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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: As the House moves to hold Trump accountable, we get insights from former National Security Council official and 2019
impeachment witness, Fiona Hill. Then —
RICK WILSON, CO-FOUNDER, LINCOLN PROJECT: We don’t think it’s a survivable philosophy for a governing party in this country to embrace
ethnonationalism as status on authoritarianism.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): A Republican reckoning, is the GOP ready to ditch Trump ex party member and Lincoln Project Co-founder Rick Wilson talks to
our Hari Sreenivasan. Plus —
SONIA GANDHI, PRESIDENT, INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS: I still hope that the systems that are existing in the United States are protecting the republic
in the United States.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Good wishes from Afghanistan, one of many looking on in dismay from overseas. The first couple join me from Kabul to talk about
war and peace, and the next American President Joe Biden.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I’m Christiane Amanpour in London. The walls appear to be closing in on President Trump in the waning
days of his presidency, a result of his behavior and incitement of extremists invading the Capitol. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is actively
working to block Trump from accessing nuclear launch codes. White House staffers and Cabinet members hand in their resignations. Prosecutors
explore possible charges against the President.
The Wall Street Journal calls for his resignation, and now the House says it’ll move quickly on impeachment. And at least one republican senator says
that he is open to that idea.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SASSE: The House, if they come together and have a process, I will definitely consider whatever articles they might move, because as I’ve told
you, I believe that the President has disregarded his oath of office. He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution. He acted against that. What he did was wicked.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Wicked, indeed. Five people died in that attack, including a 42- year-old Capitol Hill police officer who was injured trying to hold back the crowd. And now a murder investigation is being opened into his death.
After falsely crying election fraud for months, Trump yesterday pledged to help the smooth transition of power. But then today, he said he would not
attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, making him the first president in modern history to skip his successors swearing in.
Fiona Hill served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council. And she
understands well the battle for truth against alternative reality, and the delusions that have led to the chaos we’ve seen.
During the 2019 impeachment hearings, she urged Republicans to stop pushing the fictional narrative that Ukraine, instead of Russia, interfered in the
2016 election. And Fiona Hill is joining us now from Bethesda, Maryland.
Welcome to the program. It has been an unbelievable few days. And now as we’ve laid out, the walls are closing in. I just want to get your reaction
having been on the inside to what you saw this week, and to what seems to be happening, many in the national security and others are deserting this
President now.
FIONA HILL, FORMER SENIOR DIRECTOR, US NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Well, yes, Cristiane. I mean, clearly we have a crisis under where a political
democratic crisis, even a constitutional succession crisis, completely manufactured, as you’ve been pointing out, and many others have as well. I
have an interview in the last day or so we’re going to call this an attempted coup.
I mean, really, what this is is a self-coup, something that was operating over a longer timeframe in plain sight. The President has been talking for
months about the rigged elections, the fact that if he lost the election, it would have been stolen from him, laying the ground for the kind of
moment that we’ve got ourselves into.
Now, clearly, what matters the most when you look around the world and historically, it’s episodes like this, it’s how we handle it moving
forward. And I think, you know, obviously, we’ve got a lot of work to do in shoring up our democratic institutions.
They’ve gone through a stress test, many of them have worked, certainly at the federal and state level, with election officials doing their job with
the Speaker of the Senate and the Vice President, you know, refusing to go along with these last minute objections, and obviously, with so many other
people in the institutions across the government pulling together.
So although this hasn’t succeeded at this stage, it’s clearly a lesson for all of us about how much work we’ve got to do moving forward. We’ve got to
bring the rhetoric down, and we’ve got to pull the country back together.
AMANPOUR: Yes. And I want to dive deeper into what you must do to protect yourself and your democratic institutions from mischief from overseas as
well in a moment. But first, I want to ask you, because you work for the President as I said, you traveled with him.
You’ve known him for those several years that you worked inside the National Security Agency. What do you think he might do in the next 12
days, given, as you said, all of this happened in plain sight? All of this was clearly telegraphed. In fact, you even predicted several weeks ago that
there was going to be violence potentially on January 6th.
HILL: Well, I think a lot of people have been predicting this. You know, there’s been a number of people recently saying, all you have to do is have
ears and eyes, and be able to read to see this unfolding. I think the problem is that people have not been taking it seriously. I think now what
we have to do is look at all the safeguards, and whatever we do, we have to do it legally as well by the book.
I think what an important lesson for the rest of the world, is how we handle this. And American democracy has been challenged many times in the
past. And again, as I’ve just said, this is like a stress test for our democracy. And if we make sure that we stick to the legality to the
Constitution, to the limits of what our institutions can do as well, and what individuals in that system can do, we’ll get through this. So I think
that’s what the most important thing is, not just what the President may or may not do in the time remaining to him.
AMANPOUR: Well, I asked you that because the big news today is that the House Speaker as well as talking to her caucus about impeachment
proceedings, we’ll get to that in a moment because you are a key feature of the last one. She’s asked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to assure her
and the country that this President cannot get access to the nuclear codes or give any orders that that might risk more this country. What do you make
of that?
