book tent is where

the authors will be signing their books after the session. so again welcome, it's my pleasure and my honor to introduce our panelists this afternoon and their books. let me start with the big truth. the full title is the big truth upholding democracy in the age of the big lie, and major garrett and david becker are the coauthors of this book. [applause] >> mr. garrett is a washington correspondent for cbs news, host and creator of takeout -- the takeout and debrief podcasts. he has also written a book which i have not yet read but title intrigues me. mr. trump's wild ride.

and the other book is the 15 biggest lies in politics. david beck who is sitting next to me, i said you've got the best jacket, executive director and founder of the nonpartisan center, national expert on elections has worked in elections for more than 25 years and litigated major cases as a trial attorney in the department of justice under the obama and bush, gw bush administrations. our second author, this is the book that kind of appeals to some of us, maybe one or two, is called the aftermath. the last days of the baby boom and the future of power in america. mr. bump is -- [applause] i picked it up with some trepdation because i'm in that age group.

but it's the last days of the boomers in some ways. so if you're wanting to know what our last days look like. in that book. and phillip is a "washington post" journalist columnist for the post based in new york, he writes how to read this chart. and before working for the post phillip previously wrote for the atlantic, has worked also, i like this part particularly worked for the south bay labor counsel, silicon valley labor organization. so welcome. and in case you wanted to -- [applause] in case you haven't reader enough about q-anon, this is a must read by will summer called the rise of q-anonand the conspiracy that unhinged america. it's called trust the plan. it's got a great photograph of a

flag on the front. be sure to buy his book and get it signed. mr. summer has been working as a political reporter for the daily beast since may of 2018 and previously he was the champion, campaign editor for the hill. as a political columnist for the washington city paper in his journalism he covers the topics of political radicalization and right wing conspiracy theories in the united states. you may have heard him last week on fresh air. very good interview that session was. [applause] so i'm going to go around here and individually ask questions of our panelists. we're going to do our best to get 15 minutes at the end of the session so you can ask questions. a lot of that depends how quickly we get through some of

the important information they have to share with you. if you do come up to ask a question, or ask a question, please make it a question, ok? because sometimes they're not. anyway, i want to start with mr. summer i'll ask a couple questions and then go on and so forth. so you've described the adherence of q anon-is run by a kabul of say tannic cannibal ped fooils who torture children in say tannic rituals. that they're in the democratic party in hollywood and in banking and have controlled the world for centuries. ok. so my first question is how does such a set of absurd beliefs get so many across the country and in the world not only to accept

them but also to act in sometimes violent ways to promote their beliefs? >> that's sort of the kwannedry at the heart of my book that i wanted to find out. you have these ridiculous conspiracy theories and yet we end up with millions believing it. we end up with something like this january 6th, we have believers in congress. so i looked into it in my book. to give you the short version of it, q anonstarts in 2017 with an anonymous clue posted by a figure named q. and people start to believe this is someone in the trump administration, and they're sketching out this world view where as you said hillary clinton, barack obama, even tom hanks, they eat children and they worship the devil and they use this to -- they're controlling the world to get

this magical substance to keep them alive forever. hard to believe as it sounds it spreads and grows, and we have people like marjorie taylor green who i mentioned who is a really hard-core believer and now one of the most prominent republicans in the country. and in the book i get into the downstream effects, destroyed families, murders, plots to kidnap people. and so it really is, it's a fascinating topic and one that i think it does challenge, it's hard to understand how so many people get into it. >> let me add to that, you've indicated in your pook that many evangelical christians and older republicans are more likely to be attracted to q annan compared to other ones. why do you think this is the case? >> a great question. there is a huge religious overlap which feels like a religion itself. it's been compared to a cult,

