election and frequently appears as a political analyst on television and radio. mr. burns before beginning his work at the times covering the 2016 election was a reporter and editor at politico where he covered the 2012 election and previously was the editor of the harvard political review. the conversation today will be moderated by david axelrod former senior advisor to president barack obama, and now director of the institute of politics here at uchicago now, i'll turn over to our speakers. thanks. thank you. thank you. harvard that's in the east right? it's just near boston. good to see you guys. thanks. i want to. as i read this book, i read a lot about the book before the we saw the book because you guys were very skillful at disseminating some nuggets there. that would be enticing to people but well, let me ask you about that first. i mean my fundamental point is this book is so much bigger than the things that we read that were kind of exclusive sort of scoops the narrative of what's going on in our country and what went on in 2020 and i guess into this this year was was really really deep and wonderfully written but how much pressure are you under when you write a book like this to produce things that nobody else has scoops that will i see you rolling your eyes. no, i'm not. i mean, i think they're about alex. oh, i think it's rolling his eyes at you. well, first off, let me just say thank you to the university of chicago to the iop. you are our friend at former college jennifer steinhauer and to david for for hosting us here. it's a thrill to be back in hyde park. there's certainly pressure from the publisher of your book. that obviously is paying you to produce a work that they want to see people purchase themselves, by the way. it's available out there. so and on the way, i would love for you to grab a copy. we sign them all but i think with alex and i we've been colleagues now for nearly 15 years. i there's just the pressure that we fell was just from ourselves like we're competitors. we wanted to produce the best possible book and that means like two things like a well-written. well crafted narrative and it means a lot of reporting and so were committed to getting those scoops david and you know driving news and getting inside the rooms of american politics getting those conversations. not necessarily because we felt pressure for any external forces, but because we wanted to and we felt that this is extremely important period of american history and we wanted to offer we'll be hopeful the building blocks. for future histories who look back on these tumultuous years and try to capture what was going on in american politics. and why did it happen? and so that's probably so committed to you know capturing, you know, not just second hand accounts beginning first hand accounts getting primaries source material whether it's the audio recordings that hopefully you've heard or whether it was memos or documents. so that brought people to this period and it could stay in the test time and not and not just in washington, but what so interesting about your book is you have players across the country who have who interacted with the politics of the moment and including own mayor here. lori lightfoot is represented in this book. but alex and i don't want to be parochial about the book writing business. there are a ton of books out already and some coming. about the 2020 election. you guys got a book contract. you knew that you knew woodward and costo were out there and maggie haberman whose book has yet to come and all the other books that are being written. how did you decide what the contours of this book would be and what what did you hope the story would be well, first of all, let me just say my own thanks to you to the iop to jennifer to caitlin and to all the for being here. no it look that's a huge challenge to at the start of any major reporting project whether it's a book or whether it's a long-range story that you're working on is to figure out. how do you put together something that will benefit from long-range intensive reporting and also still feel new and current and competitive when it comes out and yes, there's the commercial pressure to attract readers who will spend money to consume it, but it's also just look like we have a demanding day jobs we have demanding my personal and family lives. i'm doing a book is an extraordinarily laborious undertaking and we didn't want to do that and then find ourselves generating something that nobody would find a particularly valuable because they've heard it all before so look, i think you mentioned the woodward and costa book you mentioned the maggie book. there were we knew that isaac dover was doing campaign book we knew there were a couple other, you know books that we're going to be more tethered to the 2020 election and a couple other books that were going to be anchored really really squarely in the trump white house and we thought both for the you know, those competitive reasons and also because of just wanting to say something new to readers that they really really would not feel like was entirely familiar to them that we just sort of campus with this idea to try to take a risk on a narrative that would span, you know the run up to the 2020 election the aftermath and the consequences of that election and when we started talking about doing that, we didn't know that january 6 was coming. we didn't know that trump would refuse to but well that to the authorities right, but what we did know was that the country was going through an extraordinary crisis in 2020 in the form of covid and then crisis upon crisis after that and that it was going to be a real test of the system. could we have a free and fair election and a transfer of power and then a new administration that actually got some stuff done. so that was the sort of broad shape of this thing even before you started to fill in the most alarming details of that picture. i want to get to the story of the two parties the two presidents but what i mentioned the narrative the the story of of january 6 has been told and retold in a million different ways, but somehow it seemed fresher in this book because of the first-hand accounts that you had and i was mentioning to jaymark before we came out here that i found it. what's so clear in this book is just how much people on in both parties? really felt their lives were in danger that day you talk about anthony gonzalez who ended up? voting for impeachment on a republican and probably cost him as political career to do it but on that day talk about what he did in on the other side jason