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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Just before 6:30 this morning, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart tweeted this. "Good morning. Just so you know, the defeated president of the United States is trying to overturn an American election. The will of the American people will prevail, it must." Now Jonathan printed the word overturn in caps in his tweet because that's what the president of the United States did yesterday. He posted a one-word tweet, overturn, in caps, aimed no doubt at his appointees on the Supreme Court, who now have a case before them filed by the state of Texas that seeks to overturn the results in the four big swing states, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Those four states have until three o'clock this afternoon to file their responses. While legal experts overwhelmingly predict this Texas lawsuit will go up in flames like the dozens of others that the Trump people have filed since election day, mostly on similar grounds. Here we're talking about Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch. You never know for sure until you know for sure.

What's more, and maybe you haven't heard this yet, since yesterday show, 17 more states controlled by Republicans, that is 17 more state attorneys general, have thrown in with Texas, asking that the election be nullified and given to the state legislators or somehow vetted for a longer time that would pass next Monday's December 14th Electoral College vote. That's how thin the line is between democracy and power for power's sake right now. 17 more states are now in this SCOTUS case on Trump's side, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz has offered to argue the case before the Supreme Court if they take it.

With me now on that and more is Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart. He has some news of his own. Jonathan, who some of you know from his work as a host here as well as his other stuff, has been named the new host of Joy Reid's former slot on MSNBC from 10:00 AM to noon on Sundays, now that Joy has gone to weeknights. Jonathan, hi there. Welcome back to WNYC and congratulations on the new gig.

Jonathan: Thank you very, very much, Brian. It's very-

Brian: 10:00 AM to noon is a great time slot for hosting a public affairs show. Only the best people get that time slot.

Jonathan: [laughs] As you know.

Brian: Now I sound like Trump, only the best people, referring to myself. The difference is I'm joking. Seriously, that's the heart of the Sunday morning news show block. As I don't have to tell you, you're actually up now against NBC's own, Meet the Press with Chuck Todd because NBC owns both things. Plus Face the Nation on CBS and ABC this week and Fox News Sunday, all those other mainline Sunday shows that air at the same time. You've been in the big time in the Washington Post for a long time. Welcome to the big time on TV. Do you have a name for the Sunday show or an approach you can tell our listeners about?

Jonathan: Yes, I do. Yes to both questions. The name of the show is The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart. One of the things that they were telling me in terms of coming up with a name was the name of your show should tell the viewer what they're going to see. What kind of show is this? Toying around with all of these names, and then it hit me literally in the middle of the night. I woke up and I thought, "Wait, The Sunday Show, because that's the show I want to do from 10:00 until noon on Sunday."

Thankfully, the bosses liked it. It cleared all the clearances that needed to be cleared. Viewers who loved the Sunday shows, will, when they turn into the Sunday show with Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC, Sundays 10:00 AM until noon, they are going to get a different kind of Sunday show. It'll be similar to the traditional ones in that we will be talking with newsmakers and we will be talking about issues that are facing the country right then that week on that day or in the week ahead. We're going to have opinion makers and thought leaders, journalists, and others talking about the news of the day and what it means.

The viewers who come to MSNBC between 10:00 AM and noon-- I'm sure we have a lot of overlap, Brian, with our audiences. The folks who come to MSNBC in those hours, they're news junkies. They're political junkies, by and large. They know what the news is. They know what the headlines are, but they're coming to me and they're coming to us in those hours because they want to know what the news is in context. What does it mean? Why should they care? How does this particular big event fit into the larger story, into the larger narrative?

Then ultimately, giving viewers information that will help them in conversations with their friends, over zooms or whatever. Most importantly, I think, giving them the ammunition and the facts and the information they need to go toe-to-toe with that family member on the other side of the political and the ideological divide, particularly over the holidays. That's what I'm looking forward to, with this show, is joining the Sunday morning show lineup, and doing my level best to make the show worthy of the time of the audience.

Then one last thing and I know I'm going on, but the thing that makes me and my show different is that I'm the only one like me now playing in the Sunday show space. WNYC listeners know I'm African American. A lot of WNYC listeners know, I'm also openly gay and married. I think for a lot of people to see someone like me in a chair that prominent, sends a signal. It sends a signal about our profession, journalism, sends a signal about my network, MSNBC, and sends a signal about our society and why it is possible and how it's possible for someone like me to have a job like that and that I hope that there are young, particularly LGBTQ kids, who might be sitting with their parents or their grandparents or might be news nerds like I was when I was that young, who turn on the TV and see me and think anything's possible.

