 America, this is stink tick away, I'm Jay Fiedel, standing in for Tim Appichella, he's on travel. And we're talking today in what now America about Mike Pence and our title Pence speaks about January 6th and he says that Trump is wrong. He distances himself from Trump. What does this mean? Winston, what does this mean? Oh, Winston Welch, Cynthia Thinclare and Karen Buzzard. Okay, welcome to the show, you guys. Winston, what does this mean when Pence gets up and says this and I thought he was a Trumper, but maybe not and maybe he's more an anti-Trumper these days than he ever was. What do you think? I'm not sure I would ever put Mike Pence in the category of anti-Trumper. He told the line so as such a obedient, well, Vice President, let's just say, didn't say anything about any egregious action the entire time, although apparently they were, behind the scenes things where he said, oh, I can't in good conscience bear this man's actions or words leading up to the election even, but for whatever reason he decided to, let's not say turn the other cheek, but go for a different political reality and that seems to be what he's doing now. Now I don't wanna be cynical, but it doesn't seem that just the slightest sort of wording that says someone may have been wrong in his interpretation of the Constitution is pretty milk toast, but the media was all over because it was the first real indication from this man after a year that he's realized and willing to say publicly. And it's a coordinated effort because it's followed up rather immediately by Mitch McConnell, which I was actually, that was actually more meaningful for me, but both of them taken together, I think show the beginnings that there is a significant portion of what we used to consider to be the Republican Party or that calls itself the Republican Party that says we have to shut ourselves of this fealty to one another. But you're saying this is one of those points of light that give us pause to think that maybe the Republican Party is changing to a more responsible party, are you saying that? It sounds, it is more like when a car turns, driving down the street and then it turns for a second and you think, oh, there's a car coming out. I mean, it was just turning the corner. And so maybe we'll see what happens if it keeps going down that road and shines the light more, but honestly, with Mitch McConnell, what did he, he was very clear yesterday or it might've been the day before, by this time where he said, let's make no mistake about that this was an insurrection designed to stop us from carrying out basic, legitimate functions and overthrow of the election. And I think that was, he said that right after the coup or the insurrection on January 6th. And so it's like, a broken clock is right twice a day. So in this case, kind of the broken speaker or house Senate minority leader is right twice a year or so, given about a year later that he's willing to stand up and say this, but I think there's probably been so much internally where people have come up to him and said, hey dude, we need a shield here. And the Donald doesn't like you anyway. You're already on his naughty list. So why don't you stand up and say this so that at least we can have some cover when we go back home to whatever districts that we're in where they are moderate district, where there are people really want to go back to a principle Republican party that's not based on personality and say, let's run on principles. And I think that's what this is going towards. And I think, yeah, it may be this daylight. And who knows what's gonna be coming out in the next few weeks or months with the January 6th. Well, nobody knows what's gonna happen honestly. Not a lot, but let's just assume that the Republicans themselves are deciding that there's a fair faction of them that, and I've been saying this a while, that they've been waiting for some cover like this to come out and to stand up. And when he said, we don't need to go after Liz Cheney or Adam Kitsinger, this is wrong. This is not what the party that we're about. And we need to say this, and so did Mitt Romney, by the way, who was the standard bearer a few years ago. Of course, it's his niece that wrote the, but these are little points of light. These are little points of light. Cynthia, there's two vectors working here. One is the points of light that Winston is talking about. I guess that would include the, this is only legitimate political discourse that the GOP unanimously adopted in its sanctions, its rejection, its exclusion of Liz Cheney and Adam Kitsinger. But at the same time, this vector is going the other way. Vectors which, various governors are adopting Republican governors or legislatures. There's a whole movement in the country to reject any vaccine mandates or mask mandates. And they're politically driven. You could not change my mind about that. They're politically driven, clearly. So these two vectors are working and we are going to see how they play. And you can think that these points of light will prevail but you can also think that these politicization of every issue you can think of in favor of the Trump position that that would prevail. So what are your thoughts about which one will prevail? These points of light persuasive to you? Those points of light were not at all persuasive to me. As a matter