 Good evening. I'm Harold Pacius. We're on the air again with another edition of Pacius on the News. Tonight we have a very interesting guest, Frederick B. Hill, a former reporter with the Baltimore Sun, a former State Department official, who's written a book called Derelection of Duty. Derelection of Duty, and it's a series of columns that Mr. Hill has written for the Baltimore Sun, for the Dallas Morning News, for the Bangor Daily News. And he lives in Maine. He's a graduate of Bowdoin College, and he moved back to Maine after he left Washington, but he continues to do these columns. And Derelection of Duty, as you might have guessed, is a reference to the current president of the United States. Fred, welcome to the show. We're looking forward to chatting with you. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. You undertook to assemble these columns that you've written over several years about Trump. What motivated you to do that? I wrote columns for the Bangor Daily News for four years after I retired. I had worked for 21 years in the State Department, where I really couldn't write very much publicly. And I did write a column for the Daily News in Bangor for four years during the end of the Bush 43 administration and then the Obama administration. And then I kind of stopped doing it. And I really didn't pay much attention to the 2016 campaign until Trump emerged as the leading candidate. And I was just astonished that the Republican Party was going to nominate somebody without any experience, proven bad judgment in different casino businesses, close ties to the Russians. But I think the catalyst from my deciding to write columns was mainly generated when 50 leading Republican national security experts, including Mike Aiden, two chiefs of the Homeland Security, Tom Ridge and Michael Cherkov, Elliot Cohen, the leading Republican strategist for both Bush administrations and a whole number of other people. 50 people said Donald Trump could be the most, would be if elected, the most reckless and most dangerous president in American history. And that really startled me as somebody who worked in the State Department for 21 years doing war games on different national security issues. I might point out for three Republican administrations, I went there after working for Republican Senator Senator Mathias, a respected Republican days when Republican senators were truly bipartisan. The Reagan administration, then the Bush 41 administration, and then the Clinton administration, and then the first six years of Bush 43 and doing war games and discussions on leading national security issues. And that's when I became to be startled and I began writing columns and two of the first three columns I wrote I think have stood up under time. One was on Trump's lies and his accusation that Obama and Hillary Clinton created ISIS. ISIS grew out of the Bush Cheney invasion of Iraq, which created al-Qaeda and then led eventually to ISIS. And there were all other lies and he also made a claim at some point I know more than the generals. We came to see what that meant. Most of the generals that came to work for him have left and called them an idiot, a moron, and other epithets. Timing of his another article was based on climate change and I felt that his calling climate change a hoax was just disgraceful when more than 90% of scientists around the world believe that global warming is a key aspect of climate change. And for him to call it a hoax, I think frankly Donald Trump is the hoax. He claims everything is a hoax, the Russian interference, climate change, almost everything that he doesn't like is a hoax. Well, I frankly think Donald Trump is the hoax that's been perpetrated on the American public and I think it's been proven over four years of very little accomplishment at home and abroad. Well, he must be an effective hoax perpetrator because he's always had around 40%, never a majority obviously, but always had about 40% of the people with him in the polls. He won, he didn't win the popular vote, but he did get elected president through the electoral college. So my view though is that from day one when he became president, even before that, going on the national security angle, he was asked at an interview with either the Washington Post, the New York Times, who is five top national security experts were. He reeled off five people who were almost completely unknown, one of them Carter Page was spending a good deal of his time in Moscow. He's the one that's the focus of the FBI investigation. They had good reason to look into why he had so many Russian ties at the time. And I would just say on the 40%, if a lot of those people would look at his record and not his rhetoric and fear mongering, they might see that he's accomplished very little. A friend of mine talked about Trump and says, well, he's a Republican. I don't like his character. I don't like a lot of things he says. I don't like his judgment, but I like the results. Well, look at the results that we've got after four years of Donald Trump, but the worst crisis in American history since the Depression, if not the Civil War, almost 200,000 Americans dead because of his denial, delay, calling it a democratic hoax. He did on February 28th, almost six weeks after intelligence agencies had warned him of the gravity of this crisis. Yeah, he's done all those things. But then I run under them to people that just love him. And they some friends of mine said, well, look what he's done. And of course, what he's done is not substantive. It's they point to tax policy. Well, he kind of let Congress do that. He didn't. But you know, I, I, I worked for a president who had these task force in the White House developing legislation and ideas all the time. No ideas other than social attacks come out of this White House. And so he just delegated it to Congress and Congress came up with a tax bill and people can argue about whether the tax bill is a good tax bill. Certainly didn't favor a lot of people. But in any event, that's what they say. The tax bill, the tax bill also generated a huge sense of deficit through the roof. And that's one of the things I find most surprising and disappointing about the Republican Party is that some of the key factors in Republican liturgy have been completely violated. One was fiscal restraint. That was in the 2016 platform of the Republican Party, which in which they said that the Obama administration had ballooned the national debt. Well, look where it is today. