and then if they do, well, it'll continue beyond that, who's publishing it? it'll be penguin random house. it's my publisher, viking children's the is the imprint they're. yeah david maraniss the next project i'm taking a gap year i was that 30 straight years of writing books. i don't think my next book be about sports. more likely politics. i still have a second volume of my obama biography to finish. i'm waiting for him his library open up and him to write his second memoir and all of that. so we'll see. and i guess finally, who's favorite athlete of all time? oh, roberto clemente. i mean, i wrote a book about him. i think he was an awesome human being and a beautiful football player. and that book came out in 2007. still baseball's hero. yeah, i think so. yeah. andrew maraniss favorite athlete all time. favorite. what has a kid like that i love so much? paul molitor of the milwaukee brewers city moncrief of the milwaukee bucks. but perry wallace, the subject of my first book is probably someone outside of my own family is the person that i admire most

in the world. andrew maraniss most recent book, inaugural ballers the true story of the first u.s. women's olympic basketball team. david maraniss. the book is path lit by lightning the life of jim thorpe. thanks for joining us on boowe'e order i read books. the big truth is first one, major garrett chief white house, our washington correspondent for cbs news and. and david becker the executive director and founder of the center for election innovation and research. thank you for your servitude leibovich from the atlantic

atlantic. and the big lie jonathan lemire white house bureau chief, politico and msnbc see, since this is an author's panel and book festival, i'm going to start with the literary question and. then we'll get into the topic hand. most of us, with the exception of david up here are so i have to ask all of you when did you realize this to be a book was when a reality tv host descended a gold escalade later, or was it january sixth or somewhere in between? well, for david and i for the book the big truth the imperative to write the book came with everything happened on election night 2020 leading up to january 28 january six, 2021, and then thereafter because what

started on that election the morning really about 230 when the president said the election been stolen from him and repeated that over and over via twitter and other means and lots people who already knew better said and republicans who knew better either said nothing or joined in and the country was, for the first time in its history poisoned at the presidential level by a monstrous lie about an election. and so, david and i have said this many times, we had to write this book. we just wish we didn't have to write. it. i do not this scenario on any country. i certainly didn't wish it on my own and one of the underlying parts of question is how do you deal with some matters of trump and your objectivity as a journalist and it's a challenge. let me tell you.

and it was a reckoning for as a journalist to write this book as hard as we wrote it and as unflinchingly as we wrote, because the 2020 election is an observable, knowable, verifiable truth. and defending that is not bias. defending that is standing up for the truth, which is why we give the book the title we did. i i'll just i'll just add briefly. i mean, one of the things that major and i and one of the reasons we wrote the book was, the truth about elections, large not just the 2020 election, but we've seen in 2022. and you and arizona have been at ground zero for some of this stuff, is that our elections are more transparent and verifiable than they've ever been. that's largely due to the profession realism of the men and women who run elections, the civil servants who never get noticed. something goes wrong, who work really hard. and over the last two plus three plus years have been suffering a

great deal of harassment and threats just for having done their jobs, extreme, well, they somehow managed the highest we've ever seen in american history. a large margin, two thirds of every eligible voters, 160 million americans, more than 20 million more ballots cast than ever before and did it in the middle of a global pandemic. and instead of celebrating fact, they've been under nonstop, as we sit here today, over 850 days after that election. so that dichotomy me between the reality of the success of american democracy and the perception amongst tens of millions of americans that, the exact opposite is why we had to write that book. so it's interesting as i'm physically sitting here between two guys who wrote a book called the big and the big lie, right? yeah, i did like that. they put you the two of them. yeah. you know, there is some narrative relevance this because

the question is how do you get from a big truth to a lie, the big objective truth, which is our elections which is verifiable major just said to you no election that was defined by a big lie that ultimately allowed to a deadly insurrection. and, you know, one of the biggest tragedies in our nation's history and my book is essentially about how, you know, it takes. a lot of people, it takes a village. it takes in this case, you know mass a huge proportion of one of our two major parties to bring a big truth to a big lie. it's enabling it's about who knew better. and, you know, one of the things that's also interesting about this panel is that it's about donald trump. and, you know, there's still box office appeal that if you look at the you know, the sold out or the the blowout here, but ultimately the word trump is not in any of our titles it's in some of our subtitles. but but i think the larger issue

here is that he had a lot of and these things don't happen in a vacuum they happen in a system that is allowed to be corrupted because we build good faith and goodwill into our system and an expectation trust in our leaders and. i wanted to write a book about the lindsey graham's and the kevin mccarthy's and the, you know, ryan's or ryan's problematic great example here. but marco rubio and ted cruz's, who all knew better, decided to help donald trump for whatever reason. it's fear, whether it's fecklessness, bring the election of 2020 from a big truth to a big lie. yeah. so i was when trump came down the golden i certainly didn't expect to be writing a book at that moment. but it triggered the mind what my book does and why i felt like i had to write it, which of course the decision was made soon after january 6th? was show how he had spent his and then his all four years in office, chipping away at truths, chipping away at institutions

