PODCAST: Bill Moyers and Heather Cox Richardson (1)
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Moyers on Democracy. President Trump urged his followers to come to Washington for a “big protest” on January 6th. He wanted their help in reversing the results of the election he lost. “Be there,” he said.“ (It) will be wild.” And they came. By the thousands, they came, and sure enough, it was not only “wild,” as the President had promised, it was worse. Much worse. The protesters became a mob, stormed the US Capitol, drove the vice president and members of the House and Senate out of their chambers, and turned a day meant for celebrating democracy into a riot that sought to overturn a free and fair election. Across the country and around the world people watched, horrified, dumbfounded and disbelieving, as insurrection incited by the president of the United States and his Republican enablers struck at the very centerpiece of American governance. Here's Bill Moyers, to talk about that day with the historian Heather Cox Richardson.
BILL MOYERS: Good morning Heather, glad you could join me.
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: It's always a pleasure.
BILL MOYERS: It's the morning after what happened in Washington, the insurrection. Did you believe your eyes when you were watching those events unfold on the screen?
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: I believed them and I wept. And I am not exaggerating. Seeing that Confederate flag, which had never flown in the Capitol during the Civil War, and it had never flown in the Capitol in the 1870s, and it had never flown in the Capitol during the second rise of KKK in the 1920s, going through our people's government house in 2021– the blow that that means for those of us who understand exactly what was at stake in the Confederacy. That image for me, of the flag being carried through the halls was, I think, my lowest moment as an American.
BILL MOYERS: Interesting because I kept seeing the flags all afternoon: the Confederate flag, American flags flying upside down. Flags with the name “Jesus” on them, “Jesus saves,” “Jesus 2020.” A big, burly protester carrying a flag on a baseball bat that seemed as big as his arms. He paused long enough just to give the camera and us a middle finger. Joe Biden keeps saying, this isn't America. It's not who we are, but it is America. This kind of character and this kind of conflict and this kind of meanness are a big part of our history. Is there any hope for Biden's aspiration to unite us again?
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: These people have always been in our society. And they always will be in our society. What makes this moment different is that we have a president who is actively inciting them in order to destroy our democracy. We certainly have had presidents who incited these sorts of people before for one end or another. But at the end of the day, every president until now has believed in democracy. And this one does not. He wants to get rid of democracy and replace it with an oligarchy that puts him and his family at the top. The same sort of way that we have oligarchies in Russia now, for example. Biden cannot combat these people alone. This is a moment for Americans who care about our democracy and who care about returning to our fundamental principles. And finally, making them come to life to speak up, to push back, to insist on accountability and to recognize that we are, in fact, struggling for the survival of our country, not simply talking about, “Oh, I like this politician” or, “I like that politician.” And if we do that, will we win? Absolutely. But making people do that and getting people to understand how important that is is going to be a battle. And it's one that, by the way, we've been in before, and lost. This is the same sort of battle we fought at the end of Reconstruction, when most Americans sort of went “Whatever.” And we ended up with a one-party state in the American South for generations. And that is exactly the sort of thing that they are trying to make happen across America itself.
We are, in fact, struggling for the survival of our country, not simply talking about, ‘Oh, I like this politician' or, ‘I like that politician.'
BILL MOYERS: What do you think happens to those we saw on the screen yesterday, those who invaded the Capitol, the core of our congressional system? What do you think happens to them when they discover that Trump and the Republican Party have been lying to them? That the election wasn't rigged, it wasn't a hoax. What do they do?
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: A lot of them will never realize that. You know your psychological studies. A lot of what we used to call brainwashing can't be undone and won't be undone. And they will go to their graves believing that this was a stolen election. But some, and you could see them on their faces yesterday, some people sort of went, “Well, wait a minute. This was supposed to be the storm. We were supposed to be having a revolution. And it didn't happen. We got into the Capitol building. We did our part, and there was nobody there to greet us and to help us take over.” And what's interesting in a moment like that is there are two things to do: you can go deeper into your delusion, or you can turn on the people who took you there in a really powerful and passionate way. And this is one of the reasons this moment is so fraught is a lot of people might be waking up and going, “Wait a minute. They lied to us. They changed their minds last night and they made Biden president.” And you can see if you're watching QAnon. They're sort of saying, “Well, wait a minute. I'm sure Trump has an even deeper plan.” Which, of course, puts him in a bind because he can't now say, “Oh, never mind. I didn't mean this,” because then he's going to lose their loyalty. So, we're in this fraught moment. But I think people will either go ahead and continue to believe and this will a rump group that we are going to have to be dealing with for many, many years. Or some of them will become some of our most vocal opponents of people like Trump.
