Overtime – Episode #613: Jonathan Lemire, Vivek Ramaswamy

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Okay, here we are on overtime.

Okay, John, the title of your book is The Big Lie, a line that Trump parroted and Republicans have perpetuated.

How does our nation overcome this?

Is it even possible?

Well, certainly it is very much still with us.

The Big Lie didn't begin or end on January 6th.

Donald Trump planted the seeds years before.

He spent years hijacking the Republican Party, the conservative media with lie after lie, getting them to believe the big one, which is about his false claims of election fraud.

But we're still seeing it now.

We've seen states use it as Republican-controlled state legislatures use it to restrict access to bout in more than a dozen states.

We have seen candidates right now for the midterms not just saying that they want to still overturn the 2020 election, nearly two years out,

but won't commit to conceding if they were to be defeated this fall.

It is a litmistest for the Republican Party.

And we're also seeing the negative impact in the polls.

More and more Democrats also feel they can't necessarily trust election results.

It is going to be the defining, one of the defining issues for our democracy these next,

this cycle through 2024 and beyond, being able to restore the American people's faith in the government, that not because they have the ability to vote, but their vote will be counted correctly and that the actual winner is installed into power.

And

it is going to take education and it is going to take people from both parties speaking out against it.

And we're seeing very little of that, certainly from the Republican side right now.

So look, I had a chapter in my book dedicated to this.

I don't disagree with the premises of your book.

I will tell you that it must seem that Stacey Abrams is a bit of a Republican.

She's somebody who's running for executive office, top office in Georgia, for the governor's mansion, who has not yet conceded the last race, who claimed that that race was stolen from her by Brian Kemp, allegedly one of the same people who stole the race from Donald Trump.

Yeah, you know, I've heard this on the show before.

I got to to just call bullshit on this.

It's like it's just such silly whataboutism.

Yes,

you pick out the one example on the left, one example among Democrats, that is not nearly as consequential as what is going on in the entire Republican Party, including the leader of the party, Donald Trump.

And that's the answer, Stacey Adrams.

It's a bullshit answer, man.

It's a bullshit answer.

With all due respect, it's a bullshit answer to a giant, it's a giant problem that exists almost conclusively on one side.

Yeah, with all due respect, Bill, I will tell you, speaking as somebody who's right of center,

was very clear about the fact that Trump lost the election, and I was disappointed that he did not accept that result.

But it does irritate me a little bit when people on the left unidirectionally point the finger at Trump without looking at, take the Iowa election last time, all right?

Nancy Pelosi refused to seat somebody, or almost refused to seat somebody, who was elected out of the state of Iowa.

Even if you take a lot of the narratives now, as you said, impacting the left's

willingness to accept election results, I think it's really important that everyone who at least points to someone in their tribe or on the other side points to someone in their own tribe or else we're not going to have faith in either side in the electoral system.

But more so where the two things are more of equal merit.

I mean, this is a mouse and an elephant, you know?

It just,

it's a cheap trick.

I'd be curious for your view on this, which is, you know, take the 2016 election, all right?

What role did this play where a lot of Democrats were not willing to accept the legitimacy of the 2016 election outcome on the back of the Russia collusion narrative?

What role does that play in giving legitimacy to the other side to now say they're not going to accept the elections?

I think this has been a game of escalation going along for a long time.

I don't think it's the one to do.

Hillary came down in her purple suit

before she went to bed.

Before committing to start the impeachment hearings on the other side on the back of a Russia collusion narrative that the impeachment was not about Russia collusion.

The impeachment was about Ukraine.

The impeachment was about the Ukraine scandal.

Right.

There were certainly Democrats who were unhappy.

There were Democrats who certainly were.

We saw the protest, the Women's March, the day after Trump's inauguration, but Hillary Clinton conceded the election the next morning.

Yes.

There were even one or two lawmakers who on

January 6th of 2017

said like, oh, you know, Trump, there were like two lawmakers who suggested that Trump shouldn't be seated.

They might protest.

And you know who shot them, shot them down?

Vice President Joe Biden, who was overseeing the Senate at that time, said, no, we're moving on.

Donald Trump is elected.

And you know who shot down the other side?

It's Mike Pence, who said, I'm certifying the results of this election.

So I just think that...

there were thousands of people outside trying to break into the Capitol at that point.

