it did not shift when barack obama, four years later the election was about barack obama. right. whether people liked him and, didn't like him. he was such a dominant figure in american politics in some degree in american life. donald trump made the about donald trump, joe biden, and it kept election about donald trump. you know, i think if bernie sanders had won for better or for worse, if you could have won that election, would have then become about socialism and other things. and so at some point a page needs to turn willing if it does and we'll see. but right now we're kind of a little trap, like it feels very groundhog day, as in the worst possible way. and i have to turn the page because we're out of time. thanks, both of you for what was a really terrific discussion and

yeah. thank you. thank you, everyone, and good morning. thank you to the rancho mirage writers festival for having us here for you all the audience for being here. kassidy had the chance to be on the stage and answer questions from ari melber and our idea here and idea was to really do a little bit more of the side and the personal journey of you and who you are and this extraordinary extraordinary and what was pretty brutal coming of age story in washington, dc, the cautionary tale but ultimately inspirational one, i think, and i know this has been inspiring

for me as i so we all know the public came to know through your testimony before the house select committee to investigate the january six attack on the united capitol. but it wasn't until about a year after that testify that you were able to to begin writing story and to telling your your full story publicly. and so i'd like to start from the beginning. you're a jersey girl, jersey strong. tell tell me. audience about growing up in new jersey with a mom and dad who split when you were in fifth grade. a younger brother. you were born in your home. so was your brother. one of the both of us were your both home. but and your brother was born. before 911.

what was it like growing up in new jersey? tell us about your parents, your background, how you're growing up. was. so thank you for the warm introduction and thank you all for being here this morning. and to rancho mirage graciously hosting myself and for both of us, this is an incredible event. i'm really grateful to be here to speak with all about the book in this moment and how we can all come together moving forward. so like just said, i did grow up in new jersey. my parents split when i was in fifth grade, came very humble beginnings, though my father, my biological father owned and worked a landscaping and my mom helped him run company. we didn't have a ton of money, but they worked hard and that was something that i am grateful that i witnessed from a young age and throughout my childhood know it wasn't always easier. the best. yeah, we went through tough times, but you know i think

about my upbringing in relation to my experience working in the white house and in some ways i felt as i was an employee at the white house that i wasn't exactly perfect fit in some ways that my biological father was very, very kind of a doomsday planner in some, which is there are a lot of people like that. but i grew up this perception of the government and public service while feeling this pull and drive to go into public myself so it wasn't in really the 2012 presidential election when it was obama and mitt romney when i first started watching the debates and it was almost like something and it just clicked for me and i had this vague idea of public service growing up. and then i watched the debates and i didn't know exactly how i could go into politics. but the republican party message

made sense to me. i felt that it aligned with my ideals largely and how i perceive the world growing up through the lens in which the i was experiencing the world at the time and that really motivated me to go forward through with college and then eventually to washington. well and you have an amazing story because of how you got to college. but i want to just put a pin in a story you tell in your book that was formative for you. i mean, you talk how it was really 2012 where it all clicked, but it was clearly before then and you had a member of your family was sort of in your greater family that, served in iraq and afghanistan and. you you describe a scene where you went to the hangar when he was returning from combat and sort of the glory of seeing soldiers returning home and being with their families and your first american flag pin, can you tell that?

yeah. thank you bring that up. so my uncle joe was the first figure that i really had in life that was a public servant. he lived in indiana, but my aunt started dating him and he was this extremely courageous, remarkable person to me from a very young age and very nurturing in a way that biological father wasn't. so it's really difficult for me when he went and fought in the war, but i also knew because he had talked me about this, how important it was for the country, that he was willing to lay down his life and sacrifice for the country in that way. so when he came home i mean, i remember waiting weeks for this and my mom brother and i drove out to indiana and we're in this airplane hangar and it's so hot it's the middle of august and we're just waiting waiting, waiting all day and slowly the airplane door starts going up and you see the soldiers march and i have goosebumps thinking about this because it's just this really moment in my life

