 Aloha, everyone. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii today. It's Thursday, December 9th, and this program is Politics for the People. And we're a weekly show, and welcome you aboard. Today, I'm your show host, Stephanie Stoll Dalton. But this show will be a discussion of an article by Barton Gellman. And Jay Fidel is here with me to discuss the article and share what are some compelling information points we want to get out to raise public awareness about the current situation, which we think he has described aptly, as you will see in the discussion. So the name of the article, which was published in the Atlantic last week, and has been shown on major news programs, the name of the article is how Trump and the Republicans imperil the U.S. election. And his specific topic is the coup has already begun to overturn democracy in America. So this, this is a topic that we feel it needs to be widespread and broadcast. And Gellman's major first point is that January 6, the insurrection was a practice run for his effort to overturn democracy and continue his own dictatorship. The practice and the other activity subsequent to that all the machinations that he and the Republicans have made since actually the election, but very strongly since January the 1st, has put them in a ready go position for having a successful coup in the next election, which I'm referring to 2024, but with some repercussions for 2022 also. Jay, what do you make of that proposition that Gellman presents early in the article? Well, I believed it for some time. It's not a surprise, although I'd say that he he expressed it very well, he articulated and supported it and made a rational discussion of it for sure. And the whole article, which is a quite a lengthy article, in fact, the audio and it is an hour and 38 minutes long, is is a defense of that particular position. And, you know, in case we haven't been watching, he connects all the dots. I mean, we got to get him on the show, Stephanie. I don't know why you don't want to ask him that. Wow, everybody else has on the cable news. Maybe he's ready to roll on that. Well, that article was really worth it. You know, sometimes an article appears and it takes on a tremendous value, a tremendous interest. And that's why a lot of the talk show hosts have brought him on, because it is an extraordinary article. It's a detailed examination of where we are. And it is not distracted by anything. It is covering the, you know, the essential points of where this country is going. That's why it's so valuable. And I would urge everybody to read it. It's on The Atlantic last week. And P.S. on The Atlantic, Stephanie, you know, The Atlantic used to be a literary magazine. That's true. The monthly, right? Yes. I would call it. And things changed. And it's one of those remarkable changes that we've seen in recent years during the Trump administration, I suppose. So all of a sudden, the editors changed. Maybe the publishers changed too, I don't know. And the material, the content, has changed. And now you have, you know, Goldberg, who is the, you know, chief editor-in-chief, you have Ann Applebaum, who is a remarkable writer, who has written some extraordinary articles in the past couple of three years. And now, Barton Kelman, I shouldn't say now, because he's written extraordinary articles before. But this one is the one that catches your attention, because this one is completely timely. This one catches the moment, you know, the tipping point, if you will, something that we all ought to be watching. So I think, you know, I, to answer your question, I totally agree with what he's saying. I think he speaks truth and he speaks wisdom. That is an apt description of the activity of January 6th. Well, I wanted to know if you can talk a little bit about how did Trump and the Republicans move into this very good position, which is frightening enough to generate all this discussion and attention to Gilman's article and others too. But how did he do this without using any presidential powers whatsoever over the sweep of time from the election? Can you talk a little bit about what has happened and how he managed this? Well, I'd like to step one step back and say, why? You know, at his niece's at Mary Trump? Yeah, yeah. He's active on that point. I mean, Donald Trump is a very strange and pathological character. More than that, he's been in positions of power from the time his father anointed him, and his father trained him also in racism from, you know, a long time ago. And somewhere in that psychological makeup is a destroyer. Trump would destroy things. And somewhere in his awakening, if you will, his political awakening, which was long before he ran for president, he decided that he wanted to destroy it as much as possible. And if you look back in the years of his presidency, and certainly at the later years of his presidency, you see that he is, you know, affirmatively committed to destroying the country. I don't mean anything less than that. That's what I mean, destroying the country, destroying the democracy, destroying the social fabric, destroying whatever, you know, collective, you know, togetherness we have. And he's done a really terrific job at that. I would differ with you, though, Stephanie, on the question. And to the extent that Barton Gilman may suggest this, that he did this without, you know, using presidential power. I think he has used presidential power in many ways. I think he's used a bully platform. Even if he never used a statutory power or regulatory power, but he's