Bonus: Rep. Jamie Raskin on trauma, the insurrection, and the Trump of it all

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Speaker 1: Hi everyone. Before we get started, I want to provide a warning ahead of this episode because it contains information about suicide which may be upsetting. I also want to provide you with the suicide lifeline, which is one eight hundred to seven three eight to five. Again, that's one hundred three eight to Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric, and you're listening to next question. You might remember Congressman Jamie Raskin for the impassioned speech he made during President Trump's impeachment hearing last year. And all around me, people were calling their wives and their husbands, their loved ones to say goodbye. Members of Congress in the house. Anyway, we're removing their congressional pins so they wouldn't be identified by the mob as they try to escape the violence. He's describing the January six insurrection, when a violent mob stormed the US capital. January six also happened to be the day after Congressman Raskin and his family buried their twenty five year old son, Tommy. This emotional confluence of personal grief and national terror is the focus of Jamie Raskin's new book called Unthinkable Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American democracy. We recently had a lengthy conversation and we started by focusing on what he describes as the worst week of his life. Unthinkable. Congressman represents two crises, one private and one public, that happened in the span of a single week. Take us back to that week if you could, Well, you're talking about the worst week of my wife. I suppose. Um. You know, we suffered the catastrophe of losing Tommy on the last day of December in you know that's that's a an inexpressible nightmare, basically what what that was? And Tommy was a young man of magnificent gifts and talents, and he was brilliant. Um. And he was a poet, he was a playwright. Uh, he was in his second year at Harvard Law School. But the truly remarkable thing about him was his heart. Because he was someone who had just a boundless love of the world and of all living beings, all sentient creatures. Used to pet our dogs and say, you know, Potter, you're such a fine sentient being. Uh. But anyway, he was suffering depression and um um he was back home from school because of COVID nineteen um and grew increasingly despondent um and developed a plan, unbeknownst to us, to take his life. And he did. And UM, so uh, this was a terrible catastrophe for us. And everybody was home. Our daughters were home, Sarah and I were here, lots of family came, um and then UM. I had been getting ready, really for a few months for the first Wednesday in January, which the Twelfth Amendment says is the day for Congress to meet in joint session to count Electoral College votes. And we had anticipated aggressive maneuvers against particular states and Speaker plos. He had asked me to prepare answers for what was going on with a handful of other colleagues, and we were prepared. Um. But the night before my daughter said, don't go in. I said, this was a constitutional responsibility. It would be, you know, my first day back. UM, And I said, why don't you lunch come with me. Anybody wants to come, can come. And so our younger daughter Tabatha decided to come, and our son in law, Hank, who was married to our older daughter Hannah, he decided to come. Everybody else was going to stay at home. UM, and so they were there with me on that day, and that was a nightmare of a different kind. Although I recorded my book Katie that UM, although it was an objectively terrifying situation, I really experienced no fear because I felt like the very worst thing that could ever happen to me had already happened. And what were these fascist and hooligan's going to do that could be worse than what I had already experienced. But I was very angry about what was taking place, and you know, set about in my mind to try to figure out exactly what they had done in trying to overturn election and how they coordinated this inside political coup against the Vice president and against Congress with a violent street attack which um ended up storming the Capitol, injuring a hundred and fifty of our officers and shutting down the counting of Electoral College votes for the first time in newest history. You call it a self coup that was instigated by the President of the United States. Did you ever think that you would hear those words? Well, yeah, I didn't even know that expression, which is a political science expression that they used to describe a coup that comes from the inside. Usually we think of coups as being something from the outside directed against the asident, oftentimes by the military. UH. Here, of course, the military was standing in strong defense of constitutional democracy, but the president orchestrated the coup against the vice president um. And after trying multiple different avenues of attack uh to overturn the presidential election. Uh, Donald Trump finally settled on this avenue of going after Mike Pants during the January six proceeding. But he had tried before to get state legislatures simply to avoid the popular results and to declare electoral college