 Welcome to What Now America? It's October the 20th, 2021. I'm Tim Appachal your host and today's title of the show is Trump Says GOP Won't Vote in 2022 and 2024. Back in 2020 and 2021 there was a special election in a very red state Georgia and it was a special election to either determine where the incumbents of David Perdue or Chris Kelly Loeffler would stay as the Republican senators in the state of Georgia. And a funny thing happened. They were ousted. They were ousted by John Ossoff and Raphael Ornick. And what was the reason for that? Well, one I could say Stacey Abrams had a big play in that. She got the vote out. But another curious thing happened that was Donald Trump couldn't be quiet about his grievance of losing the election. He was going on and on about how the election was stolen from him, how all elections are rigged, and certainly in Georgia. And he said just that the Georgia election was rigged. So a funny thing happened as well. Republicans stayed home. They didn't vote. And we had an upset victory in a very red state. And that's what happened. Now we fast forward to Des Moines, Iowa. And Donald Trump said the podium basically encouraging people not to vote in 2022 and 2024. Here's this quote. If we don't solve the presidential election fraud of 2020, which we have thoroughly documented, Republicans will not be voting in 2022 or 2024. It is the most single important thing Republicans to do. So if you're part of the Republican leadership and you hear Donald Trump once again poisoning the waters to discourage voting of Republicans, what do you say to that as he's your standard bearer? So that's the main topic of the show. And I'm going to go straight to my guests. I want to welcome Jay Fidel, Winston Welch, and back from assignment our special Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning, everyone. How are you? Morning, Tim. Good morning. So Jay, if you're Mitch McConnell or McCarthy or any of the leadership in the Republican party, and once again, you hear Donald Trump crying the blues about the election stolen, the big lie, and how if this is not solved, and if the Republican leadership doesn't follow behind Donald Trump on this particular issue, he's basically saying, don't come out and vote. What would you do if you're the Republican leadership on that point? I have a mentally examined is the first thing. There are various options here about why he said that. And one of them is that he's lost it. He's so fascinated with the big lie that he lies all the time. And he did this as part of a way to get his constituents to focus on helping him overturn the 2020 election. That that's the first priority for them. They have to get him. He has to get them to overturn the election. And I think inherent in that, Tim Winston, Cynthia, is that he's asking them to be part of the insurrection going forward, to turn it over. And that means going back to the Capitol and that direction. Yes, he's giving him a priority. They can't worry about the election in 2022 or 2024, because first they have to turn the whole government upside down and make him the president. That's one option. Jay, let me ask you this. Is this a litmus test for loyalty to the dear Donald? Is this what he's really trying to do is to see how tight they are to follow his every word and every command? And God forbid anyone should break ranks from him? What he's saying is you have to follow my primary point, which was that I'm still the president. That's what you have to follow. So I suppose it is. But there are other options here, too. So one is he's mentally unstable, which maybe that's part of all of this. Two is that he wants them to have another insurrection and that's a high priority. Number three is that it's the reality show again. He's saying something to disturb and disrupt. And he wants everybody to pay attention to him. So he makes these ridiculous comments about how, in fact, Republicans won't turn out for the polls. It's not true. They will. If they show any loyalty to him, he who is the Republican Party, they will show up to the polls. So it's a very odd kind of statement to make. But I think there's a fair possibility that door number three is important. That is, as through his entire term, he wanted to disrupt and distract in people with ridiculous and outrageous statements. Outrage was a way you deal with the public. And the fourth is a dog whistle. It's, you know, I'm kidding when I say this. What I'm really telling you is you have to get out to the polls. I'm challenging you. I'm provoking you. I want you to get out to the polls. I do not mean what I say. I mean what the dog whistle is telling you. Those are my four possible reactions, my four options about why he said that. But notice that in no one of those options, did he mean it as a true statement of the reality because it is not. Okay, thank you. Winston, going to you with the same question, but also adding on Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican from Louisiana, was in an interview with Axios. And he basically