used a bully platform. And he's also used his authority with, you know, with the government, as the commander in chief, as the chief executive, in return. Do you think it was intentional, though, that he didn't make any moves like in wag the dog or whatever those threats were that people thought other other leaders might make to keep themselves in power, that he didn't make any moves that were like official or a potential or probable misuse of presidential power? Do you think that he's canny enough to have worked his way around that issue, which leads him pretty much in the clear, right? Because I think he's pragmatic and he stopped short sometimes because of the advice of his advisors, which he rarely has taken, but he apparently took it a couple of times and stopped short of doing, you know, getting into a war over it. But he did a lot of things that were close to that. I mean, think about it, alienate all of Europe, alienate the United Nations, you know, have these very strange diplomatic relations with North Korea, China, Russia. These are really strange things, very destructive things. And although they're not the level of wag the dog, they're right on that continuum. And he did that, you know, in his office as part of his, you know, official position. And so I think he used this position to achieve those things, but they are things that benefit him, that benefit his corruption, and do not benefit the country. I mean, somewhere early on in his presidency, he decided he didn't care about the country. He was only going to benefit himself. Now, if that meant he had a benefit, some of his, you know, his contributors, his donors, the guys who gave him big bucks, fine, but that was for his benefit, not for the country's benefit. I would say he hasn't done anything to benefit the country at all because he's been engaged in destroying the country. And when you think about the destruction he's done, you know, my proposition is totally right. Well, I think that you're on point here. And because when we stop to think about the foundation of this, all of his destruction, there is a belief system that he's been putting in place. And I believe Gellman did think about this to respond to Barton Gellman's suggestion that there's a belief system that he hasn't he hasn't inculcated in the in the nation's people who follow him so that he Gellman said that he's convinced them that corruption is working in our democracy. And that's what's driving a lot of this, that fraud made up or whatever is definitely true, that only cheating can can give them or get in the way of or thwart their victory at the polls. So that's okay to do. And and tyranny has disrupted by these terrible Democrats, the US government. And finally, the huge point is that violence is a legitimate response to getting their way to the Republicans and Trump getting their way. Now that's what Gellman summarized as some foundational principles or beliefs that he's established among his followers. Do you think that he's covering the track there? Oh, sure. Well, think about it. You know, he spent four years building a base in irrational base. And as it went forward, and he found that he could do that, that people would irrationally follow him even to their own detriment is quite remarkable. Then he would go further. That's what a pathology like his leads to. You try it, it works, and you try it again, and worse. And so if you if you connected the dots, you know, philosophically, conceptually, over the course of his four years, you see that he tries this, it works. He gets more, you know, aggressive about it and tries that. And so each you could chart this out. Each one of these steps leads to another more outrageous step. So I mean, he wasn't nearly as outrageous at the beginning as he was by the end, when he realized that people would support him in whatever he did, you know, he could shoot somebody in Fifth Avenue. And I think it's clear right now that he could himself, he could shoot somebody in Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Why was he that attractive at the start? I mean, I understand now what's happening, you know, with these points Gellman's making, but what about at the beginning? What that came pretty early on? Well, even towards the end of campaign, why was he so compelling? What do you think that was that set up this opportunity for him? You know, people think he's ignorant, stupid, but not. You know, he's got a kind of intuitive, intuitive brilliance on how to work people who are ignorant and stupid. And so, you know, what he did was he found divisions in the country and widened them. And Facebook and Putin helped him do that. I mean, intentionally, willfully, scientifically helped him do that. So now we have these divisions and he capitalizes on the divisions. Furthermore, you know, this is a time when the rural areas, you know, falling into a kind of populism, they don't know they don't care, they resent the liberals on the coasts and the big cities for taking liberal positions, for caring about the social safety net, for caring about, you know, collaboration with other countries and all that. And he's found a group that doesn't believe in that, the populists and nationalists. And he plays on that. He plays on the division. And it's worked for him politically. He sees it as a political opportunity. And he's played on it increasingly over the past five years now. So he's not so stupid after all, he's created a base that's way bigger. Think about this than it was at the beginning. And he's hollowed out the government, you