Reading Between the Lines
Republican presidential candidates believe Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy
Presidential candidate and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgam was in Oskaloosa on Tuesday for a town hall meeting and to meet with reporters from KCCI-TV. The event was at Smokey Row, and the KCCI team interviewed Burgam in the upstairs loft. It wasn’t much of a town hall meeting. He didn’t address anyone seated at the tables as far as I could see and made no formal presentation. No local media was present (KCCI must be saving it for a future program, as I can’t find it on their website).
He did take some time with me. I was told I had four minutes. Whatever…
Here, I want to share that I’ve concluded that much of what reporters (including me) are doing this election cycle is chasing, perpetuating, and creating red herrings/misdirection in part because we are acting like this is a normal presidential cycle. Let me give an example with my own work. Last week I had a piece in TIME, “Why Senator Tim Scott Failed in Iowa.”
I was simply following my curiosity in approaching the topic. Why did he fail? During a normal election cycle, it would have a normal and helpful analysis, I hope. In retrospect, it feels trivial when democracy is under assault.
The question all reporters should be asking is “Which Republican Presidential candidates are a threat to Democracy?” In a series of articles, the Washington Post has argued that Trump advocates are working toward building a fascist military dictatorship. New York Times reporters have examined the Heritage Foundation’s America 2025 report that would reshape America under a second Trump administration. Among the plans are weaponizing the Justice Department against Trump's enemies and filling the civil service and military leadership with Trump loyalists. It would end democracy as we know it.
While the New York Times and the Washington Post focus on what happens under a new Trump administration, I don’t believe we will fare any better under a DeSantis presidency, as I’m sure that he would welcome the powers that would come with this reorganization, and I fear DeSantis would be more disciplined than Trump at dismantling democratic institutions. Ramaswamy would be giddy at the prospect. I’m not sure about Nikki Haley.
Burgum hasn’t caught on with Republican voters, perhaps because he isn’t as extreme or loud as other candidates. Perhaps…
My questions to Burgum are in bold below. My parenthetical comments are in bold and in caps. His answers are italicized.
Here is the audio, and a transcript follows:
I think that some of our Republican presidential candidates are a threat to democracy and I think that others may not be. I think that based on Trump's history, based upon the Heritage Foundation’s America 2025, some of the things that they're planning to do if Trump is reelected. I think that if Ron DeSantis is elected, he's going to fit right in with that. I'm not sure about Nikki Haley.
I want to know where you are on the political spectrum. Do you think that that kind of an effort is a threat to democracy, weaponizing the justice department, getting rid of career civil servants, without loyalty to the president? I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. I'm just interested in how you feel about the big picture of democracy and are some of our candidates, especially Trump a threat.
Well, I would say, I just talk about myself and leave it to the pundits if we only have four minutes because there's you know seven by twenty-four cable channels that can talk about other candidates…
But nobody asks people that…nobody asked them that question. The media isn’t very good at talking about the future of democracy. I’d just like you to address this, do you think democracy is in peril unless people like you are elected or other people who resist that kind of agenda?
Well, I think democracy is at risk always, and democracy is at risk right now because of our important element is free speech and we've got the ability for …so many people are getting their information off of social media and social media may not be real people. I mean this issue of other countries influencing policy and agendas like on energy. I mean if you're if you're Putin, and I know as a governor, we're getting cyber-attacked every single day by Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China. They pay people to go to work to do that and you're Russia and you're trying to sell energy to Western Europe and why wouldn't over the last 10 years. You've been fueling all of the anti-fossil fuel sentiment that occurred in Germany the UK and others where they eliminated their energy and then he ends up locking up that market for himself. I mean is we just have to be less naive about how the elements of an open society and can actually can be undermined by people that have other have other agendas including economic and political agendas. I think because right now, you know, what is what is Iran, Venezuela and Russia have in common. They've all got oil and what is China have they've got 10 million barrels of oil a day deficit that they've got to import every single day. And so, you know, there's a lot of forces that are at play that are out there that are that can affect how we think about that but in terms of democracy and about institutions, one of the things that I know is that people that work in state government whether you're a highway patrolman or county nurse someone who's, you know, teaching in the State University, there's people that care deeply about their jobs and care meaningfully, and we've got a we've got to create meaning and purpose in those jobs. You've got to eliminate the red tape and those jobs you got to get rid of the 20% of every one of those jobs. That's a mind-numbing soul-sucking thing that causes them to not even enjoy their own work. And so there's a way to reduce federal government. There's a way to cut red tape. There's a way to make sure that we ensure democracy under the weight because we can't pay for more than what we can afford and that's what we're doing right now. So to get back to the right-sized federal government, return power to the states, and follow the 10th Amendment part of that is taking someone who understands how to design work and workplaces like we've had to do in technology where every day we had to be better faster and smarter and cheaper than we were the day before.