and in my history and memories, but also what has been ingrained in our since our founding. and that's immense national pride, especially for the people who are willing to lay down their lives, for our country and for our citizens and constituents. and right now, you know, i in my view and how i've experienced a lot of this we we need to return some of those ideals. i think that being a citizen of this country is the highest honor that we all can have. but it's incumbent, all of us, to continue to work to make america great. we can't just rely on our military and our soldiers. we all have to be participant in our democracy. you, you, you've got to college against. i think a lot of strong forces or you to make other choices but your your your determined gracious and and extraordinarily

methodically worked your way through a series internships on capitol hill on. the house side on the senate side eventually to the white house and became an enormously valuable member of the white house, ultimately, because you understood the congress and. so, chuck, to just explain i mean, your and your dedication to sort of being committed to a course of developing yourself a competitive political resume is pretty and it's something i didn't understand about you until i read your book. think it's something i'm still trying to understand about myself to know my and from a very young age my biological other. we have a very strained relationship now. i'm very grateful for, you know, what we had growing up in the lessons that i have learned from him, but he ingrained in me from a very young age that education, the ticket out education, i had to go to college. and he wasn't saying we lived a bad life, but he wanted a better

life for me and for my brother. so i wanted to go to college, my mom was sort of a little bit more indifferent about it, which is also completely but i knew that i in order to, you know, sort of get out of this patterns that i had found myself in and just sort of wanting a better life. i had to go to school and i wanted to pursue a career in politics politics. so i knew when i was applying to capitol hill it was maybe going to be a little bit more difficult. you know, i applying to republican offices and you capitol hill interns for that don't know typically work for their their home representative new jersey doesn't have many republicans sitting at the time so i blast my resume out to every single house republican office and i got five interviews and except internship with then majority steve scalise in 2017. so all this coalesced with trump

coming to office and becoming president and the first 100 days of his of his administration. he were with steve scalise office. he was shot on the baseball field. he you went through this experience, steve scalise, as the whip, the number three in seniority in the house of representatives at the time had access to every single member and you develop personal relationships with hundreds of members of congress that served you when you got to the white house. right. and i that that you know, i used to say i was in the right place at the right time. i don't know if. it was the wrong place, wrong time, wrong place. right time anymore. but it cracked here. so the whip does member services. so i was able to form relationships one on one relationships not only with staff but with the members themselves eventually went to the white house, got an internship in the office of legislative affairs, which i think is one of the most

important offices. it is essentially the bridge between, the executive branch and the legislative branch without a really strong outlay. you don't have a system of communication within the government. but i worked for the house and that's where i really started to more deeply develop relations with members of leadership such. as former congressman mccarthy. eventually, mark, who i ended up working for when he was the chief of staff, we developed a strong relationship with mark meadows, who essentially cultivated, you knowing not in a creepy way, but well, maybe, maybe it will always speak to the nature of how that developed. but ultimately he spotted as a highly talented, highly effective working staffer. and the second he was asked to be chief staff, he reached out to you and brought you into you up becoming essentially the chief of staff to the chief of staff of the white house. when you are 23 years old. i just turned 23. so it's an amazing, robust,

responsive position, chock with responsibility. and it's had a how did you feel about that that did you and did you ever have imposter syndrome pinch yourself or just think, oh, my god, i'm my office is next to the oval in the white house. you know, i, i did have moments like that. but what i think made me effective partially in role was the fact that i was able to look at people as people. i was there to do a job and get the job done. so i was able to sort of put up a blinder which also did not serve me well because was very blissfully in some ways and very ignorant other ways. a lot of the more treacherous things that were happening within the administration, but tell us about what that job was like. what what did the job entail? i mean, it was sort of a little bit of everything. i was the way that mark originally described the job to me was i was his eyes and ears in the west wing.

so he wanted me to travel with and the president. he wanted us to be seen together. he wanted to make that. people knew that i was a stable conduit to mark. so whether it was cabinet secretaries or their staffs members of congress, senators, he wanted me to be an access point to get to him. but i think that every chief of staff deserves to have a strong staff below them to serve them well, because ultimately they're there to serve the president of the united states. you felt some. i enjoyed my role with mark and i would be doing a disservice to myself and to mark if i didn't acknowledge because i the only reason that i'm no there's several reasons here today but the reason i'm largely here today is because he me the opportunity and he empowered me in ways that a lot of bosses wouldn't at a young age and whether or not that's a or a strength or a weakness respectfully i'm going to disagree. the reason you're here today is because of bold actions you took