tickets for Trump. When m Republican legislative leaders and the states refused to do that, then he moved to try to browbeate and coerce state election officials, including the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Ravensburger, simply to find electoral find popular votes. And he had asked Brett Ravensburger to find eleven thousand seven in Gin native votes. That's all he was asking for. So that that was not Donald Trump trying to stop voter fraud. That was Donald Trump trying to commit voter fraud, um and UM. When all of these prior attempts to overturn election failed. That's when uh, they settled on the idea of trying to get Pence to declare extra constitutional powers, powers outside of our rule of law, to unilaterally rebuff and repudiate electoral college events from the States. The purpose there was to lower Biden's total and electoral college from three or six to something below to seventy, thereby kicking the contest immediately into the House of Representatives under the twelfth Amendment for a so called contingent election. And the reason that they wanted Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic House to be deciding was because in a contingent election, we don't vote according to one member, one vote. We vote according to one state, one vote. And after the elections, they were in control of seven state delegations in the House. We had and have twenty two, one Pennsylvania split down the middle. So even had they suffered the defection of the at large member from Wyoming, Liz Cheney, which I think they would have, they still would have had twenty six votes and they would have declared Trump president. Uh. He would have seized the presidency for another four years, and he likely would have invoked the Insurrection Act at that point to call in the National Guard, which he had not dispatched earlier in the day UH, to put down the insurrectionary chaos he had at leashed against us. So he would have basically made himself the hero, saying, you know, Speaker Plos, he couldn't keep order here, but I'm keeping order here, and then making himself president for another four years. That was basically the plan. You taught constitutional law at American University, and all your years teaching constitutional law, did you effort imagine and something like this happening? Well, what's interesting is we had we had clearly imagined the parliamentary attacks on the election. We were prepared for that. We had answers to everything they were going to say about Arizona and Georgia and Pennsylvania. After all, UH sixty one federal and state courts had examined all of their claims of electoral fraud and corruption and rejected all of them. Um, so we had very good answers across the board. We'd also anticipated are some violence outside. But what it never occurred to me was that the whole proceeding would actually be overrun by violence and shut down, and that this UH political coup against the election would be coordinated with a violent street attack by thugs and fascist group that were brought together for the first time. You know, Katie, A lot of people recognized that Donald Trump used these violent elements, you know, the Proud Boys who had told to stand back and stand by, and the oath keepers, and the three per Centers and the Q and on networks that he kept flirting with and so on. But it's also the case that they used him too, because remember back in August of two thousand seventeen when they tried to unite the right at that horror show in Charlottesville, Virginia. Well, they only had five hundred people, right. Um, they went from five hundred people there, and they certainly did enough damage and they killed Heather Higher and um they turned a great, a great city upside down. But um, it was contained. But when it got to January six, the extremist group was now several thousand in uh acting is basically frontline stormtroopers for a march of forty or fifty thousand people. They were in league with the President of the United States. They stored in the Capitol, and they came very close to overturning the whole democracy. So, in addition to everything else, Donald Trump empowered an extreme right wing street fascist movement the likes of which we have not seen in America since Basically, we'll be right back. I want to talk more about President Trump's role in the future of the Republican Party, but I'd like to go back, Congressman to Tommy for just a moment. It strikes me that you were not as fearful as you might have been, because you had just faced the worst thing a person can really be confronted by, and that is the depth of a child. Um. Tommy, by all accounts, was truly extraordinary. And I know we all think our kids are extraordinary, but your son was so outstanding. It was a student at Harvard Law School. He was a deep, deep thinker from an early age. How he would go in his room and think about big, big issues. I'm sure he his goal in life was to change the world. Can you help us understand his his struggles with depression, how they manifested themselves, and how such a brilliant person could be plagued by such demons. Well, first of all, thank you for your kind words about Tommy. Um. We obviously you know loved him, UM endlessly and infinitely, and we think about him all the