know, he hasn't appointed, he didn't appoint a lot of people. So, you know, the government culture at the end of his term was just the president making all the decisions. I mean, I know people who walked the halls of the State Department, nobody was there. They walked the halls of other, you know, government agencies, important agencies, nobody was there because he didn't appoint anybody. They all belong to him. And he created this culture of loyalty. You know, if you're loyal to me, I'll reward you, I'll give you corruption. If you're not loyal to me, I'll make your life miserable, fire you, force you out of the government. So he's done that systematically. It's also reminiscent of the apprentice, where he attacked people, if you remember on that show, he attacked people. No good reason at all, you know, and destroyed them, you know, at least in the context of the... So this is some really diabolical match between what are his natural propensities to thinking and acting to what he had in the White House and that he could do there. He used people around him. He used some of the people in the Republican Party. They used the whole QAnon thing, the conspiracy people. He himself was a conspiracist. And so, you know, what happened is the Republican Party, while we weren't watching, went away. It got hollowed out like the government got hollowed out. And the people left there are not really classical Republicans at all. You know, Bob Dole is a Republican. How many Republicans do we have there now in the Republican Party? Very, very few, if any. So, you know, he changed it. He converted it. He turned it inside out. And people should not come away from all of that with the notion, oh, yeah, this is the Republican Party. It's not the Republican Party. It's the Trump Party. And he's made it into his party. This is very scary because it's reminiscent of the 1930s. And he's using a lot of the tricks that, you know, the Hitler used in those days in Mussolini in order to make the whole government belong to him. And it still does. That is one of the most remarkable things. He's out of office. He's off the media. But they still quote him. And they still give him a voice. Well, I want to be, I just want to make the point that he has managed to own the Republican Party. He's managed to pervert the Republican Party. But we should talk about the high news item today, Stephanie, and see where it fits in all of that. Okay, remember we were having a crisis over the past two or three months overfunding the government, right? Of course. It got resolved today because a number of Republicans left the ship, so to speak, and McConnell left the ship. They agreed with the, you know, I guess the Democrats in the Senate tumor to make a deal to fund the government. This is itself an absurdity because what is the big issue about funding the government? It's incredible that we should have a fight that goes on for months. It's a cost of the last election. So this is paying for the Republicans expenditures, okay, for the most part. That's what it's about. But I wanted to ask you why are, with all of this news and all of these successes that they're having that are detrimental to our culture or to our democracy, why are the Democrats and others, independents, et cetera, why are they not taking notice or publicly openly talking about what's going on and what they're going to do about it? What do you think is going on there? Why aren't they silent? You know, they're populists and nationalists. He's a kind of a hero, an antihero. And they're still, even after all the trouble, they still follow him. It is extraordinary, but it is also emblematic of the end of our democracy. Well, yes, but what about the Democratic Party and all the others that are not Trumpers? Well, that's the point that Martin Keldon raised. And that's one of them. Well, Gellman is making that point. Oh, why is it that they're not and how is it that they can remain inactive and unspoken because they know where that goes? I don't know what the how is, but the reality which Gellman goes into in some detail in his article is that there's nobody in the Democratic Party that is actually countervailing what Trump and his friends are doing. And when you take that together with the things that Trump and his friends are doing, what you get is a failed democracy, a failed state, if you will, and certainly the complete forfeiture of the 2022 and 2024 elections. And that's because nobody is really fighting back. That's this point. So all you have to do is track all the things they are doing to undermine the institution of voting in this country. So that's on one side of the ledger. On the other side is what have the Democrats done to countervail, to argue, to bring people over to their side of that issue. And they haven't done much and they're not likely to do much. And there is no strong leader, including Biden, who is doing it or capable of doing it. So he draws a line from where we are now through the election dates. And he says, you know, the Republicans are going to win this. They have suppressed the vote. They have depressed people's view of government and the courts and the Congress. People are abandoning a whole notion of democracy. So in a way, he's already achieved it. Well, you have mentioned one of the actions to prevent this coup from occurring that came from Jocelyn Benson, who's the Michigan Secretary of State. And her first recommendation or requirement that has to be put in place, of course, is that the voters have to take on responsibility, do their duty, and put