as an individual with deep reservoir of courage in a very difficult moment for our country. because if you hadn't, you wouldn't be here today. but i'd like you to this hour, i want to acknowledge he did empower me and he did. and increasingly i know i want to spend just a bit on that because maybe he had good touch the characters. oh, good southern baptist often does right. but but i want to just spend a beat what it was like to work for mark meadows because you write in your book, you had some hesitations about working for him initially mean you had been in the office of legislative affairs and you thought, oh my gosh, do i really want to take this promotion to become a special assistant to the president and the chief of staff of the chief of staff of the and he increasingly became so comfortable with you that he would not go on presidential trips. he would send you on his own. you acted literally in his steed after, not very much time at all.

so about seven months and seven months, his so, i mean, why did initially have hesitations working with him? and was there ever a tension that you felt and i'm feeding you here, i read this in your book, you talk about feeling a tension, whether you felt loyal to mark to the president and of serving the country. so can you talk about that? i'm happy you mentioned that because when i entered public service, i had this concept of who i wanted to and it was based off of the great leaders of our past. you know, from our first president to abraham lincoln to john mccain, to mitt romney. so i was looking and you got at the time a very republican lens. and i admit that but i entered public service wanting to become someone that would lay down their life for the country. and that's you know i believe that when you swear an oath to the country you you swear that oath your to uphold that and

it's sort of sad that we've divulged so far that as a society where it's seen as courageous to come forward and honor that oath. and you know i think that that's unfortunate aspect of what we're experiencing now. but to go back to what your saying about working with mark. did you feel a tension between loyalty to him and that that of to your job? yes. and where i had a i was i didn't do a lot of self-reflect in that job. and when i took the job with mark, i was very clear with him that i wanted to work for mark as the chief of staff, not meadows as mark meadows. and to me, there was a very important distinction. there. i was there to serve the office of. the chief of staff of the white house, not the individual. and you had some hesitation. i did have yes, i did have hesitations. of taking that job, because i you know, i covered was just sort of getting i was well positioned in the office of legislative affairs, but also the first impeachment had just

ended. there was an election coming. i was a little concerned about job security, so i started putting out feelers on the hill. but throughout my tenure with with mark and working the president, i did inured to the political rhetoric rhetoric that was prevalent throughout the administration and and it was unfortunate that that and i did feel this conflicting stance of loyalty. and i didn't do a lot of reflection at the time to understand that the conflict within me. wasn't that i was necessarily disloyal to the country, but it was some in view some of the people i was working for, including the former president of the united states, mr. trump, they weren't loyal to the country and was in a position where i wasn't, you know, we were going, i'm you million miles. you're not into unless you've worked in those office in the white house, it's hard to understand how when you're describing 16, 18, 20 hour days

repeatedly you're getting sleep pandemic then. we had the summer of civil unrest after george was murdered or in the mist of an election cycle, an election. so you have no time to sleep. you you're living basically red bull coffee and protein. and my health had declined and so there isn't i mean i, i certainly understand that experience not having worked in the white house chief of staff but having worked in the white house during the katrina incident under george w bush, it's you don't have time think you're just trying to get do the job and complete your responsibilities and you refract later, which is clearly what you've done. but there's just two stories that i think are so funny from your experience in the white house. one of them is about your boss, mark meadows, who is a total teetotaler he's a southern baptist. he doesn't drink and you come into the office one morning on a monday at 10 a.m. and there are three white claus on his desk. well, what happened, girls that

have alcohol and. not they, this is what he says to the chief white house. chief staff on the monday morning, says, girls, do these have alcohol in them. so this after the election, mark and i, we were on the campaign trail. we both came down with the coronavirus so we had been out for ten days after the elections. this was our first day back on the election night, i guess there had been i wasn't there night because i had the corona virus, but i guess there had been a little bit of party festivities in the west wing and there had been some white cloth stored, his refrigerator not. what a lot of people don't know is he doesn't drink flat water. he only drinks sparkling water. he cropped out the white claws, which are alcohol, which they say sparkling on the canned and not realizing that they, i think, are 5% alcohol. i mean, he doesn't drink so so he had to take some time to sober up before the president came down that morning morning. you know, i like to think that maybe he just wanted to indulge in a little stress relief, but but it was truly innocent. there's also i mean, you spend

