Preet Bharara:
From CAFE, and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned, I’m Preet Bharara.

John Avlon:
I do not believe that at the end of the day, that people will look back upon this hoax, this attempt to defraud the United States, and overthrow our democracy as anything but what it is, which is a demagogic disgrace to our democracy.

Preet Bharara:
That’s John Avlon. He’s a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN, where he appears daily on the network’s morning program, New Day. Avlon spent his career at the intersection of politics and journalism. He’s written several books advocating for political centrism, but more recently, he’s turned his focus to history, publishing works about some of America’s most consequential presidents. He’s also chronicled the rise of the extreme right wing in our own time, from the Tea Party to Trump. We discuss why Avlon remains optimistic that the country can be united, the enduring legacy of George Washington’s Farewell Address, and whether we need a third political party in the U.S. That’s coming up, stay tuned.

QUESTION AND ANSWER:

Preet Bharara:
Now, let’s get to your questions. My favorite question from a listener this week is not quite a question, but a statement. It comes from Sarah in County Clare, all the way in Ireland, who writes, “Sorry to hear you’ll have nothing to talk about this week, August is so dull.” Thank you, Sarah, thanks for asking questions, and thanks for making your comments, and thanks for listening in a completely different time zone.

Preet Bharara:
Obviously, there are a lot of questions about the searches executed at Mar-a-Lago, what it means for Former President Trump, what it means for the Justice Department, how Republicans are reacting, what the law is, what the policy is, what the tea leaves indicate. Joyce Vance and I on the CAFE Insider this week spend a good hour reacting to the news from Monday evening. We’ve taken it from behind the paywall, all you have to do is go to the following link and give you your email, and you can listen to the hour-long discussion. Go to cafe.com/trump, that’s cafe.com/trump, but I’ll talk about some of these issues now because I’ve gotten repeated questions about them.

Preet Bharara:
One question that I’ve gotten a lot of comes from Amy Baskin, who writes, “Who signed off on the FBI raid, and what specifically were they looking for?” Well, if you listen to me and Joyce you’ll know that we take a little bit of umbrage at the word raid, it sounds pejorative in some way. They executed search warrants, which is appropriate and happens every day in federal and local jurisdictions all over the country. Who signed off on the searches? Well, a whole host of folks, you’d have the line prosecutors who prepare them, the case agents at the FBI who assist in the preparation of them. In fact, there’s an FBI agent who will have sworn out an affidavit that sets forth the facts, and support of a finding of probable cause that a crime has been committed, and that fruits or evidence of the crime will be located at the specific premises that are sought to be searched. Then, you would have supervisory level after supervisory level given the stakes here.

Preet Bharara:
As I have said for the past couple of days, almost certainly, you would’ve had the blessing and sign off of the Attorney General Merrick Garland himself, not because it’s required in any rule or regulation that a search has to be approved by the AG when it relates to a private citizen, which Donald Trump is, but because of the nature of the inquiry, the amount of scrutiny that will come to bear, how Merrick Garland himself is going to be the one accountable. In fact, Kevin McCarthy, I think said, that he plan to investigate the search and all other things relating to the investigation of the classified documents, if and when he takes over as Speaker of the House, and I think he told Merrick Garland, “Clear your calendar.” So, in those circumstances, I think almost certainly Merrick Garland will have not only signed off, but probably even read the affidavit and application materials, because it makes sense for him to have done that.

Preet Bharara:
Most importantly, who did not sign off on the FBI searches was Joe Biden or anyone in the White House, as was credibly reported by more than one news source this past week. Apparently, Joe Biden and the White House staff were surprised to learn about the searches at Mar-a-Lago, and only learned about them from social media when the news broke.

Preet Bharara:
What are they looking for? Well, we don’t know precisely what they’re looking for, but all the reporting suggests that they’re looking for evidence of violation of one or more crimes, possibly the destruction of government records, possibly the removal of classified information, to the extent they find that those actual things, not withstanding the turning over of 15 boxes of materials some months ago, that’s evidence of a crime. They might also be looking for communications. They might also be looking for evidence of destruction of documents in whatever form that might take, but we’ll know more about that if we ever see the search warrant information.

Preet Bharara:
Most importantly, with respect to your question of who signed off on the search warrant, it was a federal judge, most likely a federal magistrate judge, so someone in a different branch of government, outside of the Department of Justice. Obviously, outside of the White House, who made an independent judgment that the facts set forth in the affidavit supported to finding a probable cause, that there was evidence of a crime at those particular locations. So, you have internal controls at the Department of Justice, you have an external independent control, and all of those things together means there was a lot of scrutiny brought to bear on this search before it even happened.

Preet Bharara:
This question comes in a tweet from Kenny Paxton, who says, “Wait, can the DOJ use any evidence they uncovered during their search, even it’s for different crimes than the original warrant? #askpreet #staytuned.” Yeah, they can, under the Plain View Doctrine, relating to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, if law enforcement agents, under a duly authorized warrant, go in and search for something. So for example, narcotics in an apartment, and in the process of searching for narcotics in the places specified by the warrant, and authorized by the warrant, they also see a pistol or ammunition, they can search and seize those items as well.

Preet Bharara:
I suppose the spirit of your question relates to the speculation that maybe what’s really going on here is the FBI and the Department of Justice may be saying that they’re looking for classified document information, and violations of those statutes, but what they’re really looking for, and what they’re really hoping to find incidentally, is evidence relating to January 6th, the insurrection. So, if they come across those things, and they’re not going on a detour and frolic, and they’re not going in places that weren’t authorized by the warrant, that’s not allowed.

Preet Bharara:
I think it’s also a little cute by half, for at this level, and with this kind of fraught search, to be playing games with pretext, and wanting information relating to one crime, but stating to a federal judge you’re looking for evidence of a different crime. I don’t think it works that way. Now, one possibility is maybe some of the classified information, possibly, or sensitive information, could relate to communications regarding January 6th, and what President Trump did or did not do, or communications he had. It’s possible there’s overlap in that regard, but I don’t think the speculation that they’re using this search as a pretext to find evidence relating to January 6th is very plausible.

Preet Bharara:
This question comes in an email from Christie, and it’s a point of some confusion, and I’m not positive I have this right, so the lawyers out there, you let me know. The question is, “How do we know what Trump could be charged with? Was Trump notified as part of the search warrant?” There’s a lot of people out there who are making a correct observation, or a series of observations. One is, the search warrant and its component parts, the request for the search, and all the component parts of that, and I’ll mention what those are in a moment, is not becoming public through the Justice Department. They keep mum about that. Those things are sealed.

Preet Bharara:
The person whose premises are searched, the person who’s there at the time, gets a copy of one of the components, the search warrant itself, which is often just a one page document, signed by a judge that makes clear to the person whose property is being searched that there’s legal authorization, judicial approval of the search. There may also be a document that specifies the particular locations, because sometimes it’s not the whole property, but particular subparts of the property. Now, the packet that goes to the judge, not just the search warrant itself, but also an affidavit, I’ve referred to that earlier, which is a sworn statement by a law enforcement officer that sets forth, based on personal or other knowledge, the facts supporting of finding a probable cause. In some jurisdiction, in the Southern District of New York, the practice is also to have an application, and the application, along with the affidavit might sometimes make a reference to the particular statutes whose violations, or potential violations are being investigated.