time. UM. And we've heard from lots of families that have been in a similar situation. And of course each of these losses is um overwhelming, and all of our kids are extraordinary and unique in their own way, and so each one is a nightmare and a tragedy for the family. And of course we're living in a time of great trauma, with having lost nine thousand people to COVID nineteen, comparable numbers to the opioid crisis, UM, gun violence, the mental and emotional health crisis, the sharp increases in suicide, especially among young people. UM. You know, all of these things have created a sense of great despondency and demoralization and the public. And we've gotta, you know, we've got to bring everybody back from this however we can. UM. I guess I would just say and answer your question. UM. You know, for those of us who have not suffered from depression, it's very hard. I. UM. You know, I spent a long time reading about depression before writing about Tommy, and I think I really didn't understand it until something very weird happened, which is I UM, I went to get a cat scan UM on my stomach um and it ended up being nothing, that's the good news. But I was put into the cat scan machine and I don't know if you've ever gone through that um and uh, you know, sometimes apparently they will give people value or music or something. But I was just put under and I was just staring at the top of the machine, which was a few inches away from me. And you wouldn't think that that would cause, you know, such a sense of claustrophobia and panicked. But I was under there for thirty seven minutes, and at several times I was tempted to just abort the whole operation and stop, but then I knew that I would have to start over again. Um. But I had such a sense of entrapment, in such a sense of fear and terror, that for the very first time, I think I began to experience just the tiniest, tiniest bit for the shortest period of time, some of what Tommy described depression being like. And for those people who have gone through it, it's been described as the beast, as an endless, dark tunnel of terror and horror, and it's um, it's a nightmare. Even to here people describe you know what it's been like. Oh, I'm sorry, so sorry for your loss, and uh, the loss of a child is something no person should ever have to experience. But wow, what a legacy Tommy left behind. And I'm glad he's really present in your life and the life of so many people because of your book. Um, really, there are no words to I think express express our sympathy to you. Congressman. You know you you were dealing with the loss of Tommy. I mean, it was so fresh, so raw, so new when the insurrection happened. And it does strike me that you predicted this in many ways because you were charged with by Speaker Pelosi, with figuring out ways that President Trump might try to circumvent or thwart the electoral process. Was it eerie for you to see we thought this was going to happen, and my god, now it is. Well. The part that we had not predicted was the crossover of the street militancy and violence into the capital and the merger of this violent insurrection with the inside moves for a political crew. Um. And that what I condemned myself for in the book is not putting these things together. And I think for different reasons. I described that I should have been in a place to have predicted that and been far more focused than I was, just on the physical security side of things, and not just you know, in terms of swering the various parliamentary moves that were being made, um, you know, against the result or you know, the outside of political efforts to attack the whole electoral college process. I was prepared for those things, but I didn't put it together with what now looks in the hindsight to be telltale signs of a violent insurrection that was well coordinated with this political attach after all. I mean, it wasn't a random demonstration. It came right at one pm on Wednesday, January six, UM, and the people were sent right down from that White House rally to the Capitol where uh then President Trump was telling people to go. So uh, these different components were actually well coordinated against US and UM because of the heroism of the capital officers who literally put their lives on the line and many of them ended up with broken jaws and necks and vertebrae and others who ended up with traumatic brain injuries and post traumatic stress syndrome. And also because Vice President Pence on that day lived his oath of office. He upheld his oath of office. Because of those things, we were narrowly able to defeat the first coup in American history. You're also on the January six how select committee charged with investigating the attack after a year, more than a year of collecting interviews and evidence, Um, how much closer are we to understanding the forces that were on that day? We were much closer. But it was a very complex picture because, um, we'll think of it in terms of three rings of sedition that took place on January six. The outer ring was tens of thousands of people who arrived with a spectrum of motives. But the president had called for a wild protest UH in Washington, and that mass protests became a mob riot which injured our officers. The middle ring of activity