Defending Democracy
George Conway on What’s Wrong with Donald Trump and the GOP
George Conway was set to join then-President-Elect Donald Trump’s Justice Department, but decided against it at the last minute. Conway speaks with Marc Elias about why he refuses to support Trump, what made him speak out and his work to keep Trump out of office.
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This video was produced by Allie Rothenberg, Gabrielle Corporal and Paige Moskowitz. It was edited by Gabrielle Corporal.
- Broadcast on:
- 11 Oct 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
With only a few weeks before the November 5 election, Donald Trump is more unhinged than ever before. George Conway is here to discuss the state of the Republican Party, his pack that he's using to help defeat Donald Trump and how the Republican Party moves forward. Welcome back to Defending Democracy, I'm Mark Elias, let's get started. George Conway, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, Mark. So I want to start with kind of how maybe we got to the place we are, so after Donald Trump won in 2016, your name was floated as someone who might work in his administration, you turned that down and didn't do that. Yeah, I actually intended at one point to take that I was off through the job of head of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, and I filled out all the forms, they ran my background check, and I was interviewing people who were going to work underneath me while I was interviewing together with the designated person who was nominated to be Associate Attorney General, Rachel Brand, and then with the Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, and you know, I was kind of far along there, and then I just started having this queasy feeling like I don't really want to work in this administration, because I was just watching this shit show that was going on with the Russia, Russia, Russia thing, with a firing of Comey, and you know, the guy, it's just like the administration struck me, as I later put it, maybe, infillicitously, in a podcast like a year and a half later, which got me into big trouble at home, but I saw what I saw was a shit show in a dumpster fire, and I just got to the point where I just couldn't do it, and so I didn't, and I was one of the best decisions I'd ever made, although it would have taken a year for me to get confirmed anyway, but so, you know, I was somebody who wasn't a big Trump fan to start with in 2016, but I also wasn't a fan of a lot of other people, I kind of, originally I supported Ted Cruz, because I thought he was the most intelligent one of the bunch, I'm embarrassed to say, and then, you know, my wife got, you know, the last person standing was Trump, my wife ended up being the campaign manager at the end, and I thought that Trump would be, you know, Trump was green around the edges around politics, and he was kind of a wise-ass, and a kind of egotistical, but so are a lot of other politicians, and I figured, you know, the process, the fact of going into the White House and realizing the importance of the job to the country, and your role in history, and having good people around you would normalize him, and from the very beginning, I was like, this is what's going on with this guy, what is wrong with this guy, and so I didn't take the job, and I was puzzling over, like, what is this man's problem, and sooner or later, I kind of, I started reading stuff that I probably should have read a year before, in 2016, with people writing about his psychological unwellness, and in particular, I came across this great article, and Rolling Stone of all places, by a, the, the well-known, yeah, the psychological journal, you know, and written by a very, very fine writer named Alexa Morris, and it was pretty, a pretty straightforward article, she just went through, I mean, it was basically the title of the article was something like, does Donald Trump have narcissistic personality disorder, and I didn't know what narcissistic personality disorder was, I didn't take something, I took a cheap ass psychology course in high school, but you know, I didn't absorb any of it, and I didn't know about the DSM, and all this stuff that I now know a lot of fair amount about, and she went through the diagnostic criteria in the, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, um, volume of addition five, the fifth edition, for narcissistic personality disorder, and he checks every box, you need to take the grandiose-ness, and I learned that from that, I started reading more about what the shrinks had to say, and even though the shrinks are kind of muzzled by the Goldwater rule, which is a, which is really garbage, but you should just tell people what that, what that is. It's, it's an offshoot of a, a, a news article or a magazine article, written in 1964 about Barry Goldwater, where some shrinks basically said Goldwater was nuts. It was so embarrassing to the profession that they basically created a rule, um, that it's designed to keep them out of politics, it's designed to prevent people from, from, from diagnosing others from afar, um, but in this case, it really doesn't make any sense because we see Donald Trump, we, Donald Trump is the most observed person in the, in the observable universe over the past several years, and said, we know all about him, and we can see his behavioral characteristics. It's, you're, you're much more capable of actually diagnosing somebody, and there's, there's just no reason for it now, particularly with a guy like Donald Trump. In any event, um, it just became apparent to me that he had both narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, which is basically the DSM's, um, uh, definition of sociopathy, he's a sociopath, and sociopaths are path, you know, they're frequently, they're pathological liars, and they don't have any conscience or morality whatsoever, and they, and they have no remorse, and they're continually breaking rules and laws and norms, and that's, that's, you know, again, he checks all the boxes, and you only have to check about three