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the Republican Party has just failed to recognize it. They also no longer can be considered the party of national security. Now that's partly the fault of Bush and Cheney for their reckless invasion of Iraq, which was probably the most strategic era in American history, almost worse in some ways than Vietnam because of the consequences, not because of the number of deaths. And also on civil rights, the Republican Party today is no longer the party of Lincoln. It is the party of Trump, I agree. But they suppress voting. You have a president that says he won't maybe won't leave office if he's defeated in November, who says that the election is could be rigged and uses the post office. One of the most venerated aspects of the American government and tries to trash that as he's trashed the White House, suppressed voting, what more does the Republican followers of Trump need? In terms of accomplishments, look at that 2016 platform, for example. Not only does it say that Obama ballooned the national debt, but it said that Obama divided and turned citizens against one another. If anybody's turned citizens against one another, it's Donald Trump sending stormtroopers into different cities when they weren't even invited and crossed the streets in Washington having his own military knock over protesters, largely peaceful protesters, just so he could hold the Bible upside down for a photo op and across the street. Even General Milley turned around after that and said he didn't agree with it and wished he hadn't allowed that to happen. The Secretary of Defense Esper did the same. I would point out that Esper is a third or fourth Secretary of Defense. Trump is on his fourth or fifth round of a revolving door of increasingly inadequate incompetent officials and no more better example than this is this John Ratcliffe. Trump has gone from having and I gave him the benefit of the doubt when I heard that. Let me interrupt you say, Joe, what are you saying to the audience who John Ratcliffe is? John Ratcliffe was a congressman from Texas. He was one of the most vociferous people in Trump's impeachment trial. Trump nominated him to be director of national intelligence after Dan Coates who was a very sensible and courageous member headed the intelligence. And Coates was a Republican, right? And Coates was a Republican and Coates had the courage to say to disagree with Trump on the problems in Syria, the threat from North Korea, the realistic view of Iran's nuclear program, and Trump get rid of them quickly because he disagreed with them. So he nominated Ratcliffe. I took a small bit of satisfaction in the fact that I wrote a column with my friend Ambassador Jim Goodby in the Dallas Morning News and the next day Trump withdrew the nomination. Now I don't claim that it was because of our column because a lot of Republicans at that time also found Ratcliffe to be to have inflated his resume. He claimed that he had some role in the arrest of 300 illegal immigrants who it turned out he had no role whatsoever. Didn't have any experience in intelligence and yet Trump after he got free of the impeachment trial nominated Ratcliffe again. Our friend Susan Collins withdrew from him a promise not to politicize the intelligence world if he was going to be the director of national intelligence and what's happened last week and Ratcliffe said he would not politicize it. Last week Ratcliffe said he would no longer offer verbal presentations or summaries of the latest intelligence about an election interference largely from Russia. He'll only provide written ones and what is that but a psychopath's reaction to Trump's pressure. So look so they say that people that you talk to say well I don't like him I don't like his personality I don't like the way he does things but I like I like he's delivered they say he's delivered. Now of course people have said that about other authoritarian leaders in world history. You know and I'm sure you know this that when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 in Germany the Nazi Party was a definitely a minority party and a lot of people made fun of a lot of Germans made fun of Hitler. We have to remember that Germans are no different than us. People all over the world are no different than us. We're all human beings. We all are afflicted with human nature. We have the same types of reactions. We're all the same and so the Germans kind of mocked him but he came to power and then he did certain things and he took back the Sudetenland and he invaded Czechoslovakia and he invaded Poland and he put people back to work enormous defense spending so there was no more unemployment in Germany. So they would say well we don't like him we think he's a bit of a fool he's this he's that but he delivered and he became very popular because he delivered. So there are a lot of Americans who think what your friends think that he's delivered. Now