Jeff Flake: No Republicans Truly Believed In Election Fraud

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, House Republican leaders have announced that they will not be whipping colleagues at tomorrow’s impeachment vote. Instead, they will let them vote their conscience. The moves come in the midst of major soul-searching by Republicans after last week’s violent insurrection at the Capitol. So, what is next for the party that’s been dominated by Trumpism and Trump for the last four years? Well, my next guest has some ideas. The former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake was one of the few Republicans to speak out against President Trump. And since he left the Senate in 2018, his state has, in fact, turned blue. Here is speaking to our Michel Martin about what lies ahead.

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks, Christiane. Senator Flake, thank you so much for speaking with us.

FLAKE: Glad to. Thank you.

MARTIN: You were in the House for six terms. You were — you had six years in the Senate. So, I have to ask, what went through your mind when you saw people, a mob breaking down the doors of the room where you used to sit, your colleagues huddled in the corners, staff having to barricade themselves in, police officers you probably greeted in the morning having to being chased up the stairs? What went through your mind when you saw all that?

FLAKE: You know, in my 18 years, I saw a lot on Capitol Hill. I — my first year, 9/11 happened. We were forced to evacuate the Capitol. I happened to see the clerk of the House at that time and said, “What do members of the Congress do?” as I’m running through the halls. He said: “Run. Just get out.” And so I have seen some strange and terrible things happen on Capitol Hill, but I can’t imagine anything like this, to be in the Capitol itself, on the floor of the House or the Senate, and to see your own citizens, your own constituents in some cases, storming their doors and rampaging through the House and the Senate. It was just an awful, terrible day. So I can’t imagine what my former colleagues went through.

MARTIN: But, in a way, I’m kind of wondering if you did, in some ways, because you have been writing for some time and speaking for some time, especially since you made the decision not to run for reelection, about the dangers of the rhetoric that this president engaged in. So, now it makes me wonder what your last couple of months in the Senate were like. I mean, did you get intimations that the kind of language that the president uses, the kinds of messages he puts across could lead to violence? I’m wondering now, did you get threats while you were still serving? What was that like?

FLAKE: Oh, yes, I did. And I happened to be on the baseball field getting shot at myself. And a couple of people actually served time for threats made against me and my family. So, yes — and it does. I said many times in speeches on the Senate floor or conversations with people at the White House, saying that words matter. The words of a president really matter. And the president’s attack, for example, on the media, calling them the enemy of the people, was having already, at that time, a couple of years ago an effect on how journalists were treated abroad. More journalists were being held and detained and harassed, because authoritarians and despots around the world would use the president’s phrase, it’s just fake news. And they felt they had a license to move ahead and detain journalists. We saw the president stand with Duterte, for example, while Duterte referred to the media gathered there as spies, and the president laughing along with it. And to see the president borrow language from people like Stalin, talking about the enemy of the people, and to pretend that that’s not going to have an impact. So, yes, the words of a president matter. Obviously, I didn’t foresee what happened last week. But I sensed that, as many did, that this would matter, that this — something would happen in terms of violence, given the president’s rhetoric.

MARTIN: Your colleagues could have stopped this with the first impeachment. Why didn’t they?

FLAKE: I would have voted like Mitt Romney did. You can always question whether or not you bring impeachment forward. Alexander Hamilton said that impeachment in the end might say more about the partisans than the accused. And so you always have to worry about the political aspects. But the call made to a leader in Ukraine and the president of Ukraine, saying to dig up dirt on your opponent, seemed clear to me. So, yes, he could have been stopped before, and I wish that my colleagues had. But they didn’t. And here we are. Now we see what we do moving forward. I’m just grateful the president will be out of office.

MARTIN: They could have stopped this by reaffirming the vote and declining to entertain these conspiracy theories…

FLAKE: Yes.

MARTIN: … even conspiracy theories directed at members of their own party.

FLAKE: Right.

MARTIN: Like, the election apparatus in Georgia is entirely controlled by Republicans. So, your colleagues could have stopped this by declining to entertain these conspiracies. Why didn’t they?

