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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. Yesterday was very moving and a sigh of relief for most Americans after two months of the big lie that led to the first unpeaceful transfer of power in the lifetime of any person alive today. America you can exhale. Though we don't know how much white supremacist and other right wing terrorism may be yet to come. Let's face it. Even without the dog whistler and chief. Maybe he'll start a new reality show called The Biggest Sore Loser. For President of the United States, Joe Biden, Bruce Springsteen, John legend and Amanda Gorman have all gone home. Jon Bon Jovi, too after that clunker, but we'll forgive him.

Now Biden has to deliver on defeating the Coronavirus and on the twin promises in his inaugural address that might seem contradictory at first, bringing unity and fighting the forces from one side that he sees is most responsible for our national divide. Here's a notable moment from the speech where he says both things. He calls for unity, but in the context of standing strong against an internal enemy that needs to be named and defeated. This is the historic moment when he became the first president to utter the words white supremacy in an inaugural address.

Joe Biden: A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clearer now. A rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.

[applause]

Joe: To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy, unity. Unity.

Brian: He posed good against evil, opposing sides, but called for unity to defeat them. Here's one more. He extends a hand to people who disagree with him, but then insists there is one truth, not multiple truths.

Joe: Let's begin to listen to one another again, hear one another, see one another, show respect to one another. Politics doesn't have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in it's path. Every disagreement doesn't have to be a cause for total war, and we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated, and even manufactured.

Brian: Let's listen to each other but no manufactured facts, and by implication, he says, we know which side those are coming from. With us now The Washington Post Senior Editor Marc Fisher. Thanks for coming on with us Marc. Welcome back to WNYC.

Marc Fisher: It's great to be with you, Brian.

Brian: First things first, they got through the inauguration day with no terrorist attacks. I guess that's worth saying. Crazy as it is that we had to worry about that. Was there any hint of anything that the 25,000 National Guard troops in the Capitol had to deal with, or was maybe the show of force itself just too intimidating?

Marc: The show of force was so complete, so total, that it's almost inconceivable that anyone could have gotten through it. It certainly seems to have scared off anyone who was coming to the Capitol to make mischief. It also created, however, just an overwhelming sadness. A city that is normally filled with celebration this time of our political cycle, it was just dead. You cannot overstate how empty and sad the city was.

Although it made for a safe day, it really will hamper Biden's ability to build up ahead of steam and get moving with an obvious show of popular support. He wasn't able to do that during the campaign because of the virus, and now he was deprived of that opportunity because of the attack on the Capitol. He's got to find other ways to get people excited, and on his side about a very ambitious agenda.

Brian: Yes. As far as I know, nothing violent at state Capitols either, after the internet messages that law enforcement had picked up last week indicating on demonstrations at all 50 of them. Nothing really happened. Nothing that turned violent that I've seen in the press anyway, so that's good. It's poignant to hear your description of the Capitol at this moment of great celebration for many people as sad. When does DC get demilitarized and people are allowed back in? I don't think people on either the right or the left want any kind of permanent national security state, but how will they know it's safe to go back to regular movement?

Marc: Most of the infrastructure that paralyzed the city over the last week is already being removed. There's already a reopening of streets, a lot of those scary fences are coming down. A lot of that will be gone over the next couple of days. Some of it is gone already.

Inevitably what happens, has happened after 9/11 is that some of the new security infrastructure, and some of the new precaution stays, and we become more and more divided from our representatives in Congress. It's hard to imagine that the Capitol building will be quite as open as it always had been. It adds to that sense of an armed camp in the nation's Capitol and that distance between the people and the politicians and that can't be a good thing.

Brian: Do you have any thoughts on the two inaugural address clips we just re-aired on calling out white supremacy by name or offering unity by drawing a line on truth, and on right and wrong at the same time?

Marc: Joe Biden, he's maybe not a natural orator and yet he has a plain spoken aspect to him that can be very effective. That reasonable, honorable, every man demeanor. It came through yesterday and that line, "Politics doesn't have to be a raging fire." That's the core of Joe Biden. He's always been about driving people to what he calls the vital center. That's not terribly fashionable these days, among both people on the left and the right. On the other hand, more than 80 million people said, "This is what we want." There's a craving in this very damaged and traumatized country, for stability and security and so it makes sense that people said, "We'll take the old fashioned old guy, please."