sort of laying the groundwork with some lies. very, very small and meaningless, like about a hurricane map in alabama to, ones that eventually became extraordinarily and deadly challenge. the very nature and foundation of our democracy and, the thought, fear. the thing about the big lie and i try to capture in my book is it's about the 2020 election. yes, it fueled january 6th, but we're still living with it. it was a defining issue in the 2022 midterms. and though lot of the highest profile big lie endorsers, including in this state, lost plenty, didn't plenty who you know members of the house of representative who voted to decertify joe biden. they won easily. and certainly that election, the big lie is still very much with us today. in fact, in just a few hours from now it will be on full display at cpac when donald trump takes the stage. and right now, at this moment, he is still would be considered if not the but certainly a one

of the favorites to be the republican nominee. again, prohibitive favorite. prohibitive favorite. i believe he is the clear favorite. think he's the clear favorite right now. so we are still going to be grappling with with this. and that is a test for us all. and the book tries to address that when all of this started. we all know who donald trump was been talking about him for decades, been an author casino, owner, rich guy, hosted the apprentice. maybe we'd call him an influence, sir. now, if if social existed back then, zero experience in when made that ride down the escalator. and as you said jonathan, you were there we were all watching did any of you have any inkling that would end up as president? i remember i was a political

reporter at a time. people said what do you think? i was like, no iowa. he'll be done by iowa. all maybe south carolina, super tuesday. that's, you know, and then here we are. so i was not there at the escalator, but i was there at the first debate and from that point forward, was on the trail covering all republicans but that mostly became a trump story. so i was on the road for 16 months during the 2015, 2016 campaign and. there's saying in america that we like to hold dear anyone in america can grow up to be president. political scientists have a slight variation that anyone in america can grow up to be president so long as he or she is the nominee of a major party. okay, you've got to get the nomination and once you have the nomination, you have a chance. you have a very real chance to become president of the united states, not if you're not the nominee. if you are the nominee. and after new hampshire, it dawned me that there was very

few breaks left to stop donald, that the field would stay large large enough where he could win with 33, 34%. people he crushed in south carolina. he won with 32%. ted cruz got 22%. marco rubio. marco rubio got 22%. ted cruz got 21%. his the two people got more votes than trump. but it didn't matter that repeated itself over and over and over again and it after new hampshire i thought he is likely be the nominee and if he is the nominee he has a chance and the one thing i would give trump credit for in the sense because it goes to the premise of your question question he knew that by the time realized how serious it was he was, it would be too late and he was 100% right. i'll grab it next. certainly i did not think of the escalator that he would win, but by that summer i have to pick up where major left off there there

though polls suggested that he was significantly to hillary clinton. i did believe i was one of the few voices out there on that trail other than the campaign plane. i was like, i think he is going to win because you could just see it and we all overestimate sometimes the importance of crowd size in these campaigns. and certainly donald trump likes to talk it. but there was something you could see night after night where whether it was pennsylvania or wisconsin or michigan or florida, they're just you said high school gymnasiums, arenas, they were packed, were outside the door and there was an energy there was an enthusiasm there. there's one night stretch run the campaign a few weeks ago and. again, crowd sites don't mean everything but it's telling my colleague i was at the ap at the time was with hillary clinton in miami for about an event with about 500 people, the exact same moment across the state i was with trump in tampa and there were 15,000 and it wasn't and the trump campaign would say, well, look, we're finding these these new voters. new voters. that's the hardest thing in politics to find new voters. and there was a degree of

skepticism that that was true. but night after night, we would talk to people at these rallies who would say, i've never. spoken to a pollster in my life. i haven't voted in 20 years. i've never voted, but i'm going to vote for this guy because he's he struck a chord with. me he is saying a message that resonates with a part of america that had grievance that felt forgotten and that was going to on that day cast their maybe first ballot for that. and a lot of things had to break right for him at the end you guys can talk comic james comey if you want all those things. did line up and on that day it was nothing. yeah, i would just add that, you know, donald trump benefited a great deal from denial i mean, a lot of people just did not. i mean, they thought he was dead like a million different times in 2015 to 16. you know, oh, look, robert mueller, this, you know, great. you know, this is this is the £800 gorilla. this will put a stop to it. you know, it happened throughout

