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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. Where does the Supreme Court draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade meet the January 6th insurrection? If President Biden tells that story in this midterm election year, they connect like this.

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President Biden: This MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that's existed in American history and recent American history.

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Brian Lehrer: That's Biden from yesterday. If J. D. Vance, the newly minted US Senate candidate in Ohio backed by Donald Trump tells the story. It's his tweet that caused the Supreme Court to draft an amazing victory for the innocence we fight for. Remember Vance has previously criticized what he called "the childless left". Though maybe for politicians like Vance and house Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, we should call them the rudderless right.

Vance's college roommate released what he says is a note from Vance in 2016 worrying that Trump would be America's Hitler. McCarthy, who hopes to be the next speaker of the house has spent almost every day since January 6th cozying up to Trump. Has been in the news now because of the new book by New York Times reporters, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns for having told Liz Cheney on tape that he planned to ask Trump to resign after January 6th. Now he's, "All we love you, Donald."

We'll talk to Alexander Burns in just a minute. Here's that now-infamous audio from the Times and the book from Simon & Schuster.

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Speaker: The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass and it'll be my recommendation we should move on. That would be my take, but I don't think he would take it, but I don't know.

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Brian Lehrer: I don't know. My advice would be that he resigned. Kevin McCarthy to Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney on January 10th of last year. He's been a MAGA flag waiver almost ever since Cheney and others on the January 6th committee in the house are now planning eight public hearings about the insurrection for the month of June. We'll preview those among other things as we talk to the author of the book; one of the two authors of the book by Burns and Martin called This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future.

It Chronicles the divisions between the parties now and also very much within both parties. Co-author and New York Times National Political Correspondent Alexander Burns does join me now. Alexander, thanks for making this one of your stops. Welcome to WNYC.

Alexander Burns: Thank you so much for having me. I've been a listener for a very long time.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks so much. Many of our listeners have probably heard the McCarthy ask him to resign clip by now and we'll go way beyond that today, but could you tell us what the context was for McCarthy saying he would ask Trump to leave office before the end of his term?

Alexander Burns: Sure. As you mentioned, this is a conversation that happens on January 10th. Four days after the insurrection of the Capitol, 10 days before Donald Trump is expected to surrender the presidency to Joe Biden. This is an extraordinarily fraught moment for the whole country, for both parties, and even for the Republican leadership. This is a group of people who have obviously been in close collaboration with Donald Trump for nearly half a decade now. Most of them have been pretty eyes open for much of that time about what a problematic political leader Donald Trump is and almost none of them have ever acknowledged that publicly or done anything about it.

This is a conversation within a small group of Republican Congressional leaders. Kevin McCarthy and you mentioned Liz Cheney, Steve Scalise, who's that Republican whip, and Tom Emmer, the head of the House Republican Campaign Committee as well as a number of their advisors and staff members. What they're doing in this conversation, Brian is just trying to talk through what their options are.

They talk about potentially trying to invoke the 25th Amendment which is the process where the cabinet can remove the president. They talk about the democratic impeachment effort that is gathering steam at this point, and as we just heard McCarthy say seems almost certain to pass. They talk about the possibility of trying to get Trump to resign. What you hear from McCarthy there is at least in this brief moment he really is acknowledging that it seems like it'll be a dangerous thing for Trump to stay in office. A politically damaging thing for Republicans and that maybe their only option would be to try to push him to the exits themselves.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another clip from McCarthy's exchange with Liz Cheney, from your reporting for the Times and for the book in that January 10th phone call. In this one, Cheney speaks first and refers to then considering removing Trump from office by using the 25th Amendment which is for if a president is deemed unfit mentally or physically to continue in the job. Listen.

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Kevin McCarthy: Liz, are you on the phone?

Liz Cheney: Yes, I'm here. Thanks, Kevin. I guess there's a question when we were talking about the 25th Amendment resolution and you asked what happens if it gets there after he's gone. Is there any chance? Are you hearing that he might resign? Is there any reason to think that might happen?

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Brian Lehrer: Liz Cheney and Kevin McCarthy. Alexander, I think the bigger bombshell about that in your book is Lindsey Graham's 25th Amendment threat while the riot was still going on on the 6th. What do you report about that?

Alexander Burns: This is while the rioters are still overrunning the Capitol. Senate, Republicans, and Democrats together have been evacuated from the main Capitol Building through a series of tunnels to a secure location in one of the big Senate office buildings just across the street. You have a huge number of senators clustered in the same room and it's worth just remembering just to really capture the scene.

