[music]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. When we last spoke on Friday, the attack on Paul Pelosi had just been reported, and we did not discuss it on Friday show because we didn't know enough for it to be a topic of real conversation, just the news story with attacker and motive, still unknown. Anything we would've said would've been mere speculation, could have been a random burglary or whatever else. Now we know the suspect said, "Where's Nancy," as he encountered her husband Paul, and that his social media profile appears to fit an increasingly troubling violent extremist trend in this country.

Here's a one-minute clip from today's morning edition, many of you probably did not hear this. It last aired in the seven o'clock hour of Michael Jensen, a University of Maryland terrorism expert who was asked about the suspect, David DePape.

Michael Jensen: What we know from his posting behavior is that he really symbolizes this mix of ideological commitments. We know that he was posting conspiracy theories about the election, about COVID-19, but that he was also posting anti-Semitic statements on the platform, the white supremacist statements on various platforms. He was really mixing these extreme ideologies that apparently motivated his behavior. I think the more important thing to recognize about this individual is that this is happening within the context of a tremendous increase in threats being made against public officials and our elected representatives.

The FBI has been warning since the 2020 election that they're seeing more and more of these cases of individuals threatening, not only the highest-ranking elected representatives of public officials but very low-level ones, school board members, health board members, local representatives.

Brian: Michael Jensen, a University of Maryland terrorism expert on today's NPR morning edition. One question as Paul Pelosi recovers, will this become a voting issue for more people in the midterm elections? Will it make the threats to democracy and public safety from domestic terrorism more salient in the mix of issues people are choosing to vote on? With us now, New York Times National Political Correspondent, Lisa Lerer, no relation, different spelling. She covers campaigns, elections, and political power, and Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, who focuses largely on the numbers behind politics. Thanks for coming on today. Welcome back to WNYC, Lisa and Philip.

Lisa: Thanks for having me.

Philip: Thanks, sir.

Brian: Lisa, you're following the midterm campaigns generally. Where do you see domestic terrorism fitting in before this weekend to the mix of what's driving people to the polls, especially in swing states and swing district elections?

Lisa: I'm not sure it's going to be top of mind for many voters, but I do think it plays into-- Democrats will use it to play into the argument that they've been making, which is that the Republican Party has gotten too extreme that this MAGA republicanism is out of step with where Americans are and that they're stoking this violent political rhetoric. This is something that's been going on for quite some time since before January 6th and afterward. I actually looked up because I had written a piece about Republicans embracing violent rhetoric. I looked up the other day after this happened with Nancy Pelosi's husband to see when it was written, and it was written about a year ago.

This is something that's been well-known for a while. I'm not sure it's going to sway too many voters. Republicans, of course, this weekend were out there largely tying the attack to a larger crime weave that they see as happening across the country, which of course is a part of one of their main arguments in these midterm elections. They're trying to use this to say, "Look how much crime is out there, and it's even come to Nancy Pelosi's house," which isn't quite accurate. This is a really specific kind of violent attack that really is tied to our political discourse right now.

Brian: Philip, the description by the terrorism expert in that clip of not just the suspect David DePape, but the national context of many more threats against local officials down to school board, and of course election workers, we did a separate segment on that last week, in the era of the big lie. How much does it move independence who may decide control of Congress potentially?

Philip: Honestly it seems like a [unintelligible 00:04:48], but I think that's the big question. We see that a lot of Americans express to pollsters that they're concerned about the state of democracy. Obviously, that takes all sorts of different forms. It takes the form of concern about the validity of elections, about election results being treated. It takes the form of threats to the political actors such as you described, but it also takes the form among Republicans of people thinking that elections can't be trusted because they believe these false claims about the security of elections.

We see that there is this broad sense of democracy is under attack, but part of the challenge is that people don't agree on what that means. They don't agree on what it means that democracy is under attack. Independents tend to vote with one party or the other. My suspicion is that independents who tend to vote with Democrats see the threats to democracy as being things like this and independents who tend to vote with Republicans tend to see it as being that elections can't be trusted anymore. All that is just a re-articulation of the existing divide, that is the core of the problem anyway.

Brian: Lisa, Donald Trump himself, and some other prominent Republicans on the right have remained silent on the attack on Paul Pelosi. Trump did tweet his, or I guess it's not tweet, but he did post his concern for the family, the family of rock star Jerry Lee Lewis, who died the other day, but nothing regarding the Pelosi family. You had an article recently called Trumpism Beyond Trump that was before the attack, but what was the premise?