Brian: At the risk of embarrassing you, Jonathan, and people may not know this, but one of your first jobs as a grown-up, maybe your first out of college, you tell me, was working here at WNYC as an executive assistant to the president of the station at that time, Tom Morgan. Then you worked hard to move to the editorial side of the business and you got hired by the Daily News. Then there was no holding you back. At the risk of embarrassing you, I will say, local boy makes good.

Jonathan: Right. It was my second job out of college.

Brian: Jonathan Capehart, who is still a Washington Post columnist, if you've tuned in a little late, will be the new 10:00 AM to noon, Sunday morning host on MSNBC. All right. Now to more anxiety-producing news, Jonathan. Why did you start your day this morning quoting the president's overturn tweet, after all, these legal analysts have said this Texas Supreme Court case has a snowball's chance in Mar-a-Lago or other one places, of succeeding?

Jonathan: Because I don't think we should ever not take what he does seriously. We've never seen anything like this before. Anything he's ever done said or tweeted, is unlike anything we've seen come from the Oval Office or the president of the United States. We should not just pretend that it is not only serious but extremely dangerous to have a sitting president of the United States, who was resoundingly defeated at the ballot box by the American people, now on Twitter, saying he wants to overturn the will of the American people. Even though yes, this doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Mar-a-Lago of ever coming to fruition. It is incredibly dangerous that a sitting president would even utter these words, would take these actions. What's even more concerning is that you would have 17 other attorneys general joining this insane lawsuit. Right now what we have seen over this election, is that it has been, especially since the election with all the court challenges that the Trump campaign has thrown at the election results, it's been the judiciary that has stepped in and done what Congress Republicans on Capitol Hill have been unable to do and that is to tell the president, no.

To tell the president your arguments have no merit because they aren't based in fact. I sent that tweet out this morning, just as a reminder to people that, yes, it's all hilarious and a little bit funny and 100% sad that a president cannot accept the will of the people. On the other hand, he is doing things to try to overturn the will of the people and we can't let that happen and we can't ignore it when he is sending not-so-subtle hints that he wants that to happen.

Brian: The premise of the suit is now that there was a fraud because they don't have any evidence of fraud that would overturn the election, but that elections officials in the four states, unconstitutionally changed voting procedures to accommodate the pandemic by going to a massive mail-in ballot system that didn't have the same checks against fraud by not having more stringent requirements for two-party examination of mail-in ballot signatures and verification of witness signatures.

They say some states require witnesses to also sign when someone files an absentee ballot and that these weaknesses favor Democratic counties and make it impossible to know who really won. Therefore the election should be thrown out in those states and decided by state legislatures, which is the constitution's backup plan or short of that remedy, which is really like throwing it to Trump, to delay next Monday's Electoral College vote, to continue to verify the election results through an audit of all the signature envelopes and a few other kinds of recounts. What do you say to the Trump supporters who argue that amount of additional certainty, that there was no fraud, is it a reasonable thing to ask for?

Jonathan: I would flat out say they are wrong and that their arguments, they're parroting what the president has been saying about Biden is trying to "steal the election." That is the ultimate in projection. What you just read is exactly what they're trying to do. They are trying to steal the election. Joe Biden got the most-- I'm sorry, let me take a step back. President-elect Joe Biden won the most votes of any person to ever have run for president in the history of this country.

The idea that these folks are trying to go to court to find every possible way to make that not happen is insane. I can't even believe we have to have this conversation, and that there are 17 other attorneys general who are glomming onto this. For an election so huge, there isn't any evidence that there was election fraud, that there was any kind of abuse. The rules that were changed, that they're all upset about, to try to safeguard the health of the American people, resulted in the highest turnout this country has seen in recent memory, that the people of America made their voices heard loud and clear.

Also, let's not forget that President Trump, even though he lost, got 10 million more votes this time than he did last time. The thing that I find so weird about these lawsuits and especially what they're trying to do with the Texas suit, they're trying to invalidate the votes when it comes to the presidential election. Yet I have yet to hear anyone explain about the domino effect of what they're doing.

If you're voiding or trying to avoid votes that were cast by people in the presidential and trying to say that those were illegitimate, then what does that mean about all the down-ballot races in all these states where Republicans won? Are those elections now no longer valid? That's why all of this is so insane and it is my sincere hope that the courts will continue to do what they've been doing and that is being the ultimate bulwark against this nonsense and for American democracy.