He really believes and always has that Americans are naturally drawn to the center. That there is really a craving for consensus, even when people are saying, "Hey, I want a lot of change, I want a lot of reform." It's a very tough thing. He's got to thread the needle on between the craving for reform and the need for some kind of return to normalcy. That's really a hard combination and if anyone can do it, maybe he can, because he has that long standing reputation for making deals with people, but he's going to be under tremendous pressure from all sides.

Brian: The progressive wing says, unity might come through the right reforms, through ambitious reforms, that will pull people together and not necessarily divide them. Listeners, your reactions to the inauguration itself, the speech or anything else and day one of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris getting down to business. 646-435-7280. Or your questions for Marc Fisher from The Washington Post 646-435-7280. Or you can tweet a question or a comment @BrianLehrer.

Here's a tweet that just came in. Somebody notes, there was a Times article on this this morning. New York Times. I don't know if you had something like this too in The Washington Post today, but the proud boys have disvowed Trump. They decided that he was a wimp when it came down to it, and that's weird or ironic or crazy, I don't know what it is. Have you seen that or anything like that and have any thought about that?

Marc: I think that is emblematic of what we're going to see in the coming weeks and months, which is simultaneously a collapse in Trump's popular support. We're already seeing it. There was a Pew poll that came out yesterday that showed that support for Trump is down by as much as a quarter among his supporters. At the same time, you're going to see a hardening and a radicalization, a further radicalization of the hardcore of his support.

As Twitter bans Trump, as his message goes out in increasingly quiet corners of the internet, you're going to see that group especially the QAnon believers whose whole worldview has now been shaken by the fact that Trump didn't stay in office. You're going to see some of those people say, "Forget it. I was rooked. I want out of this."

Then you're going to see others go deeper into that rabbit hole and create new conspiracy theories and be further radicalized. This happens at the end of every populous period where the leader goes off and many of his core supporters have a collective amnesia, if the other side doesn't force them to cry uncle and say, "I made a terrible mistake," which will further deepen the divisions in the country. If that doesn't happen, then people are allowed to go into this amnesia where they just don't want to talk about Trump anymore. I think we'll see that even as we see his hardcore supporters get angrier and more frustrated.

Brian: That's an interesting way to put it. It occurred to me that maybe, not sure, but maybe there's a parallel with the mid '90s here, where there was a rising militia movement and conspiracy theory movement in the first term of Bill Clinton. Then there was the Oklahoma city bombing, which killed hundreds of people and came out of that movement. I think that after that, a lot of people who were more marginally involved in the movement were so horrified by what happened, that the thing receded. I wonder if you see history that way or if this thought has occurred to you at all, as a parallel to what might happen now.

Marc: Very much so. In fact, what we're hearing from security officials is that they're really not that concerned or as concerned about another mass attack, another organized attack on the Capitol or other targets. They're really much more concerned about individual lone wolf actors, like a Timothy McVeigh, just as you mentioned and because there are people who have been radicalized and who, because of the nature of the internet and social media have been atomized or isolated and that's further enhanced by the virus and its impact on people's social connections. I think we could be in for a time more kind of individual acts like that but, for the much larger story and much larger trend will be people saying, "I'm done with that politics thing for awhile."

This is what Biden campaigned on, the idea that he was going to be a boring president. There's a liberation in that, there's a strong American tradition of people not caring about politics. A lot of academics have always run their hands about this, our very low voter participation rates, and it's obviously great when more people vote. On the other hand, that low participation rate tells you that you have a large part of the society that doesn't feel the need to care about politics and that can be a healthy thing, or it can be at least a sign that people are reasonably okay with where things are.

Brian: Desaray in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Thanks so much for calling in today, Desaray. Hi there.

Desaray: Good morning. I wanted to address the issue of president Biden being in the middle or drawing people towards the middle. What I said to the screener is that, what is the middle or what is considered to be the middle changes according to the context. There was a time when gay marriage was considered to be radical, that is no longer a radical idea, or even it's more of a middle ground mainstream idea. There was a time when being anti-slavery was considered to be a radical idea.

