November 27, 2024 • 50 mins
Republican strategist, vocal Trump critic, and host of “The Warning,” Steve Schmidt poses the million dollar question: Can America’s political guardrails withstand Trump’s chaos? As the President-elect continues to fill his cabinet with a number of controversial picks, Steve warns us of just how dangerous these appointments could be and how cultural amnesia has led us to this moment. Yet while some of the country’s most self-evident processes may now feel uncertain, Steve has faith in the resilience of America and is grateful to be part of this chapter in our history.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is next question
today everyone. My guest is Steve Schmidt. He's a veteran
political strategist who shaped major campaigns for Republican heavyweights like
John McCain and George W. Bush. Now he has turned
his sharp eye on the party itself, emerging as a
(00:27):
very powerful voice against its transformation under Donald J.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Trump.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
With Trump headed back to the White House, we're going
to try to make heads or tails of this chaotic
transition period. And it is chaotic, folks. We're looking ahead
at what twenty twenty five might hold with a few
glances back at what led to Trump's second term, from
media trust to democratic strategy and Trump's wild cabinet picks.
Steve has thoughts, and he is not holding back, and
(00:56):
he really likes to talk. Fair warning everyone. I love him, though,
so grab your favorite beverage. My drink of choice these
days is to kill on the rocks and settle in
for a candid, no holds barred conversation about America's next chapter.
(01:17):
Steve Schmidt, so happy to see you. I haven't talked
to you since election night, as we were processing the
fact that Donald Trump was going to win the election.
That was about three weeks ago, Steve, and I'm just
curious how you've been able to understand what happened in
(01:40):
this election and why.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Huh. Well, so, I think in the end that Donald
Trump is many, many, many things, but among them is
not a hypocrite. And that is the high card of
American life, the unpardonable sin that you're full of shit.
(02:09):
And at the end of the day, more clear now
than when we spoke, exampled by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brazinski,
is the performative nature of all of this. Soon will
be on the four year anniversary of January sixth. I
watched it when CNN reported it as a riot. I
(02:32):
tweeted out in that moment, that's not a riot, it's
an insurrection. It's exactly what it was. And the American
people in the end were unbothered by it. And so
we had a breach of the peaceful transition of power,
(02:54):
and we had a failure by the Biden administry and
by Joe Biden, both exceptionally and singularly, to communicate effectively
to the country when he became president two weeks after that,
(03:15):
that what happened was astonishing, extraordinary, and there was nothing
more important than it ever ever right, not happening again,
and so the entire focus of the administration should have
(03:39):
been that. Instead, he treated Donald Trump as a prop
to be used to turn out voters like Voldemort in
a Harry Potter movie. And so for years Trump was
the justification for Joe Biden and I'm breaking my promise
(04:03):
and running for four more years. During all of this,
what rose was oppositional to the media, that you were
part of the media, that you were part of held
power to account when you worked at a network, and
that media was deeply connected to what happened in nineteen
(04:25):
seventy two, nineteen seventy three, in nineteen seventy four, when
a president of the United States said he was above
the law and inspired a generation. By the time we
get to where we are now, it's very different. When
Scarborough looks into the camera and he says to his
audience on what's supposed to be the most important public
(04:50):
affairs morning show in the country on a network that
Tom brokecaw worked at, to his audience, fuck you if
you don't believe what I'm telling you, which is the truth.
This is the best Biden we've ever had analytically and
(05:12):
intellectually in every single person, including me, who said that
that was bullshit was shouted down and smeared by somebody
in a position of power, or by somebody making money
from somebody in a position of power close to the
(05:35):
power in a political establishment that has been repudiated, has
been rejected and cast out in favor of Donald Trump,
and their takeaway from it, by and large three weeks
later is the American people are stupid, racist and we
(05:58):
did nothing wrong. So at this moment, fifty one days
before the inauguration, the American people are going to have
an experiential odyssey for which I think they have a
real lack of imagination, despite being warned about it, despite
having nine years to process it. And so we're going
(06:22):
to get to see the answer to the question spill
out in real time about what happens next when a
Pete Hegseth is the Secretary of Defense, when a man
who wants to bring back polio in smallpox, like Robert F.
Kennedy becomes the head of the public health services. So
it's going to end up tragically and badly. There will
(06:42):
be a lot of harm. But in a democracy, you
get the government you deserve. I'm sorry for the long answer,
but that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Well, let me pull apart some of the things you
just claimed because it was a long answer, Steve, And
is it really fair to put the onus on Joe
Biden for Donald try Trump's victory. Is what I'm hearing
you say that he should have been focused on the
insurrection and saying it was unacceptable. But he did have
(07:09):
to go about the business of running the country and
being president of the United States. You're faulting him for
not emphasizing that enough and for running a second time.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I'm faulting him for his titanic egotism that led to
his breaking of his implicit promise, which is I will
be a one term president and put the country first.
It's not what he did. The truth of the matter
is is the quiet part just wasn't set out loud
by anyone except for Dean Phillips, who's now patted again
(07:42):
on the back by all of his colleagues who knew
what he was saying was true, then attacked him when
he set it out loud outside the green room. And
now that it's been proven true. It can be talked
again about in private.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
When you say something has been proven true, Steve, you're
talking about Joe Biden's inability to run the government. Is
that what you're referring to.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
To communicate, to talk to inspire, to lead, to make
it up the full set of stairs on Air Force
one in an urgent moment. And so there was a
moment in history in the country where the president was
incapacitated by a stroke.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
President Wilson, right, and Edith was running the government, and
he was propped up in the car, propped.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Up running the country. And Edith Wilson believes she did
the right thing. She sincerely and honestly believed. It really
wasn't a book. Well what do you do in that circumstance?
You know, she did in her estimation what Woodrow Wilson
would have wanted. But the point is the main point
(08:54):
is that everybody and the most that can never happen again.
And so over and over an over again, the American
people were told things Joe Biden's FDR, the economy's the
best it's ever been, Bidenomics. You know what, the American people,
working people in the country, forty percent of which don't
have four hundred dollars available, don't like being lectured by
(09:16):
millionaires on television telling them how great it is. They said, fu,
and they voted for Trump because the economy wasn't great.
That was a figment of a bunch of elites imaginations
in New York and Washington. And we now have Trump
in the White House. That's one reason. That's one thing.
He did Afghanistan, completing total incompetence on the withdrawal, and
(09:40):
he was beaten about the head on it for four
straight years. Joe Biden said that the border was secure?
Was the border secure? It was not secure. Adult life
and I may have said this on election night requires
you to hold multiple contradictory thoughts. Trump is the most
(10:01):
prolific liar in American history. But if the country thinks
he's the most honest president we've ever had, because there's
no filtered thought. But when you apply the test about
who's telling the truth, who's really honest, who was telling
the truth about the border, who was telling the truth
about the economy, who was telling the truth about what
(10:21):
happened in Afghanistan? Who was telling the truth about Biden's capacity?
It was Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, and the problem
with that strategically, if your foundation is the opposition party
to Donald Trump is built on a sandbox, on mush
on the same type of Trump in dishonesty, you rail against,
(10:45):
you lose, and that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Let me ask you about the role of the media,
because you point out Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzenski as
sort of the consummate media, I guess enablers in some ways.
Talk about that and the role you believe they played
in turning many voters against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
(11:10):
and into the arms of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I don't think that enough people watch the show that
it determines outcomes. What it does is shape a narrative, right.
It creates a choke point in the artery of information
(11:35):
around what you can say and what you can't say
in the acceptable speech lane, in the truth lane. At
a moment in American politics that some of us are
trying to say is urgent, is exigent, and is a crisis.
