 The public, what is it, a social policy? Yeah, a director of the public policy center. Doesn't matter. Political science professor. And following these political events, these elections, for example, very important that we talk to him about what's going on. We're in between, I was going to say press conferences, but I don't think there's going to be another press conference. Not for a while. Every six months. So, you know, what is the state of the situation right now, Colin? I mean, how do you feel about the, not so much the election, but the post-election and the ramp up with the appointment of, you know, cabinet members and other appointees, and now the inauguration with these strange things happening around the, how do you feel? It's Trump. I mean, he's unpredictable. He doesn't really care what anybody thinks. I mean, he's surrounded himself by kind of a bizarre group of people from people like Steve Bannon, who could easily be considered white nationalists, and more mainstream folks. You know, a lot of military appointees. He seems to have a, he seems to like surrounding himself by these tough guys. He likes to think that that's who he is. I mean, some of them are highly qualified. Others really not. I mean, I thought the Betsy DeVos hearing yesterday was pretty extraordinary. I mean, she styles herself as a leader in educational policy, and she's used her billion-dollar Amway fortune to influence charter schools in Michigan, but she seemed to be unaware of some core debates in education. I mean, some things that the Department of Energy focuses specifically on, like testing. But in any case, that's all to say that people are getting what they bought. I mean, Trump is unpredictable. It's hard to ever know what to think. You know, there's an argument going on, an argument understatement in Gambia. The fellow who was elected the President of Gambia a few years ago doesn't want to step down. He's a little confused about whether he can step down or not. And somebody beat him at the last election a couple months ago, and at first he conceded, but then he changed his mind and said, I think I'll stay. I want to be king for a billion years, I think he said. And, you know, racial matter covered that, but with the clear implication that, you know, we could possibly have that happen here, too. If there were an impeachment proceeding, for example, just if there were, for high crimes and misdemeanors, and there was an impeachment decision in all of that, would Donald Trump the king, would he step down or call it a rigged deal and refuse to abide by it? Well, I think, I mean, that's the most dangerous question of all. That, and does he order some foreign policy action that just seems crazy? You know, in that case, the military steps in and stops him, but that's a clue. Or before, he's friendly with the military. Well, he is. So I don't know how that works itself out of the military. The core of the military, I think, is full of technocrats who care about the rule of law. But, you know, the other question you asked about him being impeached, I mean, I don't think he would go out willingly if that were the case. And the only way that would happen is if his poll numbers got so bad and he became so poisonous that even the Republicans decided that he needed to go. And that's very possible and likely, I mean, I don't know, likely. But it's very possible that something like that could happen. He'd still retain a good 30% of his core supporters among the public. So it's for just an uncharted territory. And you know, the other thing you see with this Trump transition, I think it's important to emphasize, is how much of American government is kind of built on custom and respect? I mean, the idea that there is a loyal opposition that has the right to be there, that the press has the right to critique the president and his administrations and ask questions, you know, even the way the transition has rolled out, the idea that the president should release his tax returns, that people who are vetted by Congress, you know, should already have their financial statements and, you know, clearly revealed and that they should be free of any possible conflicts of interest. I mean, none of that has happened. And the president himself doesn't seem too well-stuned to be president, doesn't seem to be interested in untangling his own financial dealings. And partly, I mean, in some of these cases, it's more about custom than actual law. We are learning so much about his MO even before he ever swears in. I mean, for example, this is really scary, but I guess he didn't have a good time at that press conference last week, but that neither did the press, neither did we for that matter. Fake news. Yeah, everything is bad as fake news. And every political action that goes against him is rigged. It's scary. But after the press conference, there was this thing where he or his troops said, you know, we're going to move the office, the press office, in the White House going to move it somewhere else, we're going to relegate it to some dark corner somewhere. Well, they said it was to create more space. That was so transparent. I wonder if anybody believes that, but this kind of, you know, lie or semi-lie kind of thing, catch me if you can. I think the outlines are being revealed here before the