FLAKE: Completely. And, like I said, you can have different opinions on impeachment and what threshold you have to meet for that, but there was absolutely no excuse. And some of my colleagues, like I said, could have believed that impeachment set a bad precedent and had reasons for not doing that. But I can tell you, not one of my colleagues, not one, truly believed that there was wide-scale voter fraud in this last election. Yet they simply amplified — many of them amplified the president’s claims and falsehoods, and there’s no excuse for that. And I do hope that there’s a political price paid by those who went along with that, because that was — they knew that that was dangerous for our democracy and simply wrong. Yet too many went along with it.

MARTIN: Millions, tens of millions of people find his behavior acceptable. Maybe — I don’t know what percentage of them in totality find it acceptable, but enough find it acceptable that he got 70 million votes.

FLAKE: Right.

MARTIN: And so the question becomes is, what assures you that there will be some political price? And then, of course, I want to ask you why you think this president has achieved this hold on your party to begin with.

FLAKE: Well, I think there will be political price, because there has been already. The president lost. As you mentioned, he got 74 million votes, but it was seven million fewer votes than his opponent did. You had an election in Georgia that, frankly, should have been a gimme for Republicans, yet both seats were lost. In my home state of Arizona, we have for the first time in 72 years two Republican — or — I’m sorry — two Democrats representing the state. In the midterms in 2018, we lost the House of Representatives of, Republicans. Now we have lost the Senate. We lost more than 400 legislative seats in state capitals nationwide. So, a political price has been paid and will continue to be. But as to why my party embraced the man, it’s the easier path to blame things on the other side or on individuals. It’s just — that’s what’s easy, rather than politicians telling the truth and constituents accepting that truth. Sometimes, it’s tough medicine. But I can tell you, the president lost me long before he was running for president. His embrace of birtherism was enough for me to say I could never support such a man. But he managed to get the support of my party.

MARTIN: So, what should happen now?

FLAKE: Well, the president is going to go out of office, obviously. If impeachment articles are passed on the floor, if I were in the Senate, I would vote for them. Having said that, I question whether or not there is really time to go through this and also have President Biden start his administration in a way that he should. Given the rules of the Senate, and when they have to bring these articles up and have a trial, it’s very difficult. And I just cannot see many in my caucus going for that once the president is removed. And my concern is moving ahead on impeachment is, if you do impeach the president, you need to convict him. I’m afraid that if he is impeached and not convicted, then it will say more about what the president can get away with than what he can’t, and the wrong message is sent. So I hope that there are good discussions going on between the House and the Senate. Like I said, for me, that is not a question. He did commit impeachable acts.

MARTIN: There have been a number of people in the party — I mean, there’s been some pretty robust conversations about this even taking place in editorial pages. And a number of people have said that, yes, there’s risks to impeachment, but that the risk to not impeaching him is greater. I mean, the argument is that, if there isn’t at least some public accounting, that it encourages impunity. And some of my colleagues, especially those who worked overseas, lived overseas, were born overseas, argue that a number of strongmen, people like  Hugo Chavez, people like Charles Taylor, I mean, history shows that strongmen who are stopped come back stronger. Is there any alternative, other than impeachment, that you can envision that would accomplish the goals that you seek?

FLAKE: There’s some talk of some kind of censure using the 14th Amendment to bar the president from serving again. But keep in mind that the main remedy for impeachment is removal from office. The president will be out of office next week. And so I think that there are other things that can be done. The president will face legal ramifications in other areas, in other courts. Southern District of New York, for example, is moving ahead, whether or not the president tries to pardon himself or anything else. So, I think the president will face legal ramifications, if not for this, for other things. But, like I said, members of Congress ought to consider as well the message that is sent to despots and authoritarians around the world and to people in this country if the president is impeached, but not convicted again. The president surely we will use that, to the extent that he’s able out of office, to say, yes, there it is, one partisan body indicting me once again, and nobody can convict. I didn’t do anything wrong. So, I think that the message sent is important.

MARTIN: I can’t help but notice that, even after the invasion of the Capitol, and the leadership of both the House and the Senate thought it important to come back to the building, even though it’s had been kind of ravaged, to complete the people’s business, but even after the attacks on the Capitol, 121 members of Congress and six or seven senators still objected to the election results. What do you say to them?