I do hope that one day and one day soon, that Republicans in Capitol Hill will find their spines and finally stand up to this guy and bid him adieu and get on with the work of legislating on behalf of the American people. We're in the middle of a global pandemic that this administration has failed to get under control, which has had impacts on the American economy. I know the people of New York City don't need me to tell them this, given everything that the Big Apple went through in the first wave of this pandemic.

That's what Congress should be focused on, that's what Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz should be focused on, instead of saying he would do the president's bidding and argued this case before the Supreme Court if it ever gets that far.

Brian: My guest is Jonathan Capehart. Now the Sunday morning, 10:00 AM to noon host on MSNBC, as well as still a Washington Post Columnist. We can take some phone calls for him at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet a question or a comment for Jonathan @BrianLehrer. Before we go on to a few other things, since I laid out Texas's pro-Trump arguments to the Supreme Court, I'll note that you also tweeted this morning, an article by now your colleague, NBC News, legal analyst, Pete Williams, that lists five reasons this suit is very likely to fail.

They include that the justices will say Texas would need to file first in lower courts and the Texas suit is a compilation of claims already rejected in strong language by lower courts. That's a big one I think. Another one is that the constitution says all state's electors meet on the same day, which is next Monday. Texas can't ask for four state's Electoral College votes to be separated out for delay.

Also note that the New York Times article on this, calls it a far-fetched lawsuit, right in the headline, and focuses instead on a political analysis of the 17 Attorneys General and Senators Cruz and Josh Hawley, who are all in, that says, "That these political allies are also elected officials whose jobs involve enforcing laws, including voting rights, underscores the extraordinary nature of the brief to the court. Even in defeat, allegiance to Mr. Trump is viewed as the ticket to higher office." Do you agree with that way, this political rather than legal way of looking at this story?

Jonathan: Absolutely. That's the only way any of this makes sense, that these folks have been living in fear of Donald Trump because of the fealty of the Republican base to him. That is the only reason. If they want to stay in the jobs that they have, if they want to advance to higher office and they are beholden to their Ruby Red Districts or to Republican constituents who have shown a propensity to get out there and vote, then right now, it does not do you any good to defy or go against this president. The implications for American politics are huge.

When you have a president with high approval ratings within the Republican party, who is continuing to do things to try to overturn an American election. These are people who you know they know that what they're doing goes against the constitution, but what they're doing is they're putting their own political future ahead of the greater good. That's one thing, the other thing that's at work here is the fundraising effort that's underway as a result of what the president is doing.

He is raising money, hand over fist. I don't know what the latest numbers are, but the last one that sticks into my head is more than $200 million, he's raised off of suing to try to overturn the election. With Donald Trump, New Yorkers know this, everything related to Donald Trump comes right back to him and his personal interests. Thanks to reporting by the New York Times, we know that over the next four years he's got about $400 million in debt that will come due. He's going to have to pay that money.

The money that he is raising from his supporters who think they're raising money for his legal defense, it seems to me maybe they don't care that that money will eventually go to paying off people who have nothing to do with this quixotic effort of his to overturn the election. It's the political future of the people who are trying to help him, that's at work here, and it's the president's future outside of the White House and the big bills he faces that's also at work here.

Brian: Jennifer in East Harlem, you're on WNYC with Jonathan Capehart. Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer: Yes. Good morning, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I just want to say I've called in many times about this, as somebody who completely supports all of the prominent mental health professionals and other thought leaders who have said, what will it take for this society to understand that we have a psychopathic personality in the White House that everything he has done is absolutely any adherence of that profile?

A psychopath has no regard for law, no ethics, no conscience. They are entirely exploitative and manipulative. They are entirely out for themselves. They will take down anything and everyone with them to get what they want. We continue to debate this in the realm of politics [unintelligible 00:21:59] surpasses politics. He has been doing this his entire life and he has been enabled by cronies who are just as psychopathic and as deranged as he is. Why do we continue to debate this instead of taking the appropriate measures against him?

Brian: Jennifer, even if we say, and we certainly can say as you laid out, that a lot of Donald Trump's behavior fits the profile of a sociopath, there is a case in front of the Supreme Court, that 18 state attorneys general have gone in on. We can't ignore it and just say the president's crazy, right?

Jennifer: This is true, Brian. On the other side, why aren't we addressing, again, what the Republicans are doing and the cult-like effect that Trump has on his fellow Republicans, on his [unintelligible 00:22:59]? I find it even more horrifying that he received a greater number of votes this second election. This shows the effect that his kind of personality has on people.