2020. you know biden was supposed to win fairly comfortably. he didn't. i mean, trump got 70 million or so votes despite a whole hell a lot. i mean, a terrible economy, covid, you know everything he did. so look, still there. i mean, we were all in washington after january 6th. i there was a there seemed to be at least 72 hours, at least a critical mass among republicans that we all talked to. okay. this is it. this is a bridge too far. we finally will move on from trump. and lo and behold, you know, starting pretty much that day when, you know, large numbers of republican to not certify biden's election, you know, people were falling line and i don't know again if it's fear what but look, we're still there i think trump has a big, big hold on one of our two major parties. and as major said, like one of two people are going to win in 22. the democratic nominee or the

republican nominee. it's a very good chance as we're here today, that it's going to be joe biden and donald trump. and i'm just looking the expressions on your faces right. and, you know nothing against those two candidates necessarily. it's just there's a weariness about it, which i think is just a reflection of where we are as a country. and, you know, we might have to go through it again and i would love to see an alternative, but we don't appear to have wherewithal to find one at this point. i've really got nothing to add. i mean, i, i just say briefly i mean, i'm i'm not the journalist up here. i'm i'm a longtime election lawyer. i run a nonprofit that works in election space. i work with election officials of both. and i've the effect that the election narrative that has from donald trump not exclusively, but he's really the leader of it for quite some time has had on the health of our democracy. and we forget that this really

dates back to the narrative. it dates back in 2016. during the summer, he started using language about rigging. so jonathan's book starts. yeah. and this is this is a a this is a tactic where he's tens of millions of americans that in a 5050 country there's no way that the candidate they voted for could have lost arizona is again grounds for this. of course. right. this is a very closely divided state. it shouldn't surprise that there are narrow elections. and the reason we hold elections, because someone wins and someone loses sometimes a very, very narrow win or defeat. just ask the arizona attorney general. so that effect has been going on now for a decade and it is it is rotting us to our core. it de-legitimize those who win elections to actually govern us.

and that's, you know, going back to reason we wrote the book. that's really one of the main reasons we wrote it. and mark, you pointed out in your book that it 2012 obama romney when trump started talking about, hey, if romney loses you should check the machines. oh, absolutely. this is not a new act for at all. i mean, the past is prolog in any number of, you know, stages of donald trump's life. you know, i think we'll see of this even moving forward. jonathan, you about and major and david, you also chimed in on this in your book that talking about the supporters donald trump were they or i guess more correctly are just merely feeling like they're not being heard and they found somebody to listen and to champion their cause? i think a few things at play here. i mean, some voters simply going to vote along party lines.

the those who trump turned out and excited the new voters. i think it's a things i do think that some of it is what we were talking about a ago about they felt left behind, that they felt they you know, they had lost their job there, hadn't got a raise in a decade. the factory in the plant closed their cousin died of an opioid o.d. you know, they're the first generation that felt like they couldn't promise their children a better life than themselves. coming off of the economic collapse september 11th and the war, war and so on. and that he struck a chord. now, the irony here, of course, is the man who spoke, of course, struck a chord with the forgotten person. it was a self-proclaimed billionaire who lived in a skyscraper manhattan that had his name in gold on the but yet he has thing donald trump does he has some political skills and he can read a room and he can find a message and. he recognized that with start with birtherism and other populist matters that he would appeal to certain people.

the other part of this, and we should mention, is he gave license to people the bad things, the racist things that they were thinking. this is not all. this is just of trump's supporters. of course, you know. that resonated, too, that the political correctness of it the fact that he railed against that. i that that resonated with a lot people now going forward how many of those people are staying with him. i think those are the people do stay with him you know it's hard to imagine as we do think about that hypothetical rematch in 2024 that there's going to be people who didn't vote for him in 2020, who will look at the next couple of years and go, know what i really like what he did. yeah on january six, or that trump truth social post that's really me going so that that would be i think he faces he's got a flaw but he's got ceiling too so he's laying out his educational policy in new hampshire week did you see that and trying to do this he could be a well well argued policy discussion. stay tuned, everyone. so mark brings us up to a degree in his book and tim, alberta has

written a really good book called american carnage. and i think one of the things that needs to be appreciated in, a general antiseptic about trump is that he whether he understood it, that a systematic or data driven he knew that for conservative voters, they have been over promised by conservative leaders for the better part of 20 years. and they had really gotten up with people promising things that they wouldn't actually fight for. so the definition of someone who real to them was that they were a fighter first, not an ideologue. they wanted a fighter and they wanted someone who would fight every direction all the time, quite comfortably for donald trump. that is his entire personal personality to fight in every direction, all the time. read about his business career. he fights in every direction, all the time to the point of exhaustion to those who seek to

claims from him, who sue him, or he gets scrapes with. and so the fighting narrative that jonathan i covered the entire 15 2016 campaign sent an unmistakable signal to those who wanted to fight first and take on everyone all time that this guy was the real deal and that whatever else or was said about him, that fight mattered and it got to them it was also one of the thing that i think jonathan and i, at the many, many rallies we went to i went to at least 75 trump rallies during the campaign 15 to 2016. i. i think i got to be by a few i'm sure you do. i'm sure you do. i'm sure you do. that's a fair number. but no, i can't compete with jonathan on that. but i think jonathan, i would agree with me on this. one of the great challenges for anyone who in politics is to take a room and to get people to nod.