of them out of the, out of the, out of the five or six criteria, and it came to that conclusion that, that he was basically unwell, and I also, I also, I know I wrote about it in the Atlantic, in a piece that actually was published five years ago, and a day, I mean, it was five years ago yesterday, um, because I, I, you know, I was a, I was a lawyer like you, I, I practiced a different kind of law, I practiced, um, you know, corporate litigation, a lot of it in Delaware, and I, you know, I, I learned about fiduciary duties, and that's what we litigate over, where the people are breaking their fiduciary duties, people who are fiduciaries to others, or fiduciaries to trusts, and the framers of the Constitution viewed public offices as trusts, as they should, and they viewed the presidency as the most, obviously, the most important, um, uh, office of trust, and precisely because he only cares about himself, and he's a pathological liar, and he checks all these boxes for these two psychiatric disorders, he isn't thoroughly incapable of holding and executing in a proper manner the office of President of the United States, he cannot, you know, he cannot put the law, the Constitution cannot put the people, he is incapable of putting anything above his own personal interest, and we've seen that time and time again, I mean, we're seeing it, now we're seeing reports of how he was, was wanting to punish some parts of the country for not voting for him by withholding disaster aid, we saw it January 6th, where basically he didn't care that he lost the election, you know, he, we see it, you know, he, he, he is absolutely the last person you want to have authority over your own life, and in that regard, you know, uh, even if you look at the DSM and the definitions of, of, of, of it's the psychiatric or the personality disorders, and you say, well, I can't, we're not, we're not qualified to make an assessment, even though these things were written in plain English, you're not a doctor, uh, I'm not a doctor, you, you see traits that you do not want anyone in a position of power over your existence, your life, your country to have, and he, you know, and by plain terms of these, these characteristics, he, these, these, these, these diagnostic criteria, he checks basically all of them, he's a sick man, and he's not somebody you want to trust with anything at all, you don't even want him running your ice cream stand, and so that's how I got into this, this whole thing, and, and, um, you know, it's been a bit, it, I think I opened a lot of people's eyes to it, um, particularly here in Washington, I think that, you know, the Atlantic article, which is 11,000 words long in 2019, got a lot of attention sort of in among the cognizant eye, and, you know, it, you began to see people referring to Trump's narcissism on television and in, and in newspaper op-eds, but the press is still terrified of going there, and I think, you know, and the resultant result of that is the normalization of Donald Trump. This is the why there's this double standard, so they've normalized him, um, by not treating him as pathological, which he she unquestionably is, and that's sort of the genesis of the pack that, that I've been running. So this is the question that I, I mean, I wanted to have you on for a lot to ask you a lot of questions, but I think the biggest question that I have for you is you are someone, if you really don't know your background, you were, you sell yourself a little bit short, you were a very accomplished lawyer at the most, or one of the most prestigious law firms in America, you were a very successful lawyer. Thank you. Your podcast more often, thank you. To, to the US Supreme Court, um, and you were a, you know, you were a, a conservative, you were an active conservative, you were, you were, you were, uh, you were in the Federalist Society, you, you were at the top echelon of, of the legal profession, and what I guess I don't understand is by 2018, certainly, you had started an organization, uh, I think called the Society for the Rule of Law. Right. It was, they call checks and balances, but yeah, we've since renamed it. Absolutely. Okay. And, but yet it feels like, um, you, what you saw so clearly, so many others who are smart people, like they're not, you know, I think the left, sometimes they make a mistake in thinking, oh, these are just a bunch of, you know, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis characters. That's not true. There are a lot of well respected conservative lawyers and conservative political figures, Ted Cruz, not a dumb man, you know, who have sort of, is it, do you think they don't recognize what you see, or do you think they recognize it and they don't care? Like what, how should I, as someone who is not of that world, understand why everyone didn't say yes, George, you're right. Well, that was, that has been the thing that I've struggled with the most over the past few years. I still cannot believe how many people basically shut their eyes and their mouths to what they were seeing with their very own eyes and what they could hear with their ears. And there are a lot of things in play. I mean, there's just, you know, just innate partisanship, not wanting to concede anything to people on the other side, who they've kind of demonized over the years because they felt attacked by them. And there's a big part of it, it's just grift, straight out, grift. I mean, people don't, they, you know, Ted Cruz lives off of this, right? He's, this is his career. He wants to be a podcaster more than he actually wants to legislate. You have all these political types like Cruz and others who basically, they don't, they want to keep their jobs and they realize they can't keep their jobs in public life as senators or congressmen or whatever, unless they basically keep their mouths shut about Donald Trump and pretend that he's okay. And, and, you know, it's a, and again, it's a big, big, big money machine. You look at Fox News, all right, Fox News. We saw the emails that, and texts that they sent to each other on January 6th, 2021. They