inauguration. He's going to do what he wants, and if there's no specific law that prohibits him from doing that, then he'll do it, and catch me if you can. And furthermore, I think this kind of hubris breeds more of the same. And even if there is a law that prohibits him from doing something extraordinary, he'll do that and say, catch me if you can. I think that's right. I mean, any traditional custom is likely to be broken, and then the law is themselves. I mean, unless he is caught, I think that's right. I mean, you can see this in his business dealings. This is how Donald Trump ran his empire. Catch me if you can. You're a contractor and you want to be paid, sue me. See if you can make me produce the money. And I think he's going to run his administration in the same way. So partly for those who oppose Donald Trump, I mean, their mission is going to be to have to catch him. I mean, you only think he seems to understand his power and force. And so if it involves using the legal system and the courts to push back, then that's our only option. Well, catch me if you can. It's pretty hard because, you know, there may not be a way to catch him. Well, that's right. And the other thing is the executive branch can move very fast. Congress and the courts move very slow. Right. So you can do a lot of damage and pretty much get away with whatever you want in the short term. I mean, there might be some long run consequences. But in today, tomorrow, next week, the president can pretty much do whatever he likes. Yeah. And you spoke of foreign policy taking unilateral action, even wild and crazy action on the diplomatic front. He can do that in the stroke of a pen. He has already. That's absolutely right. And it was huge damage to the country. Well, this is a thing about the institution of the presidency, right? And the entire post-war era, up to and including the Obama administration, the powers of the presidency, I mean, the imperial presidency, the powers of the presidency to operate, more or less, without any checks in foreign affairs is huge. And there's not much Congress can do, again, in the short term, to push back. And so in the past, we've sort of had presidents who respect that power. And, you know, they've all pushed the limits most presidents do. But I don't think we've had anyone yet who's simply willing to disregard precedent. Yeah. So this is part of something you mentioned a minute ago. I forget what term you applied to it, but it's kind of like the social compact, the political compact that keeps us all pretty much on the same page. We may disagree, but we agree on the system. We may disagree, but we agree to be reasonably civil to each other and to abide by certain basic fundamental things that the founders gave us. And I feel, now you feel I'm asking, that's at risk right now. I think that's absolutely at risk. I think that's what everyone finds so horrifying. We wouldn't have this conversation if Jeb Bush had been elected president or another kind of mainstream Republican. Sure, Democrats and liberals might gripe about and complain about their policies, but I don't think anyone would actually fear for the constitutional system of government. But I think we have every reason to do it because democracy is based on those norms, right? That's why you can't import a democracy. You can't just airlift the collected works of Thomas Jefferson in the Federalist Papers and expect everyone to figure it out or have the institutional rules of a democracy. Every totalitarian dictatorship in the world is the people's Democratic Republic of something, right? It's these shared values. And the two of the core ones, I mean, there's the rule of law. The second is almost certainly the legitimacy of the opposition, that they have the right to be there and to critique the government. And the third is the free press. The press should investigate the government. It should report on improprieties. And of course, politicians don't like that. They always have a tense relationship with the press. But to simply dismiss reporters and, I mean, CNN, one of the largest news broadcasts in the country as lies and fake news is incredibly dangerous, especially because so many people believe it now. You know, and one thing I'll say in regard to his treatment of the press, Masha Gessen, who is a well-known reporter in Russia, has done several brilliant essays comparing what she fears about Trump to what currently exists in Russia under Putin. And one of the things is the Kremlin simply manipulates information. They dismiss press accounts that don't seem true. And what you end up is in this state of nihilism where there isn't any truth. Nobody knows what's true. That's where we're going. Yeah, and that's where we're going. So I say something against you. You say fake. Yeah. And then I say, no, you're fake. Everybody's charging me on the guy with fake. And you know, then you talk about the most venerable, respected, credible news organizations we've ever had in this country and they're fake or claim to be fake. So where do you get your truth anymore? Well, it's turtles all the way down. I mean, that's what you end up in. It's a very dangerous situation to be in. You make a claim and I say it's false. And normally you could present some facts to show that it's true. And I