This is still in the middle of COVID pre-vaccines. This is a whole bunch of unvaccinated, many of them are older, or even elderly members of the Senate clustered together, getting briefed periodically by the Capitol Police. I should mention my co-author, Jonathan Martin, was in that room. He evacuated with the senators. One of the things that happens there is, Lindsey Graham makes a phone call.

He makes a phone call to the White House Counsel and says, "You got to get this guy-" Meaning President Trump. "-under control. He needs to tell this mob to disperse and go home and if he doesn't we are going to be pushing for the 25th Amendment to be used against him." That's an extraordinary threat from somebody who-- Again, much like Kevin McCarthy, the specifics are a little different, but much like Kevin McCarthy, one of Donald Trump's most trusty allies throughout his entire presidency is now raising the possibility with Donald Trump's lawyer in the white house that he would lobby the cabinet to kick the president out.

Brian Lehrer: If there is a rudderless right, Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, J. D. Vance, all blowing in that MAGA win against the insurrectionists before they were for them. For example, isn't the bottom line here that it's the Republican voters, most of them support Trump and Trumpism and they reveal themselves to keep supporting Trump and Trumpism after January 6th. If the people who vote in Republican primaries want a right-wing strong man that's democracy until it's not. No?

Alexander Burns: I think that really hits the nail on the head. I think that they're-- One of the things that we try to capture in this book and it's one of the main threads in the narrative is the extent to which Republican elected officials and even, I guess I could say, especially the senior-most leaders of the Republican party are really not trying to function as leaders in any literal sense. Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, they don't go out after January 6th and make a sustained blunt public argument to their own voters that it's time to move on from Donald Trump.

Mitch McConnell says on the night of January 6th the wee hours of January 7th that he thinks that Trump has finally discredited himself on January 6th. Then you don't see him go out and make a really stern and sustained argument that it's time to purge Trump from the Republican Party. What happens is when Republican voters don't turn on him on their own organically, the vast majority of Republican politicians drift back, or in some cases run back in the direction of Donald Trump, because they're following their voters.

Brian Lehrer: I want to play one more clip of Kevin McCarthy from the audio you revealed for the Times and for the book that hasn't gotten the most publicity is definitely the one about his plan to ask Trump to resign that's gotten the most publicity, I think, but this is maybe the scariest of McCarthy's warnings that makes his reversion to Trump water carrier, not just rudderless, but dangerous by his own standards. This clip from the audio is about what the inflammatory rhetoric by some GLP house members at the time could lead to. Here we go.

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Kevin McCarthy: Tension is too high. The country is too crazy. I do not want to look back and think we caused something or we missed something and someone got hurt. I don't want to play politics with any of that.

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Brian Lehrer: Someone could get hurt. A lot of people could get hurt. What was the context for that? "The country is too crazy," he said.

Alexander Burns: This is part of the same conversation in which McCarthy says that he's going to tell Trump to resign where they're talking about people besides Donald Trump in their party who they see as really dangerous figures. They talk about a couple of extreme-right members of the house, including Mo Brooks of Alabama and Matt Gaetz of Florida, who said things on and after January 6th, that Kevin McCarthy clearly believes in this conversation either did or could lead to violence, including violence against their colleagues in the house.

In the case of Matt Gaetz, he went on television after the insurrection and attacked several of his colleagues by name, including Liz Cheney, and called them out as this sort of anti-Trump cabal that was going to try to seize power in the Republican party using the insurrection as a pretext. This is really dark and conspiratorial stuff.

In that moment, Kevin McCarthy acknowledges basically exactly that, that it's dangerous. What we've seen since then, Brian obviously is that Kevin McCarthy has not had a whole lot to say about that kind of rhetoric by members of his own party, including some of the exact same people they were talking about in that conversation. The summer after the insurrection, there was an incident where there was a bomb threat directed at Capitol Hill.

When the person responsible for it was apprehended, Mo Brooks put out a statement essentially sympathizing with the guy. I understand, I'm paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect of, "I understand why people are so upset about tyrannical socialist government." Kevin McCarthy had nothing to say about that.

Brian Lehrer: Did you get to ask McCarthy about the warning that he gave there in the context of his siding back up with Trump after January 6th?

