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1:32

Aloha, saludos, and namaste everyone, and welcome

1:34

to Impolitik with John Heilman, a puck

1:36

and Odyssey joint dropping fresh topical candid

1:38

conversations twice a week with the people

1:41

who roam the corridors of power and

1:43

influence in America, from

1:45

Washington to Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood,

1:47

and beyond, shifting and shaping

1:49

the warp and weft of our politics and

1:51

culture. Speaking not only for

1:53

myself, but in this rare instance, for

1:56

literally millions of Americans, the

1:58

fact that precisely none of us are. of the

2:00

three most politically and historically significant legal

2:02

cases in which Donald Trump stands indicted

2:05

will have been adjudicated in a court of law before

2:07

election day. Three cases,

2:09

mind you, with vast and grave

2:11

governmental, ethical and moral consequence and

2:13

weight, the January 6th insurrection

2:15

case in Washington, D.C., the classified documents

2:17

case in Florida, and the election tampering

2:19

case in Georgia, the fact that none

2:21

of these cases, for one reason or

2:23

another, made their way to trial in

2:25

a timely enough fashion that voters would

2:27

have the benefit of hearing the arguments,

2:29

weighing the evidence, and learning whether a

2:31

jury of the former president's peers judged

2:33

him guilty or not guilty before they

2:35

cast their ballots is itself a high

2:37

crime and misdemeanor. And among

2:40

the most profound and disappointing institutional failures

2:42

I have ever seen in a lifetime

2:44

of covering politics, and a

2:46

failure that may, in fact, alter the course

2:48

of American history and not need it be

2:50

said in a positive way. No

2:53

television show or host in the

2:55

current constellation of broadcast and cable

2:57

offerings has been more relentlessly, rigorously,

2:59

intelligently, or instructively focused on Trump's

3:01

legal entanglements than the last word

3:03

with Lawrence O'Donnell. At 10 p.m.

3:05

every weeknight on MSNBC for essentially

3:07

the last four years straight, O'Donnell

3:09

has been in effect presiding over

3:11

a rolling adult education clinic about

3:13

the legal system, national politics, and

3:16

the unprecedented intersection of the two

3:18

during Donald Trump's time in office

3:20

and his nearly four-year-long post-presidency. Fearing

3:22

the best, sharpest, most sophisticated set of legal

3:24

analysts in all of television onto his set

3:27

and into our living rooms night after night

3:29

to make sense of a story that requires,

3:31

no, demands exactly

3:33

this kind of serious, sustained, and savvy

3:36

focus. So when the news

3:38

broke late Wednesday afternoon that the judge in

3:40

charge of the January 6th case in D.C.,

3:42

Tonya Chutkin, had released portions of a filing

3:44

by special counsel Jack Smith laying out his

3:46

argument for why the case should go forward

3:48

in spite of the Supreme Court's staggering and

3:51

constitutionally dubious, politically devastating, and generally

3:53

stunningly fucked up ruling on presidential

3:55

immunity on July 1st, I immediately

3:57

thought that LOD would be the

3:59

perfect guest for this episode of

4:02

the podcast. And not only

4:04

because of the filing, which contained new, never-before-seen,

4:06

direct evidence of Trump's involvement in the plot

4:08

to overturn a free and fair election in

4:10

2020, but because I

4:12

knew that Lawrence would have much to say about

4:14

two other current topics of great national interest on

4:16

which he happens to know a ton. Kamala

4:19

Harris, whom Lawrence knows well in

4:21

his career he's been tracking long before most anchors

4:23

even knew her name, let alone how

4:25

to pronounce it, and the United States

4:28

Senate, where Lawrence cut his teeth in politics in

4:30

the 1990s as Chief of Staff

4:32

on the mega-powerful Senate Finance Committee when it

4:34

was chaired by the late great Daniel Patrick

4:36

Moynihan, who I would say is

4:38

the most important, impressive, and simply brilliant legislator of

4:41

our time. A little more than four

4:43

weeks out from election day, how was Lawrence feeling

4:45

about the campaign being run by Kamala Harris? And

4:48

what kind of future is the Senate facing as

4:50

it exits the Mitch McConnell era and looks towards

4:52

a time when Trump is either back in the

4:54

White House or a more or

4:56

less full-time defendant? Those were

4:58

some of the questions I had for Lawrence, and thankfully

5:00

he was more than ready, willing, and able to join

5:02

us to answer them, with every bit as much eloquence

5:04

and erudition as he brings to the last word every

5:06

night, and even more of a sense of humor. As

5:09

you will hear when we dive into this all-new

5:11

episode of Impolitic with John Heilman in three, two,

5:14

one. For

5:17

an outgoing president who, as the

5:21

evidence compellingly shows, knows he

5:23

is lost, and who

5:25

says it doesn't matter whether I've lost, we

5:27

have to fight anyway, even

5:29

if I've lost. For

5:32

that president to say,

5:34

I have an official

5:36

role in the selection of my

5:38

successor, I'm not

5:40

just a citizen casting a vote, I

5:43

can basically pressure

5:47

my vice president into

5:49

trashing all of the votes

5:52

that have been cast, saying they're irrelevant

5:54

because I really ought

5:57

to stay in office. There's no world

5:59

in which which that is part of

6:01

the president's official function. So

6:03

I feel kind of sorry

6:06

for justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch

6:11

and the chief justice when they

6:13

actually see what their

6:16

demand to see the

6:18

goods has turned up. They're going to

6:20

feel rather stupid or they should because

6:23

it turns out most of what they

6:25

said in that dissertation about

6:27

the possible immunity of the president

6:29

and the way he uses the

6:31

veto power or the pardon

6:33

power, how he really has

6:36

to have a vigorous ability

6:38

to use his core powers. None of that

6:40

has anything to do with this case. And

6:43

that was a eminent,

6:45

esteemed, legendary, epic constitutional

6:48

law professor at Harvard, Lawrence Tribe on

6:51

last night's fantastic episode

6:54

on Court TV of no

6:56

wait on MSNBC. The last one

6:58

with Lawrence O'Donnell, and Lawrence, good

7:00

to see you for one thing. Happy Thursday.

7:02

You know, I do think of it as

7:05

Court TV now in the age of defending

7:07

Trump. That's really what I'm doing. I

7:09

know you do. That's kind of why I made

7:11

that reference. Yesterday was another,

7:13

the day you were headed into your show

7:16

last night and you were having

7:18

to contend with the possibility I'm sure of

7:20

maybe talking a lot about the vice presidential

7:22

debate which filled you with dread. And then

7:24

in the afternoon comes this

7:26

unsealing by Judge

7:29

Tanya Chutkin of Jack

7:31

Smith's filing related

7:33

to the immunity matter in Donald Trump's in

7:35

the insurrection case in Washington, DC. And you're like,

7:38

jackpot. I just like, here

7:40

we go. I've got my lead story now.

7:42

I've got my whole show basically. Is that

7:45

correct? That's basically how I imagined the O'Donnell

7:47

mind yesterday. Yeah, but it happens gradually with

7:49

the reading process. So before that

7:51

came out, we had an outline of

7:53

the show that begins

7:56

with the vice presidential debate and the

7:58

standard day after. coverage of that

8:01

sort of thing. And

8:03

we had a guest lineup that

8:05

included people talking

8:07

about that and the campaign. Andrew

8:11

Weissman was already booked for the

8:13

show for basically

8:18

what has been the little legal process

8:21

leading up to the release of that

8:23

document. And so you know there was five

8:25

minutes of Andrew Weissman former

8:27

federal prosecutor stuff to do just

8:30

sort of setting the table for this thing

8:33

when it arrives. But

8:36

that had arrived and so you know I

8:38

was actually

8:41

at home when it arrived and so these things

8:43

are always we always have to print all 165

8:46

pages and study them and underline them so I

8:50

printed it at home and

8:53

I was actually it was a day

8:55

where I was taking the subway to work and

8:57

I thought no no no I gotta I'm gonna be

9:00

reading this thing all the way to work I'm gonna

9:02

have to you know jump in a car to get

9:04

to work you know get an uber

9:06

or something. And so as

9:09

I was reading it that's

9:11

when we start to say

9:14

oh wait this

9:16

this is the B this is not the

9:18

B block this is the A block this

9:20

is the lead of the show and then

9:22

and at first you know

9:25

the staff was thinking

9:27

of it as kind of one segment and

9:29

I went no we're

9:31

gonna need we're gonna need Professor

9:33

Tribe to do a second segment

9:35

at least because this document

9:37

is ultimately being written for the Supreme Court

9:40

it's being submitted to the trial judge to

9:42

decide you know next steps but this is

9:44

going as we all know all the way

9:46

to the Supreme Court because if the trial

9:49

judge says yes I'm gonna allow all of

9:51

this to be charged and this is what

9:53

I think the trial should be then the

9:56

Trump side is going to appeal that the

9:59

the appeals court rule in whatever

10:01

way they rule and one side or

10:03

the other is going to appeal it

10:05

to the Supreme Court, most likely it

10:08

will be the Trump side appealing it all

10:10

the way because most likely the

10:13

Judge Chutkin and the appeals court will

10:15

feel similarly to the way they felt

10:17

about this case before the

10:20

Supreme Court interview. Before, right. Which

10:22

was that it was legit. Yeah,

10:24

and so the ultimate question last

10:26

night for Tribe was, will

10:30

we ever see Mike Pence on a witness

10:32

stand in federal court in New York saying

10:34

these things that he is quoted

10:36

as saying to the grand jury in

10:39

this document? And his answer was yes.

