Lies, Politics and Democracy

The Republican Party enabled Donald Trump as he

convinced his base that the election had been stolen.

McConnell chooses silence.

Pence says to the president, "I can't do it."

Liz had given a really compelling narrative

about why we have to certify the election.

A good deal of American democracy relies on simple good faith.

If anything was revealed to us,

it was just how fragile a system we have.

Now, a Frontline special presentation, "Lies, Politics, and Democracy."

This program contains graphic content.

Viewer discretion is advised.

Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump

and offered to work with him on behalf of our country.

I have just called President Obama to congratulate him on his victory.

I had the honor of calling Senator Barack Obama to congratulate him.

Please.

I spoke to President Bush and I offered him

and Laura our congratulations on their victory.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken.

While I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it.

The president is my opponent, not my enemy.

And I wish him well and I pledge my support.

And America must always come first,

so we will get behind this new president and wish him well.

This nation faces major challenges ahead and we must work together.

He has won.

We are all Americans.

He is our president.

In bringing about an orderly transition of government in the weeks ahead.

I congratulate you on your victory.

Congratulations on your victory.

We've got a president-elect.

He's gonna have my help.

Cheers.

I have no bitterness, no rancor at all.

He will have my whole-hearted support, and yours, too.

The people have rendered their verdict, and I gladly accept it.

I urge all Americans to unite behind you.

And every good American will wholeheartedly accept the will of the people.

I accept the result of the election with complete goodwill.

This is an embarrassment to our country.

We were getting ready to win this election.

Frankly, we did win this election.

We did win this election.

It was the lie that sparked an insurrection.

An existential threat to American democracy.

Created by decisions made over years.

Partisan warfare.

Moral compromise.

: White lives matter!

Warnings ignored.

I alone can fix it.

Get the host in place. We've gotta go. 30 seconds.

Let's get quiet in the studio.

The warnings about the threat to democracy were there from the very beginning.

Some breaking news for you now.

Fox News can now project that Texas Senator Ted Cruz has won Iowa.

Ted Cruz wins the Republican contest here in Iowa.

Tonight is a victory for courageous conservatives

across Iowa and all across this great nation.

Senator Ted Cruz had defeated Donald Trump in the

first contest for the 2016 presidential nomination.

Ted Cruz took on Donald Trump toe-to-toe and prevailed.

Clearly, a majority of Iowans didn't want to make a deal with Donald Trump.

It's going to be very interesting to see how Donald Trump

will react to the fact that he's now been beaten.

The big question now, how is Donald Trump gonna handle a loss?

Trump's response, a sign of what was to come.

"Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it."

You have tweeted that Senator Ted Cruz stole the Iowa election.

Everything about it was disgraceful.

It was a fraud as far as I was concerned.

"The State of Iowa should disqualify Ted Cruz from the most

recent election on the basis that he cheated- a total fraud."

Knowing what we know now, I think you would go

back to February 1st of 2016 as the beginning.

It's a total voter fraud, when you think of it.

And actually, I came in probably first, if you think about it.

That episode was a bright red blinking light,

foreshadowing everything that was to come.

And just what a danger to democracy that this man posed.

This is a pattern for Trump.

He has done this every step of the way through his career, long before politics.

When "The Apprentice" lost an Emmy to "The Amazing Race,"

he claimed that the Emmy contest was rigged.

"'Amazing Race' winning an Emmy again is a total joke.

The Emmys have no credibility.

The Emmys are all politics.

That's why "The Apprentice" never won.

The public is smart.

They know it's a con game.

I have just called President Obama to congratulate him on his victory.

He claimed that the election was rigged in 2012 when

Mitt Romney, whom he had endorsed, lost to Barack Obama.

"This election is a total sham and a travesty.

We are not a democracy."

"More reports of voting machines switching Romney votes to Obama."

"Let's fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!"

"We can't let this happen.

We should march on Washington."