people believe that they're fighting the devil is a real guy and he's out there doing mischief, plotting against america. and that by joining up with q anon, and the trump cause they call themselves soldiers, you are personally doing bat wl demons. so there is a religious aspect to it and an apocalyptic element. so there is that overlap. in terms of why it often is sort of an older crowd, you know, there's a huge overlap between trump supporters, the average believer often looks like someone at a trump rally, older, whiter, evangelical christian. to be frank i think often they were sort of fooled by what they saw in a way younger people are what have you on line but look, the q anon demo now can be anyone. it's expanded in a lot of ways so that younger people are more diverse crowd, i say that a pooztive thing, obviously it's

not. but it is, it really has expanded. yoga q anon. wellness q anon. it's big on instagram. it really can pull anyone in. >> wow, that's a scary thought for sure. let me move next to phillip and i want to start off by saying this. as a wanna be boomer myself, i am not a boomer technically, i was born in 1945, one year or two early. my wife today is a real boomer. i'm often reminded though, as i think about being a boomer and what it means for all of us what carl riener who is a comic writer, tv star and all that wrote about the life of an ageing boomer. he wrote in his auto biography that he gets up in the morning and he would never do anything before he opens the paper. and the first thing he does is turn to the owe bitries, and he says if i'm not there, i make

coffee and have breakfast. how many of you do this? right? well, let me start with how many of you look at the obituary in the morning. guilty myself. in your book, boomer influences discussed in terms of economic impact, how, did their large numbers affect infrastructure, health care, and the acquisition of wealth. and what does that say about a country in which boomers no longer drive the economy culture and infrastructure and many more thing sns >> so again the book goes on the leptsdz of this which is obviously why i thought it was important to talk about. but i think when we consider what the baby boom is, even baby boomers don't understand the scale. it was an enormous disruption in the american population. 1945, about 140 million people in america total population. over the course of the next 19 years, 76 million more babies

are born. but you think about what that means. what does it mean? five years later you're going to have a lot more kinder gartance, more schools, more teachers, when they hit middle school, you have to do that with middle school, high school. over the course, los angeles was opening one new school, elementary middle or high school every single month. when we think for example, think about all the schools that backlash brown versus board of education named after confederate leaders, they had to build all these schools happening at the moment of tension. the baby boom emerged 1946 to 1964 at a period when immigration was restrict td. in the 1920s new restrictions imposed as a backlash against immigrants from eastern and southern europe. so that didn't get lifted until after the boom was over. so it's much whiter than other americans. the generation itself is much

less densely immigrant heavy and while baby boomers started the trend of going to college they're also much less likely to go to college than younger americans. so we can see as we look at this pattern over time, the surging, it becoming the focus of american tension, power, money, marketers. you remember the show 30-something? came out in 1987, the 30 years exactly after the biggest year of birth in the baby boom. there's a reason it came out when it did because the baby boom was the target audience. so now what do we have? now we have this very unique and unsettling moment when the baby boom generation ceases. there's a lot of different types. people who led the resistance of donald trump are baby boomers. but when we talk about this moment, we have especially since the election of barack obama an older whiter generation of americans who see a younger more diverse and more socially liberal generation of americans

coming up and they feel unsettled and see change. not all of them see the change, but a lot see change and are wor aedz about change and that influences. you can see all the factors i said, college educator, whiter, overlap with partisan politics. so now the question is we're in this moment of tension, of generational shift, another one, what happens next? that's what the book tries to explore. the baby boom has to compete for power with younger generation. >> your book is filled with graphs and data and i love that part because so many times we just mix statements and you don't know if is there empirical data behind it. if you're interested in data, this is the book for you. i want to expand on the last question and talk a little bit more about what happens when the baby boomers meet their demise. >> sure. >> ok? sorry to say we're all going to

do that, looking out across. none of us up here of course. so you've made some very important insights about what happens when boomers meet their demise. what's next? when they decline in their dominance in our society and culture. what should we expect to happen then? how will younger generations influence politics, economics, housing, and other critical aspects of our country? >> this is the big question, right? in terms of expecting what's going to happen over the intermediate term is what happened as americans get older. remember i said five years after the boom started you had to build all these kinder gardens. now they're retiring. so people born in 1957 hit 65 last year, so we're at the heart of retirees, and now america once again had to adjust to that, has to accommodate that how to deal with this bigger