HILL: Well, she’s clearly channeling anxiety that a lot of people have at this moment, when they kind of run through worst case scenarios in the
mind. But again, as I just said, we have to make sure that each one of the actors operates within their legal remit at this point. And, you know,
there are procedures for putting in place. I, you know, I see already that these debates are underway. And, you know, if we look back to the role that
I and others played in 2016, we were there as fact witnesses in a playing the part that we were supposed to as people who have taken an oath to the
Constitution and bearing witness to things that we’ve seen.
So, I think we all have to be very careful about, you know, engaging in commentary and rhetoric at this very delicate time. Because, again, it’s
going to be very important how we handle this and making sure that everyone plays the role that is accorded them in the Constitution. Because what
we’ve seen the President tried to do in this attempted self-coup, is to try to denigrate many of the critical institutions that provide checks and
balances, and proof against this kind of attempt. And so, we have to make sure that they’re all working as they should do as we’re moving forward.
So again, you know, I’d like to make sure that everyone who’s an actor in what happens next is playing the right part, so there’ll be no
recriminations after the fact. Because it’ll be going to see and moving forward as well, there’s still a lot of grievance out there. As Mitt Romney
said, in the Senate, after all of the events, a lot of lies have been told to people. And we have to be able to look back and be able to tell the
truth and lay out the facts to people as we engage with bringing the population together in the next year or so.
AMANPOUR: So I want to get to, obviously, what you’ve been studying for much of your career, and that is Russia, and Russia’s influence, Russia’s
malign intentions and what Russia might take away from what happened this Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, said the following. She talked about the assault on Congress. And she said that it plays directly into
President Putin’s hands. Just want to play this little sound bite and then get you on it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Putin want to undermine democracy, that’s what he’s about domestically and internationally. And the
President gave him the biggest of all of these many gifts to Putin the biggest gift yesterday.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And I’m sure you know, Fiona Hill, that Russian state television has been playing the scenes over and over again, certainly played them all
live for a long, long time. They were taking a lot of pleasure, and schadenfreude out of what was going on. So what do you think this says to
Putin? And was it a big gift as Nancy Pelosi said?
HILL: Well, it’s a big gift if we don’t fix it moving forward and if we don’t handle it in the correct manner. And you just want to put this in
perspective here. I mean, Russia, in its history, has had many episodes of succession crises when it was a monarchy, under the czars have very
similar. In fact, in many respects, some of the events that we’ve seen over the last few days, and they’ve also had several attempted coups in 1991, in
August. People can look back on this, you know, if they’d like to, to see some of the circumstances.
In 1993, President Yeltsin actually fired on the Russian Parliament during a constitutional crisis in a standoff with his own vice president and
members of the Russian Parliament at senior levels. I mean, took the (inaudible) and shelled the building. And we’ve also seen President Putin
put forward constitutional amendments just this past year, in 2020, to enable himself to stay indefinitely in office. Well, at least,
theoretically, up to 2036.
And just as President Trump was relying on people like Senators Holly and Cruz to put forward his case in the Senate, President Putin also used a
member of the larger Russian parliament, Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, to put forward the idea of amending the constitution, to
enable Putin to stay in office for two more terms.
So, you know, what we’re seeing here is the Russians now, you know, being able to hide these kinds of activities, you know, in a kind of plain sight
because they’re able to point to what the United States is up to, as well.
And I think what is giving a great deal of schadenfreude and pleasure, you know, to Putin and many others around the world is that the United States
has always been the bastion of democracy. We’ve prided ourselves and rightly so on the peaceful succession, from one president to the next, for
the very excellent, , you know, secure context of our elections.
And as everyone has said, this last election was the most secure in US history. It was extraordinary smooth, notwithstanding the pandemic. And now
what they’re able to say, because of this disgraceful episode is, look, the United States is no worse than the rest of us, what right do they have to
preach about elections or democracy.
And so again, what we have to do now is to show that we can, unlike many other countries, fix our problems. We’ve had this stress test, we can
rebuild our institutions. And that’s always something that the United States has been able to present to the world, that, OK, we make mistakes,
sometimes we make big mistakes, but we’re actually quite good at fixing them of pulling together in a crisis. And moving beyond this and setting an
example in that way. And I think that that’s going to be the key as we look to how the Russians, Chinese, you know, you name it, are going to react in
the aftermath of this.
AMANPOUR: I want to get to how you think that the United States can heal its internal divisions to ward off this kind of exploitation from bad
actors abroad. But first, I want to ask you, it wasn’t divisions in the United States that allowed Russia which apparently the intelligence
community has concluded, that Russia has conducted this unbelievably daring hack of, I don’t even know whether you call it a hack or total
infiltration, of some of the most important parts of the US government, including in the nuclear realm as well. Tell about that and how even the US
cyber forces, military and otherwise didn’t find it. They did not find it.
HILL: Well, we have to bear in mind that the Russians actually have very sophisticated cyber teams and intelligence services. And, you know, we’ve
known, you know, for years, of course, that they’ve been trying to find ways of penetrating into our system. So it’s not a surprise that they’ve
been doing this, of course, it’s a surprise and a shock at the scale that has now been revealed.
And we’ve seen, you know, where the vulnerabilities have been. They’ve been in the supply chain, in, you know, various software programs and in the
private sector, because the United States being a much more open economy, not just more open government, has a lot of private sector supplies into
the government, and including into some of our secure systems.