10:42

And my favorite thing in what

10:44

you just played was the idea,

10:46

the very idea that John Roberts

10:48

could have a day where something

10:50

happens that makes him feel stupid.

10:52

I do believe that's impossible. I

10:54

do believe that they are immune

10:56

from feeling stupid no matter how

10:58

stupid they might be proved

11:00

to be. Well, I want

11:02

to get to that in a second because I had

11:04

a similar but not quite identical thought about that. But

11:07

the first thing before that, I'd like to ask you this. You

11:10

have, as you said, we made the court TV joke. You've

11:12

been like, essentially the last

11:14

word has been focused like

11:16

a laser beam on Trump's various legal

11:19

entanglements. Since at least

11:22

I would say that the second half of the

11:24

Trump term, you still work more in the normal

11:26

last word mode for the first two years. But

11:28

after the midterms in 2018, like 1920 and all

11:30

the way to now. So

11:34

for four years, basically, you've been doing court TV

11:36

in a very high level, very sophisticated, some of

11:38

the best legal analysts in the business on the

11:40

show. You I don't believe are a

11:42

lawyer. You're not a lawyer, right? I

11:45

am the only child

11:49

of my father's who is not a lawyer. You

11:51

know, so but you know, I

11:54

grew up kind of absorbed a lot by

11:56

osmosis. Yeah, I grew up thick in it.

11:59

And it's actually my. favorite thing. And

12:01

so it's where I began, you know,

12:04

as a writer, as was writing about

12:07

courtroom drama, you know, real court

12:09

cases. And, you know,

12:11

my father was a Boston cop and he

12:13

went to college in law school nights to

12:15

become a lawyer. And then all

12:18

my older brothers and my younger

12:20

sister followed him into that and became a

12:23

lawyer and he was always trying to get

12:25

me to do it. And I didn't. But

12:29

I'm, you know, I've spent an

12:31

enormous amount of time in courtrooms with

12:33

them and, and, and following

12:36

their cases in various ways and other

12:38

cases. And so it's an,

12:40

it's my, it's my original area

12:44

of expertise and

12:47

expertise is achievable in that area without

12:49

going to law school as Abraham Lincoln

12:51

proved and everybody else did before law

12:53

school was invented. But

12:57

so it's, it's actually, it's

12:59

my kind of original strike zone. And

13:01

I said, actually to

13:04

a network executive at MSNBC within

13:08

days of, of

13:11

Joe Biden being declared the winner in

13:13

the presidential election, that we

13:15

will now enter the defendant Trump

13:18

era. And I knew that I

13:20

knew that what was coming on

13:22

all these things and that there

13:25

would be surely January 6th

13:27

investigations. And we, we already knew, remember

13:29

that we already knew that there's a

13:31

major criminal investigation of Donald Trump in

13:33

Georgia because of that recorded phone call.

13:35

Because the phone call, which we'd heard

13:37

by that point. Yeah. And remember when

13:40

we heard it, when we heard it,

13:42

Trump was still president. That's

13:44

how early we knew, you know,

13:46

this guy was going to be a

13:48

criminal defendant. And we also knew he

13:51

was going to be a civil defendant

13:53

for literally for the rest of his

13:55

life because of all those civil suits

13:57

involving January 6th and other things. And

13:59

so I mean, I said with confidence at

14:01

the time, you know, inside the shop, you

14:03

know, Donald Trump is going to be a

14:05

defendant for the rest of his life because

14:08

of the way the appeals process works and

14:10

the how long litigation both criminal and civil

14:12

can last. This guy

14:14

now 78, um, is going to be

14:16

going in and out of these courtrooms

14:18

forever. And I

14:21

had the great honor of being

14:23

in his, uh, first criminal trial

14:25

in Manhattan, conveniently located for me.

14:28

And that was, that was really going back

14:31

to my reporting roots, being in the courtroom

14:33

all day. I was going to

14:35

say, even those, even people who are non lawyers, when

14:37

they heard the Georgia phone call were like, well, that's

14:39

gotta be illegal. What that's not illegal. The laws have

14:41

to be changed. I don't have to have a JD

14:44

from, from anywhere to know that the question I was

14:46

going to ask you though, on the basis of all

14:48

that, on the basis of that background, this is a

14:50

new wheelhouse. You've been doing it nonstop for the last

14:52

four years. Just for the sake

14:54

of like news of day here, is

14:57

this, is the, is the, is the,

14:59

the, the Jack Smith filing being unsealed

15:02

and what we learned in it. Is this, is this,

15:04

you know, with proper context, is it a big

15:07

deal? Uh, either not

15:09

the unsealing of it per se, but what we

15:11

learned from it, is it a big deal? And

15:13

if so, why? Well,

15:16

it's one of those big deals

15:18

that fills in detail that

15:20

you already know, you know, we

15:22

have a variety of accounts now

15:24

from Bob Woodward to, you

15:26

know, Mike Pence himself about

15:29

the Donald Trump campaign,

15:33

conversational campaign to convince Mike

15:35

Pence to break the law.

15:38

Uh, but now you have Mike Pence's

15:40

under oath grand jury

15:43

testimony and something

15:45

no one knew existed, uh,

15:47

before yesterday. Uh,

15:52

the guy was taking notes. The vice

15:54

president was taking notes while Donald Trump

15:56

was dictating his criminal plan to Mike

15:58

Pence. note and

16:00

Jack Smith has those notes and

16:02

he reproduces elements of it, you

16:04

know, in that actual document that

16:06

he released yesterday. And it

16:09

gives you, you know, from a

16:11

trial perspective, it just gives you

16:13

this overwhelming evidence because he

16:15

uses this phrase. It's a legal, it's

16:18

well, it's an English language phrase, but it has strong

16:20

legal meaning. Contemporaneous notes. There's

16:22

a big difference between notes. If I

16:24

were to take notes right now about

16:26

what you say to me, those notes

16:29

literally have a higher value in the

16:31

courtroom than if I said, if we

16:33

finish this and then tomorrow I just

16:35

write down my memory of it on

16:37

notes that has a

16:39

lesser value. And so, uh, and

16:41

judges, you know, take contemporaneous notes

16:43

very, very seriously, um, as, as

16:46

evidence. And so you

16:48

just get to imagine, you know,

16:50

Mike Pence being on

16:52

the witness stand with all

16:54

of his solemnity and seriousness,

16:56

which by the way, on

16:58

a witness stand will play very well. You

17:00

know, people who didn't like, you know, as

17:03

a, when he was a political candidate or

17:05

something like that, witness

17:08

stuff is a very different, uh,

17:10

performance skill. And so,

17:12

you know, that's solemn Mike Pence

17:14

up there literally reading his notes

17:16

to a jury is

17:18

as, I mean, that's as beyond a

17:21

reasonable doubt as you could ever imagine

17:23

getting as evidence in the courtroom, against

17:26

a criminal defendant. And so for those of

17:28

us who look at

17:30

this document and then envision the

17:32

trial, it is, it's really powerful

17:34

and overwhelming. And, and, and the,

17:36

all of the, the

17:39

really new and important element of

17:41

it is the single most dramatic

17:43

thing that could possibly occur in

17:45

a criminal trial in American history,

17:47

which is a vice president of

17:49

the United States under oath in

17:51

a witness stand testifying against a

17:53

president. It's like, wow, we, we

17:55

now know what that looks

17:57

like. I want to suggest that when you

18:00

when we when you when you write the

18:02

the screenplay for this I

18:04

want to suggest a scene to you, which is the

18:06

scene that Previously was only going

18:09

to have the call between Pence and quail

18:11

when Pence called quail and Dan quail and

18:13

said Dan What should I do him under

18:15

all this pressure now? Whether this

18:17

is true or not I wanted to be in the scene

18:19

which is just as they're about to get off the phone

18:21

after quail has told them of course You can't try

18:24

to say that these but it's engaged

18:26

in some kind of fraudulent scheme Your role is purely

18:28

ceremonial you idiot. You can't do that that the very

18:30

I know is Oh Mike Hey before we get off

18:32

the line. I have one piece of advice for you

18:35

take notes Yeah,

18:37

yeah. Yeah, I think that quail has to be the

18:39

there has to be the person who's to jump It's

18:41

like that's a good idea. Maybe I'll take notes next

18:43

time I talked to Trump and that's how we end

18:45

up getting the notes I think that's a key element

18:47

to this well, you know, the quail the quail call

18:50

is is a really interesting thing that That

18:53

is odd right in its way because

18:55

first of all a lot of reasons

18:57

Yeah for many for many many reasons

19:01

Yeah, I mean of all the people

19:03

like Of all

19:05

the former vice presidents whose phone number he has,

19:07

you know, and including Cheney by the way, right?

19:09

I can call Dick shady you think you know

19:12

for everything I called Dick shady like more of

19:14

an authority on these things, right? So we all

19:16

assume you know that that of all former vice

19:18

presidents Dan quail is the

19:20

most inept and yet and yet

19:23

in the story as we know it Dan

19:25

quail can handle this This

19:27

decision right really really easily and so

19:29

what I what I'm curious about if

19:32

we get to that trial day where where Where

19:36

the vice presidents on the witness stand

19:38

where we're pencil on the witness stand

19:40

is what does that call really about?