knew he was crazy, they were trying to figure out how to talk him down like that. Hannity, we've got to, we've got to, we've got to talk, you know, we've got to talk him out of this stuff. They know he's nuts. That they, you know, and, and they, but they make too much money off. And, and then there's also social pressures, you know, to, to, to come out. I mean, I know a prominent federal judge who helped another federal judge get confirmed, they're both conservatives. And, you know, they ran into each other at some kind of out of wedding or something. And, and one of them became a prominent never trumper. I won't say who it is. You might be able to figure out who it is. And they ran into each other. And the, the, the sitting judge wouldn't give the, the former judge at the time of day. It was really, really kind of, you know, there's a lot of different things going on. And, and my intention one way or the other after this election is over is I want to write about that. I want, I want to, I want to understand, I mean, I want to, I'm going to write a book because it'll cover Trump's disorders and how they related to the operation of the republic in our political system. But why everyone went along with that is the thing that bothers me the most. And, you know, I saw it up close and personal. I mean, I saw it with my ex-wife. I just do not understand to this day the willingness of people to be, you know, to go on television with him and treat him like he's a normal human being. And let that hit that he's somehow good for the country. And, and I know they all know better. I think a lot of these people want him to lose actually. And, yeah, but, but, but they don't want to, they don't want to have their fingerprints on. So it's, it is just one, it is the most disturbing. And, for me, dismaying. And, you know, I feel like I was just naive. I was just naive. I mean, I was naive both about Trump that I didn't think our system could generate somebody this bad. And I didn't, couldn't believe that this our system wouldn't immediately spin them out if you were that bad. And, and the reason really was is because I couldn't believe that so many people were basically so craven and cowardly or so corrupted that they wouldn't speak out. And that to me is, I mean, it is, it remains shocking to me. Now, look, I, I can see it was easier for me than for a lot of others. Okay, because I think it was harder for you than most people. No, no, I think it was easier for me. I don't, I don't view myself as having any particular kind of courage or being, you know, angelic or in any way or valiant in any way. I mean, I had an advantage over a lot of people, which is, I did, I worked for three decades at the law firm you mentioned, Walktail, Lifton, Rosen, and Katz. I don't need the money anymore. I didn't need the job and the solicitor, I mean, not the, in the, in the Justice Department. I didn't need that job. I don't need a job. I, I, you know, I was, I was well off enough that I gave a million dollars to the, to the, to the, to the, the Harris campaign. And, and, and put some money in a pack. You know, my, my, my, kids don't necessarily like that because coming out of their inheritance. But one thing they can inherit that I really want them to have is a democracy. So, um, I had that advantage of being, you know, I mean, it's what in New York, they call it, you know, with bankers, you know, they, they retire, you mess with bank, they retire at 40 or 45 or whatever, you know, and it's called fuck you money. Well, that was, you know, I had the advantage of having fuck you money. And, and that, you know, but still I do not understand, even, you know, I don't understand how people can look themselves in a mirror, even if they don't have that kind of advantage. And a lot of those people really do. I mean, you look at, I mean, I don't, I don't look at a single somebody out because I think I respect them, but look, I like Dan Coates. Okay. Um, really good guy. And he knows, and you can tell he knows exactly how bad Trump is. Okay. And where is he? Where is he? You know, all these people who base, and you know, you look at, and again, I don't want to, I don't want to be critical of General Kelly, but General Kelly, because General Kelly has spoken out to a modest extent. Um, he has talked to the press about, you know, he, he's, he bought a book written by a bunch of psychiatrists to figure out when he was chief of staff, he bought a book written by a bunch of psychiatrists to understand how Trump was crazy. And he's told that story. And he's told the story about Trump saying that veteran, the, the, the, our, our honor dead in Normandy. Some cemeteries are were suckers and losers. He's, you know, he, he's spoken out, but he should be out there more. And he's got nothing to lose at this point. Okay, he's got a pension. And I don't understand, you know, I get it if you're just a, if you're just a small minion and, and you, and you, in your life, you're, you basically have no other source of income. I can kind of accept that. But, I mean, so many people just punted. And I don't know how they can look themselves in the mirror. And, and I think there's also up, there's also an aspect of it. And I think I witness this up close, is that nobody, people don't want to admit they are wrong. Okay, I admit, I was wrong to sport Donald Trump in 2016. I was horribly wrong. It was a horrible exercising judgment. I knew better. I should have known better. I should have paid more attention to what these shrinks were saying, for example, I should have, I mean, I was sort of baked into the, you know, this part is in mindset. And, and then of course there was the fact that my wife was running that campaign. And so I wrote for my wife. But it's just, you have to, at some point say, wait a minute, this isn't working out the way I thought reality isn't, isn't coming together the way I thought it would. Maybe I, maybe I, maybe I made a mistake in my line of thought, which is what happened with me. I struggled with it. But I came to the conclusion that there was something seriously wrong with