The Face of Breaking News 

CNN anchor Dana Bash shares the tricks of the cable news trade. 

For the last 20 years, Dana Bash has been a mainstay at CNN — working her way up from segment producer to Chief Political Correspondent, and now (as of last week), co-anchor of State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. 

Bash’s experiences have run the gamut of cable news journalism. She knows what it feels like to get a prized scoop. She’s felt the “rush” of breaking news on live television in front of millions of people. And she’s among the most well-sourced reporters in all of Washington, DC. 

So what does Bash think we can expect from the early Biden administration? And what lessons has she learned about the psychology of the nation’s most influential elected officials? 

The following transcript has been edited for clarity. 

(1/28/2021)

STAY TUNED LISTENER Q&A

Preet Bharara:

Now let’s get to your questions. As you all know by now, the second impeachment trial in the Senate is coming up for former president Donald Trump on February 9th, 2021. There are a lot of questions whirling around about procedure and process and who presides and what the rules are and if it’s fair and if there’s conflicts of interest, so let me address a couple of those.

This particular question comes from Twitter user Archimedes2020. GOP senators keep broadcasting their votes and feelings on impeachment, aren’t they like jurors? If this happened in a civil or criminal court, wouldn’t they have to be recused?

Preet Bharara:

Well, you raise an excellent point, and these are the kinds of issues that we talked about not that long ago, 14, 15 months ago when we were getting ready for the first Senate trial on impeachment for Donald Trump. The thing to remember is, not withstanding the rhetoric that’s being used by Republican and Democratic senators alike, and the fact that it is called a trial and everyone understands it to be a trial, the vision you have in your head of what a proper criminal or civil trial in a courtroom looks like doesn’t resemble what’s going to happen in the Senate, and you might recall that from last time. Every single one of the 100 senators has a view on the president, knows the president, many of them have opined on what they think about the president’s conduct in connection with the insurrection and in connection with other things, some of them, as has been pointed out, might actually be complicit in the insurrection depending on the facts that you believe. I’m referring, of course, to Senator Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.

Preet Bharara:

Why is this okay? It’s okay, I guess, because that’s the constitutional scheme. The founders understood that for purposes of impeachment and a trial following impeachment by the House, it’s a political exercise. Although terms like trial and jurors and evidence are used, there’s actually no accepted standard of proof, burden of proof like we have in a criminal case I.e. proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There are no particular rules of evidence that need to be complied with, there are no particular rules of confrontation and how witnesses are able to answer questions, there’s no requirement that there be witnesses at all, and we saw that last time. As you point out Archimedes2020, if this were a real civil or criminal trial, every single juror would be struck for cause. In a real trial, jurors are not even allowed to know the defendant much less have conversation with the defendant, express views about the defendant. In a real trial, jurors are not allowed to read anything about the case in the news.

Preet Bharara:

In this instance, most of the 100 senators are not only reading about the case, they’re going on news channels themselves to talk about the case. So put out of your head all these issues of whether or not the trial is like a real civil or criminal trial in federal or state court, it’s not. But you do raise interesting questions about fairness because it is the case. Even if it’s an impeachment trial, it doesn’t perfectly match what goes on in a regular trial. People will have more or less faith in the proceedings if they seem to be fair. So there are some issues I think that should be dealt with sensitively by the House managers and by the senators themselves. So senators should take care to show that they are dealing with the proceedings in a serious way, that they take the responsibility seriously, and that they will do their best to be fair to the president given the evidence and given the arguments that are going to be made by both sides.

In connection with that, another listener, Elizabeth from California, wrote this question in an email, “Why is Senator Pat Leahy going to preside over the impeachment trial in the Senate? Doesn’t the constitution require that Chief Justice Roberts preside? How can Leahy be impartial if he’s a sitting democratic senator who experienced the insurrection firsthand?”

Preet Bharara:

Again, these are great questions and they relate to what I was saying a moment ago. First, with respect to your question about the requirement that Chief Justice Roberts preside, that is true if the impeachment trial is of a sitting president. Let’s just go to Article 1, Section 3, Clause 6, which I have handily in front of me, of the constitution it says among other things, “When the president of the United States is tried, the chief justice shall preside.” It’s a nice little rhyming couplet as well.

Preet Bharara:

In this case, of course, Donald Trump is not the president of United States and the constitution doesn’t say with respect to this provision, when the president or former president of the United States is tried. So the chief justice is not obligated to sit, and we know from reporting that Chief Justice Roberts probably has no interest at all in presiding over the trial. So that honor goes to Patrick Leahy in his capacity as the president pro tempore of the Senate, the longest serving member of the democratic side. How can he be impartial? Well, as we just discussed, it’s hard to think of any of the 100 senators who are jurors in this case that they would be impartial. But a couple of things I think mitigate the concern here. Number one, the job of the person who’s presiding over the Senate trial is largely ceremonial and administrative.

Preet Bharara:

You’ll recall that when Justice John Roberts presided, he didn’t do a hell of a lot. Decisions about what evidence comes in and how the process unfolds are decided by the members of the Senate. They make the rules, they decide how they’re going to do it, and they’re the ones who vote on ultimate conviction or no conviction. So I don’t think we have to worry so much that Patrick Leahy who’s a Democrat has the ability to put the thumb on the scale in some way.

Preet Bharara:

Then besides that, as I said before, keep in mind that there are lots and lots of other ways in which this trial is not the same as a regular trial. Yes, in real life, if you can call it that. You can not have the presiding judge in the case also have a vote alongside the 12 members of the jury, which is what would be happening here. So I don’t think it’s that big a deal. But that said, optically, it’s not the greatest look because reasonable, thoughtful people like you are wondering and asking the question, how can it be that you have a Senator from one side, at least in a formal sense, presiding over the whole thing?

Here’s another question about the impeachment trial from Trudy who writes an email from Hawaii. “Can you please clarify how many votes are needed to convict Donald Trump? Is it two thirds of the total members, two thirds of the members present at the time of the vote? What, if any, effect would any abstention have? Thank you.”

Preet Bharara:

Well, we go back to our favorite provision of the constitution for purposes of this morning, Article 1, Section 3, Clause 6, which says very clearly, “The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.” Goes on to say, “And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present.” So that’s two thirds of the members present, very clearly written in the constitution, no debate about that. So if some members of the Senate choose not to show up, then obviously the denominator changes and then the number you would need in the numerator to reach two thirds would change as well.

Preet Bharara:

There’s no evidence to suggest that halfway conscientious Republicans will abstain, not show up on the floor of the Senate for the vote. Well, we actually have seen this week is that the likelihood of conviction is pretty low given that on the procedural vote on the question of whether or not it was even constitutional to proceed, only five Republicans voted along with all the Democrats to say that the process is constitutional. That gives you a sense of where the Republicans are and how much shorter the 17 vote threshold we’re going to be in connection with this trial.

This is a question that comes from Twitter user Ben Gerald1, “Since Bannon has been pardoned, can he be forced to testify at the trial of his former co-conspirators?”

Preet Bharara:

On other occasions, I’ve made my distaste for the Steve Bannon pardon clear. I think it’s an outrageous pardon for a lot of different reasons. And one of the reasons that I’ve pointed out, that to the extent a pardon is supposed to be about forgiving particular conduct in a criminal case, either the charges were too much or unfair or overdone or the sentence was too long.