so much time traveling on the campaign, going ahead of the president's to ensure that the eventual you started going ahead to that the crowd size was proper and that all the advance work had been done the president's specifications. and there's a moment you describe because you have choice words about mark meadows now. and i know they're complicated because you also felt very loyal and devoted him and you describe one episode in the book that i think shows how much shows him in a more nuanced i think you're in north carolina at a major rally and you spot a little girl being held up by her father and trying to get mark's attention because mark is one of the celebrities at these trump rallies. and mark is just not seeing her. and the girl starts to cry. so what happened is we're in his home state and i grabbed mark and i pointed at the little girl and i told that he needed to go

over and he was was going to ruin her day or her life. he didn't go over the they after her. so he sent me back to the stockton to get a bunch of little gifts, including an american pin. and by the time i had returned got to have goose bumps right now by the time i had returned were in the overflow section of the rally crowd. so they were only at the rally on jumbotrons. mark had pulled the little girl over security fencing and was crouching talking to her. so i slipped him all the gifts and she was so happy and i was talking to her father and he was telling me that he had worked night shift and his daughter to go to this rally. so about and this was a rally that we had rescheduled due to inclement weather and he had you know, he worked the night shift he had taken her and he was almost null that mark had taken the time to talk to his daughter. you know what? he had brought his daughter there to see that day, which is he thought was democracy in action. and our constitutional republic

working in our election system working. and it's really powerful. also a sober moment for me. look back on because on one hand, it's a really and real moment for mark, you know, these are not everything was bad and i that's really important to remember especially as we enter this election year. we're all people at the end of the day and he is and was he was and maybe is a public servant and he he did care and he wanted to pass on that sense of patriotism to her. and it meant a lot to me in that moment. but i reflect on that now and i think about what i've gone through and just this period of reflection for me and my experience of working for mr. trump, but also with my upbringing and the falling out, which i'm sure we'll get. but think about all this and i just think about the that lies around donald trump. it's the people that for him or don't send dollar donations for

him to and essentially there's paying legal bills i think about of the staff and lawyers that he has exploited over the years for his own personal self-gain and it makes really sad that he has been so effective at deceiving such a massive portion of the american population because americans deserve better. our futures deserve better. our future generations of women and little girls deserve better. we need stable leadership to ensure. no. one of the things i know we've talked about this you've mentioned that it's as you came out of it right after you testified you had sort of really help you through your first round of testimony and then moving on and we'll get to that somebody said something to you about how. yeah, you're being you're being

deprogram because you know in reference this notion of of a cult which struck you deeply, uncomfortably. but how you come to think about all those who believe in that that this notion that donald trump is fighting for them. yeah. you know it's like the cult reference really difficult for me. it's i don't want to be erroneous with a blanket categorizing donald trump for the maga as a cult but it it was a very cult like movement and i'm not a cult expert, but i have done some research since and there a lot of parallels, especially with my experience of leaving and then coming to with what i actually was a part and i think it's really really critical to remember or at least to keep in mind that when we talk to people, you know, i think that sometimes as a society i experienced this where i was very very fearful of making that break with the trump world, but i had wanted and i

felt compelled to because i had a constitutional responsibility and a moral obligation to do so. but i was really afraid i was afraid of being completely ostracized by my tribe the republican party, which i had a part of. that was where all of my social and professional circles were formed. and i was also really afraid of being completely chastised and ousted by the left because i had made poor choices, had been part of something that, was dangerous and wrong, and i felt isolated and, you know, i think when we talk to people, we need to come from a perspective that when you're in a situation like that and it's really difficult to put words to explain if you have an experience that yourself. but i was viewing the world through this very lens and when i felt at the time when people started talking to me about, you know, maybe you should start thinking about the cult deprogramming or at least thinking in that way, or doing some research that made me almost take my heels in harder