what is it you've just commented you don't know what it is that he's delivered. I don't think he has delivered hell and I think I'd be the first to admit and he didn't the stock market stayed high but the economy and he lied about this as well was doing pretty well after Obama left office. There was a terrible financial meltdown in 2007-2008 Obama inherited that. I think George Bush 43 finally came around and helped stabilize it but there was pretty solid growth under Obama it was 2% or more and the fact that Trump could claim the greatest economy in the world in stock market is more important to him than the life and death of most Americans frankly that's about the only result he was able to accomplish was to keep the economy humming to some extent but as Warren Buffett's always said and so many others they've always had great faith in the underlying strength of the American economy and its innovative ability etc etc and why shouldn't it so he can claim that but and I'd be the first to admit that if Donald Trump had shown leadership after the outbreak of COVID-19 if he had stepped up to the plate the way FDR did when Japan invaded Pearl Harbor or attack Pearl Harbor if he had shown leadership and ability not undercut science and health and not come up with quack theories and denied it for two months and he February 28th you went to a rally in South Carolina and called COVID-19 Democratic hopes he then continued to deny it delay it make bad decisions and then you know one of the things that I think most revealing to main people and I can't believe anybody in the second district can support Trump he went to Guilford or that plan up there and during a meeting with Paul LaPage he called Janet Mills a dictator why it doesn't she reopen he said it several times you can look at the video just look it up potential independence and Trump supporters he sits there and with the page thank goodness he's gone as governor and we have Janet Mills he kept saying she's a dictator why wouldn't she reopen well governors in Florida governors in Texas governors in Nebraska all reopened about that time following Donald Trump's advice and look what happened there the COVID-19 surgeon all that states how today Florida has more deaths than Japan and South Korea put together all these other countries around the world have tackled this crisis because they had leaders who had guts courage vision and smarts and experience I might add Donald Trump's nothing but a flim-flam artist who had a bunch of casinos get into the real estate business with his father's millions and then depended on Russian investments to keep it going he was in real trouble in 2007 2008 and guess what even Eric Trump admitted that we don't need American money we got plenty of money from Russia I think one of the most abominable things about Trump to me is that Republicans always were the sternest strictest toughest opponents of communists well Vladimir Putin's is still a communist and we've got an American president who has embraced an authoritarian virtual dictator who is a ruler for life he's just got another eight or ten years and this is a man that Trump admires this is a man that Trump and Helsinki said oh I trust don Vladimir Putin more than I trust my own intelligence agencies John McCain a true American hero who Donald Trump maligned another one is great tendencies is to malign people who do good work and but he criticized him John McCain said he had never seen somebody abase himself before a foreign tyrant the way that Trump did at Helsinki and the most recent evidence of Trump's glaring and un-American embrace of Russia is that he has done nothing but these proven allegations that Vladimir Putin and the Russians paid bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers and that on top of his calling the Russian interference in the 2000 election and continued support for their doing it now to me is just proof that he's almost not even an American but to get back to Jen Mills just for a second he called her a dictator but Janet Mills has done a good job making tough decisions and guess where Maine is Maine has as you we all know the oldest population in the country so very vulnerable yet it has one of the lowest per capita number of cases and deaths in the United States she didn't reopen like Trump would try to order her to so okay that's you know I happen to agree I mean I he's con man and but it works in America you know I get as you do and everybody else watching this program does calls on the phone all the time from people with various scams and how about this and how about this and send me money and so forth and I ask myself why they do this well they do it because it works they wouldn't be calling on the phone if calling people on the phone and scamming them didn't work of course it works and so people get fooled and and so there is that tendency in human beings to you know listen to some scam artist and react positively to it so now if he hasn't done anything why why you know he could win could win again so why why is that seems to me that it's cultural that there are so many people you know I I don't like I think political correctness has gone too far in in some respects and all of these micro aggression discussions by college students drives me nuts but his supporters are against what they call PC political correctness they always use you know why do you say happy holidays instead of merry Christmas you know I'm a Christian tell me Merry Christmas that's fine I have no problem saying Merry Christmas to people but they use this as an example so what they his rudeness he's a very rude guy they say is telling it like it is you know he's just being candid telling it like his it is and his vulgar