I feel like and Joe Biden was for gay marriage. I feel like the middle needs to be contextualized not just as like, the path of least resistance because I don't think it always is. I think it changes depending upon the context. Also I think that it would be super helpful to just leave 45 in the past. I feel like there's no reason to like invoke him every time president Biden does something that's different from him because he was an aberration in a sense in terms of being a precedent. I feel like every time someone's like, "Oh, he actually talks to the press." Those are normal things that a president should do, Do you get what I mean?

Brian: I get what you mean and it's something we've actually talked about in our production meetings and very much intend to do on this show and hope that it remains possible. It is only day one or day two.

Desaray: It is only day one and obviously there are some instances where you're going to have to do that, but I feel like the more you invoke him, the more we don't get to move forward, it's like not talking about an ex. Anyway, thank you so much.

Brian: I completely agree with your impulse, Desaray. Keep calling us. Kind of to that point, almost to that point, let me play one more clip of Biden from the speech, and my guest is Marc Fisher from The Washington Post, making a promise to the 74 million Americans who I won't say voted for the person who's name now, we don't want to say, but who did not vote for Joe Biden and we'll talk about what this might mean or might not mean in concrete terms.

Joe: I pledge this to you. I will be a president for all Americans, all Americans. [clapping] I promise you, I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.

Brian: It's a standard Olive branch, I think, Marc, that president, not named T word usually offer. We all noticed it more yesterday because of the way that Trump governed by polarization, but we already have Fox News accusing Biden of being condescending, like Democrats think they need to reeducate you on how to have empathy. Do you know if any plans to begin to address any policy items that might show people who did not vote for Biden that he sees them and will legislate around their interests too?

Marc: I think there's a real intent on the part of the Biden administration to reach out to, certainly, the many millions of Obama, Trump voters, certainly the many independents and vaguely Republican people who would naturally have been drawn to Biden in a less polarized period. I think they're going to do that on everything from the virus and aid to states and getting the vaccine out more quickly and all of that to some more ambitious kinds of policy matters.

Desaray's point about the middle and gay marriage was really interesting one, because Joe Biden was, obviously, well ahead of Barack Obama on gay marriage, but he was no radical on the issue. He was not a leader on the issue. He had a classic political sense of where the public was. Great politicians are- [unintelligible 00:17:09]

[[crosstalk]

Brian: He was a little bit ahead of Obama on that. The vice president was a little bit ahead of the president was what was notable at that moment.

Marc: Exactly because Biden had a skill there from long experience that maybe Obama didn't yet have of reading the public. Great politicians are often not out there on the edge, they have great capacity to read the public and they understand that politics is often a lagging indicator, not a leading one. He saw that the public had already moved there in public opinion about gay marriage and so he went there.

I think the same thing is going to happen now on immigration where he's going back to the ideas that George W. Bush had about fixing the immigration system in this country, because Biden knows because he has this long history that Republicans and Democrats were really close on very comprehensive immigration reform a couple of times, and he thinks that's a deal that can be made and that would appeal to many of those moderates and independents of the Obama, Trump voters.

That's the kind of leadership, I think, you're going to see from Biden, whether it will work, whether the anger of the core Trump voters is too great to sense what Biden's trying to do. That's what is going to have to play out.

Brian: Really interesting. Marie in Woodside Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi Marie.

Marie: Hi there. I love the show. Thank you for having me. I just wanted to disagree with this guest's viewpoint that not having an audience, was like indicative or show-- Didn't provide some kind of support for Biden's agenda. Everyone knows that we couldn't have a regular inauguration audience. I did want to say that I think like the number one thing on his agenda is getting the vaccine rolled out and everybody wants that. I think that he has a lot of support for his stated agenda from both sides, I really believe that. Thank you.

Brian: Thank you, Marie. Now, Marc did you suggest that the lack of in-person audience yesterday reflected lack of support? I'm not sure that you did,

Marc: No, It's not that it reflects lack of support, it's that it deprived Biden of that wonderful boost that politicians sometimes get from an obvious and joyous political display of support. Just as it hurt him in the campaign, that he wasn't able to have the big rallies and create that sense of momentum that politicians love to have, just by circumstance, he's been deprived of that. The caller is right, that it doesn't mean that he doesn't have the support, but he's not able to use it as a public cajole to show that, "Hey, the people have my back and therefore I can take these steps."