said, there's no saying Donald Trump is going to be the 2024 nominee of the Republican Party. And he said candidly, I choose not to vote for him. Pretty bold thing to do for any Republican, particularly a Republican Senator. Your thoughts about what Donald Trump did in Iowa and like Georgia, do you think it will have an adverse impact on voter turnout if he continues with that kind of rhetoric? And then your comments about Bill Cassidy standing up to Donald Trump and making the statements that he did. Well, he'll have to be a sacrificial lamb in it. And they're testing the waters to see how this works. And maybe it'll pop up here and there, but and they're hoping maybe for a game of whack-a-mole that the attention will be localized enough that Donald Trump won't jump on it or have the ability to jump on it. But he's being advised by very strategic people as well that says, this is the person you need to attack. These are the points you need to attack. They're unloyal to you as a leader. And we saw the sort of despicable comments on Colin Powell immediately after his death. Colin Powell, you know, he talked about it being the rhino or whatever. It was just sad to see. I have that quote we'll talk about later, but it was sad. It was pathetic. But let me add this though, going back to the comments I made a minute ago, it caught him attention. He wants attention and he wants, you know, to distract and disjoint and disturb everyone. And that's what he did for his entire term, attacking people like McCain and then all that, attacking the, you know, the widow of a fallen soldier. Outrageous things is what he gets off on. True, very true. He doesn't have Twitter anymore, so yeah. But yeah, he doesn't need Twitter and Facebook because the media is putting him out there for that. I remember when he called the veterans in Mobile One Cemetery, his losers, you know, and he didn't want to, I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's sort of just like, this is a reminder of the daily onslaught of the incredible things that Donald Trump had said and subjected us to over, not four years, but four years by the 15 minute or 10 minute increment, unless it was a Twitter storm and then we had 60 tweets a minute or whatever it was. You know, I think what we're looking at here is that he does like to be out in front of the media. He doesn't care what he says. He has no effective filter at all. I don't think he was trying to really, I don't think he cared one way about Colin Powell. And Colin Powell, when he was talking about how he led us into these wars, Colin Powell was the first one that said this was the, you know, the big mistake of my life. I owned up to it. When did Donald Trump own up to any mistake he's ever made about anything ever in his entire life? You know, so people are entitled to, I suppose, you know, quiet opinions about things, but not the day, the first, not the hour that the news of the person's death is released. I was just found that really shocking and important. You know, the thing is, I was more troubling is the Quinnipiac University national poll that came out that said Republicans by a 78% to 16% margin want Donald Trump to mount a White House bid in 2024. That's incredible. 78% of Republicans. Now this is Quinnipiac, a little bit right, I think, but not that much. I imagine this is... No, I think everyone is shocked by that percentage. And given what Donald Trump has been and has done, yeah, it's completely shocking. Well, the 94% of Democrats, what are the other 6% there? Do they just want him in? Because he will be seen as so, you know, important by then that it doesn't matter that they could run Mr. Potato Head against him. I don't know. And 58% of independents said he should sit out at the election. So I'm not sure what Mitch McConnell's game is in on this, because SCNN blared out with their headline. He sends a very clear message that I didn't think it was a very clear message. I thought it was just milk toast that we should focus on the future and blah, blah, blah. I was just like, I don't know what Mitch McConnell's really thinking here, honestly. Well, he dodged the question. By talking about the future, he's dodging the past. And that's all it was. But he's also looking at this poll that's saying his... I don't know what his percentage of approval is, but Donald Trump's still 78% of Republicans, which, you know, just want him to run again. So this is either it's a mass amnesia or it's part of the... I really don't know what it is, but just that number is enough to make us just sit up. It's like having ammonia put under your nose or something, you know, smelling faults. Good point. Okay. Thanks, Winston. Cynthia, Winston brings out a great point about the 78% desire Republicans to see him run again. Again, if you're the Republican leadership that can't deny those numbers yet at the same time you see your standard bearer saying crazy things about don't vote in 2022 and 2024 unless you follow me to the edge of the cliff and over the cliff on the big lie that the election