In this case, you have none of that. One reason why you know you have none of that is that the three co-defendants of Steve Bannon were not pardoned. So if there’s something problematic about the case, something problematic about the charges, you would have expected all of them to be pardoned or none of them would be pardoned. And there’s nothing that’s been indicated in the record or in the statement from the White House that somehow Steve Bannon was different from the other defendants. What was different about Steve Bannon was not his conduct in the case or the nature of the charges. What was different about Steve Bannon is that he’s a friend and ally of the former president who the former president thinks could help him in some way maybe to start a new party or get back on his feet politically, who knows?

Preet Bharara:

Now, as to your question about whether or not he could be forced to testify at the Southern District of New York trial, I think a lot of people very quickly say the fact that you’re pardoned means you have no fifth amendment privilege anymore, it’s not as simple as that. Because it is possible based on certain conduct that even though you may not have criminal exposure any longer in a federal court, you could have criminal exposure in the state court.

Preet Bharara:

In fact, the way I view the charges in the Bannon case, remember this fraud with respect to collecting money from people who supported Trump and supported the building of a wall to give money for that purpose, it’s a fairly straightforward fraud that would violate the statutes in many, many jurisdictions, in New York and in other places because there are victims all over the country. So I think there is an argument that Steve Bannon and his lawyers will be able to make that to go into federal court and testify would subject him to criminal exposure by the Manhattan DA’s office and maybe some other places as well. I think a judge would probably agree with that argument.

The final question comes from Twitter user DJH11375, excellent name. The question is, is three too many Preet Bharara podcasts to listen to every week? #ASKPREET.

Preet Bharara:

My answer is no. I guess the Twitter user is referring to the fact that we have launched a new podcast, Doing Justice. It’s a limited series narrative podcast, six episodes based on my book of the same name that was a New York times bestseller. The first episode is out, I hope you’ll check it out. Every episode tells a story of some drama and dilemma that we faced in the Southern District of New York. So please search Doing Justice wherever you listen to your podcasts and subscribe for free. I hope you enjoy it. And by the way, let us know what you think. We’ll be right back after a short break.

STAY TUNED INTERVIEW WITH DANA BASH

Preet Bharara:

My guest this week is Dana Bash, a long time CNN journalist and anchor. Bash was a prominent voice throughout the networks wall to wall post post-election coverage. If you watched, you probably also wondered if these people ever sleep. As we embark on the Biden presidency, Bash joins me to discuss why Trump’s allies would come on CNN, whether Congress can unite to pass legislation, and how she felt during the Capitol insurrection on January 6th. Dana Bash, welcome to the show.

Dana Bash:

It’s so good to be here with you, finally.

Preet Bharara:

Finally. Well, I don’t know if you remember, but you were booked once a while back.

Dana Bash:

I do, and I failed on you.

Preet Bharara:

You canceled on us at the last minute. Now, it’s taken me two years to get over it. But the circumstance-

Dana Bash:

Wasn’t it the day that we got the Mueller report or something?

Preet Bharara:

No.

Dana Bash:

It was something huge.

Preet Bharara:

You don’t know what it was?

Dana Bash:

What was it?

Preet Bharara:

We went back and the team researched it, it was the day after the election in 2018. We thought you would do a great commentary on what it meant for the Republic, and I think that morning Jeff sessions was fired and various other crazy things happened. Your boss, our boss, I guess in a way, wanted you on the air.

Dana Bash:

Yep.

Preet Bharara:

Audio wasn’t good enough for you that day.

Dana Bash:

It’s so much easier for me that it is our boss, not just my boss. I apologize.

Preet Bharara:

So I should say to folks, so you and I have known each other for a long time, we’ve been friends, we were colleagues at CNN, do you recall how we met?

Dana Bash:

I remember. I remember generally if you have any-

Preet Bharara:

Lets see if you can get this right.

Dana Bash:

If you have any stories, I want to hear it. But generally-

Preet Bharara:

It was 2007, you were covering the Congress.

Dana Bash:

And you were chief counsel for Senator, a very low key, unassuming Senator from New York named Chuck Schumer. You were counsel for him on the judiciary committee. Did we meet during a Supreme Court nomination fight or was it something else?

Preet Bharara:

No. We met at the airport.

Dana Bash:

We met at the airport, oh my gosh.

Preet Bharara:

We were both in line for the shuttle.

Dana Bash:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Either coming to New York or going to DC. We were stuck in line together, and I think you told me lots and lots of secrets, you told me a lot about your sources. But I’ve kept that secret all these many lies.

Dana Bash:

That’s so kind of you, I really appreciate it. Oh my gosh, that’s right. Then, of course, I saw you in the hallway and I stopped you until you told me things. which of course you never-

Preet Bharara:

I told you nothing.

Dana Bash:

Of course you never did, ever, you were a vox.

Preet Bharara:

I should congratulate you, as I said in the intro, you have been, I guess, it’s promoted to co-anchor of State of the Union, the all-important Sunday morning show. The reason I hesitated on the word promotion, it’s a lot of work. And now it’s going to… So, we have a lot of things to talk about in the news, but I just wonder, because the Sunday shows fascinate me and I’ve been watching them as a nerd from the time I was in high school, several of the Sunday shows, and still do every week, how much work is that?

Dana Bash:

It’s a lot of work. I know this is F4 on your computer when you work in television, but in this case, what I’m about to say is really, really true, which is the team. I’m coming into a scenario where the team on State of the Union, the producers are A+++, they’re so good. I’ve had the benefit of working with them for a long time because I filled in a lot, I was the primary fill-in when Jake would go on vacation. So they’re really amazing. But you know how it goes, like with your podcast, the first challenge is landing the big gig. Which I know it took you three years to get me, so you see how hard it is.

Preet Bharara:

You are a very hard to get. I got Tapper before I got you.

Dana Bash:

I was in pre-jail and then I got let out because I messed up so badly. But in any event, honestly at the beginning of the week or even weeks before, it’s the race to see who you can get, who would make sense. Usually on a Monday, you don’t have a clue what the new cycle is going to be by the end of the week or what will happen.

Preet Bharara:

Especially during Trump.

Dana Bash:

Oh my gosh.

Preet Bharara:

The news cycle changed completely on Fridays and Saturdays.

Dana Bash:

It changed from 8:00 AM on Sunday to 9:00 AM on Sunday, so it was just totally bananas. But look, there are a couple of things. Number one is the team is awesome and we work on not just obviously what guests we get, but when we get them, what to ask, how to ask, it’s a real collaborative effort. The other thing that’s cool is before I had the honor of meeting you in an airport, at that time I was in Capitol Hill, a reporter or producer? At that point I was a reporter, I was on air. My life in TV news, it really started in the tape library at CNN. But my first real job within a year after that was on these weekend shows. So I was a producer on the shows, I used to help book the show, write the show, write the pieces, I was in the control room, time to show the whole thing. So it’s cool for me to be doing this now, but I also have a sense of what it takes from the inside out. So I have a three 60 view of it.