So clearly, we have vulnerabilities. And it’s not that dissimilar for the kind of hacks that we saw into our election. We have the same public
private vulnerabilities in our own government system through the use of social media and the way that they were able to exploit holes in our
democratic systems in 2016.
So really, what we’re seeing here is that we really have to have a concerted effort now to pull together a very serious effort. It has to be
the public private sector. It’s an all of government and an all of society, and an all private public sector effort to basically find out exactly the
extent of the penetration, and to be able to then mount an offensive defense, getting them out to the systems and making sure that they can’t
again.
And the other lesson from this, Christiane, is it’s not just the Russians, of course. And whatever we do in dealing with the Russians on this factor,
you know, what they’ve done. We have to bear in mind that other adversaries want to, again, the same kind of access.
And so, you know, I think the Russians are trying to draw us out in a major cyber security negotiation here. Basically, it’s a deterrent factor. It’s
the shock in all of what we’ve done or could do, because we don’t know the full extent of the information or all of the systems that are penetrated
yet, that he wants us to get us to the table.
But we have to bear in mind that whatever we talk to the Russians about, this is, you know, the full landscape of concerns that we should have,
internationally, the Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans who, you know, tried in various points to also penetrate the system, non-state actors. We have
to make sure that whatever we do, we’re tackling all of the range of threats that could come to our cyber and security systems.
AMANPOUR: Well, I still can’t get over it because this happened over a period of many months, apparently, is still ongoing. And we’ve always been
taught that the United States has a two-enemy policy. It can fight two threats at the same time. And now we’ve been told that they were so busy
trying to protect the election, that they couldn’t protect their own institutions. So this is a big, big challenge for the future.
I do actually want to ask you as well, because you were, as I said, a 2019 impeachment witness. You know, you were there. You heard. I know you
weren’t in the administration at the time, but you heard the transcript and the tapes of the Trump call to the president of Ukraine, trying to get him
to, you know, turn up dirt on the Biden family ahead of the election.
I just wondered what went through your mind when you then heard the tapes of the call of the President trying to shake down the Republican Secretary
of State of the State of Georgia, trying to get him to give him votes that he didn’t actually win. Just — what was going in your mind when you heard
all that?
HILL: Well, of course, I thought that there was a direct parallel here. And I think what we’re seeing here is the fact that on many fronts, including
in our elections, domestic politics is on personal politics in this case, the President in his own interests and his own power, and continuation
office, have superseded the national interest. And I think this is the lesson that we take away from all of those episodes.
First of all, national security shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I mean, I completely agree with what you just said, Christiane, about, you know,
looking over at one issue, and then perhaps neglecting as a result of the worries about securing the election, what might be happening in all of the
regular systems. And it’s the same thing with the election of President was so focused on getting his own votes, that wasn’t thinking about the larger
implications of national interest for the US democratic system.
And I think the lesson again, when we take forward from this is we have to be very careful about making sure there are checks and balances in all the
system. And we have to take the parties on fighting and the personal element out of our domestic politics as much as we possibly can. Because
there are some issues that should supersede this partisan politicization of his personal narrow interest in power. Now, this is part of obviously a
national discussion, resolve it here, but I think this is what we’re going to have to be all talking about over the next few weeks.
AMANPOUR: Well, in our last one minute, how would you address then the fact that part of this is because of two totally different echo chambers and two
completely alternate realities, where one is based in reality the other is based in conspiracy theory.
An example, the woman who was killed on Capitol Hill, you know, her supporters are saying kill. No, she wasn’t killed. She’s not dead, this is
just fake. I mean, they’re literally rewriting history before our eyes right now. What is the hope of reuniting a country to believe in a set of
facts?
HILL: Well, we’re going to have to work very hard to that. The media is going to have to play a role. Social media are no part of the same complex,
politicians are as well. We’re going to have to kind of figure out how to hold people accountable for telling lies. And I think, you know, what Mitt
Romney said, this is about leadership.
The tone can be set at the top. I mean, obviously, President-elect Biden is doing his utmost right now to speak out on this score. That all of our
senators, you know, everyone all the way down to members of Congress, they have a duty to their fellow Americans to basically try to get out there and
tell the truth.
And, you know, as many people as can get on as possible, talking about these issues on your program. I know there’s people like yourself, being
able to highlight when people are telling lies, falsehoods. Social media have already started to do this. It’s long overdue.
But this is really incumbent on all of us. I mean, again, this is for everyone to be out there, casting a spotlight on falsehoods, and being able
to tell people the truth. And that’s why I said going back to the beginning, it’s very important how we handle what happens next. And we make
sure we try to stick to the lake level to the letter of the law, and within the constitutional frames, in the action that people take over the next
couple of weeks.
Because we have to be able to defend and demonstrate our actions, to demonstrate that they are in line with what is appropriate and to defend
the actions backed up by the truth and the fact. It’s a tall order but, you know, I’m also confident if we do pull together, we can at least make some
progress on this.
AMANPOUR: Can I ask you and, you know, I know that you are a technocrat and a scholar, and a national security official. But I want to ask you because
you’re involved in one impeachment. Surely, the world needs to see any leader held accountable who does what you just said, incites a coup inside
their own country or wherever it might be. So do you think he should be impeached or removed by the 25th amendment?