19:42

Is he really calling Dan quail to

19:44

find out, you know, can I do

19:47

this or is he calling Dan

19:49

quail to say? How

19:51

would you handle this because a

19:53

vice president uniquely knows the weirdness?

19:56

of a president wanting him to

19:59

do something And it's hard

20:01

for us to imagine George H.W.

20:03

Bush trying to get Dan Quayle

20:05

to commit a crime, but the

20:07

basic dynamic of the president wants

20:09

the vice president to do something

20:12

is a feeling that a former vice

20:14

president could share, I think better than

20:17

anyone else could share. And

20:19

so I'm wondering if in

20:21

Pence's testimony when it unfolds

20:23

that that call is really

20:25

more about navigating

20:27

the weirdness of this guy

20:29

that whose president knowing that

20:32

Dan Quayle just from public

20:34

information can tell how weird

20:36

Donald Trump is. But

20:38

it's it's just strikes me as odd that

20:41

you know all of the advice that the

20:43

vice president is getting from his professional

20:46

staff, from his chief of staff, from his

20:48

legal counsel says you can't do it. And

20:50

then what he calls a higher authority. Dan

20:53

Quayle. It's hard

20:55

for me to believe that Pence would have

20:57

invested that kind of meaning in that call.

21:00

So as opposed to

21:02

say, what do you

21:04

think is the tactical way of talking

21:06

to this guy? And then you see

21:09

the way Pence does talk to the

21:11

guy in his later testimony where he

21:13

says, we're you know, what

21:15

should we do if he loses, you know, if

21:17

this happens and the count doesn't work right. And

21:20

he says things like, well, you should

21:22

just take a bow or well, you

21:25

should just think about twenty twenty four.

21:27

You know, like Pence has come up

21:29

with some verbal techniques of dealing with

21:32

the madman who doesn't want

21:34

to give up the presidency and they aren't

21:36

direct. They're not blunt at all. They aren't

21:38

the kind of thing that we know, you

21:40

know, previous vice presidents were willing to say

21:43

to presidents. I mean, you

21:46

know, you know, Cactus

21:49

Jack, you know, when he

21:51

was FDR's first

21:53

vice president and FDR wanted to run

21:55

for a third term, you know, his

21:57

vice president just said to him, absolutely

21:59

not. You can't run for a

22:01

third term. Don't do that. And he ran against him in

22:03

trying to get the You know

22:05

in the convention like trying to get

22:07

the nomination away from him That's what

22:09

that's what vice presidents with any sort

22:11

of strength, you know know how to do

22:14

cactus Jack Garner Oh, I Want

22:17

to tell you that that that any confusion

22:19

anyone has about why he called Dan quail

22:21

just betrays now I'll include myself in this

22:23

and you and everyone else is confused But

22:25

means that you just don't know enough about

22:27

Indiana and the way that Indiana's and fill

22:29

about their fellow Hoosiers It's basically like that's

22:31

a who that's just a you know, who's

22:33

the highest authority? You

22:35

know someone who's a someone who's a fellow Hoosier. I

22:38

got a call who's your I'm surprising call Bobby Knight

22:40

and ask for his opinion On this too, you know,

22:42

it's just someone gets get somewhat Pete Buttigieg call someone

22:44

from Indiana to get their advice about it Here's my

22:46

question about the tribe thing. I said I was gonna

22:48

come back to it. Right what I heard

22:50

in that Was he says,

22:53

you know, they're gonna they're gonna feel stupid

22:56

these these conservative justices Cavanaugh

22:59

and Gorsuch

23:02

and and the Chief Justice when they see

23:04

this all laid out They're gonna feel stupid

23:06

because they're gonna realize that all

23:09

the stuff they had in their opinion was

23:11

not relevant They could have just decided this case

23:14

because all of this behavior on Trump's part was

23:16

obviously outside the official scope of the presidency The

23:18

premise in that and I I love Larry tribe

23:20

and and I and I I'm actually not being

23:22

critical when I say this There's a premise in

23:24

that which is that the case that their decision

23:27

was on the level Yeah But they were actually

23:29

trying to decide it on the law and not

23:32

as many people assume just perfectly partisan that

23:34

their attitude was like We're just putting a

23:36

bunch of shit on paper here. But our

23:38

goal here is simple We want to delay

23:40

this case until after the election to give

23:42

Trump the pot capacity to win reelection and

23:44

then get this Get that just have to

23:46

not have to stand trial toss this case

23:48

out That is the the view that many

23:50

people have now as the as

23:52

the view of how corrupt the view that

23:54

the Supreme Court is corrupt Has become the

23:57

dominant view I would say certainly I'm on

23:59

the left I think across the country, the

24:01

respect for the courts at historic lows and

24:03

the sense that it's a corrupt

24:06

group is off the charts.

24:08

I ask you as someone who's

24:10

against, you know, this stuff is in your wheelhouse, you've been

24:12

raised in the life of the law, you've got all these

24:14

brothers who were lawyers, dad was a cop, you know, you

24:17

have done these four years covering

24:19

really nothing but this. Is

24:21

your view now that the Supreme Court

24:23

is irredeemably politically corrupt or

24:25

is it something less than that or do you

24:28

still have some faith that they are still operating

24:30

in good faith as actual

24:32

SCOTUS justices have before and

24:35

should? No, my

24:38

faith in the Supreme Court

24:40

is completely and utterly and

24:42

irredrievably shattered and that's

24:44

new. That's new. I

24:47

didn't think that when they ruled in 2000 on Bush

24:49

v Gore. I

24:51

actually thought that I heard,

24:53

I listened to that

24:55

argument. I heard good arguments

24:57

by the lawyers on both sides of

25:00

that case. I could understand a ruling

25:02

on both sides of that case. I

25:05

don't want to rehash it now. I

25:07

believe the ruling should have gone

25:09

for Gore, but I recognize that

25:11

the arguments I was hearing against

25:13

it were strong as by the way, did the

25:15

lawyers in the case, the lawyers in the case

25:18

respected each other. They thought

25:20

that each side was doing a pretty

25:22

good job of arguing against each other.

25:26

So my faith

25:28

as we could call it in the

25:31

court survived that and survived well into

25:33

the 21st century. But

25:36

by corrupt, leaving the Clarence

25:38

Thomas plunder aside, but by

25:40

corrupt, what we mean is

25:42

they're just a political body. Their

25:45

claim is that they're not. Their modern day claim.

25:47

And by the way, it's a modern day claim.

25:49

It's not, it's not that old. I mean, you

25:51

know, um, the Supreme

25:53

court justices used to privately

25:55

interact with presidents all the

25:57

time and interact with politicians all the time.

26:00

time and encouraging ways. FDR

26:03

actually thought of taking a Supreme

26:05

Court justice, William O. Douglas, off

26:07

the court to be his fourth

26:10

vice presidential candidate. He was running for

26:13

fourth term. That's how politically

26:15

interactive the court. It's by Cactus.

26:17

Jack's best efforts to stop that

26:19

from happening. Yeah. But

26:22

the court was not considered

26:24

some sacred chamber separate

26:27

from politics until fairly recently,

26:30

until beginning in the 1950s, they wanted

26:33

to be seen that way. And so that's

26:35

their ideal. And I think it's the

26:37

correct ideal, is that they're a non-political

26:39

body. But now they're just a legislature.

26:41

They really are. And so that,

26:43

to me, loses all respect.

26:47

And it was just a political

26:49

exercise. I agree with you that

26:51

that decision on immunity was not

26:53

on the level. That it was

26:56

a politically arrived at decision and

26:59

arrived at with the same bad

27:02

information that Republican

27:05

politics uses all the time.

27:07

You know, they were imagining

27:10

this phenomenon of literally. And

27:12

these clowns said this out

27:14

loud. Every president,

27:16

every single president, would be prosecuted

27:19

after they were president. On

27:21

what basis would you say that? According

27:24

to you, that's been possible

27:26

since George Washington. And it's never happened.

27:28

Never happened, yeah. So we're pretty good

27:30

at not doing that. That's

27:33

like talking about there

27:35

will be a big snowstorm in

27:39

Miami every year. It's the

27:41

same concept that

27:44

they're using. So yeah, I think they're

27:46

gone. And they're totally politically corrupt. And

27:48

they need to be expanded. The only

27:50

solution is to expand it. There's

27:52

a bill now introduced in the Senate to expand

27:55

them to 15, which is a good number to

27:57

start with. The idea that it's

27:59

nine. since the 1860s

28:01

is ridiculous. We

28:03

both increased it and decreased it

28:05

prior to it getting settled on

28:07

nine and the country's

28:10

expanded a whole lot since we landed

28:12

on nine in the first place. And

28:15

it's it needs to be expanded quickly

28:18

and with a democratic

28:20

president needs to make a bunch of nominations

28:22

and confirmations to the court. Well

28:25

I'm fully with you on the thing on

28:27

both elements of it that it's become a

28:29

wholly ideological and ideologically and partisan driven institution

28:31

and that I didn't feel that way until

28:33

I don't know what the tipping point was

28:36

for me but I still had some faith

28:38

in it after the ACA rule. Well I

28:40

can tell you where it went for me

28:42

it was actually very definitely on the on

28:44

the Dobbs decision and when you talk about

28:46

them yeah when when Larry tribes so so

28:49

charmingly talks about them feeling stupid

28:52

I thought I had them I thought I

28:54

had them for sure and I personally was

28:56

going to make them feel stupid because when

28:59

the Dobbs decision was leaked which turned out

29:01

to be the entire decision like when when

29:03

they published the full decision it was like

29:05

yeah it's the same thing it was not

29:07

a draft it was the thing right so

29:10

I see that they're quoting you

29:13

know they they do this whenever they're

29:16

trying to become historians and prove that

29:18

they're absolutely right they

29:20

want to go back as many hundreds

29:22

of years as possible to prove that

29:24

abortion is an absolute abomination and should

29:26

not be allowed and so

29:28

I see that they're quoting

29:31

you know British judges

29:34

of you know pre

29:38

the when they're reaching back beyond the laws

29:40

of the United States they really want to

29:42

go back into English common law

29:44

and prove to you that even before there

29:47

was a United States our legal

29:49

forebears which are the English thought this and

29:51

so they cite these two guys and I

29:53

look at the years and it's like you

29:55

know 1616 or something like

29:58

that I look at that and I I

30:00

say to my staff, find

30:03

out if these guys either

30:05

prosecuted witches or

30:08

sentenced witches to death.