was stolen from him. What do you do if you're a Republican leader? Same question I asked today. Well, there's not a lot that you can do, but I don't think he's doing that as a way of trying to say don't vote. He said that in the Georgia race also, because that way, when he loses, he can say well, see they didn't come out. That's why I lost because the Republicans didn't show up. But he encouraged him not to come in Georgia. He said it's rigged. It's election. It's completely false. You're wasting your time. Yeah, but that's what he's saying again too. If you don't back my big lie, just don't bother to vote. It's a bunch of nonsense. It's all about projection and it's a way of covering I didn't really lose. He because if everybody really come out, then I would have won. So I think that's part of it. And there's something though that I think is important that's going on right now. And it is that there was an article in Independence that is from that it's talking about in a new interview with the Washington Examiner, David Drucker for his new book in Trump's shadow, the battle for 2024 and the future of the GOP. That ought to be an interesting book to try to swallow. But at any rate in this interview, he claims that he was surprised by the assault on Capitol Hill that was committed by his supporters and adds that he would have stopped the mob, had the Secret Service only let him attend the scene in person. That was pretty. I thought that was pretty. I'm sorry, I missed that. Is this a quote from Donald Trump? It is a quote from Donald Trump saying that he was surprised by the assault on Capitol Hill and that was committed by his supporters and added that he would have stopped the mob, had the Secret Service only let him attend the scene in person. You know, you got yourself a newsflash there because I haven't seen that on other networks, but it's comical. That's hilarious. That's something for the daily show. I'm not buying that book. I'm not buying that book. Hey, Cynthia White, you're still on the line here with me. Let's talk about Liz Cheney and her clear blunt pointed words to her fellow Republicans about the folly of following Donald Trump on the big lie. Would you like to comment on that for a minute? I would. I personally have just the highest admiration and respect for Liz Cheney for standing up to the bully, so to speak, and to, you know, just for speaking truth to power and to standing by her principles as opposed to just going for the power and the glory and going along with the crowd. She said Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trump's privileged arguments do appear to reveal one thing. However, they suggest that President Trump was personally involved in the planning and execution of January 6th. And we will get to the bottom of that, Cheney added, and I thought you go get them, girl. Okay, thank you very much. I think, yeah, it was a breath of fresh air to see her come up with those comments. Jay, did you have any reaction to Liz Cheney and what she said? Yeah, I think she spoke for all of us in a way. I could even put a side effect that she's a conservative Republican for a moment, but in terms of her participation, the committee is exemplary, and she is one of the personalities who's driving that committee and good for her. I hope she stays on it. I hope she stays influential, and I hope she stays influential with the public. It's all good as far as I'm concerned with her. Okay, well, you let's tie that into the context of why she spoke in the first place, and that was the subpoena that's been issued to Bannon and his refusal to accept it, and now we have a criminal referral from the select committee that now has been voted, or will be voted, I think, today on the entire House of Representatives. Is Bannon just trying to play the role of the martyr, or does he have some other scheme up his sleeve? He's an extension of Trump. Peel off that bearded face in which you get is Trump. Trump is telling him what to do stroke by stroke, so that's why he's doing it, and Trump is also saying, don't worry. He can kick the ball down the road, the can down the road so far and so long that you don't have any real risk. We'll kick it all the way to the Supreme Court. You'll never go to jail, and thank you for helping me just as I helped you in the pardon. So I see him as an extension of Trump, and he's doing what Trump would do in his shoes, and it's not, it's disgusting as what it is, of course. Well, in recent news reports, it's showing that Bannon was actually part of some kind of pre-planning on January 5th. I forget the name of the hotel across the street, but he and I never, the Willard Hotel, showing that there's a really very good reason to subpoena Bannon and his knowledge about what took place at the Willard Hotel and what conversations took place and to what degree planning of the insurrection was about ready to happen. Now, we probably have all heard or seen on TV Bannon's podcast of what he was saying to his listeners on January the 5th, and that was basically, watch