 How did Trump do on the GOP primaries? I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech Community Matters and we have the honor of Manfred Henningson. He's a retired political science professor emeritus from UH Manoa and he's been around on these issues. So we're gonna talk with him about that today. Welcome to the show Manfred. Thank you. So okay, you know, Trump took a lot of pains to endorse people around the country, Republicans, in order to primary other Republicans who voted against him in the various efforts at impeaching him or who didn't support him to the extent he wanted, who didn't demonstrate the loyalty that he insists on from everybody. And so he had some success in that regard. And I would like to talk to you about that in particular I'd like to talk to you about Liz Cheney who is an extraordinary woman, extraordinary courage and ability and for that matter patriotism. Even though she's further to the right than I would prefer, she's doing a terrific job in the select committee investigation. So the question first is, from a political science point of view, can you explain to me why people, millions of people, even in these primaries, you know, it's like a current statement of it, a current expression of it, would vote for a candidate essentially a proxy for Trump. When Trump is involved in half a dozen major and promising investigations, where he may very well be indicted, prosecuted, convicted and punished, where it becoming ever so clear that he broke the law in so many ways and is not loyal to the country and corrupt in every way imaginable, including on telling lies. All of this is coming out and yet they are still loyal to him. Why? Well, that's a question that I ask myself too. And I always have this tendency to say, well, United States is close to falling off the cliff. It's Weimar, 1932. I don't know whether that is a valid comparison because Trump isn't Hitler. He has this grip on a large section of the American electorate. I mean, you have to remember that Hitler was not elected into office. He was appointed by Hindenburg, the president. But he later on, you know, got this hold on the people, you know, once he was in power and removed all of his opponents violently, killing them, you know, the leader of the stormtroopers room and all kinds of other characters. But so in that sense, the comparison is limited. But one has to say, you know, the United States is at this point, a divided country. And one part believes in the institutional framework that came into being in the late 18th century with the revolution. And the other part lives in a cult, a cult that wipes out, in a way, all rational arguments that you try to make. And you have, I mean, January 6th being a demonstration how far some people go. Now, the hearings of the committee are very extraordinary and the role that Liz Cheney played on that committee is remarkable also in every respect. Here you have a very, very gutsy, courageous woman who, you know, know that this word is so political, so suicide for her within her party. I mean, if you want to compare her gutsy-ness with another woman who is in power at this point, I would use Nancy Pelosi. Even though Nancy Pelosi is a few decades older and she cannot run for president, I think it would be wonderful if she would be 20 years younger or even in the age of Liz Cheney because she would be the natural candidate, you know, to run instead of Biden, who shows signs of frailty, you know, that I don't know whether he will come to terms with that despite all of the successes that he had had in the last two weeks in Congress. So, you know, I have had personal cases, former student who has baffled me, you know, by her transformation from a rational person into an irrational one. And it's impossible, you know, to get through to her. Absolutely incapable of having a reasonable discussion with her about, you know, Trump and the arguments that his niece is making, the psychologist, you know, who has given the diagnosis of his mental state of mind for quite some time. She doesn't buy that as all Trumpists don't. Somebody, you cannot break through this wall, you know, of unwillingness. These people, they live in a second reality of their own imagination, but it's not only their own imaginations. They have bought in into the second reality of that was imagined by Trump and his followers. So what you have here is a country that is divided between reality and second reality. And what will happen in, you know, in the primaries, I don't know. I think there's still some chance that the Democrats will hold the House and may even gain some seats in the Senate. But this is sheer speculation. It could become the opposite. At this point, I'm still hoping that the optimistic expectation for the primaries will come true. But then you have 2024, and there you have two senile candidates. Trump will be what, 78, 79. Biden will be 82, and he shows the signs of age. So I don't know whether both of them will be physically capable of running in 2024, but that doesn't, that is not the end of the Trump cult. You know, you have the Haley's and others who may and DeSantis, you know, and Ted Cruz and all of these guys who somehow have become captured