of fact, I noticed over and over and over that not even one single place where I looked in the news or listened mentioned the fact that Pence might have been doing this to cover his own batch. He tried to see if it was okay to turn everything over. He didn't mention that in that speech, right? How many months did he spend seeing if he could do it? Instead of just coming right out and saying that's not constitutional, I can't do it. So I think this is more about Pence trying to just to cover up his own stuff and possibly gave away going forward for him. He wants to turn for president. And this is what we'll get. Oh my God, I don't know why but I think I just had some gas. You know, Cynthia, we have been talking here on this show for a long time about the possibility that the Republican party will see the light. Now forgetting Pence for a minute, even forgetting Mitch McConnell's comment, is there a possibility now from all that we know that the Republican party is seeing the light? I don't see it. Liz Cheney is quoted as saying that the Republican party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to our constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both. And I think that's a very appropriate statement to make. And I think every Republican needs to ask themselves a bunch of questions. Because right now, if you're going to be loyal to Donald Trump, you have to remember that he's facing criminal and civil charges all over the place. Criminal charges in Georgia that trying to create election fraud, conspiracy to commit election fraud, with elections criminal, wait, sorry, it's not all the way on there, criminal solicitation. And then we've got the New York civil charges, which are tax fraud, mortgage fraud, bank fraud. It goes on. Then we've got New York criminal charges. We've got tax fraud, insurance fraud, scheme to defraud and falsifying business records. If any Republican, any Republican can still follow this plan, then they need to not even have any kind of position in politics. You mean that it would be irrational. And of course we have seen our fair share of irrationality, haven't we? Okay, so what comes to mind when you set out all those charges, it's the answer of the standard Republican answer. It goes this way. I hope I can do this right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all a big witch hunt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Karen, you're a media person. Does this make a bit of difference? Is all these charges against him? I mean, there have been so many politicians in this country, in these United States who have been convicted, gone to jail, come back, won elections. It doesn't seem to bother the public when a demagogue goes to jail. Do you think it's really bothering the public now all these charges that Cynthia has recited? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem, I don't see any evidence of it bothering the public. I do see some evidence that maybe that there might be some interest in Trump running as a substitute for, you know, maybe that's what he's opening the door for himself as a presidential nominee. Because I think they're, from what I had heard on a PBS special, I think it was frontline. In fact, that the reason they delayed calling out the National Guard was because Trump was still in power and they were afraid that he would use it for his own purposes. So I think there is some behind the scenes, even though we may not always be aware of it, some realization that there needs to be some control of Trump, even if it's not publicly expressed. What does control mean, imprisonment? Imprisonment, making sure he does not get back in office. Again, if you remember, even the military generals had concocted a plan to make sure he didn't have control over the forces to use them against citizens in the US. On a scale of one to 10, what's your level of confidence that they would reject him a second time? 50-50. Ha ha ha ha. Very good. So Winston, what difference does it make? Is Trump really cruising to a disaster for him? Or is, you remember the line about just spell my name right? He's still a very popular guy. He doesn't have Twitter, but you hear about him every five minutes. And a lot of people still swear by him. And it's not clear at all to me that any of this is really damaging his prospects with them. What about you? Do you feel that he would be a viable candidate in 2024? Well, you know, Donald Trump and Trumpism isn't going anywhere. I mean, to say that it's not disappearing, it's taken root in our society. It's everywhere. We see this. And I think that what the appeal is somehow on some level, and we're going to be dissecting this for 100 years, is what does it really represent when you try and get down to the core of it? I don't have a lot of good answers. There's everything from mass hypnosis to just a basic distrust of American government that's gone on for centuries. Or elitism, it's a hope. It's people losing their jobs. It's society changing. It's America changing. It's all of that. And much more, but it's not going away. In fact, I think it's the hydra. It doesn't matter if Donald Trump is the president or not. He has acolytes that are much more willing to step up across the board. But we're also seeing people standing up and saying, no, that's not it. I saw Joe Manchin said that there's, what