Transcript: Fiasco for Trump as New Revelations Nuke Another Nominee
Sargent: Right. If you were to look at it charitably, you could say, OK, maybe Senate Democrats have a somewhat well-founded fear of looking too political. Maybe they think they’re going to provoke a backlash among swing voters. But if you look at the January 6 Committee hearings, those were among the greatest acts of political communication in our lifetimes. They were very well-produced, really well-tailored to the viral era, and they were very goddamn partisan. They indicted a whole party. They put on display for the country what’s so craven about the Republican Party in the Trump era, created moments, drama, and so forth. We should learn from that, shouldn’t we?
McGowan: Yes. Part of it was that it did still have a feeling of nonpartisan of sorts because they had Liz Cheney there. It was really well-designed at that point in time. It really was also about an event and Trump, as opposed to the party. This is trickier because we have a lot of people for very good reasons, if not outdated, who are in these positions of power because they deeply, deeply believe in the role of government and in the way that they conduct business or believe business should be conducted.
The challenge there is that that is not how Republicans play. That is not how Republicans govern anymore. That is certainly not how this administration is going to govern. I used to have this beef sometimes with President Biden, who I deeply respect and think was a tremendous president because always taking the high road does not always lead us where we need to go; in fact, quite the opposite as we’ve seen now. All of the bipartisan bills that were passed, guess what? The fact that they were passed with some Republicans didn’t do Democrats any favors.