Preet Bharara:
I have not seen, but I could be wrong about this, I have not seen that the search warrant itself identifies the particular statutes specifically, and it’s the search warrant that is left behind with the person whose premises are being searched. So when you ask the question, “Was Trump notified as part of the search what he could be charged with?” I’m not sure that’s necessarily true based on the standard form of the search warrant. In some jurisdictions, there’s an attachment to the warrant, sometimes called Attachment B, and sometimes that document does list the crimes, and the statutes that are being investigated. I think it varies by jurisdiction, but I’d like some learning on this. I think a lot of people are stating in a blanket fashion that Trump must know the statutes that are being investigated. I don’t know that that’s necessarily true. I don’t know what the practice is in federal court in Florida, so I’d love to be enlightened on that because I think there’s some confusion.

Preet Bharara:
This question comes in an email from Jefferson who writes, “I’m hearing that if Trump ends up being charged in connection with taking classified documents, he may not be able to run for president again. Is that true?” Now, this is getting a lot of attention, just like lots of other things have gotten attention over the last number of years. People who are opposed to President Trump politically, are looking for any avenue by which, other than the ballot box, he can be prevented from being president or taking the presidency, and as we saw when he was president, people kept talking about the 25th Amendment. Now, there’s some basis for this speculation, there’s a particular statute that might be among the ones being investigated by the Justice Department, and that’s 18 USC, 18 U.S. Code Section 2071, which seems relevant here, and probably is one they’re looking at, and probably is one that’s specified in the search warrant affidavit and application.

Preet Bharara:
Section 2071 makes it a crime, essentially, if someone who has custody of government documents, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys them. It seems like that’s a plausible scenario here, depending on what the evidence ultimately shows. Now, that statute, which carries a maximum sentence of only three years, also says that if the defendant, who’s convicted, is currently in a federal office, they shall forfeit the office, and more relevant to your point, they shall, “Be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.” If you’re reading the plain language of the statute, it sounds like a simple plan, get the evidence, charge Trump with 2071, convict him, and then you have an argument that he can’t become president again, he can never hold office under the United States.

Preet Bharara:
Again, the problem is that’s a fairly untested statute, there’s at least one case that casts some doubt upon that statute. The reason it’s problematic in the minds and writings of a lot of experts, is you have this other thing that’s not a statute, that’s above a statute, that’s called the Constitution. The Constitution sets forth, very plainly, what the qualifications are for the presidency, it doesn’t talk necessarily about all the other offices, but certainly of the presidency, and the statute is generically, seems applicable to federal office. I think the more persuasive argument, as much as you may not want to hear it, is that in a conflict between the Constitution, which arguably contains all the qualifications required for the presidency, and the statute, a mere statute, that suggests a conviction under that statute disables someone from becoming the president, the Constitution wins, and is the exclusive source of authority for what the qualification should be for becoming president.

Preet Bharara:
There have been some experts who’ve opined on this in one way or another. According to a New York Times article analyzing the issue, which is quite interesting, and I commend it to your attention, there’s a suggestion that former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, when he was discussing the applicability of 2071, not to Donald Trump, but some years ago, to Hillary Clinton, who was also investigated for issues relating to classified emails, may be improperly stored or handled. He suggested that this may be something that would prevent her from serving as president, but also according to the article, Michael B. Mukasey thought better of that analysis, and said he believes he was wrong. So, we’ll see what happens.

Preet Bharara:
We’re very, very, very far away from a discussion or litigation over the presidency, and the ability to hold office. We have just had a search, it’s going to take a long time, I think, for them to sort out what they have. They have probably a lot of other investigating to do. We’re on the cusp of an election, and I think the Justice Department wants to be careful about what actions it takes within 90 days or 60 days of an election, and that time threshold is coming up. But, at some point in the future, we can revisit it, if we ever get there. We’ll be right back with my conversation with John Avlon.

THE INTERVIEW:

Preet Bharara:
John Avlon is an author, a columnist, and commentator. He’s written books about George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. He’s also the former editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, and while still in his 20s, he was the chief speech writer for then New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom he’s not so fond of anymore. John Avlon, welcome to the show.

John Avlon:
Great to be with you, Preet. Always a pleasure.

Preet Bharara:
Long overdue, so we were going to talk about a million different things. I should note for the audience, and we’re going to go right to it, note chit-chat with you for today, John. We are recording this in the 3:00 PM hour on Tuesday, August 9th, and less than 24 hours ago, we got word from none other than Donald Trump himself, that a number of FBI agents had executed a warrant for documents and other materials at Mar-a-Lago, Florida. So, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about this multiple times, including on our shared network, CNN, so I’m going to take a break from that, and ask you some questions. How is that?

John Avlon:
Let’s do it. You need a little role reversal, take a break, you got it.

Preet Bharara:
Yeah. So, obviously there are a lot of legal aspects to this we can talk about, if you want, but one of the stories emerging from the search, and we don’t have a copy of the warrant, we don’t have a copy of the application, we don’t have a copy of the affidavit that goes with the application, so we don’t know how much evidence there is, all we know is that a federal magistrate judge or a district court judge, it’s possible, signed off on the searches based on probable cause presented to the judge by the Department of Justice, along with the FBI. But apart from the legal story, there’s a very, sort of troubling political story, what do you make of all these Republican leaders, mostly Trump supporters, but some of them Trump adjacent, decrying the search without knowing more information? Together with that question, tell us what you think, because you’re a keen observer of this, what you think about the potential for violence, or other bad activity on the part of Trump supporters here?

John Avlon:
Well, this is one of those moments that you can feel the history in the present tense, and I think you skated to where the puck’s going, I’m afraid, which is the question of political violence. Last week, I was hosting New Day, filling in for our colleague John Berman, I noted in a very busy news week, that Chris Wray had given testimony, FBI Director, saying that threats of political violence had accelerated, and we’re now basically a 24/7 thing, 365. That’s clearly a departure from our best traditions. It’s not anything resembling normal. We’ve had moments of intense political violence in our past obviously, and even within living memory, but that’s the kindling that’s underlying our politics right now, and Donald Trump has shown that he is more than willing to fan the flames. But, the fact that Republicans in the Senate, some people who are not known of being the hardcore Trumpers in the House, are getting on the bandwagon, talking about the Biden regime, comparing to a Marxist dictatorship in the case of Marco Rubio. That’s really loathsome stuff, and it’s dangerous because there’s a downstream effect.

Preet Bharara:
Do you think that folks who are clamoring for an investigation of the Justice Department already, when there’s been no charge launched against Donald Trump, we don’t know what the fruits of the search have been, we don’t know what the basis for the search is, do you think they’re doing it because they think it’s smart politics?

John Avlon:
Within the context of playing to the base, yes, but that’s the fundamental problem. I mean, all my work tends to be focused on the question, the problem of how to combat hyperpartisanship and polarization. It’s what all my books are about at the end of the day. It’s what most of my columnists are about, and it’s the thing I’m most concerned about. The disconnect between the GOP base in particular, and the general electorate, is kind of the original sin from which a lot of our current problems flow. So, what’s good for them, GOP politicians, in terms of winning their closed partisan primaries, is utterly disconnected from the question of what’s most representative of the American people as a whole, let alone how to solve problems or unite the nation, and that’s what we’re seeing. Kevin McCarthy desperately wants to be speaker, he needs to keep Donald Trump in his good graces so he’ll say or do whatever it takes, including threatening the Attorney General with impeachment. It’s short-term thinking.