And when you watch Joe Biden perform by twenty twenty two,
(11:59):
twenty twenty three, and you appreciate what the central line
of attack is and you look at the reality that
it's clear if you have competency with regard to being
able to assess the landscape of a presidential campaign, you
can do that that Biden's in a lot of trouble.
(12:20):
And what Joe Biden got from Joe Scarborough, his friend,
wasn't favorable coverage, sympathetic coverage. Joe Scarborough decided, I'm gonna
wear three hats, I'm gonna be the guy on the show,
I'm gonna be the president's friend, and I'm gonna be
his political advisor. And he was. And what's special about
(12:42):
the United States is the and I really mean this,
the genius of the people who founded the country. They
were imperfect, they weren't just, but man, were they fucking brilliant.
And they left us something called the First Amendment. And
(13:02):
what the First Amendment guarantees is that the next era
of journalism in America will be bottom up. And from
this bottom up journalism will come the accountability, will come
the challenge, and will come the information the American people
need to have so that the next time they get
(13:24):
a choice, which they'll have again, they can say time
to turn around and change direction.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture. Sign up for our daily newsletter,
Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Let's
(14:02):
talk about these cabinet picks, Steve, because Chris Coons of Delaware,
a Democrat, described it as a reality show casting call,
and there were a slew of people named over the weekend.
Donald Trump doesn't want FBI background checks, he wants recess appointments,
(14:24):
so the Senate doesn't even have to confirm these people.
And there are a lot of questions about some of
these folks. From RFK Junior Telsey Gavard Pete Hegseth. I
thought Maureen Dowd's column was good this weekend when she
said is Donald Trump protecting women or predators? Because there
(14:45):
is a thread amongst some of these people in terms
of the allegations they have faced. So, as you've watched
these people be named and cabinet positions, other power full
positions in the government, what has your reaction been shocking?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
It's not surprising as shocking, Pete Hegsath cannot be must
not be in the chain of command for the release
of nuclear weapons with his white nationalist tattoos stamped on
his chest. The answer is no. Now. If the United
States Senate is unable to deliver the no with an
(15:26):
assertion of its coequal power under the American system, that
means we're in a crisis. If Trump appoints all of
these people, these misfits, the disordered ones, absent FBI investigations,
which is reckless, but through a recess process with the
(15:50):
implicit approval of Republican senators objectively, in that moment, I
could make an argument that the American Republic has fallen.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
The big question is what will these senators do? And
I think it's a big question mark at this juncture,
we don't know what do you think reading the tea leaves, Steve,
do you think they are going to give Donald Trump
a green light? Or are they going to say our
role is to advise and consent and we need to
(16:27):
fully vet these individuals before they're put in these positions
of incredible power.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
So I completely appreciate the ministerial part of this. If
you're a senator to say, I'm not going to prejudge
Nay Pete Hagsath, Tulca Gabbard we're going to wait for
the confirmation hearings. I'm going to examine them, and I
get the politics of that. There is nothing, not a
(16:59):
single thing that any sentient US senator needs to know
regarding these people's on fitness that isn't available right now.
In this moment, you had a guy like Pete Hegseth, Right,
you look at all these people. I was talking to
someone like, who would you stop? If you can only
stop one, which one would it be? And so I've
(17:21):
talked to like fifteen people about this, right, I've had
great conversations on this to some of these people all
over the world. And I was talking to one of
the I think I don't think he would mind. I
was talking to John Nichols at the Nation magazine, and
I think it's one of the smartest, brightest, most thoughtful people.
And we came to the same conclusion, right, which is
(17:42):
heg Seth, which is, if you were Captain Benson, you
would follow the bread comes in the clues to the
nuclear weapons. That job comes with nuclear weapons command and control.
You want a lieutenant colonel following Pete Hegseeth around with
the launch codes for the nuclear weapons. He gets to
turn the key with the president, right, right, you know?
(18:05):
Uh no. So you look at all these people and
I try to imagine, like what could go wrong, what
could go right? And I look at some of them
like a Gabbard, there's nothing that can go right. A
hag Seth, there's nothing that can go right. A Bobby Kennedy. Right,
(18:27):
he could be in pharmaceutical advertising. But polio's coming back,
so I'm against him too, right, We and and and
and Christy noan Christine, No, we haven't even talked about her, right,
Like the whole shooting of the dog. And I'm a
dog lover, right, I have like dogs are a big
part of my life, a lot of big part of
(18:49):
like a lot of lives of Americans. She confessed to
shooting the dog because the dog embarrassed her at a
at a hunting party. And she just had the dog
loose in the back of a pickup truck, so of
course it jumped out because it wasn't trained to sitting there,
and she killed it. And we want to make we
want to make her the head of a gigantic federal
(19:16):
police bureaucracy. It should be ninety eight to nothing. Send
us somebody new that's not going to happen. But with
regard to those people, in the scenario that you're laying out,
what you're really talking about is you should start with
a hard no of all of the Democrats, plus Murkowski
(19:38):
and Collins, if they are who everybody seems to think
they are, which isn't in a position of agreement with
the Democrats, but serious people, but of course they would be.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
No.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Sullivan in Alaska is a Marine Corps colonel in his
previous life. Is U S Senator? Does he think it's
okay for Pete Hegseth, who's regardless of whether he raped
the woman or not that he's been accused of by
our of raping or right that the police reports make clear,
he's a dipshit of the highest variety. Right, he shouldn't.
(20:18):
He shouldn't. He's not eligible to be an officer in
the junior class at West Point with that type of conduct.
It's unbecoming. Right. So, honestly, Robert Kennedy, right, is interesting
right of all of these So for example, and I
this is the one. I can argue this all day.
(20:39):
But what I'm most interested about with regard to him
is is two things He's declared war on the sugar
soda industry, and they're gearing up like in Washington, like
right now, right if there was still functional journalism, like
every PR agency, right they are, they're going right now
(21:01):
in anticipation that rfks and he got in there right
for the soda war. The other thing, right, I find
fascinating is RFK said no more and he can do this.
He can get rid of it pretty easily, no more
pharmaceutical advertising. So it's just to me, it's just.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Fascinating, right send to play devil's advocate. What would be
wrong with defenestrating the pharmaceutical industry's ability.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
For it completely for it? My question would be, do
you have to bring back polio and do it? Right?
I don't, right, I think.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I think the scary thing about RFK Junior is to
paint all pharmaceutical companies with a broad brush when they
have developed life saving, life changing drugs that are helping people. Yes,
I understand, we want to look at the core problems
(21:57):
that are making people sick, so we don'tcessarily always have
to rely on pharmaceuticals. But they've done a lot of
great things like vaccines and curing polio and the HPV vaccine,
et cetera, et cetera. And I think it's sort of
frightening to have someone who's the head of the Department
of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, the CDC,
(22:21):
the NIH, Medicare and Medicaid services. Although I guess doctor
Oz is going to be doing that, But to have
someone who is so anti pharmaceutical doesn't sit well with
me either.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well, I'm listening to you. My existence. My grandfather was
a twin, and he and his twin both lost their
first wives and children in childbirth. My father was his
(22:55):
son by a second marriage. My grandfather's brother, I was
a D Day paratrooper. When I met him, was in
a wheelchair, not from war rooms, but from polio, which
he got in the nineteen fifties. Right, suffering, suffering, Right,
that default position of humanity since the beginning of time,
(23:17):
alleviated by profound leaps forward in science. Now, for my
entire political career, right, let's call it. Between age twenty
five and forty, big Pharma was the target of the
Democratic Party, right politically, big form of this big pharma
(23:38):
screwing you, YadA, YadA, YadA. Now, these companies are powerful,
billion dollar organizations. I have skepticism of anything big and powerful,
as I know you do, so should your audience. And
one of the worst ideas of the last thirty years
was to put pharmaceutical advertising on television. It wasn't a
(23:59):
lot out before. That shouldn't be allowed. And I do
think that some of the fights that RFK has picked,
some of his enemies have real teeth, and to have
somebody who's literally nuts enough to make a full charge
at them in Washington, DC is something I haven't seen
over the course of my career. And I'm just as
(24:20):
a practitioner of campaign politics who spend a lot of
time in this space, in this world and has watched
how it's all covered in the media as a political
science experiment. I just I can't. I could, I could
set up a podcast and cover it. I mean, I
just it's endlessly fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So do you think some of his desires to tackle
these intractable problems like the power or the size of
these big pharmaceutical bohemoths is in some ways a good thing?