out, hang on, and this is going to be wild, and the revolution starts, and that's where you want to be tomorrow. Now, there's Shane, he goes through that. He goes through that and much more to say that the remarks that he's made about the events just prior to the insurrection indicate that he was in on it. And I don't think any reasonable person could argue with that. It's very clear that he was in on it, and he becomes a very important witness. And for that reason, Tim, to go to a point you inferred, and that is, well, he doesn't want to show up and have to talk about that because he will be incriminating himself, or they'll have to be the whole negotiation of immunity and force him under contempt again to talk to the members of the committee. So that'll be a bad moment for him. And you know that Liz Cheney will be all over him about it. But the question I think legally right now is that he has to show up at all. And he says no, that he enjoys through Trump some sort of absolute privilege even to not show up. And that's really Poppycock. He's never going to get to first base in any court, including our wrong way car against the Supreme Court. He's not going to get to first base on that. So the question is, does he have to show up? And the answer is he will have to show up. And the practical solution for him and Trump is to kick it down the road as long as they can. At the end of the day, though, as and when he does show up, hopefully before Election Day in 2022, he's going to have some hard questions to answer. And the play is going to be on what he does when they ask him questions that might incriminate himself as an active member of a foment or of the insurrection, a person who organized and conspired about it in the essential conspiracy. That's pretty risky. Do you see criminal charges coming? Do you see criminal charges coming his way, Jay? Yeah, I mean, beside the fact that he blew off the subpoena. Forget that for a minute. Right. Let's talk about his participation in the conspiracy. I mean, absolutely. I see very serious criminal charges coming down. And I think that may be part of his reasoning here, that he's greatly vulnerable to those charges of conspiracy, insurrection, what have you. The problem is that if Trump ever gets elected, Trump will pardon him again. Right. You're Winston. Well, hang on here. I'm still writing down poppycock. Let's see. Jay has used a word that I haven't heard in decades. To Winston, and that is what's really at stake here for Congress. If they let Ben and Slide on this request for, well, not a request, demand for subpoena, and he blows it off. Is it something that the select committee is going to pursue? And is the credibility of the House of Representatives as providing oversight in the future for all things? Is that at stake? And is there credibility at stake? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. We're looking at an institution needs to be able to gather facts to run the nation. And this is part of their obligations, part of their duties. And when they're thwarted in that, it thwarts the whole democratic process. Obviously, this will be seen as a partisan play, even if you have Liz Cheney on the side. Will anything happen? Is Merrick Garland's Department of Justice going to do anything? I don't know. Maybe there's something coming down the pipe. Is Steve Bannon going to get up there and said, I fomented an insurrection against the United States? Probably not. He's probably going to say we were, you know, if I was involved in anything, it was just supporting our great leader who felt that this was a stolen election or whatever. I don't think it's just going to be theater in the end that's not going to be good. And I thought, you know, Danny Degrazia, I think that's the way he pronounced his name. He had an article in Civil Beat on the 18th of this month called Hawaii's Broken Political System is the real emergency. And I think what he's, what he wrote about there, I just thought that's writ small of our national situation, although he didn't talk about the courts here specifically. But I think that plays into it as well, is that you have this sort of three-ring circus as it is, and that people's trust and faith in the institutions, that's the real danger here, is that they don't have the power. They have their active leader saying, ignore this, sideline it. I'm your true president anyway. And so it's no wonder that people are confused and misled. And as we're talking, and I'm thinking about that Quinnipiac number again, and thinking, and by the way, just to finish up on the legislative committee investigating this, they're going to have to go to emails and that sort of thing to get any truth. But even then, they may be stymied for years, but they'll be able to put together some sort of report that's very absolutely incriminating. But will it be read? Will it be cared for? Well, I want to go to that point because if Bannon stretches this out and I don't know how long it'll take Attorney General Merritt Garland to respond to