Preet Bharara:
Do you think any of these folks care that it appears fairly clearly that Joe Biden in the White House had nothing to do with authorizing or blessing the searches? The reporting that I credit makes clear that the Biden folks only found out about the execution of the searches at Mar-a-Lago from social media or the press themselves, and yet, as you mentioned a minute ago, there’s all this talk about the Biden regime, the Biden FBI, by the way, the Biden FBI led by Chris Wray, Trump appointee.

John Avlon:
Correct.

Preet Bharara:
Not handpicked by Donald Trump … not handpicked by Joe Biden, or Barack Obama or anyone else, and someone who was touted mightily at the time of his appointment by Donald Trump, which vacancy by the way came about because Trump fired the prior guy, Jim Comey. Do you think any of that … I guess the larger question is, it should matter for me-

John Avlon:
Of course it should.

Preet Bharara:
What does it say about our discourse that people can just blindly make assertions about Biden’s involvement when there’s no evidence of it?

John Avlon:
Look, we are deep in bizarro world, that’s not exactly news, unfortunately anymore. There is an entire echo chamber that is fundamentally resistant to facts because that’s the trade they made, of course it should matter that the White House didn’t know about this. A lot of folks on the left, not too long ago, were complaining bitterly about Merrick Garland, saying that he wasn’t moving aggressively enough, that he was too concerned about not politicizing the Justice Department, which as our friend and colleague Elie Honig pointed out, Bill Barr’s Justice Department was enormously politicized, even though he resigned at the 11th hour because he wouldn’t overturn the election at the ex president’s request. Facts matter.

John Avlon:
The other thing that matters is equal justice under law, and it seems to me that that’s where we’re at. You can’t have [inaudible 00:19:50] opinions exonerating a sitting president from indictment no matter what he might do, even as Trump’s lawyers argued in court, “Shoot someone on Fifth Avenue,” and then say that applying the law to an ex-president is a violation of some external code of conduct, or risks polarizing nation further. It very well might, that’s a real danger. But the core problem, it seems to me, is the right wing playing the refs, and the left wing does this as well, just less effectually, the far left.

John Avlon:
What should guide decisions, it seems to me, and you have even greater experiential insight into this, is simply applying the law without fear or favor, and that’s not too much to ask. In fact, that’s sort of table stakes in a democratic republic, and if we’re guided by that, we should be in a good place. But there are folks who want to ramp up, who have basically conditioned the shock troops to revert to conversations about civil war, that’s incredibly dangerous, and it’s the least patriotic thing you can possibly imagine.

Preet Bharara:
Putting aside violence, the idea that people get riled up when their guy, or their woman, if it’s the case of Hillary Clinton, is in the crosshairs of an investigation by the FBI or some other law enforcement agency, I don’t know how you get around that. In some ways, over the last number of years, I keep thinking those kinds of cases are special, and they move people more than cases against their congressman, or their senator, or their governor, and they believe, 70, 80 million people come and vote for somebody. People really wanted Hillary Clinton to be president, they thought she was mistreated on the other side. People hated her, who were Trump supporters and wanted her locked up, and the inverses is true often for Donald Trump, how … I guess my question is, do you have any optimism that so long as Trump keeps doing things, and engaging in activity that legitimately draws law enforcement scrutiny, whether it’s in Georgia, or in Manhattan, or in DC, or anywhere else, that there’s any hope for any kind of unity, and trust in government that I think we used to have more of?

John Avlon:
Ultimately, yes, but with a couple of key caveats. First of all, the question optimism, I’m a big fan of what is unfortunately an apocryphal Lincoln quote, which is, “I’m an optimist because I don’t see the point in being anything else.”

Preet Bharara:
Who is that really?

John Avlon:
You know what? I don’t know who actually said it, but it sums up, I think, my general point of view, and I think does a good job of expressing Lincoln’s sort of balance between optimism and fatalism, which is a very American balance. We have to be optimistic about the future. There’s no point in being fatalistic, that said, we also need to be realistic about the larger forces we’re dealing with. One of the reasons I like studying history, and applied history in particular, and try to bring it into my journalism, is because it imposes perspective. We can take some comfort from the fact that we’ve been through far worse before, while also recognizing that tribal politics, when tribal politics enter into the arena, that’s when things get ugly, and that’s in fact where we are. Fevers break. Cults ultimately end, ultimately, usually badly.

Preet Bharara:
Sometimes fevers don’t, sometimes fevers cause death.

John Avlon:
Well, God, you’re being dark now.

Preet Bharara:
Well, you know-

John Avlon:
That’s that great John McCain joke, it’s always darkest right before it goes completely black.

Preet Bharara:
Completely black. Yeah, you know, I’m not always feeling sunny. Look, I’m with you, and anybody who listens to this podcast knows that whenever possible I strike notes of optimism. I am still optimistic about the country that gave me and my family so much, and it moves me every day, even when things don’t seem great or on the right trajectory, but sometimes fevers don’t break. I guess, the broader question to you is, as a student of history, and someone who’s a student of history is always asked to predict the future, is America fundamentally changed or not, based in the last few years?

John Avlon:
Well, let’s ask ourselves that question by applying the lessons of history. One of the fundamental problems with the weaponized nostalgia of phrases like Make America great again is you have to ask yourself, “Well, when was America great?” What is that period that you are hearkening back to? Usually it has to do with people’s childhood, when the world seemed simpler because they were, right? My grandparents were immigrants to this country, and like you, their experience and the appreciation they had for this country was fundamentally formative for me, because they had something to compare it to. But let’s say somehow your gauge for when things were great was, oh, I don’t know, the 60s and 70s.

Preet Bharara:
There was no strike then.

John Avlon:
Exactly, what are we talking about here? I mean, political violence and assassinations were rampant, anti-government violence was a real problem, particularly on the left, people forget about that. Nixon coming in, in part because there was so much civil unrest, and then of course compounded by Watergate, and the downward trend in distrust that that created, in addition to Vietnam. So, what the hell are we talking about? Of course, we can-

Preet Bharara:
Can I tell you what we’re talking about?

John Avlon:
Yeah.

Preet Bharara:
Just to be negative guy again for a moment. You had upheaval. You had upheaval. You had strife. You had more inequality in many ways than you have now, but then I’m too young to remember, and I’m a little bit older than you are, but when I say it has America fundamentally changed, one way in which I’m asking the question is, insofar as this is the first time that I think, and I could be wrong, I could be corrected, but the first time that I think the peaceful transfer of power was in jeopardy, and may be in jeopardy again in the not too distant future, not withstanding the upheavals of the 1960s. We can talk about the civil war, if you want, that feels different to me. What do you think?

John Avlon:
It is. It is, and that’s why we should be wide-eyed about the danger we face. The Founding Fathers, when … I did a book on George Washington’s Farewell Address, and one of the things I did is I looked at how remarkable it was that the Founding Fathers tried to apply the lessons of history in the creation of our documents, as imperfect people, and as imperfect as those documents were. They specifically drew on the lessons of the Ancient Greek and Roman Republics and how they fell, and they tried to build fail-safes that addressed those, checks and balances, separation of powers, et cetera, et cetera. What has developed over time, having a chief executive, even though they work very conscious of the dangers of populous demagogues, having a president who would threaten the peaceful transfer of power is a Founding Father’s level nightmare, but they did not anticipate that national politics would be so polarized that the party, his party would go along with that after an attack on the Capitol. That seemed to violate basic concepts of institutional self-interest.