senior population. there's a lot of questions. it's extremely awkward to write a book in which you have to talk about a massive group of people who have to die. dem graphs, are like yeah that's going to happen. we don't know how long americans are going to live generally much less as a collective but there's repercussions for that. we think about the wealth held you've probably heard this, also very wealthy but there's an enormous number. so per capita, n not wealthier but where does that wealth go? one factor is how long people live. if you were planning your retirement to live until you're 80 and you end up living to 90 and then have some medical crisis that throws your economics out of whack. so all of these conversations over the course of the next 20 years expect to be more than $50 trillion transferred from baby boomers to other places, institutions, family members, but that's very dependent upon this question of how long people live. and so we don't know that, is it

the case that when baby boomers sell their houses it's going to be a glut in housing market? is no, because people are going to live a long time and the market is going to accommodate that. the real question that speaks to this panel is what happens with politics, and that is much more intricate than people realize. we have a younger generation, more liberal, more diverse. but we've seen states, and the state that most looks like what the census bureau expects the demography of the country to look like in 2060 the state that looks like that most right now is the state of florida. florida is not a democratic state, right? i think you know this. but, but, but florida is also very different because their older population is much whiter, will be in the 60s, and it is also the hispanic population, cuban america, a much more conservative group. so what does that mean? what will that look like? it's not as clear cut as younger

americans are going to stay liberal, although i think it's more like that they will. but it's not the case the republican party of today will be the republican party of 20 years from now either. >> let's move on to major garrett and david becker. i start with saying this. in your book you create a hypothetical scenario in which things go terribly wrong at the voting, at a voting site and the nation byed -- nation wide fallout. what does this tell us about what could have gone wrong had it been a reality in 2020 or 2022? >> well, so we did pose a hypothetical and one of the things that struck us, we wrote this book mostly in the early part of 2022, and it came out in september. and i think major and i both agree we were very concerned about as people were focusing all on 2024 that we still had to

guest past 22. and the, one of the big concerns we had and i've been working on my whole career about especially in the last few years, i'm not particularly concerned that people are going to be anointed the winners of an election in which they lost. there are many, many checks against that, that's very unlikely. but the specter of political violence hangs over everything in the last few years, perhaps nowhere more so than here in arizona. and we were very concerned about how that could be catalyzed. i mean, there's a scenario in which a specific instance kind of provides the spark, there's also a hypothetical where no specific instance was necessary, that things could have gone off the rails very badly. i think it's also important to thoet, when we talk about the 2022 election, i know we feel

this way and i suppose many of you in this room feel this way. we are far better off than we thought we might be five months ago, and that's a very good thing. that doesn't mean we're out of the woods. in fact when we start talking about 2024 we're definitely not out of the woods. we're still in a very, very perilous point in our history as a democratic nation. but things are a little bit better than we thought they might be, the streets of phoenix were not set on fire, the election -- put ago side who anyone might have voted for, the election results were verified and confirmed just like they were in 2020 and the people who actually won, even when they won by very, very narrow margins took office. that's a good sign but we're going to have to be very vigilant going forward. >> one thing i would say on behalf of the book is the facts that you'll find in there about what happened in 2020, who made it happen, when i say who made

it happen, what david and i mean is americans all over this country who do the hard work of putting elections together. in our country we do this on a decentralized basis, at the local level first and the local level has professionals, civil servants. but has a great number of volunteers who are poll workers, who assist in this process, in their neighborhoods. and we essentially wrote the book initially, the original idea for it was just to write a love letter to the people in 2020 who made the election happen. the largest turnout in our history, the most diverse population to ever participate in an election, with very little day of election snarls or problems and the teeth of a global pandemic when we still did not have vaccinations and election administration is by definition a non-socially distance experience. you have to do it face to face at great peril. and many people got sick and were hospitalized in the service