Alexander Burns: Brian, I'm going to be a little bit cagey here because I'm just not going to get into the exact chronology of the reporting process, but Kevin McCarthy is not quoted in the book addressing any of that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's see, am I remembering correctly? You did ask him before you released this audio about him saying he planned to ask Trump to resign and then he denied it and then you released the audio which revealed it as a lie.

Alexander Burns: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: As far as that goes. Then maybe this is the point at which we preview the January 6th committee hearings coming up next month. What can you tell us to expect as far as anything you know so far tentatively scheduled to begin on June 8th and include eight total days next month?

Alexander Burns: Yes, I think this is one of the most anticipated moments of the year in Washington and I think for people who care about politics generally. Look, the committee has made some pretty confident public statements to the effect of they expect to be able to put material out in public view that will shock the country and that will be eye-opening even for people who think they know everything about this.

On one level, I think we ought to take them if they're serious people doing a very very serious investigation. I think that one of the things that people have seen with the audiotape from this book over the last few weeks is that even when you think you know the whole story, there's always a whole lot more information out there. By the way, my co-author and I did not have subpoena power or massive staff of lawyers or anything like that to work with.

I have really no doubt that they are going to put some pretty bracing stuff out there. What I think is more challenging is the question of what the legal and political implications of that will be it's obviously just premature to parse that out before we know exactly what they have. I do think that one of the big-- It's a moment that we chronicle in the book where Republicans in the house and Senate have the opportunity to endorse a truly bipartisan and a collaborative investigation into the January 6th attack. They don't do that. Kevin McCarthy rallies the house Republicans to block other creation of a special commission. Mitch McConnell does the same thing in the Senate.

They didn't want a drawn-out investigation and public discussion of the insurrection. They thought it would be politically damaging to the party. They thought it would drive a wedge between the Republican Party and Donald Trump. Brian, the trade-off there is because they refuse to support a fully bipartisan 911-style investigation. They have very little insight into what the select committee is doing now. There are Republicans on the select committee, but there are Liz Cheney and Adam Kinser, who are the proudest of dissidents in the Republican party fiercely anti-Trump to their core.

In opposing a bipartisan investigation that they found inconvenient Republican leaders may have created this other force that is really certainly beyond their control, even beyond their ability to keep tabs on information and developments.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. All kinds of people are testified behind closed doors to the January 6th committee. I saw a report that Donald Trump Jr. testified this week. Another one that Rudy Giuliani is going to. People very close to the president as well as a lot of independent people. What do you think if you have any indication of this so far, we're going to see in terms of witnesses at the public hearings next month?

I think back to some of the scandal hearings of the past, the classic Iran-Contra hearings with Oliver North becoming a big public figure through his testimony there, the first Trump impeachment with Alexander Vindman and William Taylor and Fiona Hill, and some of the others. Are we going to see individuals put in positions like that in these hearings if you know?

Alexander Burns: I don't know. I think that there is the expectation that there will be individuals called. I certainly don't know enough to tell you whether we can expect a sort of Oliver North-style star witness.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us. My guest is New York Times National Political Reporter, Alexander Burns. Co-author with his New York Times colleague Jonathan Martin of the new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future. We can take phone calls for him on the midterm election year politics of January 6th, we'll get into that. The Supreme Court and Roe, we're about to turn to that. The threats of physical violence that Kevin McCarthy worried about in private, if not in public or anything else related. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or a tweet @Brian Lehrer.

What we've been talking about so far, Alex plus reversing Roe v. Wade if it officially comes down that way from the Supreme Court next month, we'll make quite a backdrop for the midterm election campaign in the fall. What role do you think at this early date those issues will play mixed in with inflation and crime and voting rights and any other leading concerns in shaping the two party's basic strategies?

Alexander Burns: As you just alluded to, there's a whole lot hanging over this election and almost none of it-- The country is in a moment, I think of real tension and real frustration and pessimism right now. One of the things that has been a real challenge for the Democrats and for President Biden is that there is far less that their side is fired up about than the Republican side is fired up about. Then voters in the middle are just in a pretty bland mood. They're frustrated about inflation, they feel that COVID has not receded as fast as they hoped it would.

I think for basically the entire electorate from far-left to far-right and everybody in between there is just this sense of fatigue and frustration over the last few years. It's really, really hard to run a midterm campaign or any kind of campaign as the party in power when the country just feels like things are pretty lousy right now, things have been pretty lousy for a long time. If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe, I do think that has the potential to be a really powerful force to motivate voters on the Democratic side and also to push some voters in the middle back into the Democratic camp.