There is an FBI, a former FBI agent who just came out with a book called Dangerous Personalities, not just came out, it came out a few years ago. He certainly alludes to Trump. The fact that again, throughout history, they take down entire countries. You have had Masha Gessen and others on your show, excellent reporters with tremendous knowledge of autocracy and such. I just don't understand what it will take and why he was given the latitude and the support. It is a cult-like effect.

Brian: Jennifer, I'm going to leave it there. We really appreciate it. Jonathan, do you want to say anything about the intersection of, let's say, sociopathic personality and ability of people, willingness of people, vulnerability of people, use whatever word you want, to be drawn to and support a sociopathic person?

Jonathan: Sure. I'll leave the psychological analysis aside and just point out that I've been focused, basically since he came down that escalator on June 16th, 2015, about the impact of Donald Trump and what he was doing and how he was able to win, and also why he was able to get 10 million more votes this go-round than he did the last time and still lose. I come back to a particular year on the calendar, 2044. That is the year that the Census Bureau has estimated when the United States will become a so-called majority-minority country.

That has freaked out a lot of white people. After two terms of the first Black president and dealing with the reality of what that means about what America is, what it looks like, and who is at the center of power both politically, but also culturally, a lot of people rebelled. If you read Carol Anderson's book White Rage, she makes the historical case that we have been through this before, where big advancements for African Americans in terms of freedom and sharing in the promise of America, there's always been a corresponding backlash.

What we're seeing right now and it's at the hands, as Jennifer says, at the hands of someone who she says is psychopathic. What we have is Republicans and a lot of white Americans who are throwing their luck in behind a man who promises to "make America great again." Who has run or ran in two successive campaigns, racist, nationalistic, nativist, xenophobic campaigns for president all with the promise of keeping whiteness at the center of American political and cultural life.

To me, that goes a long way to explaining why we are seeing people who four years earlier were preaching how much they care about the constitution and how much Barack Obama was defying the constitution and defiling the constitution, who are now giving this sitting president for the next 40 some odd days, giving him a pass on a whole host of things. This is about who is in control of this country. I share Jennifer's concern about the fact that 10 million more people voted for Donald Trump this time than last time and what that says about where we are in this country.

Brian: You know that if you ask maybe anyone of those 74 million Trump voters, let's say any one of the white voters who are the vast majority of those 74 million, almost any one of them. Yes, there are a few who are explicitly white supremacists, but the vast majority will say, "I'm not voting to protect whiteness. I don't even think about whiteness. I'm voting because I'm not taken into consideration by the elites "on the coasts" or in the cities or in the academic institutions or in the Washington Post. Trump gets me at my gut and represents me at my gut in a way that a lot of the Democrats don't. I'm not talking about I want to be represented in whiteness." What do you say to those people?

Jonathan: He represents you at your gut. You're fine with banning Muslims from coming into the United States. You're fine with tearing families apart at the border. You're fine with jailing babies on the border, in your name. You are fine with snubbing our allies, the people who help keep us safe because of the treaties and the relationships and the alliances that have been sustained for more than seven decades and led by the United States.

You're for a president who harasses government officials, but also private citizens from the White House briefing room, from campaign stages, from his Twitter feed. You're fine with then he gets you at your gut when he stands there and lies to the American people about a pandemic that is now raging across the country. There's only so much someone's gut should take before they take a step back and wonder, why am I supporting this person?

Tax cuts cannot be the only reason why someone is supporting Donald Trump. How much can one avert their eyes to some of the horrible things he has done in the name of the American people that go against everything we say we are and who we are both at home and abroad? Whenever I saw in stories in 2016, and also in 2020, that, Donald Trump says the things I can't say. There are a lot of people who are wondering, "What have you been dying to say that you couldn't say before now that Donald Trump is on the stage?"

Now, having said all that, I do understand that there's an irony here, in that among the president's increase in vote, was also a marginal increase in his support among people of color. In terms of that question about "coastal elites" ignoring, people in the middle of the country, that's the kind of conversation I would love to have. I want to know, from African Americans, Latinx community, and others who voted for President Trump, why, given everything that we know about what he did and did not do. Why did you vote for him? That is an amazing conversation that actually I hope to have on my show on Sundays.

Brian: Here's pushback on the lawsuit from Brian and Randolph. Brian, you're on WNYC, thank you for calling.

Caller Brian: Hey, thank you. It's a pleasure to be on. Brian, congratulations on your award last night. That was wonderful on the award show and Mr. Capehart, congratulations on your show as well. I just have a couple of points, and I'll take answers off the air. I'm originally from Pennsylvania. I lived in Pennsylvania for 25 years. I moved to New Jersey for law school. I have never been a registered Democrat. I was a registered Republican for a couple of months and voted for Obama twice, voted for Clinton, voted for Biden.