of this work. we in this country trained 400,000 new poll workers because 400,000 opted out. who were those 400,000? longstanding traditional poll workers who were aged, 60, 70, 80. of course they opted out because their health was jeopardized by the pandemic. so we trained 400,000 poll workers, most of them via zoom. highly difficult mechanism by which to convey the intricacies of being a poll worker. but we did it. it was a great civic accomplishment for this country, a great civic accomplishment. something when i was a child in this country we would universally celebrate across party lines as doing something uniquely american. not accepting failure, working through hard problems, living within a deadline, finding creative ways around hard

problems, and working together, clabt illinois and create illinois. that's exactly what happened in 2020. it's something that should be celebrated and not may lined as a krien because it wasn't a crime. it was an american civic triumph, fact, and that will never change. but those who want to demean it, those who want to slander it will always change their orientation. and i offer as proof the former president of the united states last night talking to his most rabid supporters at cpac and saying republicans have to master mail-in balloting and ballot harvesting. ok? that's not what he's been saying for two years, ok? why is he saying it? because he understands the politics of doing what republicans used to do. which is sort of mail-in balloting. look at the state, republicans were very good at mail-in balloting for decades.

none of the apparatus or the laws or the procedures changed. only the outcome left one person and one party childishly aggrieved. well, that grievance threatens the future of this country, and our book is an answer to that grievance. and the facts you will find in that book will never move. they will but we won't. >> can i ask, how many people in this -- please [applause] how many people in this room have volunteered to be a poll worker in the past? [applause] i mean, the facts that drove us to write this book is that the reality is our elections are secured, verified, and transparent as they've ever been in american history, that is the result of professionalism, that election officials, volunteer poll workers have built over the course of decades, and that's

what led to the triumph, 160 million people casting a ballot in the middle of a global pandemic. 20 million more ballots, the highest turnout rate we've seen before, and the reason we're so concerned about democracy is as we sit here there are tens of millions of americans who believe the exact opposite from the verifiable truth, which is that even when you have an election as for instance with the arizona attorney general's race that is very close, it is an election -- the election officials prayer, if you know election officials, if you know any of them find them and give them a hug. the official prayer is let the margins be wide. they don't care who wins as long as the margins are wide. when you get a statewide election decided by just over 200 votes, that's a nightmare, it represents a very closely divided state. there's nothing election officials can do about it,

there's no laws that can enable you to know who won at 200 vote margin statewide race on election night. there's no way that can be done. there's just ballots that come in late that have to be verified and confirmed. and they did it. and the fact that there are still tens of millions of americans, hundreds of thousands of people here in arizona that doubt the outcomes of elections regardless of whether margins are wide or narrow is an ongoing concern. >> thanks. i want to bring it back to arizona again a little bit because we had a situation here where four of the six top statewide offices or candidates i should say, republican candidates, were endorsed by former president trump. and four lost. all four lost. as you say, one, the attorney general's vote was 280 different i think, i had one of those myself back in 2014.

but you wait for the recount and you honor the results. and that's not happening. some are still out there saying the election was stolen. so i want to be optimistic about what happened in 2022 and how it might affect 2024. what would you say about such optimism? is that likely to play out in 2024? i know you don't have a crystal ball but what do you think? >> so i'm that optimistic for this country because i believe the country is durable, resilient, optimistic and forward moving. it always has been. fits and starts for sure. but this has been a traumatic time for this country, no question about it. but these arguments against the election in 2020 and 2022, they simply don't wear well. they've got nowhere to go because they are based on a foundation of fraud lnsy and they always will be. that doesn't mean some people

won't buy into it but the durability of that cannot last. that's my belief. that's why i'm a net optimist about this. that's why in nevada, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, when deniers lost, they more or less, more often than not, conceded. and that was a very important part of this process. not only is the way we cast and count ballots important, but the recognition, if there's a recount, and then a concession, a concession is part of theglu that holds our system together. it's about the larger system. when you concede you are not a weakling, let me say that again. when you concede you are not a weakling, you are a strong american who is giving your voice to a process that you didn't prevail through but you're strong enough to say the system is bigger than i am. and the structure is bigger than i am. and that adds strength to