HILL: Look, I think people are discussing this right now. I think that there has to be some accountability —
AMANPOUR: So what do you think?
HILL: — everyone for their actions. Well, I’m not going to be very frank, I am not a legal scribe myself, have been looking into this today trying to
read up, you know, as I did during the last impeachment, trying to understand this.
And, you know, I guess, you know, we have a lot of people on Capitol Hill, and these circles discussing this right now. And just before the program, I
was reading, you know, through myself, you know, some of the for and against. And, you know, I just simply don’t have the training to be able to
rule on this. But, there has to be some kind of accountability.
So, getting back to your point here, there has to be a reckoning and an acknowledgement of what’s gone wrong here. And everybody has to, you know,
figure out how to address this. But also to move the country forward because as we see in these kinds of circumstances, there are still a lot of
people, like you said, who completely believe that something different happened.
So how do we address this? Some people will be irreconcilable. We’re going to have within our myths now, all of the seeds for civil conflict for some
considerable time to come. And I think, you know, people like myself have to be very careful on what we comment on.
You know, I didn’t use the word coup likely as a self-coup. But I think, you know, if I — if you run through, for example, all of the various
elements of a coup and many other people have spoken, who are, you know, scholars of, you know, this kind of political action, you can see so many
elements there. But what worked is an awful lot of people at different levels of our institutions actually did their jobs and prevented it from
happening.
AMANPOUR: Yes. And we can take, I guess, some hope from that. As they say, democracy was tested and it’s held on tenuously. We’ll see what President-
elect Biden can do to repair it. Fiona Hill, thank you so much, indeed.
Now, watching Wednesday is terrifying and illegal invasion of the Capitol. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan mobilized state police and the National Guard
only to be blocked from sending them in for 90 minutes by the federal government. Governor Hogan, a Republican is now calling for President Trump
to resign or be removed from office.
Joining calls for the President’s impeachment is the Lincoln Project which is the anti-Trump Republican group that was formed back in 2019. The
project’s co-founder, Rick Wilson, called the violence sedition and insurrection, and here he is talking to our Hari Sreenivasan about what is
at stake.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Rick Wilson, you have worked with the Lincoln project for years now to get to this point where Donald Trump would leave office. And the other day, when you were watching TV and you saw essentially an insurrection, anything surprise you?
RICK WILSON, CO-FOUNDER, LINCOLN PROJECT: Sadly, Hari, no. Sadly the idea of armed and violent insurrectionists, charging the US Capitol seizing our legislative seat of governance, at the direction of the president and the encouragement of his allies in the Senate, particularly in the house, did not shock me. This is a point where we have declined so far, from the norms of American exceptionalism and become essentially, poised on the verge of the collapse of those norms at the behest Donald Trump. It doesn’t surprise me. You know, I meant it sort of flippantly when the first time I said it five years ago, I said everything Trump touches dies, but it is becoming increasingly evident that everything that he has corrupted and reduced over the last four years in, in our governance, has come home to roost. And it is a painful lesson, that institutions are fragile.
SREENIVASAN: There was a recent economist YouGov poll that showed even after the attack on the Capitol, about 40+ percent of people who say the Republicans were the answered the survey say, yeah, um, I’m fine with that. I’m fine with the protesters. I’m fine with Donald Trump. And interestingly, that’s almost the same proportion of members of Congress who were voting on January 6th or were intended to vote on January 6th to obstruct the results.
WILSON: Trumpism is a cultural problem Hari. Okay. And, and that culture is defiant of not only reality, but of tradition and of morality. It’s a fundamentally unconservative, culture. They are not believers in limited government, the rule of law and the constitution, they believe in Trump. And if he says something or does something, that’s what they believe. If Donald Trump tomorrow said, I’m in favor of child sacrifice, they would say, well, we got to reconsider child sacrifice because that is the power he has over them. It is the most is the most astounding diversion from what American politicians have traditionally been. They have traditionally — even powerful charismatic American politicians — have traditionally still been a — in response to people. These are people in response to a leader. This is, you know, he is a perfect authoritarian, um, figure, in the, in terms of the charisma, the control, the almost religious devotion to him.
SREENIVASAN: How much does the death of Officer Brian Sicknick — I apologize if I’m saying his name wrong — how much does that change this equation?
WILSON: Well, as you saw immediately on the night, it was announced that he had passed, you know, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were suddenly appalled and shaken and, Oh, it was terrible. Actions have consequences. Aactions have consequences. Their actions have consequences. So Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz, and Josh Holly and Ron Johnson, they have blood on their hands in this. They were encouraging these people that — Ted Cruz over the weekend was out doing a speech on the hood of a car screaming and waving his fist around. And we’ll fight back. We’ll fight to the last man, et cetera. Rudy Giuliani is out there saying let’s have trial by combat. Well, the death of a, of a Capitol police officer, who I don’t mean to be grizzly about this was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher at the hands of a mob motivated by Donald Trump and his Senate and house allies. They should have a moral responsibility and culpability for this. They, I pray some in some capacity, the family of this officer is going to pursue their legal remedies against the people that encourage and caused this. And it’s, it’s not just the guy that, that, that beat him to death. It’s the people that, that pushed him to do that. It’s people that motivated him to do that. I promise you this, whoever beat him to death with the fire extinguisher is a frequent Fox viewer. And is in a million Facebook groups telling him that everyone’s out to get him. And that the world is the world is a dark place in Antifa is everywhere and conspiracies are real. And, you know, five people died in this, in this, on this day. And it is, I mean, the tragedy of it is enhanced by the, by the, by the place it took, it occurred. And the tragedy of it is enhanced by, by the fact that, that the rhetoric of the people who supposedly serve the American populace, revved those people up into a fever pitch.