Right, and

no one is saying that there aren't millions and millions of good Republicans who are not Trumpers.

Or maybe they like Trump, but they still don't think he won the election.

And they said so.

And yes,

not just Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr,

Liz Cheney, none of these were on my favorites list, but they did the right thing.

They are what I call as good as it gets, Republicans.

No, if I'm talking, it's the liberals now.

Because before the impeachment trial, if you had went down the list of what Liz Cheney is for, I mean, she would be booed round by, and now liberals cheer her.

Because that is as good as it gets.

And that's what I think everybody in this country has to understand.

You're never going to get people who see the world the way you do.

And they don't have to.

When push came to shove, there are Republicans who did the right thing.

The argument you are making is a false equivalency

this is not a problem on both a giant problem on both sides it is a giant problem on one side I view it through it I view it through a beyond partisan lens okay at the end of the day well you shouldn't because it's a partisan issue

I disagree with that I respectfully disagree I think that the threats to democracy I think the threats to democracy are plural for me I'll tell you where I'm coming from here Where I'm coming from is the best measure of the health of a democracy to me, you know what it is?

It is the percentage of people who feel free to say what they actually think in public.

It's not the votes that are cast.

That's just fetishizing the act at the end of the process.

And when I look at the true threats to democracy, to free speech, to open discourse, I do not think it is a one-sided threat from the Republican Party.

To the contrary, I think the threats to democracy are plural, and we have to acknowledge that, or else we're going nowhere.

But the votes that cast do matter because those are putting people in office who are making public policy and passing laws and nominating justice to the Supreme Court.

So, I mean, I think that's more of an impact also on personal liberties than just the ability to speak out.

Yes, and to your point about are there existential threats which both sides use?

And by the way, both sides use the word, the phrase big lie.

The big lie means a completely different thing in a Trump bar.

Yes.

Yeah,

they think it's made the hoax.

Absolutely.

But, okay, I will agree.

You know, I'm all the time getting castigated by people on the left because I criticize them for what I think are their excesses and their insanity.

Let's show the picture of the lady with the big tits again.

Must be?

No, we must.

But the Jugs magazine won.

Okay, but on this particular issue,

it is something that only one side really owns.

Let me ask you this.

The 147, Michael Moore was talking about, the 147, 147 members of Congress who would not certify the election.

Do you think if it was the other way around, there would have been 147 Democrats who wouldn't certify the election?

I don't know.

Do you think the Democrats would have attacked the Capitol the way the Trump people did on January 6th?

So I don't think so.

But I got to tell you that we also have legitimized crime in a different sense for the last two years in this country.

At the end of the day, we're talking about legitimization and victim legitimization.

Well, at the end of the day, I think a lot of the crime that we're seeing in cities across the country is because of democratic legitimization of breaking laws of a different kind.

Now, that's not the threat to democracy point, but I want to come back to...

Again, it's a false equivalency.

Yes, I mean, is it again?

I think we're getting nowhere by pointing partisan fingers.

I think we are not moving the ball forward by partisanizing what is a fundamental erosion of citizens' mistrust of our institutions.

I'm sorry.

And that's the problem.

My compass goes toward what is true.

If it points toward partisanship, I have to do it.

I'm not going to put it off the table if one side is doing something and the other isn't.

Now, is it wrong that you can walk into a Walgreens and shoplift?

Of course it is.

It's not that out of the ordinary, and it's eminently fixable.

And it probably will be.

It's a whole different kettle of fish from democracy is hanging by a thread because a lot of people are under the impression that if

they don't don't get the

most amount of votes, it doesn't matter.

Right, they're right.

It doesn't matter who got the most amount of votes.

That's new.

There are Republican candidates on the ballot, not Democratic candidates, Republican candidates on the ballot in a number of state official elections who have not said they would, they have not said they would certify the election results

that were done.

That they would find the way to potentially pick their favorite to be in place.

That is, you know,

I mean, look, on the back of Bush v.

Gore, on the back of Bush v.

Gore, there were Democrats who did not certify the result of that election.

So I'm just saying that this is...

Again, another guy who conceded.

Yeah.

Al Gore, who had every reason to stick it out, and he didn't.

And

people in the Senate who did not certify the result of that election.