was the exact words that he said that electoral count act reform will absolutely pass. So these senators and Congress folks realize that we can't have these fiascos of everybody suing all the time and trying to figure out, does the vice president have the ability to overturn this and whatnot? So it's in their interest as well, just to not have chaos. And I think Mitch McConnell has recognized that you had Susan Collins coming out and saying something we would expect that from Susan Collins and also Lisa Murkowski. But those are outliers and they always have been. However, every voice makes a difference there. And when you look at the polls internally, support for Donald Trump is still very high among Republicans. It's over 40% approve of him and what he's done and said and how they ignore his behavior somehow. They turned a blind eye to it. But when you ask the same people, do you want them to be running in 2024? The answer is different. They said, he's come, he's done his work. He's gonna work from behind the scenes. He's gonna raise a lot of money. He's still gonna be a kingmaker, but basic and we will count out to him to different degrees. You're still not seeing a lot of breakaway from the Rubios and the Cruises and a lot of other people that might- No, they're afraid of him. They're afraid of him. And once more, I think his influence, your point is well taken, his influence is growing. Look at what's happening in Canada over the politicization of public health. Extraordinary. The whole country isn't not about it. And it's Canada. I thought those guys were more rational than we, but not- When you look at Canada though, I mean, a lot of that is, they're connected at the hip to America and it's possible not to spill over, but when you really dig down in there, while there may be deep seated resentment against some things about the vaccine mandates, they're getting a lot of money from abroad. And when you look at, if you actually do the reading in there, nobody likes to be imprisoned in their house and restrictions that we've had from COVID. These are a public necessity that we are now deciding whether or not we still need to keep them. Let's not forget COVID deaths yesterday or this week are at a year high. We'll have a million people in this country pretty soon. I mean, right this week, now they're going down certainly, hopefully, but who knows what's coming down. Well, you have another mutation in bingo. So, I was talking to these guys before you got on the meeting, Cynthia, I'm telling them about the election of 1896. This was a contention between the populist movement, William Jennings Bryan, you like history, right? And McKinley, William McKinley. And the populist movement was the hinterland. It was the rural parts of America that were very resentful of the capital concentrations in New York and elsewhere in the cities. We felt that those guys were pushing them into poverty that were responsible for all these business cycles and all the angst and trouble that the middle America had. And so this was a big attempt of a movement that had been growing for 20, 30 years to unseat the capital concentrations in New York, you know, the pure part morgans and the carnagies and the railroads and the steel and all that. And we of the country really thought that the populist movement would win what it lost because money talks. Citizens United talks, okay? The difference between that election and the elections coming now is that in those days and ever since until Trump there was a peaceful transition of power. Now that is an issue. So my question to you is assuming that we have the same kind of bifurcation of the country, it's a similar kind of division of the country now, but assuming also that we have lots of confusion and lots of contention about who won, that whether the count was right, whether the public could properly vote with confidence in the system, whether the courts would respect that. What do you think is gonna happen this year? Eight months away? Ooh, that's a big ask. Cause things seem to change every day. And if we can have some sort of, accountability happen with some of these people that have broken the law, so egregiously broken the law, then maybe things will change and come around. And I think people will start falling away from that whole scene of that Donald Trump has been sort of leading forward. I know that the DHS just put out a statement yesterday on the domestic terrorism threat. That's part of this whole thing, right? And it says, the United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with faults or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories and other forms of mis or dis and mal information or MDM, introduced and or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. As long as we've got that at this level, I think that there's no way to know for sure and there's no way to change any of it. So I think that that's gonna make a big difference. Go ahead. What about, as Winston mentioned, what about the select committee? They're giving us pieces of what they've learned that appears in the newspaper. They're about to start live hearings on live TV. It's gonna be something like the McCarthy hearings maybe or Watergate, you know, it's gonna be a public spasm over this. And so things are gonna come out that are shocking. They've already come