his vulgarness they say here's the courage to act to be himself to act like himself and so they admire this this is all this is all non substantive stuff but they like it Nate and they like it because also a lot of people are racist not everybody but they will his supporters will say there is no racism in America they'll say you know no white supremacy no I agree how I think that's culture has a lot to do with it this is a very diverse country and Obama held it together pretty well Trump to me is divided people against each one another using very racist and ethnically sour language calling Mexicans rapists Muslims barring them from all countries not just Iran or other places and on the free speech issue I think I think the the overwhelming evidence is that he another way he violates his responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution United States is the fact that he calls so much fake news I mean he is somebody who listened Alex Jones the person that said that the awful massacre in Connecticut was a hoax the new town shooting a new town shooting exactly Alex Jones argued that's a hoax and Donald Trump respected this person Donald Trump listens to these cune on conspiracy he encourages white supremacists I think it's a sad commentary that we have a president who desecrates the Oval Office the way he does using the language he does calling people human scum and snakes and sleazebags I mean presidents throughout history have used strong language and I'm a great fan of HL Mankin as my friend Alan Simpson was who was in the Senate when Matt Mathias and Bill Cohen were there but I don't think any president has stooped to the level of nasty rhetoric and sure they can say it's locker room talk but since what woman in this country can have much respect for a man who brags about grabbing women by the genitals who has had so many cases of sexual abuse leveled against him and I think it's one of the ironies of this day that the only news channel it's a big one Fox News has had so many of its executives accused of the same very same behavior as Donald Trump's been accused of but to call to me as a former journalist there are several things his lack of accomplishments and foreign policy we can get to that in a minute or one of my main problems with him but the fact that he can repeatedly call the best newspapers in this country and CNN and other networks all fake news and the enemy of the people the enemy the people is an expression that goes way back in history but it's been made most famous by Joseph Stalin Putin's hero and Donald Trump repeatedly has used the words enemy of the people to describe the very best papers in this country so as far as I'm concerned he's against free speech if he is elected to another term in office not only will he trample on the rule of law more than he has and we can talk about that but he will try to limit the free speech the American people it's not that's more critical than a culture war as and I agree with you about the political correctness but I think that political correctness divide is partly due to the diversity of this country and it is that's one of the things that we should be proud of instead he's abused the issue of immigration we had a serious problem with immigration George Bush 43 tried to do something about it I think that was one of his best steps and Obama did as well and they had some agreements at one point but Marco Rubio and a couple of other Republicans chickened out at the last minute when that deal between the group of 8 was about to be made and it fell through the cracks and that's an issue that Donald Trump is exploited you don't need a border wall most the experts say you just need some good reform of immigration laws and frankly I've read several articles by people in towns in the Midwest Trump territory who have lots of immigrant workers in their neighborhood and they get along with them very well but they still swallow some of Trump's ridiculous rhetoric about immigration and M13 I have people say they're afraid of they're coming in their window practically and he exaggerates these years the this business about the press is a hoax and the enemy of the people actually I find that kind of interesting because everybody watching this program knows that everything the president says is recorded it's on video or it's on a voice recording so what they do is just report what he says and does he has these these you know every day what are you the the thing that he texts out every day on social media and so it's all there I mean all they're doing is reporting what he says he says it and they report it and then he says it's a hoax it's like when he was in England he said something about the prime minister on television was recorded everybody saw it was a video and he said later I didn't say it he gets away with it so why does he get away with it is it because people 90% of the Republicans according to the polls strongly support I don't strongly support Donald Trump 90% of them so he can get away with it he knows he said I could go out on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody dead and my supporters would never leave me he's right he's right about that and he knows he's he knows that's true so what do you do about that it's the voters that put him there it's the public who wants him to continue some in the public what can you do about that nothing I think Biden and Kamala Harris will make a very strong campaign and the fact he's accomplished very little and he's got more pretty much more than a ten ring circus between what the people going in and out of the White House people like General Madison Rick Tillerson and John Kelly all leaving as I said he's on the fourth or fifth level