30:10

Because those were the days when,

30:12

long before they were doing it

30:14

in Salem, Massachusetts, the English were

30:16

burning witches at the stake all

30:18

the time. And

30:20

so yes, both of these

30:22

guys were witch prosecutors

30:24

before becoming judges who

30:26

were sentencing witches to

30:28

death. And it was

30:31

their wisdom about abortion that the

30:33

Supreme Court was relying on. Alito

30:35

and his goofy clerks found

30:38

these guys and put them in there. And

30:40

I assume, I'm thinking like, oh my god,

30:42

I'm going to go on the show tonight

30:44

and expose this whole thing. These

30:48

witch judges in England are their legal

30:50

authority. And when I

30:52

do this, obviously, in the final

30:55

opinion, they will be so embarrassed.

30:57

They will pull out the witch

30:59

guys. The witch guys won't be

31:02

there. And it's like, no, the

31:04

opinion comes out. The witch guys

31:06

are still there. And so the

31:08

ability for them to feel stupid

31:11

simply does not exist. I mean,

31:13

Alito's clerks are utter buffoons. Because

31:16

Alito doesn't find those guys.

31:18

It's the clerks who dig back

31:21

there. And they have no

31:23

idea that whenever you see

31:25

the date 16-something in English jurisprudence,

31:27

you are very likely dealing

31:29

with a guy who sentenced

31:31

witches to death. Alito's

31:34

got his clerks on that because he's too

31:36

busy on some 4chan channel absorbing

31:38

the latest conspiracy theory about how the election

31:40

was stolen. We're going to take a break.

31:43

And we're going to move on to a, hopefully,

31:45

less depressing topic that is the

31:47

Democratic nominee for President Kamala Harris.

31:50

So we will be back with Lawrence

31:52

O'Donnell here in politics with

31:54

John Heilman. After this break, stick around.

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34:43

weeks after the November 2nd election,

34:45

California finally has declared a winner

34:47

in the Attorney General race, and

34:49

it's not the one Karl Rove

34:52

wanted. I

34:54

pride myself and

34:56

us of living in

34:58

a state that has always been known

35:00

to be the source of change. So

35:02

goes California, goes the rest of the

35:05

country. Whoo! Whoo!

35:07

Whoo! Whoo! We

35:09

are the place that has the courage

35:12

to invite new approaches,

35:14

always in search of innovation, not because we're

35:16

bored with things the way they've been, but

35:20

because we strive to be

35:22

efficient and effective and

35:24

relevant. And there she was, Kamala

35:28

Debbie Harris, having

35:30

won the California Attorney General's race, a race that was,

35:33

as you can tell by both your intro

35:35

there, Lawrence, and the time that

35:37

elapsed, that was December 3rd, 2010, was

35:41

a close race. Didn't know who the winner was

35:44

until more than a month after election day

35:46

in 2010, and there you

35:48

were. I know you that went on to conduct an interview

35:50

with her. You've

35:52

known her for a long time. Yeah, so

35:54

in 2009, when I was happily ensconced, mostly

36:00

in show business and was

36:02

dabbling in MSNBC as a

36:05

kind of pundit guest. In

36:09

Los Angeles, living in Los Angeles at

36:11

the time, my

36:13

friend, actress Kerry Washington, said to

36:15

me one day, hey, do

36:18

you want to meet the female Obama

36:20

tomorrow? And I said,

36:23

well, yeah, who's that? And she said,

36:27

the district attorney of San Francisco. And

36:29

I can't remember whether at that moment Kerry

36:32

actually knew her name or not. And

36:37

so a friend of hers had

36:40

tipped her off that this interesting

36:42

woman's going to be in LA

36:45

tomorrow. And so we went

36:47

to this law firm in Century City, which

36:49

was an interesting show business law firm with

36:53

mostly black partners. And

36:56

there I noticed that there's a

36:59

gathering of these lawyers, about a dozen,

37:02

and of several of their clients,

37:04

almost all black people

37:06

you'd know in show business. And

37:09

so it's about, I don't know, 20 people, maybe 24 people

37:11

in this room. And

37:15

Kamala Harris is there, the San

37:18

Francisco DA. And she

37:20

starts talking about her work. And

37:23

I realized five minutes in, okay,

37:26

this is the smartest DA I've ever heard in

37:28

my life. Now let me just say the

37:31

bar couldn't be lower. I've never

37:33

heard. I

37:35

knew DAs who were very good at trial

37:37

work. I never knew a DA who was

37:39

a good thinker and

37:42

a bigger thinker than a trial

37:44

tactician. This was much,

37:46

much more interesting stuff, talking about

37:48

being tough on crime is one

37:50

thing, but being smart on crime

37:52

is a better thing and getting

37:54

into details about that. And

37:57

I was just really impressed. And

38:00

so the the skills

38:02

that she demonstrated there and the charisma

38:06

all of that was just right there and and

38:09

Everybody knew right away that yes,

38:12

and that's that was the phrase

38:15

that that Black Hollywood was

38:17

using for her then which was the

38:19

female Obama big what they know what

38:21

they meant and what you meant The

38:23

second you saw her was yes This

38:25

is the black woman who can go all

38:28

the way there might be others somewhere where

38:30

I don't know where I haven't met them

38:32

They might be da's and in Illinois or

38:34

somewhere and I don't know but this person

38:36

I'm looking at right here She can go

38:38

all the way to the presidency. This is

38:40

this is a really sharp, you know player

38:43

in this field and so I Recognized

38:46

that right away and what impressed me

38:48

about Karl Rove is that

38:50

he recognized it to the next year? Right

38:53

and so Karl Rove sees that

38:56

she's running statewide in California she's

38:58

gonna go from San Francisco to

39:00

run statewide for Attorney General and

39:03

Karl Rove decides to pump

39:06

big Republican money into

39:08

a statewide Attorney

39:10

General's race in California for

39:12

the Republicans something that they

39:15

normally Wouldn't even think about

39:17

trying to win like we're not gonna waste

39:19

our money there But Karl Rove knew I

39:21

think he saw exactly what I saw which

39:23

is she can go all the way. Let's

39:26

stop her here What if we could have

39:28

stopped Obama in the state legislature in Illinois?

39:30

What if we could have stopped him then

39:32

instead of letting him get to the Senate?

39:35

Because if you let a player like Barack

39:37

Obama get to the Senate look out, you

39:39

know There it turns out we now know

39:41

there's no stopping him from doing the next

39:43

step. And so Kamala

39:46

Harris was that same person you and and the

39:48

other thing that we all knew at the time

39:50

is the two California

39:52

senators are You

39:54

know in what getting on in here the late

39:57

years of a Senate career turns out and

40:00

Feinstein had a lot more years in her, but

40:03

Barbara Boxer then decided not

40:05

to run free election. And

40:07

Attorney General Kamala Harris reasonably

40:10

quickly had a Senate

40:13

seat open to her, which

40:15

she ran for, got, and then the rest

40:17

is obvious to everybody else. All

40:19

of that is true, Lawrence, and I will say, just

40:22

noting for the record, that the first time I met

40:24

Kamala Harris was in 1999 or 2000. I

40:29

was living in San Francisco, and she was the Assistant

40:31

District Attorney then, and the Chief of the

40:33

Criminal Division, and she was making a name for herself, prosecuting

40:37

sexual assault cases. And

40:39

in the very, very small,

40:41

very, very provincial pond that San

40:43

Francisco actually is, she was seen

40:46

not quite as a female Obama

40:48

yet, but definitely as a Democratic

40:50

rising star. But I wanna go

40:52

back to that clip we just played, because that

40:55

was the lead-in to a segment where

40:57

you interviewed her, and I

40:59

wanna play a little more from that so we can hear what

41:02

I think is an all-time great

41:04

Lawrence O'Donnell guest introduction from a

41:06

slightly younger Lawrence O'Donnell with

41:09

just a little less gravitas in

41:11

his voice. Kamala, I'm not sure

41:13

you're aware, but that appearance you

41:15

did Sunday on this show, Sunday

41:17

before the election, actually aired three

41:19

times in California that day. First

41:21

it was live at 12 noon,

41:24

then it was rerun later, I believe, at

41:27

three, and then at seven p.m. So

41:30

I've gotta think, in that

41:32

last minute desperate turnout drive,

41:35

you couldn't go statewide from an

41:37

LA local station or a San

41:39

Francisco local station. Don't

41:42

you think it really was really

41:44

gonna cross that finish line by coming

41:46

here in the last year? It was

41:48

the Lawrence O'Donnell factor. There is no

41:50

question about it, no question about it.

