Will Trump be a 'Comeback' President?

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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. Many of you know the BBC's US special correspondent Katty Kay, who you may have seen many times on PBS stations or on MSNBC. Now Katty Kay has a new documentary called Trump: The Comeback? The thing is it's not so much about Trump as about the American public as seen through Katty Kay's perspective of someone who is not from here but does report from here.

In the documentary, she travels around the country speaking to voters and local politicians in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming with the goal of understanding what the impact of Trump's potential run for the presidency in 2024 may have on American democracy. Continuing with our 30 Issues theme of democracy this week, Katty, we’re honored that you made some time for us today with your many commitments. Welcome back to WNYC.

Katty: Brian, thank you very much. I loved your description of the documentary. That's what it felt like. It felt like a political road trip of somebody that's not American but does live here and love here.

Brian: That's definitely how it feels. I want to start by playing a clip from your conversation with somebody who came up on the show earlier today already and that's Kari Lake, the current Republican nominee for governor of Arizona. We’ll hear you speak first.

Katty: Do you really believe the 2020 election was stolen?

Kari: Yes, absolutely. I'm not the only one who believes it. The majority of Americans believe it. Unfortunately, the media refuses to cover it. We had a million ways to cheat and they used each and every one of them.

Katty: There was also here in Arizona a review commissioned by the Republican Party that found that Joe Biden won the state.

Kari: We know that hundreds of thousands of phony ballots were dropped into these drop boxes and they were counted. The media still won't believe it because they're on a mission to discredit that. I'll tell you what, people are waking up to that election.

Brian: That of course was thoroughly debunked including by people like William Barr and Richard Donoghue, the assistant Attorney General under Trump. What's your take, Katty, on the significance of having an election denier in that position, in that state if she wins?

Katty: Going into that I spent time with Kari Lake outside of Wyoming at a retirement community where she was trying to get votes. I have to say my first impression of her is that she is incredibly good at what she does. She's very poised. She comes across as very likable to that community. She walked in and complimented people in the room. They immediately warm to her. She doesn't have a hair out to the place. Of course, they know her very well from all her years when she was a local Fox TV anchor so she felt familiar to them.

She worked the room in a way that was just for a first-time politician, stunningly effective. I went into that interview really wondering, "Does she believe that the election was stolen given all those years she spent as a journalist reporting the facts and reporting the news, or is she using it as a political strategy?" I pushed her thereon. There was this Republican review. Then I raised all of the court cases that have been thrown out including by Trump-appointed judges. At which point she said there is evidence those courts didn't see but she of course has never actually raised that evidence.

I came to the conclusion Brian that in a way it doesn't really matter whether she believes it or not. You're never going to get her to say, "Oh, yes, actually the election was free and fair and Joe Biden won anyway." The issue I think is something deeper which is that people in positions of influence like Kari Lake or Donald Trump before her put this message into the American system and it infects the system like a virus. Now millions of Americans, one-third of the American electorate believe that Joe Biden is not the legitimate president. That's the problem with people like Kari Lake saying this.

Brian: I'm going to play an example from your documentary of those people who again I think are really the heart of your piece not the Kari Lakes and the other politicians. We're going to hear clip folks of Katty's conversation with Karen and Steve, an elderly couple who own Trump merchandise shop, an actual Trump merchandise shop in Show Low Arizona. Steve speaks first.

Steve: If the Republicans don’t win in 2022, if it gets stolen again confidence in the whole entire system is just going to erode America. Then it leads to trouble. It could lead to civil war. It could lead to--

Katty: Civil war?

Steve: Yes. It'll start on a small scale. It'll be like town against the town. The community is like that. State against the state.

Katty: You think things are that close in America? You think things are that tense in the country?

Steve: Oh, I think so.

Karen: You think it's more a civil war I think it's more like the American revolution quite frankly in my opinion.

Katty: Are you afraid of a civil war or a revolutionary war?

Steve: I don't want to see it. I know what war is. If it comes we’ll fight.

Karen: If it happened I will take up arms. Absolutely. If we have to do that in order to save our country we will.

Steve: This could really turn nasty.

Brian: Whoa, Katty, what were you thinking during that conversation? Were you surprised to hear people imagining so openly that a civil war in this country could take place?

Katty: There are a few things in that conversation. First of all, Steve's saying if Republicans lose it will mean the election was stolen from us. There's not even any prospect in his mind that Republicans could lose and it would be a fair election. They have to--

Brian: Oh, I'm glad you went to that. Let me go back and just read our listeners because it certainly jumped out at me but it really took till the second time I heard it. We're not going to play it again but the first words in that clip were that guy Steve saying, "If the Republicans don't win in 2022 if the election gets stolen again, confidence in the whole entire system is just going to erode." He's equating those two things.

Katty: He's equating those two things. It's almost not matter of fact way but almost if the two of them had sat down and thought, "How would this pan out?" It would start small as Steve says, community to community, town to town, and then it would spread. This is not an idle thought. They have had almost conceptualized how a civil war would start in the country. I think one thing that did strike me as I traveled around America, this road trip I did covering thousands of miles, and all the people I interviewed, Karen and Steve aren't alone in thinking they need to defend democracy. I heard both Democrats and Republicans say with equal conviction that America's democracy is in peril.

