famously demagogic and antisemitic radio host who had millions of listeners, you know, he ends up essentially disgrace. his show is taken away, he dies in unanimity. joseph mccarthy of course, long last have you no decency, richard nixon who, you know, is disgraced. everyone has been waiting for that moment for trump forever. like, for a few years. and i wonder what you think this report plays in that, right, yeah. keep waiting. it s never going to come. i mean, i think of all the many qualities that donald trump has exhibited, the misogyny, the racism, the in curiosity, the ignorance of policy, detail, all of, it goes on, and on, and on. it may be that the most salient quality that he has is shamelessness. he is shameless. he will lie 42 times a day, he will do all the things that we know he s capable of. but he s ultimately a shameless human being. and the very definition of
well, i think jamie raskin, who writes the epilogue to our january 6 report edition, and who i also want to say we all hope that he s healthy soon, he announced yesterday that he has cancer and he said that he s going to get through it and we have every hope that he will. he s an extraordinary person and he was extraordinary on this committee. and he said to me, and i quoted in my preface, that of course there is no legal standing, in the sense that this report can t be an instrument of prosecution, although it provides enormous amounts of information and evidence, as congressman schiff said. but it provides a basis for historical thinking, it provides information for an informed citizenry. it goes beyond what the press has been unable to lock, because it had the power of a congressional committee and
understanding of the focus of donald trump on this outcome has gotten through to the public that appears in the report? i do think it has. i think we ve reached the folks that we could reach. you know, people that live in fox world and we don t get exposed to any other information that the misinformation they get on fox, we are not going to reach. but those people who have an open mind, i think we have reached. and we ve demonstrated just how culpable the former president was in every step of this scheme. you know, you re right, there are some who would belittle his misconduct by saying, well, you know, he s acting like a petulant child or he doesn t know any better, he s a nontraditional politician, this is just trump being trump. well, you know, that might have worked in the very beginning when he was breaking down norm after norm. people maintained it either when he saw in his
occasionally, people who have paid attention to their subpoenas. so, it lays a foundation for truth and it makes it very clear, above all, how fragile democracy is. even in this extraordinary country, we learned an amazing lesson in real and practical terms two years ago, that the democratic system, when it is challenged by and threatened by a sitting president of the united states, can be driven to the brink and maybe over it. we saw that dramatized in the most stark terms. one other aspect to the sort of repercussions of the report, when you write about the sort of more history, right? is i ve been thinking about the sense of disgrace, right? disgrace in a morally instructive way, right? as a means of accountability and as a means of essentially a democratic public saying, like, we don t do this, right? so father coughlin, who s the
yorker, argues the most are urgent thing to learn in the wake of january six and a committee s investigation is whether a two and a half century long old republic will resist future efforts to undercut its foundations. he adds, i quote, the contents of the report insists that complacency is not an option. the report also insist on accountability, though that will ultimately be the responsibility of the department of justice and the american public. the report is provided the evidence, the truth. now it remains to be seen if it will be acted upon. these words are from david remnick s preface to the january six committee report published by the new yorker and david remnick joins me now. david, what do you think the significance of this report is? a congressional report is a strange genre of thing. it has no power of law. it s just publishing, something you know something about, right? it s words, but words can have a lot of import. what do you think the significance of this is?