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I think that I live in a ski town and
in a city, and most people where I live, generally speaking,
are in pretty good shape. If you go to Disney
World or to Disneyland, you're going to find a real
cross section of America. It's frightening, it's unhealthy. If you
(25:20):
brought somebody back who is a medical doctor, who let's
say passed away in nineteen sixty five, and you showed
them what the American citizen looks like in his or
her aggregate in twenty twenty four, what would their reaction
be if we had to fight, right, we had a
(25:42):
draft World War two. It's the physical training, level of
physical fitness in the country. It's deplorable. The country is sick.
And I think that that is a fair observation. A
lot of it has to do with the culture, with
(26:04):
the food people are. By the way, this isn't this
isn't a European problem. This is an American problem, right.
This is an American political problem. Right. This is a
lot of corruption, a lot of power, a lot of
in these in these industries, and so kind of crazy
person observes something correctly, Does that mean that that person's
(26:29):
observation qualifies them to fix the thing that they've observed correctly?
Of course not, you know, he he is there are
there are kind of a couple qualification bars in these jobs,
right that, and they matter most on a sliding scale. Character, honesty, judgment.
(26:50):
Tell me about the bear again in Central Park, about
the whale, about the revelations and the diary. Now, now
let's look at your your ability to process reality information.
I'm going to tell you something. Okay, what I'd like
from you is a response about what we should do.
(27:14):
There's no evidence to suggest that Robert Kennedy has any
capacity to know what to do in any given situation.
Can't process information. It's bad judgment and a rotten character,
and so he's unfit.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Well, I think, I think to your point, Robert F.
Kennedy Junior is a mixed bag. I think he says
some things that are true about chronic disease in this country,
about pesticides, about some of the things that so on
in this country that are keeping people unhealthy. On the
other hand, you know, there are things that he says
(27:52):
that are really scary about vaccines. He went to Samoa,
and I don't know if you've read that story.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Killed a lot of people, kill.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
A lot of us died, and and there are other
positions he has taken that are really scary too, So.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
He's got let me like I just like one he
will get people will die. People will die, right if
someone like him runs the public health services, right, And
it's like one of the things I find most curious
about this era. I say, this is like a Gen
X or fifty four. There's a lot more sensitivity today.
(28:30):
Some of it's good than there used to be, but
there's a real current in the culture that if you
talk to somebody about consequences, there's just like a real
resistance right to the concept.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
What do you mean.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I was in a restaurant and in a waiter a
couple of weeks ago, spilled four drinks on me and
I didn't, but he was. He was a young guy.
It's like twenty three. And the first thing he says
to me, he goes, it was the tray. It was
the tray, and I just I grew up in a
(29:11):
place and in a time it wasn't the tray, it
was you, Right, I wasn't mad. Shit happens. But the
point is, in a world where nothing is ever anyone's fault,
it's not possible. I couldn't have spilled that drink on you.
It was the track. Did it, right, you know, it
(29:33):
was the tray in this world right in which our
politics takes place. Right, all of this is downrange from
culture incredibly. I mean, you're in the nine to eleven Museum, Katie,
that's you on the television. I remember watching it. That
was the most horrible day of my adult life, watching horror,
(29:56):
American horror on the screen. And it seems to me
quarter century later, just total amnesia, right, real numbness about
bad things that could happen. So, you know, we used
to there used to be movies right about what would
happen if there were two astronauts like stranded in space.
(30:18):
That's happening right now. No, just as a fuck right
at all? Right, right, except for like at NASA, And
so what I'm saying is with all of these people
is terrible, terrible things will happen. I know it will happen.
It's not a debate. If you take a guy who
(30:39):
doesn't believe in science and vaccines and medicine with a
track record of doing what he did in Samoa, of
course people are gonna die. Right if you politicize the
American military, Trump is at hour one right, all transgender
personnel or out the military. They'll be disqualified for military service.
They're gonna be medically discharged, all of them. Fifteen thousand.
(31:02):
He's going to fire the Joint Staff, right the chiefs,
the Chief of Naval Operations, Linda Franchetti, Admiral Fanchetti, first
woman to be Chief of Naval Operations, she's going to
be out. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who
was a confidant and friend of General Millet, he's going
to be out. Mark Wayne Mullin just put a hold
(31:24):
on promotion of the three star officer who's being promoted
to four star rank to take over US forces in Europe.
He's going to be out of the military. So you're
going to see a culling of the senior leadership of
the military, unlike anything that the country's seen since nineteen
thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, when Marshall got the
(31:47):
military ready to fight the Second World War, and guys
like Eisenhower went from lieutenant colonel to Brevett major generals overnight.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I also understand that there may be a mission to
court martial some of the high ranking military official Steve
who spoke ill of Donald Trump during the campaign of
course I'm talking about John Kelly and Mark Milly. General
Mattis did not. He did write a resignation letter, and
(32:34):
I think sort of you could read between the lines
what he was saying. But could he actually court martial
some of these individuals who spoke out against him.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yes, he could recall them to active service and convene
a court martial under a uniform Code of Military Justice,
which is the military's legal system. That is a prosecution,
that is a kangaroo court prosecution all sorts of problems,
including the command influence or undue influence of the commander
(33:06):
in chief in the court martial. And of course that
court martial would be tried by a jury of Millie's peers,
who of course would not convict him, and it would
be found not guilty. Right, So that's an example. Could
Trump do it? Yeah? Is there a release valve? There is.
(33:33):
We don't live in the Third Reich. We live in America.
So Millie would go have his court martial. I think
Jackie Robinson was court martialed, right, It will be as
unjust as that a lot of people have faced on
just court martial in the history of the military for
racial reasons. A lot of them. The military justice system, though,
(33:55):
like the American justice system, which it's much a part of,
is resilton. And so you don't go to get Milly
up against the wall. Millie's going to be acquitted, and
with that acquittal will be a rebuke morally of the
outrageousness of the action. And so that's how it works.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
In that case. You're describing Steve guardrails that exist, but
there are few and far between guardrails currently in place
with a Trump presidency and a Senate controlled by Republicans,
a House controlled by Republicans, and of course a Justice
Department controlled by Republicans. So what are your biggest fears
(34:46):
as you look toward these next four years?
