Former Mitt Romney strategist Stuart Stevens is senior adviser of the Lincoln Project, a never-Trump “Republican” outfit whose pathetic anti-GOP stunts and scandals have discredited it everywhere but in the mainstream media, where it remains a reliable source for smears of the modern-day Republican party as fascistic. Stuart took his familiar act to Tuesday’s edition of Amanpour & Co., which airs on PBS. Host Christiane Amanpour used Steven’s spicy quote in her show opener:
Stuart Stevens: Now, it's been a lot of sleepless nights trying to come to grips with it, but the Republican Party now is an autocratic movement.
(Stevens is a popular “Republican” in PBS-land. In October 2023 he pumped his then-new book The Conspiracy to End America on the PBS NewsHour comparing his old party to Nazis.)
Stevens was interviewed by co-host Walter Isaacson, who identified Stewart as “part of the anti-Trump movement in the Republican Party.” What? He's a former Republican.
Isaacson asked him if Trump being on trial would hurt or help his presidential campaign. Stevens had to admit the optics of Trump on trial could work in the candidate’s favor: "It's the grievance campaign. I am your retribution. The deep state is out to get us. What better proof that the deep state is out to get us than the deep state has me on trial.”
Prompted by Isaacson, Stevens alleged Trump supported Russian dictator Vladimir Putin before getting to the money quote.
Stevens: “And I've spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to come to grips with it, but the Republican Party now is an autocratic movement. And I think what you see in front of the Supreme Court, where they're actually trying to make the case that a president is above the law, it's just further proof that. It's why they -- the conservative movement is in love with Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin.”
Isaacson quoted from Stevens saying the Biden team has to be amazed at "how is this guy still in the race?" Stevens painted the GOP as racist.
Stevens: You know, a lot of this ultimately has to do with race, Walter. We're a country that's headed to becoming a minority-majority country. If you're 16 years and under in America, you -- the majority are nonwhite. Trump's base is 85 percent white. And it's that reality that drives so much of the Republican Party's efforts to change election laws and to sort of curate the election.”
Prodded by Isaacson, Stevens got more and more worked up, and, yes "alarmist."
Stevens: ….it's difficult to talk about this without sounding alarmist, and language is one of the issues that, you know, we struggle with. But I think if Donald Trump wins this election, it will be the last election that we can recognize as a normal American election. I know these people. As bad as you think they are, they are worse. They want a different America, and they're open about it when you really listen to them, and that's why they embrace Russia so much. They look at Russia, and they say, OK. Russia, no nonwhite people in power. Putin says there's no gays in Russia. There's no women in power. Elections are performative, but not decisive. That looks pretty good. And they embrace that….
Excepting a question about anti-Trumpers, including Sen. Liz Cheney, journalist Isaacson just facilitated Stevens and his long, broad smear of one of America’s two main political parties.
A transcript is available, click “Expand.”
Amanpour & Co.
5/1/24
2:03:04 a.m. (ET)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Stuart Stevens, a former Republican strategist, admits that he's still coming to grips today's GOP and its embrace of a man facing 91 criminal charges, and the grand old party's creeping authoritarian character, as he explains with Walter Isaacson.
WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Stuart Stevens, welcome back to the show.
STUART STEVENS, SENIOR ADVISER, THE LINCOLN PROJECT AND AUTHOR, "IT WAS ALL A LIE": Great to see you, Walter. Thanks.
ISAACSON: You've been a Republican strategist most of your life, worked for George Bush, Mitt Romney, and then have been part of the anti-Trump movement in the Republican Party. Now, you're watching him on trial. In some ways, he's running on the notion of grievance and persecution. Does this trial help him or hurt him?
STEVENS: Well, you know, I mean, I think that the sort of headline on this is that Trump is still a viable candidate and he's on trial. That in itself is extraordinary. Look, I think if you're one of the smart people running the Trump campaign, and they do have smart professionals now, this isn't what your ideal scenario would have been. But at the same time, it's not disqualifying for Trump, which it would be for any other candidate I can think of.
And what -- the essence of that is that Trump's campaign, particularly in this cycle, is based on being a victim. It's the grievance campaign. I am your retribution. The deep state is out to get us. What better proof that the deep state is out to get us than the deep state has me on trial.
ISAACSON: And you say these are really smart people running the campaign. Are they going to use this to help this politics of grievance?
STEVENS: Yes, they're going to use it to try to eat as a proof point. You know, if you have -- you have to get inside their heads, Walter, the whole Trump thing. So, in their world, Trump won the presidency, the White House has been stolen. And the only way that they can stop Trump, who was the legally elected president, they say, from winning again is to put them in jail.
So, this is just that process of the deep state trying to take away from you, the voter, your right to choose your president, and they would say, restore democracy. It's sort of like the aliens built the pyramids. Once you understand that, everything else makes a lot of sense. You know, the problem is aliens didn't build the pyramids. But that's how they see the world and this fits into that worldview.