say, well, you've made those up or it's rigged. How do you respond to that? I mean, as a paper, it's not clear. I mean, that's sort of the journalist's ultimate weapon is to produce a document or to show that something is obviously true. But if you still say that it's fake and made up at that point, then I honestly don't know. I don't know how you proceed. And even if you connect the dots with your experienced background training, your position in politics and political community could sense it as true or false, a lot of people out there don't have your background and could not sense it as true or false. Oh, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, it's not the case that a certain group of people won't be still able to see this. But the prevalence of real fake news on the internet and people's willingness to believe it is extraordinary. And we knew this was coming. We know this from psychological studies, right, that extreme partisans, when you present them with facts that contradict what they believe, they actually cling to their beliefs even more. In other words, they're even more convinced that they're right. And the rise of, I think, social media, and I mean, this has sort of become a bit of a cliche, but it's true that the rise of social media and people creating their own information camps were the only thing they hear. Bubbles. Yeah, the bubbles, exactly. The only thing they hear confirms what they already believe. And the only thing they want to hear are things that they already believe. I mean, and the left can be a guilty of this too, although I don't think it's taken such extreme forms other than kind of a few fringe groups. But the right, it really seems to have dug in. When you take all of that together, you know, you take his way of dealing with the truth and dealing with criticism, his treatment of the press, his willingness to, you know, set aside, catch me if you can, kind of mentality, how does, this is like a real cliffhanger, how does our free society deal with that? Because we already see the outlines of where he is and where he's going. And we'll take a break. We'll think about it in the break, maybe. But, you know, what do we do? What do the branches of government do? What does the press do? What do we, the people, what do we do in order to save ourselves from sliding down some really awful slippery slope, which I see in front of us. Let's take a short break. We'll come back. That's Colin Moore of the Public Policy Center and political science professor there. Hi, I'm Marianne Sasaki from Life in the Law. I'm so excited to be marching on Washington on Saturday, January 21st with a big woman's march on Washington. And here with me is Michael, who's heading up the local march for women on Oahu. Come on out and visit us and we're going to be at the Capitol on January 21st, starting at 8 o'clock, gathering by 9.30 and starting, March starts at 10. Aloha, my name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-hosts of Keys to Success, which is live on Think Tech Live Streaming Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. We're back. We're live with Colin Moore and exciting ourselves and getting scared about... what do we call it, the political environment here in the day before the inauguration, which is so contentious in so many ways. You know, it's completely unsettled and yet we're going to have an inauguration which somehow confirms all that has happened today. Exactly. But I give you all the circumstances that we talked about before the break and all of them are pretty scary. And I ask you, you know, if we assume that he's not going to change. We know the outlines now and actually with, you know, the inauguration and the confirmation of his power in office, it might be more of the same or more of that. How do we save ourselves? Well, that, I mean, that is the central question. And I think there's, I mean, there's what can Congress do and what can we as citizens do, what can the courts do. You know, I think that there's a couple of minds about how this might shape up. Some people think that Donald Trump himself isn't that interested in policy. He actually won't make particularly radical changes and the thing to do is to essentially ignore the tweets, I mean, not to become outraged and allow him to control what we're thinking about in the news cycle. I mean, simply to dismiss it and focus on the policies, focus on the real damage those policies can do to working people like the repeal of the ACA. And if there are opportunities to peel away moderate Republicans, I mean, to push back, I think that's the answer too for the Democrats. I think that the real question is should the Democrats play a role of just pure opposition or should they work with Trump on some of the issues, you know, they might be able to work with them on. I don't know the answer to that question. I think that we'll have to see how the administration begins to shape out. What can we do as citizens? I think that, I mean, I think it is making the administration accountable. And again, I think it's not trying to fixate on the outrageous tweets, the fake news. I mean, this is Trump's genius. He manages to distract us from other issues that matter by simply coming into a room and turning the tables over, which in part is what his supporters