the guy. What is it? And I, just a lot of people won't do that. Or even if they do it quietly to themselves, they, they, they realize is that if they admit that they're wrong, just a little bit with Donald Trump, you admit you're wrong. You end up having to admit the next thing and the next thing. And then you realize how much you fucked it up. And people are, they're too embarrassed to say that. And, and they're too committed to say that. And I just hope that, you know, what will happen in part, I mean, I think this is very true of, of, of a lot of the elites who support Donald Trump. But I also think it's true of ordinary voters. And one thing we can hope for on November 5th, is there are enough of them out there who, they don't have to go out and say I'm voting for Kamala Harris. Thank you. Thank God we're given a secret ballot. They can just say, okay, I'm going to fix this. And I was wrong. And they'll quietly cast a ballot for her. I'm hoping that there are these secret Harris voters. I think they're going to be. And I think it's one of the reasons why I think she's going to end up winning. But still, we're going to wake up on November 6th or, you know, God, it's probably not going to be November 6th. They'll be counting votes for days, and there'll be bullshit litigation as that'll keep you busy. You know, when it's all over, we're going to say how the fuck did 75 million people vote for this guy anyway? I'll be right back with more of my conversation with George Conway. But please take a minute to subscribe to Democracy Doc. It's free, daily and weekly newsletters. The link is in the show notes below. So this is my, this is my question. I spoke to Sarah Longwell and like she really illuminated some things for me that I had not really thought about. You know, I was involved in representing President Biden in the post-election in 2020. We had a lot of success. And I thought, amazing job. I want to, I appreciate it. You really do. An amazing job. And I thought that the fever would break. Like, I figured, all right, you know what, the one thing he's got going for him is he's a winner. But once he's not a winner, once he's a loser, and the world's, and the, and the Republican base sees that he's a loser, and the elite see that he's a loser, the fever would break. But yeah, I thought that too. And I particularly thought January 6th was going to be the end of it all. But you know, Mitch McConnell let him off the, let him off the map. And, and the fact that the Republicans did not go all in and saying, this is wrong, gave people the permit, you know, they essentially gave people permission to forgive Trump. And these, you know, these politicians were craven and cowardly. I mean. And you point to the media. You point to the media because one of the things that drives me crazy is, look, I think, you know, you don't have to agree with me. I think you are a hero because you have been so full-throated and you have, and I think you have, you know, given up a lot in that. I think, I think Liz Cheney is a real hero. You know, Liz Cheney was the number two house republic. She probably right now would be the speaker. Honestly, I mean, if you think about it, if she had just played the game, she would be speaker right now. In a normal, in a normal country with a normal Republican party, she would be speaker of that house. Absolutely. And she gave all of that up. She gave all of that up to tell the truth. And when, when you look at Elise Stefan, I could get the complete opposite, right? You look at, like, what those incentive structures are. And, you know, the fact is that I, I continuously find myself watching the media. And they are, like, on the one hand, they sort of acknowledge that Donald Trump, they get very upset, for example, when, like, when Donald Trump attacks the media, like that, like, but like, that is the third rail. We do not allow that. Right. But they otherwise don't seem to say, just like, with no equivocation, what he is saying is a lie. What he is saying is absolutely insane. Like, it is insane that he is giving talks about Hannibal Lecter. It is insane that he is talking about electric boats and sharks. And saying that he said that 70,000 or 80,000 people who saw, who went to Kamala Harris's rallies the week after she became the nominee, they were all fake, just right. So why doesn't the, what, I mean, I'm not, you're not psychoanalyzing the media, and it wasn't, you were an immediate lawyer, but like, what is it that the media seems to be unable to just say that? Yeah, I can. I mean, I think it's partly the, the refusal to confront pathological. And also it's the fact that there's been such a drum beat of, from Trump, of his insanity over the last seven or eight years, it's just not news anymore, he says, praise something crazy. I mean, you know, just pick anything he says on any given day, and if anyone else had said that, they would just, it would be the end. And he gets away with it because people have become inured to it. And it's a, it's a concept that, that psychologists and I think so, that psychologists calls malignant normality. And I, you know, I, if you want to watch, want to understand malignant normality and how it sort of, watch the movie downfall. I always urge people to watch the movie downfall. This was a German movie, about 15 years ago. It's subtitled in English. And it was basically about the last 10, 10 days in the fear about it. And it's like, well, I remember, I was watched that movie over and over again during the Trump years thinking, like, this is what this is what's going on when my, when my, my now ex wife goes to work. They just, they just live in their own world and they treat him as normal. And, and, and everybody else on the outside is attacking them. And it says, there's just a very, just a very weird culture. And it's, that's malignant normality when the completely abnormal and the pathological and the dangerous become accepted because you're used to it. And that's one of the, that is one of the problems we've got with Donald Trump is that people are used to it. And even if he loses, and