crow and the conversation that he had with his wife a republican a democrat young former military. speak to that sure, you know one of the things that we prior ourselves on in the process of reporting this book was talking to so many members of congress who are not a household names right and really trying to animate the forces that we're driving them to make excruciating decisions like ending your own political career by voting to impeach donald trump as a republican or just what's going through your head in those crucial moments that we knew that if we generated a narrative about january 6th that told you all the donald trump gave this speech on the national mall and evacuated mike pants from the senate floor and then they all you know, they took the congress to secure. position etc, etc. like that's all pretty familiar. material. we know that we had to get deeper into that and and jonathan had the enormous advantage and dubious opportunity of actually being in the capital complex while the attack actually remember was seeing you wandering around. on the feeds from the capital that night. yeah, but you know anthony told us this well. these members told us told their colleagues told friends and family about these really renting things that they did in real time. so jason crowe is calling jason crows a democrat elected in 2018 from colorado former army ranger a call. he's in the gallery when the capital is locked down and he calls his wife and she knows that he's a soldier and she knows the kind of training he has and the way he might want to behave in that situation and she tells him don't be a hero, you know, she's scared that her husband is going to try to do what he thinks is the right thing and she mentally and that he has children and we should add that he sent her home early sent her home early. this was this was this is one of the most chilling things. i think we discovered in the run-up to reporting on the run up to january 6th is how many members felt like something terrible was about to happen. so jason crowe andy came from new jersey, i did the same thing their families were either going to come to washington or already in washington for january 6th, and they just felt like something feels really wrong. i don't want my spouse. i don't want my daughter or son to be in this city anymore. yeah, and a gonzales. yeah, left a note. yeah. so infinit gonzalez is our republican from ohio who some folks in this room might recall played pro football. he played for the peyton manning era indianapolis colts and he entered politics pretty young guy. he's still in his 30s fascinating story a cuban american. and was sort of widely seen as this rising star in gop politics in congress and he is he is really shaken by the events of that day, and we talked to him a great length about his experience that day. it's one of the most compelling parts of the book. i think he he was in his office in the capital complex and he decides to write a note for his wife and to put it in the desk just in case he lost his life and no, just hearing that in the interview is sort of gives you chills because you realize what was going through the minds of lawmakers in those hours. and just how how close we worked. we even greater catastrophe on january 6th. and just to finish the story on gonzalez. he decided a few months after january 6th. he was not going to run for reelection. he's 37 years old, i think and he had voted to impeach president trump a week after january 6th and obviously caught hell from president trump because of that vote and he talks about sort of death rents have come in against he and his family about being met at the airport back in ohio with you know, uniform police officers to escort them off the the gate. and he's i i just don't want this life anymore. it's just not worth it. i have you know wife and young kids and who needs that and frankly. he's pretty honest about it's i am worth it to come back here for a party that is still sort of in the throes of trumpism anyways, and so he's a fascinating character in this book both for his experience on the sixth and then for everything the flows out of that and sort of his disillusionment with his party with politics, generally. um you have a lot of scenes from inside the republican caucus and i want to talk about we're going to talk about both parties here, but i want to talk about things that have meaning beyond the the storyline of this book and into the future. there was a debate, you know, we had a great republican in this in the state named abraham lincoln. who said in illinois is for his first he was born here though, david he in his first inaugural address. he said we are not enemies but friends, this is right before the civil war. we must not be enemies though passion may have strained. it must not break our bonds of affection. so you have a republican from arizona now named andy biggs and he had a slightly different message in the republican caucus. in the aftermath of january 6th and his ira was aimed not a demo not not well a democrat certainly, but at least cheney for for for taking on trump. and he accused of aid in comfort to democrats and he said they're not just an opponent. they're an adversary that's trying to wipe this country out and change it forever. yeah, and it strikes me that that quote. is heavy with meaning because it is sort of the it is what is driving so much of republican politics now now you know and yeah, we we talk about trumpism. we were just talking before we came out here about this senate race in pennsylvania right now. well, donald trump has endorsed dr. oz uh, there's another candidate who's spent 40 million dollars or something and there's a woman who's going to very likely win that primary or certainly could who has spent virtually nothing but is in steve bannon's word ultra-maga. to the right of trump and all of them. what does this say about the state of republican politics? well, i mean, i think the notion that or is that a leading question? i think it is, but i think i'm willing to be led on this one. no, i mean, i think that the sentiment behind what andy biggs said is so pervasive in republican politics even among people who are actually like comparatively ideologically mainstream relative to andy biggs people who don't necessarily have like way out there right-wing policy ideas, but who just feel like the democrats are out to take this country apart at the building blocks and i think when you see the other party that way it makes the basic operations of american government like virtually impossible if that if that gains prominent look the story in pennsylvania