the House's referral, can you produce a report without really not having the key players justify? Exactly. And how many, what's the Democrats, like eight surplus Democrats in the House? A lot of them are in vulnerable seats. In the Watergate era, remember, it was the president's own party going after him. And that was what the clincher was. This one, there's zero of that. So I don't know that we can expect a lot out of it. I don't think maybe someone will get indicted somewhere for something. But how many people went to prison in Watergate? Now, the idea is that our system is predicated on the threat, not the threat, the promise of good faith in government. And citizens, we have a healthy distrust of government in this nation. But we also rely on citizens trusting in the government as well. And that when the government says, okay, you need to all get a polio vaccine, then people lined up to take it. These days, you have people, they don't, I'm surprised people even stop at stop signs anymore because it's become everyone's a law unto himself. Well, there is a suggestion, not a law. That's what's scary here is that we're really losing basic faith in our institutions across the board. It's not just government, but it's especially government. Because when we don't trust or believe, then that makes it also the government reacting a certain way as well of how they deal with the population. And so it becomes less and less democratic, less free, less open, because every piece of information they give will be twisted or concerned. And it brought me to a thought, and I brought it up before, is that we need to really go back and try and understand what are these 78% of Republicans thinking that they would still support Donald Trump after all I've been through and really, really need to go through, do a deep dive, strip off all of our preconceptions and say, what are the, are there real grievances here that are and maybe a poll question isn't getting to what you're suggesting. We need a deep dive to understand that so that we can address that whenever it is. And maybe it's just a general trust in government and say, okay, how do we address this stripped of Donald Trump? He may be the messenger of all of this, but we need to say, how do we get these folks back on board so that they're not not voting? We want people to vote. We want a principled conservative party in this country. We may not agree with them all the time, but we need principled players that are invested in the system. And so we do really need to go back and look at this rather than just dissuade it out of hand. And it's the same. All right. I want to get to Cynthia on this before we conclude our show today, but Jay, you said you wanted to interject something real quick. Yeah, I want to go back to your question. And gee, it's been so long since you asked a question. Oh yeah. But I think we are operating in the assumption that at the end of the day, we want to see this committee hang some people. We want to see a quote, accountability end quote. But Trump is going to do everything he can to prevent us from getting there. And bottom line is the committee can only do what the committee can do if Supreme Court does a rule in time. Okay, okay. What the committee should do is with Mueller, who in his later years, he wound up with dementia. Mueller didn't do. He didn't really report on the difficulties he had. He didn't report on the obstruction that he had with regard to his own investigation. And if I were running the committee and I ran into these kinds of things, I would say, look, this is what we got in the documents. This is the testimony we got from others. That's what I'm reporting on. And I can make my recommendation that go this way, that way, the other way. But I can't control the ultimate result. I can't control the Attorney General. I can't control the President. I'm just telling you what I learned. Yeah, no, I did not. We should not be expecting more than that from them. Yeah, okay. Cynthia, what's your opinion about Bannon and his role in all this and his reluctance to submit to a subpoena? And what does that get him? And do you also think that maybe he could be criminally charged in the future? I absolutely believe that he can be. I hope that he will be. I think that it's all about a stall technique. It's his MO to drag their feet, drag it out as long as they can. You can imagine they're probably going to try and drag it out till the 22 election so that that way none of this will be decided yet. And right now, among the Republican Party, 66% of the people think that what happened on January 6th was not an inner instruction, was not a riot, and that nothing bad happened. 