41:52

So there you

41:54

are, Lawrence O'Donnell, basically,

41:56

basically, kind of inescapably taking credit.

41:59

for making Kamala Harris Attorney General

42:01

of California. And you know, I

42:04

think history may look back when they

42:06

really carefully examined the data that

42:09

you were exactly right. That if there weren't for

42:11

that last appearance on The Last Word, which was

42:13

a brand new television show at that point, hadn't

42:15

been around very long, that was the thing that

42:18

made the difference. And that is how, if she

42:20

becomes the first black woman president of the United

42:22

States, you know, people

42:24

would, when did that happen? And people will go

42:26

back and play that interview and say, this was

42:28

it. You know, I boast

42:30

exactly once every 10 years. And

42:33

that was the day. Oh, yeah.

42:35

I think it was

42:38

exactly once every 10 seconds. Sorry. That

42:40

was the moment, but look, I mean, I just want to be clear about this.

42:42

You know, I

42:44

was so lucky. I was so lucky

42:46

that someone I know completely outside of

42:48

politics in show business just said to

42:51

me, hey, do you want to come

42:53

meet this woman? You know, that was

42:55

luck. That was the luck of me

42:57

living and working in LA. It

43:00

wasn't me looking

43:02

out there and surveying the entire

43:04

world of political candidates and isolating

43:07

this person. I was really lucky.

43:10

She would not have been on my show. I would not

43:12

have covered that race if I

43:14

had not met her the year before and

43:17

seen what she was

43:19

capable of. I just, and I remember

43:21

saying to my staff when the show started, and

43:23

I said, yeah, I

43:26

want to get the San Francisco DA

43:28

on as soon as possible. She's

43:30

running for attorney general in California. Nobody,

43:33

and quite understandably, no one at the

43:35

network knew who that was. Right.

43:38

You know, and so as you

43:40

point out, you

43:43

were, I think once she became attorney general of California,

43:45

the reputation that you just talked about, the notion of

43:47

her being a, about the female Obama became

43:51

a talking point that that national political

43:53

reporters picked up and,

43:55

and, you know, eyes were on her, right? So she

43:58

becomes the United States Senator. from California and

44:00

then she decides to run for president in

44:03

2020. And you've interviewed

44:05

her on the show at various times

44:07

over the years. Uh, uh, often the

44:09

relationship has, has persisted. And I know

44:11

you, you know, her, you know, you,

44:14

you, the California connections and everything else. And you've had her

44:16

on the show a bunch of times. I,

44:19

you then you have a thing, I think, and we

44:21

could talk all day about all of this and I'm

44:23

going to try to condense it into before we get

44:25

to like where things are in the race right now.

44:28

I would say, you know, there's no one who would

44:30

say her presidential campaign was a success. Um,

44:33

and in many respects it was, it was

44:35

a, it was a disaster. And she had

44:37

one fantastic, uh, she had a fantastic launch

44:39

in Oakland. I was there. Uh,

44:41

uh, she had a debate moment where she devastated

44:44

Joe Biden in the first debate, but pretty much

44:46

everything else was for Cocte in that race. And

44:48

then she becomes vice president, which

44:51

that at least for the first couple of years,

44:53

I would say the pre-dobs period, whether

44:55

you credit this or not, the general perception

44:58

was, uh, that she was

45:00

having a hard time. She definitely was not getting

45:02

good coverage. I would say that, you

45:04

know, it's been a, that, that a lot of

45:06

vice presidents have a tough first couple of years.

45:08

It's a shitty job, uh, where you get stuck

45:10

in a broom closet and given assignments that are

45:12

either ceremonial or things the president doesn't want to

45:14

do. She's not the first one to endure that.

45:16

It's hard to shine as vice president of the

45:18

United States, but the, the

45:20

female Obama, um, uh,

45:24

you know, do you compare and contrast there to

45:26

their rise, their rise, she had a rough patch

45:28

that he never experienced. He had some, some rough

45:30

patches, but nothing like a

45:32

very badly failed, uh, nomination

45:35

campaign, uh, democratic primary campaign, and then, uh,

45:37

a rough first two years of

45:39

the vice presidency. If you accept that as

45:42

a basic high level narrative, um,

45:45

do you, do you first kind of accept that,

45:47

but more importantly, when did you start to see

45:49

the turnaround

45:52

that put her in a position to,

45:55

uh, take over

45:57

in an extraordinary circumstance to become the

45:59

nominee. in July of a presidential

46:01

election year out of this incredible thing

46:04

that happened, unprecedented thing that happened, for

46:06

her to take up on that role

46:09

and step into it with grace

46:11

and sure-footedness and in many respects,

46:13

flawlessness in her performance at a

46:16

time when I think many

46:18

people didn't expect that. How

46:21

do you tell that story of how she went

46:23

through that rough patch and then came out the

46:25

other side, what we saw

46:27

in her from the time

46:29

that Joe Biden dropped out through the night of

46:31

her convention speech in Chicago? So

46:35

everything you just said is

46:37

completely factual, right? And

46:39

so what I, what's fun about

46:41

what I'm about to say is it doesn't,

46:43

I don't, I don't adjust any

46:46

of the facts, but

46:48

I see completely different outcomes at different

46:51

stages. And so I

46:53

was completely unsurprised by

46:56

her ability to take

46:59

the nomination immediately when Joe Biden stepped

47:02

out. The one thing I said to

47:05

in the, there was a year,

47:07

it wasn't just six months, there was a year

47:09

of people saying Joe Biden should drop out. And

47:11

what I would entertain that question on the show,

47:13

the one thing I wanted to point out to

47:15

everyone was if

47:18

that happens, the only person who can get

47:20

the nomination is the vice president for the

47:22

following reasons. Now pretty much

47:25

everybody who wanted Joe Biden to drop out

47:27

before that, they wanted Kamala Harris to drop

47:29

out. The first strategy was Biden's old, so

47:31

there'll be a lot of focus on the

47:34

VP. We should get a new VP. She's

47:36

very bad. And so they wanted

47:38

to dump her, you know, that was their first

47:40

move. And all of the advocates of Biden should

47:42

drop out, almost all of them did

47:45

not want Kamala Harris to be the nominee. They

47:47

absolutely didn't. They wanted Gretchen

47:49

and all these other people,

47:52

these imaginary candidates, they wanted to come in there

47:54

and steal it away. And there were a bunch

47:56

of reasons, which I won't bother to go over

47:58

now, that were both technical and political about

48:00

why it had to be Kamala.

48:03

And so that, I

48:06

always knew, if the move comes, that's what's

48:08

going to happen. It's what's going to have to

48:10

happen. And Joe Biden will do everything to make

48:13

it happen. Kamala Harris will do everything to make

48:15

it happen. But let me go

48:17

back to the part that is agreed

48:19

upon, generally, as a

48:21

failure, which is to say

48:24

her first presidential campaign. I

48:26

think that campaign was a

48:28

fantastic success, just a fantastic

48:30

success. Because what you have

48:32

to remember, when a

48:35

presidential campaign starts, there

48:38

are two finishers, president

48:41

and vice president. She

48:43

got the vice presidency in what

48:46

has become the normal modern way.

48:48

And the only way she could

48:50

possibly have gotten it from Joe

48:53

Biden as a nominee, which is

48:55

she ran for president. She

48:57

got out of the running for president part of

48:59

it, the primary part of it, as soon as

49:02

it made sense for her to get out. As

49:04

soon as she looked at it, she did the

49:06

very smart thing of dropout. As

49:08

soon as you know, it isn't

49:11

going to work. Don't stay in an extra

49:13

month, because that's going to cost you money

49:15

that you'll never get back. You'll

49:17

run up campaign debt. Poor

49:20

John Glenn, United States Senator, when he

49:22

ran for president, he stayed in too

49:24

long. He piled up presidential campaign debt

49:26

that lived with him for the rest

49:28

of his political career. And he was

49:30

trying to pay off presidential campaign debt

49:32

for the rest of his Senate career.

49:34

And those people who were stuck with

49:36

that in those days were these zombies

49:38

walking around the Senate trying to pay

49:41

off their presidential campaign debt. She made

49:43

the smart executive decision to

49:45

bail out of the primaries as soon as

49:47

possible when it was clear she wasn't going

49:49

to do it. Joe Biden

49:51

was on the debate stage with her.

49:54

She's the one person on the debate

49:56

stage who hit Joe Biden the hardest

49:58

in the very first debate. Joe

50:01

Biden watched that. Joe

50:03

Biden then gets down the road, becomes

50:05

the nominee. Joe Biden has

50:07

to choose a VP. He

50:10

had made it clear that he wanted to make

50:12

history with his VP choice, and he wanted a

50:14

black woman. That was

50:16

very clear to me every minute of that,

50:18

that it was going to be Kamala Harris,

50:20

every single minute of it. And

50:22

she had played it exactly right to become

50:24

that choice for VP. And

50:27

so she starts a presidential campaign, and

50:29

she ends up in the White House

50:31

in the number two position. That is

50:33

called coming in second. That

50:36

is not called losing. Everybody else in

50:38

that primary field lost and went back

50:40

to their old jobs or went to

50:42

oblivion. She

50:44

did not lose. She came in second.