I think a lot Brian, about the voters I talked to during the 2018 election; the swing voters I talked to during that election, many of them were moderate even center-right professional women, many of them in the suburbs who had voted for both parties or maybe even leaned towards Republicans in the past, but just thought Donald Trump was appalling and just could not continue to support a Republican Party that had him as the leader.

Those are voters that Democrats in 2018 and 2020 were borrowing their support. They were leasing their support, that wasn't a permanent relationship. One of the things that those voters also tend to believe is that the right to abortion access ought to be a legal guarantee. I think there is a big chunk of the electorate, that if abortion were not a major issue, would probably be pretty tempted to vote for Republicans for economic reasons, and also just out of a feeling that, "Whatever we're doing right now isn't working, and so we have a binary system, and I'll vote for the other guy." I think Roe really has the potential to complicate that.

Brian Lehrer: Now, before we go to a break, and then take some phone calls, a lot of listeners want to talk to you, you will not be surprised. The Kevin McCarthy stuff has been the breakout headline material from your book, but I think it's important to say that the book more begins on January 6th, then ends on it. It's also very much about how the Democrats have big internal divisions since Biden was elected. I don't know if you saw the review of your book in progressive publication, The Guardian, the headline was Trump-Biden Blockbuster is dire reading for Democrats. How would you begin to describe those fault lines along the lines of the big themes in your book?

Alexander Burns: I really appreciate the question, because I do think-- We're obviously pleased that people are so interested in the Kevin McCarthy material, but I do want to stress that Kevin McCarthy occupies maybe 3% of the book or less, so much more of it is about the Trump Administration, the Biden Administration, the Democratic Party, generally. Look, I think there are two sides to the story about how much trouble the US political system is in. One of them is that the Republican Party is radicalized and captive to this disgraced former president. The other side of it is that Democrats have not managed to be a functional governing party.

If you believe that the democratic system is under threat from the extreme right and a populist demagogue, then surely, part of fixing that problem, or averting that political disaster is for the other party to show that it can govern effectively, that it can deliver results for the American people, and that it can put together a stable majority coalition that is capable of turning back the far right. I don't think that we can sit here today and say that Joe Biden has managed to do that.

The whole saga of Build Back Better is just this wrenching period in the life of the Democratic Party, where every major constituency wants to go out and achieve their longest-standing goals, and Joe Biden can't quite figure out who to say no to, which issues to prioritize, and what compromises to make. In the end, that indecision, and that ferocious internal tug of war dooms the entire legislation and now they're trying to cobble together a pale version of what they could have had last summer if they were a more coherent political party.

Brian Lehrer: Last month, you wrote a story in The Times with a headline, "If Biden's plan is like a new-new deal, why don't voters care?" How did you answer that question?

Alexander Burns: That's a story about the American rescue plan, a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package that Biden passed within months of taking office. This was an enormous initial triumph for him. He poured money into the economy, into public health, and what that story focuses on into helping states and cities recover and rebuild from the pandemic.

The tragic answer to the question in the headline is, it's two things, Brian, one is that so much of this money is being used for long-term investments in cities and counties that have been deprived of federal resources for so long, but those investments aren't visible yet. Voters are going to be very grateful for a new community center, a health clinic in three or four years, but they're not voting on that today.

The other part of it is that Joe Biden has done, I think people in his own White House will acknowledge this, he's done a very poor job of explaining to the country what he has done and what that money is being used for. It's really a bitter irony for Democrats because, throughout the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden wouldn't say a negative word about the Obama Administration that he served in, except on one thing, and that was salesmanship. He would say, "We did a good job on policy in the Obama-Biden Administration, we did a poor job of selling it to the country, and I'm not going to let that happen again." Brian, he has let it happen again.

Brian Lehrer: It's interesting because I always thought a big problem was the name of the bill Build Back Better, which doesn't mean anything to anyone. Maybe if he had called it the childcare for working families bill and the decent home care for grandma bill and the make the super-wealthy pay their fair share in taxes so you can have these things bill, he would have gotten popular traction. Are they second-guessing the branding?