by the cult themselves. Well, let me ask you about that, Manfred. You know, Trump does have a special talent. We have seen that of lying and insisting on it and then doubling down and never backing up. I mean, it's the autocrat in him. It's the same thing in Putin. And I suggested maybe there is a good parallel between Trump and Hitler. Why they liked each other. Yes, so you know, the question is whether DeSantis or anybody else in the country could do it as well as Trump. He is talented in terms of developing this cult. But my question to you is, will the cult followers follow someone else like DeSantis? Well, at this point it seems they will, but it may be that the magic of the cult leader is important. And I don't know whether Ted Cruz, Haley and DeSantis, you know, can somehow develop this similar type of magic. Appeal, that's a very interesting question, you know, because those three are not stupid. Trump is stupid. I mean, he is an ignorant man. He doesn't know history. He doesn't even know, I mean, he doesn't know world history. He doesn't know American history. But I think the other three guys are intelligent, they are educated. And for that reason, maybe the educational intelligence way may prevent them from becoming really the cult leader. You know, I used to think that before anybody could run for office, there ought to be a course. Maybe you could teach a course like this, call it Politics 101, and they have to learn about government, they have to be educated, and that would make them a more successful office holder. But I think Trump is an example of someone who can be quite ignorant about history, about the country, about economics, about everything. He's ignorant and he's never gonna change. He never needed to be educated and he hasn't been. I'm sure his grades at the University of Pennsylvania, if ever released, that'd be tougher than his tax return. If they are ever released, we would find out that he was a shunk in those classes. But it does show you one thing. You don't have to be educated. You don't have to be skilled in the ways of the world, in all those points that you would teach in Politics 101. All you have to be is good with power. And every autocrat we can think of was good with power. Yeah, but you see what you just described in Trump is also the description of his constituency. They are as ignorant as he is and they like that about him. So there is an identity, an identification there with the persona of the leader. And as you cannot change Trump's mind about all kinds of things, you cannot change the mind of his followers. They are in a way gone, you know? And only a collapse will have somehow therapeutic impact. What's a collapse? You mean a health collapse? You mean some kind of... Certainly if he dies on stage as a heart attack or whatever stroke, that would be the death of the leader. Now, that is something that will temporarily, I think, take the magic away from the cult. And whoever takes over then, Cruz, the Santas, or Hailey, or whoever else will be able, you know, of faking this mystic for a certain period of time. But it will not last. But the collapse could also be a political one, you know? Suddenly, a war breaks out and people in power have to make rational decisions. You know, it's very interesting. I think about these shows in advance, Manfred, I think about talking to you in advance. And one thought that struck me was the comparison between this cult and the cult in Jonestown, which is worth studying. I forget his name, but the guy in Jonestown, the cult figure there, he took them further and further into cult. It became all-consuming. I guess cults have an organic dynamic life. And Jones, his name was Jones. Yes, that's what Jonestown is. Yeah, and he took them further into the suicidal aspect of cult, where, you know, you give up the ultimate sacrifice for the charismatic leader of the cult. You ask them, and they knew what they were drinking, you ask them to drink the Kool-Aid and die. Right. And if you are a very successful and unhinged cult figure like Jones was, or possibly like Trump is, you dwell in this suicidal continuum. And one day you have a catastrophic event because you actually ask them to kill themselves or kill their community or kill their country. It's all the same. Isn't that where he could head? Yes, but I don't think he has the similar powerful cult over the American people. I mean, listening to you and, you know, trying to think of illustrations of this suicidal dimension, apart from Jonestown, you know, when it comes to the end of Hitler, you know, there's a wonderful movie about the last days, the last two weeks of Hitler in the bunker. He commits suicide. He kills his mistress Eva Braun. And you have the suicide of a large section of the upper echelon of the Nazi party, you know, Goebbels, Himmler. You have some military people kill each other, but you do not have a mass suicide campaign in Germany itself. In a way, the fascinating thing about the end of the Third Reich is that the steam of the cult, you know, went out immediately with the death of the leader and the people around him who committed in a way, collective suicide as well. So if I do not, I mean, in that sense, I think