The Washington Roundtable Live: The Backlash Midterms

23:34Jane Mayer:Has it, quote unquote, resulted with the same alacrity that Woodward Bernstein's reporting on Watergate did in the 70s? No, it has not. Because there are other institutions at play here, and you have an absolutely obedient Congress and a Supreme court, too, that has acted the way it's acted at times. So, you know, we can't do everything. It's not all heroic, but I do think there is still an active, rigorous press, and not just in these main institutions, but in other areas as well. I don't want us to leave the vast and splendid subject of corruption too efficiently. Actually, just recently, in fact, Rahm Emanuel has been saying that the Democrats in this election are not doing enough to connect this question of corruption with affordability, which is in its way sort of the watchword.

24:25Jane Mayer:I don't agree with everything Rahm Emanuel says, and why should I agree with everything anybody says? But I think he's right. And I think he's drawing his conclusion from a set of foreign examples, not least Hungary, where Viktor Orban is guilty of many authoritarian sins, but clearly the sin that was most lurid in the eyes of the Hungarian electorate was self-dealing. You saw this in the Ukrainian elections of sainted memory, and it led to the Orange Revolution. Once the Ukrainian public discovered that their Russian-friendly masters, as Susan knows only too well, were building vast houses and zoos and, you know, the usual banal set of emollients, that was it.

25:08Jane Mayer:That was it. There are some subjects that are just as outrageous in their way, but they don't play with the voters quite the same way. And in some ways, actually, that Rahm comment was a very interesting one to me because I do think there is an element. Let's be real. Democrats are going to engage in self-flagellation up until the very moment in which occurs. One of the best ads I've seen so far of this election cycle is the easiest one that Donald Trump has teed up, which is the recent quote of him saying, you know, I don't think about Americans' financial situations. Now, if Democrats as a party can't win an election after the president of the United States has served that up.

25:45But interestingly, the ad, which is being run in different versions in different congressional districts, what is it? It's very simple. It's Donald Trump's, you know, the clip of him saying, I don't care about Americans' financial situation. Then it flips to him talking about the ballroom.

26:01Jane Mayer:I think there's a talent problem. I think Donald Trump, please don't be angry at me. Donald Trump perversely And somewhat ironic has talent. He has demagogic talent. He has communicative skills that you might find Hilarious or disgusting or depressing, but there he clearly clearly in 2016 Found a way To connect on a populist level despite being a billionaire or maybe partly because of his being a billionaire of a cartoon sort. And when I look around at a lot of the congressional races, whether in my own district in Manhattan or in Senate races from, I don't know, say Maine and onward, I look at the talent in the room, as Norman Mailer once said, and I try to assess it, and it's wanting.

26:57Jane Mayer:It's badly wanting. Now, the Democrats may score great victories in November, And I don't think that's a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination, not just because of redistricting. I just think that if you look race by race, it's hard to be overwhelmed. But hold on. What about in Texas? I mean, people like James Tallarico, he's got sort of the potential. OK, Charlie Brown, you know, you got to go on at that football, baby. Look, Tallarico may well win, not least because the Republicans, backed by Trump, decided to, you know. Ken Paxton. It ain't November yet, my friend. I'm not counting anything.

27:39Jane Mayer:Wait, are you saying that you do? Texas is not just Houston. Do you think that Tallarico is going to win? No, I don't. Okay. But that's a separate question from saying that we can't come up with any talent. I think John Ossoff's been, in terms of the message that has to do with corruption, He has completely connected the dots between the corruption of the Trump family. Totally. I look at Georgia and I think, look at those two senators. They both seem to be in possession of an intelligence, a soul, and an honesty that is rare. It's not thick on the ground. Okay, but let's talk about on the other flip side, Trump does have talent, but he also has amazing deficits.