Does this varied set of responses like House minority leader Kevin McCarthy saying nothing until asked a day later by a reporter, which was different than the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who came right out and said, this is horrific and unacceptable. There's a difference between how McConnell responded and the House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy responded, does this fit in somehow to the Trumpism beyond Trump narrative?

Lisa: Some of this depends on who the politicians are speaking to. Like the composition of the House, Kevin McCarthy wants to be the next speaker of the House. It looks like Republicans will take control of that chamber. They only need to get five seats to do so, which seems in this political climate, and based on what we're seeing, this late-breaking time seems pretty achievable. He's dealing with a caucus then in order to win that position, he needs to win over some members of the Republican Party who are much more further to the right. McConnell is a really different dynamic in the Senate.

I think some of this has to do with talking to their base. What we know about the Republican base is about a third of Republicans, and an even higher percentage, when you're looking at people who say that they most trust far-right news sources, that group believes that true patriots may have to adopt violence to save the country, kind of what Philip was talking about that democracy is under attack, and if you really believe that democracy under is under attack, it's not a far leap to say that you have to adopt some violent rhetoric or even violent itself to save it.

That's a belief that has some traction in the Republican base. If you were a politician who your political career and your political advancement depends on really cultivating that base, then probably you're going to be a lot quieter about this attack. Even this moment where political posturing should not be happening. This is of course politics and people are thinking about it in terms of the lens of politics rather than the lens of violence and national security.

Brian: Listeners, our phones are open on anything about the attack on Paul Pelosi and anything about the state of the midterms generally. I know that's very broad, but that's what's in play here. We're going to get into some various midterm election swing states in a minute with our two guests from the New York Times and the Washington Post. You can weigh in on any of that, you can weigh in on implications of the attack on Paul Pelosi. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, questions of course as well as comments, welcome, or tweet @Brian Lehrer for Philip Bump from the Washington Post, and Lisa Lerer, no relation from the New York Times.

Speaking of Twitter, Philip, you had an article the other day, Twitter is a Skirmish in the Rights War on the Media and "Elites". Of course, the news hook here is Elon Musk taking over officially at Twitter, and it was a pretty interesting moment for him to take over and appoint what has been reported to be a content moderation board. Just as we were learning about this, David DePape and his social media profile and the connections once again between networks of people who support domestic violent extremism. What do you think is the Twitter now being owned by Elon Musk who wants to restore Donald Trump's Twitter feed and all of that. What's the intersection here?

Philip: I think that people underestimate the extent to which, and this started definitely with the Donald Trump era, actually started with the Tea Party. People underestimate the extent to which American politics has shifted from a red versus blue lens to an increasingly, "Elites versus normal people lens" This is something we see amplified really heavily by people like Tucker Carlson, Blake Masters is running for Senate in Arizona. We see this group of people that really are trying to not necessarily beat Democrats, but beat the liberal elites that they think control everything. People in the media, people in academia, people in the entertainment industry.

Obviously, there's lots of overlap there with other dubious things like QAnon and things like that, but there has been for quite some time a focus on this. Part of it deals with the fact that politics is increasingly fragmented along educational lines with more educated voters tending to be more democratic, less educated voters tending to be more Republican. What Twitter really represents to a large extent is yes, Elon Musk Is buying the thing. Yes, he says he's doing it for these speech reasons, but the reason he's being championed is because it's really seen as a victory by these anti-elite.

Again, always when I say elite, putting that in quotes, these anti-elite forces which are trying to disrupt or dismantle these power structures that they see. Twitter is an unusually active place for the media, as I think everyone on this conversation can attest, and for influencers and entertaining people, Twitter is a very specific place for the elites as these people would pause it to gather and talk, and that Elon Musk has taken it over.

Isn't just about Elon Musk, isn't just about these concepts of free speech that are overblown, but it is really about this broader battle that to a large extent in many places has supplanted the red versus blue dichotomy.

Brian: Let's take a phone call, M.A in Englewood, you're on WNYC. Hello, M.A.

M.A: Yes, good morning, Brian. I have a question, and is, would the attack on Paul Pelosi, did affect the thoughts of independent voters and sway them more towards the Democratic Party thinking that parts of the Republican Party have become too extreme? I'll be happy to receive the question off air.

Brian: Thank you. We touched on a question very similar to that earlier, but Lisa, do you want to run with the caller's question?

Lisa: Yes, look, I do think there are concerns about democracy in this election. It shows up in polls the two parties do not agree on what those concerns are, but that is not the top concern. The top concern this entire race has been the same, which is the economy and inflation. Abortion after the Dobbs decision that got rid of Roe shot up in the rankings a little bit. More people said it was a dominant thing in their vote. It's fallen down a little bit, although I think that's really state-by-state in states where abortion rights are literally on the ballot.