Alexander Burns: I agree with you, but I think it's almost an even deeper problem than that because there's the branding, but the branding has to reflect what's in the legislation. The reason why they couldn't call it the clean energy jobs and childcare act of 2021 is that they weren't sure in the negotiations that that's what the bill would be in the end. If Biden and his team had gone in early in the summer or in the middle of the summer and said, "Listen, folks, I'm sorry. We can't expand Medicaid and Medicare in this bill. We can't do new dental benefits, we can't do certain kinds of childcare, but we are going to do this childcare, and we are going to do this housing support, and we are going to do this climate investment, and that's the deal." Then they probably could have come up with a brand that wasn't this just vague "everything's going to be good bill".

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting. I hadn't heard it explained that way before, that's actually very clarifying. They couldn't say exactly what was going to be in the final version of the bill so they couldn't brand it with those things. All right. We'll take your phone calls for Alexander Burns right after this, stay with us.

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Kamala Harris: How dare they? How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body? [applause] How dare they? How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?

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Brian Lehrer: Vice President Kamala Harris reacting this week to the draft from Justice Alito of the decision that could overturn Roe. Now, your calls for Alexandra Burns, co-author with his New York Times colleague Jonathan Martin of, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future. Julie in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Julie.

Julie: Hi. I just wanted to say that I've been an activist for a long time, especially over the last six years. I've just worked so hard to get Trump out, and then when that almost happened on January 6th, and it didn't, I was so hopeful that maybe things would change, but instead, I'm here trying to get back to my life, and I'm so terrified because Ohio they just said on NPR is the bellwether and here we are again, and we have a chance. Still, we supposedly have the power, although there has been these roadblocks by [unintelligible 00:27:46] and we can't seem to get anything done.

About Built Back Better, I don't hear any coverage about it. It's not a great slogan, yes, but part of the problem with the Democratic Party is that we are trying-- First of all, I don't want to be a spokesperson for the Democratic Party, but they are the party right now that seems to be more likely to do things for the majority of people, and because there are so many issues to cover, they need a big umbrella, and it's almost impossible to talk about them all at once. I've been to protests in front of Schumer's office with giant building blocks that have Bs on them Build Back Better, and they talk about coverage for veterans, and coverage for green jobs, health care, and all the things that we need done.

The only thing that those 70% of Trump hear are that inflation is rising, and it's Biden's fault. I don't want to call them stupid. I feel like a big problem on the left is this-- It's just such a knee-jerk reaction to say that they're stupid, they're not. They want many of them the same things that we do. Is there racism there? Yes, but if these things were given to them, if we were actually able to pass some of this legislation, and people knew about it, then maybe we could turn the tide, but right now I see that Ukraine was partly so terrifying about it, is that I'm sure they didn't think it could happen there, and it's happening.

I see that if we don't unite, if we don't find a way for the people of this country who are hurting on the left and right to see that and that these powerful people at the top are just playing us against each other. We have to somehow be able to show that but I don't know how. Anyways, sorry.

Brian Lehrer: Julie, thank you. Thank you for your heart-felt call and putting so many things into that analysis that Alex, I think represents the complexity of the situation. Certainly for Democrats, when Republicans seem to have an easier time saying, "Our party stands for national security and limited government." Then the Democrats tried to craft a much more complicated message that encompasses many of the things that Julie's talking about and it lands like mush.

Alexander Burns: I think one of the things that Julie mentioned that is such an important attention in our politics and in the narrative of our book is this question within the Democratic Party of how to approach the voters who supported Donald Trump or who attempted to support Donald Trump? For so much of the Democratic Party, there is this sense that voting for Trump is an unforgivable sin.

If you voted for Trump then you must be in your court as a morally, totally defective person. One of the people who did not believe that was Joe Biden. When he was a candidate, he believed very strongly, and I think he very likely believes this to this day that if you just go out there-- Very much what Julie said. If you go out there and you show these voters that you can make government work for them and you can deliver tangible new benefits to their lives, then they might be less taken in by the sword of Tucker Carlson Nexus of a culture of war provocation.

I think one of the great disappointments of Biden's presidency is that has really not turned out to be the case. It doesn't mean that Biden wants to, or can give up on reaching out to those voters. He really doesn't have a choice. They represent a huge cross-section of the country and they have disproportionate voting power because of the structure of the Senate and the electoral college.

I do think that the experience of the last year and almost a year and a half has really challenged for Biden and Democrats like him this expectation and hope that once Trump was off stage and once the country was moving at least somewhat in a better direction that a whole lot of people out there would reassess their basic assumptions about who was on their side.

Brian Lehrer: Reggie in Bed-Stuy, you're on WNYC. Hi, Reggie.