John Avlon:
But of course the Founding Fathers, I mean, the Constitution doesn’t mention political parties, we forget that. But one of the things that Washington focused on in his Farewell Address, one of his chief warnings is the dangers of what we would call hyperpartisanship that he called faction. So this a fundamental virus that has infected our body politic, that has destroyed democratic republics in the past, so no, I’m not trying to be Pollyannish about this at all. I’m just saying it’s an outlier, and I don’t think that in the fullness of time … I think, rarely does life give you very clear black and white right and wrong. Trump’s lies about the election, his attempt to overturn the election in a systematic way, exploiting people to do it, ultimately culminating an attack of our Capitol is one of those times. It’s still a jump ball, the structures of our politics make politicians afraid to call him out, who know better.

John Avlon:
Again, this goes back to the rigged system of redistricting, closed partisan primaries, all those litanies that I rail against all too regularly on air and in print, but that’s why we’ve got a problem. It’s very serious, and we need to deal with it in the near term, and frankly midterm, and we need to learn the right lessons. But I do not believe that at the end of the day, that people will look back upon this hoax, this attempt to defraud the United States and overthrow our democracy as anything but what it is, which is a demagogic disgrace to our democracy.

Preet Bharara:
I want to ask you some more about Washington, and in particular about his farewell address. So, first question, this is a hard one, whose farewell address was better, Washington’s or Trump’s? I guess, in fairness, the second one didn’t do a farewell address, did he?

John Avlon:
No, he didn’t. He, I think, shook his fist at the air while getting on a helicopter to Mar-a-Lago. Look, I mean, he’s not the first-

Preet Bharara:
Get off my lawn!

John Avlon:
Get off my lawn! He’s not the first president to skip the inauguration of a successor. John Adams wasn’t particularly excited when Thomas Jefferson took over, and more notably into the point, Andrew Johnson stormed out of town.

Preet Bharara:
Yeah, but it’s been a while.

John Avlon:
It’s been a while, and with the case of Andrew Johnson, I mean, the previous clear contender for worst president of all time. So again, history gives perspective. Mark Twain used to say, “History doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes,” and so I think part of our job is to sort of listen for the rhyming.

Preet Bharara:
That wasn’t Lincoln?

John Avlon:
Sadly, no. Sadly, no.

Preet Bharara:
No, I know. I know it was Mark Twain, but can we talk about the farewell?

John Avlon:
Yeah.

Preet Bharara:
You talk about the theme of your work being about hyperpartisanship and how that’s bad. The theme of my work has been the importance, not just of good laws and regulations, and policies and institutions, and constitutions, but also people. George Washington made the very, very fraught decision to leave office, I mean, hence the farewell. He wasn’t term-limited back then, that didn’t happen until a couple of centuries later almost. Lots of people have said this, I’m wondering what your view is, is that arguably the most important, and profoundly helpful presidential decision in history, to step down after two terms, voluntarily?

John Avlon:
Great question, and I think you’d have to say the answer is yes, because he was a president without precedent. I mean, he was acutely aware of that, and the thing about Washington, for all his flaws, because all our historic heroes are flawed because they’re human, that’s what makes them interesting, is that he understood that he was forging a national character through the exercise of his own character. He didn’t even want to run for a second term, he was convinced. The one thing Washington … the one thing Hamilton and Jefferson could agree upon is that if Washington left after his first term, that the nation could have devolved into civil war then, so he stayed on, somewhat regretfully. But after the second term, he was determined to go home to Mount Vernon. This wasn’t a Cincinnati style pretension, this was a real deal, but the repercussions, voluntarily leaving power, that’s what was truly revolutionary, that’s the second … the revolution.

John Avlon:
There’s a great quote from Jefferson that I use as the epigraph to that book, Washington’s Farewell, where he says, and I’m paraphrasing here, “It is due to the moderation, virtue and character of one man that this revolution was not ended as most others have been, by basically a new form of tyranny being established on the embers of the old.” That was Lincoln’s … Washington’s example. David McCullough just died, he’s one of my literary heroes, and one of the things he’d say about the writing of history, and the lessons of history, is that it all comes down to character. There are moments, let’s face it, where we have tested the proposition that character is destiny in recent years. It didn’t always look like that ball was going to go fair, right?

Preet Bharara:
Yeah, and that’s the problem.

John Avlon:
But I think we see that ultimately it does.

Preet Bharara:
You’re crystallizing, I think, very, very artfully this problem, and this tension between having good laws and good constitutions versus having people of character, who operate within the oceans of discretion they have, within that system of laws. Washington wasn’t required to step down. People wouldn’t have been necessarily surprised if he had not stepped down, that’s the way of powerful men, especially back then. How far have we come from that idea that you voluntarily relinquish power, ceded to people who maybe you don’t even agree with because the peaceful transfer of power is important to today?

John Avlon:
I want to put this in perspective because we can’t lose sight of the fact that Donald Trump is still the outlier, but the conditions that he exploited, I think have to do with cautionary tales about how people are often cowed by people in power, and the prospect of holding onto power, particularly when they’ve been convinced that holding onto power is a matter of life or death, not living to fight another day, which is democracy is predicated upon. We’ve established over decades, a hyperpartisan information ecosystem that has monetized people’s anger, and anxiety, and resentment in such a way that people were predisposed to believe that they couldn’t possibly lose an election because that would be akin to losing their way of life. That’s the psychological precondition for civil war, that’s what we saw in the 1860s that I write about in my book Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.

John Avlon:
That’s what’s so incredibly dangerous about this structure that’s been put in place, not just social media, and the hyperpartisan media ecosystem, which I think has twisted our national character a bit, but also then the structures that have been put in place in partisanship with the rigged system of redistricting, the decline presence of competitive general elections, closed partisan primaries, all of which create an incentive structure where people are afraid to speak up because they don’t think they’re ever going to have to face a general electorate. All those things conspired, and Donald Trump took advantage of it in a way that people thought was impossible because we have been a nation of laws, people have held up. Now, Mike Pence stood up, a bunch of people stood up at a critical moment, and stopped this from occurring, but we need to.

Preet Bharara:
The last possible moment.

John Avlon:
The last possible moment, but now we’ve got to really apply the lessons of our recent history, and make fundamental reforms, also recognizing the importance of teaching character, and institutions and incentive structures that reward people of character, because Mike Pence’s political travails are evidence of the situation we’ve gotten ourselves in. We’re going to have to work our way out. We’re going to have to defend liberal democracy, and strengthen liberal democracy at home and abroad, that’s our generation’s responsibility now, and we have to accept it clear-eyed.

Preet Bharara:
We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with John Avlon after this. Can I ask you this question? And maybe this goes to some of the polarization we have, and the short version of the question is, do we care about politics too much? The longer version of the question is, we say every four years, and I think more recently it’s been a true statement, but whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you say, “This is the most important election of your lifetime,” and as a matter of political rhetoric, and maybe sometimes in good faith, but not always, we say that every election is existential. You pointed out before that people sometimes think that life as we know it will end if the other side wins the election, is that wrong? Does that contribute to how polarized we are? That we, as part of our normal traditional politics, we tell everybody, the entire universe, and the way that we understand life to be, as Americans will be forever, and irrevocably altered if our side doesn’t win, is that a mistake?