really loved about him, that he wasn't, you know, he didn't seem like this Washington stuffed shirt who was, you know, willing to, you know, the genius of changing the subject. That's right. Always changing the subject. Always be changing the subject. The thing about it is that he doesn't know that much about government. He doesn't know that much about politics or policy. I think it's very likely that he, the policies he champions, at least domestically, is going to be a miserable failure. I mean, I don't think even some of the people he's hired for his administration, I don't think they fundamentally know how to run a large bureaucracy. And so I think there's going to be a lot of failure and a lot of frustration, and I think his opponents can exploit that. Yeah. I'm concerned that, just a concern, we talked about the press and all this. Will we know the dimensions of the failure or will it be able to keep that away by intimidating the press, not informing the press, not talking to the press, not revealing information to the press? It worries me that things will happen that are really terrible, and we won't know the dimensions of them. I think it's likely that that will happen. I mean, there'll be a lot of pretty awful things that occur and won't be known until years later. But at the same time, people can't keep their mouths shut. I mean, there's always, I mean, the federal government is a huge place. There's often people who are willing to leak information. I mean, the deep state, in other words, the career civil servants first don't tend to be friendly with right-wing Republicans. They're probably going to do as much as they can to slow Trump's agenda, particularly people in the EPA and the Department of Education. And they have a lot of power. I mean, people forget about the power of the bureaucracy to delay, delay, delay. And the last thing is, and I think this is what makes Trump so vulnerable, because I don't think he's going to be a successful president, and I think you already see this happening. His poll numbers are going to are really the lowest we ever had for a president. But he denies the polls. Oh, right. He denies the polls. So he can say whatever he wants, right? But the other people, the other Republicans can see what's happening. And if he becomes completely toxic, they're going to go after him, too. You know, one thing to pick up on the thread about the Republicans and maybe them having a kind of change of heart about him seems to me the Republicans have really been in a bubble for a long time, starting with that whole cliff thing and the end of year financing issues. But it could be that they will now distance themselves from him and find a new measure of truth and adherence to the common good and those fundamental principles. Do you think there are signs of that now? Well, I don't think there are signs of it now, but there could be later. I think the Republican Party will emerge from the Trump administration either as this kind of wounded rump party that is so associated with the Trump administration. And after the demographic changes, they'll have a very hard time winning national office or they'll reinvent themselves. I mean, they will see this as an opportunity to change some of their policies and maybe be a bit heroic in opposing the president. We'll see. The Republicans right now are a pretty cynical bunch. I mean, many of the statesmen-like Republicans, people like Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell who earlier criticized Trump, got on board pretty quickly and I think they think he can be their puppet and I think they're mistaken about that. And then, of course, there's the Democrats who characterize them these days. They're still licking their wounds. They're in a state of shock. Exactly, exactly. I mean, they're a bit of a mess and the comedian Lewis Black always describes the two parties as the party of no ideas, the Democrats and the party of bad ideas. They're Republican. And the Democrats need some ideas and it has to be a little less wonky. It has to attract voters they lost and they have to reconnect with their working-class roots. They knew they lost somewhere along the line. Exactly. So just to short answer that then, if I ask you where should we put our bet here, who will save us? Is it these two parties or one of them? Is it the Congress in general? Is it the Supreme Court? Is it the bureaucracy, you know, who has its own agenda? Who will save us, Colin? Well, this will probably sound odd, but I still have faith in the genuine kind of rationality and goodness of voters. And I think for a variety of reasons, I mean, Donald Trump, of course, didn't win the popular vote and he barely won even with the Electoral College. I think people will see this guy as dangerous. Even people who wanted him to come in and start turning over the tables will realize that there are real consequences, like their health insurance. And when public opinion starts to turn, politicians are very responsive. Even the court is responsive. Even journalists are responsive. I mean, when they're going after someone who's wounded, they get more aggressive. So we all must participate in public opinion. We have to have opinions. That's right. That's right. So, you know, in my Woody Allen world, I live in a Woody Allen world, the