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Jared Yates Sexton joined journalist Michael Cohen to discuss the events on January 6th for his substack "Truth And Consequences."
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For the weekender episode today, Jared had a chance to sit down with Michael Cohen, the journalist, not the lawyer, to discuss whether what happened on January 6th was a coup.
This is part of Cohen's substack, Truth and Consequences, where you can digest all of his work.
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Welcome everybody to the latest Truth and Consequences Zoomcast and I am really excited for today's Conversation with somebody just asked.
This is actually pretty good.
This is gonna be a hyper negative talk.
I hope not.
I was gonna be, you know, realistic, somewhat positive.
We'll do what we can.
Lauren, thanks for asking.
I'm joined today by Jared Sexton.
I'm really happy to have him here today.
This is actually kind of a funny situation.
I wrote a piece, which I've talked about a little bit earlier this week, about why I'm not overly concerned about Donald Trump's 2024 election.
And Jared, you know, DMed me on Twitter, sort of asking me some questions.
Very respectfully, I have to say.
And I don't say that like a surprise.
Jared, I say it's more a surprise for the medium of Twitter, which usually people just call you a-holes if they disagree with you.
But he did not.
He was very respectful.
We had a nice little conversation.
I said, hey, you know what?
Why don't you come on?
We'll talk about it.
So here he is.
Jared, welcome.
Thanks for coming today.
Thanks for having me, man.
I've been waiting to meet you for a long time.
There we go.
Me as well.
And I'll just say, Jerry, you are a professor, Georgia Southern University, right?
You're in Statesboro, Georgia.
And you also, of course, do the audio coming in here.
I have to admit them into the room.
You have a sub stack called Dispatches from a Collapsing State, which I've rather enjoyed catching up on some of your stuff, especially the most recent piece about Kyle Rittenhouse, which we can talk about.
And you are a prolific writer and Twitterer, I would say.
Is that an accurate description?
I don't know, maybe I've insulted you by saying that.
I don't know if it's good or bad.
No, I think it's accurate, but it doesn't get the distaste out of my mouth.
That's what I would say.
I mean, I think Twitter is one of those things that we kind of hate, but we hate, but we also love because it actually is a way to communicate with people.
That's pretty awesome.
You have an immense number of followers.
I was actually pretty happy with my number, but you've like a 250,000 Twitter followers, which is really impressive.
So you've got a huge platform talking to people, which is great.
And that's one thing I love about Twitter and you get to meet interesting people as you know, he and Jared and I did today.
So it's a pretty cool opportunity for us.
Oh, and I see Pete Dominic is here.
That's exciting.
We've both been honored to be on Pete's show.
And actually, you know what?
Since Pete is here, I'm just going to mention that I believe today, or it was yesterday, was his 500th episode.
Tomorrow, I think.
Is it tomorrow?
There he is.
There is my friend Pete Dominick.
There, our friend Pete Dominick.
Congratulations, Pete.
Hi, everybody.
Everybody's friend.
Everybody's friend.
Hi.
Hi, thank you.
I saw that two of my favorite people were talking, and I thought I would like to sit in, and I'm only sorry I didn't wear a wig.
I'm more upset that I have to look at this handsome face and it throws me off before a serious conversation.
That's right.
That's right.
Too much.
Yeah.
One thing that Pete, I'm glad, appreciates, understands is that to participate in these Zoomcasts, you do have to have a beard.
So I'm glad that he does that.
Larry Simon, I'm looking you up there in the left corner and You know, come on, let's get with the game.
All right, please, if we could.
All right.
So we are here today to talk a little bit about democracy.
Is it in peril?
So I wrote this piece, as I've talked about before, basically arguing that, you know, we have some serious threats to democracy in this country, but that Donald Trump's silly 2024 election is not necessarily one of them.
And I guess this is maybe it.
I think, Jared, I kind of agree for the most part.
We agree more we disagree.
But I'm curious to start off by asking you, why do you think I'm wrong?
Or why do you think the threat of an electoral coup is more significant than perhaps I'm making it out to be?
Yes, so to go ahead and start on this for anybody who came here for fireworks I don't think that this is necessarily like a complete fundamental disagreement, I think that I think that when you and I look at this landscape we're in agreement that there is a fundamental threat to democracy.
That there is currently an anti-democratic trend in this country that is coming from the Republican Party and forces that either surround Donald Trump, propel Donald Trump.
I think for the most part, Donald Trump is a complete and utter grifter who is more or less ideologically nothing, but an instinctual sort of destroyer.
The people around him, however, I think are incredibly dangerous.
I think you do as well.
But the means that I think that we look at this situation are different.
I don't think you're wrong that disenfranchisement is one of probably the leading thing to be concerned about going into 2024.
If I had to sit here, and this is an unfortunate foot to start this out on.
If somebody put a gun to my head right now and said, predict the 2024 election, I would have to say today that Donald Trump wins the election and we deal with the fallout after that.
I would say the disenfranchisement and those types of techniques would probably lay the foundation for those types of things.