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I guess I have a slight dissent, and I think
it's a really important in distinction, which is this, The
guard are exactly the same as they've ever been. They're
exactly the same. Nothing has changed. Constitutions, the constitution, the
votes are the votes right, All the facts of what's right,
(35:13):
what's wrong, what's decent, what's not, what's crazy, what's not,
nothing has changed. What's changed is the incentives and maybe
the tolerance that a Bill Haggerty from Tennessee would go
out and say, we don't for the most sensitive jobs
(35:35):
of the US government. I don't care whatsoever who these
people are, what they'll do, who they're on the payroll,
if they're compromised, if they're not, don't give a shit
at all. I trust Trump, And so if there are
enough of those people, then Trump will get to do
whatever he wants. Now, the recess appointment is a bigger deal, right,
(36:02):
because that's a systemic assault. If you take all of
these unqualified people with the acquiescence of the Senate, who
seeks to evade their complete lack of fitness by evading
their constitutional role, by giving away their coequal status in
(36:24):
the American government with an acting capitulation, well, I would argue,
like I said earlier, the republic has fallen, right, And
it's not about Republicans and checks and bounces about whether
ten to fifteen people. We know who those people are, right,
(36:45):
we know their names. Will they process somebody right on
national television that's clearly unfit? Right? I mean these people
were flying a commercial jetliner. You got to leave your
kid with him, right, whatever circumstance, analogy that works for you, Right,
(37:06):
I think most people would be like those people in
these positions. The great question in our politics is just,
really you're going to say yes to that?
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Are you talking about Republican senators like Susan Collins and
Lisa Murkowski?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
And absolutely? Of course?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Of course who else comes to mind, Steve.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Sullivan in Alaska. There's been a couple of them, Mitch McConnell.
Does Mitch McConnell believe that Pete Hegsa is fit to
be the Secretary of Defense? I don't think he has
any core right, but I don't know what he's going
to do.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
And he has said he felt liberated not having to
be the majority leader.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
And there's nothing that makes me crazier than the sense
that I would the Senate majority leader. But now I'm liberated.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Now.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
If you have power, you can exercise it how you wish,
when you wish, for whatever cause you wish. And that's
why people like John McCain when he was at his best.
The issue here is right, it's not there's no there's
nothing to discover. There's new bad stuff that will come out,
for sure, because that's who these people are, but there's
(38:25):
nothing right that will make them more wet, more saturated.
By unfitness than they already are. So the question is,
is really like Susan Collins right? And three more? Are
you kidding me? Her him? Christine?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
No, come on, I want to ask you about Pam
BONDI what reasons do you think she should not be confirmed?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Because in twenty twenty three she said that the prosecutors
and the Justice Department officials who prosecuted Trump should themselves
be prosecuted because for revenge. We live in a nation
(39:16):
where the rule of law is supreme. Donald Trump is
prosecuted because he broke the law and he was found guilty.
And then the Supreme Court held that the president has immunity, which,
though is a new and novel concept and all the
broad scope of American jurisprudence and history, the Court does
(39:39):
in fact have the power to say so and to
make it so, and now it is so. And so
those charges have been dismissed because of the complexity, the
layerings of the American justice system that always offer another
opportunity unity for another look on a question of law.
(40:06):
So I would be, despite not being someone who would
ever pick him, if I was in the Senate and
I had a vote, I would be like yes to
Marco Rubio, I would be no to all of these
other people, because there's no case to be made that
these people can run these agencies, do these jobs, and
(40:30):
these are life and death jobs. They're ludicrous appointments.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
What I think is interesting is so many of these
people have absolutely no expertise in the agencies they are
being tasked to run.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
There's no difference, none, between making Pete Hegseth the Secretary
of Defense and having an Apprentice episode and making Meat
Love or Little John or both of them together with
Gary Busey the Secretary of Defense. It's the same thing.
(41:09):
When Donald Trump was on the Apprentice set, he assembled
a menagerie of characters that coagulated there same thing. And
those are the people that are his casting call him her, him,
and these people right have been put forward. There are
(41:30):
other people in the country, we call them senators. Their
job is to objectively look at those people, sayon and
the diplomatic way to do this, and Republicans will have
to do it this way, and they should be given
(41:52):
the space to do this by their democratic colleagues because
it's good for the country. Trump can never be wrong.
We've left that world.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
What will happen to some of these senators, Steve, if
they vote not to confirm some of these people.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
So what these senators their back door, of their escape
patch to be able to go out and say again,
because in this world Trump can never be wrong, is
that Trump didn't know Trump was ill served. Trump is
christ Like, he makes no mistakes ever. But there are
(42:35):
judases around Christ, and they are judases around Trump. And
it will be the Judas who is blamed, never Trump,
by a Republican senator, for sending Trump into a position
where Trump was humiliated. It isn't that Donald Trump knew
who mack Gates was. It was that Donald Trump just
found out who mack Gates was because Donald Trump was
(42:58):
badly served. Because of course, Donald Trump is an Ajenoux.
How could he have known. So it's important to appreciate
the performative aspects of all of this stuff. Right, if
the federal government shrank by some gigantic percentage and amount, right,
(43:19):
they're still going to be a need to deliver food
services to poor children four years from now. What's going
to be left behind is the nothingness that gives democrats
and progressives their golden age and golden opportunity because for
the first time in a long time, they get to
imagine something new, something different, how to deliver twenty first
(43:43):
century services to people who need it without having to
defend the broken institutions made in the nineteen fifties in
nineteen sixties that are going to be gone right, going
to be gone right by the time we get to
the end of the Trump presidency. But they're not going
to be gone by Elon Mosker or Ramaswami.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
I'm taking away from this conversation Steve that you're pretty
stoked about this incoming crew of folks.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
I think that was a joke, right, I think, you know,
John Lewis talked about this, right, you know, I don't
you know. My life overlapped with his. You know, I
went to Auschwitz with lv z L on the sixtieth
anniversary of its liberation when I worked in the White House.
And this is the time that I was born into.
(44:32):
I was born in nineteen seventy. I was ten years
old when Ronald Reagan became president. It's a long time ago. Now.
I was thirty when the millennia turned and Bill Clinton
was president. We were the most powerful nation in the
history of the world pre eminent in all things, to
(44:52):
such a degree that people were saying, we're at the
end of history. I've watched a lot happen over the
last years, and all I can say in this moment
for any American, our country's going to outlive all of us.
We'll never see the whole. We're never gonna get to
see the ending. We just won't, right. And I think
(45:16):
this is like so deeply important to appreciate in the
context of there are things bigger than us, and as
an American, there is nothing bigger than us than the
United States. And in our story, this chapter of it,
(45:37):
I think it's exciting to be part of it and
to oppose something that I think is deeply terrible, because
on the other side of it is something a lot better.
That's the greatness of the country. Lincoln was preceded by
(45:59):
the worst president in American history until Trump became president.
And so I think Trump is going to be a disaster, disaster,
but the country will endure, damage will be done, Terrible
consequences might happen, but one of the consequences that will
(46:27):
come from the disaster ahead is greatness that will emerge
from it. A greatness that didn't exist in the moment
when what's to come could have been prevented. Destiny did
(46:47):
not shape the events at hand like that. So I
think in this moment, opposing what is about to come
is a deep import and I'm excited to have a
small voice in that effort because for me, some people
(47:09):
are great at sports and some people love music and painting.
This is what I care about. There's nothing more important
to me outside of my family than the country. And
what that's come to mean to me over recent years
(47:31):
is not the partisan victory and the excitement of winning
a campaign when I was a young man, but about
the opportunities that everybody ought to have in a country.
That ought to mean when it comes to freedom, the
same thing for everybody, and that is very much on
the table right now, that question. And I could not
(47:54):
think of a better thing to do if I got
a day left, a week left, or thirty five years left,
than to talk about that right now, because what's been
handed down to us to preserve it makes stronger for
(48:16):
the next generation is of profound importance. There's three hundred
and forty million Americans alive, half of us who have
ever lived or alive right now, because there's only been
seven hundred million people in all the history of the
world since July fourth, seventeen seventy six who've been able
(48:36):
to say these words that mean more to me and
I think mean more to a lot of people in
the country than any other association in their life. And
it's this I am an American.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Steve Schmidt, thank you as always for talking with me.