was the domestic violent extremist groups, and this was the realm of the insurrection. These people came with the idea of overthrowing the government, shutting down the electoral college process, and installing Donald Trump as president for another four years. And this were all all the extremist groups that were brought together UH into this insurrectionist band. But the very inside of it was the ring of the coup, and that was targeted at Pence just to get him to make this totally unlawful gesture of rejecting electoral college votes, UH, in order to kick the entire thing into the House of Representatives for a so called contingent elections. So they exploited UM the various phases of the electoral college system, which is something of an antique, UH, in order to promote their plan. You know, the guy sits next to me in the Rules committee at promoter from Colorado, UH said, this used to be a day in the old days of bipartisan celebration. People would go out drinking and it would take forty five minutes and everybody accepted who the president was. It has now been transformed into another terrain of partisan combat and even violence. So that's one of the things that our select Committee has got to confront in terms of thinking about the future and fortifying the democratic process. What do we do about the fact that the electoral college, which worked so so as long as we were willing to accept the basic legitimacy of the votes in the states. But if that's out the window and you've got strategic bad actors. What do we do now with the fact that the electoral College is this protracted, torturous set of fights about what's going to happen. Do you think Trump was the maestro, the puppeteer, the person who ultimately was doing the targeting of all these different groups. Well, that's a complex question. Uh. And you know, we've received overwhelming cooperation from the witnesses in our investigation, right up until you get to the entourage right around Donald Trump. So Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Mark Meadows, who's kind of doing the hoky poke one ft in, one foot out, but there are the people right around him have tried to maintain a kind of code of silence. So some of it was clearly directed even publicly by Donald Trump. Some of it we know came through intermediaries. But we don't know the exact proportions for every part of, um, the assault on the election, because we don't have, you know, complete testimony. Yet a lot of people here about Steve Bannon and Mark Meadows and Roger Stone refusing to cooperate, and they think, well, wait, how can they do that? Can't Congress compel them? Um? In theory? Yeah, um, I mean there's three mechanisms by which we could do it. One is the criminal contempt, which we've done, um in handful cases. We've helped people in criminal contempt, and then it's up to the Department of Justice. Unfortunately, the gears of the Department of Justice were moving slowly on that. Another possibility is civil contempt that we go to court and we just try to get judges to compel them to participate or again to hold them in criminal contempt for not doing it. Uh. And the third possibility the is what's called the inherent powers of contempt that Congress has. That is, we could ourselves try to compel their participation. So, UM, it's a fine grained case by case determination about what to do in each particular case. Um. We've made progress in some of these cases. Um, but it's frustrating in others. But we also don't want to get completely caught up in one of these things and have that overtake the whole process. Why is Marrek Garland acting so slowly? A lot of people are very frustrated with the Attorney General and the fact that more isn't being done well. Uh. A Jorney General Garland is a constituent of minded. I don't speak ill constituent skating, um, but I will say you know, they've they've brought more than seven fifty charges against people for different levels of involvement, all the way from trust pass to assault on officers to destruction of federal property. They seem to be working their way up with charges like seditious conspiracy brought against Stewart Road and the bath Keepers. And I if it's proceding the way other mob prosecutions have proceeded, you work your way all the way up to the top. So I've got to believe, uh, that's what's happening. Um. Obviously, there's a lot of political delicacy for an attorney general, especially coming out of a period where the Department Justice was so deeply politicized and subordinated to the will of then President Trump about bringing these kinds of prosecution. So I think they probably want to make sure that you know, all the eyes are dotted and the teaser crossed, and that they have all of the procedural formalities in place, and that they've got all of the evidence. UM. In any event, you know, their investigation is about individual criminal accountability. Our instigation is about social and political accountability for all of us. What was the nature of that attack on our democracy, and how do we ready ourselves and prevented in the future. We want to make sure that we're not fighting yesterday's battle. Uh. There's been a lot of focus, for example, on the role of the vice president, understandably so, but there