50:46

Everybody always forgets that. There is a

50:49

second place, and she won second

50:51

place, and that's why she's on

50:53

her way to being president. And

50:57

when she was serving as vice president, she

50:59

got the worst coverage of any vice

51:02

president in history because she was the

51:04

most prominent vice president in history. She

51:06

was the first woman vice president. She

51:08

was the first black vice president. So

51:11

she attracted a kind of attention that

51:13

no one could have survived. There were

51:15

zero articles, zero articles about what a

51:17

bad job Lyndon Johnson was doing as

51:20

vice president, zero. Here's how

51:22

bad the job was. The Kennedys wouldn't

51:24

even talk to him. They wouldn't allow

51:26

him to have an office in the

51:28

West Wing. They didn't have anything to

51:30

do with him. This guy went from

51:32

being Senate majority leader to being nothing

51:34

in the Kennedy administration and basically hated

51:37

by Jack and Bobby Kennedy.

51:39

And nobody thought that was an interesting

51:41

article to even write because

51:43

no one thought there is a job

51:45

in the vice presidency anyway. And

51:48

so in the modern world of having

51:50

too many reporters with too many things to think

51:52

about, of course there were going to be an

51:54

endless stream of what a bad job Kamala Harris

51:56

was doing as VP. And I just

51:59

took all that stuff to be crazy. crap all the way along.

52:02

So I will say that we could talk about

52:04

this all day long and I don't, this is one

52:06

of these places where we really can have a common

52:08

set of facts and actually can also have two different

52:11

interpretive frameworks in which they're actually kind of equally valid

52:13

in some sense. But rather than spending

52:15

time on that, I'd like to say I do

52:17

think that one of the things that's true for

52:19

her as vice president was that the

52:22

Dobbs was a Dobbs and the

52:25

peculiarity of Dobbs coming to

52:28

the administration that had a president who

52:31

was distinctly uncomfortable talking about what turned

52:33

out to be one of the most

52:35

important salient political issues in addition to

52:37

a legal issue and a public health

52:40

issue, but political issues in our lifetime

52:42

an issue that transformed, turned out and

52:44

changed the face of who

52:46

participates in our politics and why, that

52:49

she had a president who was not comfortable

52:51

talking about that issue. And she

52:53

did it in a way that vice presidents

52:56

really are. Issues with political upside are

52:58

not things that presidents generally hand over to other

53:00

vice presidents. She got that and she made the

53:02

most of it. And I would say that her

53:04

performance, her performance or

53:07

public performance got better and better as she

53:09

got deeper and deeper on that issue. She

53:11

found an issue that she was

53:13

comfortable with, that she was passionate about. She found

53:15

a community of voters who cared

53:17

about it, who wanted a champion and embraced

53:20

her and that built confidence. And it's

53:22

why you and I think we're in the same

53:24

place where I was not surprised by

53:26

her sure-footedness because she had been getting, after

53:30

having I think a rough patch that

53:32

was some of it was manufactured, some of

53:34

it was real, she had found her

53:36

footing post-Dobs and had become formidable, had

53:38

gotten back to the kind of possible

53:41

female Obama space even before this moment

53:43

happened. She seizes that moment, we are

53:45

where we are now. Here's what I

53:47

would say, again, to try to condense a lot

53:49

into a small space. We

53:52

all know what the polling says, that

53:54

the race is incredibly close and

53:57

is going to be incredibly close through election

53:59

day and potentially. past election day. And

54:01

you might have the closest election in modern

54:04

presidential history. If the current polling

54:06

holds, who knows if it will, there's been a lot of

54:08

polling error last two presidential elections, but we

54:10

only have the data we have to go off of. I

54:12

think if you looked at, if there

54:15

was a thought

54:17

bubble over the

54:19

collective democratic political

54:21

class today, the

54:23

single sentence that would be in that thought bubble,

54:25

and I'm not saying they're right, I'm just saying,

54:27

you know, this is what the collective thought bubble

54:29

would be, is we

54:33

are so close to winning

54:35

this thing, but right now she's not doing

54:37

enough. She's not doing enough as something I

54:39

hear 10 times a day

54:41

from someone in professional politics, that

54:44

she's very close to closing the

54:46

sale, and she's

54:49

had these great big campaign moments, but

54:52

that, I mean, obviously the debate, fantastic,

54:54

the convention's beat, fantastic, the period of

54:56

time between becoming the presumptive

54:59

nominee and becoming the official nominee, fantastic,

55:01

but that right now she's

55:03

not, and these are not people who are like, oh, she's

55:05

got to do more network interviews. It's just that there's like

55:08

a, at this stage in the campaign,

55:10

the kind of ubiquity that you normally see from

55:12

a presidential candidate, especially when it's a close race,

55:15

a lot of events, a lot of untraditional

55:17

media events, a lot of traditional media hits,

55:19

just being out there and, and seeming like

55:21

you're campaigning, like your life depends on it,

55:24

has been something that people have not seen

55:26

of late from her. And

55:29

I think many Democrats in the

55:31

professional political class say, if she

55:34

can just take it up a notch, that

55:36

will be the thing because people still are out there wanting

55:38

to know just a little bit more about her. She's got

55:40

to do the reps. Do

55:43

you buy that? And if you don't, why not?

55:45

And if you do, do you

55:47

expect that that's what we're going to see from her in the next month? No,

55:50

I don't buy it for a couple of reasons.

55:52

One, she has, you

55:54

know, the best possible campaign team

55:57

you can have their professionals. who

56:00

know how to make these decisions. I've

56:02

never run a presidential campaign. I've never worked

56:04

in one at any level. I don't think

56:06

I know how to fly those planes. I

56:08

never think I'm smarter than the people running

56:11

the presidential campaigns of Democrats.

56:14

And everything you've said,

56:16

I have heard about every

56:18

single Democratic candidate for president

56:22

inside the game since I have been

56:24

inside the game. And some

56:27

of those Democrats won. But

56:30

exactly the same stuff was said about Bill Clinton

56:32

in 1992 and much,

56:34

much worse when he was running

56:36

third behind Ross Perot and

56:39

George W. Bush. So

56:41

I heard the highest levels of panic

56:43

ever among Democrats in 1992 about their

56:45

horrible candidate who ended up winning with,

56:47

by the way, 43% of the vote.

56:52

I heard the same stuff about John

56:54

Kerry. And he lost by the hair.

56:56

And you hear

56:58

the same stuff about Barack Obama, both times,

57:00

both times with Barack Obama. And so

57:04

by the way, just to say one thing, I

57:06

did not want to characterize that. I don't think there's panic. The

57:08

panic is not the time right now. I know

57:10

exactly what you mean. The stakes

57:13

of the election are really high. And people think she's

57:15

doing great. They just think you need a little bit

57:17

more, which is different from panicking. I've seen a lot

57:19

of bedwetting in my lifetime, too. Nobody's bedwetting right now

57:21

over her. No, I agree. I know exactly what you

57:24

mean. I don't want to compare it to the Clinton

57:26

panic, which was, I thought, by the time, by the

57:28

way, a legitimate panic. But

57:30

yeah, I mean, there's the same feeling about Biden in

57:33

2020. It was exactly the

57:35

same rumbles every single time. Those

57:38

rumbles are always there. And they will

57:40

never be quieted. We're never going to

57:42

have another 1996 where

57:46

Bill Clinton is running at certain points 17 points

57:49

ahead of the Republican nominee, Bob

57:51

Dole. That comfort zone is never

57:53

going to recur in

57:56

the foreseeable future. And so this

57:58

tension of, you know. people

58:00

in the back of the plane, you know, worried

58:03

by how much it's vibrating, it's

58:06

just gonna always be there. I simply

58:08

am not empowered to be smarter than

58:11

the people running the Democratic presidential campaign. I

58:13

just don't know how to do it better

58:15

than they do it. And I'm not one

58:18

of those people who presumes that I can.

58:21

And you, at this moment, you feel, your

58:23

feel that your confidence level at her winning

58:26

is at what level? High, moderate? Like

58:28

how do you? How confident

58:31

and comfortable are you right now? I think she's gonna

58:33

win. All

58:35

right, that's good. That's a very

58:37

crisp answer. We're

58:39

gonna take another break, and then we're gonna come back

58:42

and talk about the true love of Lawrence O'Donnell's life,

58:44

the United States Senate. So stick

58:46

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1:01:00

You argued for the Senate not to

1:01:02

convict Mr. Trump. And central

1:01:04

to his immunity argument

1:01:06

is the claim that a former

1:01:08

president who was impeached and

1:01:11

convicted by the Senate can be

1:01:13

criminally prosecuted. He was not.

1:01:16

Do you regret your choice? It's

1:01:19

part of the defense. I

1:01:21

don't regret anything I said, Dan. I

1:01:23

haven't taken anything I said then back. But

1:01:25

the answer to your question is going to

1:01:27

be in the courts. The Supreme

1:01:29

Court's going to decide that. What

1:01:32

do you think of that argument? I

1:01:35

told you what I thought. On

1:01:39

January 6th and February 13th of 2021, I stand

1:01:41

by everything I said then. But

1:01:46

the answer is in court.