(HE DIDN’T ANSWER MY QUESTION! JUST KEPT THROWING RED HERRINGS AT ME!)
I think those are all really good points (THIS IS ME BEING POLITE). And I understand why you're making them but how about internal threats? I mean, there's not a lot of what's going on that is truly conservative from Trump. There's not a lot that's truly conservative from Ron DeSantis. They're blowing up institutions. You don't see that as an internal threat to democracy?
Well, I see that from my standpoint as someone who's a leader and a problem solver in the executive branch as someone that you're responsibility is to work for once you're elected. You work for everybody. I say in North Dakota if there's a blizzard we got a plow the roads for Republicans, Independents, and Democrats, and somehow the idea that the executive branch is this thing that is weaponized for the grievances of one party against the other (IS HE ALLUDING TO TRUMP? I SHOULD HAVE FOLLOWED UP), that doesn't fit my philosophy because I know that the job as designed of a governor or every president is to serve everyone whether they voted for you or not. And one of the reasons why we got re-elected by 40 points in our state was because people knew that even if they didn't vote for us, we would listen to them. We would respect them. We would try to understand their problems and we would try to figure out a way to deliver a solution efficiently because in almost all these cases, you know, we keep having these discussions about inputs. We need to tax more and spend more. No, we need to design solutions that actually cost less but produce better results that are available in our society for people who understand how the economy works. So I see myself, can transform government but not in the sense that it's I'm aggrieved. I'm in the sense that I'm nervous about the future of America because we're in a cold world with China and we're in a proxy war with Russia, in a proxy war with Iran, and that people don't understand how energy policy undermines national security. I mean those things concern me, but at the heart of that is we've got to actually have government that works for the people.
And we're over your time, but I appreciate it.
He didn’t answer my question. All of the things he mentioned are important and worth discussing, but all are distractions from the question. And running on and on about them is nothing but cascading BS to avoid the question.
All he had to say was “yes” or “no.”
If he had answered “yes” that Trump and possibly other candidates are a threat, we could have discussed why he, Doug Burgum, should be the Republican nominee who would save democracy.
If he had answered “no” there was no threat, he could have explained why not. I would have loved to hear it. How easy would it have been to say no, Trump isn’t a threat? SO EASY! But he couldn’t.
That likely means he believes that Trump, and possibly other Republicans, are threats to democracy. This makes Burgum at least implicitly complicit.
Shouldn’t every presidential candidate be concerned about threats to our democracy? Sure they should, unless they want to have a hand in it.
Maybe Burgum has his head in the sand, but he doesn’t seem the type.
Nikki Haley was asked the same question by 15-year-old Quinn Mitchell in New Hampshire, as reported by an NBC reporter, and she declined to answer:
Quinn also asked a similar question of DeSantis. “Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power — a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?”
DeSantis didn’t answer.
If a 15-year-old kid can ask these kinds of questions, so can reporters.
Now some readers are thinking, “why Bob, you are over-analyzing—they can’t answer the question because it would anger Trump and his base…”
But that misses the point. Actually, a couple of points.
First, if they choose not to answer we know they are complicit. That they are OK with the end of Democracy if they are part of the power structure that emerges.
Second, reporters need to keep following up. Here my mistake with Burgum in my interview highlights the problem with reporters. At the end, as we stood up and shook hands, all I had to say was, “It was a yes or no question. Is Trump a threat to democracy? Yes, or no?”
But I didn’t.
Now I have to ask, in the MAGA world where lying comes so easily, why don’t they just lie to us and answer, “Of course not, Trump’s not a threat! That’s hyperbole…chuckle, chuckle…”
Maybe that’s a bridge too far, even for them. But I suspect they just haven’t thought of it yet.
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Thank you for continuing to interview these candidates and ask the hard questions, Bob. I appreciate your good work and diligence. I do have to confess, though, that I am usually left wondering why your brain doesn’t melt and leak out your ears when you have to listen their endless BS.
Excellent writing, as always. Of course, candidates running for office will only really engage with the press---actually answer your questions, for instance---if they have respect for such institutions, and believe in accountability to those they serve. And that is increasingly not the case.