John Avlon:
I think it has been a mistake in the recent past when you look in the rear view mirror of history, because some of these elections, you look back at Obama-McCain, even with Palin on the ticket, you look at Obama-Romney, this was center right versus center left. Obviously, the truism behind that isn’t just the coercive sort of emotional appeal, but elections are how democracies make decisions about the trajectory they will be on, so every election will determine the trajectory to some extent for the next four years, and so therefore there is a real urgency. It’s our chance to be heard. What’s different, is if you have someone on the ballot who is trying to overturn democracy, has a demonstrated record of doing so, that’s existentially different, which is why we’ve got to, and I’m getting near the broader point of your question.

Preet Bharara:
The other way to put it is, politically in the past, have we cried wolf too much?

John Avlon:
Yes.

Preet Bharara:
Yeah.

John Avlon:
Yes, I think we have, and I think that’s an important point. The second point you ask, do we care about politics too much? I mean, I’m someone who loves politics because I believe it’s history in the present tense, that’s the lens through which I see it. That said, the tribal politics are when we get into problems, the decline of other elements of people’s identity that used to supersede partisan affiliation. Perhaps the decline of religion in people’s lives that gave people a sense of purpose, but religion was render under Caesar’s, a separate thing, you didn’t blur church and state.

John Avlon:
It wasn’t until the 19, really the 1980 election, really beginning in 1976, that evangelicals became politically involved and active that … There is a sense in modern life, and I think it’s a backlash to globalization, that people feel inured without a sense of purpose. But finding that purpose in partisan politics, as opposed to liberal democracy, writ large, being a vigorous citizen in a democratic republic, that’s where we get into real danger, because a lot of those folks are being manipulated. People polarize for profit. I don’t know that people adequately appreciate that. There are people who polarized for profit financial, political, and we’re reaping the whirlwind.

Preet Bharara:
What’s different about now than before? We’re in all the ingredients and elements of this level of polarization baked into the American stew, for at least a century, and we had a civil war a century and a half ago, so what’s different now?

John Avlon:
Well, there are a million differences. I mean, one of the reasons why I think talk about a second civil war is dramatically overwrought, we don’t have an issue like slavery, a fundamental contradiction to our deepest values that’s dividing the states. We don’t have state militias that can be militarized and weaponized in conventional conflict along battle lines. That’s not to say we should dismiss the dangers. We are playing with fire, to be clear, but there are fundamental differences. I think it’s very clear that one of the core contributing factors, in addition to the ways that the incentive structures have been put in place by the parties, to try to undermine majoritarian democracy. Jane Mayers is a great piece in The New Yorker, I encourage everyone to read. I’ve covered redistricting fights in states like Ohio extensively, where parties carve up maps in such a way that they no longer have to be responsive to the will of the majority of people, that’s incredibly dangerous.

John Avlon:
But I think that the confluence of the rise of social media, Balkanization, amplification of the most extreme voices, conspiracy theorists voices, because the algorithms are organized to monetize engagement, and people are more engaged when they’re agitated, and lies travel faster than the truth, unfortunately, these are things that we need to exert our control as human beings on, coincided with the rise of Donald Trump in such a way, because his natural mode of communicating was perfectly suited to that medium, where his conspiratorial, confrontational, hyperbolic, hyperpartisan appeals, all were amplified dramatically. So, I think we need to not only strengthen the Electoral Count Act, we need algorithm reform in fundamental ways, and there’s been bipartisan support for that in the past, although it hasn’t passed yet. Those things, I think, are existential in the way they have Balkanized our country in a much more fragmented way even [inaudible 00:41:49] we were in the past.

John Avlon:
You could trace back, and you could look at the decline of the fairness doctrine, and how immediately talk radio immediately supersedes music. There are key moments in this. Newt Gingrich, the rules he put in place to undermine a more unified style of governance in Congress. There are key things we can learn from, but we’re going to have to undo those things. We are going to have to address them to remember the essential wisdom of the country, which is E pluribus unum, out of many, one. We need to emphasize the things that unite us, not divide us, and our politics, and our social media particularly, does not do that, it does the opposite right now.

Preet Bharara:
Podcasts, they’re a force for good, yes?

John Avlon:
Clearly. But can I just make a serious point on top of that joke?

Preet Bharara:
Yes, sure.

John Avlon:
An extended conversation, it’s about people reasoning together, ideally with some meaningful disagreements so it’s not all an amen corner where people hype each other up into sort a lather, where they get to demonize the same folks, but an extended conversation is part of a strong civil society. That’s very different than demonizing people in 240 characters to maximize your reach because that’s how we gauge success. It’s a very different thing.

Preet Bharara:
At the risk of getting you in trouble with new management at CNN, why don’t we have extended conversations more often on cable news? Why can’t you have me on for 40 minutes and have a conversation like this? Why don’t we do that?

John Avlon:
First of all, I do think that there are … I think there’s the room for it, and there should be more extended conversations, but I’ll pair you with by referencing my-

Preet Bharara:
Hold on, your wife has a terrific show.

John Avlon:
Ah!

Preet Bharara:
Oh, sorry, sorry.

John Avlon:
Thank you, that’s where I was going. I recommend Margaret Hoover’s Firing Line on PBS because it’s a half-hour conversation, a contest of ideas that is civil and substantive, and it’s the only place on television that I’m aware of that does that. So, at the risk of simply cheering on my bride because she’s brilliant and beautiful, and bright and shining in every way, that’s one of the things that her show does. She’s revived the William F. Buckley Firing Line tradition, but she’s moved it in a direction that’s consistent with her personality and POV, but that’s part of the virtue. We need to have larger extended civil conversations without shying away from disagreement. Civil society depends on civil discourse.

Preet Bharara:
So talk to the new guy, talk to the new boss.

John Avlon:
I think-

Preet Bharara:
See if they can have me on longer.

John Avlon:
I’m not going to get into CNN stuff, but I do think that Chris understands that, gets it in a fundamental way, [inaudible 00:44:26].

Preet Bharara:
I’ve been on Firing Line, it’s a terrific show, and very substantive, and your wife is terrific.

John Avlon:
Thank you, I agree.

Preet Bharara:
We’re going to have her on in some weeks to critique your performance today. I just want you to know, that’s why we’re having you first so you could do your business, and then she’ll critique it.

John Avlon:
You know what? And then you’ll get the better of that, but when Margaret and I are on CNN together, one of the things we hear is, because we do disagree a bit, we come at things from different perspectives, we often end up in the same place, but the mere function of people disagreeing agreeably, I think gives people hope. I think we need more examples of that in our civil discourse, people who have disagreements, but love each other in whatever form that love may take. I’m going back to my ancient Greek here, but agapē, whatever, that’s what democracy depends upon, an assumption of goodwill among fellow citizens, even, and perhaps especially when you disagree.

Preet Bharara:
The problem is, if some of those people in those tribes are not proceeding in good faith. There are disagreements about policy, but then there are also bad faith lies about reality, and about facts, whether it’s climate change or the election, or something else, and so … It’s not just tribalism, right? We’ve had tribes for a long time, since the beginning of the Republic. As you mentioned, the Founding Fathers talked about the dangers of factions and tribes, by which they meant largely political parties, but I think more recently … maybe I’m wrong, and maybe if I lived in 1843, I would have a different view. It seems like there’s more bad faith about real facts and about reality than there used to be, and compounded with that, you have the ability to disseminate more widely and quickly bad faith lies than ever before. That combination can be beautiful, and great if you’re promoting the truth and virtuous citizenship, but it can be the opposite if people are acting in bad faith. Is bad faith our problem?