Reggie: Hi. I'm probably the other side. I'm black as well. Particularly with the Ohio midterms, most of the media was focusing on J.D. Vance, but in my opinion, the big one was the Shontel Brown, Nina Turner race, because right now a lot of people who are progressives and I consider myself, I would be a Bernie voter. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Let me just say, for people who don't know that race, that was a democratic primary for a House seat. Shontel Brown is the more Biden-ish incumbent. Nina Turner is the more Bernie-ish challenger. Go ahead.

Reggie: A good exa-- Actually for this audience you had on India Walton, I credit you with covering India Walton's race in Buffalo, but I would be that kind of voter. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: The democratic socialist who won the Democratic primary for Mayor of Buffalo, and then was defeated by the more centrist Democrat incumbent who ran as an independent. Go ahead.

Reggie: At this point, they didn't want Nina Turner. They didn't want India Walton. That was the Democratic Party. The amount of money and the amount of the packs that were going against Nina Turner both times, particularly this time was ridiculous. A lot of progressives like myself right now, I voted for Biden. I voted for Hillary, I voted for Biden, I voted pretty much democratic on the national level. I voted for Obama, one time I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. At this point, I'll tell you flat out, I'll never do that again. Never, never, never.

One expression that has popped up now, and you'll probably hear it if you haven't heard it, is "PINO" Progressive in Name Only.

[laughs] You'll hear that pop up-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I hadn't actually heard it before. You're the first person to say PINO on this show, Reggie. RINO, Republican in Name Only. DINO, Democrat in Name Only. PINO.

Reggie: If a third party candidate like a Nina Turner or even an Andrew Yang. I liked Andrew Yang running for president. He was incredible. I liked what he was saying. If someone like that was running in 2024 and it was Biden, I would vote for that third-party candidate, and-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Even if it means giving the election to Trump?

Reggie: Yes. At this point, yes. In my opinion, Biden has done nothing for-- He's done nothing. He's done nothing for Black people. Ketanji, it doesn't affect my life right now. He's done nothing. I'm not the only person that feels that. I've done all the correct Democratic Party things I was supposed to do. I voted for Biden, but at the national level? No, I'm not going to-- Fool me once, sure. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Reggie, let me go. Keep calling us. Thank you very much for your call today. That was really interesting. By the way, the previous caller who I think Reggie said he was in contrast too, or maybe it was just in contrast to some of the things that we referenced in that last stretch of conversation before his call. Julie from Brooklyn called back to say, she's a Bernie supporter not Biden in the primary. It's a very revealing call, Alex, right?

The Democrats lost in some key races last year in Virginia and New Jersey and Long Island and elsewhere. New Jersey Senate president was ousted by a little-known Republican, for example. Everyone knows about the Virginia governor's race within the party. Eric Adams was elected Mayor of New York, not someone like Maya Wiley. The electoral debate- This is where I'm going to ask you for insight. -within the Democratic Party, seems to be whether they should lean into enthusiastic turnout by base voters like Reggie or lean into a certain moderation for mostly suburban swing voters, like the ones you were just talking about who switched to Democrats in 2018 in reaction to Trump. Is it an either-or for the Democrats this year or is that oversimplifying it?

Alexander Burns: I think it's not a binary choice. In fact, I think for Democrats to have any shot in any election it can't be treated as a binary choice. I think it says a lot about the culture and the party right now, and the mindset of party leadership that it often gets a reduced to a binary choice that either we take care of our most reliable voters and get them really excited to turn out for us, or we stiff our base and run to the middle and try to reassure people who are persuadable to vote for either side.

A functional political party ought to be able to do both of those things. Historically, the winning party usually does at least for a while. One of the things I thought was so interesting about what Reggie had to say was his interest in both your candidates like India Walton and Nina Turner and your candidates like Andrew Yang. They are ideologically very, very, very different. Andrew Yang is not a left-wing candidate.

Nina Turner is about as left-wing as you get, but what they all represent is a set of disruptive voices in the political system that reject a politics as usual. I think there's an enormous yearning across the board for new kinds of leaders, new kinds of faces, new kinds of ideas and messages. I think one of the things that the two parties have really struggled with is how to adapt to that hunger from the electorate in a way that represents an organized constructive evolution of their political party, as opposed to just internal a civil war.