Places like Michigan where there's a referendum to put it in the state constitution. It's more of an issue in states like Connecticut or New York where abortion rights seem safe, it's less of an issue. The dominant issue in this race is economic concerns, whether that's gas prices, whether that's high inflation, whether that's fear of a recession.

Also beyond that structurally, this is a really hard election for Democrats to win. Historically, the party in power in the White House loses these midterms.

I think the last president not to lose seats for his party not to lose seats in the midterms was George W. Bush in 2002. For Democrats really to keep control they have to over-defy decades of political history, and on top of that, the headwinds are really strong against the party. These economic headwinds concerns about crime. Even if the people look at this attack, which is quite horrible, and they say, "Okay, I'm concerned about the state of our democracy." I think the voters who would say that are probably already primed to be voting democratic. I'm not sure, given everything else that's going on in people's lives right now, that this is this thing that's going to sway a large number of people.

This close elections or decide on the margins, so we'll just have to wait and see. This is a really tight race, particularly in the Senate, and in this final week, things can be a little unpredictable.

Brian: Rebecca in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Rebecca.

Rebecca: Hi, Brian. Third-time caller, longtime listener, sustaining member. Thank you so much. My concern is where is the outrage. Where are the alarms? This guy broke into the house saying, "Where's Nancy?" This was an assassination attempt on the second in line for the president. It didn't even make the top of the fold in the New York Times. What is going on? This is not a both-sides issue, this is an assassination attempt. I just don't understand democracy is at stake. I understand that people have differing views on things, but this is a huge deal and I don't see it being made a big deal in the media, and it's really scary.

Brian: Rebecca, thank you very much. Philip, I don't know where sits in the print edition of the Washington Post. I think the media is making a big deal of this, but you can give me your impression, but I think there's a difference that maybe is getting lost between something like the guy who attacked Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor of New York in upstate New York a number of weeks ago, who even Zeldin wrote off as a guy who was having mental health problems. That was an isolated incident as even Zeldin described it. This, which is part of this network of domestic violence extremists who do want to commit political assassinations or even lean towards civil war, there's a difference there, and that needs to be made clear in the media.

Philip: Well, Yes, I think there are a couple of factors to blame here. First is that it took a while to learn details of what happened in the Pelosi attack. The problem that happens every time when we have these things occur is that either there are slightly erroneous early reports. It takes a while to get the truth out there, and very quickly that space is filled with all sorts of theories and so on and so forth, and frames are set in politics. This is not to say what the media is doing, but rather to say that a lot of the conversation around this is now driven by this total nonsense and garbage that's out there about what allegedly happened, including being promoted by Elon Musk on Twitter.

Part of the challenge here is that the media is always disadvantaged in seeking truth because we have to wait often to see with the truth is before we can actually articulate what it is to do to readers or viewers or listeners. That's one issue by itself. The other issue here is, you're right, is that there is always when there is an incident like this, there tends to be a pattern in which, particularly on the right when these violent things occur, they're seen as outliers. There's a pattern of rhetoric that amplifies the need, either explicitly or implicitly for violent responses, but then when violent responses actually occur, it is minimized or downplayed as being an individual actor who's behaving badly. That has absolutely been the case here.

I don't think a lot of Republicans conservatives would agree with your formulation that this person who acted and tried to kill Nancy Pelosi apparently was someone who was outside of the lens of mental illness problems. I think they would probably amplify some of the things he's written, so on, and so forth, but a lot of these things aren't clear-cut. January 6th was clear-cut. We talk about what happened on January 6th. That's very, very specific. I want you to [crosstalk]

Brian: This is a continuation of January 6th or an individual with mental health problems, or maybe some kind of intersection of the two, because people with mental health problems, that extreme, they can attach to what's going on in the news or the culture or whatever. Lisa, I know you have to go in a minute. Just looking at the battle to control the Senate, I think we're looking at six states primarily that are in play. Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin.

You wrote up the Pennsylvania race after the debate this week between Oz and Fetterman, and your headline was Fetterman's Debate showing after his stroke raises Democratic Anxieties in the Senate battle. Give us your quick take on Pennsylvania, and then I know you got to run.

Lisa: I think it's really tight. I think it could go either way. One interesting thing is we were out in the field with a poll the night before the debate, the night of the debate, and the night after the debate. The calls that were made, the responses we got on that night after the debate, we saw those numbers change a little bit, that a plurality of voters said that Fetterman was not healthy enough to do the job. Though he still had a lead over Oz, the Republican candidate.