John Avlon:
It’s part of the problem, and it’s again, because of the incentive structures. We underestimate how the hyperpartisan economy is self-corrupting, how people have monetized their various tribes. There’s separate economies that they’re looking for the, not just the endorphin rush of appealing to their base, but the actual financial structures, and careerist reasons to fall into line. One of my favorite quotes is by Vaclav Havel who says, “Ideology creates the illusion of dignity and morals while making it easier to part with them.” But ideology is almost highfalutin compared to just the crass careerism that has led many people to excuse things that they would’ve condemned. The basic idea, it goes back to the golden rule, this isn’t complicated, treat other people as you’d like to be treated.

John Avlon:
I’ll jump to the Grover Cleveland, a Democratic crook is as bad as a Republican crook, apply the same standards, but we’re not doing that right now, and a lot of it is simple bad faith, because it’s stark crass hypocrisy. So you got to call it out, but you got to stay more to real principles. You got to make sure that you don’t, in reaction, become what you’re condemning, but you can civilly insist on a fact-based debate, and you don’t … There’s not a mythic moral equivalence on every issue. I think … I’m a centrist, I’m an independent, I believe in those principles as a means to healing the nation. When I look at Abraham Lincoln, I see a guy in the middle of a civil war, who’s assassinated, remain committed to his idea that there’s more than unites us than divides us as Americans, even in the midst of civil war. Those are the inspirations we need to look to, and to model as best we can, even though we’ll fall short.

Preet Bharara:
Do you think we need a third party? Do you have any view on Andrew Yang’s Forward Party?

John Avlon:
I do. So, I am someone who has, since my first book, which was called Independent Nation, about centrist leaders in American politics, and how some succeed and some fail, believe that we do have a market failure in our two party system. I don’t believe the two parties, and this is demonstrably statistically true, they are not equally playing to the base. They’re not equally extreme, but the fact that the number of self-identified independence has risen from around 25% in 1992, to between 45% and 52% now, at the time the parties have moved further to the extremes, there are no progressive Republicans anymore, and very few conservative Democrats, if any, I think speaks to a market failure in our politics. That’s why 62% of Americans say there’s a need for a third party.

John Avlon:
Now that’s a bell curve, there are some folks who are on the far right, and the far left of that. I think where … I think that history would suggest third parties run into trouble, is when they’re primarily focused on running people for president, because they can play a spoiler role. If you want an inspiration beyond Teddy Roosevelt, 1912, this may or may not be the subject of my next book, so you’ve stepped on a hornet’s nest-

Preet Bharara:
You heard it first here.

John Avlon:
Well, it’s not a done deal yet, I’ve got a number of ideas I’m looking at, but in all seriousness, is to look at the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s, culminating in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. If you want to make a difference and offer people an alternative, which is an off-ramp for the polarization, I think it’s enormously dangerous to have one party states, because one party states are invitations to corruption, among other things. But some people in certain states and regions can’t get past the R or the D next to a name, sometimes for good reason. Start building a third party in individual states simultaneously, some which are all Democrats, some which are all Republican. Offer people an alternative focused on reform, and trying to find a way to come together. Begin with mayors, governors, state legislatures. The best thing about mayors as Fiorello La Guardia used to say is, “There’s no Democrat, Republican, or Socialist way to sweep the street.” You got to be a nonpartisan problem solver, and when you’re not you get pretty disastrous mayors like Bill de Blasio.

Preet Bharara:
Could I challenge that?

John Avlon:
Sure.

Preet Bharara:
Can I challenge that for a moment? Because-

John Avlon:
Sure.

Preet Bharara:
If you had said that to me, and I think that’s right, but if you had said that to me three years ago, I would have said, “You’re totally correct.” I used to say about the way the Justice Department should enforce the law is it’s apolitical, and there’s no Democratic, or Republican way to try a Hobbs Act robbery case, right? Apolitical thing. However, there’s been an intervening event in the lives of every American, and every person who lives in the world, many of whom no longer live in the world, and I would’ve thought that the onset of a global deadly pandemic like COVID-19, would’ve been like clearing the snow, and there wouldn’t have been a Democratic or Republican way to deal with that, and yet there was. Is that an unfair comparison?

John Avlon:
I think it’s a fair comparison, but not if you look at a hyperlocal level. Look, I think if you really want to analyze the deeper divides in our society, and this is a comforting thing, I don’t think it’s red state v. Blue state. I think it’s urban versus rural, and those divisions have existed since, literally the Constitutional Convention. I think most mayors tried to look out for public safety in a fairly traditional way, i. e. How can we ensure that we don’t have a pandemic get worse on our hands? Which in some ways, pandemics certainly transcend politics, pandemics don’t care about partisan politics. I think at a governor level, at a center level, we did see the downstream effect of the politicization of the pandemic, which is the dumbest thing in the world we could do, and it led to a million Americans dying, which is more than died in the Spanish influenza epidemic a 100 years ago, which my grandparent’s families died in, which is one of the reasons they came to America. So, it’s tragic that we saw it.

Preet Bharara:
It is a little political. [Inaudible 00:52:06] it’s tribal, and I haven’t looked at every major city mayor in the country, but large city mayors tend to be Democrats. Is that relevant or not?

John Avlon:
Well, not always because actually 80% … 82%, last time I checked, of mayors in America are elected at nonpartisan elections. So, if you look at Charleston, South Carolina, or other places, nonpartisan, and those folks may have been Democrats back in the day, they may or may not be now, other cities have Republican mayors, but they represent an urban republicanism, which means they have to reach out beyond their base. It was that generation of third way mayors in the 1990s who helped turn things around in this country. So, I don’t know that that’s always the case, but your point’s taken. We’ve seen a major breakdown of things that should be well beyond partisan politics, like public health, and that’s a symptom of our larger sickness that we need to deal with.

Preet Bharara:
Yeah. I mean, there’s a little bit of a movement against expertise.

John Avlon:
Yup, Tom Nichols has written about that.

Preet Bharara:
Yeah, he has, a guest on the show, who now likes Indian food finally.

John Avlon:
I’m coming to dinner next time.

Preet Bharara:
Absolutely, anytime, and a little bit it’s … The rhetoric that’s used is anti-elite, and some of the people who have the anti-elite rhetoric have the most elite educations and credentials.

John Avlon:
Oh, the Ivy League populous drive me crazy, absolutely.

Preet Bharara:
I won’t name any of them at the moment.

John Avlon:
Name them.

Preet Bharara:
[Inaudible 00:53:35] that phenomenon … You can name them.

John Avlon:
All of them in the Senate. I mean, my God, go through the list, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, I mean, it will be on and on and on.

Preet Bharara:
Well, you’re the elitist. You’re the elitist because you’re on TV.

John Avlon:
Yeah, I guess so. My point is just these folks who … I mean, some of these folks went to Harvard, and Yale, and Oxford, like Senator John Kennedy or DeSantis. This is one of the things the Founders feared.

Preet Bharara:
One of the jobs you had in your life was being the principal speech writer for a particular mayor. You talked about mayors, and I said many of them are Democrats, this was a Republican mayor, and my question is very simple, that man, Rudy Giuliani, what happened?