america. it does not take it away. and i believe we'll see more of that in the future. [applause] >> i mean, i think major and i both share optimism, and now that i've said that i'm going to say something pessimistic. there are still areas of this country where denial can lead to potential political violence, potential attempts to tsh that i think will ultimately fail but attempts to play games with the election system. i'm particularly concerned about this state, i'm particularly concerned about wisconsin. i think those two states are number one and number two on my list, not necessarily in that order. and one of the other dynamics that in my day job as leading a nonprofit, the center for election innovation research, we've done polling on this and one of the things that often shows up is that people's

confidence in the election system diminishes farther away than where they live. this is what led this is what led to something we talk about in the book, the texas attorney general filed a lawsuit in december 2020 arguing that election rules that everyone had an known about did not satisfy people in texas and some other states. imagine by the way being the chief law enforcement officer in a state and saying to another state, we don't like your election rules. this is one of the least conservative, least federalist 80 as you can imagine. that was quickly struck down by the supreme court. this doubt about election processes is spread by allies. that's how we get to something like january 6. it is not that people in arizona thought the arizona election was stolen and they went to washington. it is that people in wyoming

caught the arizona election was stolen, thought the nevada election was stolen, and the pennsylvania election was stolen. they traveled all the way across the country to washington in january of 2021. but that potential is still with us. we will have to remain extremely vigilant about it over the next two years especially as we have at least one declared presidential candidate and perhaps more that are willing to undermine the processes for the election. >> thank you. can we turn to will again and talk about your findings, that qanon influenced, and the followers were present at the insurrection, on january 6, and that violence has been connected to their beliefs that joe biden would be arrested by donald trump at the inauguration or that trump would be reinstated

as president from whence forth? and share what you know about this bizarre notion that rfk, john kennedy, and michael jackson others would come back to dallas? >> sure. [laughter] >> i don't get it but maybe you do. what happened there? >> it is a lot to cover. briefly jumping off the arizona election point, people say it could have been horse after the helmet should. you had a guy running for secretary of state who among other things was part of a coalition organized by a guy who impersonates jfk junior. he puts together -- he was called the qanon coalition. we usually could have had that run elections here. in terms of january 6, i think you and on, it would be hard to

decipher their codes and what have you, it was an under registered factor. we look at the indictments on january 6 and it seems as though the proud boys and other groups uncovered, they and the oath keepers allegedly saw that there would be gaps and they would like to spark. a lot of that restless energy and desire for violence came from qanon. i spoke to a woman who believes in qanon. i opened the book this way. she had come from across the country because she thought that they would be the storm. for q and nonbelievers, that is the day they think donald trump would execute all his enemies, including barack obama, hillary clinton, or send them to guantanamo bay and author in a fascist utopia. they like this idea. this woman thought so and she was there to rescue the children being kept in underground tunnels. all this crazy stuff. she would ultimately be

arrested. when you look at other people who are charged, over 60 q and nonbelievers who were arrested because of the roles and generate sixth, several people died including ashli babbitt who were convinced of the storm. qanon had a big role providing that manpower. when you promise people all of your problems will be solved and your debts will be abolished, your political enemies and people you hate, it will help lead up to the violence. should we move to jfk junior? so a faction of q and nonbelievers, for the life of me i don't understand, they think jfk junior faked his death in the 1990's in a plane crash to reemerge and help donald trump take on the cabal. where it gets really interesting, roughly 30% of q