of people that are his key advisors the I think the record is got to be paid more attention to than the rhetoric frankly and the people I think just like the TV reality show I remember working for I did get this from campaigning for Jared Golden two years ago and I met a woman in Lewiston or Gardner and I asked her talked about Golden's record and Golden had actually worked for Susan Collins at one point he's a young Marine who volunteered went to Afghanistan or Iraq after barely out of high school he served this country he's a very brave and I think energetic young man but I asked this woman what did she think of Trump and after we had a conversation she said well I don't like him I think he's foul I don't know these good leader but boy does he put on a good show and I think that's part of the reason that I don't think the level is 90% I think it's a lot lower than that and I think to me one of the biggest problems is the lack of courage on the part of the Republican Party and that started to fall apart in the and I last section of my book is on the collapse of the Republican Party and it goes is not due to Trump it was falling apart in terms of its ethical and political vision what long before Trump and that's probably why he got elected because they had 16 or 17 other candidates and none of them including some good people like Jeb Bush were there but overrun by his foul language and humiliation and braggadocio but Norman Onstein of the American Enterprise Institute which is a conservative think tank in Washington and Tom Mann wrote articles about the Republican Party back to 2008 and 2010 about how they were losing their respect for American values and they predicted Trump's rise even before he began to take off in the 2016 campaign they wrote that and I can't remember it's in one of my columns but that the Republican Party was losing its bearings and losing its respect for principled action compromise I mean look at Max McConnell he held up all held open a seat on the Supreme Court for almost a year just to basically let me interrupt you yeah it's true but 90 percent of the Republicans don't care they're happy he did that's true no that's true and they want conservative judges and factually that's one of the only things he accomplished was to get to Supreme Court justices appointed or nominated and and what's hard about that when you have a Senate majority that in the tax cut which basically enriched the 1% it didn't do much for his own supporters and a criminal justice bill were the only accomplishments he was able to achieve there was infrastructure health care he tried to oh he's over he's now suing to overturn Obama's health care because he didn't like Obama is he there's so many things he could have done in his first term he didn't but on Al on foreign policy this is a man who's supposed to be the maker of the art of the deal he's transactional guess what he embraced the worst dictator in the world Kim Jong-un nothing's happened Kim is still firing off missiles no he he got played he got played because everybody knows look people who support Trump for watching this program know how easy it is to play Trump because of his massive uncontrolled ego Kim Kim Il-jun he knew all you do is play to his ego tell him what a great man he is and so he played him they had these meetings he just played them and and they all do that so let me ask you this what what's going to happen in the future uh you you i think interested in history i'm certainly interested in history i i love history and read it we've had we've had crises this type of crisis this type of uh social fire in our country before and it was in the 1850s angry passions and divisions and ultimately people took up guns now we have a president now who's stoking the fire pouring gasoline on the fire are we in danger whichever gets reelected now we're going to have four more years unrestrained really unrestrained of this what happens to our country where are we going is it out is are they going to people going to be in the streets already you know we see a guy out in milwaukee the other day where there's ak-47 18 17 years old i'm going to bring order i'm going to put down these insurgents and kills a couple people is that where we're heading total chaos and guns well i think that's i think that's one of the worrisome scenarios if trump would be elected because he's shown himself to not care about uh he claims himself to be the law and order president well the chaos as far as i'm concerned is not the chaos he claims that biden would bring it's the chaos that's occurring in his administration partly generated by some of the poor government government actions that have been taken his rhetoric his encouragement of extremist groups i mean the charlottesville incident is probably the most reflective of of his attitude where he said they're good people on both sides well one side was mostly white supremacists and neo-nazis and it's a very sad commentary that he encourages groups like qanon which he's retweeted talking about tweets i mean can you imagine a president in the what oval office who spends 60 percent of his time watching television and tweeting but i think the danger has been several mass shootings so he repeatedly happened he suddenly says he feels sorry for people and he goes to visit them says he's going to do something but then does nothing about it and the fact is that there's so many guns in this country it's it's it's quite frightening and we need a president that has the courage to show leadership to show some vision to bring people together and not divide them as he's divided them well again true and i just returned to my prior question which is yeah all these things are true and he is a