was never any ambiguity about that before that. The vice president's role was a purely ministerial and administrative one, not a decision making role where the vice president could just declare unilaterally certain states electors to be invalid um. So if we clarify that, fine, I think that that's an okay thing to do. But I don't want us to think that what we clarify that therefore everything is okay, because what we still have is an entire political party that's positioned itself outside the constitutional order, which has adopted a rule where ruined philosophy. Either they're gonna rule and control everything, where they're gonna destroy our ability to govern as a democracy, and that's an unacceptable attitude for a political party to adopt. Him. We've got to figure out ways to fortify ourselves against that. We're going to talk about the future of the GOP in a moment. But I wanted to ask you, Congressman about Rudy Giuliani, who has indicated he is going to, you know, may testify or isn't talked to testify, and that he would be less confrontational. How likely is he to offer substitutive cooperation? Well, um, you know what, I think we would have to take maryor Giuliani's testimony for what it's worth when he gives it. Um. And he obviously presents different attitudes and poses in different contexts that we see him. Um. But I believe that he will cooperate, and I believe that he will do his best to explain everything that he was up to. Um. You know, one thing I've come to recognize about Donald Trump is that he creates franchises. So there's a Steve Bannon group, there's a Giuliani group. Uh, you know, there's a Ivanka Trump group. There's different groups of people who he uses for different purposes. And I think the best that we can hope for is to find out from Giuliani what what his understanding was of his plan and his role as he had been assigned to work on it by Donald Trump. Are you starting to chip away at all the obstacles that President Trump and his um allies have thrown in your way in terms of the work of the committee. President Biden, I know, ordered Trump White House bussor logs to be turned over to the committee because they're substantial, I guess gaps and some of these phone logs. I mean, do you feel like you're getting finally the information, the material, the tools you need to really get to the bottom of all of this. Yes, the courts have overwhelmingly ruled in our favor anytime when someone has come at the authority of the Select Committee or our ability to receive the evidence that we want and need. Um. The Springport historically has been emphatic that Congress has the right to collect the information it needs in order to legislate. And what would be a more pre legislative purpose than figuring out how to protect the continuing stability of the government itself against outside who's an insurrection. So we're winning there and we are getting uh the evidence we need. And in a democracy, UM, the truth really does want to be free. Uh, the truth will come out. It's just that we're in a race against the clock now. I mean we see that we need to get this done this year. We are hoping to have hearings in the spring, hoping to get are report out in the summer or the early fall. UM, we need to make a report to Congress into the American people about what happened. You're you're wanting to get your work done before the mid terms. Can you explain why that's important? Well, every Congress, of course, stands on its own, unlike the Senate, which is a continuing body, which has you know, overlapping terms of the Senators, so it's just one third of the Senate that's up every two years, and it's a continuing body. The Congress itself um ends at the end of this term and then a new Congress is created for the next term. So all of the work of the committee's ends um in this term. And so this is the general clock that we're operating on UM and you never know what's going to happen in the next Congress. So uh, you know, we have a strong bipartisan committee. We've got a great chairman in Benny Thompson, uh from Missippi. We've got a great vice chair in Liz Cheney from Wyoming. It's the most bipartisan committe Katie, I've ever served on UM. You know, it's the only committee I serve on that doesn't begin basically with an hour of partisan invective and polemics and denunciation, where we just get right into the task at hand. And it's a good thing because the task is so important. Do you think the longer this takes, uh, the less invested the American people will be and getting to the bottom of it. That's something that I wonder about, Congressman. You know, we've been hearing about this for over a year, and I feel like the attention span of the American people is not particularly long. I know that's a rash generalization, but how concerned argue that the longer this takes, the less people will care? I mean, I actually have the contrary impression. I think that every day that goes by, people get more and more fascinated and engaged with the question of how exactly we almost lost it all on January six. So I believe, if anything, the public interest the suspense is building UM for us to tell the complete story of how this took place, why it took place, and what we need to do to protect ourselves When we