But I guess I'm making a different point, which is that by fetishizing just the ballots that we cast every November, that's just the final act of the process.

There's a lot more to the health of a democracy than just that.

It is about living out the democratic values.

And I see the threat to those democratic values coming from left, right, center.

But I think there's a deeper batter of institutions crushing the will of everyday citizens.

And I think left-wing populism and right-wing populism are not as different as we'd like to make them out to be.

I think this is a broader phenomenon, it's even transnational, of citizens of nations feeling like their voices are not heard.

If we see that through a partisan lens, we're missing the point.

Well, all that,

we're not missing the point.

A lot of that is true.

It has nothing to do with voting, which I don't see as a fetish.

Voting is not a fetish.

At the end of the day,

you know what?

I think a lot of citizens, so let me take a democratic attack on the legitimacy of the elections.

The way we're banning about the word Jim Crow, okay, at the end of the day, we're applying Jim Crow as a label to asking people to show an ID to vote.

My view is that at the end of the day, if you can Google where do I vote, at the end of the day, it probably doesn't fit the Jim Crow label.

And you know what?

Georgia, more people are voting this year than voted before the allegedly voter suppressive laws that were passed.

Those are also described under the same banner of threats to democracy.

And I think that this is a too low resolution, too sloppy of a way.

You're bringing up a lot of things about the left, which I would agree with, where they have gone off the rails, or they're making some mistake or they're excessive in one way.

All this kitchen sink stuff has nothing to do with this one thing we're talking about.

Fundamental.

democracy, voting, guy with the most votes wins.

And we have to elect, we have to respect that.

It was always the jewel in our crown.

Peaceful transfer of power.

It's the one that other countries could not manage.

So many other countries had trouble with this one.

How do you pass the baton?

I mean, I feel like with the argument, I just wrote a book explicitly calling out Trump and saying that at the end of the day, it was Trump victimhood that failed the country.

He lost the election.

He should have admitted it and moved on.

So I'm not trying to pretend a psychologist here.

But at the end of the day, I think that having said that, it's really important to look 360 degrees.

It's a lot easier to put this in somebody else than it is to look in the degree.

It is.

Again, but I think you're just conflating these two things.

There's a lot of craziness on both sides.

Agreed.

There's a lot of, I say it all the time.

I would never vote for Trump.

I understand why some people do.

I understand why people look at a lot of the craziness that goes on on the left and go, you know, I can't let those people take over this country because I have kids.

And, you know,

what my kids are having to see every day in school or whatever they're coming home and telling, talking people about, and, you know, men are pregnant now.

And, you know, just stuff that drives people

has nothing to do with what we're talking about on this one area of voting and democracy.

I agree, the left is nuts too, but on this one area, they're not the guilty ones.

They're not the guilty ones, and it's much more important.

Much more important.

There has been one president.

Yes.

There has been one president who did not try to adhere in the peaceful transfer of power.

Yes.

One president.

One.

That's Donald Trump.

And one party that is behind him.

Is still behind him.

He is still right now, even despite these swirl of investigations and the legal jeopardy he is in, he is still the overwhelming favorite to be the Republican nominee for president.

Yes, and he will be, and he will probably lose again and it won't matter because in 2025 he's going to show up on January 20th to be inaugurated whether he won that election or not.

He is showing up.

He's got his suit picked out.

So the tie.

I think the red tie.

What do you think?

The red tie?

Yeah, I think

I think he's going to go with the red tie.

So there's a look, I mean, I think that what I worry about is each party up in the ante.

So in 2016, you had a party in power that used police force to attempt to place a mole in the campaign of the opposition party.

Now, if you go to 2024, now you have a president in office that's declaring his enemies, at the end of the day, domestic terrorists using police power to ultimately silence political opposition.

You think when the tables turn, that isn't going to escalate in the other direction?

You're going to see Democrats upset about it when that's going to happen.

I think it's quite likely to happen that we continue to play this game of escalation unless we see this through a lens that these are the rules of the road.

It's not a partisan thing.

It's a rules of the road question.

You don't use power to silence the opposition party, period.

To me, that's the real threat to democracy.

I think that look, the White House is crucial.

You can always pick the raisins out of the raisin bread, but it's mostly a loaf of bread.

I don't even know what that means.

Thank you very much.

We only got to one question.

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