America is not Jonestown. And America is not Nazi Germany, but even when you're looking at Nazi Germany, at the end of Nazi Germany, you do not have this willingness of people to commit suicide collectively. Germans didn't do that. Whatever, you know, you may charge them with for having not killed, I mean, the generals, for example, I mean, this is a very interesting detail of Trump's ignorance also, when he always told American generals, you know, why don't my generals behave like the Germans, like Hitler's generals? Well, they, American generals behaved in a way like Hitler's generals, you know, they didn't feel the time was there to shoot him. But Hitler's generals, you know, were not stupid. They behaved in a similar way. They were cowards, some of them, and some of them participated, you know, in the assassination attempt on the 20th of July, 1944. And then got hanged, you know, hundreds of them were executed after that. So what you had, there was a willingness to resist. It was not Jonestown. And I do not think that the United States, at this point, should be compared with Jonestown. And I don't know whether the inner circle of the Trump, well, I don't know, maybe his two sons, but Ivanka is not, it sounds, a candidate for the Jonestown syndrome. Maybe Kushner is, but I don't know whether he has really dismantled, in dismantled capacity of lying to himself. Yes. Well, I wanted to go to one other aspect of this. So Trump is, in many ways, off the public stage. And I don't know why the press gives him as much oxygen as they do, but he certainly doesn't have the same influence and leverage that he had while he was in office. His leverage is sort of a negative leverage, I mean, so Congress is investigating him, so various prosecutors are investigating him, okay. But he doesn't have the presidency and he doesn't have Twitter, which was very important to his ability to influence his base. He has some kind of historic legacy of influence on them. Okay, so now he says, well, I wanna show you I'm still powerful. I wanna show you that I can still control politics within the GOP. I wanna endorse some candidates and I wanna unendorse other candidates. I wanna endorse their opposition because they voted against me and one thing or another, especially in the impeachments. So I'm gonna get involved, roll up my sleeves, and I'm gonna make endorsements that are tactical, strategic endorsements to try to affect these GOP primary elections that are happening. So the question is, why do people follow among that? It's not a direct loyalty to Trump or is it? And sometimes his selections have been dead wrong. He's picked the wrong candidates. He hasn't won all of the endorsements he wanted to win. It seems to me that it's, what do you wanna call it, less efficient, less effective when he plays the endorsement game as opposed to vote for me as president. Yeah, but look, I don't know whether you remember, well, I'm sure you remember the role Mitch McConnell played after January 6th, when he made this famous speech that Trump is guilty and then he votes against it. I mean, this is schizophrenia on an amazing level and a lot of Republican politicians, they suffer from that schizophrenia. They know, he is crazy, and they know that what he does and says is not true, but they support him anyway and follow him anyway. So what you have, and they, I think are smarter than their constituent, but they are afraid that their constituents will not follow them. So in that sense, you have to, it's not Jonestown, it's a collective schizophrenia of the political class in the Republican Party. They actually, I mean, they know what they are doing is wrong, but they feel admitting that would make them lose their jobs. And that, I cannot explain that with Jonestown because they are not behold, they are not drinking Kool-Aid. So for that reason, you need some other explanation for that, but it is also, you could say, maybe a good indicator that if Trump dies for whatever, whenever, that the cult will die with him because there are no true believers among the Republican professionals. They fake their belief and their support for Trump, but they are too smart and many of them too educated to really believe what they are doing. You could say, they are fraud, it's fraudulent what they are doing and it is, and I don't think the clinical terms schizophrenia applies to them because I think most of them know that what they are doing is wrong. They do it because they don't want to lose their jobs. But they're looking for a way out and you raised a very interesting point and that is the what about after one. So for example, I am in office, Trump has threatened to primary me because I haven't been loyal to him one reason or another. So I retire, I'm out of it. I don't run in the primary, I swear I'm like a beast. You know, there's lots of the people in the Republican that voted for impeachment. They retired. Yeah, okay, retired. Some of them retired because they were afraid, I think. Right, some because of age and yes. Well, sometimes it's not age, sometimes it's young. And my question to you is, you know, and you have to put Liz Cheney in this category because she, you know, she got primaried and she's done. And