I always appreciate our conversations. Thank you, Steve.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Great to be with you, always, always great to see you.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(49:34):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
(49:55):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is next question
today everyone. My guest is Steve Schmidt. He's a veteran
political strategist who shaped major campaigns for Republican heavyweights like
John McCain and George W. Bush. Now he has turned
his sharp eye on the party itself, emerging as a
(00:27):
very powerful voice against its transformation under Donald J.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Trump.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
With Trump headed back to the White House, we're going
to try to make heads or tails of this chaotic
transition period. And it is chaotic, folks. We're looking ahead
at what twenty twenty five might hold with a few
glances back at what led to Trump's second term, from
media trust to democratic strategy and Trump's wild cabinet picks.
Steve has thoughts, and he is not holding back, and
(00:56):
he really likes to talk. Fair warning everyone. I love him, though,
so grab your favorite beverage. My drink of choice these
days is to kill on the rocks and settle in
for a candid, no holds barred conversation about America's next chapter.
(01:17):
Steve Schmidt, so happy to see you. I haven't talked
to you since election night, as we were processing the
fact that Donald Trump was going to win the election.
That was about three weeks ago, Steve, and I'm just
curious how you've been able to understand what happened in
(01:40):
this election and why.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Huh. Well, so, I think in the end that Donald
Trump is many, many, many things, but among them is
not a hypocrite. And that is the high card of
American life, the unpardonable sin that you're full of shit.
(02:09):
And at the end of the day, more clear now
than when we spoke, exampled by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brazinski,
is the performative nature of all of this. Soon will
be on the four year anniversary of January sixth. I
watched it when CNN reported it as a riot. I
(02:32):
tweeted out in that moment, that's not a riot, it's
an insurrection. It's exactly what it was. And the American
people in the end were unbothered by it. And so
we had a breach of the peaceful transition of power,
(02:54):
and we had a failure by the Biden administry and
by Joe Biden, both exceptionally and singularly, to communicate effectively
to the country when he became president two weeks after that,
(03:15):
that what happened was astonishing, extraordinary, and there was nothing
more important than it ever ever right, not happening again,
and so the entire focus of the administration should have
(03:39):
been that. Instead, he treated Donald Trump as a prop
to be used to turn out voters like Voldemort in
a Harry Potter movie. And so for years Trump was
the justification for Joe Biden and I'm breaking my promise
(04:03):
and running for four more years. During all of this,
what rose was oppositional to the media, that you were
part of the media, that you were part of held
power to account when you worked at a network, and
that media was deeply connected to what happened in nineteen
(04:25):
seventy two, nineteen seventy three, in nineteen seventy four, when
a president of the United States said he was above
the law and inspired a generation. By the time we
get to where we are now, it's very different. When
Scarborough looks into the camera and he says to his
audience on what's supposed to be the most important public
(04:50):
affairs morning show in the country on a network that
Tom brokecaw worked at, to his audience, fuck you if
you don't believe what I'm telling you, which is the truth.
This is the best Biden we've ever had analytically and
(05:12):
intellectually in every single person, including me, who said that
that was bullshit was shouted down and smeared by somebody
in a position of power, or by somebody making money
from somebody in a position of power close to the
(05:35):
power in a political establishment that has been repudiated, has
been rejected and cast out in favor of Donald Trump,
and their takeaway from it, by and large three weeks
later is the American people are stupid, racist and we
(05:58):
did nothing wrong. So at this moment, fifty one days
before the inauguration, the American people are going to have
an experiential odyssey for which I think they have a
real lack of imagination, despite being warned about it, despite
having nine years to process it. And so we're going
(06:22):
to get to see the answer to the question spill
out in real time about what happens next when a
Pete Hegseth is the Secretary of Defense, when a man
who wants to bring back polio in smallpox, like Robert F.
Kennedy becomes the head of the public health services. So
it's going to end up tragically and badly. There will
(06:42):
be a lot of harm. But in a democracy, you
get the government you deserve. I'm sorry for the long answer,
but that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Well, let me pull apart some of the things you
just claimed because it was a long answer, Steve, And
is it really fair to put the onus on Joe
Biden for Donald try Trump's victory. Is what I'm hearing
you say that he should have been focused on the
insurrection and saying it was unacceptable. But he did have
(07:09):
to go about the business of running the country and
being president of the United States. You're faulting him for
not emphasizing that enough and for running a second time.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I'm faulting him for his titanic egotism that led to
his breaking of his implicit promise, which is I will
be a one term president and put the country first.
It's not what he did. The truth of the matter
is is the quiet part just wasn't set out loud
by anyone except for Dean Phillips, who's now patted again
(07:42):
on the back by all of his colleagues who knew
what he was saying was true, then attacked him when
he set it out loud outside the green room. And
now that it's been proven true. It can be talked
again about in private.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
When you say something has been proven true, Steve, you're
talking about Joe Biden's inability to run the government. Is
that what you're referring to.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
To communicate, to talk to inspire, to lead, to make
it up the full set of stairs on Air Force
one in an urgent moment. And so there was a
moment in history in the country where the president was
incapacitated by a stroke.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
President Wilson, right, and Edith was running the government, and
he was propped up in the car, propped.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Up running the country. And Edith Wilson believes she did
the right thing. She sincerely and honestly believed. It really
wasn't a book. Well what do you do in that circumstance?
You know, she did in her estimation what Woodrow Wilson
would have wanted. But the point is the main point
(08:54):
is that everybody and the most that can never happen again.
And so over and over an over again, the American
people were told things Joe Biden's FDR, the economy's the
best it's ever been, Bidenomics. You know what, the American people,
working people in the country, forty percent of which don't
have four hundred dollars available, don't like being lectured by
(09:16):
millionaires on television telling them how great it is. They said, fu,
and they voted for Trump because the economy wasn't great.
That was a figment of a bunch of elites imaginations
in New York and Washington. And we now have Trump
in the White House. That's one reason. That's one thing.
He did Afghanistan, completing total incompetence on the withdrawal, and
(09:40):
he was beaten about the head on it for four
straight years. Joe Biden said that the border was secure?
Was the border secure? It was not secure. Adult life
and I may have said this on election night requires
you to hold multiple contradictory thoughts. Trump is the most
(10:01):
prolific liar in American history. But if the country thinks
he's the most honest president we've ever had, because there's
no filtered thought. But when you apply the test about
who's telling the truth, who's really honest, who was telling
the truth about the border, who was telling the truth
about the economy, who was telling the truth about what
(10:21):
happened in Afghanistan? Who was telling the truth about Biden's capacity?
It was Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, and the problem
with that strategically, if your foundation is the opposition party
to Donald Trump is built on a sandbox, on mush
on the same type of Trump in dishonesty, you rail against,
(10:45):
you lose, and that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Let me ask you about the role of the media,
because you point out Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzenski as
sort of the consummate media, I guess enablers in some ways.
Talk about that and the role you believe they played
in turning many voters against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
(11:10):
and into the arms of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I don't think that enough people watch the show that
it determines outcomes. What it does is shape a narrative, right.
It creates a choke point in the artery of information
(11:35):
around what you can say and what you can't say
in the acceptable speech lane, in the truth lane. At
a moment in American politics that some of us are
trying to say is urgent, is exigent, and is a crisis.
And when you watch Joe Biden perform by twenty twenty two,
(11:59):
twenty twenty three, and you appreciate what the central line
of attack is and you look at the reality that
it's clear if you have competency with regard to being
able to assess the landscape of a presidential campaign, you
can do that that Biden's in a lot of trouble.