I think you can look at other Republican experience with Donald Trump and really see it as chickens coming home to roost after years and years and years of Republican elites not listening to what their own voters wanted on economic issues, on immigration, on so much else. The Democrats are now struggling with the same thing. I think you have seen over the last two decades plenty of examples of Democrats successfully building a broad coalition that stretches from the center to the center-left to the far left.

What you have not seen a whole lot of is leadership turnover in the Democratic Party. The youngest Democratic leader in Washington right now is a senior-senior democratic leader is Chuck Schumer who's in his 70s, Brian. We are headed for a big generational transition in democratic politics at some point very soon. The party's ability to navigate that and elevate new voices and disruptive voices without allowing the party to tear itself apart is one of the biggest organizational and movement-based challenges that Democrats are going to face in the coming years.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. I want to acknowledge with this call that about a third of our board and a number of our tweeters are raising an issue about the book. I'm going to let Elliot in Cromwell, New York ask the question. Elliot, you're on WNYC with Alexander Burns.

Elliot: Hi. My question is with regard to Jonathan Martin's firsthand observations of Lindsey Graham's call with regard to the 25th Amendment, was that published at the time in the New York Times?

Alexander Burns: The 25th Amendment specifically?

Elliot: No, the fact that Martin was in the room and heard Lindsey Graham make this call, was that reported in the newspaper.

Alexander Burns: What was reported in the newspaper at the time were important details of Jonathan's experience reporting from the Capitol that day.

Elliot: I'm asking you a direct question.

Alexander Burns: I'm answering you.

Elliot: Me as a consumer of the New York Times expect to get the news when it happens. This was very important, this might have had implications in the impeachment.

Brian Lehrer: Elliot, let me get an answer. I guess it was your colleague, not you who was in the room there in the House of Representatives and the Senate, did Lindsey Graham say that to him on that day? The larger question is did you guys hold these bombshell audios and some other pieces for the book in a way that may have hurt the effort to hold Trump accountable in the moment?

Alexander Burns: I appreciate you asking me that question and permitting me to actually answer it, unlike your listener. I think that it's a totally fair question for people to ask, "Was material held for this book that should have been released in real-time?" The answer is just a flat no. I understand the confusion around this and I think that authors generally including us need to do a better job of explaining the reporting process of a book and how information is gathered for the purposes of a book.

Without getting into really minute piece by piece reporting questions about sensitive information, what I will say very broadly here, I'm happy to address the tapes specifically is that there are people who will share information for the purposes of history that they do not want to see on Twitter four seconds later or in the paper the next day. If you go back and look at my bylines and Jonathan's bylines from January of 2021 you will see ample coverage of dissension in the Republican Party, of Republicans, turning or sounding as though they might turn on Donald Trump, of contemplating us supporting impeachment in real-time.

What you will not see is us publishing in real-time information that was shared with the understanding that it would not appear in the paper the next day. Source agreements have to be honored or you are absolutely worthless as a reporter and then the information will never come to light. That's just not a breach of trust that either of us is prepared to engage in.

Brian Lehrer: To the caller's specific question, did Lindsey Graham tell Jonathan that he was considering the 25th Amendment for Trump that removal from office but he was telling him that not for reporting?

Alexander Burns: Brian I'm not trying to be evasive here but I do want to be really careful about responding to a specific question about reporting that I was not present for. What I will say again is that Jonathan's reporting on that day and in that month was exemplary and shared urgent information with the public about the state of the Republican Party and its relationship with Donald Trump. Everything that he was able to share and report in real-time appropriately he absolutely did that.

The one thing that I will challenge here, Brian is the overwhelming assumption on the part of callers like the last one we heard from that if only all of this information had been out in real-time Donald Trump would be sitting in a cell somewhere. Because I think what we have seen over and over and over again is that the Republican party is not prepared to turn on him. Whatever that moment of wavering was in those weeks after January 6th it did not last very long, it's a crucial moment of testing of the Republican party, are they willing to break with Donald Trump? The answer is no.

It's not that Lindsey Graham didn't know what he was thinking and doing at that time and it's not that Mitch McConnell didn't know what he was thinking and doing at that time. The idea that if only one additional trench of information on top of everything we already knew had been accessible to the wider public in January of 2021 then there would've been a stampede to impeach and convict him. I just think beggar's belief given everything we know about the Republican party and given what we documented in the book.

Brian Lehrer: Alexander Burns who along with Jonathan Martin both reporters for the New York Times has now written the book This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future. Thank you so much for spending so much time with us. Thanks a lot.

Alexander Burns: I really appreciate it.

 

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