ISAACSON: If Trump were not on trial, if there had not been all of these indictments, would he be in a stronger or a weaker position?
STEVENS: I think that the indictments helped him in the primary because it then became necessary to support Trump in the primary to prove that what the Democrats were saying and they put in the same Democrats in the deep state are exactly the same.
I don't think it is going to help him in the general election. I think that there's something that is going to be disconcerting and wearing the people to see a potential president of the United States, a former president of the United States on trial in multiple jurisdictions.
ISAACSON: But wait, haven't people been saying this for a year or two that eventually wear down?
STEVENS: Yes. Yes. But the audience has been -- the audience that has been voting has been that primary audience. And it was fascinating to see the split in the primary electorate that pretty much the threshold belief that if you voted for Trump, you believe that he won the presidency last time.
Very few of Nikki Haley's voters believe that. The majority of the country doesn't believe that. So, I just think that -- you know, I've compared the Trump candidacy to somebody walking around with a paper bag full of water. I don't think it's going to leak, but I think there's a very good chance it's going to go -- and when it goes, it's going to be very hard to put the water back in the bag.
ISAACSON: Were you surprised that the Republican Party, not just a hardcore base, but a majority of people in the primaries, rallied around him that way?
STEVENS: Oh, Walter, you know, I had a going out of business sale with any optimism in the Republican Party. I think that we've seen a complete collapse of any moral authority of the party. And the people to blame are not Donald Trump. Donald Trump is just being Donald Trump. It's all of the people that you and I know, and I helped elect a lot of them, who before Trump, they wouldn't have had lunch with Trump. They wouldn't let Trump in their house. They know that he's destructive to democracy. They know he's not a conservative. They know that Putin helped elect him. And yet, they still support him.
ISAACSON: Why is that?
STEVENS: That is a profound question. And I asked myself that. And that led me to write this book, "It Was All a Lie." And what -- the only conclusion I come to that makes any sense to me, and I think it makes any sense at all, is that all of these things that we espoused as deep values,
Walter, that the party held, character counts, strong on Soviet Union, strong on Russia, the deficit matters, all of these things, we said were values were in fact just marketing slogans.
So, OK, that's not the case then. So, character really doesn't count. Sure, we'll support the candidate who supports Vladimir Putin in, you know, the largest war in Europe since World War II. I don't know how else to come to a conclusion because people don't abandon deeply held beliefs in a couple of years. And the party has just walked away from these.
You know, the Republican Party now doesn't really exist as a normal American political party in any kind of tradition. It exists to defeat Democrats. And, you know, that's how cartels operate. Nobody asks OPEC, what is your higher purpose? You sell oil. And, you know, it's not like a fun thing to admit. And I've spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to come to grips with it, but the Republican Party now is an autocratic movement. And I think what you see in front of the Supreme Court, where they're actually trying to make the case that a president is above the law, it's just further proof that. It's why they -- the conservative movement is in love with Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin.
ISAACSON: There's a group of people in the Republican Party who have, of course, pushed back Liz Cheney, most prominent among them, even Senator Mitt Romney, Former Vice President Mike Pence. Do you see the possibility that more and more Republicans like that will come forward between now and the election?
STEVENS: I don't think there's many Republicans like them. I think if Trump is convicted it might make a difference with some. You know what – I think it's very interesting to look at, say, Chris Christie, who was a former client of mine. Loved the guy. Could not believe he endorsed Donald Trump in 2016. I remember standing at Atlanta Airport and seeing, you know, CNN and literally tears came to my eyes. It was like, how is this person that I love doing this. And I think he would say it was a mistake now, which is good. What he's going out there and saying now is what should have been said. But when you listen to Chris Christie, how do you come to any other conclusion but you have to support Joe Biden? Same with Asa Hutchinson, who ran in the Republican primary, former governor of Arkansas, another former client of mine, a really good and decent human being, and you may not agree with his politics. He has to support. Liz Cheney has to support Biden. Mitt Romney will support Biden. I think --
ISAACSON: Well, you think or he should --
STEVENS: I think they will. I think those two definitely will.
ISAACSON: Do you think that Biden -- and Biden hadn't called them yet? Do you think Biden should reach out to all of them and create a Republicans for Biden committee?
STEVENS: Sure. When the time is right. You know, if a prominent Republican came to me and said, I want to endorse Joe Biden, my advice, as wearing my political consultant hat, would be, that's great. I would wait. Because if you do it now, it's not going to mean as much as if you do it, say, during the Democratic Convention. And timing is pretty much everything in politics. So, I hope this will happen. If Trump is convicted, it may make that entry ramp a little smoother. But really, you don't need a conviction in any of these trials to know that Donald Trump should not be president. So, you know, it's just -- I mean, think about it, Walter, the Republican Party doesn't have room for a Cheney? Really? A Cheney? What do you do with that?