Preet Bharara:

Can you get more granular for a moment? So let’s say hypothetically by Friday evening you know who the guests are going to be for the Sunday morning show and it doesn’t change, do you work all day, Friday night, Saturday? What time do you get up on Sunday morning? What’s the weekend look like?

Dana Bash:

So the weekend looks like yes, working. Saturday really is when the team and I get together and go over where we want to go, how we want to handle it. First just broadly and then down really in a granular way down to the ifs, ands, and buts. It changes a lot, but that is how specific we get. Then Sunday morning, I get up around 5:00 because unlike you Preet, where you can just roll out of bed and go on TV, it takes a lot of work for me. I have to do hair and make up.

Preet Bharara:

That is not true, come on.

Dana Bash:

I have a lot.

Preet Bharara:

Are you going into the studio these days during the pandemic or[crosstalk 00:17:32]?

Dana Bash:

Yeah, we are. You haven’t been in?

Preet Bharara:

I have not. I was asked to come in last week and I’m still more cautious in the current [crosstalk 00:17:41].

Dana Bash:

You should be, it’s totally understandable.

Preet Bharara:

So I have my nice home studio with my bookcase. So you get up at 5:00, you rush into the studio.

Dana Bash:

Yeah, and I go in, rush into the hair and makeup chair, and I’m there for about three hours. No I get in and get all dolled up, and then we have a final meeting with the team at around… I track calling, track the open. So I put my voice to the open of the show, which you see at the beginning, which is all a fancy beginning to the program. Then we have our final discussion and then I get in the chair and we go. Sometimes we have pre-tapes sometimes we have to tape a guest a little earlier than the actual show, but for the most part it’s done live. Yes, I’m in the studio, but pre-COVID, we were in the giant studio which you’ve been in DC.

Preet Bharara:

Yes.

Dana Bash:

With a lot of depth and a lot of whizzbang and a lot of light. Now I’m in a little, what we call, flash studio. So I’m alone, there’s no camera person there, there’s no nothing, it’s all done robotically for safety.

Preet Bharara:

Do you find it harder or in any way easier? What’s the difference in difficulty of interviewing someone, particularly someone who’s not being very cooperative, live face-to-face at a desk as opposed to on a TV screen?

Dana Bash:

That’s such a good question. I always prefer to have a face-to-face interview because there are human cues that each of the people, I and the person I’m interviewing, can take. It does go both ways, which I think is where you were going with that question. On the one hand you can be better about interrupting because if you have a physical cue to the person you’re interviewing that you want to ask another question to they’ll stop.

Preet Bharara:

When you make a face, like making a face for example.

Dana Bash:

Right, exactly. Or you can put your hand a little bit forward or… No, I’m not making a face, or maybe you’re making the face right now, you want me to shut up.

Preet Bharara:

No, no.

Dana Bash:

But you put your hand forward or you can do something in a physical way that you just can’t do when you’re remote. The flip side is if you’re having a contentious interview, which I have had in person, and they are determined to continue the contentious dynamic of that interview, they can just watch you try to say, okay, I’m done, and roll right over you, which has definitely happened. So it goes both ways, but for the most part, I prefer to be in person. Don’t you?

Preet Bharara:

I used to, it’s complicated for me.

Dana Bash:

How come?

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know if I should break down the fourth wall too much for listeners.

Dana Bash:

Oh, all right.

Preet Bharara:

I now have a preference in some ways for not being in person and being remote and not being able to see the person. In part because, maybe surprising to some folks, at the beginning when I started the podcast, I would fly places to go interview people because I thought it was so important to be in the room. I flew to interview Leon Panetta, who was my first guest, I flew out to interview the Pod Save America guys, Judd Apatow, to LA at great expense and time. There’s something about having the audio experience, that is the same experience that the audience has. It allows me not to have to worry about making eye contact with the person, making sure they have water, and all these other things. When I have someone now just in my ears, I can look down at my notes, I can focus purely on their voice, and in some ways it’s an easier experience for me.

Dana Bash:

That is so interesting because I’m-

Preet Bharara:

Is that surprising?

Dana Bash:

No, it makes perfect sense. Because as you’re saying that, I’m sitting here in my little home office looking up, staring into space, listening to you, and that’s the experience I’m having. I’m having the audio experience and not other other senses. That’s really fascinating.

Preet Bharara:

Well, I get interviewed a lot also, and when I’m being interviewed, I vastly prefer to be in person, to be able to see the other human speaking to me and interacting and pick up on their cues. But when I’m doing the interviewing, I like both. Here’s the other thing, I think if it’s someone I’ve never met before and never spoken to before, then pure audio is not great because there’s some value in having those few minutes before you tape in the studio to bond with someone and maybe have some conversation, break the ice, as they say. Do you do that in the commercial break when you’re going to have a guest?

Dana Bash:

I try to.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have go-to lines and jokes to soften them up?

Dana Bash:

No. Like you said, it depends on whether or not I know them. These days it’s are you healthy? Are you okay? Is your family okay? Which it’s not just pablum, it’s a real question. On the other hand, if know an interview is going to be contentious, it’s a little bit of a toss up whether or not you want to talk to them before or afterwards, right?

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Dana Bash:

Because you want to maybe sometimes keep distance. It’s probably, obviously when you were prosecuting terrorists, you didn’t have the option of buttering them up. But other than that, when you’re in the courtroom, the dynamic probably isn’t that different and that you want to keep a distance to do the best you can.

Preet Bharara:

Well, actually, that’s interesting. I write about interrogation in my book, Doing Justice. And in fact, there is an opportunity if you’re trying to get the terrorist or any other criminal defendant to flip and cooperate and tell you about their scheme and tell you about their cohorts. There is a period of buttering up. I tell stories about how bringing them sandwiches or their native food from whatever country they’re from if they’re not from the United States causes people to want to talk. It is obviously very different, there’s a difference between being interviewed on State of the Union and in an interrogation room at 26 Federal Plaza where the FBI is housed in New York. But the principles of trying to get people to talk and to open up, they overlap no matter what the scenario is [crosstalk 00:23:29].

Dana Bash:

It’s human, what you just said about giving them their native food and everything, it’s a basic element of humanity.

Preet Bharara:

Just as a general matter, I wasn’t planning to go in this direction, to talk to the psychology of humans. But do you find it to be the case, having done this for a long time, that the default for most human beings is that they want to be left alone and not speak or they want to get stuff off their chest and do want to speak?

Dana Bash:

I think it’s the latter, do you?

Preet Bharara:

I do too. I think that’s not necessarily intuitive, I think people want it. I guess it’s not clear that they want to spill their secrets and be interrogated about things that they’ve done on live television. But I do, I think as a general matter, people want to be heard and they want their stories to be told.

Dana Bash:

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t mean to belabor the point on difficult guests, but it’s just fascinating to me. If you’re going to have an obstreperous guest who’s not going to be so cooperative, I have a number of questions. Question one is, why the hell did they come on the show if they know it’s going to be that kind of an interaction?

Dana Bash:

That’s a really good question. It depends on the person. During the Trump years, a lot of times they would come on the show because they wanted to show their boss, the president, how well they could fight. And it was real, we were talking about real issues. But the answer to why they would put themselves through it, that’s the answer, because he wanted people to go out there and fight for him and speak his language. So that was definitely a thing in those years. Other times there are people who enjoy the debate and enjoy the fight. It’s probably going to be a long time before we talk to somebody like Ted Cruz again because of his involvement in the big lie about the election. But he’s somebody who was a debater his whole life and he actually enjoys it in normal times.