(12:20):
And what Joe Biden got from Joe Scarborough, his friend,
wasn't favorable coverage, sympathetic coverage. Joe Scarborough decided, I'm gonna
wear three hats, I'm gonna be the guy on the show,
I'm gonna be the president's friend, and I'm gonna be
his political advisor. And he was. And what's special about
(12:42):
the United States is the and I really mean this,
the genius of the people who founded the country. They
were imperfect, they weren't just, but man, were they fucking brilliant.
And they left us something called the First Amendment. And
(13:02):
what the First Amendment guarantees is that the next era
of journalism in America will be bottom up. And from
this bottom up journalism will come the accountability, will come
the challenge, and will come the information the American people
need to have so that the next time they get
(13:24):
a choice, which they'll have again, they can say time
to turn around and change direction.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture. Sign up for our daily newsletter,
Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Let's
(14:02):
talk about these cabinet picks, Steve, because Chris Coons of Delaware,
a Democrat, described it as a reality show casting call,
and there were a slew of people named over the weekend.
Donald Trump doesn't want FBI background checks, he wants recess appointments,
(14:24):
so the Senate doesn't even have to confirm these people.
And there are a lot of questions about some of
these folks. From RFK Junior Telsey Gavard Pete Hegseth. I
thought Maureen Dowd's column was good this weekend when she
said is Donald Trump protecting women or predators? Because there
(14:45):
is a thread amongst some of these people in terms
of the allegations they have faced. So, as you've watched
these people be named and cabinet positions, other power full
positions in the government, what has your reaction been shocking?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
It's not surprising as shocking, Pete Hegsath cannot be must
not be in the chain of command for the release
of nuclear weapons with his white nationalist tattoos stamped on
his chest. The answer is no. Now. If the United
States Senate is unable to deliver the no with an
(15:26):
assertion of its coequal power under the American system, that
means we're in a crisis. If Trump appoints all of
these people, these misfits, the disordered ones, absent FBI investigations,
which is reckless, but through a recess process with the
(15:50):
implicit approval of Republican senators objectively, in that moment, I
could make an argument that the American Republic has fallen.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
The big question is what will these senators do? And
I think it's a big question mark at this juncture,
we don't know what do you think reading the tea leaves, Steve,
do you think they are going to give Donald Trump
a green light? Or are they going to say our
role is to advise and consent and we need to
(16:27):
fully vet these individuals before they're put in these positions
of incredible power.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
So I completely appreciate the ministerial part of this. If
you're a senator to say, I'm not going to prejudge
Nay Pete Hagsath, Tulca Gabbard we're going to wait for
the confirmation hearings. I'm going to examine them, and I
get the politics of that. There is nothing, not a
(16:59):
single thing that any sentient US senator needs to know
regarding these people's on fitness that isn't available right now.
In this moment, you had a guy like Pete Hegseth, Right,
you look at all these people. I was talking to
someone like, who would you stop? If you can only
stop one, which one would it be? And so I've
(17:21):
talked to like fifteen people about this, right, I've had
great conversations on this to some of these people all
over the world. And I was talking to one of
the I think I don't think he would mind. I
was talking to John Nichols at the Nation magazine, and
I think it's one of the smartest, brightest, most thoughtful people.
And we came to the same conclusion, right, which is
(17:42):
heg Seth, which is, if you were Captain Benson, you
would follow the bread comes in the clues to the
nuclear weapons. That job comes with nuclear weapons command and control.
You want a lieutenant colonel following Pete Hegseeth around with
the launch codes for the nuclear weapons. He gets to
turn the key with the president, right, right, you know?
(18:05):
Uh no. So you look at all these people and
I try to imagine, like what could go wrong, what
could go right? And I look at some of them
like a Gabbard, there's nothing that can go right. A
hag Seth, there's nothing that can go right. A Bobby Kennedy. Right,
(18:27):
he could be in pharmaceutical advertising. But polio's coming back,
so I'm against him too, right, We and and and
and Christy noan Christine, No, we haven't even talked about her, right,
Like the whole shooting of the dog. And I'm a
dog lover, right, I have like dogs are a big
part of my life, a lot of big part of
(18:49):
like a lot of lives of Americans. She confessed to
shooting the dog because the dog embarrassed her at a
at a hunting party. And she just had the dog
loose in the back of a pickup truck, so of
course it jumped out because it wasn't trained to sitting there,
and she killed it. And we want to make we
want to make her the head of a gigantic federal
(19:16):
police bureaucracy. It should be ninety eight to nothing. Send
us somebody new that's not going to happen. But with
regard to those people, in the scenario that you're laying out,
what you're really talking about is you should start with
a hard no of all of the Democrats, plus Murkowski
(19:38):
and Collins, if they are who everybody seems to think
they are, which isn't in a position of agreement with
the Democrats, but serious people, but of course they would be.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
No.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Sullivan in Alaska is a Marine Corps colonel in his
previous life. Is U S Senator? Does he think it's
okay for Pete Hegseth, who's regardless of whether he raped
the woman or not that he's been accused of by
our of raping or right that the police reports make clear,
he's a dipshit of the highest variety. Right, he shouldn't.
(20:18):
He shouldn't. He's not eligible to be an officer in
the junior class at West Point with that type of conduct.
It's unbecoming. Right. So, honestly, Robert Kennedy, right, is interesting
right of all of these So for example, and I
this is the one. I can argue this all day.
(20:39):
But what I'm most interested about with regard to him
is is two things He's declared war on the sugar
soda industry, and they're gearing up like in Washington, like
right now, right if there was still functional journalism, like
every PR agency, right they are, they're going right now
(21:01):
in anticipation that rfks and he got in there right
for the soda war. The other thing, right, I find
fascinating is RFK said no more and he can do this.
He can get rid of it pretty easily, no more
pharmaceutical advertising. So it's just to me, it's just.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Fascinating, right send to play devil's advocate. What would be
wrong with defenestrating the pharmaceutical industry's ability.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
For it completely for it? My question would be, do
you have to bring back polio and do it? Right?
I don't, right, I think.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I think the scary thing about RFK Junior is to
paint all pharmaceutical companies with a broad brush when they
have developed life saving, life changing drugs that are helping people. Yes,
I understand, we want to look at the core problems
(21:57):
that are making people sick, so we don'tcessarily always have
to rely on pharmaceuticals. But they've done a lot of
great things like vaccines and curing polio and the HPV vaccine,
et cetera, et cetera. And I think it's sort of
frightening to have someone who's the head of the Department
of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, the CDC,
(22:21):
the NIH, Medicare and Medicaid services. Although I guess doctor
Oz is going to be doing that, But to have
someone who is so anti pharmaceutical doesn't sit well with
me either.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well, I'm listening to you. My existence. My grandfather was
a twin, and he and his twin both lost their
first wives and children in childbirth. My father was his
(22:55):
son by a second marriage. My grandfather's brother, I was
a D Day paratrooper. When I met him, was in
a wheelchair, not from war rooms, but from polio, which
he got in the nineteen fifties. Right, suffering, suffering, Right,
that default position of humanity since the beginning of time,
(23:17):
alleviated by profound leaps forward in science. Now, for my
entire political career, right, let's call it. Between age twenty
five and forty, big Pharma was the target of the
Democratic Party, right politically, big form of this big pharma
(23:38):
screwing you, YadA, YadA, YadA. Now, these companies are powerful,
billion dollar organizations. I have skepticism of anything big and powerful,
as I know you do, so should your audience. And
one of the worst ideas of the last thirty years
was to put pharmaceutical advertising on television. It wasn't a
(23:59):
lot out before. That shouldn't be allowed. And I do
think that some of the fights that RFK has picked,
some of his enemies have real teeth, and to have
somebody who's literally nuts enough to make a full charge
at them in Washington, DC is something I haven't seen
over the course of my career. And I'm just as
(24:20):
a practitioner of campaign politics who spend a lot of
time in this space, in this world and has watched
how it's all covered in the media as a political
science experiment. I just I can't. I could, I could
set up a podcast and cover it. I mean, I
just it's endlessly fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So do you think some of his desires to tackle
these intractable problems like the power or the size of
these big pharmaceutical bohemoths is in some ways a good thing?