28:24Jane Mayer:and the same with Paxton. I mean, just look at the, we the press are today completely preoccupied with the race, the Senate race in Maine because of Graham Plattner and because it's come out now that he was less than, what is the word, uxorious towards his... Maybe not the word he would use. Well, that's a fancy way of saying the man was sexting on his wife. Okay. But look at Paxton. Look at Trump. Why is it that the Democrats completely freak out on these issues and the Republicans are like, hey, that's life? look, I think a lot of Democrats in Maine are going to say that. I mean, while I was sitting back there, I was looking on the Times website and there's yet another story thickening the reporting

29:23Jane Mayer:of his marital transgressions. As I said to you, we had dinner before and marriage is complicated in all sorts of ways for all kinds of different people. Life is complicated. we are all fallen beings, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't want to have to go on that journey with him. What I want is a senator of some maturity, integrity, intelligence, and, you know, where I can find some kinship and political positions too. If that's the journey he's on and he and his wife are in it together, as we say at the 92nd Street Y, it's Zeitgesund. but that's not a great choice between susan collins who walks up to the line of integrity every time and then steps back and this guy so i want to talk about this question of consequences because in the end right we're having conversation about the election and the idea that election have consequences this was something that democrats were big into when trump 1.0 right this was the mantra in some ways of the 2018 midterm election.

30:32You know, I'm old enough to remember that. Well, okay. So we have the Republican enablers like Susan Collins. How many people here feel concerned about how concerned she is always, right? Like stop being concerned, do something. But I will tell you 10 years into this, you know, to Jane's point, how many times have we heard, well, these senators are going to, you know, make a jailbreak. So today in the Senate, this is where we're now being told those Republican senators have had it with Donald Trump. This is it. They're really, you know, he went too far. He knocked him out. Bill Cassidy, he called Donald Trump's proposed $1.8 billion slush fund, quote, an immediate and dire threat to our constitutional order, unquote.

31:16Who was the deciding vote today to kill the Democrats' amendment saying there can be no slash fund. Susan, and there's gambling in

31:25Jane Mayer:Casablanca, too. No, that's right. So would you rather have Graham Planner? And by the way, I am not arguing for it, and I do not want to go on that journey, and I don't think you can wake up in the morning and get an accidental tattoo. That being said... Endorsement is not my bag here. I'm just trying to point out, as the Marxists would say, the contradictions. And why... I don't understand two things. Well, I don't understand many things, but here's two things. For example, I don't understand why more people Of intelligence integrity and of all kinds of politics don't run for office Sorry to be so Innocent about it And I don't see what's so unbelievably swell about these jobs That you're willing to sacrifice your soul for them at every any given moment.

32:15Jane Mayer:I do not understand Is it so terrible that you go back to Iowa and be a mid-level lawyer and earn a living? The honest answer, the most poisonous word in Washington is relevance. That's become a kind of talismanic pursuit that everybody says, I have to do this for relevance. This is the sort of Lindsey Graham, that's the center of the whole in the middle of a person like... But I don't care if you're a person of God or not. You have to answer to yourself or something. More with our special guest, the New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, live at the 92nd Street Y in just a moment.

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34:02Jane Mayer:I want to make sure that we take a second here to talk about what actually happens if Democrats win. Like, what can they do and what should they do? To be specific here, we've got a question from somebody in the audience who asks, if the Democrats take control of Congress, will they pursue a much wished for retribution campaign? Is the desire for airtime in the elected official class and the now performative nature of politics too much to overcome this outcome? How do we avoid that trap? Meaning, is this going to be another cycle of retribution or does there need to be some kind of accountability to prevent this from happening again?

34:37Jane Mayer:I mean, what I think is you can see a pattern that's already taking place. And what I expect is that if the Democrats take control of the House, they will hold hearings and they will try to delve into this unbelievable corruption that we're all seeing. And I think we will then see something of a constitutional crisis because I think the White House will completely stonewall Congress. They won't come to the hearings. They won't – Essentially the Pam Bonney technique. They simply will just say, no, we're not playing. And I think that is – And then what happens? How does that work? I only have gotten that far.

