Just watch with me for a minute.

Senator Gillibrand in the hearing for Clayton uh this week.

You can understand why this committee is concerned that you won't say Biden won the election because it just reeks of this insecurity by the Trump administration about election security.

So when you say election security is important to you, I want to make sure that you understand the ODNI has a responsibility towards cyber security, towards election security that's not about voter fraud, but about the influence of foreign countries on our election security.

Do you understand that?

Um, absolutely.

Stay on Clayton for a minute.

He's not a well-known figure.

You can introduce him a little bit in in your answer, but What does this tell you, this general atmosphere in this specific hearing about his ability to be a neutral arbiter and analyst of the facts related to foreign interference?

Right.

Well, he has no intelligence experience.

Um, not that that stops the president from nominating anyone for positions that have no experience for what they ultimately I have no television experience.

So, here we go.

I know we can all tell.

Yeah, I know.

I appreciate that.

No, but um he I think that it doesn't bode well for independence uh because we have seen that again with his answers to the committee he was not willing to to give a direct answer also he was behind the subpoenas of the New York Times reporters.

So I think that he is showing that he is willing to do the president's bidding and you know they're talking to an audience of one.

So Steve this is a really fascinating question.

Now, we're getting into the psychology of of this.

Let's go to previous presidencies.

There are certain issues, let's say, that were no-go issues.

If you didn't agree with the president on X, you couldn't you couldn't work for him.

You could not be opposed to the free market and go to work for Ronald Reagan.

Yeah.

Just a random example.

Um it seems now and it has seemed for a while that if you don't play along with the delusion the the the the either earnestly felt delusion on the president's part or the manufactured delusion that he won 2020.

You can't work in this administration.

Yeah.

This is what might be called a novel situation in American democracy.

I mean novel is probably the nicest way to put it.

Um, look, I think it's it's very worrisome.

Jay Clayton is somebody who's widely respected among Republicans.

Um, Republicans, not just in the MAGA world, but Republicans who serious guy, serious lawyers, he has history.

He has a history.

There are never Trump Republicans who think very highly of him and to watch him, you know, unwilling to answer this very simple question in a straightforward manner.

Okay, let me pure speculation I'm asking for.

But what are the chances in your mind that Jay Clayton, someone you studied, believes that Joe Biden didn't win?

I mean, z no zero zero, right?

Nobody serious.

Nobody serious believes that anymore.

Look, remember, it's important to remember the president's own campaign hands didn't believe that he won the 2020 election.

They were the ones who were telling him.

His White House counsel was telling him, his attorney general was telling him.

Nobody serious believes this.

And to watch somebody like Jay Clayton who's going to be taking the position that you that you mentioned, not being willing to state the obvious, I think is really problematic.

It's also the case, we should point out that in interviews, not just the high level, not just in Senate hearings, but in interviews of low-level employees being hired by the administration, they too are asked usually as the first question, did Donald Trump win the 2020 election?

They have to say yes.

Well, that's what I mean.

It's become the equivalent in 1942 of saying to somebody who wants to work in the administration, you do support our war effort against Japan and I mean it's baseline.

People are being regularly polygraphed.

It's an authoritarian test.

Well, this is what I wanted to ask and you go go into this because you have broad experience covering elections and threats to democracy in other countries including other countries that have experienced authoritarianism.

What are you seeing here that's novel and what are you seeing here that's not so novel?

It's not at all novel that there is a kind of myth or a lie that everybody has to pay lip service to in order to demonstrate their loyalty.

So Trump also at some level knows it's a lie or he and he but he's making people go along with a lie because that proves they'll be loyal to him no matter what and that they won't they won't they're not bothered by reality, by law, by anything else.

Well, and this went all the way to all the judicial nominees have been caught in the same trap.

They have to say it.

Now, the thing about uh Mr.

Clayton, Democrats wanted to support him and move him along quickly because they want to replace the acting director in there.

But this that hurt him.

He he that that hearing hurt him with Democrats and he's not going to get the Democratic votes that he would have before.

One last question on this, Steve.

The does it mean anything that the president didn't outright say last night uh on Thursday on his spee in his speech that the 2020 election was stolen?

I mean he didn't do the usual he used the words rigged and stolen full full monty.

No, but it wasn't but he didn't go you're right.