khan man and he doesn't tell the truth that those are facts but we're politicized everything's politicized now so many republicans like him for one reason only they can only find one reason to like him and it's enough and that reason is he's not a democrat that's true and and the fact that he can only accuse democrats of being socialist i don't think joe biden as a socialist are going to bring socialism to this country i i just would like to ask a lot of republicans a lot of the banks in this country get huge billions trillion dollars to pour from the government in the united states that's a form of socialism donald trump gave 15 billion dollars to farmers in the midwest after his tariffs against china went afoul that's socialism is there any of these republicans and i've been a republican three times in my life frankly once when i was a young man and they even voted for nixon once i think that was a big mistake i ended up covering watergate but later on i worked for senator matthias but the but let me ask you this uh they so he's you know biden is the dreaded democrat the dreaded democrat so they feel that it goes back i think to the social issue the country's changing obama a lot of people hated obama and nothing really really hate obama as a human being he's nice to his wife loyal to his wife lovely to his children nice family life looked after his mother-in-law nice guy sense of humor good educational background smart guy but he's a democrat well a democrat and he had one other added burden was his color right now people are looking at the work the country changing this has been whether this has nothing to do with the civil rights battle america history of america is as a white christian country that's it that's our history despite all of the diversity despite all of the immigration some people embrace the diversity and the immigration and they say that's strength and dust but others worry that because they're white they worry i'm going into second place i'm not going to be the big shot anymore so i think that's part of it and they see trump with his finger in the dike holding back the hordes after trump the deluge what do you think of that there is a strong underlying element that is so worried about losing that white christian majority or control but i think it goes more deeply to the lack of education in this country and it's kind of disappointing given the amount of great educational institutions we have but maybe it's at the high school and secondary school level at the decline in the use of teaching of civics has been so degraded and just not emphasized that very few people seem to understand the strengths of the diversity that we have and draw on that strength rather than fearing it and being afraid of it so many people have come around to accepting black and hispanic people in their neighborhoods and living with them yet we have now certainly plenty of underlying tensions that persist because despite the emancipation bill all the different laws through past civil rights bills you still have a deep fear and willingness to trade on racist slurs to me the one of the underlying problems as well as civics and education is the amount despite this country's great history is the amount of apathy only one in three people there are every presidential election for a long time now only there have been one in three people who have not voted and that is terrible and this goes across all segments of society not white not black not hispanic it's uh to me the three underlying there were four reasons for trumps getting elected in 2016 one was the bankruptcy of the republican party the second was their democrats put up a candidate who wasn't very popular she was popular among democrats but not broadly popular and that was a probably a legacy of bill clinton's administration although he was a reasonably effective president despite some of the sexual misdemeanors and the felonies but to me that was one factor third was the russian interference massive russian interference and just as a sidelight trump calls it a hoax but the senate not only moller called it massive russian interference but the senate intelligence committee 11 republicans and 10 democrats have unanimously endorsed the fact that was massive russian interference and it continues this day and the fourth reason was the electoral college which i think should be changed at one point but there are three underlying reasons i think and one is apathy the fact that voter turnout is so low the second one is the what we've touched on already prejudice that was prejudiced in 2016 against obama and against hillary clinton as a woman and the third reason frankly is we have with social media these days and the ability to abuse the availability of it there is so many people who just don't keep themselves informed i don't expect people to read a lot of newspapers or just listen to npr but they should do something more than watch just msnbc or fox news so we've covered a lot of we've covered a lot of ground we we're now heading toward an election what do you think if you think there's any doubt that if donald trump is behind in october that he will talk a lot about the election being stolen from him yes well he tried that in 2016 he didn't he didn't expect to win in 2016 he and that's clearly why he got off to such a rocky start and they had those meetings in trump tower they had michael flinn the future of first national security advisor talking to the russians and uh they had so many contacts for the russians because through roger stone and wiki leaks they were able to continue to push the hillary clinton email abuse and i agree that was abusive i would also point out that colin powell also used emails a private email