Dana Bash:

Lindsey Graham is another example of that, he doesn’t mind the tough questions. He enjoys it even though he knows he’s going to get a lot of them these days. Again, he’s another one we haven’t talked to in a while, but he would be okay with it. In other times, it just depends on where they’re coming from. Sometimes people know that they have to take their lumps and take their medicine depending on if they’re trying to come through a bad time and come out the other side, sometimes you just have to answer the tough questions.

Preet Bharara:

But then there are other times where I’ve heard you and other anchors say, depending on the circumstance, “We asked all 52 Republican senators if they would want to come on the show and they all said no.” So there are moments when people just flee the scene, right?

Dana Bash:

Oh, yeah. And that was definitely the case more times than not in the Trump era because they didn’t want to have to answer for his shenanigans. It went obviously way beyond shenanigans towards the end, it got extremely dangerous. Those that did, are now paying the price in the court of public opinion, in that court in which facts actually matter, not in the echo chamber where they tend to be hiding.

Preet Bharara:

Right. So when you have a difficult guests coming up who you worry is going to be misleading, certainly you prep a lot, you look at their prior statements. I once made a suggestion on Twitter, which was half serious, more than half serious, what prosecutors do and trial lawyers do and even appellate lawyers, they get mooted. Meaning if they know they’re going to have a difficult witness, they have some other person, one of their colleagues, be a stand-in for that witness. We would do this even in congressional hearings, I would play the attorney general and Senator Schumer would ask me questions so he could get used to the idea of the back and forth. Because you can’t script out questions when you have an intelligent adversary in the interview. Do you guys do that? Do you ever sit around and say, “Hey, Wolf, come over here, pretend to be Paul Manafort or someone else?”

Dana Bash:

Not in a formal way like that in regular interviews. When we do debate prep, absolutely, we mock it. Like you said, we mock it and we have people playing all of the candidates. With regard to interviews, we do it in a less formal way or at least me, I’ll just speak for myself. When I do it, I do it in a less formal way, and sometimes be with the team, with the producers. I’ll say the question and I’ll say what I know the answer will be, then that’s how we’ll prepare the follow-up. So we talk it out and that’s how we prepare, not just the follow up but what we call the backup, all of the information and facts to back up what they have said in the past thinking that they will either deny it or try to go in a different direction. But that’s actually a good idea to do it in a more formal way.

Preet Bharara:

I’m available.

Dana Bash:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

You want to call me on a Saturday?

Dana Bash:

I got your number.

Preet Bharara:

It’s fun to play a character because I guess my other question is, how often? You do a lot of prep and you’re very smart, how often are you surprised at the answers you’re getting such that you have to think in the moment about how to respond because the answer is so surprising to you? There’s one interview in particular that I know got a lot of attention that maybe is an issue you want to discuss or maybe there are other examples. But there was that moment when you interviewed Kellyanne Conway and you tried to get into a topic that I thought was perfectly appropriate. She went after you in a particularly harsh way about bringing her pre-marriage. Did you expect that?

Dana Bash:

No, that’s a really good example. This was just at the beginning of George Conway starting to tweet, at the beginning he retweeted other people’s anti-Trump statements. It was just at the very beginning of that and nobody had brought it up with her at all and it wasn’t really a thing. He was definitely not out as an anti-Trumper the way he is now. I thought that what I expected and we anticipated when I said to the team was, “She’s going to laugh it off as a, “Oh, finally a woman gets asked about what her husband is doing as opposed to vice versa.” That’s not what happened at all.

Preet Bharara:

[crosstalk 00:30:00] what happened.

Dana Bash:

So what happened was… And that’s why I asked her in a tongue in cheek way at the end of the interview. I said something like, “So what’s up with your husband’s tweets?” And she launched at me.

Preet Bharara:

She did.

Dana Bash:

And I honestly did it in a jovial way because I thought that she was going to respond in kind and it did not happen. How dare you? This is what… Of course attacking me, attacking CNN and if you want to talk about marriages, and I was like, okay. I was just asking.

Kellyanne Conway:

Oh, no, no, no, you just brought him into this. So this ought to be fun moving forward Dana.

Dana Bash:

Okay.

Kellyanne Conway:

We’re now I’m going to talk about other people’s spouses and significant others just because they either work in the White House or at CNN? Are we going to do that? Because you just went there.

Dana Bash:

Yes.

Kellyanne Conway:

You just went there. Look, differences [crosstalk 00:30:49]. I’m just asking about it was meant to harass and embarrass, but let me just tell you something.

Dana Bash:

Absolutely not.

Kellyanne Conway:

Let me just tell you something by definition, spouses have a difference of opinion when adultery is happening.

Dana Bash:

I would not agree more.

Kellyanne Conway:

By definition, spouses have a difference of opinion when one is, I don’t know, draining the joint bank account to support things that maybe the other disagrees with. So this is a fascinating cross the Rubicon moment, and I’ll leave it at that.

Dana Bash:

Okay. It was pretty intense and I had to be in the moment. We ended up killing a commercial break and just turning… I remember that the next guest was Bob Corker, who was the foreign relations chair at the time. I turned to the camera because she was in studio, that’s another example of you talking about tough interviews not being astute. I actually think that was helpful that we’d have eye contact with one another. But that went way longer than it was supposed to because it was just supposed to be a kicker question. Then they killed the commercial break and I turned to the camera because he was remote, and I started asking about something really deep about Syria or Iran or some substantive issue, and it was dizzying, the difference. Yeah, you have to be ready and you have to be ready.

Dana Bash:

And with someone like her, I’ve known her for 20 years, so I felt like I could go head to head. But I also didn’t want to be… I didn’t ask the question to be a jerk, I didn’t ask the question to get into her personal life, I asked the question because it was becoming a thing and I actually thought that she would feel like it was a safe place to say something. But Preet, I hit a nerve, which we all know now is true. I didn’t know I was hitting the nerve when I hit it.

Preet Bharara:

Maybe it’s an unfair question but I’m going to ask it anyway because it’s my podcast. Having known her for that period of time and observed her since, do you think that Kellyanne Conway believes all the things she says in praise of Donald Trump or is she acting?

Dana Bash:

Oh my gosh, that is a hard question. I think that she has a very different relationship with him than most people. She can talk to him in a way that most people can’t, he talks to her in a way that he doesn’t with most people, and she uses that as the foundation for what she has done. Does she support everything that he’s done? Absolutely not. Does she support things that he’s done that that maybe she said that she did support in public? Sure. Because everybody who worked for him understood that in order to be a Trump person, you have to be all in no matter what. So look, I think with like all of the people, not all, I think with a lot of the people who worked for him, it is a complicated thing. Preet, I bet you’ve even talked to people who worked for Trump who will tell you in private moments the real deal or, “Oh my gosh, if I wasn’t there, you think it’s bad now? It would have been 50 times worse if I weren’t there.”