John Avlon:
This is the question I get the most, especially from people who knew me back in the day. I was Rudy’s chief speech writer in the second term, through 9/11, I was proud to work for him then. He’d be the first to say he wasn’t a perfect person, but I think the 20 years of Rudy and Bloomberg turned around New York City in a fundamental way. He was part of that whole third generation of mayors, third way generation of mayors that made a huge difference, Dick Riordan in LA, Steve Goldsmith, Indianapolis, on and on and on.

John Avlon:
Look, Rudy is somebody. I’ll tell you the two quotes that I most associated with Rudy, one was, “To be locked into partisan politics doesn’t permit you to think clearly.” He is no longer thinking clearly, and hasn’t been thinking clearly for over a half dozen years. I think there are lots of reasons for that. I think he went through a rough part of his life. I think there’s an ex mayor’s disease where you become addicted to attention. I think Trump appealed to a lot of his worst instincts, but gave him relevance. He was never a big fan of the Clinton’s, but clearly things got out of control.

John Avlon:
The other thing, which is particularly tragic, as someone who I think was regarded, I mean, you were a US attorney for the Southern District, regarded as one of the best lawyers, prosecutors of his generation. He used to say that, “The law is about to search for the truth.” Well, we couldn’t be further from the truth in the way he has conducted himself in recent years, and both those things I view as genuine tragedies. I think he is so far from being his best self, and the damage he has done to his legacy, which he has made a decision not to care about apparently, unfortunately, his last chapter, his worst chapter will largely define him in the eyes of his fellow Americans. I don’t think that will entirely eclipse 9/11, nor do I think it should, his leadership. More attention should be given to some of the policies he put in place that were enormously effective in New York, but it’s a tragedy what’s happened to him.

Preet Bharara:
Do you have any continuing relationship with him?

John Avlon:
I saw him at a funeral for Denny Young, who was one of his closest aides, who was a wonderful man. I was proud to work in that city hall with my colleagues, and I tried to stay in touch with them even … because of our disagreements around the Trump era, but when he did the trial by combat thing, that was too much for me.

Preet Bharara:
You wrote a book in 2010 called Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, if you were to write that book today, would it be three times as long or not?

John Avlon:
At least twice the size. I mean, I did a second edition.

Preet Bharara:
Back at 2010, it’s almost quaint you’re talking about this.

John Avlon:
It is, but it’s a reminder that we’ve been dealing with this in microcosm for a long time. It’s gotten worse and worse. I mean, Trump doesn’t even appear in the book. I think in the second edition, he makes a brief appearance around his pumping up of birtherism, which is the first of his political sins in some respects. But, what I did with that book, and I tried to do this in my reporting, it came out of my reporting when I was then a columnist for The Daily Beast, covering the aftermath of the 2008 election, the first year of Obama, looking at some of the massive resistance, et cetera, et cetera, is I would say, “Okay, look at this figure.” Let’s say Glenn Beck, and I’d say, “To understand Glenn Beck, you need to understand the John Birch society.” So what I try to do is take reporting about a contemporary figure, and then open the aperture to look at the larger strain that he’s tapping into.

John Avlon:
I did that with all the figures, and a lot of them, like the hatred groups I wrote about, which was my term for the self-styled malicious vigilante groups. I had one of the earliest interviews with Stewart Rhodes, who is the founder of the Oath Keepers, who obviously played a major role in January 6th, interviewed the founder of the Three Percenters, a guy named Mike Vanderboegh, who gave me a quote I’ll never forget, which is, “All politics at this point is prelude to civil war.” Some of these characters have, unfortunately, only become more prominent, but I think that’s a book that’s unfortunately aged well, I guess.

Preet Bharara:
We started talking about current events with the search at Mar-a-Lago, and I want to … as we’re getting close to the end, I want to ask you about something else that was pushed off the front pages, at least for a day, because of the searches, and that’s this incredible vote in the Senate for the Inflation Reduction Act, which does many, many things, including giving a lot of tax incentives, and other incentives towards conduct that will help produce carbon footprints, and help the climate change crisis. Some weeks ago, people said that, politically, Joe Biden was dead in the water. I know you’ve talked about this, you get asked about it, and you ask your guests about it, now people say he has had an amazing week. We don’t know if that has any effect on the polls just yet, maybe the polls are ossified, and that’s just the way politics is these days. But based on your experience, both in politics as a historian, and as a journalist, must the story about Joe Biden repeat in familiar patterns and cycles because that’s how journalism is?

John Avlon:
What do you mean by that?

Preet Bharara:
So, you have a narrative that prevails. People say this all the time, and I don’t know if it’s true or not, I haven’t done a study, and they look for things that counter that narrative. So, the narrative is someone is up, someone is up, someone’s a high-flying … that’s the most common narrative, right? The high-flying, inspiring leader commits some error or some sin, and they fall from grace, and everyone turns on them. More rare, but also a wonderful story for journalistic mythology, is someone is counted out, counted out, they’re the underdog, they’re failing, and they have a dramatic turnaround. I feel like we often have cycles of up and down. Is that fair?

John Avlon:
I think it’s true about humanities-

Preet Bharara:
Well, if it’s true then it must be fair.

John Avlon:
Well, no, those two things are not always the same. I mean, I think it’s clearly true that narratives exist in politics because they exist in human nature. We tell ourselves stories to understand the world, right? Joan Didion, I think, said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” I think that politics is perception, and so narratives do exist, and things that contradict or reinforce the narrative tend to get picked up more. But even larger than the question of narrative, of course, is fact, and here’s where it can be useful to try to impose historic perspective on the present tense. How will things look in 20 years? 30 years? How will Joe Biden’s presidency be judged? Obviously, it’s incomplete and you can’t say definitively, but here’s what you can say, more bipartisan legislation has passed this congressional session. Even before the partisan, through reconciliation and Inflation Reduction Act, with a 50-50 Senate.

John Avlon:
If I were to pull, if we were to pull all the articles that pronounced Joe Biden’s agenda dead, those folks would look foolish. Instead, I think as our colleague, Fareed Zakaria, has written, and The Economist has a very good editorial about, Biden has shown willfully, fitfully, but over time, that it is perhaps possible to still govern for the center. Now, he has not coalesced the center around him, and indeed independence started abandoning him really precipitously with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, almost precisely one year ago, certainly this month. But these accomplishments are extraordinary, and they are real, they’re not token play to the base stuff, the CHIPS Act is a major investment in American competitiveness in R&D. The Infrastructure Bill is something that is overdue, that has been talked about, presidents … remember, Infrastructure Week forever and ever, amen, happening. Then this bill, which lowers prescription drug prices, starts dealing with climate change, accelerates investment in non-fossil fuel energy, while raising revenue, it’s fiscally responsible in that sense, is a major accomplishment.

John Avlon:
So, too often, I think, and I think it’s partly human nature, we focus on conflict, and I don’t think we spend enough time talking about successes. I think that’s a criticism of the media that’s rooted in human nature, but I think we need to counterbalance that, because we need to celebrate accomplishments, and then do a better job covering governing, frankly, rather than defaulting to the horse race, and the conflict de jure, the outrage of the week.