SREENIVASAN: Should the people who were speaking and riling these folks up — what charges can or should the department of justice bring? I mean –
WILSON: I’m not an attorney and I don’t pretend to be one, but to go back to the black lives matter analogy, if a, if a, if a leader in black lives matter was standing on a podium somewhere screaming that we have to charge Capitol Hill and take back our election and take back what’s ours, that person would be in jail this minute. They would have been arrested and put in jail immediately. They would have been in for conspiracy or what have you. I, again, I’m not an attorney, but there is a sense in this country where, where moral accountability for political actions needs to be restored.
SREENIVASAN: There’s also the possibility of impeachment or calling on the 25th amendment, but given the clock, should these actions be taken even in a symbolic manner, even if they can’t be completed?
WILSON: Absolutely, absolutely. Look, the cabinet is falling apart right now. So the 20th amendment is a very long shot, but the 25th amendment has a four day clock. Where, where if the cabinet 51% of the cabinet goes in and says, Hey, this guy is not capable of fulfilling. The duties of president goes to Congress for after four days, they could do it two or three times between now and the end and, and keep him from the worst excesses. I think that is a vastly remote possibility. There’s too, too many people in the cabinet who were utterly loyal to Donald Trump. I think we should repeat. Sorry, go ahead. She did. She did. She did, but there are still too many people and the people they’ll replace them with will be junior loyalists of the, of the first, you know, the first water. I think that, that he should be impeached today. They should expedite the process, take it directly to the floor. There’s a methodology by which they skip the committee BS, take it directly to the floor. He should be impeached today. And the reason he should be impeached is that as a moment where it forces the Republicans in the Senate to take it up or down, vote on whether or not they think this rhetoric and behavior and the outcomes that they’re facing in the chamber in which they will be standing as it was the besmirched and vandalized by Trump supporters, if they think that that is a viable position to have. I’d love to have them on the record doing it. I’d love to have them on the record. They won’t, but I’d love to have them on the record.
SREENIVASAN: Given your involvement with the party, I’m sure you’ve read the long reports after the Republicans lose an election they go off on a retreat —
WILSON: I’ve helped write some of them.
SREENIVASAN: That’s right, you’ve helped some of them. So if they go on another retreat after this, first of all, should they be careful who they invite that is a Republican. And two, what, what, what are the revelations that the party needs to come to grips with?
WILSON: Here’s the, here’s the shocking and terrible thing Hari. Not one of them gives a damn. They made a political calculus that for at least the next 20 years, there are still enough angry, white people, angry white dudes, 55 and older, to sustain them. And at least a functional party — even though it won’t be a national party any longer — they’re going to be able to hold onto enough red seats, red districts, and red States to call themselves a party. And they are, they’re not interested in expansion. They’re not interested in viability. They are interested in the very short term. Do I keep my seat? Do I win? And so some of them will try to back away from Trumpism. Some of them will try to run it through the car wash, as I like to say and pretend it never happened. But a lot of them have embraced it. (17:17) You don’t go back from this. You don’t go back if you’re Ted Cruz and say suddenly, Oh, I’m a constitutional conservative again. And so this is not a scenario where these guys get to easily undo this, or wind back the clock and say, ah, I’m a regular Republican. What? Donald who? They don’t get to do that.
SREENIVASAN: You’ve said your three goals for the Lincoln project were 1) to oust Donald Trump. 2) Then you were going to pursue his enablers essentially to the far corners of the earth. 3) And then you are going to do everything possible to eliminate Trumpism. How long does that take and how do you hold people accountable?
WILSON: Well, you hold people accountable by using the power of media, the power of political action, the power of advocacy, which we become very strong at. We have become very good at that. We drove three law firms away from the president after the election, we made them quit. We pressured them. We are not constrained by the old Washington rules. None of us are lobbyists. None of us give a damn about whether we’re invited to the winter party meeting. None of that stuff matters to us. But we have built an audience we’ve built a constituency that is interested in, in pushing back on the people who have enabled Donald Trump. Now that is a long road, but ‘22 and ‘24 are looming. And we plan to play a role in both of those campaigns. Trumpism is a more complicated problem. And, you know, we came to realize it wasn’t merely political fairly early in the process after forming the Lincoln project. It is a cultural problem. It is a moral problem. It’s a civic problem. It’s an educational problem. So we’re going to have to pursue some other angles into that. We’re not really sure where that is yet, but we know that that’s a long battle, because if we exist in a country where there are people who believe in authoritarianism, who believe in nationalism and statism in that model that Steve Bannon and other folks around Trump have proposed, we think this country is in deep trouble. We don’t think it’s a survivable philosophy for a governing party in this country to embrace ethno-nationalism and statism and authoritarianism.