even went after he loses in November, you know, we've got, we're going to have those 70 or 75 million people who thought it was still thought it was okay and normal. And I, you know, I, I, I despair at that. But, you know, I mean, at least we all overcome the immediate danger. Yeah. So, so you started Psychopack, which is like an unbelievable name. Anti-psychopath political action committee. Okay. So, you started this and you put your own money into into it as well as raising money from others. And, you know, the one thing I can say for sure is that there is no one who lives within the psych, the, the recesses of Donald Trump's head like you do. Like he is clearly obsessed with you. You have clearly gotten to him. Like you, you upset him to a degree. And so, my question is like, is the goal here to throw him off his game, which you are doing? Like you have done, by the way, in ways that I couldn't have even imagined. Like you're, you, you know, you play a prominent role in introducing, I think, one of the people who sued him to a lawyer, right? Like, like, is the goal here that you are trying to mess with his head? Or are you trying to persuade voters? Or are you trying to shame, shame elites? All of the above. Okay. When I started Psychopack, I had four objects in mind specifically. One is to explain Trump's psychiatric disorders. Second was to explain why his psychiatric condition is bad for the country and incompatible with the presidency. The third is to get the media to start talking about him in terms of his pathologies and not normalize him. And the fourth is, was to trigger him into manifesting those traits so that then, you know, you create kind of a vicious cycle where he, you say, he's nuts. And then he does something nuts. And then you see, say, I told you so. Um, and, and, um, and definitely achieve the fourth. Like he, he, you trigger him to be more psychotic. Right. But there is, there, the fourth one has a, has a corollary to it. I should, I, I realize now, but one of the things I wanted to do, and I, I hope I had something to do with it, um, it doesn't matter whether I had something to do with it. It makes me feel better than if I did, is to get other people to do it. I mean, I said four years ago, there either is a tweet laying out there somewhere where I said that the Democrats should be hiring in 2020. I said the Democrats should be hiring a, a panel of psych, of shrinks basically to figure out how to drive Trump nuts. And that it would pay off. And I've said it for the last year, I started beating that drum again. I mean, I was at a, I was at a, um, an event held by the, it was a stop Trump summit held by the new Republic back last about a year ago. And I basically said, you know, one of the keys here is to drive him nuts. He will take the criticism. You poke him exactly where, and he will, he will throw him off. And, you know, that's what I got to say. I mean, they started doing it during, you know, when, when, when the president was running, um, a little bit, but they, they, but they really run with that since, since Kamala Harris became, um, presumptive and then actual nominee. They really, you know, it was marvelous. I thought the way they have been Trump, you know, what, what she did during that debate, that was intentional. She was trying to provoke him into talking about things he doesn't want to talk about. He shouldn't want to talk about. He can, you know, his, his, his, his handlers, Trump's campaign people have a big problem with him. One, the fact is he can, you can manipulate Donald Trump. He's very easily manipulable. Ask, ask, ask Vladimir Putin. But he, he can't, you can't control him. Ask anybody who worked in his White House or anybody who's working right now in his campaign. And you can basically manipulate him into doing things that are against his interest. And he, and, and then he, he gets, he even gets defensive about that. I mean, the people were talking about how, how Vice President Harris laid all these traps for Trump at the debate, but criticizing him on certain things. And, you know, he, he can't help but to respond and get defensive about crowd size and whatnot. Um, just the other day he was saying, people say, Kamala Harris laid a trap for me. There's no trap. I did not fall into a trap, blah, blah, blah. As he is jumping back into the trap, you know, I mean, that's, he cannot help himself. I mean, he, he is so incapable of focus on things that actually should matter, the things that he should be talking about. Although, you know, he's going to lie anyway, when he talks about these things. He is so psychologically unfit that you can just, you can just pluck with him the way that way I've been doing with these ads. And, and, and thank goodness, the way the Democrats have been doing it. I mean, you know, I would have thought for, for eight years ago that you would see Barack Obama on, you know, a national television at a national, at the Democratic National Convention saying, making this gesture about crowd size. Okay, that was designed to fuck with the guy. And it did. And it worked. It's, it's still working because he's talking about, you know, he, he can't stay on message for a moment. He just some, some, as soon as you sort of lob, one, lob an attack on him about something he sensitive about. And that's a sensitive about a lot of things, his popularity is losing that 2020 election, his own, his intellectual capacity, his, his, his cognitive ability, whether or not he's suffering from dementia, all of these things are swirling around in his head. And he can't read from a fucking teleprompter as a result, even his, even his own convention speech, his acceptance speech was right. He was like, he was okay for like the first 20 minutes because he was following the prompter. And then people saw, wait a minute, the prompter's not moving and he's making no sense. And he did it for another, I don't know, 45 minutes to an hour. Okay, he can't help himself. He completely lacks self-control. He exists in this state of narcissistic rage. And you know, it, it, it, it, it, he should be no, in