now, a lot of people came to see trump were already sold on trump, but there are things he would talk about and in ways that he talked about made them feel as if they were smarter. like i've been thinking that for ten years, 15 years. and no has said it until this guy said it. yeah. and that sense that i'm smarter than i get credit and he makes me feel smarter than i get credit for is a really important aspect of not only trump's but the durability of the support beneath him and just add i mean one thing that occurred to us when we were writing the book, 74 million people voted for donald trump in 2020, 13 million more than in 2016. and that that is not they're not all insurrectionists. a lot of them are our friends, neighbors, our family members. the vast majority are good americans. they just preferred a different presidential candidate than the winning candidate. supporters and those people have been they have legitimate concerns, have issues with the

candidates but they're also being fed a constant diet of lies about the process that is designed to farm their rage, to increase their anger and division and most importantly, their donations. there is an ecosystem of people in this country that their entire is built around the idea that elections are stolen, to keep people believing that elections are. mike lindell was just speaking at cpac today about the brazilian election and how the machine stole the election in brazil if only someone had been in power for the previous several years and could have changed their election system. this is we are more secure than before and people don't realize this and their anger is being fed. we have more ballots than ever before, more audits, those ballots than ever before, more judicial of the process than ever before, more transparency than ever before. the election system here in arizona is pretty much exactly the same as it two decades ago,

because arizona has been voting by mail and on paper for long, long time. and yet people are still telling lies about that. and unfortunately, the are fleecing their own flock here. they're targets for this. and david, let me ask you, as as the non--- journalist who studies elections and is involved in the journal as well, i'll chime in, because that's what we do. but what is it? and you and meijer wrote some about this in your book. what is it that people lose in their government and lose trust, their government enough to get us to this point, one particularly interested to hear what these three say about this from my perspective, i think about elections every and i have been doing that for 25 years. i've done it from a variety of perspectives. i worked in the justice department and the voting rights section. i've worked at non profits and elections are really esoteric the majority of americans only

turns out to vote once every four years. it is not something thinks about every day and really. it's not something anybody should think about every day unless we're working this space. there are so many nuts and bolts, boring checks and in the process, how many people in this room have volunteered to be a poll worker? i'm curious that's that's wonderful. thank you all so much. and, you know, the people who volunteer to be a poll worker, how there are so many and balances. there's a reason you for hours before you show up there's a reason you show up hours before the polls open and there's a reason you don't get to go home as soon as the polls close. it's because there are bipartisan rules that govern process every step of the way. but we can't expect everyone to know that. and we've always relied states people, people like al gore in 2000, people like john mccain in 2008, people like mitt romney in

2012 to acknowledge edge when they lost that they had lost and for the first time in 2020. we someone who wouldn't do that and it is now gone on. i didn't make the 850 day number up its act look it up it's 850 days since the november 2020 election where we continue. see that here in arizona. you're seeing that from multiple candidates, you're seeing that from legislators. you're that from members of congress who were elected on the very same pieces of paper that joe biden and governor hobbs were elected on the very same page of that of those pieces of paper and those members. congress haven't really how their legitimacy is real, but the legitimacy of the person who was elected on the two races above them on the ballot is. yeah, yeah. so look is a really big

question. why did people lose faith in institutions i don't have a unified answer for that because it's just enormous. and it's not just in government. there's a lot of hierarchical respect. you will all hierarchies are sort of shattering are being brought down in media world the hierarchies that many in this room grew up with in the sixties seventies and eighties are unrecognized to you now don't have just three networks now i'm not saying that was better. i'm just saying it was different and. the power was much more concentrated then and local newspapers were stronger and more visible and more viable than they are now. a hugely regrettable circumstance from my vantage point, since i started my career in local journalism in amarillo, texas, as a newspaper reporter, so, so there are a lot of reasons why institutions large are under stress. people are less faithful in. it's true across religion it's true across almost everything other than the military police, banks, lawyers, everyone.

the institutions are under some sort of stress i think there is some argument you could make that that's not altogether too different than things psychologically in this country during the gilded age. and we're in the digital now. and the two things my wife over there, laura brown, is a political a ph.d. and she has a big theory about and it goes like this at times of massive economic turmoil, massive dislocations and, cultural upheavals that are brought by that economic turmoil, things that really are so different to you that you feel unmoored and unsettled at so many different levels, that you look in lots of different directions for an answer and they were politically turbulent times during the gilded age their politically turbulent times during the digital age. and i would say that's not the only answer but it is one of them. let me jump in just because i want to make sure we have time to get into to your questions and mark and jonathan one of the common themes between your is

what mark, you called the joke that everyone was on, especially the rnc for those you who didn't read the book, first of all, mark, explain what the joke was. sure. or ends. yeah, you got to read the book first. no, no. on sale right outside. yeah, it's it's on page two. i say okay. so the joke is kind of a washington thing and it morphs. there are different jokes is kind of an unspoken truth that people sort of in the know green rooms in halls of congress what have you will sort of just without saying without actually going on tv and talking about you know for many years the joke was that washington was kind of this big bipartisan racket where even though these people were democrats and these people were republican and we're all kind of all in on the same deal and, you know, we can get maybe do a