and nonbelievers, where it gets interesting is there are specific guys they think are jfk juniors. these guys will be out and about . i already mentioned one who was meddling in elections. there's another guy who wears a fedora whose name is vincent. he shows up at these things and everyone says well, it is jfk junior. he's nice personally but he won't admit it. he's obviously not jfk junior. [laughter] i ran into him once at one of these events. all these women were like, it is jfk junior, like he's a heartthrob. i said, you know that's not him, right? it doesn't even look like him. and they say, haven't you ever heard of hollywood? they have some special effects going on here, like i'm the dupe. [laughter] this belief, you mentioned the dallas crew, a cultlike group

within qanon, not only jfk junior, jfk senior, all of these celebrities who died tragically were going to come back to dallas and return to life. these people mobbed the city of dallas and anyone they see, that guy looks like robin williams, that's him. there is a sad aspect to this. i got a call from a guy who was like, my wife disappeared into this group and i have not heard from her in weeks. sad stories. in the book i try and balance, there is comedy and ridiculousness to it, but it's sad for a personal level and the country as a whole. >> wow. read this book. [laughter] you need to scare the hell out of yourself. i want to turn next to philip. your book, with data and analysis, explaining the baby

boom and how it impacted every aspect of our country from 1946 on. do you use data to explain how pervasive the boomer impact on who we are as americans, for example, and this is something that will probably resonate with the audience, you discussed the influence of boomer music on our culture. as one of the many here this afternoon who still live music of our time, can you talk about this particular boomer influence ? >> ok. it is sort of hard to encapsulate. i think it is an important part of this. when we talk about the baby boom importance, we talk about everything that is america today. everything until recently is

about a massive group of people. one of the most telling quotes, in which the way the media environment has changed, you can sit in your room in cleveland and get $1 million overnight. which is true. social media empowers anyone to become a face and a voice and someone who can say things, crazy cumin on things, or that the election has been stolen. but that is different. when the ab boomers were young, they were gatekeepers. -- baby boomers were young, they were gatekeepers. there were all these ways in which they were very limited avenues forward. you have things like the beatles, the rolling stones, i still know all these bands because my parents were born in 1948 and it was what i grew up listening to because the boomer influence is so big and i'm generation x.

the point is that nowadays, you can record your own song, being your own musician. there was a great example in the times a couple years ago. this guy in a eastern european country took a hip-hop song and it became a number one song after remixing it. i think the important thing here is not only the consistent and pervasive influence of baby boomers, not only music but movies and everything else, they were a big market for so long, that everyone wanted to sell things to them, but the important thing is when we talk about how those gatekeepers are fractured, and how young people in particular can challenge older people and use this tool, lack of a gatekeeper to speak directly to older generations, that is not something baby boomers could do. when the vietnam war protest emerged, you would just go and protest and hope the san francisco chronicle would pick

it up.part of the generational tension we are seeing in this moment is rooted in the fact that you can be confronted like that. when you think about something like the ok boomer phenomena, what was that? people on tiktok. all of a sudden it was a place were more older people were creating content and younger people native to tiktok were irritated by it. they take the content from older people, and they take terrible songs, and say ok boomer to this. it is just because of their ability to speak directly to older generations. obviously the musical influence is huge, but it is undergirding the erosion of gatekeepers that speaks to the challenges we are seeing right now. > in your epilogue, this is for major and david, you discussed the notion in the talk , on tv and online and social

media that we are on the verge of the civil war. you say this is the language of fatalism and retreat. now we have a q&a on member of the house of representatives, in a position of authority, certainly gets airtime, calling for a national divorce between red states and blue states. what can be done about this kind of rhetoric and pushback on this kind of notion? i know that you believe we have a solid system, but it is being further eroded by these kinds of comments. >> it is true. one of the things we are seeing, it has always been around, but we are seeing this more so now than ever, that we have kind of media silos telling us our fellow americans, neighbors, friends, family, are our avenue mise -- are our enemies. it is not exclusively on the right. it is across the political spectrum. we all siloed to some degree, including myself.