because you read your defense a lot, wants to be told they're in a cult or nobody that that is a part of something dangerous wants to be told they're part of something dangerous. i think that we need to approach conversations from an educational perspective and also to make sure that people are being heard, listened to and to approach. as you know, i to hear your point of view. but this is mine. you know, this is this would be a slow progress. but in order to get out from this moment, we have to get through this moment. and i think that we have to, as a practice, a little bit more empathy, understanding for the people that have been seduced and sucked into trump's sanctum and movement irrationally false, falsely, because he has built this movement off of fear and propaganda lies. and that's how authoritarians rise to power. and that is what we're on the brink of right now. and i'm you know i'm not here to fearmonger but that is the reality. and as i think that we are extremely fortunate we haven't had a scenario like we have seen

in other countries where they've had a democracy and then it's been taken away from them. but they happen really fast and it almost did and we're on the prep press such that of that happening happening again you beautifully. we know how you felt about january six with limited time. if you if you want to hear the tick, read the tick tock or the line by line, please, by book and read it. it is such a compelling compelling testimony to your journey. you go through january six, you ultimately realize that you're about to receive a subpoena after the january six committee is formed and you find yourself in golden handcuffs because. there is no way that you, having worked the federal government for the previous four years, have any resources to pay legal bills but enter or enter your hero. the campaign or someone associate hated with trump world

volunteers to pay for your legal fees and participate heartedly and not holistically until you you realize. that you actually do want to be wholly forthcoming and you want a second chance. you tell a story about your friend sam, who i believe is a member of congress we shall protect his identities and he is a current member who encourages you to go look in the mirror and look at how you look. but look at whether you can live yourself. and and somehow that precipitated you going full force in the other direction. yes, that night the jury committee had filed that i submitted a lawsuit or something against meadows mark meadows, where several pages of my testimony first you sat in with my testimony had published and

i'm reading through the transcript and it was just this really powerful, also extremely frightening moment for because i, i had that concept of who i wanted to become when i entered public service. and i, in that moment it hit me like a train how far gone i was from that person. and again i felt this really moral obligation in concert responsibility to uphold my oath of office, but also to do the right thing and to come forward and tell the whole truth and to tell everything that i that i knew. so i called sam. and who is a current republic and member of congress who did not serve on the january six committee? and he told me to go look in the mirror and like you just said, yes, if i could live with myself for the rest of my life. and it sort of at the time seemed like this really and sort of idiotic thought experiment. and i also was crying. i don't like to look at myself when i'm crying as i just was very emotional in this moment. but it was just this remarkable

force circle moment for me that i look back on now. there are a lot of moments that change the trajectory of my life, but that really was one where i, for the first time felt empowered by someone, that it was okay to go forward and do the right thing. and this was something that i had worked with in the past and i had known from my time in the administration who was still serving in congress and who is and was a responsible member of congress throughout. this the ten years that i worked with him and continues to be so. but it's also important to remember that that's not reflective the entire congress. and i think that we need to to elect more people like that of moral integrity and it's not that i have i feel, to protect his identity because i don't want there to be civil unrest or public or political violence unleashed on him and his family. and that's the era that we're living in. and that's what donald trump has normalized. so psa there are republicans in congress currently serving are afraid for their own safety and

will not stand up to donald trump but are important your view to be there because when the rubber hits the road? do you think sam will vote for a certificate even when it comes around next time or not? i mean, this is to me, i think there are several republicans who for certification, but a lot of them have left. and that's i mean, when rubber hits the road next is if it's trump v biden and there's an electoral watch republicans are going to join with democrats to certify. and i think that's a really important point. speaking about the 2024 election and in my view right now, one of the, you know, donald trump is an existential crisis for our constitutional republic and to our democracy and to our stability as a nation on the world stage. it is absolutely essential that he has never anywhere near the oval office again. but second, on that priority list for me is making sure that we elect responsible, trustworthy people to congress and right now the republican party as have perceived it, is not in a place where they're

going to elect responsible people to congress. and there is a very good chance that this next election could be contested again. you know, i think that we approach selection it's equally important to talk about congress and now i have not voted for democrats in my life. i consider myself very republican. i have more conservative personal principles, but i don't necessarily think that my personal conservative principles are what should be the lay of the land. but i would vote for democrats across the board, in this next election if that meant that donald trump and republicans in congress don't have the ability to uproot and shred our constitution like they almost in 2020. okay this is my favorite of the book that i didn't know about you. you go in you get to this point in, your journey where you decide you're going to move