come back. Congressman Raskin and I talk about the future of the Republican Party, and you have to wonder about what's going on at the state level with legislatures and with secretaries of state and people who are being put into these positions who are sympathetic to Donald Trump. It was interesting to read that the Committee has issued another round of SPINA subpoenas, including to Trump officials and four prominent GEOP officials from battleground states. How significant is evidence of a coordinated effort by the Trump campaign at the state level and how concerned are you about what's happening behind the scenes, kind of quietly state by state by state in terms of uh putting these people in who are sympathetic to Donald Trump and have no qualms about overturning the will of the people. Well, I think you put your finger on it um. And this is why I'm saying we can't fight the last battle and just focusing on the role of the vice president in the January six proceeding. The big terrain for conflict I think coming in is this effort to seize control over the electoral machinery. And the first thing they're doing is going after anybody who did not do the will of Donald Trump. In take Secretary of State Brad Raethinsburger, who's a lifelong devoted Republican who simply refused to make up votes, Well, they're going after him. They're getting one of my colleagues, Jody Heist, to run against him for Secretary of State of Georgia. And you go state by state, you will see that anybody who refused to be a loyal soldier for Donald Trump's efforts to steal the election is now being opposed, deposed, um, fired, what have you. They're going after all of them, whether they're in and a point of office or in an elective office. So I'm very worried about that because what's at stake here is the traditional idea of bipartisan or nonpartisan election administration. And they want to replace nonpartisan election administration with partisan election administrator. That's administrators where they put in their loyal lieutenants. And then the ultimate appeal is not to a bipartisan election board, but it's to the state legislature, which is in their hands, or to the governor. Uh that obviously resembles much more of Banana Republic than it does American democracy as we think of it. Do you think that Donald Trump will run? Given the fact I appreciate that you're not a prognosticator, but certainly you have must have a view, do you believe that Donald Trump will run again? Yeah, I'm planning. I'm planning all of my work around the supposition that he's running. He's telling people he's running. It makes sense um politically because he's got that kind of control and has made sure he's got that kind of control over the GOP. It makes sense for him financially because the Trump presidency was above all a money making operation. And I do fault myself and other Democrats for not putting forward from the very beginning his rampant violations of the emoluments clauses and the money that he was collecting both from foreign governments but also from the US government at all of the golf courses, in the hotels and the other kinds of commercial ventures. So yes, financially, I think he wants to keep a good grift going, and politically he's got the power to do it. And psychologically, of course, we know that he needs to do it because he can't stand the idea that he lost he's been lying about his defeat by more than seven million votes to Joe Biden for several years. Uh, and um, so I'm fully expecting it. And uh, what we need is not just the Democratic Party, but independence, uh moderate Republicans, not under the Conservative Republicans, not under the spell of Donald Trump. Greeds everybody to rally around to defend American constitutional democracy because it's the whole experiment that's at stake right now. You don't think all these allegations so at the state level, you know, all these investigations will result in some kind of um, you know, criminal proceeding or civil proceeding that will prevent him from front putting his hat and the ring again. Well, um, yes, I do believe he is starting to get his come up. It's in a whole bunch of criminal and civil investigations into things like real estate fraud, bank fraud, election fraud like the investigation in Georgia to what he did with Ravensburger. But we also know he travels with a huge team of lawyers for pretty much his whole business career. He's got a ton of money to defend himself, and he's got a loyal cultish following that is not going to be interested. I mean, as Donald Trump himself put it, he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and he's not going to lose his followers. I mean, that's a strange thing to brag about, but that is the hallmark of an authoritarian religious or political cult, and he does exercise that kind of control, so those things might happen. We also have to take account, Katie of section three of the fourteenth Amendment, which is really important because it says that anybody who has sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against the enemies foreigner domestic, and has violated that oath by participating in insurrection or rebellion shall never hold office again, either at the federal or state level. That's totally apart from impeachment