35:12Jane Mayer:It's just a mess. It's got to be a crisis. Susan, I'm curious in particular about impeachment. There are a lot of people who will be wondering if that's coming up after a potential mid-term. You know, it's interesting. I mean, from my perspective, historically speaking, what happened in the first Trump term was that we sort of proved pretty much conclusively that impeachment is a dead letter, that it no longer functions in the way that the founders of the Constitution envisioned, which was as a check on the executive. because they were operating and writing this in essentially a pre-partisan time, a pre-party time, they envisioned the idea that the branches of government would act in the interest of that branch of government rather than that party loyalty would be more important.

35:56And as a practical sense, even if Democrats exceed the predictions, and none of us are predictors here, but even if Democrats exceed the predictions for this November, You know, at the moment, they're favored to win the House, although relatively narrowly, I think there are very few people who believe it will be one of those, you know, 48 seat, 60 seat pickups. But, you know, right now, Democrats are favored to win the House. It is a stretch, a big stretch for them to win the Senate, in part because there are flawed candidates, not just in Maine. but you know there's a very divisive democratic primary in michigan for example which is a must win seat for democrats this fall so let's just say they win one or both of the houses nobody thinks that there are the votes to convict donald trump of almost anything in the u.s senate and that means in many ways that impeachment is a dead letter do i think democrats might pursue it anyways because there will be some terrible scandal yes i think we have to consider that it's not only possible, but even likely because the outrages are so vast.

37:04And just one minor point on that, we're having this conversation this week where, although the Senate did not pass this Democratic measure today to bar the$1.8 billion quote slash fund, nonetheless, you know, the Trump administration has said they're not going to move forward with it, leaving intact probably what would have been the biggest scandal of any of our lifetimes in any president anyways, and no one's even talking about it, which is that Donald Trump has negotiated with his own government to give him essentially lifetime immunity from taxes. And this to me is a classic Donald Trump technique here, right?

37:47So he's confused us with so many, the smokescreen of so many scandals. And the reason I mentioned that is like, that's an impeachable offense. I mean, you know, there's so many of them. And I think it's very reasonable to expect that some scandal will come up that Democrats will feel they need to pursue, even though they know they don't have the votes in the Senate to convict.

38:06Jane Mayer:In some ways, a lot of these corruption scandals are confusing to people. They have to do with crypto and sovereign wealth funds. And in a way, you know, we've talked about this on the show, but people want something really concrete. And that is a hard thing to find. I want to talk sort of looking a little over the horizon. David, you know, we ran a big piece in the magazine recently on the subject of Barack Obama. And really what the piece was asking was it was trying to get at this question of there is a hunger among Democrats for somebody, maybe it's not Obama, but for somebody to emerge from the pack, to sort of step into our lives and be able to articulate what this country wants.

38:44Jane Mayer:And, you know, you've written about Obama for years. And I'm curious, if you look at the conditions now, is it possible for somebody like that to emerge again? Somebody who, even in technical terms, you know, a Democrat who could win Iowa, for instance. Or has the moment shifted so much that we should be looking for something else? Well, I think Obama nostalgia as such, which Obama resists and also encourages, is futile. he can't be president again. Nostalgia is not a politics. And his talents are, I think, what people yearn for. His integrity and his bearing in the world, which contrasts so radically with Trump's, is what people yearn for, especially in a reasonable way.

39:35Jane Mayer:You can argue about how he expenses post-presidency? Should he be spending it more in more idealistic ways or less in commercial ways? He would argue that if he's talking all the time, he becomes just a commentator. He becomes a kind of higher version of Jon Stewart. Okay, whatever. You can argue with that. That's a trivial argument. What's obviously necessary is someone or some people of talent and integrity to emerge to confront the problems that we face today. They aren't the same exact ones as in 2008. In fact, as positively as I think about so many aspects of Obama, he also missed certain things.