Brian: It actually brings me to my next point that I was going to make and raise with you, which is that, besides the inaugural yesterday and the executive orders, there was the first press briefing from the new press secretary, Jen Psaki, and folks for those of you who are going to see her name in print, and wonder how do I say that, it's P-S-A-K-I. P-S-A-K-I but it's pronounced like the Japanese drink we could say Psaki, Jen Psaki.

Now, by way of contrast, we remember the day one press briefing from Sean Spicer in 2017, I guess, our caller from Park Slope isn't going to like this because I'm comparing to Trump again, but we do remember the press briefing from Sean Spicer in 2017 when he came out of the box insisting, demanding that the press report a lie.

Sean Spicer: This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.

Brian: That really set the tone on day one for the four years of not just claiming but demanding that lies be reported as true. Okay, let's assume that's over, but press secretaries are still in the business of public relations for their client not always direct answers. Last night, for example, when Psaki was asked directly if Biden supports impeachment of Trump going forward, she said this.

Jen Psaki: His view is that the way to bring the country together is to address the problems we're facing.

Brian: Marc, do you want to take a minute as a Washington Post reporter and editor on what we just went through with public information in the last four years that was unique but then also address that non-answer on impeachment?

Marc: Yes. In the last 24 hours I've gotten a whole bunch of mail from readers, particularly on the right saying, "You guys are in the tank for Biden, and you're now going to be part of his PR operation," all of that kind of stuff. What I've been telling them is, "Look, we're going to be as aggressive on Biden as we are on Trump, as we were on Clinton, on Hillary Clinton." People forget that The Washington Post did a lot of the investigations that led to the exaggerations that we saw from Conservatives about Hillary Clinton's misdeeds.

Inevitably, whatever honeymoon you might hear from Jen Psaki in the first days of the administration as she pointed out, that will deteriorate over time. Every administration has missteps, it’s our job to find them, explain them, and understand them, and they won't like that. The relationship will perforce deteriorate.

Obviously, there's a general sigh of relief in the news organizations about the fact that as Joe Biden would say, returning to regular order. There's a normalcy of daily news conferences and an assumption that it's the administration's responsibility to tell us what's going on and to be truthful about it, and it's our job to push back and see whether they are indeed being truthful. I think everyone craves that return to that constitutional sense of the relationship between the press and politics.

In the Trump administration, we didn't have that. It looked like a much more antagonistic relationship when it was really just a striving on the part of reporters to find out what was going on and push through some of the lies.

Brian: Here's a caller on the press, Janine in Springfield Virginia. Hi Janine, you're on WNYC.

Janine: Hey Brian. This lead into exactly what I wanted to say and Happy New Year.

Brian: Thank you.

Janine: I actually, two things, with the press because I have a question and a comment. Number one, is when Marc, I can't remember your last name, I apologize.

Marc: Fisher.

Janine: Mr. Fisher, when you talked about citizens going back to the happy ignorance, we can’t afford to do that. I think the last administration taught young people, black and brown folk, immigrants that we have to advocate for ourselves in every aspect of being in this country in order for us to live. That, my friend, is what is going to make us not look for a savior like we did for Obama because one man is not big enough to fix this mess. This is something we all have to do. Just like with COVID, we have to stay inside to take care of others. We have to take care of other people through our own civic action.

My question is, what is the press going to do? At the beginning, yes, you're saying that you're going to hold Biden accountable and Jen Psaki did say yesterday that the honeymoon will be over. I'm keeping my eye on the press because the press if it bleeds, it leads. The press was very responsible in making money to create Trump during the 2016 election and how they did not and they do not hold white men accountable the way that they do people of color, the way that they do women, the way that they covered Hillary Clinton and the way the press rooms there is not representation that is fair and tells the stories of black and brown people from our perspective.

Nate Silver is getting pushback because the data that he is creating is from a white male perspective that is shifting, this country is shifting to a multicultural democracy.

My question is, how, and I don't know what your responsibility is and what power that you have, but what will the press do, what will the organizations in an economy that is struggling, and you're trying to make money, what challenges will you do to actually tell the actual authentic truth and be advocates for the people so that we do know what is going on in a better way than you did? You started doing it towards the end of Trump, but y'all need to do it now with the Conservatives, with the lies that they're spouting, and all of these other media organizations that are popping up that are going to be contributing to the lies.