I think where you and I part ways, Is I think you are very focused sort of on the practical electoral politics, the mechanisms of what we're looking at here.
What I study in my research and in my writing is I'm looking more at the culture that has made all of this possible.
So, so the disenfranchisement techniques that you're writing about.
I would go ahead and argue that the cultural, political, socioeconomic factors that have made that not only acceptable and beneficial for the Republican Party, but also something that is acceptable for their base, is something much, much larger than even the 2024 election.
Sure.
I'm not necessarily sitting here telling you, like, I'm not sounding an alarm, 2024 is going to be stolen in a coup.
But I think there are precedents in American history that show us that things like that do happen.
The 2000 election, I hate to tell you, was not great.
No, I'm familiar.
I'm familiar.
Not great.
And I think made it very clear how these types of things can take place.
What I am concerned about is that different
Factions and different ideas within the Republican Party and within the right wing in not just the United States, but around the world, are hastening and worsening these problems and conditioning the base and populations to not only accept possible coups, but violence, anti-democratic actions, and that history shows us that these kinds of things can metastasize into unpredictable changes.
So for instance, with January 6, and I would love to hear from you, because the reason I reached out to you is, I think there's a fundamental difference in how we view January 6, what it was, what its importance was.
And I think when you talk about it, and tell me if I'm wrong, because I don't want to put words in your mouth, You talk about it as a situation that occurred, the fact that it wasn't quote unquote successful is indicative of strength of institutions.
Yes.
I would make the argument that January 6 was less about an electoral coup Trying to interfere with an election, then it was a haphazard kind of sloppily attempted chance to reshuffle the deck, let the cards drop where they may.
And when that happens, elections, electioneers, election officials, bureaucracy, those types of things, which I'm sure we're going to talk about in a moment, Those things change.
And it would have been more about the response to what the moment would have been, then it would be even the Electoral College results, all of those types of things.
So I think go ahead and talk about where we sort of differ on January 6, I think would help.
I think it's funny on January 6th because I remember watching it live in my apartment, watching it and being just, you know, absolutely, I don't know, appalled by everything that I was witnessing and seeing that I didn't really imagine was possible.
I think as I've gotten further away from it, one thing I think has happened is that we have, there's been a lot of assumptions about the planning for January 6th and the extent to which it was an it was a concerted effort to overthrow an election I don't know that I think that's actually what happened I don't either I don't I think it and actually in a weird way I've been I've been thinking about this word insurrection a lot and whether or not that really was an insurrection and and
And I say this because generally speaking, if there's an insurrection, the people who engage the insurrection don't just leave when the police show up, right?
And I think in a way, I do think that what happened January 6th was horrific and everyone there should be prosecuted for what they did.
But in a sense, I don't know that it was something that was planned in advance.
I think it was a spontaneous act, which in some ways, Actually scares me a little bit more because it just shows you, I think, the sort of the trigger happy nature of Trump supporters and how they can be spurred into action.
And I remember being a lot of Trump events over the years and having that feeling, the feeling that if I remember going to an event in Long Island in 2016, and it was the most terrifying political I've ever been to.
It was just scary.
I was really, you know, if you've been to Long Island and you've seen and you've been around maybe a sporting event, There's a lot of testosterone, a lot of just, you know, enthusiasm.
And I feel, and it was one of those things where I think if Trump had said, you know, march, go out there and, you know, burn down the village, I think they would have done it.
And that's the part about that scared me, that his hold over his supporters and its ability to push them into action.
And I don't know that on their own, they would have done without Trump's, you know, instigation.
So I think in that sense, That's the part about him that scares me, is his ability, the level of devotion his supporters feel to him, which I find hard to understand, obviously, but also the extent to which I think he's able to push them, to provoke them, the way that you could imagine a demagogue being able to do.
Yeah, go ahead.
Well, okay, rejoinder, because we're on similar paths here.
And I'll just go ahead and say, a large, I started sneaking into Trump rallies.
That's the only reason why we're talking.
That's why I gained a platform in the first place, was in 2016, I started sneaking into Trump rallies.
And I noticed exactly what you just said.
That there was a growing fervent base that, you know, if he would have pointed and said destroy that building, they would have destroyed the building.
There was something that was growing and metastasizing there.
I will go ahead and say that a large reason that I'm afraid is not just what you just laid out, but also January 6th as you laid it out.
I would make the argument that January 6th was a convaluence of multiple parts of the Republican Party and the right-wing project of the moment.
So at the Capitol, I've laid this out, there were three main groups at the Capitol.
There were MAGA supporters, right?
People that wanted to be there to support Donald Trump and they wanted to be, you know, protesters.
They wanted to be part of a moment.
Many of them, by the way, wanted to live stream and, you know, advertise their real estate businesses.
Advertise their lawbreaking.
Which is a large part of what I'm getting ready to lay out because there are economic factors in all of this as well.
Right?
Economic motivations and all of this.
So you have a bunch of MAGA supporters who are there.
Many of them ended up in the Capitol and they're like, what in the living hell are we doing in the Capitol?