that's not a surprise to anybody, but as in the case of Liz Cheney who may have other plans later, some of these other guys either because they retired or because they lost due to a Trump endorsement of their opponent, they may have plans to come back. And you're right, to suggest that at some point he may not be around, he may die. Right. And when he dies, the whole club thing, the whole, you know, cult thing disappears overnight. Really, I agree with you. But what happens when this crowd of people say, oh, I am free, I am liberated, I'm going to come back, I'm gonna finish, I'm gonna leave my current configuration and I'm gonna start a new chapter in my life. I'm coming back to politics. Do you think that's gonna happen? Is it gonna make a difference? It's a possibility, yes, it's a possibility. And I think that's the time when Liz Cheney, that's the Liz Cheney's time. It's not 2024. It is really after that collapse of the Trump phenomenon. Then she is the only one who has the credentials to come forward and say, I'm now trying to reform the Republican party. And there will be a lot of the people, the younger people who have retired, like the guy in Arizona, I think, they will come and support her. And then maybe also some people who appear now to be 100% Trumpies. So that would, I mean, that will be very interesting, but I do not think that the cult will survive. The cult is strangely enough connected with Trump. And I mean, you will have features of the Trump political, I mean, Trump's ideological possessions that will be taken over by some of the politics. But the whole thing, the package, the whole package will not be, will not survive. Yeah. So, are you telling you there's a piece in the paper that I think was the Times this morning that suggested that based on her remarks the other day, her concession speech, as it were, she may very well run for president, not clear exactly how, I mean, what party and all this. And that one of the things, at least in this opinion piece, one of the things that was interesting is that she might do that simply to be the opposing voice. So if Trump, or for that matter, at this instance gets up and makes ridiculous statements and lies and autocratic, takes autocratic positions, she'd be there as an opposing candidate to call him out on it. And that would serve the nation well. It would serve her well, whether or not she wins. It would serve all of us well, just due to the nature of her. You see, I mean, that function would be performed by the democratic candidates, whoever he is, even Biden would do that if he, I think makes the wrong decision and runs for a second term. So in that sense, this Chinese role as the rebel of truth will survive 2024, whether he runs for president or not. And in a way, I think it would be better for her to not run, but simply be there, this really, this person with unusual integrity and intelligence and courage being in the back, you know, of the Republican party. I mean, she's, I don't know how old she is now in her fifties, you know, she can wait and she can give speeches, you know, she can, she will become more attractive out of office because she can go now anywhere. She does not have to think of Wyoming any longer. And the people in Wyoming, you know, they will really look in the mirror and ask themselves, how could we be as stupid as we have been? And so, I mean, you have also the Chinese mystic in Wyoming, you know, it's not only this Chinese, it's the father, it's the mother, you know, they are credentialed conservatives, you know, and I'm not certainly supporting any of them, but you have their legacy that is connected with her name, a personal legacy, a family legacy. And I think the Republican party, if it does not completely fall apart, needs at one point some kind of reconstruction. And at that moment, you know, people like, especially people like Liz Cheney will be called up on because she has the integrity that none of the others have. Yeah. Well, right now, you know, she's lost badly, no surprise. She has a big following in at least part of the Republican community and a huge following in the Democratic community. And you know, and she has people saying nice things about her and talking about the fact that she has a future. So my question to you is, what are her best moves? I mean, we talked before the show about whether she should try to get the Republican candidacy for 2024, for president, or maybe go independent or create her own party or just wait in the wings and make speeches, and by the way, I might not vote for her when the ships are down, but I would certainly go to see her speeches. I would pay to see her speeches. I would want to know everything she's saying and thinking. But anyway, what is your advice to her politically? What should she be doing for the best effect? I think she should stay out of the race in 2024 because her role as the person in waiting will grow. She will get more and more support from Republicans who are disenchanted with what has happened to their party. And the party then needs people with integrity. And the people, like, they're not going to be able to go to the party and the people that Cruz, like Haley, like DeSantis, who at one point, I