Judy: Investigations of the
January 6 capitol attack are
still underway.
But as husband and wife
reporting team, Peter baker of
the New York Times and Susan
Glasser of the new Yorker
explain in their latest book,
to understand what happened on
January 6, 2021, it is necessary
to understand what happened on
January 20, 2017, the day
president Donald Trump took
office, and all the days in
between.
And that is the focus of their
book, "The divider,"
which is out this week.
We welcome you to the newshour.
This is an eye-popping book
literally from the first page,
when you lay out the premise
that the attack was the
inexorable culmination of a
sustained four-year war on the
institutions and traditions of
American democracy.
Peter, that is a stunning
statement about the president of
the United States.
>> It really is, but that is the
case here.
January 6 was not an outlier.
It was predictable.
If you pay attention to
everything he was talking about,
trying to turn the institutions
of American government into his
own personal instruments, the
justice department, the
military, and all these efforts
basically lead up to this moment
where he is refusing to accept
the democratic election in which
he lost.
To understand that, we have to
understand what he was doing for
four years.
Nobody has gone back to take
that look.
Judy: There is so much to ask
you all, but a lot of the book
is about the division between
the people who were around
trump, the people who were in
essence trying to protect the
country and worried about the
country, and others who were
enabling him.
What is a good example of one of
those who was worried more about
the country than they were about
president trump?
>> You are right, and the
complication is in that faction
red and, the enablers sometimes
were also the resistors.
Also, the enablers were people
who facilitated trump.
Without them, Donald Trump would
have been some angry old dude
shouting at the television in
between golf games.
But there was a group in
particular of national security
officials who defined their
roles as protecting the
nonpartisan traditions of
national security.
And this is a through-line that
goes through to the beginning of
the trump administration.
He called people like Jim Mattis
and John Kelly "My generals."
He had clashes with them.
He extraordinarily told John
Kelly, his second white house
chief of staff, why aren't you
like the bleeping Nazi generals
in World War II?
Kelly said, what are you talking
about?
He said they were totally loyal
to hitler.
Kelly said, no, they were not.
They tried to kill hitler three
times.
But he defined it as service to
the country as service to him
personally.
You go forward to 2020 and his
clash with the chairman of the
joint chiefs mark Milley.
For me as a reporter, getting a
hold of Milley's resignation
letter, in which he called the
president of the United States a
threat to national security, he
said you're doing great and
irreparable harm to the country,
it is still mind blowing.
Judy: Was there one point when
you felt the country came
closest to coming off the rail?
We are clearly focused on
January 6.
But there were other moments as
well.
>> That is exactly right.
All of 2020 in many ways was a
catastrophic year for this
country.
The manipulation of a public
health crisis, a once in a
century pandemic, to exacerbate
the divisions within American
society, to turn something like
a piece of cloth worn over the
face as a public health measure
into a badge of partisan
affiliation.
This is a terrible tragedy for
the American people, no matter
where they live.
I think the testing of
institutions that we wrote about
that existed, Donald Trump
seriously considered in a five
hour meeting in the white house
after he lost reelection
imposing martial law.
He did not throw people out of
the oval office and say, what
are you talking about?
He spent hours
contemplating unprecedented
steps.
We faced a situation that has
never before happened in
American history, in which a
president of the United States
refused to accept his defeat and
sought to overturn the election.
That has never happened before.
No Democrat, no Republican, no
president, period.
Judy: Did you come away thinking
that if some of these
individuals around the president
had been -- had more courage in
standing up to him that things
could have been different?
Or that no matter what Donald
Trump was going to do what he
did.
>> That is a great question.
One of the through-line's we
found, we did all this research
after he was in office, but we
interviewed 300 people and they
felt freer to talk after he
left.
The through-line was the
struggle many of them felt, this
moral conundrum, do I stay or do
I go?
Those who were not true
believers.
They told themselves the same
thing over and over.
If I leave, it will be worse
because someone who comes and
takes my job will be more
willing to do whatever extreme
thing he wants us to do that I
am trying to stop.
You can see the difference in
January 6.
Think about John Kelly.
Everybody in some ways is
flawed.
Somebody told us in that white
house, there were no heroes.
But John Kelly, he would have to
turn himself in the doorway of
the oval office rather than let
some of the come in and talk
about martial law, whereas mark
meadows was called by one of the
former Republicans the matador
because he kept encouraging this
effort.
I think people do matter and
people around him mattered, even
if they were not going to change
his fundamental nature.
Judy: You do come away from
so much of this looking at if
Donald Trump runs for
reelection.
What is the country facing?
Did you come to a conclusion?
>> This book is not just a book
of history.
It is in fact partly a prologue,
it could be, if he won again.
In some ways, it is a roadmap
for where he would go.
We interviewed a national
security official who spent time
with him in the oval office.
This person compared him to the
velociraptor in the movie
"Drastic park," which is to say
he learned.
Not about policy, but he learns
to make government work for him
after four years in office.
This person compared him to the
velociraptor who opens the
kitchen door where the kids are
hiding.
He is learning to do it.
The point is, in a second term,
a lot of things that constrained
him in the first term would not
be there.
He would not hire a John Kelly.
He would only hire a mark
meadows.
He would not be captive to the
people who are slow walking him
or resisting him.
He would be much more aggressive
and certain of his own ability.
And he would not have a
reelection to worry about.
He could do what he thought was
the right thing, or the thing he
wanted to do most without being
constrained.
Judy: Finally, did you come away
with a sense of what you think
he will do about 2024?
>> Peter and I visited and
interviewed trump twice in
mar-a-lago for this book.
Initially, I think we would say
we were somewhat skeptical that
he would, that he seemed sort of
like a very unwilling retiree
but a retiree to Florida
nonetheless.
But I think in particular as we
have seen these metastasizing
investigations of Donald Trump
continue and escalate in the
last few months, not only the
classified documents
investigation, the January 6
congressional investigation and
also the grand jury
investigation, the New York
state investigations, it seems
that trump has a sense that
actually being a candidate for
president might protect him in
some way.
I also think that Donald Trump,
as we all know by now, cannot
relinquish the stage.
I think the mere concept that
the trumpists, the
ini-me's, people like Ron
Desantis, the idea that trump
will fade away gracefully and
let them take over seems very
unlikely to me, knowing what we
know of Donald Trump's
personality.
Judy: There is so much to read,
to reflect on, in this book,
"The divider."
It is full of information that
Americans should know.
Peter baker, Susan Glasser,
thank you very much.
>> Thank you so much.