Preet Bharara:

Oh, yeah absolutely. Look, forget about people who’ve worked for him, you have a lot of congressional sources, I think lots of Republican members of Congress who are publicly supportive are privately critical and not even critical but dismissive. So I think there’s a large universe of people, particularly in recent days and weeks and will probably multiply, who don’t like the things that he’s done and want to put some separation between them and him, right?

Dana Bash:

Yeah. Oh my gosh, no question, especially now. Except for those who don’t, except those who don’t want to put separation between them and him because they are from, I don’t know, a state like South Carolina where he is incredibly popular or…

Preet Bharara:

Or if you are a QAnon member of the House.

Dana Bash:

Or if you’re a QAnon and you actually believe the off the wall conspiracy theories that is now completely plaguing the Republican party. It’s really frightening, can you imagine from the days you walked the halls of Congress and the Republicans you dealt with, what was it now, 15 years ago? That any of them would be even close to where some of these people are, espousing these crackpot theories that Democrats are part of a pedophile ring are you kidding me? These people are elected.

Preet Bharara:

Speaking of Congress, some of the things we’ve been talking about are, I don’t mean staged interviews in the sense that they’re rehearsed, but when you interview someone on the Sunday show or at the Capitol where it’s prearranged and formalized where there’s a debate, that’s one thing. The thing that was astonishing to me with respect to the press when I went to work on the Hill, and maybe people don’t have the full sense of this, and this is one of the first times I’m sure I saw you, if you’re a member of the Senate or the House, and my experience was in the Senate, there was no hiding.

Dana Bash:

No

Preet Bharara:

Like there is for a governor or some other executive where Andrew Cuomo or Gavin Newsome or whoever can hole up in their mansion and decide when they’re going to meet the press or not meet the press. Not to mention the different competing show of yours. But if you’re a member of the Senate, I remember accompanying Senator Schumer to the floor to vote, that is a public corridor. The senators have their own elevator so you can’t get into an elevator with a member.

Dana Bash:

You can if you’re invited, I’ve done.

Preet Bharara:

If you’re invited, yeah, but you can’t push your way in.

Dana Bash:

You can’t , correct.

Preet Bharara:

And depending on what’s going on, it was an astonishing thing to see you just get mobbed sometimes by reporters, and it’s a long way back to your office before you can shut away the reporters.

Dana Bash:

It’s a very long way.

Preet Bharara:

And you did that, what was that like?

Dana Bash:

Day in and day out.

Preet Bharara:

And what’s the strategy of… And I’m going to use a negative or pejorative verb because it’s obviously good for the first amendment and good for the public. But from my perspective, it looked a little bit like a member is walking to get a sandwich and, “Oh no, there’s Dana Bash and now she’s going to ask me 11 questions about some bill on the floor.” Did you enjoy that? Is that a weird thing to do? What do you feel about that?

Dana Bash:

It’s not a weird thing to do, I enjoyed it. Congress is the best bead for a reporter full stop. And it’s for that reason, for the dynamic that you just described, it’s awesome because there is no place for them to hide. Well, there are places for them to hide, but if and when they have to do their most basic job, which is to vote, they have to go. Unfortunately, now people have seen the insides of those halls in a horrible way, but usually it is quite different and they have to come onto the second floor of the Capitol, either on the Senate side or the House side, that’s where the chambers are. They have to go through one of four doors that surround the perimeter of that chamber to go vote.

Dana Bash:

So some of the doors we as members of the press aren’t able to stand out in front of. But for the most part, we can and it’s the culture and it is amazing. Look, members of Congress get a lot of crap and in some cases it is well deserved, but for the most part, it is remarkable. Two decades on and off that I spent stalking these members of Congress and to watch and to listen to them.

Preet Bharara:

That’s your word, you said stalking.

Dana Bash:

Yeah, it is. But to watch them, not just answer questions about whatever the issue of the day is, but they get somebody from the Farmers Daily or the Energy Gazette, and they ask really granular questions to these members on a host of issues every single day in the hallway. To watch these members for the most part, have a real understanding and a handle on the policy to be able to answer those questions is remarkable. You really have to be a Jack of all trades and to know your stuff in order to engage with reporters as is such the culture on Capitol Hill.

Preet Bharara:

Look, I will tell you said things that foreshadow my next question. I found that to be remarkable, that at any moment without a memo, without prep, without advanced warning, you could have thrust at you as you’re walking down the hallway to vote, a question about your home state, a question about a vote, a question about something that maybe came out in the paper 20 minutes earlier that you haven’t had a chance to see. For the most part, obviously, we’ve all seen videos where members pretend that you don’t exist, that the reporter doesn’t exist and they just walk along and they don’t want to do anything crazy so that they go viral for being non-responsive. But to have at your fingertips some substantive answer to anything under the sun is something else. So my question to you is, which maybe you’ve answered, over your long career of covering Congress, has your respect for Congress generally, and obviously there are particular people you might feel more or less strongly about, but overall over that time, did you come to have more respect or less respect for the members?

Dana Bash:

A lot more respect, a lot. For that reason, the fact that for the most part… And there were people who didn’t know what they were talking about. But for the most part, these members are pretty read in to the issues that matter to their constituents. They’re read in about the issues that… We wouldn’t be asking them a question… For example the Senator John Doe is on the foreign relations committee, they would be asked real substantive questions about treaties, about summits going on, about all kinds of things that the general public would have no clue about because of the committees that they sit on. So for the most part, they’re pretty well-versed in that.

Dana Bash:

Not just that, I’ll take it a step further beyond their knowledge. For the most part, the QAnon members now aside and the people who are even pretty close to that caucus who show, who I don’t need to name because everybody knows who they are now. But for the most part I found in my years that people came to Congress, yes, they had egos and they like to be in the spotlight, but they came to Congress with a point of view, with an idealism, with a very specific philosophy on how they wanted things done or not done with regard to big government, with regard to taxes, with regard smaller government, and you name it. But they wanted to do good and do right. People got off track and politics can become poison. But for the most part, that was why and how people came in. Did you find that as well? Because I know on judiciary, you had to deal with… It’s a partisan committee more than others, but it’s not like the Ag committee where people all get along across party lines.

Preet Bharara:

No, I feel like people in the Senate, no disparagement to the House, but look, Chuck Schumer, my former boss, used to say the following, and he came from the House. He would say-

Dana Bash:

Yes he did.

Preet Bharara:

He would say this publicly so I don’t think I’m going to get in trouble with my old friends there. He would say, “When I was in the House, I looked at my colleagues, and by and large, they were really honorable and respectable and smart and impressive people. But there were some people they were in very safe districts you wondered how they got there.” And he said, “When I got to the Senate, I looked at my 99 colleagues over time and I don’t agree with all of them, and some of them I disagree with pretty vehemently or I have a different style or whatever the case may be. But I look at my 99 statewide elected colleagues from their various respective states, and I know why each of them is here. Each of them has some very or set of very special qualities of leadership, agree with them or not agree with them.” That was one way he described the difference between the Senate and the House. Is that fair?

Dana Bash:

Yeah, I think that is fair. Especially now with regard to safe districts, the gerrymandering is so out of control that there are so many safe districts in both sides, on both sides rather. So because of that, you get QAnon members because whoever wins the primary wins the seat.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back to my interview with Dana Bash after this. What is it like to break news as a person?