and conviction. It's just a principle that's put into the fourteenth Amendment. And so, uh, there are already some suits that have been brought about this relating to certain members of Congress one in North Carolina. We're watching that closely, but we're also trying to figure out what exactly does section three of the fourteenth Amendment mean and how can it apply to the current situation. It seems to me, though, Congressman, you're telling us that Donald Trump is above the law, that he has these lawyers, he has a cult following, and that it is possible that none of these things will stick, which seems insane. Well, um, this I agree with. But the rule of law is as strong as the people who are willing to enforce it, and so we've all got to be tough and hang tough for constitutional democracy. This is why, uh, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinziger, the Republicans who voted to impeach ten of them in the House, the seven who voted to convict in the Senate. UM. To my mind, these are constitutional patriots. These are people who are standing up for their constitution above the rule of one guy or the interests of one political party. Um. And that's what we need everybody to do right now, regardless of what your party or ideology is. We're unified by virtue of having one constitutional framework, and everybody has got to stand up for it, uh, and stand up for the rule of law. I mean, Donald Trump is essentially a one man crime wave, and you can find thousands of lawsuits of him being sued by plumbers and electricians and small businessmen and carpenters. People he just decides not to pay and makes them sue him because he's got that army of lawyers, and then they end up settling for pennies on a dollar. This is how he's done business for decades. And we know about his rampant violations of law as president and the way that he just defies the Constitution. So it's frustrating how long it takes to enforce the law and make the law work. But I do think that, um, he is going to get his come up in in the In the end, we're going to say that our Constitution was vindicated, and that's our historical assignment. Before we go, I want to ask you about the future of the Republican Party, which has clearly been taken over by the cult of Donald Trump. Can the party be rehabilitated in your view? Mitch McConnell is obviously working behind the scenes, it appears to thwart another run by Donald Trump, But how can the party be rehabilitated or returned to its roots, whatever those are at this point. Well, when I had the chance to speak to Republican senators during the course of the Senate impeachment trial. I would say to them, this is something you've got to do for America, something you've got to do for the Constitution, But you have to do it for your own party too, because he will destroy your party. And what's so odd is that they've they've basically threatened the destruction of their own party by following him blindly, when he's not even really much of a Republican. He was a Democrat for a long time, he wanted to run for president on the Reform Party. He's made fund of the Republican Party, and so he's just a very bizarre champion of Republican Party values. And these days, of course, there are none left. It's all him. Either you obey his will or you don't. So I don't know. I know that you know, there are certainly Republicans like Liz Cheney who are challenging him on principle and trying to assert principles that should instead be the organizing glue of the Republican Party. We'll see if they're able to take him on, and if not, the Republican Party will likely be replaced by another party. I mean, that's that has been the historical pattern when a party essentially walks the plank like that with you know, someone who takes them in a hopeless direction. So, uh, you know, there's nothing in the constitution about the Democratic Party and the Republican Party or even a two party system. Uh, there could be other parties that emerge, and that might be a healthy thing for our politics. Congressman Rask And I was struck by a passage in your book, and the preface actually about trauma, and I was wondering if you could read it, because it speaks about trauma on so really two different levels. Um. I've learned that trauma can steal everything from you that is most precious and rip joy right out of your life. But paradoxically, it can also make you stronger and wiser and connect you more deeply to other people than you ever imagined by enabling you to touch their misfortunes and to integrate their losses in pain with your own. If a person can grow through unthinkable trauma and loss, perhaps a nation made too. In closing, Congressman or asking, do you do you think our country can come out of this time of unprecedented turmoil and division stronger than ever? And what about those who truly believe the state of our union is in peril and the future of our democracy is bleak. Well, I don't want people to despair in any way. UM. For one thing, If you identify the source of our immediate problems with um Trump and Trumpism, as I do, you can recognize that Hillary Clinton beat him by three million votes uh in the popular vote, and then Joe Biden beat him by more than seven and a half million votes in the popular