no position of authority to affect anybody's lives. It should be in prison, actually, but in your, in your non-psycho, psychiatrist, expert opinion, you're lawyerly. It feels like he's getting worse. He is getting worse because the condition makes him worse. Or is he suffered from dementia? Like, you're, like, all of these definitely worse than he was in 2016. All, all of the above. I think it's a combination of age. He, he doesn't get enough sleep. I'm sure he's a terrible diet. He's aging. And he's, he's also under a lot of pressure because he knows that this time, he's not just running for president. He's running from prison. This is his only way out of, of, of, of his criminal convictions is to be elected president, in which case, even I would agree, you know, you can't, you can't incarcerate a sitting president. I know you went to some of the trial. Is it true he fell asleep at his own criminal trial? Because that seems, that, that's weird. It is weird. But I think partly is he, you know, first of all, I think his sleep patterns are erratic. I mean, any, any, a lot of mental health professionals point that out and you can see it in the tweeting in the middle of the night. I know he's sometimes all of us wake up in the middle of the night, but he, he, he, he lives a nightmare at night. And I don't think he gets enough sleep. I don't think, you know, I, I don't think he's in the best physical condition. But I also think part of what he was doing there was he realized that, you know, he could, he could actually get thrown in jail for contempt and behave in the wrong way. When, when, when, I mean, she was held in contempt essentially with 10 times and sooner or later, he was going to end up, you know, in the jail at 111 Center Street, 100 Center Street or something. And he, you know, and, and I think he kind of was tuning out. I think that was part of it. I think he was trying using his, his mental, what little mental abilities he has to kind of tune out. And I think he was also exhausted. So I think that's part of what was going on there. But, you know, he still managed to, to hurt himself in the courtroom with his, with his antics. I mean, set aside the, the copious evidence, you know, that there was, you think he, his demeanor or, or I don't think his demeanor helped him. I don't think falling asleep in front of the jury and dozing off in front of the jury and then making faces every so often. I know, no, no trial lawyer will tell you that's a good idea. But also he caused his lawyers to do some inexplicable things that things that they, I mean, Susan, Michelle is, is a terrific lawyer. And even she was prone to it. They were basically, you know, spending time making sense, senseless attacks on witnesses that didn't really advance the ball for them, but satisfied the, the narcissistic urges and, and, and rages of, of their client. And I think some of that stuff backfired on them. I think the, the examination of Stormy Daniels went on for way too long. And it was way too meandering. And if you, you know, if you do cross examination for too, for too long, you get, you know, and it's not confined to asking the yes or no questions can only go one way. And you're just badgering the witness and the witness is smart. The witness gets a free shot at you. And, and, and, and she's not, she's, she's no dummy Stormy Daniels. She gave it right back. And really, you know, I, they did themselves some harm. I wrote about it in the Atlantic. I can't remember all the times they did it, but they, oh, yeah. And then put that guy, they put some guy on at the end there to testify about what Michael Cohen had told him. And, you know, it was a disaster. That just backfired. They just all took the stuff that backfired. And, and, um, you know, the, the, the go back to Stormy Daniels, they should have just said, yeah, they should have just did a five-minute cross and got off, gone on, gone on and off because it doesn't, you know, what, what she says doesn't really matter. You know, there was no point in contesting whether or not there was a set, there was sexual activity going on. The question is what, whether he made the payments to help cover up the claim. And that, and that, and, and so they basically should have said it doesn't matter what he did. I mean, he denies it. She says it happened. And, but let's focus on the issue in the case, which is the books. You're addressing something that I get asked all the time. And I'm curious your perspective because you may know more Republican lawyers than I do, or you probably know more lawyers than I do. Um, but, you know, I get asked all the time, is does Donald Trump have bad lawyers? Does he have bad cases? Or does he make good lawyers make marginal cases bad? So what I say is that like, yeah, Judy, really, Julie and Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell were like ridiculously not good lawyers, but that he actually has like you on paper. Some of these lawyers are actually seem to be very qualified lawyers. And I think Donald Trump's making them worse lawyers. But I'm curious what your take on that is. It's exactly what you say. First of all, he's the, he's the worst client in the world. Okay, he doesn't follow your instructions. But maybe if he follows them, he only follows them for like a few minutes. And then he goes off and does something stupid. He doesn't pay his bills. And as a result of that, a lot of people would not represent him. I remember in 20, way back in 2017, after Rod Rosenstein, um, issued the special counsel appointment order, he began looking for personal counsel. And I was actually one of the people he consulted. Um, I was sitting in my office at Wattelipton. And my, my then wife calls me and says, the president is going to call you in a few minutes. He wants to ask you about some lawyers. And sure enough, lo and behold, a few minutes later, Donald Trump calls my office. And I'm talking to the president of the United States about, he's asking me of my opinions about, you know, Tetleson, Watteleson that wouldn't end up going to work for him anyway. But about, about the