Dana Bash:

It’s such a rush.

Preet Bharara:

That was good, I knew you were going to say that.

Dana Bash:

You did?

Preet Bharara:

Why is it such a rush? Yeah, because you’re a journalist.

Dana Bash:

It’s like catching the football in the end zone, it’s like the home run, it’s like, pick your sports metaphor. It’s like getting the guilty plea on a terrorist. Not guilty plea guilty, guilty conviction.

Preet Bharara:

Well, the first few metaphors are about games, the second was more serious.

Dana Bash:

Well, okay, that’s fair. But it’s a serious thing and it’s a public service that you do and you did. But it’s still a feeling of, this is why I’m in this and I did what I set out to do. But you’re right to differentiate those. And it depends on the issue, sometimes I break news and it’s interesting but it’s not going to change the world. At times I have broken news where it’s been interesting and it matters in terms of the trajectory of whatever the story is or whatever the moment is in time.

Dana Bash:

I’ll give you one example. It was I think when you and I were on the Hill together, it was after 9/11 and the intelligence committee was briefed on the fact that the NSA had gotten intercepts the day before, on September 10th, 2001 saying something along the lines of, “The game is tomorrow, the batch is tomorrow,” something like that and they didn’t translate it until September 12th. It was one example of a big miss. I got the information, we broke the story, and I personally think that it mattered as part of the tapestry of the narrative of why and how America missed 9/11.

Preet Bharara:

Is there a difference between breaking that kind of news from sources and talking to people and working the phones and shoe leather, as they used to say, versus another way, I guess you can break news given your higher more prominent role is you elicit something from someone in a live television interview. I guess that is some form of breaking news, but that’s less of a rush, is it?

Dana Bash:

Yes. It’s a totally different feeling. And you described it perfectly, Preet, it’s the difference between behind the scenes, working sources off camera in a really delicate way, and then getting the story. Versus being on a high wire act of a live interview and getting somebody to admit something or to say something or having a moment. Which you’re right, is breaking news because it will matter later on. But it’s a different kind of, accomplishment is the wrong word, but it’s a different reason why I do what I do. It gives me a different sense of accomplishment.

Preet Bharara:

Do you get nervous ever when you are going to go and do a live shot or do the Sunday show?

Dana Bash:

Yeah, sometimes.

Preet Bharara:

What makes you nervous?

Dana Bash:

It depends. First of all, I think it’s healthy to have some butterflies because it keeps us on our toes.

Preet Bharara:

Well, I have them. I had them before even these interviews and I know you well. Yeah, I think that’s right.

Dana Bash:

Really?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, because you want it to go well.

Dana Bash:

I’m very intimidating. So I can [crosstalk 00:47:08].

Preet Bharara:

You are.

Dana Bash:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

You curse on television my friend. I think you are the only person who can do that. I’m just guessing here, is the most nervous you’ve gotten moderating a presidential debate?

Dana Bash:

100%, I was just going to say that.

Preet Bharara:

That’s the hardest?

Dana Bash:

Absolutely. Like anything, at the beginning when you first start speaking, it’s nerve-racking, and then you get into a groove. But there have been times where I am convinced that people can hear my heart beating over the microphone because that’s how nervous I am. You just have to force yourself to get in the zone.

Preet Bharara:

Who’s more nervous, Dana, in those circumstances, the moderators or the candidates?

Dana Bash:

I don’t know. I’ll speak for myself, maybe me.

Preet Bharara:

But you don’t show it and they don’t show it.

Dana Bash:

Yeah, we’re all hiding it.

Preet Bharara:

Because the game in life is in part to hide all of that. People are nervous all the time and you can’t let them see you sweat. But as it unfolds, do you get in your groove and you’re fine or not?

Dana Bash:

For the most part, for the most part. Sometimes something happens and it grows, you have to try to roll with it. But for me personally, it’s the anticipation of it and the beginning of whatever I’m doing, and then once I am in it, I’m a little bit more relaxed. How about you, do you feel that way?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, because once it’s going well and there’s a rapport in an interview or when I’m giving a speech and the audience seems to be paying attention and not all running to the bathroom, you get some confidence. Do you worry that a fly will land in your hair and it will be a meme for the next six months?

Dana Bash:

Oh my gosh, can you believe that happened?

Preet Bharara:

But that’s a television thing that people have to worry about, it happens, right?

Dana Bash:

I know, I know, it’s definitely happened. Oh, I have a lot of… I’m trying to think. I’ve had lights fall on me during live shots, outside in a blizzard I’ve definitely had things happen during live shots, but never a fly. It’s not something that I worried about until I saw it happened in Mike Pence, and now I’m worried about it.

Preet Bharara:

So can I tell you when one of the hardest things for me as just a legal analyst on CNN when-

Dana Bash:

Just a legal analyst.

Preet Bharara:

I’m senior legal analyst.

Dana Bash:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

When there was breaking news, there’ve been multiple times I’ve been in the air to address some topic and then there was a filing in the Mueller case or something broke with respect to impeachment or something else. I’m sitting there with either you or Jake Tapper or Wolf Blitzer or someone, and they say, “Breaking news.” And they’ll tell me the headline of the thing that happened and it’s live national television. I know my parents were watching too, by the way, which can be-

Dana Bash:

Honestly, for me that’s one of the most intimidating thing.

Preet Bharara:

[crosstalk 00:50:11]. My mom and dad, they watch every single… It’s like coming to your games in sports when you were a kid. My mom and dad, which is one reason I love them very much, they watch every appearance. So now you’re being asked these questions and my training has been, I’m not going to answer a question about a legal argument unless I’ve read the entire thing that was submitted or had a chance to think about it, research it, discuss with my colleagues. I spend a lot of time doing all that when I prepare for these podcasts. There you are, live television, deer in the headlights. So my experience has been panic about not wanting to say something stupid, but also wanting to say something meaningful. But that’s happened to you a million times in your career because you’re on television a lot. How do you deal with that? Having to answer something in the moment when you don’t know that much detail about the thing.

Dana Bash:

It’s not easy, it’s just not, there’s no other way to say it. You learn to just tap dance around the things that you… And just to say what you know and not go any further, that’s really the key. What do you do?

Preet Bharara:

I stammer and try to sound intelligent. But look, I think cable news is very valuable and CNN is one of my employers. I think there’s a very, very valuable function in there being multiple 24 hour news channels, especially when there’s crazy things happening in our country. But sometimes in the moment of breaking news before there’s a lot of understanding, having people who are trained and smart but don’t know enough about that particular subject, I’m not saying it does a disservice, but it’s a weird moment that is necessitated by the fact that you have these networks that are on 24 hours a day and live. I don’t know a better way to go about it.

Preet Bharara:

I think what people should do is be careful about what they say. And then everyone work really quickly and insidiously in the moments following it to read the documents and to call people and get some background so that as minutes pass and hours pass, the understanding being presented to the American public is deeper. But boy, it’s a moment of sheer panic when something happens new that you haven’t had a chance to check out yet. Look, do you remember that Bush V Gore from years ago?

Dana Bash:

Oh, of cause. Oh, my goodness.

Preet Bharara:

Correspondents were running out of the Supreme Court building trying to figure out what the hell had happened. In retrospect, it’s comical, but that’s what happens when you have live TV.