Every step along the way, anything he has ever lost is

because somebody else has cheated and stolen it from him.

For those watching closely, it was a signal of trouble ahead.

This certainly was a moment that set off alarm bells.

To be a small-D Democrat means to know how to lose elections.

And a democracy can't survive if politicians

and political parties don't know how to lose.

I mean, sometimes people have even said democracy is for losers.

It's a system that allows losers to come back and fight another day.

And so, if the losers deny that they've lost, the system can't endure.

In Washington, some in the Republican Party were

sounding the alarm about the threat Trump posed.

Bill Kristol was one of what were called the "Never Trumpers."

I was publicly saying that Trump was unacceptable.

People shouldn't support him.

They should make clear they couldn't support him in the general election, even.

They should band together against him.

Kristol had been born into conservative royalty.

His father, Irving, the godfather of the neoconservative movement.

He was chief of staff for Vice President Quayle

in the George H. W. Bush White House.

Founder of the conservative magazine, "The Weekly Standard."

Kristol saw danger in Trump's appeal.

He had a real feel for people's anxieties

and unhappiness about various things.

He was willing to stoke those anxieties and

hatreds in some cases, resentments,

in ways that other politicians weren't willing to.

Take three. Start the recording.

I don't know anything about David Duke, okay?

I don't know anything about white supremacy or white supremacists, so...

At the time, we used words like "unconventional" and "nontraditional."

"Oh, I don't know what I said!

I don't remember!"

But in hindsight, yeah, looking back, there were red flags left and right about

what kind of leader Donald Trump was going to be.

This was not someone who supported Democratic ideals.

This was, in very real terms, an anti-Democratic candidate,

someone who had very clear authoritarian and autocratic tendencies.

You see the pattern, looking back now.

We're gonna be so strong.

We're gonna be so tough.

We're gonna be so vicious.

And we're gonna knock them for a loop.

We have no choice.

Adding to the never Trumpers' alarm,

a dangerous fervor among some of his supporters.

Donald Trump liberated a certain portion of America.

Hyper-nationalist, reactionary, semi-military elements

using the language that was common in these arenas.

They saw him as the best hope of translating their paranoia, their contempt,

their anxiety, their anger into a political platform and into public policy.

You know, knock the crap out of them, would you?

Just knock the hell,

I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise.

There were many, many signals throughout 2016 that this was not just a showman,

but no, somebody who had definite authoritarian sympathies.

And there was violence at his rallies that he openly encouraged.

I mean, it wasn't a joke.

There's a guy totally disruptive, throwing punches.

I love the old days.

You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this?

They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks.

I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you.

Ah, it's true.

The nastier he got, the more excited the crowd got.

And rather than trying to clamp that down and

sort of pull back, he egged on the crowd further.

And that dynamic of the angry crowd

and the demagogic leader fomenting anger and using violent rhetoric

was a sign that this is somebody who had no Democratic core,

liberal Democratic core, and it was not clear

what the limits of this

So I think that was very frightening.

With Trump's emerging embrace of authoritarian behavior,

a moment of decision for Republicans.

They had a choice.

They could have taken steps to prevent Trump's nomination.

Or if that seemed illegitimate because he won

the primary, they could have renounced him.

They could have refused to endorse him.

The Republican Party was the one group of individuals

with the power to isolate Trump.

Some tried.

Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud.

His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.

This is the party of Abraham Lincoln.

This is not the party of David Duke, Donald Trump.

But most Republican leaders didn't.

I'm gonna continue to avoid weighing in on the presidential contest at this point.

I don't really know him.

We're gonna obviously get to know each other if he gets the nomination.

And we'll cross those bridges when we get to it.

And he could be our nominee.

But I think I don't want to comment on something hypothetical.

It was vertigo-inducing because it showed me that

either I had gone crazy or everybody else had gone crazy.

Mona Charen's conservative credentials were earned in the Reagan White House.

She was surprised by what she was seeing among Republicans.