services so it wasn't just hillary clinton but i do think uh that he said then the election would be rigged if uh hillary clinton won and then after the election from day one he continued to try to say it was uh rigged in what he didn't lose by three million votes in the popular vote that he had actually won the vote and he actually tried to get different people in different states like main and headed by that guy in kansas covac to show that there were lots of uh there were three million illegal voters so i i think he will i think he'll try to continue to threaten not to leave office if he were to lose and so what will happen he won't let's say and this is not uh inconceivable let's say he leaves he loses uh don't you think it's almost certain that uh there will be uh you know he'll say i'm not leaving i'm not conceding and we're going to have investigations and uh court cases that will be the that will be the test of the republican party where the people like mitch mcconnell lindsay graham who once called trump every name in the book from jerk to idiot now embraces him but i think that's when we'll see what it was the republican party has any spine in 1974 and i covered watergate before i went to london for the baltimore sun uh early in 1974 and i did this in my last column in the main newspapers uh republicans early in 1974 recognize that nixon was on very fragile uh thin ice and was barbara conable new york congressman who you probably knew uh even wrote in his diary that he thought uh his his actual quote uh he said in his diary it's hard to think of nixon without revulsion not because i consider him loathsome but because i consider him incredibly stupid as a leader that was january of 1974 it wasn't until the supreme court freed up the tapes of nixon's white house meetings with haulderman and erlichman and other people like uh liddy that republicans including bill cohen my classmate from bowden had the courage to say that he probably will be impeached and even then it wasn't sure that it would happen but in june 23 uh there were further tapes released and one of them was of a meeting between nixon haulderman in which nixon told haulderman to tell the fbi to stop the investigation stop the investigation it's the same thing trump has done and it was then that barry goldwater an icon of the republican party from arizona john hughes the house minority leader from arizona and senator hughes scott a moderate republican senator from pennsylvania they went to the white house and they told richard nixon on august 7th just 46 years ago you need to leave and nixon resigned two days later if this scenario plays out where trump does clearly lose and has no basis for staying and tries to claim that it's been rigged i think we'll see the test then of whether we have republican leaders in the senate with courage or just have become trumpite psycho fans in my days the question would have been back in the 60s whether we have leaders who are patriots first and basically we did most of the members of congress the senate and the house ultimately were patriots that came first there's some question now and we'll see the answer look you but you were an investigative reporter right yes so uh you know i helped put uh get spear wagon a lot of office all right so they based on your experience uh you believe ultimately with respect to any president anybody in such a public position that everything will come out over time the books will be written people will talk every you know people that are working in the white house and who are privy firsthand to what's going on what's being said it'll all come out ultimately i do i mean the question is why hasn't he released his taxes i think there are three reasons for that one is it one one they'll show that he's not as rich as he claims to be the second one is we'll show that he's a skin flint that he basically uh and that's been proven he admitted a couple years ago in a lawsuit and paid two million dollars that he had used money they had raised from veterans uh supposedly to help veterans issues he had used it for his campaign and he'd also used it to pay donald trump's boy scout dues things like that and have paintings done of himself that's how narcissistic he is and i also think it'll show maybe the russian it the extent of russian investment in his trump towers in 1980s a lot of russian oligarchs saw the collapse of the soviet union coming and they started to take money out of the soviet union and i traveled to the soviet union as a reporter then uh you could see the people were selling things selling art and selling i always offered a nice painting by some i think kgb agent maybe it was a trap i declined it but he was trying to make money and this was in the mid 80s they could they could see it coming guess where they bought properties they bought apartments in trump tower if anybody wants to doubt that look at craig unger in the new republic's articles russian laundromat they define how much the russian mafia have supported trump early on not just recently but i think that'll come out why hasn't he released his taxes why hasn't he released his grades why is he so defensive about everything and try to keep it hush hush i mean there are a lot of lawsuits the like against deutcher bank and other people that supported him even when they def he def defrauded them but i do think things will come out and it's too bad they don't come out before then ultimately so if i'm a supporter of trump uh ultimately things will come out you know i was a supporter of clinton and things came out about clinton uh that disturbed me uh things that while he was president you know his behavior obviously was uh uh reprehensible and so uh and then when uh