strong officials like Secretaries of State in position and they need to have authority and strength to do their job. So you mentioned that too. So that's in following up on your point. And what else can be done to give us some prevention or some intervention for the carrying through of this coup? What is going to stop the train or getting its way from the Democratic side? I hate to say this, but Benson, the article stands for the proposition that there is nothing. That it's too late. It's already happened. Benson, you know, is a point of light. And so is the point of light that they were able to draw a few Republicans over who continue funding the government. That's a point of light. I suppose, if Winston were here, he would say, let's be optimistic about it. I'm not optimistic about it because I only see it as a point of light. You know, that's that's what Burton, Burton, what's his last name? Gellman. Burton Gellman's article is about namely, yeah, don't get confused. Yes, we have point of light. If you want, if you have wishful thinking that you want to see something that's worthy of some optimism, you know, go for it. But that's not the prevailing history around us. The prevailing history around us is that in a dozen states or more, more every day, there is suppression of voting, which the Supreme Court isn't going to do anything about. And Congress isn't going to do anything about. There is, you know, this whole thing with gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court isn't going to do anything about. And Congress isn't going to do anything about voting rights, forget about it. The Republicans not only are having their way, they've already had their way. And then of course, when you get into the elections themselves, and this is really sad, you find out that there are officials who have replaced the old officials who are perfectly willing to take Trump's instructions on finding votes, ignoring legitimate votes, and turning the whole election around like he wanted to do last year, turning it all around and having a few people determine what the public vote was. And that's going to happen again. And then of course, you have challenges in the courts. But it's come clear, Stephanie, that the courts are no longer reliable. At the district court level, federal courts, at the court of appeals level, and certainly at the Supreme Court level, it's clear they're going to back him up. They're not going to support voting. They're not going to knock off the suppression. They're not going to knock off these steps the Republicans have taken to switch out secretaries of state. At the end of the day, the courts cannot be relied upon. So what is going to happen at best? What's going to happen at best is we're going to have litigation that goes beyond election day all over the country, which has already started. And at worst, the courts turn against these democratic notions that don't allow any relief, which is actually something that is already happening. Let me bring up another point here that Gellman made. And it has to do with, of course, the targets, the big targets of the Trumps and Republicans, the Trump and the Republicans, are the six states that are likely to have close elections or very slim margins. Okay. So one of the things that Trump has been able to do in this situation and looks like he's working to make it happen as much as he can because some of the states are putting in these new laws. And yes, they seem to be all on the side of the Republican agenda, but which in the case that they are, they still have potential to disrupt and to cause chaos because they're new and people don't understand them. And then there will be this chaos in the state. So what is it that Trump knows how to do with chaos that makes it this powerful lever he uses to move things in the direction he wants? Do you have any sense of how that works and why he does that? And what does it get him? I mean, obviously it gets him a lot, but maybe you could comment on that. It's one thing in the Gellman article that I found very interesting with regard to these six states and the likelihood of their having problems and then being chaotic and then Trump takes that chaos and does something with it. He's an anarchist. He's an excellent anarchist. So how does it work? Well, there's several parts to it. I mean, one I mentioned earlier is that, you know, he's a destroyer and he's attracting people through the notion of populism and nationalism and destroyism. You know, if you live in the rural part of the country, you really don't like the liberals on the coast. So he's feeding on that and he's encouraging that and he's using that as a device of mechanism with social media. Regrettably, the social media goes along with him on that and them. Secondly, he's systematically removed the old time Republicans out of the Republican Party and he's managed to fill it up with the populists and nationals who are loyal to Trump. It's quite amazing. Let me go further to answer your question. Go ahead. I mean, how he turns it against the system. Yeah, go ahead. Then you have the courts. He's stopped the courts and the courts back up these people, these Trumpers in the legislatures. This is not accidental. It's not coincidental. He's had a plan and a team and a conspiratorial arrangement to do this for a long time and it's coming home to roost now. What happened in the Willard Hotel would happen. All those people who participated in the planning and the execution of the January 6th insurrection and the steps after the January 6th