Of course, they believe it's in peril for very different reasons, but the conviction is just as strong on both sides. Republicans I spoke to spoke in the language that Karen and Steve do, that it is their patriotic duty to take up arms and fight to defend American democracy because they think that it is being stolen for them. If you honestly believed Brian, that an election had been stolen you would be mad too, right? Perhaps even contemplating that was something worth fighting for. The problem of course is that there is no evidence that the election was stolen but their belief that it was is very real.

Brian: Karen and Steve seem welcoming of you and-

Katty: Very.

Brian: -generally pleasant from the [crosstalk]

Katty: Everyone I spoke to. Yes. Everyone I spoke to could not have been more welcoming, more open, or more pleasant.

Brian: How did we get to this point where there's this false equivalency that you were just describing? You were saying Democrats and Republicans both in so many cases fervently feel that democracy is in peril. The problem is that on one side it's based on a big lie.

Katty: The facts around the 2020 election clearly do not show that there was enough fraud on any scale as Bill Barr said, as Governor Ducey of Arizona said, as Brad Raffensperger in Georgia said, as all of these Republican politicians have said. There was no fraud on any scale that would've changed the nature of the election. I think what's going on is that we are focusing on this idea of the election having been stolen. Actually, what Karen and Steve are talking about and they hinted it there is a way of life. It's not just the electoral system, it's the notion of liberalism in the big cities taking over the country in a way that feels uncontrolled and unchecked.

Part of their fervor is to defend that, is to defend what has always been. I heard people in Wyoming describe Wyoming as almost as a bastion against liberalism. I spoke to another local sheriff in Arizona who spoke in that kind of language. Perhaps the election and an election being stolen is a focal point but it comes with a whole lot of other grievances that people have.

Brian: Those other grievances, those are at least theories or arguments or fears.

Katty: Absolutely.

Brian: That people can discuss and debate in good faith.

Katty: Yes. You cannot debate whether the election is stolen or not, was stolen or not, because there are no facts to suggest that it was. You can debate abortion, you can debate immigration, you can debate borders, you can debate gender issues. You cannot debate. There is no debate to be had around whether the election was done. That is why somebody like Kari Lake is frustrating because she is putting it out in the system like a belief system.

Brian: Katty Kay with us for a few more minutes, maybe you recognize the voice from seeing her on PBS or MSNBC as the BBC special correspondent for the US these days. You were also on the road in Pennsylvania filming this cross-country documentary when Roe versus Wade was overturned, I see. It seems like Democrats you spoke with those in the political establishment are really rallying hard behind abortion rights with the hopes that'll help them overcome the economy and other obstacles to retaining control of Congress and a lot of governor seats this year. I'm curious, as you were traveling across the country, how you saw it landing or not?

Katty: In a way, I was traveling during June and Pennsylvania was a perfect microcosm for actually what is happening today because gas prices were very high at that moment. I spent a day at a truck station with some truckers to try and assess how much the economy was going to be the issue. It was at the same time that Arizona's Supreme Court's dod ruling broke. It seemed at that moment that the issue of abortion would sweep away almost everything else on the Democratic side and perhaps even tilt the midterms in Democrats' favor.

I think what we're seeing now is that as inflation ticks up again, we are starting to see that perhaps it is the economy, as James Carville famously said in the Clinton era, it is the economy stupid that will be the number one voting issue in this election. Abortion back in those days of June was on the paper all the time. We were hearing awful stories of 10-year-old girls having to move from Ohio to Indiana to have an abortion after a rape. We were hearing stories of women who had massively deformed fetuses and couldn't get an abortion in their state.

It was very real and visceral. As those stories receded from the headlines, perhaps it is now, and as inflation ticks up again, perhaps it is the economy that is starting to weigh on people's minds more.

Brian: Can I ask as a closing thought, Katty, what do you think you bring to US coverage as a BBC correspondent that Americans born here might miss? I see you on television all the time. I see you as a modern-day de Tocqueville, putting your European eyes on our national condition. It's also why I'm always glad that our radio station airs so much BBC content, but what do you think you or the BBC generally bring to covering the US by virtue of viewing us from, in a way outside?

Katty: Brian, okay, first of all, de Tocqueville, I could only wish. He's the ultimate outsider with a view on America. I do think there is something about bringing global perspectives. There are things that America struggles with that other countries have struggled with and perhaps handled in a different way. There's some connecting of the dots that goes on. Whether it is healthcare or gun control or elections or democracy or immigration, how are other countries tackling these things? That influences my view of how America is handling things.

It's also just sometimes it takes an outsider, somebody who has not been born here and spent their whole lives here to ask different questions, and yet I do this as a friend. I come in the ultimate friendship. I have four children, three of them were born here. They have American passports. I want America to succeed, but I also want America to be able to see itself in the context of the rest of the world and have some of that outside perspective in the hope that some of the problems America has can be resolved with some global perspective as well.

Brian: Katty Kay, the BBC's US special correspondent, her new documentary is Trump: The Comeback? and you can see it on BBC Select, Amazon Prime, or Apple TV. Katty, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Katty: Brian. Thank you. Thanks

 

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