lobbying shop together and make of money. and we don't really have to talk about too much. but that sort of was the joke of washington about, you know, people making it work for them in the republican party starting in 2015. the joke among people who were elected republicans who were elected candidates and so forth, was that, look, this guy that we have to praise to the nines in public, that we have to support up and down is a complete who doesn't know how any of this works who we all sort of inwardly have zero respect for. but you know the joke is we all know this, but we can't say it because. we need him to get elected. we need his supporters to for us. and that became like the dominant dynamic inside the republican party, you it's true to this day. i mean, to to to a large degree you will not hear a lot of republicans on the record talk about how donald trump is even though privately they will say the same thing. so that is the unspoken joke.

and, you know, it's devastating. it's horrible to listen to, you know, people to facing you and, you know, their supporters this. but it's very much part of the scenery of certainly republican washington and republican america right now, which jonathan led to a lot of what you were writing about that he'll change, he'll pivot, he'll grow into the job as what was being said in the green room is part of the. yeah that didn't happen. it is and the joke does persist and there are republicans who knew better who went along with their small percentage were true believers who were all in on him. but a lot of them didn't use him because he was useful to maintain their proximity to power for their own fundraising for the next lucrative gig after they left the you left left. they left washington. the joke also was continued after the election in 2020.

there was that sense of, well, he just needs a little time this is a hard loss. he needs to cool down. it will be fine. there's that infamous we probably have all mentioned this quote in the washington, an unnamed republican operative about two weeks after the election saying, well, look, he just needs to get this out of his system. i know he has conceded yet i'm paraphrasing here, but let's just let him what's the harm? what's the harm in humoring him? yeah, right. yeah. and we saw the and humoring him. we also have seen since he left office. the joke continues and more have been willing to speak out against him. it's still a pretty small number, but more half one of them, mitch mcconnell. but here's the thing about mitch mcconnell and others of his ilk and former attorney general barr's like this, too, who have denounced trump did on january six. they said he's bad for the party. the party should move on. but if he's our nominee again, of course i will vote for him.

so there are very a very, very small minority who have gone and said, no, i can't even do that. here is, though, sobering thing about that one of those who did that was cheney who put patriotism. who put patriotism over party and lost her primary by 40 points. this will be my last question then come to you all. so start thinking about your question cards and get ready to your hand so we can get to them. and mark, i'm going to stay with you for saying your book. thank you for your servitude really is kind of about the change came to washington. ted cruz lindsey graham, kevin mccarthy who excoriated trump in 2016 and now are the water for him on a regular basis has any president and all of you can chime on this or party leader since trump no longer president

been able to make that level of a change because everybody often gets behind their party's nominee. yeah, it changed as far as oh just complete he's from oh you know he's an idiot he's a -- to he's almost the second i mean okay so newsflash i mean politicians share the truth a little bit. they emphasize. yeah, you know, they will withhold information, they'll emphasize certain things. i mean, that's part of the finesse and, you know, we have a certain level of tolerance as a society for the kind of spin, the kind of politic double speak, that politics politicians are known for never anything like this. i mean, this is sky is blue, sky is green of stuff. and i don't think any of us have seen it. and i will say this i mean as i mean as a member of the as all of us who are members of the institute, one of the institutions that people have lost faith in the media, you

know, major and john, chris and you know, all of us and, you know, i know you're not a but i know you signed on to this to you know, we believe we try to be fair, try to be unbiased. we try to tell the truth. you know, again, it's hard to be unbiased or it's hard be bi unbiased about, racism, democracy objective truth. you know, again, like not even like close to an argument i mean, just, you know, this election was stolen, this election was rigged, won in a landslide. i mean, and, you know, you of course, you go and you say what the truth is and. you know, half the country is saying, oh, well you've made up your mind. you're biased. you know, you're the liberal media, boom, boom but so that is you know, that makes it hard and that builds in a level of tolerance. the mitch mcconnell's and the kevin is to say one thing and then just do 180 degrees the next day.

i mean, every president consequential every single president is consequential. but donald trump is, a very largely consequential figure in american politics outside of the fact that he was president for four years as mark alluded to when we first sat down here, the here is indicative. if the title for this panel was who is marco rubio, it would be a smaller crowd. i covered marco in, the legislature in florida, and i probably wouldn't come to that little marco crowd right? yeah. if the title of this had who was tim scott, it would been a smaller crowd. i'm not saying there's anything wrong with marco rubio or tim scott, but the fact is trump a consequential hold on the american psyche, good and bad. he has been the most significant turnout machine in the last