Preet Bharara:
I’m [inaudible 01:03:03] off the hook a little bit, and say maybe the fault is not in the journalist, maybe the fault is in the audience, because the audience can choose which journalists they want to listen to. What’s crazy to me, I don’t have the exact figure in front of me, what’s crazy to me is there are a large percentage of Americans who don’t know about some of these successes. I saw poll some weeks ago, and I don’t have the number off the top of my head, some significant percentage, particularly Republicans, have no idea that the Infrastructure Bill was passed and signed into law, and part of the reason is there are no shovels in the ground yet. But people just choose not to learn stuff, and you can avoid … I’m not even talking about the people who avoid the news generally. There are people who even do pay attention to the news, but they’re in their silos, depending on what channel they watch, and who they follow on social media. Is it fair to blame the audience, and the tribalism of the audience here?

John Avlon:
I think it’s a contributing factor for certain. I mean, we have self-segregated ourselves into separate political realities, and the danger is places that label themselves as news organizations sometimes do not cover breaking news if it conflicts with their narrative. You hope that over time shovels in the ground, and lower prescription drug costs, and on and on, and on will start to seep in, but of course … We, as human beings, we’re good at reacting to short-term perceived crises, we are bad at dealing with long-term crises, and so that’s part of our job, is to impose a sense of perspective.

John Avlon:
Now, we talked earlier about the way that algorithms reinforce that short-termism, that reinforces and elevates conflict and controversy, and so you see conspiracy entrepreneurs making tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars by spreading lies. So, that’s part of the challenge we need to face to, I think, defend our democracy, frankly, is to adjust those algorithms in the incentive structures that lead people to appeal to the worst elements of human nature, rather than are better angels. But it also requires leadership in politics, and media, and then in the part of average citizens. Citizens need to recognize that they have a responsibility too, that they vote with their eyeballs every day, whether they know it or not, and whatever they give their attention to in the attention economy. So, we have our work cut out for us, but we do ourselves a disservice if we don’t celebrate our successes, and highlight when there are bipartisan wins. We need to make a conscious effort to do that, just so we can live in a fact-based reality, and remember that transcendent truth, that there’s more than unites us than divides us as Americans, there has to be.

Preet Bharara:
Well, that sounds pretty good, and I buy all that, so I’m going to end by asking you a personal question. You and I have talked about politics, and I’m going to ask you something that you once asked me. You have worked for a politician. You have written speeches for a politician. You’ve studied history. You’re extremely eloquent on these issues. You care about the country. You care about democracy. You care about progress. You have views on what the parties should be saying. You have views on how tribal we should or should not be, why isn’t there a political future for you? Why aren’t you doing that?

John Avlon:
Well-

Preet Bharara:
I mean, the books are nice. The books are nice, John, but how about some bills?

John Avlon:
I appreciate that very much, and I have asked you about that, and I wish you had run. For myself, I made a decision early on that people who are interested in politics shouldn’t run for office too early in their lives, that it should be a chapter of your life that people do, and that you need a personal and public identity separate from politics, and that ideally-

Preet Bharara:
Oh, you have that. You have that.

John Avlon:
yeah , and I’m trying to answer you as honestly as I can. I’ve got a young family, and I love what I do, but I do believe that ideally politics and journalism are two sides of the same coin, because you care about the country, because you care about civics, you want to elevate the debate. I would be honored at the right time, to roll up the sleeves and get in the arena, because I think that’s part of a well-rounded life of a citizen in a democracy.

Preet Bharara:
Ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here, he’s running.

John Avlon:
Stop it. Stop it.

Preet Bharara:
He’s running as a-

John Avlon:
I’m very, very … I love what I’m doing now.

Preet Bharara:
Well, that was not even … Now, I’m very excited, we’re going to have to talk after this. So, I want to remind everyone your most recent book, Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, excellent, and maybe you can tell people the name and the link for your political action committee.

John Avlon:
Stop it. Stop it. Tune into CNN, New Day, Reality Check.

Preet Bharara:
John Avlon‘s exploratory committee, [inaudible 01:07:46] even talk about what office.

John Avlon:
Reality Check every morning on New Day’s CNN.

Preet Bharara:
John, thanks for being here, it’s a real treat.

John Avlon:
Thank you, my friend. Great talk with you.

Preet Bharara:
My conversation with John Avlon continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider, again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

THE BUTTON:

Preet Bharara:
So, folks there’s been a lot of news this week, but I want to end the show by talking about what could end up being the signature legislative achievement of the Biden presidency. I’m talking, of course, about the Inflation Reduction Act or the IRA, which passed on Sunday, after an all-night marathon, what they call a vote-a-rama. The deal was announced somewhat shockingly, just days earlier by Senator Joe Manchin, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, but its passage was not a certainty until Vice President Kamala Harris cast the decisive 51st vote. Now, it’s expected to pass in the House and to become law, the legislation which achieves some of what was proposed in the failed Build Back Better Plan focuses on climate action, healthcare, and corporate taxes. It’s the largest single investment the federal government has ever made to combat the climate crisis, about 370 billion worth.

Preet Bharara:
The bill includes regulation around the fossil fuel industry, and incentives for transitioning to cleaner energy solutions like wind and solar. It also extends the Affordable Care Act healthcare subsidies for three years, which will prevent spikes in the cost of insurance for roughly 13 million Americans, and among other things, it allows Medicare to negotiate the price of certain prescription drugs, and it caps the annual healthcare costs for seniors at $2,000. This is a very, very significant bill, and one that will make a difference in the lives of many millions of Americans, but I also mentioned it because if you allow me a point of personal privilege, I used to work for the man who got it done, Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer.

Preet Bharara:
Now, I often talk about my time as US Attorney because it’s relevant to the topics we discuss, and all the cases that unfold at DOJ, but as proud as I am of the time I spent in, and leading that office, I’m equally proud to have worked for Senator Schumer as his chief counsel on the judiciary committee. As the Washington Post reported, it was Schumer, who after secret negotiations with centrist Senator Joe Manchin, and later conversations with Kyrsten Sinema, resurrected the bill that most people thought had died without Manchin’s support in July. So I was watching, the vote play out on live TV on Sunday, and I thought about my time in Senator Schumer’s office, and the thing that moved me the most, was that Schumer himself seemed to get emotional on the Senate floor, that’s not so common for him.

Preet Bharara:
What else moved me, was at the end of his remark, he spent a good amount of time thanking the people who don’t have household names, who we will never see posturing on the Senate floor, but are as responsible as anyone for the unlikely progress that was made with this bill. Those are the members of Senator Schumer’s staff, and I will tell you, because I was one of them, that he rides his team hard. He demands truly heroic efforts from them day in and day out, sometimes all night long, but he appreciates them more than any member of the Senate, and he ticked them off one by one, name by name.

Chuck Schumer:
And of course, I cannot forget my own staff, the best staff ever on Capitol Hill, and my members know it. The members know how good my staff is. I am so dedicated to them, the best in the business. Mike Lynch, and Martin Brennan have been with me just about since I started being senator, and they are just such rocks in our office.

Preet Bharara:
So, I want to add my thanks to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and all the other members of Congress who awakened to the challenges we face in the world, and came together to pass this important bill. But also, to each one of the staffers who are working for days and days to get this done, many of whom are dear friends of mine, and I want to say to them, because it’s warranted, thank you for your service to this country.

Preet Bharara:
Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, John Avlon. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice, tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the hashtag #askpreet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338, that’s 669-24-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. The CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Wiener, Jake Kaplan, Sean Walsh, Namita Sha, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Das. I’m your host Preet Bharara, stay tuned.