mean, especially Cruz at one point and Rubio made these nasty comments about Trump when in 2016, and then they ate their own garbage and want people to believe that they never made these statements. I don't think statements like that are known from Liz Cheney. She doesn't have to get back on some of the bad way. As you said before, yeah. Whereas they do. So in that sense, that it's not only the act of rebellion against Trump and the Trump cult and the people in Congress who supported that and her ouster as well. No, I think her appeal within the Republican Party will grow over the years. She will be the president in awaiting. Yeah, so let me ask you one more question that comes out of all of this, out of what you said a minute ago. We're examining here Trump's endorsement of these various right-wing GOP candidates and some of them right-wing GOP candidates who are really distasteful to a lot of people have won, they've won the primaries. And you would think that the more moderate Republicans would be offended by them, would never vote for them because they're unhinged and they follow him who is unhinged. And you would think that that would help a Democratic candidate, even if a Democratic voter would not necessarily follow a certain Democratic candidate, they A, would vote in greater numbers in November and B, more people across the spectrum would vote against the Trump endorsing. So in that possible scenario, you could say that Trump's action in endorsing these right-wing candidates actually hurts the GOP and actually helps the Democratic candidate. Is there anything to that from a political point of view? Well, I don't know. I mean, so far I think the Trump line has won. And I think- But there's only one within the GOP primaries. Yes. I'm asking about the general. Well, we will see in November, but I think since Trump will still be alive and his magic is still there, the cult is still working even without Kool-Aid. I think it is simply a reflection of the division, the intellectual, the mental, the philosophical, but maybe one shouldn't say connect philosophy with Trump. But I mean, this whole ideological division of the country is there. And for that reason, Democrats gain only that much from being against Trump. Now, whether they, I mean, if they would have a charismatic candidate who could really make this case, it would be possibly different. But I don't know whether Nussan is able of doing it, but he's the only one around. I mean, look, I always come back to Nancy Pelosi because I think that lady has the guts that a Democratic politician really would need at this point. I mean, she is not impressed by threats from China but she goes there. I mean, the whole adventure was quite an amazing, amazing exercise in political courage. And I understand that Biden cannot follow her and fly to Taiwan and in a way do the same thing that she and now the other congressional delegation has done. But there is not a person at this point is that reputation around in the Democratic Party who could do that. I at least don't see him. Look, Hawaii is a very, very... Isn't that correctable though, Manfred? For example, if Joe Biden said, look, I'm bringing in somebody, I'm gonna have him in the Oval Office a lot. And he's gonna be my best counselor, give him a job somewhere in the White House and then give him plenty of face, expose him to the press and sing his virtues and make it clear that Biden thinks that he might be a good successor. And if he does that right now and is still months to go before November, then maybe somebody will rise to the level that you're talking about with Nancy Pelosi and galvanize the Democratic Party. If the vice president, Harrison, could undergo a transformation of becoming a female Obama figure, that would be possible. But there is no one, I think, around at this point with this kind of political sex appeal and in the Democratic Party. And now, look, we are living here in the blue state of the nation. We don't have to worry about problems here. But I do not think you can correct me or somebody may correct me and point to people all over the place. I mean, there must be characters like that. But we have 330 million people. Surely we can find just one. No, it's, look, I've been pointing sometimes to what happened in Germany recently when these young green rebels took over, not only their own party and transformed it from a social movement into a political party and are now leading in all the polls because they have courage. They do something which was politically inconceivable before. And it's a wonderful illustration that sometimes surprises can happen and they may still happen in the United States also even though at this point I don't see them coming. Okay, well, we're gonna have to continue the conversation because they may come any day, any day of the week, Manfred, and you and I will both be watching intently to see what happens. Manfred, thank you so much for joining me today. We're out of time. I hope we can do this again. It's so interesting to get your perspective on everything. Manfred Henningson, emeritus political science from UH Manoa, thank you again so much. Thanks a lot. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.