forward with legal counsel, with and you're going to testify you're going to go back and spill the beans. you're going to tell everything. and part of what led you to this discovery, she is a man. and i'd like to see a show of hands in the room for people who recognize the name and understand the importance of alexander butterfield. i'd. okay, so alexander, you discover okay to remind people. alexander butterfield is the deputy chief of staff to the white house. chief of staff heilmann, and he is the haldeman, and he is the individual who immediately going into the watergate discloses that there are tapes of the white house how you discover haldeman how did you i'm sorry, not haldeman and how did you feel? an instant connection with him. so this was after my conversation with sam and a couple of days after and i had begun the process of back

channeling to the january six committee to go in for a third deposition because at the time was thinking, you know, if i can still through this, i maybe i could just get through it unscathed and know that obviously unscathed. but as i'm driving to new jersey one night and, i'm thinking there had to be somebody in the nixon white house that had a similar role or position to what i had a role that required an incredible amount of trust and an incredible amount of the ability to keep things to themselves. and that didn't want to be in that position. but ultimately, you know, did right thing. i just i needed a connection with that had gone through something and i you know, i had heard of john dean but i was like i was not the white house, although anything would amount to that. and i a john dean is incredible an honorable but you know we're on the same level as john dean. so i on the watergate page and i find alexander butterfield's

name. so i click on it and it's a very limited profile. so automatically i'm like perfect. he did not try to do anything. after he went forward, he did the right thing already. green flags, all around. and then i'm starting to read about what he actually did and forward and testified to and i extremely moved not only his story but by his commitment to his country and by his commitment to honor his oath. and it he didn't want come forward to the watergate, but he knew from the get go that if he was called, he go without question, he would go and he would tell the whole truth, because he had served in the military. he had taken the oath once when he swore into the military, he had taken oath another time when he swore to work in the white house. and then he worked at the faa as well. and i saw alex, a vision of the public's that i had wanted to become and the person that i felt that i could not grasp. i felt that i could so kind of

claw my way back. so he gave me that second wind of optimism, strength to go forward and continue working with the january six committee. and at this time to you know, it's this is about april of 2022. so we're not in this where are now where we have a wall of public resources and knowledge about what actually went well what actually happened that day but it was hearing alex's story and then eventually getting to meet alex that you know for me as an american, i look back on what alex experienced almost 50 years to the day when i testified and i we had a conversation about this, where you know, he never would have envisioned that 50 years later, we would have been on the brink of. another corrupt presidency that required people to go forward and testify truthfully. and i think about that. and then 50 years down the road and anything that i do to make sure that either that never

happens again or that there's another future, a little girl or woman or even a man, that if they feel like on the brink of making a really difficult moral decision, that they have someone to turn to and that they can find companionship and their storytelling or through books or through hearing my journey. because, you know, my journey isn't linear. i made a lot of mistakes. i did a lot of things that i wish i could take back, but it's also in my view, a journey of self-discovery and a comeback and a grace that saved my life and being embraced by people who have inspired me to continue on this trajectory of public service and also show also show me that there are really, really good, caring people in this world, but we have to surround ourselves with those people. you write in your paper, you you write in your acknowledgments, i cannot. the impact of alexander butterfield had on my life his allegiance to his oath that swore is a reminder that the

pursuit justice is an obligation that should never waver. may his legacy continue to inspire future and to find their moral compass in the face of adversity and that you credit that the journey wouldn't have happened without you and butterfield in hindsight said that he had no regrets he had to do it all over again. i, i do the very same thing. where's your phone? do you have your phone? you. it's backstage. she showed backstage her phone and the screen saver on her phone is a picture of her. alexander butterfield, wasn't it? was, actually. when did you meet? almost, almost a year. it might have been exactly year ago. it's late february 2nd in. i'm almost been might have been february 2nd last year. i tell you, i met him for the first time and i was flying and i remember i've never been to san diego and i remember out the plane window and seeing all the warships. and alex and i talked on the phone a lot leading up to the first time we had met and he had told me to look out the window and we had up when the plane was landing. and i would see all of navy battleships. and he was so of all of that.