three elections. the 2016 election was a low turnout presidential election. 2018 set a record for a midterm last time that turnout had been that high by percentage 100 years before, and we all know who wasn't allowed to vote 100 years before 2018. so it's the highest midterm ever, most diverse electorate, the 2020 election, as david said, highest turnout, most diverse, 2020 to almost a near-record that reflective of the psychic pull and push and trauma and elation that donald trump brings to the american political conversation that makes him consequential, not just at a policy level or a political level, but a deeply psychic level. and the one thing that david and i learned as spent all this time trying to understand, not only denialism and rejectionism about elections, but why it persist, why it exists is because there is a component part of it that is about psyche, about identity, about who people feel they are in the american experience. and one thing i will say is an

observation even more politics becomes psychological. the more combustible and volatile it becomes. one of the things that i've been most surprised at how trump and his ilk have in effective is the way they've turned principal conservatives into into almost perceived liberals. liz cheney is a great example. marc, you raise this point. i mean, this is it's it goes across conservative ideology. there is a great report written and i hope read it by a group conservative legal minds called last night storm and you can find it at last stolen dawg and included people like ben ginsberg who is george w bush's and mitt romney's counsel, ted olson, who famously argued for george w bush in the supreme court in 2000. judge thomas griffith, who was a d.c. circuit judge appointed by george w bush. bush george judge michael luttig, who was on bush's short

list for the supreme court, who testified before the january committee. and somehow all these people get painted with this broad as a rhino. sometimes i'll even see it spelled out. you, which i think is somewhat hilarious. i'm not sure what the stands for in there, but but this tactic has been very effective of separating out these great conservative legal minds and conservative politicians who have a lot to contribute to policy regardless whether you agree with them or not. from the rest of the republican. and i think, again, that's one of the most surprising things that i've seen, actually. can i can say one thing as far as the effectiveness it so there was a somewhat nothing famous but it was a vignette that has been talked about a amount over the last few months kerry like in one of the final weeks of the gubernatorial election. sorry, governor like just if you're if you're if you're so inclined. none of no. she she was at a campaign event. she made a reference, john

mccain, and she said mccain supporters here and, there were, i guess, a few people and who were willing to admit it. she said, well, i don't you i mean, which, again, is of sort of the part of the dismissive thing that david is talking about. it's like, look we don't want you if you're not fully pure and fully on board with our mindset and our black white sort of position here and like that that might have lost her an election or that didn't help her. let's put it that way. i mean, john mccain was one of the most effective politicians in arizona history, got reelected many times. and, you know, if you're a republican trying to get elected here, presumably you need his supporters. and to piggyback on that briefly, i mean, you can have a true believers. you can try to winnow your party just to have the votes were most but that yeah that's going to limit your pool of voters too and make it that much harder to win elections and what we have we have seen the losses the republicans are taken since 2016. you know, in 18, 20, 22, because

they're not speaking to issues most americans care about. most americans don't care about hunter biden's, you know, but they do care about a lot of other things the republican party's just simply not putting their energy behind. and that is where the challenge for them going forward and it certainly will persist next year if will probably whoever their nominee is but particularly if it's if it's trump and because i think this is you know that that message that of course is amplified. there can be another conversation about the role of the conservative has had in all this and the way they have spewed that out. and also at many we have seen vividly on display in recent weeks not always to the truth in their reporting, even if they knew better, even if they knew it right. let's turn it over to, you all. oh, oh. and so surprise that anybody has any questions. this nice gentleman here with, the microphone will head over you. so keep your hands up.

yeah, a thousand years ago, when i was growing up, people actually read newspapers. they watched walter cronkite and brinkley, and now it seems like the loudest voice in the room. a network with f0x is not actually news at all, but instead propagate. and yet so many people rely that and think that's the god's truth when it's not objective whatsoever. that's changed a lot of it seems. well, the media has changed enormously. and look, check my resume. i worked at fox eight years from 2002 to 2010. i left on my own a year and a half ahead of my contract and we parted. and that's that. but i was a part of that ecosystem. it was a different place than it is now. one of the reasons i left is i had a sense of it might be heading and i couldn't abide that. but fox did create a business model in the cable space where

your audience penetration doesn't need to be nearly as large as a network. and you can make money. and roger ailes had an idea that if you serve particular network, you could make money. and he was right. what happened over time. is that network began to serve it so slavishly and with such fear about its possibly wandering away that that overtook and don't believe me just read the depositions released in the last weeks. who's that state this without any shadow of a doubt? it's not red or blue. it's green. that's rupert murdoch, not me. yeah. okay. so that part of the ecosystem changed. then you have msnbc, which started as a neutral cable outlet, then became left leaning or left of center as a business model. reaction to fox. and i would say of those have created a home game atmosphere for lots of politicians who show up and do home game interviews which from my tastes are positively useless because