We'll have to see how his health situation plays out in the next week or so. The thing with debates is like people's decision on them often happens in the days after. It's the spin that really sets how people view the debates and how those viral clips are used by each side given the small number of people who watch these debates.

We'll have to see how it all works out, but there are some indications that it could have an impact on his standing, but again, this is just a really, really tight race, just like a lot a of these Senate races are our poll found in several of them within the margin of error. It's really a jump ball here.

Brian: New York Times National political correspondent Lisa Lerer, no relation. For some reason, she spell us her last name without an h. I'll never understand that. Lisa, thank you very much for joining us today.

Lisa: Thanks for having me, even without the h.

Brian: Philip, I want to play two brief clips from the debate last week in New York between the gubernatorial candidates, Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul and Republican Challenger Lee Zeldin, that might exemplify the national closing arguments. Here's Zeldin.

Zeldin: You're poor and less safe because of Kathy Hochul and extreme policies.

Brian: Here's Hochul.

Hochul: He opposes sensible gun safety laws as well as opposing a woman's right to choose.

Brian: That was just five seconds of each of them. In a way, is that the last week of campaigning for both parties nationally? The Republican is saying you're poorer and less safe because of the Dems and the Democrats saying, "Oh, less safe, really. Well, he opposes sensible gun control as well as a woman's right to choose."

Philip: Broad strokes. I think what's missing there is that Zeldin [unintelligible 00:21:21] was far less inflammatory than what you're seeing in a lot of places. Zeldin obviously also running in New York state where that doesn't play as well. One thing we're seeing in other places, particularly places with the Titanic contest, is really inflammatory rhetoric on crime that's often tinged with racial subtext or even overtly in the case of some of the advertising.

It is a playbook we've seen lots of times before. It's important to note that we don't have good data on what's happening nationally with crime. A lot of this is just based on either anecdotes or cherry-picking. The theme is absolutely in keeping with what we're seeing but the way in which it's being conveyed was fairly mild.

Brian: To ask you about a particular state, we just went into Pennsylvania a little bit with Lisa. You have an article the other day, far-right skeptics of GOP may soon have a state's worth of Senate power. Is that about Arizona?

Philip: It's about Arizona and Ohio. This is going back to what I was saying in the last hour about this war on the perceived liberal elites. We've got J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, who are very close with Peter Thiel. This billionaire does venture capital among other things. They along with Tucker Carlson, who's been promoting them heavily, ascribe to this idea that it's not really about red versus blue, but it is about elites against normal Americans.

You see Blake Masters on the campaign trail running as a Republican in the same way, essentially that Donald Trump co-opted the GOP to seize power to his own ends. That's what's happening here as well. It may be the case that after the elections next week, Vance and Masters occupies much power in Senate as the state of California, the state of New York. I think people are under-recognizing the extent to which that's a shift in American [unintelligible 00:23:11].

Brian: If they're running as the party of the non-elites, this came up in our previous segment, but if the Republicans economically are more anti-union, more for cutting taxes on the rich, more opposed to government benefits like childcare or the earned income tax credit for families with children. More opposed to Medicare being able to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for the price of prescription drugs. I could go on. Those are government programs or policies that work in class. Americans of all colors rely on more than higher-income Americans. How do they make the case that they're not the party of the elites?

Philip: It's all cultural work based. When we talk about elites, we're not talking about necessary people [unintelligible 00:23:59]. Blake Masters and J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel, they're all very wealthy people. They have beautiful homes, they make a lot of money, and they got rich on capitalism. They are combating-- Donald Trump-owned penthouse on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. He was seeing this in an anti-league voice because he acted the same culture war stuff that you saw on Fox News. It's long been the case. Obviously, the Republican party leverages culture, war fights in order to advance their own economic agenda. What we're seeing now is that it's really metastasized in this really virulent argument against these perceived elites.

Again, I think because of the polarization, the fragmentation we're seeing in education. The short answer is because elite doesn't mean that. Elite means people who drink soy lattes and all the standard things that you hear, the fact that public radio in New York City. There are Washington Post [unintelligible 00:24:53] These are the markers of elite that have nothing to do with power, nothing to do with the economy. They have to do instead with reflecting these themes that you hear in conservative media all the time, which of course is very intentional.

Brian: Speaking of really really really rich really really really really famous people trying to identify that way. We'll take one more call from Brian in Harlem, who has something to say. Brian, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Brian: Hi Brian. How are you doing? You can hear me?