40:23Jane Mayer:you know he would gesture toward radical wealth and radical income inequality but you could easily argue that he didn't address them adequately certainly people on the progressive left would you know have no patience for obama nostalgia and that's the primary reason for that uh ditto on foreign policy you could make those arguments but what what's plainly necessary is people who've kind of worked out their personal dramas, who are ready to hold high office, who have things to say with clarity and connection and know how to use modern technology and communication means to do so. And when you look around and you look at these various races, you know, in the state of Ohio, you've got a guy who's struggling.

41:12Jane Mayer:I don't know if he can even win his Senate seat back. and but does speak brown right right who does speak with a certain populist gravelly connection but that's the past you know this is why for a lot of young people mom donnie and aoc connect and it's not all because of particular positions it's because of a sense of modernity and an awareness of how things have changed, and they are addressing them. When you look out, Susan Jane, do you see anybody in this race? And this doesn't have to be about a specific candidate, but I'm curious about if there is an energy out there that gives you confidence, bringing us around to where we started today, that says, okay, yes, some of this corruption stuff is hard for people to understand, but it is a cumulative fact that they will eventually say enough is enough.

42:09Jane Mayer:Do you look at any of these races and say, okay, I see the sign of something that gives me confidence? You know, actually, I've been thinking a lot and listening to this conversation to what Jane brought up, which is Minnesota. You know, I think it's from civil society that the real power in American politics has to come. I absolutely agree with David's point that I think in Washington, as you know, I always make this point that I think we overstate the role of ideology in candidates and in politics. And, you know, because people in Washington, they come, they're policy wonks. And, you know, if you have a hammer, then everything's a nail.

42:48It's the energy. It's the, you know, the axis of American politics. It's not just right, left. It's also inside, outside. And that the energy, the visceral pain that we're hearing from so many people in our society right now, it's not being effectively channeled in the context of our two-party system. And we've seen the consequences of right-wing rage for 10 years, and it is destroying a lot of what a lot of people hold dear. It is a destructive force in our politics. But that rage is not contained to the right. And I think about my son who's graduating from college next week, and these kids don't know if they're going to have jobs.

43:29There's a sense that the disruptions in our life are not about Trump so much. They're thinking about more basic fundamental things, not only radical inequality, but the idea that actually the ladder is being pulled up in our society and we're leaving behind a whole new generation of kids. That's a kind of visceral rage and anger that I think is coming from the grassroots. I think it is going to be channeled. It's going to be more apparent over time in your sort of post-Trump world on the left and in the center and not just the politics of rage on the right. I don't know what it means exactly, but I don't see the candidate out there who's emerging to speak to that for Democrats yet in an authentic and powerful way that is also an electable way in 2028.

44:16Jane Mayer:Okay. So, I mean, I think you're right that there is this rage that people could tap into. I don't want to dwell on Graham Plattner, but he obviously is now really booby trapped himself here. He has serious problems, but he is part of a younger generation that is really talking about the runaway economic inequality and the unaffordability of life and of the American dream for most everybody else while we're watching people at the top get so rich that it's just unimaginable and kind of indefensible. And I think that is an issue that is both on the right and on the left and is very much generational.

45:02Jane Mayer:I also think, I mean, I hate to sound like an optimist, but I think that actually, you know, that often it seems like there's no talent out there. And then because you overlook someone like, oh, who's this Barack Obama? I mean, forget it. That's totally fair. And you could say the same for Ossoff. And it does. The talent does rise. I think right now what's sort of interesting is there's a little bit of a void at the top of both parties, but obviously on the Republican Party. But what strikes me as interesting also is that the Pope right now is somebody who's speaking to big issues that... Do you think he's going to run?

45:47Jane Mayer:Pope 28? The Pope? I'm not converting. You're talking about the Pope, man. I'm not converting. He'll do very well on the south side of Chicago. But when you hear his encyclicals or read them, you realize nobody else is talking about this, and they should be. No, and the people at the top of the income, it's not just the giganticness of the income. It's the way, and Evan has written about, Evan's book about the haves and the have yachts. Somebody had to write it. It was just, and also someone had to go report it, too. You know, I've been meaning to thank you for that, Dave. You're welcome. This is an appropriate occasion.