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I think that I live in a ski town and
in a city, and most people where I live, generally speaking,
are in pretty good shape. If you go to Disney
World or to Disneyland, you're going to find a real
cross section of America. It's frightening, it's unhealthy. If you
(25:20):
brought somebody back who is a medical doctor, who let's
say passed away in nineteen sixty five, and you showed
them what the American citizen looks like in his or
her aggregate in twenty twenty four, what would their reaction
be if we had to fight, right, we had a
(25:42):
draft World War two. It's the physical training, level of
physical fitness in the country. It's deplorable. The country is sick.
And I think that that is a fair observation. A
lot of it has to do with the culture, with
(26:04):
the food people are. By the way, this isn't this
isn't a European problem. This is an American problem, right.
This is an American political problem. Right. This is a
lot of corruption, a lot of power, a lot of
in these in these industries, and so kind of crazy
person observes something correctly, Does that mean that that person's
(26:29):
observation qualifies them to fix the thing that they've observed correctly?
Of course not, you know, he he is there are
there are kind of a couple qualification bars in these jobs,
right that, and they matter most on a sliding scale. Character, honesty, judgment.
(26:50):
Tell me about the bear again in Central Park, about
the whale, about the revelations and the diary. Now, now
let's look at your your ability to process reality information.
I'm going to tell you something. Okay, what I'd like
from you is a response about what we should do.
(27:14):
There's no evidence to suggest that Robert Kennedy has any
capacity to know what to do in any given situation.
Can't process information. It's bad judgment and a rotten character,
and so he's unfit.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Well, I think, I think to your point, Robert F.
Kennedy Junior is a mixed bag. I think he says
some things that are true about chronic disease in this country,
about pesticides, about some of the things that so on
in this country that are keeping people unhealthy. On the
other hand, you know, there are things that he says
(27:52):
that are really scary about vaccines. He went to Samoa,
and I don't know if you've read that story.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Killed a lot of people, kill.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
A lot of us died, and and there are other
positions he has taken that are really scary too, So.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
He's got let me like I just like one he
will get people will die. People will die, right if
someone like him runs the public health services, right, And
it's like one of the things I find most curious
about this era. I say, this is like a Gen
X or fifty four. There's a lot more sensitivity today.
(28:30):
Some of it's good than there used to be, but
there's a real current in the culture that if you
talk to somebody about consequences, there's just like a real
resistance right to the concept.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
What do you mean.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I was in a restaurant and in a waiter a
couple of weeks ago, spilled four drinks on me and
I didn't, but he was. He was a young guy.
It's like twenty three. And the first thing he says
to me, he goes, it was the tray. It was
the tray, and I just I grew up in a
(29:11):
place and in a time it wasn't the tray, it
was you, Right, I wasn't mad. Shit happens. But the
point is, in a world where nothing is ever anyone's fault,
it's not possible. I couldn't have spilled that drink on you.
It was the track. Did it, right, you know, it
(29:33):
was the tray in this world right in which our
politics takes place. Right, all of this is downrange from
culture incredibly. I mean, you're in the nine to eleven Museum, Katie,
that's you on the television. I remember watching it. That
was the most horrible day of my adult life, watching horror,
(29:56):
American horror on the screen. And it seems to me
quarter century later, just total amnesia, right, real numbness about
bad things that could happen. So, you know, we used
to there used to be movies right about what would
happen if there were two astronauts like stranded in space.
(30:18):
That's happening right now. No, just as a fuck right
at all? Right, right, except for like at NASA, And
so what I'm saying is with all of these people
is terrible, terrible things will happen. I know it will happen.
It's not a debate. If you take a guy who
(30:39):
doesn't believe in science and vaccines and medicine with a
track record of doing what he did in Samoa, of
course people are gonna die. Right if you politicize the
American military, Trump is at hour one right, all transgender
personnel or out the military. They'll be disqualified for military service.
They're gonna be medically discharged, all of them. Fifteen thousand.
(31:02):
He's going to fire the Joint Staff, right the chiefs,
the Chief of Naval Operations, Linda Franchetti, Admiral Fanchetti, first
woman to be Chief of Naval Operations, she's going to
be out. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who
was a confidant and friend of General Millet, he's going
to be out. Mark Wayne Mullin just put a hold
(31:24):
on promotion of the three star officer who's being promoted
to four star rank to take over US forces in Europe.
He's going to be out of the military. So you're
going to see a culling of the senior leadership of
the military, unlike anything that the country's seen since nineteen
thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, when Marshall got the
(31:47):
military ready to fight the Second World War, and guys
like Eisenhower went from lieutenant colonel to Brevett major generals overnight.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I also understand that there may be a mission to
court martial some of the high ranking military official Steve
who spoke ill of Donald Trump during the campaign of
course I'm talking about John Kelly and Mark Milly. General
Mattis did not. He did write a resignation letter, and
(32:34):
I think sort of you could read between the lines
what he was saying. But could he actually court martial
some of these individuals who spoke out against him.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yes, he could recall them to active service and convene
a court martial under a uniform Code of Military Justice,
which is the military's legal system. That is a prosecution,
that is a kangaroo court prosecution all sorts of problems,
including the command influence or undue influence of the commander
(33:06):
in chief in the court martial. And of course that
court martial would be tried by a jury of Millie's peers,
who of course would not convict him, and it would
be found not guilty. Right, So that's an example. Could
Trump do it? Yeah? Is there a release valve? There is.
(33:33):
We don't live in the Third Reich. We live in America.
So Millie would go have his court martial. I think
Jackie Robinson was court martialed, right, It will be as
unjust as that a lot of people have faced on
just court martial in the history of the military for
racial reasons. A lot of them. The military justice system, though,
(33:55):
like the American justice system, which it's much a part of,
is resilton. And so you don't go to get Milly
up against the wall. Millie's going to be acquitted, and
with that acquittal will be a rebuke morally of the
outrageousness of the action. And so that's how it works.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
In that case. You're describing Steve guardrails that exist, but
there are few and far between guardrails currently in place
with a Trump presidency and a Senate controlled by Republicans,
a House controlled by Republicans, and of course a Justice
Department controlled by Republicans. So what are your biggest fears
(34:46):
as you look toward these next four years?
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I guess I have a slight dissent, and I think
it's a really important in distinction, which is this, The
guard are exactly the same as they've ever been. They're
exactly the same. Nothing has changed. Constitutions, the constitution, the
votes are the votes right, All the facts of what's right,
(35:13):
what's wrong, what's decent, what's not, what's crazy, what's not,
nothing has changed. What's changed is the incentives and maybe
the tolerance that a Bill Haggerty from Tennessee would go
out and say, we don't for the most sensitive jobs
(35:35):
of the US government. I don't care whatsoever who these
people are, what they'll do, who they're on the payroll,
if they're compromised, if they're not, don't give a shit
at all. I trust Trump, And so if there are
enough of those people, then Trump will get to do
whatever he wants. Now, the recess appointment is a bigger deal, right,
(36:02):
because that's a systemic assault. If you take all of
these unqualified people with the acquiescence of the Senate, who
seeks to evade their complete lack of fitness by evading
their constitutional role, by giving away their coequal status in
(36:24):
the American government with an acting capitulation, well, I would argue,
like I said earlier, the republic has fallen, right, And
it's not about Republicans and checks and bounces about whether
ten to fifteen people. We know who those people are, right,
(36:45):
we know their names. Will they process somebody right on
national television that's clearly unfit? Right? I mean these people
were flying a commercial jetliner. You got to leave your
kid with him, right, whatever circumstance, analogy that works for you, Right,
(37:06):
I think most people would be like those people in
these positions. The great question in our politics is just,
really you're going to say yes to that?