they're not challenged and they don't know anything about the other side of the argument they just get to play home games all the time. they've rhetoric rhetorical. they've just lessened the to be rhetorically interesting in american politics and they've made people decidedly comfortable and siloed in their own media environments. the politicians and those who want to listen to them. and that's a huge change, no question. well let me ask ryan. i'm wondering one thing. the trump years exposed to us. you started off by saying good faith. good. well, i'll add preston. and standards guided much of our history for 250 years regardless of which party it they stood up for that pretty much most of that along with morality and honesty and decency, were flushed down the toilet under the trump years and continue to be flushed down the toilet. i'm wondering, what can done legally, for example, why a few people in the justice department

side that a sitting president cannot be prosecute? why should a president be able to bring his family members, her family members into the white house and continue to run their businesses from the white house? why should a sitting president be able to pardon people of crimes related to him? and finally, i've been told that if convicted now, trump can still run and be elected president unless it's treason? is this true or not? mark, you would take that for me, but i we have our counsel here, right? yeah, actually, that's why i i'm not sure i've got the complete solution for all of this. let's now look, there is a reason that our founding documents talk about us a more perfect union. i mean, are our documents as good as are are not perfect? our laws are not we are constantly trying to perfect them to prosecute a crime. you need a prosecutor? i can tell you, having been at the justice department and having been a lawyer for a long,

no prosecutor likes to bring a case that they're not sure they're going to win. i think the department justice is acting very deliberately i tend to be fairly confident my former colleagues at the biggest law firm in the plant, the planet and that they are doing their due diligence, that takes time. and a lot of you've heard others talk about this as well when you're talking about investigating crimes, often like if you're looking at, for instance organized crime, you start with the smaller and you work your way up the pyramid. that's the way these things are prosecuted. you know, overall, keep the passion for changing some of these things. there were norms that were broken, you know, a major i talk about it in the book. it was not unusual for a sitting vice president to preside over a joint session of congress when that person had lost the previous presidential election

to anoint their winner as their competitors. the winner, richard nixon, did it in 1960 in a close election. and of course, al gore did it in 2000, a very close. those norms were completely broken. and i think it's fair to say that our laws and our established norms from the good guys, the good guys weren't only in one party, were not really prepared for that. and hopefully building up some preparation for that in future. although if you do read some the federalist papers and some of the things that are our founding fathers fathers wrote, they did kind of anticipate it unscrupulous leader at some points just hadn't fully gotten to that point. we've very lucky through our 240 plus years of of history up until then, i'm going to jump down here kind of into the front row and then we'll come to the back. so you all don't feel out down back there. i would like your insights into how we can get the trust in our election systems and stop beating up on these people in

some, oh, you stole my last question, but go ahead, guys. wow. so one way we can do that is to understand that there is some very skepticism there, that has to be at least heard. and david and i had an experience with this the day after the super bowl, we were in we were at arizona state university, and we were part of a two hour televise focus group that was conducted by frank luntz, 17 election registers. people who rejected the election results of 2020 and also the 2022 midterms in arizona. all 17 was an audience of 90 asu students and invited brad raffensperger, the of state of georgia was there. bill gates, maricopa county board of supervisors were there. and david and i were up on the show. the four of us were the panel of experts. the students were there interacting with these election.

and frank luntz was the focus group moderator. and this went on for 2 hours. and i guarantee you, after those 2 hours, not one line was changed. and over. they were heard. and we listened and we answers and we gave our as best we could. i went in assuming, i wouldn't be able to change anyone's mind. and i was correct in that. that's not a criticism so much as this is deep, it is a residual deep and it's part alienation, it's part grievance, it's part a sense that there's a machinery that they don't understand. and i think in the election space and i know david will speak to this eloquently than i will those people who have been in this space because, it's esoteric because it's nuts and bolts have always of had the approach, i'll take of the election and win the results are reported and the candidates will accept it and then move on. or when candidates don't accept it, then a burden. now on the election administrators to be more vocal

and communicative about what they do and how they do. and that's a new burden because they never had to worry about candidates accepting results before this is placed upon them. a new burden that they're really not prepared for their nuts and bolts, esoteric people deal with the fundamentals of the election. they don't they don't have comms staffs, they don't have pr firms. they don't have any of the apparat high that lots of other people in bigger roles in american have and they're just covering to their horror that they now need to do all these other things on top of just doing they thought they were supposed to do which is administer an election. so they're evolving in that space. they need books like ours. i'll tell you, i swear to god, we wrote a book to help them. we really did. and we hope it has some minor positive effect. david well, i'll just say briefly the one word accountability, the incentives is all out of whack right now? people are getting rich off of these lies. they're gaining at least

perceived opportunity for political power. we need to criminal liability for those whose actions have led to things like january 6th. we need see civil liability, which i think we're going to see in things like the dominion lawsuits against fox and others. and we need to see professional liability for lawyers who have violated their oath of office as officers of the court. and they need to be disbarred again. arizona's zero for this. there's some recent things that have happened here that i don't need to tell you about with regard the former ag so we need accountability first and foremost. yeah, somebody. all right. let's get somebody from the back. just i don't want to just let the front. i mean, you guys were here early and i appreciate that but we should let the people who were at the end the line have some chance spoke about. you spoke about the disaffected people that trump appealed to and that he was making promises