And there is no Republican Party to go back to. And people just have to come to grips with that. There's a kind of false hope that somehow we can just look beyond Trump, and McConnell expressed a lot of this, and a lot of these sort of gentry Republicans have held their nose and say, well, you know, we're just going to be able to put Trump behind us. No, no. The party -- there is a need for a center right conservative party in America. That cannot be the Republican Party as it's currently construed.
ISAACSON: So, wait. What happens if there's a need for a center right party and the Republican Party has abandoned that? What do you see down the road?
STEVENS: I think 2032 is the best hope that you could have a sane center right party that will emerge. You know, pain is the best teacher in politics. Arguably, maybe the only teacher. And what needs to happen is Republicans need to lose, and they need to lose again and again. And then, out of some sense of survival, you could see a sane party emerging.
You know, a lot of this ultimately has to do with race, Walter. We're a country that's headed to becoming a minority majority country. If you're 16 years and under in America, you -- the majority are nonwhite. Trump's base is 85 percent white. And it's that reality that drives so much of the Republican Party's efforts to change election laws and to sort of curate the election.
ISAACSON: You talk about the politics of grievance and of anti-corporate, anti-state feelings. How does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fit into this equation?
STEVENS: It's a great question. I think it comes down to who RFK. Jr. is. If come October, and RFK Jr. is defined as a crusading environmentalist lawyer that took on big corporations, that guy's going to hurt Joe Biden. If RFK Jr. is defined as this wacky conspiracy nut who has said that there is no safe vaccine, which means he's basically the, you know, anti-polio vaccine candidate who believes -- has expressed these conspiracies about the CIA killing his father and how, you know, Prozac leads to school shootings, I think that guy will probably hurt Trump more.
But, you know, if it was up to me, I would rather just have a straight race with no third-party candidates. It's a cleaner race. You have to make it a choice between Trump and Biden. And there are voters out there who don't like Trump, who are uncomfortable with Biden. If you give them any sort of socially accepted off ramp, my fear is that they'll take them.
That was a great fallacy of a No Labels candidate. And all the candidates they talked about definitely would have just helped elect Donald Trump, which maybe is one of the reasons that ultimately, they didn't go forward. But, you know, in The Lincoln Project, we're out there defining Robert Kennedy for what he is, a conspiracy nut who's anti-vaxxer. I think that's what needs to be done. And I hope that's who he is in October.
ISAACSON: The last few lines of your op-ed, let me quote them to you. You say, we should not normalize how extraordinary it is that Mr. Trump is still a viable candidate for president. The Biden campaign will watch the spectacle unfold asking, how is this guy still in the race? So, let me ask you, how is this guy still in the race?
STEVENS: It goes, I think, to a fundamental hollowness that existed within the Republican Party that Trump brought to light.
ISAACSON: But also, the American electorate?
STEVENS: Well, you look at among Democrats, Trump is, you know, not getting a lot of support. But yes, you would have to say he is appealing to a dark side of America. And we've had other candidates who did that. George Wallace did it. We just didn't have him nominated by a major political party. The Democratic Party rejected George Wallace. The Republican Party embraced it. You know, I think that there has been, by the establishment of the Republican Party embracing Trump, it has given a permission structure for people who are troubled by a lot of Trump to say, well, he couldn't -- he must not be that bad. I think he's a little weird and all this, but, hey, my governor -- I know my governor better. My Senator, they're normal humans. They support Trump. And that is the failure of the party not to stand up to Trump.
But look, if you're going to ask me if Donald Trump wins his next race, does it say something that's very, very troubling about the future of democracy? My answer overwhelmingly is yes. You know, it's difficult to talk about this without sounding alarmist, and language is one of the issues that, you know, we struggle with. But I think if Donald Trump wins this election, it will be the last election that we can recognize as a normal American election.
I know these people. As bad as you think they are, they are worse. They want a different America, and they're open about it when you really listen to them, and that's why they embrace Russia so much. They look at Russia, and they say, OK. Russia, no nonwhite people in power. Putin says there's no gays in Russia. There's no women in power. Elections are performative, but not decisive. That looks pretty good. And they embrace that.
So, the idea, you know, America is rapidly changing, non-college educated white voters have the largest declining demographic in the country, and they find it unsettling and troubling and they would like to stop that. And they will -- they are about the business of trying to change elections so that they reduce the power of those who see a different America. And that's -- the Electoral College facilitates that. Biden won by 7 million votes, but it's 45,000 votes to change hands in just exactly the right places Trump would still win. So, I think it's a race about the future of America. I think the cliche this is the most important race of our lifetime has never been more true.
ISAACSON: Stuart Stevens, thank you so much for joining us again.
STEVENS: Thank you, Walter.
AMANPOUR: So, that was two Republicans, two former Republicans, talking about their party today.