46:27Jane Mayer:He would write back from the south of France about the quality of the fresh-squeezed orange juice for 42 euros a glass. You know, I wanted to do a thorough, a very thorough job on that. And your expense account was extraordinarily thorough. But when the lasting image of American wealth from the same guy is of renting the city of Venice for your wedding, and at the same time crushing one of the most valuable institutions in the press in the world, simply because you've kind of lost interest or you've gotten frustrated or the P &L statement wasn't what you wanted it to be that particular year. This is outraging.

47:13Jane Mayer:And in Silicon Valley, you've seen an ideological transformation, not of everybody, and it's not uniform. And I don't expect, by the way, I don't expect everybody to think like I do politically or everybody should be Democrats equals good and Republicans equals bad. But when you see the level of a politics of self-dealing and of cynicism and of apartness and a kind of skybox attitude toward life, that is enraging to the electorate and causes a distorted politics that never goes in a good direction. I can tell you having lived in Moscow for four years and Susan the same and you and Pichet. Yeah.

47:54Jane Mayer:I mean, I just came back from China and one of the moments there that somebody pointed out to me that we were standing at a university campus and a professor who'd come back from the United States. And he looked out and he said, you know, when this campus was founded, it was just for the rich. There were only 500 students on this whole place. He said, that's why the government was overthrown. And it was really, it kind of stayed with me. The sense that there are deep tides of history. And when they come around, they can come around very hard. I will say, Susan, to your point about grassroots energy, I take the following fact to be very encouraging, which is that in the second half of the first Trump term, when we began to see the levers of government beginning to try to squeeze him, yes, of course, he was able to defy the impeachment verdict ultimately, but he was, in the history of the United States, he will be the twice impeached president.

48:47Jane Mayer:And that was for one reason, which was that the 2018 midterms had the highest turnout in the history of the election since 1914 or something. People responded. And they responded because they read the kinds of stories that made this unbearable. They made it clear and crisp. And yet. Yeah. By the way, I'm not usually the hopeful one, but I know we're coming to the end. So I will offer a hopeful data point in that vein. Donald Trump is not only historically the most unpopular president, you know, that we've had at this point in time. But if you think 2018 was the standard, you know, by which at least some measure of accountability was offered, Donald Trump is running far behind where he was in terms of his approval ratings at this point in 2018.

49:40and the numbers are even worse for Republicans when you look at key issues like the economy. So the metrics are there. I come back to where we started, which is to say like, you look at it on paper and this should be a historic repudiation of Donald Trump. And so we'll see.

50:02Jane Mayer:Should be. Evan, are your rich, your super rich, your haves and have yachts, are they moving away from Trump yet? We had an expert who we interviewed, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who said a sign when a dictator or an autocrat is going to fall is that the elites start sort of creeping away from them. You know, where they got where they are because they learned to wait and see. But he is not a person who has a lot of friends. He has a lot of business partners, and that's a fragile way to live. I want to say we are out of time and we are immensely grateful to all of you for coming out, spending some time with us tonight.

50:43Jane Mayer:Thank you, David, for joining us on this. Thank you guys for everything you do for the New Yorker. It's beyond, beyond. Thank you, folks.

50:57Jane Mayer:Thank you to 92NY for hosting us and for everyone who joined us in New York City. It's great to see you there, and we'll be doing more of these live shows. This has been The Political Scene from The New Yorker. I'm Evan Osnos. We had research assistance today from Alex D 'Elia. Our producer is Nora Ritchie, mixing by Mike Kutchman. Stephen Valentino is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. And we'll see you next week.

51:33Jane Mayer:This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, Jack Schlossberg, the Kennedy heir and political influencer who's running for a seat in Congress. I understand that content creation is a new profession and that it's not synonymous for many people with a quote unquote real job. You have to make an argument in 90 seconds with a lot of complicated information. I'll talk with Jack Schlossberg on the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. From PRX.