about doing things for about fighting for them constantly. what do you think fought for that had impacts or might have had impact on that group of people? so let me give you one example. this is playing out right now in south carolina. south carolina is going to have primary in 2020 for nikki haley's already announced former governor of south carolina, tim scott announce there's a conversation going on in south carolina right now about trump and nikki haley and tim scott and one of the arcseconds procession in south carolina moved by the trump campaign goes like this. so how did roe versus wade get overturned? trump appointed hard core conservatives to do that, as he said he would do. what happened in south carolina after that? south carolina wrote a law to restrict abortion in south carolina after roe wade was overturned, the state supreme court full of republican

confirmed nominees, overturn that law. and the pro-life and evangelical community in south carolina is deeply unhappy about this. and the trump line of reasoning in south carolina goes, well, who appointed those people to south carolina supreme court? henry mcmaster, not altogether if he's a trumper, for sure, but good enough. and nikki haley. so if you leave it to all these established trump republicans, you're not going to get you want only trump can give you what you want and make it stick. that's one example not the only example but example that's playing out in real time right now in south carolina and. that idea that this fight, this sense that others say they're going to do it, but he'll do it and they would put it, i think more dramatically in the supreme court context than any other supreme court context on the trump side for the trump supporters, many of were uncertain about voting for him in 2016, but looked at the

future, the supreme court saw that he a list and said, i'm going to i'm going to go in that direction, see what happens. and they did. can i just say for the record, donald trump had no idea who. brett kavanaugh, neil gorsuch or amy coney barrett was before he took over. i mean, leo told them this is a list they, you know, mike pence would have nominated probably the same or few of the same let off the same list. so the whole like promises made promises, kept thing on judges always somewhat amused my but sorry. just to add a note of cynicism here. sure, but that doesn't stop them from talking about it. yes. at their level in their way. yeah. oh, oh. hatch, there's a woman in red here on the end. i saw your hand go up. it's all you you. how do you plan on how do you plan on reaching younger audience about the dangers a figure like donald trump in politics, leibovich is doing a tick.

yeah. look for it. yeah, that is a challenge. i mean, we see the demographics of who watches news and who reads the news and it is not the young people way they should. you. i think there will need to be creative ways in order to do that. i there is some encouragement about young turnout young young voters up a little in recent cycles more engagement that is good and there certainly issues that young people seem to care about more than then than those that who are older than they are. but that's a challenge for all of us. and also to say, piggybacking off that question, you know, we all, i think, will no one covered donald trump perfectly time around. i think mistakes were made during the campaign in particular. i we got better as it went along. we gave him too much airtime, not enough fact checking. initially, you're not enough context provided. that was a challenge for all of our news organizations and every other one to do that. and to to realize that we couldn't treat him like any

other president. and i do think by the end we had done a pretty good job not perfect, but pretty good job of it. but now becomes that much more of a challenge going forward as he has taken steps back onto the stage to be a candidate and maybe he'll be the republican nominee. how do we do that? how do we talk about an insurrection, a candidate? do we use that language? do use the language of he is still not. i mean, that's likely the answer. and you know, we we at the when i was at the ap and then i associate and now politico you know, we were not shy when the moment called for it. we used the word racist to describe. he did. and i think this time around it would need to be insurrectionist or election denier, whatever it might be as we go forward. but to what mark did say earlier, that will, of course, open us up to charges of bias from half the country. we have to do it anyway and stay with it. i would just also say, i mean, young voters right now have never been important. and, you know, on one hand, you know, we say this and on the other hand, oh, yeah, here's biden and trump again. like, you know, be excited. go organize. and you know. so there is this this sort of

disjointed between the kind of menu sitting before the future of american politics and the actual product they're voting for. but just i don't know. it's never i mean, numerically, just it's never been more important, you know, especially for the democratic party, but also, i mean, for the republicans. i mean, they seem to have punted on, you know, under 40 voters for a few cycles now. and but like, who knows? i mean, there's a lot of dynamic, you know, process going on, you know, on college campuses and so forth in which you're seeing backlash against cancel culture, what have you and so forth. so anyway, there's a lot on engagement has never been more important. and i would just say in response to your question, this thing that we did at arizona state university, you can watch it on it's online, arizona state and universities, southern california, the annenberg school from university of southern california, the cronkite school promise you sponsored it. so one of the things that was really inspiring to david, i was

most of the best in that 2 hours came from students talking to the election, rejection is because they said in their own words, this is this is the future of democracy for me for the rest of my life. and i want to know why you. don't think it works because i'm just to think it does work and i want it to work. and they were deeply involved and passionately engaged in this conversation. and that gave david and i witnessing it firsthand a real sense of optimism. unfortunately, that i know we are out of time. thank you to the four of you. thank you to all of you. and now the mall grab their books, beare our panelists today