out that are shocking. We're gonna find out that he was, that Trump was engaged in a real live conspiracy, that he was the center of it, that he was attempting to manipulate the votes, the evidence, he was thinking of doing violence with the National Guard and the military in general. I mean, it was a whole nine yards. He was, I think that's gonna come out and we're all gonna hear about it and the four of us are gonna be outraged beyond outrage about it, but other people maybe in the middle of the country, the Trump followers, they're not gonna be outraged. They're either not gonna believe it or they're gonna believe it and say, eh, so what? He was just trying to hold on to his seat. Do you think that what comes out of that, even assuming the worst of it, the most horrendous conspiracy and military coup and violation of every principle and every rule of the constitution is gonna make a difference in this election? I hope so. And like I said, accountability is, I mean, did you ask me that? Was that for me? Yes. Okay, I hope so. And I think that it's again, accountability. And if we don't have it, then nothing's gonna change and there will be no difference. And yes, that same twisted mentality will still reign in these people's minds until they realize that their thinking was wrong and they realize that they were falling for a lot of misinformation until we can do something about this misinformation, nothing is going to change. And that's, in my mind, the very most important thing that we need to try to address. Well, that's a great segue to you, Karen. Misinformation, disinformation, social media and the failure of what you might consider the legitimate media to address this, to cover it, to speak truth to power, to make it clear to all of us what's going on. Are they doing a good job or are they pulling the rug out from under us? No, I don't think they're doing a particularly good job. I think that they are really not presenting what the American public needs to know. And there's still a lot of splintering of the news channels to different sides. They're not fully covering things and they cover things at specific angles that even I think this Russian conflict with Ukraine is being covered in a biased way. But I think there's a distress of the media. But one thing I did hear was an interview which I thought was very interesting with Brad Raffensperger or whatever his name was, the Secretary of State of Georgia. And he said in the Georgia election most people did not vote for Biden or Trump. They voted down ballot. They didn't want anything to do with national politics. They just voted for local politicians. And I think it would be interesting to see if that was true else in other states because I think that's really where the hope lies is the down ballot ticket or the local elections because people are very discouraged, I think at the national level with basically the Senate and the House basically kind of checkmating each other so there's no action on anything. People just get fed up with that. So I think that the real action needs to be at the local level for the parties at this stage or for the Democratic Party. Yeah, and Harrington, what you're saying is that the parties, and I'm speaking now of the Democratic Party has lost its ability, its mojo, its togetherness to deal with what's happening. This is an opportunity for them to lead, to galvanize and they're not doing it. No, I mean, I think that to see it as the last election as purely about Trump or Biden is possibly a mistake. I think it was just a disillusion with national politics. So a lot of people, at least in Georgia according to them didn't vote for either of the top candidates. They just, they had more people voting down ballot than they had people voting for either the top ticket people. You know, Winston, I wanna go around for last comments, but I wanna ask you a question too though and you can go beyond it if you want. And that is, so we've seen these points of light. We've seen some of these statements made recently, but largely the GOP is in lockstep. And I just wonder, you know, what it would take A to have more defections a la Cheney and Kinziger. We don't really see that. We see a few comments, but nothing like a mass defection. What would it take to generate a mass defection? And B, would a mass defection, how would a mass defection work? How would it affect the elections coming soon? Oh, well, people are waking up, Jay. They're sick of the rancor as Karen was saying, that they're tired of not being able to talk to their family and their friends and their colleagues about just normal stuff where we used to be able to joke about, you know, oh, you're liberal. That's why you support that or, you know, you're conservative and so, but these days it's become, we're so manipulated as I think Cynthia was mentioning about, when you're talking about the legitimate news. I mean, what's our newspaper, which I find a reasonable newspaper, has about 150,000 people it goes out to in our state population of 1.5 million. The legitimate news in these days is TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and their friends. And if you see it on there, and they have so finely manipulated us to put us in little echo chambers and to feed us whatever narrative is that we think that we wanna hear or that we don't even know that