vote. The young people are not interested in the conspiracy theory and the lies. The new Americans are not interested in that, and so the vast majority of the American public rejects the model of insurrection and propaganda and coups um. But what we have here is a race between the will of the majority and popular government versus a bag of tricks. And the tricks are basically manipulations of the political system. So it's the gerrymandering of our congressional districts, which is not in the Constitution or in federal law. The use of the filibuster to thwart voting rights legislation. Again, the filibuster not in the Constitution, not in federal law. The passage in certain states of voters suppression statutes again, totally, it odds with what our constitutional history and values are. So that's the struggle that we're in. But I don't want people to lose hope, because I think the vast majority of the people of every conceivable political stripe in party believe in our constitutional democracy and don't want a republic based on lies and propaganda. Is there a way, though, Congressman, to more effectively reach out to the segment of the population that seems susceptible to this manipulation, that is disenfranchised and and feeling left out? Or is that a waste of time? No, I don't think it's a waste of time. I think it's really the central task. I mean, that's what I want young people coming to work with me in the summer to be doing, to be reaching out neighbors to neighbors, friends to friends all over the country. I think that Donald Trump succeeded spectacularly in his two thousand sixteen campaign precisely because he appealed to a lot of real feeling in the public that there was corruption in the political process, that the parties had turned away from the interests and the plight of working people. Across America, so we've got to make sure that we're being responsive. I feel great about what we've done on infrastructure in the country, a trillion dollar infrastructure plan that we passed. I feel great about the Build Back Better Plan, which is about a massive investment in the social infrastructure, to reduce prescription drug prices, to bring those down for people, to invest in universal pre K for three year olds and four year olds, to empower and liver eight our young working parents. Um, this is what government's got to do. Government's got to be an instrument of the common goods. So we got to restore and renew everybody's faith in the ability of government to meet the needs of the people. But we're not going to get that way through propaganda and stereotyping and racism and all of the darkness of the tinth century, which is what they're trying to bring back. We got to move forward into this century, bringing everybody together, um, and confronting the problems of our time. I mean, how if we're spending all of our time fighting the proud boys and the oathkeepers and political corruption, how are we going to deal with climate change, which is uh a nightmare bearing down on all of us. You know, with record forest fires out in the West and record drought throughout the Midwest, and record flooding in the East, and hurricanes of record velocity hitting the southern coast. Um, we've got to confront the reality of climate change and we don't time to be relitigating the fascist agenda from the twentieth century. So do you think that the best way to change hearts and minds is to change lives and that you do that by legislation the kind that you just mentioned, Um, And do you think that's the most effective way to to reach out to some of these constituents. It's going to be a combination of legislation, as you say, in education, and the legislation is something the government has got to do to meet people's needs where they are. But education is something that political leaders and political parties have got to do. We've got to educate people about what facts really are so that people are not being fed this constant diet of propaganda and fake news. Good luck on that, but that's another that's a whole another podcast, Congressman Um. Congressman Jamie Raskin your book is Unthinkable, Trauma, Truth and the trials of American Democracy. I think we talked about all of that today. So thank you so much, Congressman for your time. The pleasure has been all mine. Katie. Thank you so much for reading my book and taking it seriously. I really appreciate that. Thanks so much for listening everyone. And once again, because this episode contained conversations about depression and suicide, we wanted to give you the suicide lifeline number, and that is one eight hundred to seven three eight to five. Five again, one hundred two seven three eight to five. Next Question with Katie Kurik is a production of My Heart Media and Katie Kurk Media. The executive producers Army, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Litz. The supervising producer is Laura and Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements and Adriana Fasio. The show is edited and mixed by Derrek Clements. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter wake Up Call, go to Katie correct dot com. You can also find me at Katie Currect on Instagram and all my social media channels. 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