metric are the comedians. Yes. The ones on late night TV, Bill Maher, for example, and just one, but there's others too, who speak their minds and who make really good fun of it and criticize it with humor. Derision is a powerful tool. And as long as they're speaking, and I feel there's hope, the eternal light, the end of the tunnel, the light at the end of the tunnel, but if they stop speaking, if they are intimidated, or economic forces take them off the air or political forces, then I'd be really worried. I would too. That's when we are no longer a republic. We're something else. We'll go to one last point before we close, and that is the international effect of all of this, the global reaction to it, especially including Russia. And I would like your thoughts about the dossier. Well, so the dossier, of course, is very disturbing. Some of the parts in the appendix, it's not clear if that's true, but there is this very unusual relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia. Even if some of that is, the involvement of the Kremlin, I don't know if we'll ever know the full involvement. It sounds like they were somewhat involved, and they jocked at how successful this strategy turned out to be. But the more disturbing things are Trump's excuses for the Kremlin, his genuine admiration for Vladimir Putin, a murderous dictator, and the Republicans essentially not criticizing him for warming up to Russia of all places. Most of the history of the party is in opposition to. Strange. It's very strange. I mean, if I had told you a year ago that Donald Trump will be president and he'll be saying complimentary things about Vladimir Putin, I never have believed it. I think it's very interesting. One Times reporter said, whether you believe the dossier and all that or not, it still doesn't explain itself why he is so friendly to them. It can't be just business. It does suggest something really dark and underhanded in some way. Oh, I think that's right. I think he has genuine admiration for Putin, who is the kind of authoritarian, strong man he sees himself as, and his opposition to Islam and all of these things that fit in some ways with a Republican worldview. On the other hand, it seems possible, seems credible that Putin has something on him. You know, the old fashioned compromise approach which Putin has been doing his whole life. That's his style. So doesn't it feel that way and in that regard, how much of the dossier do you believe? Well, I don't know. That's the thing. You don't know what's true and what's false in that. I think that, you know, the pain meet with a representative from the Kremlin, that seems a little far-fetched to me. I mean, the prostitute stuff seems a bit outrageous too. But that's what they do. No, I mean, I understand that's what they do. It just doesn't seem to fit Trump very well. But I do think there's probably some questionable business dealings in Russia. I mean, it sounds like I do believe that they offered him some deals which were essentially bribes. They were so good. They would have been in communication with representatives of Russia. I mean, the thing about Trump is he's not very sophisticated. He's dealing with a former KGB agent. And so I don't even know if he thinks some of the stuff he's doing could potentially be treasonous or that the Kremlin is building this portfolio on them. He probably doesn't know what they have. They wouldn't use it yet. They're not going to show their hand until they really need to force it. They're trying to pee you down while you've been putting Russia up. And the EU has some really wonderful leaders like Angela Merkel, Angela Merkel, Merkel. And so, you know, to put her down and put Trump up just seems, I mean, to put Putin up seems so strange. It's deeply strange. I mean, it's overturning most of post-war American foreign policy that Western European leaders the US has long been a big supporter of the EU for economic and security reasons. I mean, questioning the value of NATO that simply is unheard of. And going after the person who should be the president's closest ally, the chancellor of Germany is, it's crazy. I mean, I don't know how else to explain it other than that he seems to speak from this place of utter ignorance about the EU about how valuable it is to have European allies. And I honestly have no idea what he's doing except he is doing irreparable damage to American influence in Europe. And people are and should be concerned about it because ultimately it could affect their lives. So for all those people out there, you know, who see these things and who recognize that he is not going to change that he is doing things that are extremely disruptive that have all could have all kinds of secondary effects that will bounce back on our lives and our quality of life and our government in this country who are worried every day these days what do you say to them Colin? How would you comfort them? What state of mind should they build for themselves now? I think you have to be vigilant and pay attention and don't pay attention to the tweets and the outrage. Pay attention to what he does not what he says and push back there. I hope we can get together and follow up on this because it's a moving target and a story that is still in the early stages. It's just the preface.