we wanna hear because it's so subconscious that they're pressing buttons based on something we pressed of two likes or whatever. And they're very sophisticated. And you know this, if you shop on Amazon, if you buy, you know, AA batteries and, you know, a glue stick, then they know that you wanna buy Kansas city stakes. I don't know, they got really sophisticated algorithms. We're just data, aren't we? We're just data, we're just data. We're manipulatable, that's not a word, people who then vote or don't vote as the case may be. So it basically, it's just getting back out there and rediscovering our humanity, our common interests. These politicians will discover when they go back home in Peoria, people are sick of the ranker, they're sick of the division. They just want the job done. And they're tired of fighting. They understand as opposed to what Karen was saying that they gotta participate in the national conversation. I think Karen's maybe right in there. I mean, really it's just about locally. Do you think that Mitch McConnell has you on speed dial? Does he care? No, but your neighbors, those are the ones you're gonna go to if you need something. And I don't know, you remember the olden days when your mom used to send you next door for an egg or a cup of milk when she was baking something? When was the last time you went to your neighbors to borrow an egg? Maybe we need to start the borrow an egg campaign across the country so that we get to know our neighbors again. There's just normal human beings. That's gone the other way. Cynthia, I'd like you to deal with this. Ideally it's a national conversation, but it's not, as Karen said. And I guess the question is, it strikes me that this is a kind of reality show. It's all theatrics. And I hate to use the word propaganda here in these United States, but it is largely that social media and the like and these political officials get up and they're really playing to the house. They're playing to the national house. It's almost like the delegation doesn't have that much to say about it and local government doesn't get involved. And local people don't really care. They think it's beyond them or as Karen said, tired of it. But it gets worse because it's not only a reality show for the country, it's a reality show for the world. It was Putin or somebody commenting on what Putin was doing to say that Biden's future depends on what he does, how well he succeeds in Ukraine. And if he fails in Ukraine, he will never be able to live up to it. He will be done politically. And I don't know if that's true and I don't like your opinion about that, but that does demonstrate that this echo chamber is not limited to a conversation within our borders. This is a global conversation and it affects the politics within our borders. You agree? I do, I absolutely agree. I believe that there has been a lot of reporting on the rise in dictators and autocrats and it's like everywhere. And so maybe what Putin's doing is for that very reason because we know that he has been focused on destroying America, tearing us apart. He's been focused on that for a long, long time. And he's also said he wants Ukraine back in Russia. He wants to reunite the Soviet Union. He has said that from day one. And he's also said that he wants to destabilize America since day one. Those are two things that tell me, we know why he's doing what he's doing right now on the border in Ukraine. And yes, it is important how Biden handles this and how the world handles this. We see President Macron going and talking to him at the end of the 30-foot table. And you wonder how intimate are these discussions when they're 30 feet apart? Why are they bilateral? Why is it just one leader going to see him? Why isn't there a crowd from the EU and from NATO going to see him? That's very troubling. Thank you, that was my next thing that I was just gonna say. Why is he there all by himself? That's exactly what I was gonna say. And so I feel that that is so important for NATO to stand together right now. For America's sake and for the world, also for democracy all around the world, right? So all that accountability is the most important thing in my mind anyway. And I believe it is the number one barrier wall from being able to make any kind of progress. We get the misinformation tells us, oh, he's not really guilty. Well, we need to find out the proof that shows that he is. And until we have that, so I think January 6th committee, it's really important. I wanna, is it closing time? Can I do more closing? It is closing time, but go take another 30 seconds and show you something. Okay, well, this is the newest thing that's come out from January 6th and from other places too. And that is the National Archives and Records Administration, NARA, set it between 15 boxes of White House records and other items that were stored in Mar-a-Lago. So there is an act, the Presidential Records Act of 1978 that says they cannot take anything away or destroy anything. So we've got Daniel Goldman, who is the guy who was the, he was the lawyer. Impeachment, yeah. Lawyers. So he said, this is a crime and would be pretty easy to prove with a few grand jury subpoenas to witness of his document destruction. Nobody heard what I say to that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another part of the witch hunt, no? Well, this