Brian: Good, thanks. We got you, go ahead. You want to say something about Elon Musk and the Pelosi attack?

Brian: The Pelosi attack, there are all sorts of things on Twitter. The [unintelligible 00:25:31] has gone on off the rails talking about there being a-- the attacker was Pelosi's gay lover or a male prostitute. Elon Musk actually retweeted one of those stories from a really fringe-- I think it's called the Santa Monica Journal or something, a really fringe thing. Once said that Hillary Clinton was dead and there was a body double running in 2016, stuff like that. The guy has got over 100 million followers and a quarter trillion dollars and this is one of the first moves he makes after buying the place. He did delete the retweet he made.

Brian: He did it.

Brian: [unintelligible 00:26:21]

Brian: Brian, thank you very much. You know what, I had missed that story, but I just looked it up as we were taking a call to confirm because a caller to talk radio can call and say anything. They may have it right, they may have it wrong, they may be making it up on purpose. I'm seeing Philip, I guess you must know about it from multiple news sources here. Here's one from the Times of Israel's new Twitter owner, Elon Musk tweeted an anti-LGBT conspiracy theory Sunday about what happened the night dot, dot, dot.

Philip: Yes. He did. It is true, as the caller articulated is accurate. I think that look, it's poisonous and toxic. You can't say much more than that necessarily. There has been some effort to try and say, well, he's just exercising his free speech, which is just willful and idiotic abdication of the fact that he has far more power and voice than your normal Twitter users. Again, I hate to sound like broken [unintelligible 00:27:22], but it is because he is fighting a culture war fight. He recognizes that the position here is to so doubt to cast this as being something other than to present the elites as circling the wagons around a false narrative around what happened to Paul Pelosi, which of course isn't at all what's going on, but he's part of that effort.

He's part of that culture war fight. He sides with them, even if it means amplifying misinformation he doesn't care because this is what he's doing as far, this is why he owns Twitter, is to engage in this cultural war fight. This is a marker of that, however irresponsible and toxic it is.

Brian: One quick thought before you go about the governor's race in New York. We played those clips of Zeldin and Hochul before and you said, Zeldin is not running as far to the right as people like J.D. Vance in Ohio, or Blake Masters in Arizona, but he did have Ron DeSantis come and campaign with him in New York over the weekend.

I wonder if that indicates, depending on where you put DeSantis on that scale, that this is a very different Republican gubernatorial campaign than maybe George Pataki ran in the 1990s trying to portray himself as a pro-choice acceptable Republican to independent swing voters by being mild, even as he was trying to end the Mario Cuomo era mostly on economic issues.

Here is Lee Zeldin bringing in Ron DeSantis who is to many New Yorkers lights a very hot-button right-wing figure at this point. How do you see that in context?

Philip: I'd say two things. The first is that my comments earlier about Zeldin order specific about that clip you played in which you just vaguely alluded to crime. He's obviously, running more to the right than we've seen from other past New York gubernatorial candidates. Part of that is simply a reflection of the lessons a lot of people took from 2016, which is that if you just simply play as hard to the poll as you can on the right, you can turn out people who wouldn't vote otherwise.

There's a theory that in 2012 Romney lost the presidency because hardcore hard right conservatives didn't want to support him because they weren't excited about him, and Trump changed that. It seems as though in a lot of places, including in New York, Zeldin wants to make sure he gets those hard right fervent people who wouldn't be excited about a Pataki-like candidate he wants in McConnell vote. The DeSaints, of course is fascinating, and I think one of the most interesting things here is that for a long time I've been waiting to see when he would actually engage in the fight with Donald Trump if he wants to be president in 2024, which he obviously does.

The fact that he is now being this advocate going out there and has his own platform and position, I think is a marker of that. It certainly does reflect something on Ron DeSantis, is this going to turn off a lot of Democrats who were, or independents who were [unintelligible 00:30:17] Zeldin? I don't know. It's hard to say. I don't think there's a lot of good polling on it. I think at the end of the day, what Zeldin's trying to do is send these markers without having Donald Trump by his side but send markers to the hard right base.

I'm one of you, you need to come out and we got to beat-- he has lawn signs upstate, save our state. That's the message. Save our state. That is obviously a fairly extreme message to put out there and I think having the DeSantis by his side helps tell his base. We got to take this thing very seriously.

Brian: Washington Post columnist Philip Bump. Thanks so much, Phil, Appreciate it a lot.

Philip: You bet. Thanks, sir.

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.