You spent many years, the formative part of your career,
working for and with Republicans.
And I'm curious, because I'm trying to look forward now,
the specifics of what happens tonight,
or tomorrow, in the next few days,
we can't say right now.
We think we know what's gonna happen.
But let's look farther forward.
What does the Republican Party do now?
Because there are a lot of people like myself,
I'll be honest with you,
I must have said this a million times,
I don't get as angry at Donald Trump
because I look at him as,
I think a lot of people would agree,
a malignant narcissist,
is the term which is used a lot.
He's someone who has a condition,
probably needs to be treated.
The people I reserve my true anger for
are the enablers within the Republican Party
who have just gone along
and they've all been in lockstep.
And I'm sort of a history buff.
I'm hard-pressed to think of another president
that had the total zombie-like control
of his party Totally agree.
like Donald Trump.
No one breaks ranks.
They're all terrified of him.
So what happens?
How does the Republican Party move forward from this point?
Or do they not?
Is it going to be still Trump's party?
Look, this is my private pain, usually.
I mean, this party that justifiably gave the Bush family,
and you and I have talked about this before,
who I worked for, such a hard time.
Never hesitated to criticize them,
and that was healthy.
I'm not complaining about that.
I'm just saying I know the Republican Party
is capable of saying screw you
to a Republican president 'cause I saw it.
To see them be so subservient in the face of a man
who doesn't believe in anything they believe in.
And you can argue that the base of the party's
more where Trump is on foreign policy and trade.
That might be true.
But the Republican elected officials are not.
They believe the stuff that former Republicans
and former Republican nominees used to believe in.
So to have sort of capitulated on their own ideology,
and then to have capitulated on their own souls,
is, to me, the most dangerous dynamic
in the era of Trump.
Because what's happening right now
is that people around Trump
are saying it's over.
It's not clear to me that anyone has walked in
and told him that.
He may have figured it out 'cause he watches...
He's an incessant consumer of cable news.
And I think even on Fox News,
while some of the folks in the evenings,
they're cheering these really sort of illogical
and non-evened formed law suits.
I mean in one state they want the vote to keep going.
In another, they want it to stop.
In another, they want ballots stuck and not.
I mean, you know, they don't want one thing
across the country.
So the fact that so many people allow him
to really desecrate the presidency
is, to me, the irreparable piece of his tenure,
which looks like it'll only be four years.
But I don't think there is something on the other side.
It's, you know, how do you build that back?
If you're subservient--
You mean not something on the other side
for the Republicans?
Because that's my curiosity--
For these Republicans.
Right.
If you're, and I have friends,
people I went to college with
who we didn't agree on...
They're smart, they're very intelligent, well-read people
who really love their country.
Who, we didn't always see eye to eye
because they would vote Republican,
I would vote Democrat.
But we would have long conversations
and we shared a lot of values.
And now I think we've gotten to the point
where those people, those friends of mine,
have wanted no part of Trump or Trumpism.
So you wonder, how does the Republican Party,
how does it encapsulate,
of how can it be big enough, a big tent,
that holds reasonable people,
and people that believe in their hearts
that Joe Biden is a pedophile
and drinks the blood of children in Satanic rituals?
How do you do that?
I don't know that there's a party there.
Well, look, that's a QAnon conspiracy.
I didn't know what QAnon was until very recently.
I missed pronounced them.
I saw them on my teleprompter and called them like Quay-non.
Qua-non. (laughing)
Like Quaalude.
Look, I don't think...
It's oil and water, right?
QAnon is a toxin, and I don't think you can say
like, oh, I'll just swim with them.
So it is, they are mutually exclusive.
And what the party has become
doesn't have room for reasonable people.
I think the smart line of questioning that you're pursuing
is at this point, unknowable.
Because I think that winning campaigns
always over read their mandate.
And Senate Republicans will think they won this
because they didn't lose as many seats as they thought.
And even if Donald Trump is rejected,
I think they will misread what might've been
a lot of anxiety about shutdowns
and about maybe over...
I think Republicans have been conditioned to believe
that shutdowns and lock downs
and public health safety measures
are against the interest of our economic security.
And I think that is not what Joe Biden
has been saying,
but I think that's where that sort of toxic mix
of disinformation and misinformation
and painting all Democrats as Socialists
will make it difficult for him to lead the whole country.
Because I think half the country truly thinks
he want to shut people down and leave them in their homes.
That is not even the public health approach.
But I think that until you have a party
that understands that that dynamic,
worried about the economy, worried about the shutdowns,
had more to do with Republicans looking healthier
on Tuesday night in some of these Senate races
than even a lot of Republicans thought they might,
than any sort of mandate for Trump or Trumpism
or what they are doing.
I think they will continue down this path.
And I think flirting with QAnon
and playing footsie with white supremacists
is a dead end road.
It's a cul-de-sac.
There is no what's the GOP on the other side?
It has to, you know, sort of collapse,
and it might in the next cycle,
the cycle after that.
And then, you know, maybe something thoughtful
comes up on the other side.
Maybe it doesn't.
Maybe we have this sort of corrupt path
of the political, you know, machinery,
and maybe that's what Democrats have to figure out
how to contend with.
I don't see clearly what the future is
for the two party system.