BILL MOYERS: Seventy million people are not really a rump group, are they? They constitute a sizable portion of the American population. You think they'll drift away, those who are just seeing Trump as a sort of spokesman for their grievances and someone who could put the establishment on notice? Or are they in this for the long run?
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: I think it's really important to distinguish between people who voted Republican in the last election and people who actually stormed the Capitol yesterday. For all that we saw yesterday was horrific and the rioters that protested outside of some state capitals, there really weren't that many of them. And a lot of people who went ahead and voted Republican would not have endorsed what happened yesterday. So, the thing that I am watching is the fact that so many people will vote for their political party no matter what it does. And one of the things, as you know, that I've talked about for a long time is Republicans stepping in and reclaiming their party because I think they really could steer some of those Republican voters back into the American mainstream. And you can see that battle going on at this very moment as there's this dramatic split between the formerly establishment Republicans who went ahead and supported Trump for all these years. People like former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, or the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham. Or many of the other establishment Republicans who have stepped in and said, no, we're not going to go ahead and pretend that Donald Trump won this election. He did not. And you can see them trying to take back the Republican Party and move it back away from the QAnon supporters, away from the Trump supporters. And then you see the Trump supporters taking their own off-ramp into a more radical direction. And if that split really happens, I worry a lot less about those 70 million people because I think they will vote Republican. Not a lot of them will end up going down what is absolutely a neo-Nazi, white supremacist direction.
BILL MOYERS: But as I watched, I was taken with a couple of still photographs of the members of Congress after the invaders got inside, who were being evacuated. They got their gas masks out from underneath their desk and began to proceed. Three in a row that I saw were what I would call political agitators from within. They were people who supported Trump's argument that the election was a hoax and was rigged. And they had the most bewildered look on their faces as to what was happening. And as I watched, I got angry with all those people who stoked the fires of dissent and, when it got out of control, acted surprised, like those members of Congress who were being led out. But once you whip up fury with people you've lied to, you can't just brush them off with a shrug of your shoulder. And you can't just say, I have no responsibility for what happened. I only asked those people to vote for me. I didn't ask them to attack the Capitol. What happens to those members of Congress, those political figures who actually encouraged what happened yesterday indirectly by agreeing with and embracing Trump's lies that the election was a fraud? What happens to them?
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Well, of course, they were making the calculation that it was worth supporting what Trump was alleging because they wanted to pick up his base for elections in 2022 or 2024. And that's exactly what Josh Hawley was doing, the senator from Missouri who went ahead and signed early on to supporting the House Republicans who were going to challenge Biden's electoral votes. And then, of course, Ted Cruz from Texas jumped on board because he's terrified that Hawley was going to undercut him for the 2024 nomination. So, to them, it was a game. It was a calculation. You know, “Biden's going to get the presidency. We know he won it fair and square. Trump has lost all of his lawsuits. This is a really safe way to go ahead and signal that I'm going to honor him, and I'll pick up his voters.” And to them, it was a game. And what they discovered pretty quickly was, it wasn't a game to the people to whom they had seemed to promise their loyalty. Josh Hawley is done because that photograph of him making the power sign to the rioters, yeah. His career is done. And Ted Cruz is also in a terrible spot because, if you recall the timing, he had given a really incendiary speech while they were already marching toward the Capitol. So last night, those two senators doubled down because they really don't have anywhere else they can go. But it was interesting to see the people who hadn't been that exposed took the off-ramp. Yesterday morning, 14 senators said that they were going to object to the counting of electoral votes from Arizona, which is one of the states that Trump said he was contesting. But by the time the vote actually happened last night, only six of them went ahead and objected to it. But you can see them going, I didn't mean that. I didn't want to be part of that.