former US attorney out in Chicago, Dan Webb, you know, he went through a whole list of people. And I gave, you know, I gave him to the extent I really, to the extent I was in a position to give them opinions, I gave them. And there were like 15 other people in the room. It was bizarre, the vice president was in the room. Jared was in the room. I mean, just the lines previously. It was just the most bizarre thing. But the fact of the matter is that all the, well, a lot of those very good lawyers that he mentioned would not represent him. They would, they, you know, and their partners certainly would throw a fit if they tried. And that's, you know, I mean, because he's such a bad, bad potential client, which is why he ended up with, you know, a retired, semi-retired solo practitioner, Jim Dow. Okay. And who, you know, who was a good lawyer, that limits the number of people who will, who will take him on. And, and people don't want to have their reputation as besmirched by him. You know, he occasionally gets a bit. The lawyer he had who represented him at the first aging carol civil trial was a criminal defense lawyer. He was a very smart criminal, crafty criminal defense lawyer. And he, you know, basically he quit after that, that case. Okay. He quit after that case. And, you know, because basically, the judge is saying to him, you know, is he going to testify? Is he going to, is he going to come? And, and, you know, Trump was making all sorts of statements out of publicly. And his lawyer clearly was advising him not to testify because his testimony would have been a disaster for him. He would have been propped. He would have been blown to smithereens on grass. And basically, the judge started feeling sorry for the guy because he realized this guy had no control over his client. And so he basically, and then, you know, the trial in Manhattan on the, on the, on the criminal trial, the stormy trial, I mean, they did some really bizarre things, basically, because he, I don't think they, he, I don't think he would have tolerated it if they had not done it. And so he does all three things. One is he, he's such a bad client and that, that people don't want to work for him. So he gets a lower, he gets fewer really good lawyers to work for him. And then the last is that he, you know, he makes whatever lawyers he does have worse, even if they are good, he makes the worse. And because they have to end up taking stupid positions and doing stupid things to please him. And, and that's, that's, that's, he's his own worst enemy. Yeah, so in the reigning few minutes we have, I want to ask you about the future here. So let's, let's assume that you are right and Kamala Harris prevails. And I know you are, I know you are not, you know, a regular insider anymore within the Republican Party establishment, but you're a pretty good observer of politics and, and politicians. What does the Republican Party do? I think the Republican Party may be in its death throes. And if, if Donald Trump loses, and here's the reason. This is my simple logic, not based upon anything, you know, any information that, that you don't have or that any of the rest of us don't have this. But think of what happened here. He's taken the RNC. Now, he fired all these, they fired everybody at the RNC and made them reapply for their jobs. He moved the RNC down to Florida. He put his daughter in law in charge of it, and he merged it with his campaign. Now, what happens to political campaigns after the candidate loses? They disappear into thin air, like they never existed. Though, you know, all of a sudden, you had all these busy people with all the phone banks and all paper flying around and running all over the place in the company. And then you have empty office space. And no, everybody goes their own separate ways. That's what could happen to the RNC because it basically has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump campaign. And that's, that's at the national level. Now, let's look at the state level. There are the state level. There are literally these political blood baths going on in Michigan, Arizona, where you have the semi-normal maggas, who are, you know, they're just run of the mill, spineless Craven Republicans, who support Trump because that's their meat, that that's their meal ticket, and would support someone else if somebody else were in charge, and then the real, you know, the Carrie Lakes and the Laurel Loomer types and the MTG types. Okay, who basically want to burn everything down and they don't, they don't care, they don't actually care about winning elections. It's all, it's all this sort of performative nonsense and, and, and, you know, those state parties are, are in a state of paralysis. And, you know, he, he, I don't know if there's a viable Republican party or a viable Republican establishment after this is all over. What's wild is that, you know, I have worked on lots and lots of campaigns, and Chris Lasavide is not a dumb man. No. Susie Wile built the Republican party of Florida into a very, very, very formidable institution, and they did it because they understood the mechanics of winning elections. They understood the strength of, for example, vote by mail. They understood the, the importance of doing field. They understood the, the importance of, as you say, a strong party independent of a campaign, because that party over time gets better and better and better from candidate to candidate to candidate. And I don't know if they are just like not empowered, whether they have drunk the Kool-Aid, but like, I don't understand why they are allowing Donald Trump to, to continue to bed mail vote by mail, to say, I don't care if people vote, I, you know, to, to do those things. You know, I'll maybe end with your thoughts. Because they can't, you think, as I said, you can manipulate him for a little bits of time, but you can't control him. You can't script him. I mean, the only reason why we're here today was that he was scripted for a while, like, for about six to eight weeks before the 2016 election young started reading from teleprompers. I