SREENIVASAN: Oh, so how does Mitch McConnell, how do Lindsey Graham, how are they held accountable? They — Lindsey Graham survived a rather close election.
WILSON: He did, you know, look and Lindsey lives in a very, very red state. And Mitch McConnell was in one of the reddest of States. And so it’s hard to hold them politically accountable, but what you can do is make their lives painful, which you can do is reduce the size of their majority. What you can do is get them into the minority politically, because being in the minority, isn’t being 50% less than being in the majority if you’re, if you’re Mitch McConnell. It’s a hundred percent less. You go from unlimited power to almost none. And you know, he’s still got some positional power because the rules in the Senate, but he is, you reduce their, you reduce their ability to have political impact. You reduce their ability to elect more people. You cause the pain level with their donors and their supporters and the people that lobby them and the corporations that support them. You increase the pain level with those people. So look right now, if you’re a corporate supporter of Josh Holly, somebody is knocking on your door right now saying there’s a dead cop in part, because Josh Holly was telling people that he was out there giving the high five and the, and the, and the raised fist to, to these people that were riding and invading the Capitol. So, you know, there, there are ways to, there are ways to hold them accountable. Elections are part of that. You know, we, we lost in this country for a long time, a sense of shame politically. And it was just like, uh, okay, we’re, we’re, we’re owning the libs. We’re we’re causing a ruckus. We’re trolling effectively. We’ve got to change the way society looks at that kind of political behavior. It’s a long road Hari.
SREENIVASAN: What does Joe Biden have to do?
WILSON: Fix COVID. Honest answer. That’s the number one thing Joe Biden has to do. He doesn’t have to do the green new deal or, or gun control or, or, or anything else. He has to fix COVID. This administration, the fate of his administration will be decided in the first 18 to 24 months. If he gets the vaccination program in place and gets the economy on track, he will be considered one of the greatest of our presidents because the death toll is rising and will continue to rise. It’s the biggest possible issue. If he does that, people will see that government can be competent and sane and honorable and decent, and doesn’t have to be a performance art reality TV show every day.
SREENIVASAN: Look fixing COVID would be great in a vacuum but what is the potential for him having to deal with rising domestic terrorism, from people who just don’t actually find him to be the legitimate president?
WILSON: It’s enormous, it’s enormous. And, and I will tell you, there are two people who need to be held accountable. If that domestic terrorism continues to rise. Rupert Murdoch, whose network is the wellspring of all the misinformation in the universe and Mark Zuckerberg, whose platform amplifies it and tells Donald Trump’s supporters that there’s a conspiracy against them. That the, that the election is fake, that Joe Biden isn’t legitimate, that violence is a political option. Those two people have a vast influence on the political culture of this country on the right that cannot be overestimated.
SREENIVASAN: Should the attorney general, if he’s confirmed Merrick Garland, go after Donald Trump.
WILSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. He encouraged sedition. He encouraged sedition. He has attempted to overthrow the results of a legitimate American election. And look Donald Trump’s life is about to become a burning hell, a misery of unparalleled scope, because the New York AG is going to go after him on tax fraud and bank fraud. He is never going to escape court for the rest of his life. And it is important, I think, as a message from the, from the attorney general, that, that everyone is accountable, that everyone is under the law. Donald Trump had an Attorney General in Bill Barr for two years, who said that he was above the law and, and immune to any sort of accountability. I think it would be important, in, in this world to see, uh, Merrick Garland or whoever becomes the attorney general, pursue charges against Trump and his administration, and to pursue things that aren’t just about this particular incident this week, there’s a, of an endemic corruption of this administration has been influenced peddling. There’s been cash for pardons. All these things need to be looked into and and Congress has a role to play as well. I mean, when four Americans were killed in Benghazi, we had hundreds and hundreds of hours of hearings in Congress. Well, five Americans just died on the Capitol. I think it’s incumbent upon us to go through this, tear it apart, tease it out, find out what’s underneath it, get to the truth and hold people accountable.
SREENIVASAN: Rick Wilson of the Lincoln project. Thanks so much.
AMANPOUR: And Joe Biden who also knows so much about the world and has so much foreign policy experience spent a lot of time during his Q&A talking
about what a terrible image of America this insurrection, this invasion, this incitement by the sitting President of the United States, what a
terrible image of America it projected around the world.
Now, the whole world is watching America right now as it grapples with the aftershocks of a home grown extremist assault on democracy.
The office of the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, tells us “The president has been following the events that occurred in the U.S. over the
past 48 hours and he believes that American democracy is deep-rooted and strong and that American democracy and the American people will prevail.
That is important for the U.S. and for the world. The president is looking forward to working with the incoming U.S. administration on issues of
mutual interest.”
Now of course one of the biggest issues that Trump is handing over to Biden is Afghanistan, it is America’s longest war. Just hours before the Capitol
was stormed, Afghanistan’s President and First Lady Rula Ghani sat down for a joint interview with me about engaging with the Biden administration.
Here they are.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: President Ghani and First Lady Rula Ghani, welcome to the program. You know, it’s rare to see the first couple speak at the same
time, and I wondered whether you had a message this new year, particularly with the incoming administration in the United States.