Dana Bash:

Yeah. And you have to have bosses who recognize the stakes on something, especially like that, and say, “We’re going to take a beat, we’re just going to talk about what we got, and we’re going to let the people who are reading it read it and digest it.” When you talk about the Mueller filing, that’s a great example. We had this unbelievable team of people and when we knew something was going to come out or anticipated, or even thought something was going to come out, there was a plan about how to do just that so that we could contextualize it and digest it properly.

Preet Bharara:

Look, I’ll tell you when the Mueller report came out, I think we knew the date certainly in advance. CNN flew me down to DC, this is before the pandemic obviously, I don’t know if I was asked to come on in the morning, but I preferred to come on in the afternoon, and I sat in my hotel room. All I did over multiple diet Cokes was read that report cover to cover, and then I felt comfortable coming on in the afternoon. So I guess if you have some ability to plan out preparation, it makes a difference. The insurrection.

Dana Bash:

Oh my God.

Preet Bharara:

That was an act of violence against the branch of government that you’ve been covering for a long time.

Dana Bash:

Yup.

Preet Bharara:

Two questions. One is how big a deal was that against the backdrop of your reporting on that body for a number years? And two, what are your sources, both democratic and republican, say about how it made them feel in the aftermath?

Dana Bash:

Well I’ll just take the last part of your question first. Terrible, people felt terrible. They just felt so violated on so many levels as humans, as people who work in that building, and as renters of the building, people who are just there because they were elected to be there or work for people who were elected to be there, or reporters who cover that building. It’s completely traumatic. The stories from, and we’ve heard a lot of the stories, from members of Congress, from their staff about locking doors, getting under tables, turning the lights off, not wanting to make a peep so that people didn’t come in.

Dana Bash:

Again, that is against the backdrop of those of us who walk those halls so many years, you included, Preet, of feeling very safe there. The only time I didn’t feel safe in the Capitol was on 9/11, and it was for obvious reasons. At that time, one of the reasons I didn’t feel safe was because the cops themselves you could see that they were rattled. They were screaming at us to get out of the building because they thought a plane was coming. Other than that, it felt very fortified. You get to know these police officers, you know that they’re there, they’ve got your back as somebody who’s physically in the building and not to mention more importantly the members of Congress, and they were completely and totally overwhelmed, and they didn’t have a chance. Now that we have the benefit of more time, yeah, there were obviously some people who did some really stupid things like the guy with the selfie and hopefully we won’t hear more about any real collusion, to use a term, between any members of the Capitol police and these rioters, potential assassins, not just rioters, potential assassins.

Dana Bash:

But for the most part, they did what they had to do and they protected the people and they said, “We’re just going to give up the building and protect the people.” But I still can’t believe what I saw. Think about when walk across the second floor of the Senate when you were there, you need to show your pass, sometimes if there’s a dignitary there you can’t get from one side of the hallway to another. To think that those basic protocols that were in place to protect everybody, that was thrown out the window and these people were just fearful for their own lives. It breaks my heart.

Preet Bharara:

Well, what was shocking to me visually was to see these rioters come on the Senate floor, which by the way is very, very restricted. Members can go on the floor.

Dana Bash:

Very restricted.

Preet Bharara:

And not even all staff, high ranking staff had general passes. My recollection is that other staff on a case-by-case basis could be admitted to the floor. The public never could be on the floor, my recollection is right, is that right?

Dana Bash:

That’s right.

Preet Bharara:

They could watch proceedings by coming into the gallery on the mezzanine or the floor above.

Dana Bash:

The third floor.

Preet Bharara:

On the third floor where some of the press stuff is. But to see that violation and see people sitting in the president’s chair and rifling through the desks, I always think about the opening chapter of Bob Caro’s book, Master of the Senate, where he talks his old chapter about the desks of the Senate. If you have a reverence for that because you have a reverence for democracy, seeing people just desecrate it like that was an unbelievable thing.

Dana Bash:

It really was.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think that Mitch McConnell had a change of heart about Trump or did he always have a problem with Trump so far as he was a useful person for him for judges, and now he has no more use for him and this is a reason for him to try to put him in the rear view mirror or do you think he had a visceral reaction to seeing what you and I saw happen to the Senate?

Dana Bash:

I think he had a visceral reaction. He’s obviously a controversial figure when it comes to his “reverence for the Senate” since he follows the rules that fit his agenda at the time, and even he would admit that. I give you Merrick Garland and then I give you Amy Coney Barrett as exhibits A and B. But on a personal level, at that point he was already so pissed off at Donald Trump because Trump stopped talking to him after McConnell went on the Senate floor and said that Joe Biden was the president elect and it was a free and fair election on December 14th, I think it was. After the states certified their electoral college independent before they got to the Congress, Trump stopped talking to him.

Dana Bash:

So between then and January six, remember there was the stimulus bill that then president’s team negotiated and McConnell begrudgingly agreed to it. Then by the time it got to the president’s desk, he watched something on Fox and he said, “Oh, nevermind.” And he wouldn’t take McConnell’s calls. He completely stopped talking to McConnell because he was angry that McConnell acknowledged reality that Donald Trump lost the election. So you have that over the last month or so. But let’s be honest and I know this is an issue near and dear to your heart as a lawyer, as a former US attorney, as a former counsel to a key Senator on judiciary committee, Mitch McConnell had already gotten what he needed out of Donald Trump, which is to completely fill the federal bench with the conservative judges that he wanted. Trump doesn’t really, he claimed to care about it because it was politically expedient for him to do, but he let McConnell run the show on that, and McConnell got everything he wanted out of it. The question I will always have is, was it worth it?

Preet Bharara:

But there’s one thing he didn’t get, he got robbed of the other thing that he wanted, which was to retain control of the Senate.

Dana Bash:

Totally. And that’s when he said, “I’m out.”

Preet Bharara:

He might believe that but for Donald Trump’s shenanigans and the crazy things that were said in Georgia and attempted in Georgia, he should have retained the Senate. So he got what he wanted in some sense and then the other thing that he wanted he didn’t get, so he has a double reason to abandon Trump at this point. Do you think that McConnell’s vote on conviction in the Senate with respect to impeachment is in doubt?

Dana Bash:

If I were to guess, and I could have egg on my face when they actually vote, if I were to guess, he will find a way to vote no. He’ll say it’s not constitutional or pick your reason.

Preet Bharara:

So you think he’ll vote procedurally but not defending the president’s action?

Dana Bash:

Yes. Do you? Because look, we don’t even know the level of pushback that he’s getting. It is off the charts for, again, standing up and speaking the truth. Even last week when he went to the Senate floor and said again, the president is responsible for what happened and that he has cited this mob. He believes that, he is angry about that, but even in saying that, the base is still the Trump base and a lot of his members are scared of that base because they share the same base. And they’re getting a lot of pressure and Mitch McConnell is getting a ton of pressure. I’ve talked to Republican senators who are mad at him for speaking the truth, saying, “He’s ripping apart the party, we got to move on.” So we’ll see. We’ll see what he does, but regardless of what he does, in his heart of hearts, maybe this is going to go too far, but I’m guessing he believes it was an impeachable offense. I’m just saying that based on his own words over the past few weeks.