mean, he'd go off script occasionally, but that was the, that was the one time and somehow my ex-wife got him to be disciplined, rough, not, not 100%, but like, got him up to 70 or 80%, like he was like a real candidate for a few weeks. That never happened again. And it's not going to happen now, because what happened is he became, you know, his egomaniac got in the way. I mean, he didn't really expect to win in 2016. And then after he won, after he won, and he was president for a year, he began thinking like, I'm smarter than everybody else. Trump thinks that he's the genius that won the 2016 election, and that he's, he's such a genius. He doesn't want to, he doesn't need to listen to anybody else. And, and, you know, he'll listen a little bit here and there and he'll take some things here and there, but he doesn't want to be told that he's born or that he's fallible and that he's made mistakes. And that's the problem you have when you, when you're trying to try to get Trump to do something as, as, as La Civita and, and Wiles are certainly have been trying to do is that when you start being a nag to him, he tunes you out and you're telling him, you got to stick to this. You can't don't talk about Hannibal Lecter. They had somebody must have said that to him. And what he does is he goes out, if you say, don't talk to the Hannibal Lecter, he'll go out the next day and say, they're telling me not to talk about Hannibal Lecter, and then he starts talking about Hannibal Lecter. And I have a theory about what happened with, you know, this late, late, this, this whole bit about I'm a protector of women. I think, you know, he saw some numbers that was pointed out to him that he's doing shit poorly among women by, you know, by 20 or 30 percent, some, as bad as anybody ever has, and he needs to shore his, he needs to shore up the female vote. And, and then somebody must have told him, look, you know, you're, you, the women will will support you that in the, if they perceive you as a strong and stable leader, they, they want somebody to protect them. Okay, they, they like that in a leader. Okay, somebody said, probably said something, you'll just like that, Tim. And then he goes out and says, I will be your protector. Right. And this is like, no, that's not, you don't say it that way. Okay, you don't do it that way. That's a dumb way to do it, because it, you know, for the obvious reasons, it makes it look like a fool and makes it and, and, and sort of raises all the sex stuff. It's just like, and, and I think that's what happened. I think somebody in particular went down there, I won't say who, and, and talked to him and, and he garbled it. I think it's just like how he got to talking about injecting disinfected and shining lights and light that the people's bodies to get rid of COVID. They briefed him just before that press, presser that was daily pressers that were the one, that fateful one, were the last ones he had. And they said, you know, some, some scientists type said, you know, they're doing research into whether or not you can clean off this table with, with, with Lysol, and will it, will that kill the COVID virus? So, or can you shine a UV light onto the table to tick tickle? And he garbles that in his, his, his inadequately staffed brain to, oh, we can, we can, it's a, it's a therapy for, for human beings. We'll just inject them with, with Clorox or something. And that's, that's, you know, that's, he can't help himself. His, his brain is warped, and he garbles everything. And at the same time, you can't tell him, sir, you've garbled that. Sir, you've never, you didn't win any people have been pointing this out for years. You never won a man of the year award in Michigan. Sir, you know, you know, you can't tell him that. Sir, don't talk about Hannibal Lecter. You know, you, you tell him that. And basically, you know, he's like, he's, he is like a five-year-old kid with, well, actually, even not even that. You tell him not to do something, and, and, and there's this oppositional defiance where he goes out and does it. And that's sort of part of, I think what the Democrats are doing now, and what I've always urged people to do, is you, you, you get into his head, and he's going to garble it and fuck it up some way. And that's, that's why he's completely unmanageable. It isn't Susie Wiles' fault, and it isn't, it isn't Chris Lasabita's fault, although I, you know, I have utter contempt for them, for, for enabling this man, as I do with all these other people. I mean, they're doing it, they're not doing it because they believe him, and they're doing it because he's the only game in town, and they, and, and, and they're doing it for the money, and, you know, the country be damned. And that's, you know, that's, that's the sad thing about it all. That is the sad thing about it all, and it is the reason why I wanted to have you on, because you are someone who is putting the country first, and you have done that consistently, and you, you have my admiration and, and gratitude, and I know you have the admiration and the gratitude of millions of Americans. One of the things I always tell folks is that 20 years from now, when this moment has passed, your children and grandchildren are not going to ask you what, where you stood on marginal tax rates. They're not going to ask you about in what inflation was like in, in, in 2024. They're going to want to know when democracy was at stake, what did you do? Not how did you feel? Not what did you read, but what did you do? And you're going to be able to tell people that you did everything you possibly could when democracy was at stake. I still feel like I haven't done everything I can, but I'm getting there. You, you, you are. So thank you for joining me today, and thank you for everything you're doing. Well, thank you, and thank you for what you do. Thanks for joining. To stay up to date on the latest voting rights and democracy news, make sure you're subscribed to Democracy Dockets Free, Daily and Weekly newsletters. We'll see you next time. Defending democracy is a production of Democracy Docket LLC.