ASHRAF GHANI, AFGHANISTAN PRESIDENT: Well first of all, a very happy New Year. Our deepest sympathies on the losses from corona, our gratitude for
the sacrifice of the American servicemen and women, 2448 of whom they’ve paid the ultimate sacrifice, our thanks to over a million American men and
women in uniform who have served in our country.
I look to a world that would be healed, that would become whole, that our partnership will be strengthened and based on mutual interest, mutual
respect and mutual trust and I trust that we will be able to obtain peace in Afghanistan and hopefully stability in the region.
RULA GHANI, FIRST LADY OF AFGHANISTAN: All I would like to say is that COVID has taught us humility. We find out that no matter who we are, we’re
not in control of our lives and we need to always to adapt. So that’s the lesson I get from those two.
AMANPOUR: Well, let’s address all those issues. First, I want to ask you both because I think it matters to you both as representatives of all the
Afghan people, what is the latest in the peace talks, the so-called peace process, that the United States has backed and initiated between your
government and the Taliban forces?
A. GHANI: Well, first of all, the beginning is important because after what, nearly 20 years of conflict, we are beginning to speak. The process
has been slow because over four months was spent just dealing with procedure, but this second round message is can we agree on the goal that
the international community and the region has agreed with us, namely a sovereign democratic united Afghanistan at peace with itself in the region.
If that goal becomes accepted, then we can move forward, but if the objective of the Taliban is to dominate and give us the peace of the grave,
then that will have very negative consequences. Our society is united and seeking peace, but we want to have a positive peace.
R. GHANI: Yes, I would like to mention that when the peace talks started in Doha, we always heard that it would be at the cost of the rights of the
women. And what was really very interesting and very warming for me is that the women did not lie down and accept it.
They did stand up and made their voices heard. And through several interventions, they showed a lot of political maturity and they were able
to insert themselves or at least to be part of the process, fully part of the process. Not only do they speak for themselves now, but they speak for
the country and for the whole people of Afghanistan. So, this is a positive aspect of what has happened.
AMANPOUR: I want to play a little bit of an interview that I conducted with the commissioner of your civil rights commission a few months ago as
some of these talks were under way. You’re absolutely right, the fact that several women have been sat across the table from the Taliban who never
recognized that women actually had the rights to be out of their home is pretty dramatic. This is what Gaisu Yari told me about her and other
women’s concerns.
GAISU YARI, COMMISSIONER OF AFGHANISTAN’S CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION: One point that is very important for the international community to focus is
that we are not ready to give up.
We are not ready to lose the achievements that we have had in the past almost 20 years now. So if we — yes, we do want peace in the country, but
are we going to with the price of losing women’s rights or the achievements we have had in the past two decades?
AMANPOUR: I want to ask you because you’ve spoken about how the Taliban actually talks about women when they think they’re not being listened to in
public, do they really respect, are you confident that even if a peace deal is signed, the respects the gains women have made, respects what your
constitution provides for women’s rights, that if the Taliban’s involved, those will be respected?
R. GHANI: Let me answer it in a different way. The Taliban’s are our brothers and our sisters and as Afghans, they have the right to come and
live in Afghanistan. And actually, quite a few of them do. What — here, the question is whether or not they should bring with them their own way of
thinking and impose it on the rest of the population. And they can, if they want to have — if they have political ambitions, they can do it through
the electoral process.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, you have been the forefront of the post-Taliban Afghanistan since the fall back in 2001. You served under the previous
president and now you, yourself, are president. What do you think — what is your gut telling you about whether you can or this longest of American
wars can end in any way that actually guarantees the rights of all your people and that ends the violence?
A. GHANI: Well, we’re in an open moment. The incoming Biden administration is in the midst of opportunity to work with us A, to define what U.S.
security interests in Afghanistan and the region are. No one wants a return to a heavy footprint. Second, in agreement on the future stability of
Afghanistan, guaranteed both by the region and by the international community is essential to end 40 years of conflict.
Third, I have been leading the peace process. I’ve owned it. I secured the first cease-fire in 2018 in our history. The process must now be truly
owned by the Afghan government and the Afghan people. Fourth, the scale and scope of U.S. presence in Afghanistan needs to be defined.
Here, the most critical issue is how to marry a condition-based approach with a time-based approach. My basic goal is to be able to hand power
through the will of the people to my elected successor. This is crucial to enable us to both honor the sacrifice of our civilians, our activists and
others.
One thing needs to be clear, Afghan society is not willing to go back and we are not the type of society that the Taliban type approach of the past
can be imposed on us. That was the peace of the graveyard. We want a positive peace where all of us together, over time our past, embrace each
other and together a build of — rebuild an Afghanistan that can be, what I call, a roundabout, where all civilizations, all people, all activities can
interact.
AMANPOUR: I hear you saying we don’t want a heavy footprint forever, but I wonder what you feel about first President Trump calling for the reduction
by half of American forces there and secondly, Vice President Biden, President-elect Joe Biden, who is also not a massive interventionist to say
the least, I just want to play a little bit of an interview that he gave to CBS a year ago.
This was before he won the nomination, obviously before his election, but this is what he was talking about a year ago.
BIDEN: Do I bear responsibility? Zero responsibility. The responsibility I have is to protect America’s national self interests and not put our women
and men in harm’s way to try to solve every single problem in the world by use of force. That’s my responsibility as president and that’s what I’ll do
as president.