it is difficult to be challenged constantly. major and i went down rabbit holes of election denials to write this book and it is not fun. that is a very very dangerous philosophy. it is something our enemies and try to get us to believe for a long time. if you look at back at the russian disinformation and other disinformation prominent in 2016 and onward, a lot of it is designed not so much to pursue a particular policy but to get americans split between policies. you see them promoting a black lives matter readily across the street from in all lives matter rally in the same city. they don't care which one wins. they just want us to be angry at each other. this can lead to talk of civil war of dividing our nation in a variety of ways, and seeing, let's be honest, 74 million people voted for donald trump in

2020. they are not all insurrectionists. they are not all bad people. they have different policy prescriptions. they are good americans. major and i participated in a focus group in phoenix a couple weeks ago with people who had serious doubts about the election put on by the cronkite school of journalism and franklin's. we sat with him and to be honest it was not fun for them either. they were challenged for two hours. we did not change minds. we did reach understandings and some goodwill was built over time. one of them visited the maricopa county elections office and his understanding now the checks and balances that go into elections that the things he had hearing ballots, dead venezuelan dictators, ballots made out of bamboo, i wish i was making this

stuff up. it is something all of us can do which is it is easy to look on people that we disagree with as the other and enemies. to some degree, we will have to come together a little beyond that and that means being comfortable in some opposing views. it is uncomfortable because of these held. >> beliefs one of>> the reasons david and i committed to doing it is because we wanted to hear what people thought who either reject or deny the 2020 and 2022 election. they mostly deny and reject both. we wanted to hear why, and if anything, lower the temperature a little bit. i don't think we change anyone of their minds, but they were heard and they had a chance to express themselves and be to their satisfaction respected. on the other set of that event, david and i said, what did we

really accomplish? with the accomplishment of having interacted, listened, interactive discourse, nobody yelled or threw a punch, we just sorted the sound. if i would say anything about this position -- part of what marjorie taylor greene does is relentlessly push the boundaries of outrageousness because that is a method for her to do short-term things. raise money and increase her visibility. lots of politicians have short term goals. that is something in american politics. hers is a particularly egregious form of short-term goal seeking and making. she will have to defend it. you might expect her republicans colleagues say that's outrageous, we should not talk about a national divorce. my point is don't wait for other political leaders to rescue this country. you will have to rescue this country. the reliance i have and the

optimism i have is not based on political leadership. it is based on you. it is based on your attendance. it is based on your faith in this country. it is based on your sense of what this great american experiment is about and why it matters and deserves to be preserved. don't wait for them to rescue this country. rescue it yourselves. i beg of you. [applause] >> we want to go to questions, but i want to do a rapid round with each of our panelists to answer questions that is the subject of this panel today. what can we expect in 2024? tell us what should we expect from your perspective, what should we expect in 2024? >> i'm low on ron desantis' chances. i recommend people watch a video of him talking and calibrate your thoughts on that.

also just from my topic area, we will see a resurgence of these conspiracy theory groups that have been under the radar and as trump returns to prominence and we get more political tension in the country every day, we will see groups like proud boys perhaps or some splinter groups become more visible and active. >> i will say it is important to remember that 2020 and 2024 is four years and that is a long time. it does not seem like it. but it is a long time and a lot of things can happen over four years. i mean that in two ways. december 20 19th, none of us could have predicted what happened in 2020. i also mean the demography and people change. now we have an expectation in the same way that it happened in 2016, with efforts to reshape the narrative, this not effective effort by the russians

to change what happened, it is not the same thing that happened in 2020. if you look at what happened in 2020 and 2022, something changed . a lot of americans recognize what occurred from 2020, november 3, 2020 until january 6 2021 was a huge crisis. a lot of americans responded to that. maybe they did not love democrats but they came out to vote in the midterms because they were more worried about what might happen to american democracy. i got out of the production business on november 8, 20 16. [laughter] but we should say that the elections will continue to get younger and americans are now very cognizant that this is a real room -- moment of risk. >> so to answer the question what should we expect in 2024, i want to take you back to february 11, 2020.that's when joe biden came in fifth in the new hampshire primary. all of you then, i'm sure,

