some comments recently where one of them was arguing. I think it was mad as saying, well, that general shouldn’t, you know, engage in politics.
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:41

    And I was like, well, okay, but you were you were in his cabinet. So, like, you made a choice. You made a choice to go be in politics. So now you gotta talk about what you saw. You know that he’s unfit.
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:51

    And so I think that it is gonna take to defeat Trump exactly what you say, which is these Democrats reaching out to folks, but it is also gonna take a lot of these people who are in his cabinet sort of relentlessly making the case that he is unfit and how scary a second term would be.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:06

    And you know what worries me about and I’m not gonna say specifically with Mattis or anybody, but I’m sure somewhere with some of these. In your post life, you wanna go work, you know, be on a board, you or lobby or consult, They don’t want you speaking out because they may have to work with the next Trump administration. I mean, I’ve heard people say that. Like, well, you know, Kenziecker, we’d love to have you involved in something, but what Trump wins again. And I don’t care.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:30

    But that is a concern to me is that there’s a financial incentive for some of these folks, particularly when it looks like Donald Trump could win, to stay quiet. They may never go back to the administration, but they wanna be in a position to be able to lobby, to be able to consult, or serve on certain boards of these companies.
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:47

    But can I ask you a question about this? This is, you’re a military guy. Right? And so these guys put their lives on the line. They sent soldiers to die for democracy they signed up to die themselves.
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:57

    To me, it seems confounding to then hear them say as like seventy year old generals who dedicated their life to this American democracy to be like, oh, sorry, I can’t. I need to sit on a board. And I know you’re not specifically saying that’s exactly the reason, but I I know you’re right. I know you’re right about the incentives for people to keep their mouth shut. I just can’t get over this idea of like My whole life was dedicated to this enterprise, but I’m not gonna say something right now.
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:24

    Well, I I can’t either and especially with somebody with such a powerful position that could make such an impact. I mean, Look, you can say I don’t wanna get involved in politics. And as you mentioned, well, you know, you took a political job. But it’s one thing if it’s, like, I don’t wanna get involved in politics, and talk about Roe versus Wade or whatever. But when it’s a literally defending democracy at a moment where it is in deep Sarah Longwell, there’s no question.
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:49

    You don’t have a choice. You don’t have a moral choice to stay quiet. So maybe they’re keeping their powder dry the right time? I don’t know. Let’s hope.
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:58

    Let’s hope.
  • Speaker 1
    0:43:59

    Let’s hope that’s happening.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:00

    That’s what that’s what I’m hoping.
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:02

    But I’m also here for you guys. Should you want to come together for that? I’m right here for you. Okay. So I wanna play one last bit of sound before we get out of here because I will say the one thing we heard from conservative voters the down on Trump guys that really did stick for them though.
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:16

    The thing that they brought up the most is the fact that Trump did nothing. Like the messenger brain inside me kept going off as I was listening to them because this seems important for people to emphasize as they talk about Trump because It really did seem to stick with people. Let’s listen.
  • Speaker 3
    0:44:32

    I think he got off on the whole situation. Was watching it. I was appalled that this was happening in our country that people were just being so disrespectful of our government. And they were incited by Trump. They were not told to do it, but they were definitely encouraged.
  • Speaker 3
    0:44:49

    And he could have stopped it he chose not to. I think, secretly, he was enjoying what he created.
  • Speaker 15
    0:44:55

    I think at a minimum, the man was negligent. Like, I don’t think he actually caused the resurrection, but I think he was so willing to sit on his hands and watch it go down that it makes him a horrible leader, but it don’t know. It reminds me of that seinfeld episode at the end where they all went to jail because they watched the guy get beat up, Brad or Rob. He could have done something. He should have done something.
  • Speaker 15
    0:45:15

    And the fact that he didn’t do something makes him guilty in my opinion.
  • Speaker 16
    0:45:19

    Once you get people pissed off and really mad, and then tell them to go to the capital, you don’t know how they’re gonna react. He should have been a common influence. They should have tried to unite people. But he was just all about himself.
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:34

    To me, this was interesting, and I know you guys talked about this in the January sixth committee, but seems to me that this is a thing that you can really point to that people were like, alright, I’m not sure he caused it. I’m not sure the media didn’t hype it, but what I do know is he could have stopped it and he didn’t.
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:48

    Well, the one guy mentioned the resurrection, and I’m like, I think, there’s probably some Republicans that think he is the resurrection, but Yeah. I mean, this is the whole point. That and that’s our last hearing in the hundred and eighty seven minutes. It’s like, look, he literally for the first time in his life resisted peer pressure to act because people were telling him to. He didn’t do anything until he saw the moment when law enforcement seemed to have turned the tide And he realized it wouldn’t Bulwark.
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:14

    Only then did he begrudgingly start to make statements, but he wanted to see if this thing Bulwark. And so there’s a couple points with that. What is Donald Trump’s strength in the mind of Republicans? It’s that he’s strong. He’s not.
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:27

    Okay? But, you know, let’s just take as they see it. He is a strong person. He’s the victim of everything, by the way. The most powerful man in the world literally is a victim of some of the weakest things So how you can think he’s strong?
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:40

    I don’t know. But that’s the point to make is how can the strongest man in the world not have been? Able to stop this. Of course, he could have, of he could have called the National Guard. He could have called anything.
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:51

    He could have put out a statement. People know that inherently, even if in your folk a script, they say, no, that’s not true. They know in their soul. I’m I’m glad I heard that because that’s some point I’m gonna continue to make. Is that he proactively did nothing.
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:05

    If it was Antifa, if it was the FBI, if it was Capitol Police and Nancy Pelosi that really caused us, shouldn’t he have been all over it trying to stop it? Why wouldn’t he? And that’s the point is he was completely complicit in it in the least. Even if you don’t believe you launched it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:23

    Okay. Adam Kinsinger.
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:26

    Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:27

    The best. The best. Thank you so much for joining us, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Focus Group podcast. We’ll be back next week because it’s primary season, so we’ll be parachuting into Iowa and New Hampshire, and I can’t wait. So see you soon.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:43

    Bye.
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