A. GHANI: I agree with President-elect Biden that his responsibility is protection of American people. You know, since I’ve been president, the
number of Americans, this is since 2015, that have lost their lives is 98, while we, the Afghan people, have lost over 40,000 civilians and military.
We are in the frontline of your security. The key issue is not charity for as our responsibility. We would be grateful for the United States for what
is done with us. The question now is what is the threat of terrorism? Is it the system or is it individuals? That is where our common interest is. And
it’s on that basis that we move forward.
In terms of blood, the sacrifice has been reduced very substantially this year. The question is not the endless wars because Afghanistan is not a
civil war. The question is whether there are endless threats to our current global order and how Afghanistan fits within that.
We are assuming responsibility for our future. So if the United States would like to withdrawal, all we ask for is a process that is predictable,
that is mutually agreed. I had the honor, as you mentioned, of leading the transition process where over 100,000 American troops during four years
left Afghanistan, General Petraeus was commanding 150,000 troops, now we are approaching 200 — 2,500 troops by ’15.
So it has come down, President-elect Biden must make his decision and then together we will forge a pathway to make sure our mutual interests are
ensured.
AMANPOUr: I want to ask you, Madame First Lady, because you have spoken in other forums about the effect and the presence of international forces and
international NGOs, non-governmental aid agencies. If you were to put on your role, your hat as a former journalist, how would you assess what
happened in your country with all this outside intervention, unbalance, what does it look like today?
R. GHANI: Well, basically what I have been talking about is that the NGO model is not a sustainable one because it’s a cyclical model and at the end
of every cycle, the NGO people have to go around with their begging bowl and ask for more funds.
I much prefer that it would become — they would become local associations that rely on the population of Afghanistan. They still can receive funds
from abroad, but they should be accountable to the people they’re supposed to be serving.
AMANPOUR: What are your fears for COVID in Afghanistan? And now that vaccines are coming out, do you believe that countries like yours will
benefit from that?
A. GHANI: Well, first of all, I think Afghanistan showed that despite our small and limited resources, we could predict accurately the onslaught of
COVID. We categorized it in five phases, awareness, diffusion, adversity, relief and recovery.
The first wave we took very strong measures and our casualties were minimal and equally the destruction to the economy was handled because thank god
agriculture. The second wave, again, just in the last week is going down. Our fear is of a third wave.
We managed the first two I think remarkably well, mostly because of our population configuration. Fully 70.6% of the Afghans are under 30 years
old, so the youth give us that and also collective immunity. The third wave that is now started from the U.K. is the focus of our attention. On
vaccines, we are hopeful. The first wave — the first access badge (ph) that will come to cover 20% has been agreed.
AMANPOUR: I want to turn finally to you, First Lady. Your husband mentioned that his goal is to transition peacefully to whoever is his
elected successor. When you see the hullabaloo that’s going on in the United States right now with the current president not transitioning
peacefully and putting up a huge amount of obstacles to the duly elected president-elect, what message does that send to Afghanistan and to other
countries in your neighborhood?
R. GHANI: Well, I suppose we’re finding out that America is not very different from our countries and that maybe the efforts that we are doing
here in Afghanistan to install a solid republic, a solid constitution and a system that allows a voice for everyone with respect, mutual respect and
trust, is something that will be durable and probably might be an example for other countries.
I still hope and I can already see — I still hope that the systems that are existing in the United States are protecting the republic in the United
States and are allowing that whatever disruption has happened during the past few years will be just that and that there will be a return to normal.
AMANPOUR: On that note, First Lady Rula Ghani, President Ashraf Ghani, thank you so much for joining me from the presidential palace in Kabul.
A. GHANI: Well, thank you. It’s an honor and pleasure to be with you.
R. GHANI: Thank you for having us.
AMANPOUR: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: A frank conversation there and talking of, back in the United States, President-elect Biden did say that the country had to start
reflecting again its values around the world and he also announced his final round of cabinet selections, saying that he’s assembled a team that
looks like America.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: This will be the first cabinet ever that is evenly composed with as many women as men in the cabinet. This will be the first cabinet ever with
the majority of people of color occupying this cabinet. And it has more than a dozen history making appointments, including the first woman
secretary of treasury, first African-American Defense Secretary, the first openly gay Cabinet Member and the first Native-American Cabinet Secretary.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Quite a group. And finally at the end of this calamitous week for America, we honor a man who upheld a fundamental pillar of democracy, a
free and independent press holding government accountable, and he was Neil Sheehan, the crew-saving Vietnam war correspondent who has died at the age
of 84.
His family says the cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease. Reporting for the New York Times in 1971, Sheehan broke the explosive story
of the Pentagon papers, a secret trove of documents that exposed widespread government deception about America’s ability to win that war. The Nixon
administration was furious at this revelation, but Sheehan’s story led to a landmark victory for press freedom at the Supreme Court.
And Sheehan himself later defended his actions, saying the papers belong to the American people who “paid for them with their national treasure and the
blood of their sons.” That is it for now. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London. And now we go back to my colleague Brooke Baldwin who
has more on the aftermath of what’s been happening in the United States and around the Capitol.
END