and it was almost sense. we were like, i was coming home and, you know alex's. alex's me so much. but he has given our country so much to and he's just he embodies what a public servant is. and i'm i'm grateful that he was around to help guide me through. and he didn't know that he was a core force for me and that he was when i needed him the most after. we don't have much time left, but i want to head to more topics quickly. liz cheney is, also somebody who has become really a spiritual guidepost for. you, a mentor, a person who who you deeply treasure upon and respect and admire. one of the things liz cheney said about you and the january six committee hearing in your courage come forward was that the country needs see strong women and girls standing up to. yeah. i mean liz cheney i she is not

only an incredible public servant, but she is an incredible woman. she's an leader. she's an incredible role model. i looked towards liz cheney when i was, you know, going through this period, a year and a half after the end of the administration, as somebody who i didn't always agree with. and she irks me from time to time, but she was doing what i was jealous and i had wanted to do myself and, you know, it's not i wish that i had, but i'm really i feel so fortunate. i had her example to talk to liz cheney, adam kinzinger. but i also think about other nancy pelosi, who i worked with her and her staff, my tenure in the white house. and i you know, i think about her, the moral leadership that she has set for for generations of women and little girls. and if i can amount a fraction of who those are, alyssa farah griffin, sarah matthews, ruby moss, shay freeman, that all testified before the january six

committee. you know, i it men have successfully let our country to the point that we're at now but i believe that our future is female and i think that we to build generations of strong girls. and i want to reflect on something really serious. you've alluded to it throughout all of your your comments, but that the process you as you have reflected back you wrote that you reflected and you have regretted the and the cruelty the crudity of some of the president's messaging. it's inappropriateness. his unpresidential tweets, communication. and but they you became a nerd, too it and you speak to the power of tribalism in our politics and how it didn't just affect you and the staff in the white house it's affected the country. maybe it's not a cult, but it's a movement with cult like

features and it is eroding our our democracy and the that have taken 250 years to build how how can we move forward because right now we're moving forward as a as a repeat. we've essentially they've repeated the same election for three cycles. there's no reason that we should be in this position right now. but we are and we need to accept that. you know, a lot of by the way, that's not an easy thing to do. many republicans not accepted that reality. many republicans, the the the country at large only beginning to wake up to the fact that we're on track for a biden. v trump 2.0 reelect schoen which essentially the first time in history that will have to incumbents facing off against each other. one of the things for the president to do on charges and and there's that so and one facing 91 criminal charges right

there's not a simple formula i don't think to move know how to exactly move forward but i think you know, there are several. do you ever think about what could heal the country, though? how we can move past this? i do. i think a lot about that. and i think, you know, touched on this earlier. i think moving forward, it's, you know, a lot of this would to come, i believe, in my view, after the 2024 presidential election. i think that we need to put all of our time and resources right now making sure, you know, the election's going to down and that we karl rove here yesterday and karl rove could speak much to the statistics of all this than i could, but essentially election will come down to a handful of swing in about 100,000 votes and the greatest likelihood we need to make sure that we're devoting resources to those districts, to the american population as a whole, to make sure that they're not getting constantly fed propaganda lies. you know, that's the first big step that we need to take, need to deconstruct the system donald trump has on, fortunately

successfully implemented, which is building this movement based off of people's basic and their needs of security and what they rely on the government for. and he's that fear and built a movement of and lies and this falsehood. so we need to make sure that we're properly educating the american people about what's actually at stake. but i think what's essential in some of this comes now, but some of it will come down the road is a is explaining to americans how fragile democracy is and how quickly it can taken away from us. we need to talk about how that's happened in other countries and how we are so fortunate as americans to not have had to experience that. but it can happen really fast and societies can completely dissolve. and again, we're on the brink of. that potentially happening in 2024. and it's a really, really dangerous and critical moment for. our history as a nation, but also for the peace and stability

the world we have been the gatekeepers of security, the world for 250 years. and what example are we setting for the world, if we're going to not stick up for our in what we have so cherished for long. you know and i, i think about all of this and i, i don't ever want reach a point in my life where i look back again and i think could have done more. could i have said something? how i explain this, my children or my future grandchild, grandchildren or future generations of that. i stood back when it might have been easier to remain. you know, i think that when we move forward and, hopefully move forward a little more hand in hand and to be able to have productive conversations, we've righted our wrongs and we've looked towards our better angels, as we have in past cassidy hutchinson for your courage, for your willingness to share and speak out, and