Preet Bharara:

Which of the following two senators do you think is more disliked and or frustrating to their Republican colleagues, Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz? Based on all of your contacts and sources.

Dana Bash:

I would say Ted Cruz has deeper roots in that area because he’s been there longer and he’s made his colleagues mad at various times on various topics. So the length, at times real animus between the majority of his colleagues and him is longer. But Josh Hawley is getting up there.

Preet Bharara:

He’s getting up there.

Dana Bash:

He’s getting up there, he really is. The thing is, it’s not as if it’s not complicated on this particular issue for most Republican senators because even the ones who are very clear-eyed in private and in public, from Mitt Romney to Rob Portman, to others, they have constituents who think that Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz they say right on guys because they believe it because they’ve been fed the lies. Their constituents watch Fox News and listened to conservative radio and are on conservative social media, so it makes it much harder for them to speak the truth when they have their colleagues telling their own constituents lies.

Preet Bharara:

But it seems to me like a terrible dynamic that has become more and more pervasive is it used to be the case that getting something done was great. You have a lot of bills where there’s a famous Democrat and a famous Republican on them and benefit went to both sides on that. It seems like more recently people are afraid of giving the other side of win. So if they pass something tremendous on transportation or infrastructure or something else, it seems to me that a lot of people are held back by this idea of giving Joe Biden a win, a victory, and they don’t want that. Do you find that to be true?

Dana Bash:

It’s always the case. There’s a reason why compromise is really hard and it’s even more so when the country is very divided. The calculation that all of these Republicans have to make is whether agreeing to a compromise deal on topic X allows you, the Republican, to claim victory just as much as Joe Biden can claim victory. If they look at it from that point of view, like this Republican Senator I was talking about said, then that’s good. They can go home to their states and say, “Look at what I got, infrastructure. Look, it’s physical, look at this road that’s going to be built, I did this for you. Look at that bridge that’s going to be built, I did this for you.” If they only look at it through the prism of the presidency and what Joe Biden is going to get and the victory he can claim, then nothing’s ever going to get done.

Dana Bash:

But you know what? Biden is such an old school negotiator that he understands that. He can go to Republican Senator John Doe and say, “Look, if we do this, you can claim victory, you can say you got this.” He understands that in the art of negotiation, everybody has to be able to claim victory on something. And despite the fact that the former president called it the art of the deal, that’s not ever something that he put into practice when he was in government.

Preet Bharara:

Dana Bash, congratulations on all your success.

Dana Bash:

It was so fun to talk to you.

Preet Bharara:

… and your promotion at CNN. It was great. By the way, I should mention, otherwise Zucker’s going to get mad, CNN, number one in recent ratings, besting Fox and that other network. Anyway, thanks for being on Dana.

Dana Bash:

Okay, thanks, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Dana Bash continues for members of the CAFE insider community. To try out the membership free for two weeks, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. So I want to end this week’s episode with a brief rumination on the old adage, you can judge a person by their enemies. So in this regard, I’m a very proud person. I’ve been put on some serious enemies lists, Russian president, Vladimir Putin banned me alongside 17 other American public servants some years ago from entering Russia following the passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2013, I’m also not welcome in Turkey, President Erdogan effectively barred me after we prosecuted Reza Zarrab, a gold trader who my former office accused of violating sanctions on Iran. That’s not to mention the variety of pro-Trump groups who have called me names, goof me with other critics, and of course I was fired by the president.

Preet Bharara:

I was thinking about all these predictions that were being made by QAnon and other folks that the inauguration was going to be the scene of a mass arrest of Democrats, Biden supporters, who were finally going to be relegated to the Gulag or some such thing for their conduct. I went on Twitter and I posted this tweet, “As far as I can tell, QAnon did not have me on the list of people to be arrested yesterday and tried by military tribunal, I feel this makes me an underachiever. I’ll get over it eventually, but I will try to do better.” Obviously I was speaking tongue in cheek and I didn’t mean to joke about the real danger that QAnon poses. In fact, the very, very smart Watergate prosecutor, Jill Wine-Banks admonished me correctly, “Don’t joke about this, they are a real threat.” Of course, they are a very serious threat as evidenced by their central role in the capital siege on January 6th and by all sorts of other kinds of violence that they’ve encouraged with crazy conspiracy theories over the past number of years.

Preet Bharara:

But I do believe very strongly more than ever the principle that you should judge a person by their enemies. But in response to my tweet, an astute commenter directed me to a somewhat tongue in cheek village voice article that I’d never seen before, way back from 1973, which tickled me and is on-point. The article by Phil Tracy is entitled The Shame of Being Left off Nixon’s Enemies List, which you will recall Nixon had an actual documented enemies list. The piece was published in July of 1973 just days after former White House counsel John Dean provided the Senate Watergate Committee with a hard copy of the official written list. The article offers sympathy for those Nixon critics who were deemed not worthy of being in the cross hairs of this increasingly unhinged White House and increasingly unhinged President Richard Nixon. The article is pretty funny and I commend it to your attention also.

Preet Bharara:

In it, Tracy writes, “What newspaper is going to shell out hard cash for a columnist whose opinions are so tame that even the White House doesn’t consider him dangerous?” It also makes reference to particular people who didn’t make it onto the enemies list. Like Shirley McClain for instance, spent nearly all of 1972 trying to defeat Richard Nixon. How does she face her former friends in the McGovern camp knowing that Gregory Peck gave Nixon more sleepless nights because he was on the list? Poor Joan Baez’s singing career is also in ruins. What dewy-eyed teenager will ever again listen to Joan’s, wobbling laments for peace, love, and brotherhood after learning Joe Namath struck greater fear in the corridors of the establishment?

Preet Bharara:

Best of all is Phil Tracy’s solution to address the clear and apparent inequities of this list, “The only rational solution is that the list must be open and that people will be allowed to plead their case for inclusion as an enemy of Nixon. It is incumbent upon the president to immediately name an impartial investigator to review the entire list and hear arguments from those who have so unfairly been left off.” He goes on to write that, “The investigator must have a reputation for impeccable honesty and no friendships with people who might be considered eligible for the list. Since obviously no one in America fits that description, my personal suggestion is that the president nominate the Pope. After all he’s already had experience in deciding who should or should not become saints.”

Preet Bharara:

By the way, the journalists who penned that amazing piece, Phil Tracy, was not just writing a one-off take down of creepy cultish list-making, he would later move to San Francisco where he would play a major role in exposing the criminal conduct of Jim Jones’s cultish People’s Temple. So the principle endures, you can judge a person by the enemies they have not just by the friends they have. So thank you to Twitter user ChazMiller18 who brought that article from 1973 to my attention and for Twitter for showing me that I’m not the first one to feel cheated by being left off a crazy creepy list. Thanks also to all the journalists and truth tellers who are, as Phil Tracy did a half century ago, holding conspiracy theorists to account. So may you all have wonderful friends and we’re the enemies.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Dana Bash. 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 staytuned@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE Studios. Your host is Preet Bharara. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The senior producer is Adam Waller. The technical director is David Tatasciore. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Geoff Isenman, Chris Boylan, Sean Walsh, and Margot Maley. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m Preet Bharara, stay tuned.