He didn't go he didn't go into detail and he didn't spin the crazy conspiracy.

didn't get into Venezuela.

Some of the things that we were led to believe he might I think it's very he stuck to a script that had been written with him but well and and it comes after the administration has gone to great lengths.

I mean, we talked about Tulsi Gabbard going to Georgia to seize ballots to to do deep investigations of what had happened in 2020.

And the fact that they've been focused on this, that this is what keeps the president up at night, that they've spent time and attention on this and that in this moment the president didn't make that case, I think is pretty telling, right?

Although, I will say in in one of my encounters with the president, I asked him, you know, why can't you drop this?

you're already the most successful American politician of the 21st century.

You've won two elections and and he said three.

And I said, exactly.

Why do you have to?

And he said, it was very interesting.

I thought this was interesting psychologically.

He said, I don't want to keep bringing this up, but I believe in the truth so deeply that I feel that I can't let people lie about who won in 2020.

It was and and to go to your point, we don't know if he believes it or if he believes that he believes it or some kind of it's it's it's too uh it's it's a very complicated thing.

But the point of the fact is that it is the central preoccupation and it's influencing a lot of events and it happens and it's going to influence the midterms.

But if I could just add one more thing because a source uh close to the White House who used to work in the White House told me that there are more people like Clayton maybe who don't believe it around him including in the White House right now but they will not stick their heads out because they know that this is the one thing that he wants that he believes.

So even if they don't want PY in the oval talking to the president convincing him to declassify all these documents they are not willing to fight on it.

Right.

Carl, I want to turn to the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, the untimely death of Senator Lindsey Graham.

One of the most influential members of the Senate, one of the most influential allies of of Donald Trump.

Talk about his legacy for a minute.

Well, I mean, definitely a big character in the Senate that has fewer of them these days.

You know, he was he filled a lot of roles.

He was a dealmaker, but he was also uh hard right on foreign policy, very uh you know, pro- US intervention.

Uh he obviously learned at the knee of John McCain uh and Joe Lieberman uh traveling the world trying to insert themselves into all these foreign policy disputes.

Very the the the Senate was rocked by this just I mean people were really kind of stunned.

Uh John Thun relied on Lindsey Graham as a conduit to the White House.

So, you know, the question about Lindsey Graham is also what happened to Lindsey Graham, right?

Someone who had criticized uh the president so harshly ran against him.

Uh sort of acted like after January 6 that he was going to break with the president and didn't break with him.

Uh Lindsey Graham, as I said in that story, and a lot of people have also noted, he he was in search of relevance.

Lindsey Graham wanted to be in the middle of everything on Capitol Hill and he kind of did what he has to do at that to stay in the middle of it and part of that was uh you know appeasing the president and having a relationship with him.

Now members on both sides give him credit for keeping President Trump and the administration in behind the Ukraine when there's a lot of pressure uh on the outside.

Yeah.

And you've thought about this.

Last word to you on this.

A lot of us met Lindsey Graham when he was this sidekick, wingman, son Panza to John McCain, a man who loathed Donald Trump and everything that Donald Trump stood for.

You've written a lot about this new age of politics.

Um, how do you interpret Lindsey Graham's legacy?

I think Lindsey Graham will be remembered for only one thing in the end and it won't be Ukraine and it won't be Iran.

His support for Ukraine.

Yes.

It won't be about any or anything to do with foreign policy.

It will be his decision to abandon the ideals that he held for so long.

He was very loyal to the military.

He had an idea of propriety in politics.

He had an idea of America playing a role as a leading democracy in the world.

He abandoned all of those things in exchange for having power and influence and helping to legitimate Donald Trump.

And I really think in the long run of history, that's how he'll be remembered.

Um, one last question to you on the Ukraine piece, this is a blow to the Ukraine cause on the Hill.

Is that fair to say?

It's it's not clear to me that he made that much difference.

You know, he had this sanctions bill.

um almost everything in the sanctions bill that would put sanctions on Russia can be done without the bill.

So, it was more of a symbolic game rather than real influence as far as I could see.

Carl, you're you're definitely right that he was larger than life in a Senate that seems to be getting smaller.

Yeah, the characters aren't quite there the way they used to be.

And you know, and he was actually, love him or hate him, he was a very funny person, right?

And there was a lot of humor uh with him and now his sister uh is serving in hisstead and we'll see what happens there.

Right.