1:01:49

The Supreme Court's going to determine that. You

1:01:52

stand by your description of Trump

1:01:54

as practically and morally responsible for

1:01:56

provoking the events of January 6th

1:01:59

and potentially. criminally

1:02:01

responsible and liable. I

1:02:04

don't know how many times you're gonna ask

1:02:06

me the same question. I stand by everything

1:02:08

I said on January 6th and

1:02:10

February 13th of 21. If

1:02:13

you didn't know who that was, unmistakable voice, the

1:02:15

dulcet tones of, even in his very, very,

1:02:17

very, very late stage of his life, Mitch

1:02:19

McConnell, you can pick that man's voice out

1:02:21

of a lineup. And Lawrence, without

1:02:24

diving, I did not play that to dive

1:02:26

back into the immunity questions. I

1:02:28

played that to say, we are now at the end of

1:02:30

the Mitch McConnell era. He's not gonna be

1:02:32

the Senate Majority Leader, or

1:02:35

the Minority Leader. We're gonna

1:02:37

listen to what status the Republicans have in the upper

1:02:39

chamber. And there's a leadership fight that's

1:02:41

now playing out, which we can talk about. But I first wanna

1:02:43

ask you this. You

1:02:48

and I first met, you

1:02:50

won't even remember this, but back in the day when you were

1:02:53

at the Chief of Staff of the Senate Finance Committee,

1:02:55

working for Pat Moynihan, I was a reporter at The

1:02:57

Economist Magazine, who worshiped Pat in

1:02:59

much the same way as you did, and thought he

1:03:01

was the bow ideal of what a United States Senator

1:03:04

should be. I still feel that way. A

1:03:06

once in a lifetime figure of

1:03:08

grand intellect and

1:03:10

political savvy and institutional

1:03:13

reverence for

1:03:17

that body. And

1:03:19

you wrote a motorcycle, I believe at that

1:03:22

time. You're at the motorcycle riding leather

1:03:24

jacket wearing relatively long haired rebel

1:03:26

in those days. But

1:03:29

you know that institution from that time. Direct

1:03:31

staff, instead of finance, people don't really understand.

1:03:33

It's like House Ways and Means, Senate Finance, the two

1:03:35

most powerful committees on Capitol Hill. If you're the staff

1:03:37

director there, you're one of a handful of the most

1:03:39

powerful staffers on Capitol Hill. And

1:03:42

you worked for Pat Moynihan, right? With

1:03:45

all of that said, it's why you're so good at talking

1:03:47

about anything that happens on Capitol Hill, like

1:03:49

the class of the field on television, talking about

1:03:51

this stuff, because you know it better than anybody

1:03:53

else. What do you as

1:03:55

McConnell comes to the end of his time? in

1:04:00

power. What do

1:04:02

you, how do you think history will judge

1:04:04

it? And what do you think Pat would

1:04:06

have thought of, of his reign as Senate

1:04:08

Majority Leader? Uh,

1:04:10

you know, I never, I'm very

1:04:13

uncomfortable answering questions about, uh, you

1:04:15

know, what would Pat Moynihan say?

1:04:17

And, and one reason for that

1:04:19

is, as you know, he was

1:04:21

so brilliant. He would say

1:04:23

something far smarter than anything I could

1:04:26

imagine him saying. It's a

1:04:28

little different, uh, actually, the way you've put

1:04:30

it to ask what he would think. Uh,

1:04:33

because I do know what he would

1:04:35

think about Mitch McConnell. It's

1:04:37

exactly what, what I think and feel he

1:04:40

would be shocked. He

1:04:42

would be absolutely shocked that

1:04:44

Mitch McConnell sunk to the

1:04:46

level that he sunk to

1:04:48

because in the 1990s Senate,

1:04:51

which was the last Senate Pat

1:04:54

Moynihan served in, he, he left,

1:04:56

you know, in, uh, 2000, uh,

1:04:59

retired and Hillary Clinton took over the seat.

1:05:01

Mitch McConnell was one

1:05:04

of the reasonable people on the Republican side

1:05:06

of the aisle. Mitch McConnell was one of

1:05:08

the people we could do business with. And,

1:05:11

uh, Mitch McConnell as, and this

1:05:13

is the long forgotten chapter of

1:05:16

his life, but Mitch McConnell as

1:05:18

the Republican chairman of

1:05:20

the Senate ethics committee recommended

1:05:23

the expulsion of

1:05:26

the Republican chairman of the

1:05:28

Senate finance committee, Bob Packwood,

1:05:31

uh, over a series of

1:05:33

sexual harassment accusations over

1:05:35

a number of years. Um, and,

1:05:38

and, and so, and, and by the

1:05:41

way, on the basis of the evidence

1:05:43

that kind of, that made sense

1:05:45

at the time in, although he

1:05:48

definitely could have recommended a lesser punishment.

1:05:50

And I think the Senate would have

1:05:52

accepted a lesser punishment for, uh, Bob

1:05:55

Packwood, but Packwood then resigned because if

1:05:58

McConnell's against him, that means. that 99

1:06:01

senators are against him and

1:06:03

it's just just to tell that

1:06:05

story shows you how inconceivable that is

1:06:07

today in the Senate today and

1:06:11

I don't want to get into grading

1:06:13

sexual harassment offenses but the

1:06:15

the offenses Packwood was accused

1:06:17

of were all the kinds

1:06:19

of things that a Republican

1:06:21

would now simply deny and it would

1:06:23

just be the so-called he said she

1:06:26

said you know two people in a

1:06:28

room alone and it like Brett Kavanaugh

1:06:30

would just deny it and and and

1:06:32

survive it you know so

1:06:37

you know the McConnell decline

1:06:39

from reasonable senator

1:06:41

and capable

1:06:43

of bipartisan action and capable

1:06:46

of simply seeing a wrong wrong

1:06:49

conduct and condemning it is

1:06:52

astonishing you know it's just

1:06:54

astonishing that that same person

1:06:56

could have corrupted everything about

1:06:59

Republicanism in the Senate

1:07:01

so horribly beginning

1:07:04

with basically seizing not beginning

1:07:06

with but highlighted by historically

1:07:09

seizing a Supreme

1:07:11

Court seat just taking it away

1:07:13

from the president of the United States you

1:07:15

know Barack Obama has a year to fill

1:07:17

a vacancy on the Supreme Court and

1:07:20

Mitch McConnell alone decides that

1:07:23

will not happen we will not allow

1:07:25

that which

1:07:27

by the way tells you exactly how

1:07:29

many federal judges would be confirmed by

1:07:31

a Republican Senate if if there's a

1:07:33

president Harris zero they won't fill a

1:07:35

single one not just a Supreme Court

1:07:37

but any of them and

1:07:40

so McConnell's corruption of the institution

1:07:42

is is horrific

1:07:45

you know I began the 21st century

1:07:48

as a supporter of

1:07:51

the the cloture rule

1:07:53

people call it the filibuster it's

1:07:55

not a filibuster it's the 60

1:07:57

vote threshold rule for cloture Filibusters

1:08:00

will always be legal. You can never eliminate

1:08:02

Filibusters because the Senate has the in the

1:08:04

Senate you have the right to speak for

1:08:06

an unlimited period of time We

1:08:08

have not seen any Filibusters. I mean I

1:08:10

saw one in my life in the 1990s

1:08:14

What we're seeing now are they're

1:08:16

not Filibusters. They're just procedural roadblock

1:08:18

stuff That is

1:08:20

possible because of the 60 vote threshold.

1:08:23

I supported that 60 vote threshold because

1:08:26

when We

1:08:28

used it on the Democratic side effectively more

1:08:30

than once, you know having 44 You

1:08:34

know Democratic senators preventing something

1:08:36

from happening that the majority

1:08:38

wanted But I

1:08:41

slowly you know You

1:08:43

know by by the time

1:08:46

we got to around 2010 actually had come to

1:08:48

the conclusion that no no We have to get

1:08:50

rid of this this culture

1:08:52

threshold this 60 vote threshold

1:08:54

because McConnell has poisoned the

1:08:57

entire system and now it's

1:08:59

just a ludicrous Nut

1:09:02

house, you know kind of Degraded

1:09:06

into something that for which

1:09:08

nothing works anyway So let's just

1:09:10

get rid of all this junk that

1:09:12

McConnell is using To

1:09:15

make the place worse every day. I just

1:09:17

it's it's the great tragedy, you know and John I

1:09:19

used to when when Trump was running and I thought

1:09:21

he was gonna lose I used to

1:09:23

amuse myself by saying oh to be so

1:09:25

funny to see him actually get elected president

1:09:28

and discover that the speaker of the house

1:09:30

is more powerful than he is and Discover

1:09:32

that the Senate majority leader is more powerful

1:09:34

than he is, you know Paul

1:09:37

Ryan will put him in his place and McConnell

1:09:39

would put him in his place and he'd discover

1:09:41

He's not in charge of any domestic policy at

1:09:43

all. It's entirely up to them legislatively and

1:09:45

I could not have been more grotesquely

1:09:48

wrong Right so do that

1:09:50

get is a perfect transition to the one thing

1:09:52

I want to kind of close on which is

1:09:54

looking towards the future About this on this front.