FLAKE: You’re wrong. I mean, I don’t know what to say, other than I think, if that vote were held today, it would be much different. I don’t know if — I would think that someone who was caught up in the moment would certainly think, what have I done? But maybe they weren’t far enough removed from the moment to think clearly. But if that election — or if that vote were held today, I think it would be different. I think that they would see it differently. I hope so.

MARTIN: As you mentioned, you have been out of office for the last couple of years. You made the decision not to run again. And you said that — in fact, you wrote about this in “The New York Times,” actually in a piece that posted the very morning that the invasion of the Capitol took place. You said that: “I chose not to go along with my party’s rejection of its core conservative principles in favor of that demagogue. In a speech on the Senate floor on October 24, 2017, I announced that, because of the turn my party had taken, I would not run for reelection. The career of a politician that is complicit in undermining his own values doesn’t matter — doesn’t mean much.” So, what’s it’s been like these past two years for you?

FLAKE: Well, I was in the House for 12 years and the Senate for six. That’s a pretty good career. But I would have liked to have served another term in the Senate. You don’t get to the Senate and want to go usually after just six years. But the price that I would have had to pay, and what I faced when I was going for reelection, is a knowledge that I would have to stand on the campaign stage with this president when he came to my state, if I wanted to have any chance in a primary. And I would have to laugh at his jokes. I would have to nod along as he ridiculed my colleagues or minorities or others. And I couldn’t do it. There’s no way that any career is worth that. And so that’s where I have been. So, I have — regardless of whether or not I would have liked to have stayed in the Senate for another term or two, it’s been — to be out of office, knowing that I did the right thing has felt good. And, frankly, I lived a charmed political life, and I have no complaints. And I — but I’m happy the way I left, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

MARTIN: Do you feel vindicated? I mean, as terrible as the events have been, does it in some — I mean, you certainly couldn’t take any pleasure in it.

FLAKE: No, I…

MARTIN: But do you feel vindicated?

FLAKE: No, you take no pleasure at all in it. I don’t. I saw my colleague Bob Corker, who left under similar circumstances, say the same thing. You don’t take pleasure in it, but you are gratified that others are coming to the same conclusion, maybe belatedly, or they’re having the courage now to stand up and say, we were wrong, and we shouldn’t have countenanced this kind of behavior in our party, and we shouldn’t have gone along with this man. We don’t see people saying those words. But I think the behavior will change. And I was certainly — I have been good friends with Mike Pence for 20 years now. And to see — it’s been painful in the last couple of years to see what he felt he’s had to do to stay in the president’s good graces But to see what he did this past week was gratifying and so good for the country. And Mitch McConnell, I have had my differences with him on what he’s done and what he’s said sometimes, but he was pitch-perfect on last Wednesday. And I was glad to see that. So, hopefully, we can move ahead and be in a better place as Republicans. Unless we decide that we’re going to be the party again of limited government economic freedom, strong American leadership, individual responsibility, we have no future. There is no future with Trumpism. And there’s just no there, there. This kind of nativist, you know, personality cult that just doesn’t last very long in a democracy. And I think that we saw that in these last elections that bore this out. And as Republicans, I hope that we recognize, if for no other reason that we want to be relevant as a nationalist party, we’ve got to eschew Trumpism and move ahead.

MARTIN: Have you spoken to the vice president since the events last weekend? I know the two of you were — have been friends for some time. Have you spoken to him?

FLAKE: I have not. I just haven’t though that I would get through to him – – to him. I should mention, you know, that the most awful thing about some of the stories that we have heard since then is how, you know, president was just egging people on to go after the vice president. And after finding out what was going on, and people were running around saying, Hang Mike Pence, the president never called to check on him, never called to see how he was doing. And I remember back years back to the baseball shooting, while I was still there, we’re putting, you know, Steve Scalise in the ambulance to get him out, I got a call from Mike Pence at that time who had saw the coverage saying, are you all right. Then then I got call from Barack Obama, the former president, and Joe Biden, the former vice president, just checking, are you all right. And to think that the president of the United States wouldn’t have the courtesy or the good sense or the humanity to call his vice president, his vice president who has been nothing but loyal to him, and who he had actually incited the mob against to check on his whereabouts or to see if he was OK, that is just awful.

MARTIN: Senator Jeff Flake, thank you so much for speaking with us today.

FLAKE: Glad to. Thank you.