is extraordinary. i think that it speaks to a couple different things but one of them is, you know, we have written so many times including in this book about trump's control of the republican party. this is not a study in trump controlling the republican party. he's not been able to make a dr. oz the decisive front-runner in pennsylvania, but trump's brand of politics is definitely in control of the republican party in pennsylvania. this a candidate kathy burnett is i mean she is in in many ways like more trump than trump and she has been out there saying as a paraphrase, but that you know trump doesn't control the magna movement, you know, we're more than that and that's actually i mean, it's it's a hell of a signal about the overall trend in republican politics. i think you could even make the case that it's a little bit ominous for a donald trump personally the point at which the sort of next generation of revolutionaries starts to say that the guy who led them on the long march is not actually in control of the revolution anymore. you know that makes things pretty unpredictable for everybody involved. we should point out that in the governor's race in the governor's primary. you also have a candidate who's likely to win who is running in tandem with this senate candidate or loosely in tand. who is also far to the right of the other candidates there? and but i think what's so telling is that we use these terms like far to the right and i get why but i think 10 years ago if we were using that language about the so called tea party. you're a candidates. that would have been shorthand for like you know like down the line ideological conservatism on issue xy and z right? they are for limited spending. they are culture issues. you know, i think it's so much more now based on affect and and sort of a pugilism now more than it is any kind of menu of issues david and i you know what so appealing about barn and i think for a lot of republicans is not just you know, what kind of policies she's talking about. it's the packaging too. it's her storage her profile of the republican party is now organized chiefly around opposition to and really contempt for. the democrats and i sort of finger in the eye sort of platform. it's basically what the platform is is. we are against those guys and we want to take it to those guys and what better way to take it to those guys then putting forth a conservative black woman who is saying a lot of the things that that you believe but saying them like, you know, pretty emphatically in sort of offering her own fascinating life story that serves as kind of a review to what you believe are the pieties of the left. i mean that's pretty powerful stuff. and again, it's wrapped up as much in sort of profile and image and appearance as it is any sort of set of issues. yeah, and that's i mean that's different from 10 years ago. it speaks to why governor desantis has become, you know trump first then the santa now this right? yeah. yeah, that's the through life but to santa's, you know. he he comes across like the quarterback of the high school football team slamming the geeky kid against the lockers to get laughs from the cheerleaders except in this case. the geeky kids are the democrats and democratic shibboleths. so you're looking at me like you don't like my now oh, but like it's the slamming against the locker. that's the appeal, right? yes. yeah, no the muscularity of it. yeah. yeah. how much do you think you know, we're sitting here obviously, you know this in the district that obama's political career. how much of this nativism you know when you hear andy biggs quote about they want to change america? you hear this discussion about you know, they want they want to replace us push us out. how much of that was. a reaction to the election of the first black president i think there's no question that it accelerated that and it brought it into. the mainstream of conservative politics here in a way that hadn't been before i think part of it is the actual reaction to the election of the first black president. i think part of it also is frankly the political success of democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections just wiped out a generation of mainstream compare comparatively mainstream conservative politicians and just opened the door to you know, whoever would put their name on the ballot when the 2010 election came around. i just broke the old guard establishment to the republican part of the old fashioned way by defeating them at the ballot box and consecutive elections. i think that it is a bigger story than a reaction to barack obama. i think the proof of that is when you look at other western countries where this style of politics has also been on the rise in some cases before us and in some cases accelerating substantially after us that right wing populism broadly defined has been on the march across you know central and western and eastern europe and the uk for some time and in some respects. we're like a lagging indicator of the direction of the of western democratic politics a culturally but look i think that there's it's obviously, you know, jonathan alluded to the tea party before i think it's one of the things that the media has been a pretty upfront about and looking back on coverage of the tea party is that you know, yes, there were a lot of candidates who put their names on the ballot in 2010 and afterwards who sincerely believed in limited spending and small government and hated the aca and other obama era policies, but were there voters really motivated by like a profound ideological opposition to expanded government spending some of them some of them were clearly motivated by some other and much darker stuff. and i guess what's different now is kind of okay to remove the right. yes, and that's something that trump did. yeah, he removed both sides of it, right? he removed the pretense that it's not about race and identity and he removed the pretense that they care about spending right like the trumpier republican party doesn't give a -- about that. yeah. let's i want to spend very little time on this because it's been so picked over in the coverage of your book, but it does speak to the power of this movement that we've been discussing both the republican leaders in the in the senate in the house. their initial reaction to trump's to january 6th. was repugnance, it's fair to say or at least they expressed that in mcconnell mitch mcconnell's case. it seemed to be very visceral. yeah in mccarthy's case, who knows but but they both expressed themselves to their to their caucuses and to th