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Are you talking about Republican senators like Susan Collins and
Lisa Murkowski?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
And absolutely? Of course?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Of course who else comes to mind, Steve.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Sullivan in Alaska. There's been a couple of them, Mitch McConnell.
Does Mitch McConnell believe that Pete Hegsa is fit to
be the Secretary of Defense? I don't think he has
any core right, but I don't know what he's going
to do.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
And he has said he felt liberated not having to
be the majority leader.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
And there's nothing that makes me crazier than the sense
that I would the Senate majority leader. But now I'm liberated.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Now.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
If you have power, you can exercise it how you wish,
when you wish, for whatever cause you wish. And that's
why people like John McCain when he was at his best.
The issue here is right, it's not there's no there's
nothing to discover. There's new bad stuff that will come out,
for sure, because that's who these people are, but there's
(38:25):
nothing right that will make them more wet, more saturated.
By unfitness than they already are. So the question is,
is really like Susan Collins right? And three more? Are
you kidding me? Her him? Christine?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
No, come on, I want to ask you about Pam
BONDI what reasons do you think she should not be confirmed?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Because in twenty twenty three she said that the prosecutors
and the Justice Department officials who prosecuted Trump should themselves
be prosecuted because for revenge. We live in a nation
(39:16):
where the rule of law is supreme. Donald Trump is
prosecuted because he broke the law and he was found guilty.
And then the Supreme Court held that the president has immunity, which,
though is a new and novel concept and all the
broad scope of American jurisprudence and history, the Court does
(39:39):
in fact have the power to say so and to
make it so, and now it is so. And so
those charges have been dismissed because of the complexity, the
layerings of the American justice system that always offer another
opportunity unity for another look on a question of law.
(40:06):
So I would be, despite not being someone who would
ever pick him, if I was in the Senate and
I had a vote, I would be like yes to
Marco Rubio, I would be no to all of these
other people, because there's no case to be made that
these people can run these agencies, do these jobs, and
(40:30):
these are life and death jobs. They're ludicrous appointments.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
What I think is interesting is so many of these
people have absolutely no expertise in the agencies they are
being tasked to run.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
There's no difference, none, between making Pete Hegseth the Secretary
of Defense and having an Apprentice episode and making Meat
Love or Little John or both of them together with
Gary Busey the Secretary of Defense. It's the same thing.
(41:09):
When Donald Trump was on the Apprentice set, he assembled
a menagerie of characters that coagulated there same thing. And
those are the people that are his casting call him her, him,
and these people right have been put forward. There are
(41:30):
other people in the country, we call them senators. Their
job is to objectively look at those people, sayon and
the diplomatic way to do this, and Republicans will have
to do it this way, and they should be given
(41:52):
the space to do this by their democratic colleagues because
it's good for the country. Trump can never be wrong.
We've left that world.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
What will happen to some of these senators, Steve, if
they vote not to confirm some of these people.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
So what these senators their back door, of their escape
patch to be able to go out and say again,
because in this world Trump can never be wrong, is
that Trump didn't know Trump was ill served. Trump is
christ Like, he makes no mistakes ever. But there are
(42:35):
judases around Christ, and they are judases around Trump. And
it will be the Judas who is blamed, never Trump,
by a Republican senator, for sending Trump into a position
where Trump was humiliated. It isn't that Donald Trump knew
who mack Gates was. It was that Donald Trump just
found out who mack Gates was because Donald Trump was
(42:58):
badly served. Because of course, Donald Trump is an Ajenoux.
How could he have known. So it's important to appreciate
the performative aspects of all of this stuff. Right, if
the federal government shrank by some gigantic percentage and amount, right,
(43:19):
they're still going to be a need to deliver food
services to poor children four years from now. What's going
to be left behind is the nothingness that gives democrats
and progressives their golden age and golden opportunity because for
the first time in a long time, they get to
imagine something new, something different, how to deliver twenty first
(43:43):
century services to people who need it without having to
defend the broken institutions made in the nineteen fifties in
nineteen sixties that are going to be gone right, going
to be gone right by the time we get to
the end of the Trump presidency. But they're not going
to be gone by Elon Mosker or Ramaswami.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
I'm taking away from this conversation Steve that you're pretty
stoked about this incoming crew of folks.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
I think that was a joke, right, I think, you know,
John Lewis talked about this, right, you know, I don't
you know. My life overlapped with his. You know, I
went to Auschwitz with lv z L on the sixtieth
anniversary of its liberation when I worked in the White House.
And this is the time that I was born into.
(44:32):
I was born in nineteen seventy. I was ten years
old when Ronald Reagan became president. It's a long time ago. Now.
I was thirty when the millennia turned and Bill Clinton
was president. We were the most powerful nation in the
history of the world pre eminent in all things, to
(44:52):
such a degree that people were saying, we're at the
end of history. I've watched a lot happen over the
last years, and all I can say in this moment
for any American, our country's going to outlive all of us.
We'll never see the whole. We're never gonna get to
see the ending. We just won't, right. And I think
(45:16):
this is like so deeply important to appreciate in the
context of there are things bigger than us, and as
an American, there is nothing bigger than us than the
United States. And in our story, this chapter of it,
(45:37):
I think it's exciting to be part of it and
to oppose something that I think is deeply terrible, because
on the other side of it is something a lot better.
That's the greatness of the country. Lincoln was preceded by
(45:59):
the worst president in American history until Trump became president.
And so I think Trump is going to be a disaster, disaster,
but the country will endure, damage will be done, Terrible
consequences might happen, but one of the consequences that will
(46:27):
come from the disaster ahead is greatness that will emerge
from it. A greatness that didn't exist in the moment
when what's to come could have been prevented. Destiny did
(46:47):
not shape the events at hand like that. So I
think in this moment, opposing what is about to come
is a deep import and I'm excited to have a
small voice in that effort because for me, some people
(47:09):
are great at sports and some people love music and painting.
This is what I care about. There's nothing more important
to me outside of my family than the country. And
what that's come to mean to me over recent years
(47:31):
is not the partisan victory and the excitement of winning
a campaign when I was a young man, but about
the opportunities that everybody ought to have in a country.
That ought to mean when it comes to freedom, the
same thing for everybody, and that is very much on
the table right now, that question. And I could not
(47:54):
think of a better thing to do if I got
a day left, a week left, or thirty five years left,
than to talk about that right now, because what's been
handed down to us to preserve it makes stronger for
(48:16):
the next generation is of profound importance. There's three hundred
and forty million Americans alive, half of us who have
ever lived or alive right now, because there's only been
seven hundred million people in all the history of the
world since July fourth, seventeen seventy six who've been able
(48:36):
to say these words that mean more to me and
I think mean more to a lot of people in
the country than any other association in their life. And
it's this I am an American.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Steve Schmidt, thank you as always for talking with me.
I always appreciate our conversations. Thank you, Steve.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Great to be with you, always, always great to see you.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(49:34):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
(49:55):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Katie Couric
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.