I have had to take issue with a couple of things. Mr. Capehart, you're not a journalist. You're a partisan opinion writer. To start this segment by saying that the purpose of your show is to provide ammunition for folks on one side of the political spectrum, for arguments with family members, on the other side, demonstrates exactly what you're trying to do. This lawsuit filed by the state of Texas, I read the bill of complaint. I don't think it has a very strong chance of succeeding, but to just whitewash it, to just say that it's nonsense, that it's insane, that he's a psychopath.

These are 18 states that have looked at what happened in Pennsylvania, Michigan, where the legislators have the constitutional authority to make changes to election laws. That didn't happen. There has never been an election like this. There has never been a lawsuit like this. There has never been an election where states are sending mail-in ballots without being requested. It's worth review. It's worth a review.

I think that the outrage that the folks on the right are so outraged about the changing demographics of the country and the outrage I see, and here, just as much outrage from Mr. Capehart, from folks on the left. Outrage doesn't conquer outrage. People have to come to the table, look at the facts, have conversations, and understand why things are happening. We have had four years, rightly or wrongly, where Republicans felt that Democrats just could not accept the results of the 2016 election, rightly or wrongly.

Rather than having a cool, calm, collected conversation about it, all you see is outrage. Now, I guess in a way, the Republicans are giving some Democrats some of their-- I think a lot of Republicans know that this isn't going to succeed but it's a sense of payback. Even thank you for the time. I appreciate it. I wish you both the best and I wish you both happy holidays. Thank you so much.

Brian: Brian, same to you and thank you very much for your call. What do you say especially to his last point, which certainly a lot of Trump supporters articulate, that the Democrats never accepted the Trump election as legitimate? A number of Democrats in Congress refused to attend the inauguration because they said his election was illegitimate because of Russia. Hillary Clinton said a similar thing, though she did attend the inauguration. Now they're trying to turn it around or they've been sieving as a result of that ever since.

Jonathan: One, Brian, I thank you for your call.

Brian: To your call, Brian.

Jonathan: To the point of your question, all the examples that you just presented, Brian, of Democrats questioning the legitimacy of President Trump's election, it was just them saying things like that. Raising questions about Russian interference. What makes what's happening now different is that you have the President of the United States, and Republican officials going to court and turning their questions about the legitimacy of this election, and actually going to court and trying to overturn the election, overturn and reverse the will of the people.

2016 and 2020, we're talking apples and oranges here when it comes to the reaction of Democrats to the election of Donald Trump and 2020 and the reaction of Republicans to the election of President-elect Joe Biden. When it comes to the lawsuit, before coming on your show, Brian, I was hosting my Washington Post live show, called First Look, where I was on with Eugene Robinson, a liberal columnist at the Washington Post and Hugh Hewitt, a conservative columnist with the Washington Post, who has a daily radio show, who is also a lawyer.

I asked him about this. He agreed with Eugene Robinson, that this Texas lawsuit, it's meritless, and if a dyed in the wool attorney, conservative columnist, for The Washington Post says that what Texas is doing is not worthy of being heard and is without merit, I'm going to listen to him because, contrary to what Brian might believe, I do listen to what people have to say on the other side of the political spectrum.

Actually, he raises a good point about, when I said, talking about my show, giving people ammunition for arguments that they want to have with people in their family who are on the other side of the political and ideological spectrum. That is my recognizing who I am and what I bring to the table as an opinion columnist. I should point out, I am a journalist. What I get to do is, after I do all my reporting, I actually get to say what I think about things, which is why I'm an opinion columnist, an opinion journalist.

Folks, I've been in this business, writing for more than 25 years, coming up on 30 years. I'm a journalist. I'm not a mathematician. Everybody knows that I am left of center. There actually, probably some people out there for whom I'm too conservative. I hear you, Brian, and I understand what you're saying, but we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this. When it comes to the Texas case, I am more than happy to stand with Hugh Hewitt on this. If a conservative like Hugh Hewitt says that what's happening in Texas is a waste of time and has no legal merit, who am I to argue?

Brian: Jonathan Capehart, addressing our last caller, whose name is also Brian, in case there was any confusion there. We will have to leave it there with Jonathan Capehart, opinion columnist, opinion journalist for The Washington Post, and as of this weekend, the Sunday morning 10:00 AM to noon host on MSNBC. For now, Jonathan, always a pleasure. I hope you keep coming on with us even though now you're a big TV star.

Jonathan: [laughs] Absolutely, Brian. Thank you.

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