after print was president i came to the conclusion that uh the the clinton's really tried to take such advantage of what of their power and connections and like to hang around with rich people even like to hang around with donald trump went went to trump's wedding so that stuff i don't like gonna come out everything is going to come out so if i'm a trump supporter or i should say just trump supporters stand by because you're standing with this guy and there will be no secrets ultimately and everybody will be judged based on history not on their political instincts they will be judged in the context of history i'm judged in the context of history i worked for linda johnson in the white house during the vietnam war i was a strong supporter of johnson's policies at that time i was dead wrong i was wrong and i was wrong about the positions i took and uh and i admit it and it's uncomfortable and so it's the same with the trump supporters remember everything will come out tax returns russia pootin remember pootin is the only person he's never insulted never he's insulted almost every republican he is insulted almost every leader in the world but never not once has it been even a suggestion of an insult about vladimir pootin and the reason will come out one day i don't know what it is but we'll know ultimately if we live long enough proof of the pudding is take a look at the people at that convention who spoke in favor of donald trump who's like a family gathering i mean talk about corruption and nepotism jared kushner is the last person who's qualified to be head of a middle east pishan institute but look at the people that spoke in favor of biden collin powell john casage and just a number of others and look at the number of respected americans who now see trump for what he is general mattis rex tillerson called him a effing moron after a meeting at the pentagon which to me was one of the most frightening experiences i learned about it's documented in the book by uh the washington poster reporters philip rucker and carol leonig there was a briefing in the pentagon in 2017 it was the first briefing for donald trump new president on the extent of u.s influence around the world the different threats we have the joint chiefs of staff generals and admals are top military people briefed them on these issues and trump had a tantrum like a child and i maintain he is an insecure child but trump went off on a tantrum and called our leading generals dopes and babies and people i won't go to war with this is long after he'd said i know more than the generals of course and that's the meeting after which rex tillerson whose father was a combat veteran rex tillerson his secretary of state said he is a effing moron john kelly has called him an idiot hr mc master has agreed general madis said he has the brains of a fifth grader but i just want to go back to the people that have now look at trump with clear eyes who are republicans not just the 50 republicans national security experts which are now 70 now 70 of them come out this year and said the same thing that they said four years ago but general madis collin powell george will elliot cohen john casage on and on and on have come out and said he does not deserve to be president of the united states and i can't answer your question about what will happen if he is either elected i think things could be very very bad in this country but if he loses the election and tries to stay in office i do i have some confidence that people like mitch mcconnell and lindsay graham will step up to the plate i don't have much respect for either of them or people like ted cruz who trump abused of course supports trump but i would think that by then if there was a clear electoral victory for biden i can't see trump staying i think trump is desperate i mean the polls show that he's behind anywhere from three to five to ten points and that's why he's inflaming public opinion trying to send storm troopers into different cities like the nazis did go into kanosha himself what good can he do other than to stir up trouble but i think he's desperate and frankly hell i think he he knows that if he's defeated he the attorney in new york state has got the goods on his uh fraudulent activities not only with deutche bank but other activities and that he may be destined for jail like and guess what i mean some of these republican and independent voters who like trump look at trump's closest supporters where are they paul maniforts in jail roger stone convicted seven and then pardoned by trump steve bannon one of his closest supporters chief strategist he's just been arrested for flim flamming and abusing a non-profit that supposedly was going to build the wall turned out used money for himself michael cohen on and on and on he has trampled on the rule of law in addition to our constitution so many times and i just think he'll continue to do it from insulting judges to firing inspector generals which i guess he can have right to do but once they criticize him he fired the u.s attorney in new york because he was on his trail although the new one is probably there too he violated election laws he paid ordered paid stormy daniels the porn star 130 000 to keepers silent that's a violation of election law another violation of law that he's where he's trampled on our rule of law is by inviting russians to interfere or encouraging the interfere at least and he's accepted foreign influence in our elections thank you very much fred i appreciate very much the time you took to be with us we'll be back again next month with another episode of patience on the news and fred you're welcome to come back at another time and thanks again well after the election okay thanks hell