It's not going to get better unless the press, the media, right now, you guys step up. I'm asking what are you going to do to step up? I'll take my answer offline. Thank you, gentlemen.

Brian: Thank you, Janine.

Marc: That's a great question, and obviously there was a bump that, what people call a Trump Bump that many news organizations experienced during the Trump years in the audience because people were very much more involved across the country with whichever side they were on in following politics. That perversely enabled news organizations like The Washington Post to hire a lot more reporters and be much more aggressive in our investigations and other reporting.

It's a weird Yin Yang relationship there where some stories that some people may have felt we were over covering actually contributed to our ability to be a better watchdog over the administration and other institutions in society. We're glad to have that. Will that audience now go away, remains to be seen which takes me to the listener’s other point about participation. Obviously, it’s good for everyone and good for democracy if we have a more active and involved electorate.

My point about being able to sit back and ignore politics comes actually from my experience as a foreign correspondent back in the final days and months of communism in Eastern Europe, when many people who had suffered under that system told me that they were jealous of Americans because they said Americans didn't have to care about politics because their lives weren't in jeopardy. That is a luxury that Americans often don't realize we've had through the years.

If now with Trump and the dangers that he posed being removed from the calculus, if that enables some people to go back to not caring about politics, it's not a great thing for our democracy but it is a healthy reflection of the fact that we have a society where people can trust enough in institutions that they are able to sit back sometimes.

Brian: One more caller in this segment, Susan, in Chatham in New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susan? Susan, you there? Do we have Susan in Chatham, New Jersey? Not Chatham, New York which is New Albany. Susan in Chatham New Jersey. Once, twice. All right. I'll wrap up with you this way, I guess. While we're expecting 10 executive orders related to the coronavirus today including use of the Defense Production Act to speed up vaccine delivery, Jen Psaki confirmed last night. Are there specifics yet of how that might work?

Marc: Well, I think what you're overall going to see is a shift in responsibility from the States back to the federal government, exactly what Trump refused to do. From the beginning, Trump didn't want to be blamed for the virus, and so he put it on the Governors across the country who obviously did not have the infrastructure, the money, the capacity to deal with this nationwide problem.

You're going to see the federal government resuming some of that responsibility and forcing private sector companies to produce the supply chain that is slowing down the vaccine rollout at this point. They are producing the glass vials, the syringes, the packaging all of that stuff. You're going to see money flowing from the feds to the states to have vaccines distribution centers set up in stadiums and community centers. All of these things that were obvious that the Trump administration should have done and just decided not to because Trump himself didn't want to be blamed if it went wrong.

Brian: Let me bring up and go back to really one thing you brought up earlier in the conversation as a closer. That is comprehensive immigration reform, which as you noted, both Obama and Bush took a shot at in a similar way. More border security in exchange for a path to citizenship for law abiding people already here illegally, but he would need about 10 Republican votes in the Senate.

Conservative media is already reporting on a new caravan coming from central America on the belief that Biden will let them in, after Trump didn't. Biden is signing an executive order or maybe he already did yesterday ending construction of Trump's border wall. What does real border security Biden's style purport to look like, in a way that can bring 10 Republicans to thinking this deal is real?

Marc: It's going to be a tough deal to make because a lot of Republican politicians are under tremendous pressure from their base which now will be riled up once more by Fox and Friends about these caravans and the dangers of illegal immigration and all of that. It's the time ripe for that kind of a deal that Bush and Obama tried to make, maybe not. A number of people in the Biden administration are saying, "We need to not repeat the mistakes of Clinton and Obama and go hard on an unpopular issue," as those administrations did on healthcare early on which made it really difficult for them to get the rest of their agenda done.

There is some hesitation about really going for the big comprehensive approach on immigration. I think Biden is going to try to move there and take advantage of the civil war within the Republican party because really the big story of the next couple of years, politically, is going to be the redefinition of the Republican party. It's not at all clear which side will prevail. Obviously the impeachment trial will give us a first window onto that, but the Biden folks do believe that there are somewhere between five and 15 Republican senators who they can work with on any number of tough issues. We'll see just how many there really are.

Brian: Washington Post senior editor Marc Fisher. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Marc: Great to be with you.

 

 

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