1:09:56

So McConnell is as I said is not gonna

1:09:58

be Senate leader in

1:10:00

the Republican leader in the

1:10:02

Senate, whether whatever status the party has

1:10:04

from from January of 2025 on

1:10:07

there is a leadership election that's

1:10:10

taking shape right now. The two primary candidates in

1:10:12

it are John Thune from South

1:10:14

Dakota and John Cornyn from Texas.

1:10:16

There might be someone who throws

1:10:18

jumps into that race later on. And

1:10:20

it seems to me the question of how to

1:10:23

deal with Trump, especially

1:10:25

if Trump wins, but even potentially if Trump

1:10:28

loses and still maintains a voice in the

1:10:30

Republican party, we could debate that all day

1:10:32

long. It's just a question. It's a, you

1:10:34

know, how are you going to deal with

1:10:36

that? And McConnell obviously had a very complicated

1:10:38

relationship with Trump. In some respects, he caved

1:10:41

to Trump. In other respects, he sometimes was

1:10:43

in fact, a hurdle, an

1:10:45

obstacle to Trump, a guardrail against

1:10:47

Trump in some areas. I want

1:10:49

to play John Thune, who

1:10:51

gets asked about this a couple of weeks ago in an

1:10:53

interview with the AP and just kind of

1:10:55

illustrates where John Thune is. And I

1:10:58

don't imagine that John Cornyn would say something a whole

1:11:00

lot different than this. He's asked about the fact that

1:11:02

he went down to see Trump and Mar-a-Lago recently. And

1:11:04

this is what he said. So we

1:11:06

were down at, uh, at

1:11:08

Mar-a-Lago and had a very, I thought,

1:11:10

constructive, productive conversation for a good

1:11:13

length of time. Um, where we talked

1:11:15

about if he was successful and if

1:11:17

I was successful, uh, you know, hopefully

1:11:20

in leading a Republican majority, how we

1:11:22

could work together to get some things

1:11:24

done. Are you confident

1:11:26

now that he would follow Democratic norms

1:11:29

like the peaceful transfer of power? I think

1:11:32

with respect to Democratic norms, my expectation is that he's

1:11:34

going to be, yeah, he's going

1:11:36

to follow them. Um, he's going to do things

1:11:38

clearly his own way and stylistically it might not

1:11:40

be the way I would do it or the

1:11:42

way any other former president has done it. But

1:11:45

in the end, the, the constitution, the

1:11:47

rule of law govern in this country,

1:11:49

that's our bedrock principle. Yeah, we can't

1:11:51

deviate from that. And, um,

1:11:53

and I would expect that, uh, if

1:11:56

he is successful, um, he will

1:11:58

govern accordingly and there are Certainly

1:12:00

a lot of us out there that will be working with him

1:12:03

to ensure that we're doing the right

1:12:05

things for the good of the country

1:12:08

and doing them in the right way. So

1:12:11

one of three things is true in that case.

1:12:13

Either John Thune is way stupider than I think

1:12:15

he is or he's much more

1:12:17

a gratuitous liar than I think he

1:12:20

is or he's just been sleeping through

1:12:23

all of Trump's term and more, more

1:12:26

relevantly what's happened after Trump left

1:12:28

office. How

1:12:31

do you read, not just Thune,

1:12:34

but how do you imagine this plays out?

1:12:36

Again, I think Cornyn would basically probably say

1:12:38

something very similar and anybody else who

1:12:40

runs for this job wouldn't be appreciably

1:12:42

different from what Thune said there. How do

1:12:44

you imagine this plays out if

1:12:46

Donald Trump does win in 2024 and

1:12:48

the Republicans are

1:12:51

the majority in 2024? How

1:12:53

do you imagine all of that plays out in

1:12:56

the upper chamber that institution you love

1:12:58

so much? Well, if Trump

1:13:00

wins, then he'll have more influence

1:13:02

over these guys than ever. And

1:13:05

John Thune will do anything Trump

1:13:08

wants him to do. In

1:13:11

the old pre-Trump version of the United

1:13:13

States Senate, this would be the time when

1:13:16

John Thune was rising to this

1:13:18

position and having been a loyalist at McConnell's

1:13:21

right hand part of his leadership team

1:13:23

all along and he would be close,

1:13:25

he would easily get a majority of

1:13:27

votes to be the Republican

1:13:29

leader of the Senate and carry

1:13:32

on in normal ways.

1:13:35

But Thune is, if anything, weaker

1:13:38

than Mitch McConnell. He's not a

1:13:40

stronger person than Mitch McConnell and

1:13:43

he certainly is not a smarter person than

1:13:45

Mitch McConnell. And so he

1:13:48

would completely surrender in every conceivable

1:13:50

way to Trump. Now if Trump

1:13:52

loses, it's a much more interesting

1:13:54

situation, you know, because my

1:13:57

belief is if Trump loses, he's,

1:13:59

you know, he is. occupationally at

1:14:01

that point full-time defendant Trump, criminal

1:14:04

federal defendant Trump and state defendant

1:14:06

Trump. And

1:14:08

he would have, I would

1:14:10

assume, next to

1:14:12

no power over these guys, that

1:14:15

the the constituent pressure

1:14:17

on them to do

1:14:20

what Donald Trump says, you know, on

1:14:22

the steps of whatever courthouse he's walking

1:14:24

out of that day, would

1:14:26

be pretty low. And for

1:14:28

Thune, you know, it would

1:14:31

be lower, I think, than most of them in

1:14:35

that position. And so, you know, and

1:14:37

then you've got this other dynamic, you

1:14:39

know, with Cornyn in Texas. I mean,

1:14:41

what if Ted Cruz loses the Senate

1:14:43

race in Texas? What does that do

1:14:45

to the Republican senator from Texas? What

1:14:47

does he begin to think about

1:14:50

his state and how hardcore Republican

1:14:52

he can be? And it

1:14:55

would also raise the question of what do the

1:14:57

Republicans in the Senate think of

1:15:00

voting for a leader

1:15:02

who's in a precarious position in a

1:15:05

state like Texas suddenly, which was never

1:15:07

precarious before. So it's the

1:15:11

interesting, the more interesting side of the dynamic,

1:15:13

actually, that's harder to game out and predict

1:15:15

is, you know, what's the Trump

1:15:17

effect in the United States Senate if he

1:15:19

loses? Yeah,

1:15:22

I, I, we

1:15:24

were, we were coming to the end of our time here

1:15:26

and we both got to go. I, if I

1:15:29

sometimes would like to start a separate show that would

1:15:31

be called If I Were That Asshole. And if I

1:15:33

were that asshole, I would go back and I would

1:15:36

play the last time you were on this podcast when

1:15:38

we, when we were still different guys,

1:15:41

you and Kurt Anderson came on in the last

1:15:43

week of January 2021. And I remember asking you

1:15:45

what you thought

1:15:48

would happen to Trump and you said,

1:15:50

he's a loser. He's going to be branded a

1:15:52

loser and he's going to have, he's

1:15:54

going to slink off tomorrow. I go, he's got no

1:15:56

influence over the Republican Party whatsoever. I, I,

1:15:58

I'm not I played it, it'd be

1:16:00

unfair to play it because that's what a lot of people

1:16:02

thought. I actually thought that myself. I

1:16:05

thought there was no chance that Donald Trump would be the dominant figure

1:16:07

in the Republican Party going forward. So if

1:16:09

I played it, I'd be doing a gotcha to me

1:16:11

as well as to you. But I will say, obviously

1:16:13

things are different now. He is a defendant. But

1:16:16

it may turn out to underestimate

1:16:21

the abject corruption and collapse of

1:16:23

the Republican Party to

1:16:26

suggest that Trump will have very

1:16:28

little power over it not because

1:16:30

he has a lot of time on his hands or

1:16:32

not because the criminal defendant stuff, the

1:16:34

defendant stuff on these various cases doesn't occupy him,

1:16:37

but that because the party is so debased at

1:16:39

this point that he wouldn't have to do very

1:16:41

much to still be the most powerful

1:16:43

person in the Republican Party. That is my one

1:16:45

caveat to your assessment. I know we could talk

1:16:48

about this all day long, but that's the one

1:16:50

thing I say. I just can't believe how thoroughly

1:16:52

debased and collapsed and corrupt

1:16:54

the Republican Party has become. I

1:16:56

mean corrupt in the ideological sense.

1:16:59

Jod, you should have a listener

1:17:01

warning whenever I'm speaking indicating

1:17:04

it's pure guesswork. This guy

1:17:06

is just offering pure guesswork.

1:17:09

Yes, well, but entertaining guesswork. It's great

1:17:11

to see you, Lawrence. Thank you for

1:17:13

keeping us entertained. You had an hour,

1:17:15

actually had an hour and seven minutes

1:17:18

worth of material. It's

1:17:20

great to see. It's always a delight and always a

1:17:22

pleasure. Fun job. Thanks, John.

1:17:25

Thank you very much. I'm John

1:17:27

Heilmann, chief political columnist for Puck,

1:17:29

where you can peruse my prattling

1:17:31

every Sunday along with

1:17:33

the work of Audisie John. I'm

1:17:35

John Heilmann. I work with a great audience

1:17:37

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1:17:40

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1:17:44

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1:17:46

If you dug this episode, please follow in politics with

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1:18:32

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