insurrection to prevent any impeachment or investigation of it is part of a larger plan. So you have to realize that Trump, for all his bumbling and stupidity, all his inane remarks and crazy destructive statements, he's got a team that plans this stuff and they are Trumpers and they are traders to the country, but that's what they are doing and that's why he is successful in doing this. And isn't this one of the contributions, significant contributions of the 1-6 committee is that they've revealed this? Would we have known about the Willard Hotel and all of the rest of the events, planning and coordination of the assault? Would we have known about that without the 1-6 committee? Is that not a contribution? We would have speculated now we know it's a matter of evidence and that's good. I believe you're saying that we probably had assumed that or I mean I don't remember seeing anything written about it. Maybe Gelman could have done an article on that and in fact maybe that is mentioned by the way in his first article. Yeah, which is how which was about the destruction of America, how the Republicans could destroy America and he wrote that in November and that turned out to be absolutely true and including in that article he he posited that there would be a 1-6 assault on the government, which he didn't know what date, but he did say everything that happened and he was shown to be accurately predicting the whole series of events and I think that that's one of the reasons he's not being paid so much attention to now, but I wanted to ask if the other suggestions that the Michigan Secretary of State suggested get put in place, like of course federal government support to disallow the undermining of our beliefs and values and government system and also that they're in order to help with that to go further is to have federal and state task forces in place to actually go up against what it is that they're trying to do in dismantling our democracy. Do you see those as hopeful at all? No. Activities? Who's going to do that? All the Republicans will oppose that. They oppose everything that Democrats want to do. It would be the Democrats who want to do that. Republicans would oppose it everywhere and certainly Congress is not going to do anything because Congress can't do anything and for for most purposes Congress is inactive, dysfunctional, non-functional. Congress almost doesn't exist. I don't know why we spend all the money on the people in Congress when Congress doesn't do anything. They don't develop policy. They don't deal with what's happening in the country. They're not even respectful to the other side. The bottom line is that Congress isn't going to do anything. The Supreme Court isn't going to do anything. They're lost in space. I'm sorry. And finally, will Biden do anything? He's very modest and mild-mannered and he's got a very modest and mild-mannered attorney general and I'm not sure. And he's got a vice president who doesn't do anything. So who's going to do something? Task forces? Not going to happen. We are cruising and I agree with Gelman on this. We are cruising directly into a disaster in 2022 where A, the Republicans win back the House and the Senate both and then if they don't, there'll be litigation about it. There'll be these familiar claims that the Democrats rigged the election. It'll never come to rest. Our democracy is already broken. And 2024, you can assume the same thing and worse. Well, you know, we're reaching the end of our conversational time. So I want to close with your mentioning briefly. If you think that McConnell, given some of his moves lately, is in any way getting in the way of Trump and is that anything that could be considered positive? He's positive. He voted for funding the government. That is something. And he allowed, if you want to use that word, a number of Republicans in the Senate to do the same. So yeah, there seems like there's some hope there. So at the end of the day. At the plate, maybe he is stepping up to what he claims are his principles and values. My answer, no. I think he realized from a practical point of view that if that failed, if funding the government failed, it would be a national and international disaster of major magnitude. So he figured he better go along with it. I know we probably can't actually on him. Yeah. Maybe. Well, give us a final comment, Jay. I know so far you've been fairly pessimistic and seen us moving in the direction of the storm instead of away from it and not even getting ready for it. So tell us if there's any other comment you'd like to share on this program about that. I agree with Barton Killman. I agree that these forces are in place that are destroying our democracy in many ways they already have. And I agree with Barton Killman that I do not see any forces that can avail the negative forces that will save us. I don't see them on the horizon, either for 2022 or 2024. And therefore I'm very concerned about the future of the country and all of us, each one, every single one. May God bless us all. We're going to need it. I'm sure you speak for many, many viewers. And I thank you for your participation today in this conversation on the Barton Killman article that the coup has already begun here to dismantle our election process. And this is Think Tech Hawaii on a weekly discussion show, Politics for the People. And we look forward to seeing you next week, same time. I'm Stephanie Stoll Dalton. Thank your host for this show. And we've been talking with Jay Fiedel about the article I've already mentioned. Aloha, mahalo.