is the important thing that comes out of that. In section B of that act, it says whoever does that is disqualified from holding any office under the United. Oh, very good, good. Good, hold that thought, yeah. Hold that thought and see, and easy to prove, let's do it. So all this other stuff is so hard to prove and have to go against all these other things. They're already trying to disqualify this guy, Madison Colley, I think, or Colley Madison on the basis of the 14th Amendment, section three. So this is gonna be a big thing in the courts going forward. So Karen, I have to ask you a question again about public opinion to close and then you can make any statement you want. If we know that public opinion is formed not only by these media that we've been talking about but also by entertainment. And a lot of people in the time of COVID sit at home and watch cable TV and they watch what's being offered. It strikes me that there's an awful lot of material out there these days about what happened in Germany in the 30s, you know, the Nazi movies are proliferated all through cable entertainment and various other examples of outrage, of human rights, of atrocities, of dictators. It's just a lot of stuff. And I wonder if you think this affects people. At the same time, there's a lot of movies out there with violence and vengeance. And we know this helps, I mean, I know anyway, this helps establish public opinion. So you have various things coming over the entertainment and people don't watch the news nearly as much and the news is not as persuasive at some emotional level as all this entertainment. How is this affecting public opinion today? In other words, for accepting violence but also for showing what happens in case you get picked up at two o'clock in the morning because you didn't part your hair correctly. Well, I think in terms of my view of the movies, I think Hollywood made a huge error, in my opinion, going to these Marvel comic superheroes whether it's good versus, it simplifies the world, good versus evil. And it seems like that's all they know how to produce anymore with the, you know, there's special effects. I've got the CSG or whatever they're called, which to me are horrid. And they don't seem to able to produce movies about ordinary people. You have to actually watch foreign movies to see dramas about people and their relationships. So it's like they've forgotten that, you know, we can have relationships in this country. It's all about these fantasy heroes and evil people. And I think that does affect splitting the world into good versus evil. Even with this affair with Putin, I don't think it's, you know, us, good, them, evil. It's much more complicated than that. But I think there's a tendency in the press to portray it that way. Okay, we're out of time, but Winston, simply because you're in the minority of gender here among the three of guests, I'm gonna allow you one more, one more close. So the apologies to Cynthia and Karen, okay? You can, but you can sort of summarize all this if you can and say welcome back to Cynthia and welcome to Karen and whatever else you like. Welcome to Cynthia and Karen, exactly. You know, the title of the show was that there's some daylight being spread between Mike Pence, who was so, so close and so involved in this at good, bad or otherwise. Mitch McConnell and other leaders and spokespeople, the old guard of the party that are starting to speak up. People are sick of the rancor, they're sick of the noise. I think candidates that there's gonna be certainly those that inflame that and people that wanna join in on the drama wagon, but there's a huge number of people that are just tired of it. They're sick of COVID, they're sick of Donald Trump, they're sick of the Congress, they're sick of Donald Trump, good boy, good, bad or otherwise. They just wanna go back to having normalish sort of relationships and I think the candidates that reflect that are going to continue to be rising in the ascendant. I think we have good hope here. It's the slow turtle. The noise is not gonna go away. The basic underlying things about Trumpism is not going to go away. We need to address those as we change as a nation and try and figure out what that means. But for right now, I would say, keep the slow steady going so that we can get back to normalcy. Okay, and closing, I wanna thank you all. Winston, Cynthia, Karen. I also wanna tell you that at the beginning of Trump's administration, the play Hamilton opened on Broadway. And in that play, if you recall, they criticized Trump. So he refused to go and made some stink out comments about it. Pence, however, went. And of course, he was recognized by the audience and they came to ask him for a comment. And his comment was completely different to Trump. His comment was, I'm into the First Amendment. This is a wonderful play. This examines our democratic roots and I don't feel the same way that Trump feels about this play. And that he distinguished himself even early on. I'm not saying that he's been a good vice president or a protector of our nation, but he is different than Trump. And maybe there are other people in there too that are different and can break away if only they had the opportunity. Thank you, Winston. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you, Karen. See you next time. Aloha. Aloha.