Okay, here we are.
Right.
And then there were two other groups that I think are really, really telling within that.
Because what we're talking about, I think, are tensions within the Republican Party and which tensions are going to win out.
Right?
You have QAnon believers.
Wait, I'm sorry.
You think there's tensions in the Republican Party?
I think there are tensions within the Republican Party that are currently... Say more about that, because I'm not sure I agree, but I want to hear why you say that.
Okay, so let me go ahead and talk about the other two groups very, very quickly.
Okay, sure, sure.
You have the manga supporters who basically look at Donald Trump.
Most of them probably don't even have a fundamental, mature understanding of American politics, right?
Because of the internal contradictions of Trumpism, right?
It's more of a populistic expression of culture than it is Politics.
Yes.
Right.
100% agree with that.
Yes.
The two other groups that are in there, we have QAnon fanatics, who are absolutely riddled through with conspiracy theories that make them believe the only way that the United States of America can be fixed is through a military coup, or some type of anti-democratic violent action.
The third group, many of these people who are part of this, are actual extremists.
We're talking about paramilitary groups.
We're talking about white supremacists.
We're talking about people who either want to literally overthrow the government of the United States or alter it in some kind of massive fundamental way.
Those three groups compressed in one place, I think, are an expression of the tensions within the Republican Party right now.
And so as this thing takes place, and this is why January 6th worries me so much.
There were people at January 6th who wanted to carry out a coup.
There were other people who wanted to protest.
There were other people who were just waiting on someone like a Donald Trump to give an order.
Right?
Yes.
But Donald Trump will not give an order.
He's a damn coward.
Everything that we have seen about January 6th is he wanted to be away from it.
He wanted others to make the decisions, almost like a mafioso boss, right?
Which is one of the defining characteristics, I think, of Donald Trump.
Those three groups are important because the MAGA supporters, if they would have been given an action, they would have done it.
That's what concerns me is which of those ideas sort of wins out and I think what we're seeing is that they are coming together into not necessarily a cohesive project but a more cohesive project.
So I have a thought here, maybe where we have, we diverge a little bit.
And maybe, I'm not saying why we diverge, maybe an explanation for how we see it differently.
I think you're looking at it from the perspective of Trump supporters and the tensions there.
And I'm looking at more from the perspective of Trump and the Republican Party.
And I mean the elected leaders of the Republican Party, elected officials, the establishment Republican Party.
And one thing I was struck by in some of the tweets, That tweets I'm sorry the text messages came out from Mark Meadows was how many people who know who who say that something different in public were saying to Meadows, this has to stop, and more than anybody else the one person I'm struck by is.
Donald Trump Jr., who basically said, this is stupid and reckless.
Now, if you've done something that even Donald Trump Jr.
thinks is stupid and reckless, you've accomplished something because, you know, he's an idiot.
And his whole, you know, sort of aesthetic is being stupid and reckless.
And so I think even he realized this went too far.
And what I keep coming back to is that Republicans, the establishment of the party, has viewed Trump for a long time as a means to an end.
A means to an end of achieving political power, of achieving their political goals.
And so when I say, for example, when I see, you know, Republicans who come out and say that, like this thing in Minnesota yesterday, where they had this Minnesota governor's debate with Republicans running for governor, none of them were willing to say, None of them are willing to say that Biden won the election.
I don't actually know how many of them actually believe that.
I would imagine maybe one or two do, but I think most of them are saying this because they know it's the way to appeal to Trump's supporters.
So in a way, I think that they have decided that this is the way to accomplish political power.
But when push comes to shove, as we saw in 2020, many of them were not willing to jump into the pool with Trump.
Many of them were not willing to, like Brad Raffensperger or Brian Kemp.
Brian Kemp, I have his point.
Brian Kemp in 2018, when he ran for governor, held a rifle, a shotgun on his, and you know this, you're from Georgia.
You're talking about my governor.
Your governor, who is nuts.
And yet, absolutely not.
Held a shotgun on his daughter's boyfriend, right?
And yet would not go along with Trump.
Because I think at the end of the day, there are significant reputational, moral, legal, ethical constraints that prevent, and even just sort of the basic democratic norms people have come to understand in this country, there are certain things you just can't do.
Trump doesn't understand that.
And I think one of the reasons why Trump is who he is, I made this point before that Why it's so hard to replace Trump in the Republican Party?
Because Trump is crazy.
Trump is a narcissistic sociopath.
And he really, I don't think, was bothered by what happened January 6th.
I think he saw it as something that was beneficial to him.
He can't empathize with people.
He just like literally mentally cannot do it.
And so I think he didn't have a problem with it.
While other people who are not sociopaths could say, no, this goes too far, actually.
So in a sense, I think that what makes Trump I think what I find, why I'm not as scared about this, I think that the established Republican Party is not willing to go as far as Trump would like to go.
But to your point, they are still willing to cater to his craziness.
And by doing so, they are encouraging the people that you're talking about, the extremists within the Republican Party, who see him as somebody that they want to empower, but also to follow his words and follow his actions.
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