66%, I saw another poll, but we only have to look to that so that the big lie is still believed by that many people. If they just keep getting fed lies, we're never going to be able to pull those Republicans back from the brink because they're going to be too buried in lies, and we'll never get them back. And that's what I'm afraid of more than anything. And there's so many of them. And I don't know if you guys saw the clips from Jim Jordan when he was being questioned by the committee and he suddenly can't remember how many times he talked to Trump on the day of, oh, what was it before or was it after? And he's already been, he's already told a reporter that he talked to him before and during and then many changed his whole story to being after. So it's like they're all just going to lie. Well, they have to be careful because there's something called perjury before Congress and maybe he needs to be aware of that little rule. Yes, absolutely. And especially when, and I can't remember which Senator or which Representative, I can't remember which one of them was questioning him when they just nailed him to the wall and go, okay, so was it before or was it after? And he goes, after, after. And he said, well, then you mean when you told the reporter blah, blah, blah, oh, well, I guess it was, I guess it was during and after, you know, I talked to him all the time and it was like, I don't know, we're going to nail you down on exactly when it was and they didn't let him squirm out of it. I didn't get to see the whole finishing the little episode that they had with him. But at any rate, boy, they were not letting him squirm very good. Well, I guess that's the question whether or not they'll let Ben and squirm and your prediction about whether Ben and squirms out of this or not. Oh, I don't have a prediction. I know that my prediction is this, he will get in front of Congress whenever he does end up getting there. And he will lie through his teeth, okay, his own and to save Trump's neck and and to save his own power. So I don't trust any of them to tell the truth by any stretch. Okay, you get the last word on this topic. Cynthia, we've run out of time, so I'd like to get your last comments. What do you think is going to happen here in the coming week or or on this subject? Go ahead. Oh, wow. In this coming week, instead of on this subject, how about either or take it's a potpourri of decisions here. I want voting bills. I know that just yesterday or today or whenever it was this last when they went to go through the Senate with the voting bill and then of course, didn't go anywhere because not one single Republican signed on with it. But I think that if Congress doesn't get extremely, extremely dialed in and focused on voting rights, it doesn't matter what our infrastructure is. It doesn't matter if we get the January 6 commission all the way through. If we don't have voting rights, we have nothing. And so that's my biggest thing, voting rights. Okay, yeah. Well placed. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you for your comments. Jay, your last thoughts for for the show and for the week coming. Ashley's right. Voting rights is very important. But even with the voting rights bill, we still have a lot of problems that are going to happen next couple of elections, 22 and 24. And that it's going to be more of the same slow rolling insurrection. Never forget what Carl Bernstein said. I would repeat it at every show. We are in a slow moving insurrection, a civil war. There's no turning back. We're going slowly over the cliff. And all of this falls second to that. I don't know and neither does Carl Bernstein what you do in order to prevent the fall. But we are in a fall now. Okay. Thank you, Jay. Winston, your last thoughts. Let's focus on that. What Cynthia said about the 68% said it wasn't an insurrection, the 78%, 74, whatever it was that want Donald Trump to be president again. Those same people, those are our countrymen and country women and they are supporting him for some reason, even whether they think he got elected or not, the big lie before that they're still supporting him, after that they're still supporting him. We need to understand what that is deconstructed so that we can address it and hopefully turn this ship. I think I remain optimistic and hopefully we'll get some chicken in every pot as it were with these stimulus bills being passed or rebuild America, building back better, whatever they're going to call it. It looks like they're going to come to some agreement and that's where we really need to focus. I know Donald Trump is an amazingly attractive distraction and he's grabbed our attention again and we need to go back and say, the country needs to be rebuilt. We have to do it. We have to focus on that and it's so easy for him to derail us. Alrighty. Well, we've run out of time but I want to thank everyone, Jay Fidel, Winston Welch and Cynthia Leeson-Clair for your wise and sage comments. That's the nice thing about Think Tech Hawaii is that we talked about the tough subjects, the tough topics and we get a great response. We get great opinions and perspectives and so remember that in October for the fund drive that's taking place right now, click on Think Tech Hawaii and donate. We appreciate your time. Thank you for watching us. Join us next week, Wednesday at 11 o'clock. I'm Tim Apatel, your host for What Now America. Aloha.