predicted within a month, he would be the democratic nominee. [laughter] right? you were all sure of it. you all knew. i wish you had called me. my point is, politics shifts and it shifts rapidly. whether this rube is comfortable or uncomfortable -- room is comfortable or uncomfortable, you have to consider trump the republican favorite until he's defeated and someone stands on stage, and says you are wrong, i am right, i have the coalition behind me to elevate me to the primary and that is a long way away. nikki haley is saying we need a new generation of leadership is not say that p republicans don't know how to say what they need to say to replace them with the former president. you have to knock him out. you have to defeat the front

runner. that's not easy business. it's hard business. you need a strategy and tenacity. you need means i which are just to raise money. ron desantis is very good at raising money. so was jeb bush. so was hillary clinton. they are not presidents. it is hard business. it will be the hardest thing republicans, if they want to have a post trump or alternate trump republican party, have to do. they don't have a means or roadmap to do it. for president biden, everyone expects him to run. i fully expect him to run. there are a lot of ways in which the 2024 campaign will look different than when he was less required to be less -- to be visible. it was not an active campaign. no one was doing rallies and events and traveling.

issues of his age and acuity will inevitably be a part of presidential campaigns that will be viewed from lots of different ways across the political spectrum with unpredictable results. my only point is predicting anything in 2024 is extremely difficult because of the turnout model. the electorate is engaged, showing up in larger and more volatile numbers, all of it makes it difficult with any degree of confidence to tell you what will happen in 2024. i know you were all sure that biden would roll everyone up in new hampshire. [laughter] >> i will avoid like philip any political predictions. i'm notoriously bad at them. but i will talk about the health of our democracy overall.

one thing we know is the incentive structure is out of whack. there's an ecosystem of grifters getting very rich and perceive the opportunity for political power even if they are wrong. by spreading lies about the health of our democracy and the outcomes of elections, that will continue. election officials in this country are currently under threat. we are over 850 days since the november 2020 election. that has not abated they are getting threats today as we sit here. there are people prosecuting -- prosecuted for making threats. there are people raising a ton of money either in political power or not by spreading lies. they will continue to do this. people forget often in 2020, donald trump was delegitimizing the election process back in march of 2020 and that wasn't

even the beginning. he was saying elections were rigged in 2016. he was using the birther conspiracy as a narrative in 2012. these were things we were going to say. the question is not whether or not we will be millions of americans who doubt the outcome of elections in 2024. the question is whether there are just a few million americans or major political parties reject the fringe movements or whether there are tens of millions of americans and one of the major parties flirts with tractor channel that. what we are seeing as there is no channeling that. that is a force that were overwhelmed -- will overwhelm any chance to redeem them and will corrupt them overwhelmingly. i say to everyone although this is not 50-50 between political parties, not even close, it is

also not 100-0. there are elements on the left. there have been elements of individuals who denied elections in the past. there are people who refused to concede in the past. so it's not equivalent at all but it can be all of us. who among us has not experienced a bitter election in the last 10 years? we will just have to process it and be ok with it. sometimes the candidates we believe in lose. they are good americans who voted for candidates who lost. they realize hopefully the right thing to do is fight for the next election. >> thank you. we have time for a couple questions. yes, ma'am. >> [inaudible]

-help me understand- why it is that the parties are accepting the down ballot election results but not the up ballot election results. how can i understand how they can justify that? >> yes. the question was, how can people believe in the integrity of a race that was down ballot on the same ballot where they doubt the integrity of the races up the ballot? this came up in the focus groups. there was an individual who doubted donald trump had lost in 2020 and doubted kari lake had lost, but he talked about a arizona congressperson he really liked, and because this person really fights for his values. i asked him, do you think this person was legitimately elected in 2020 and 2022, because he was literally on the same piece of paper as these other races, literally a couple lines down? you

can kind of see him for a second. he kind of realized where i was going with that. he said at that point, actually now that you mentioned it, i don't know that i believe he was legitimately elected. >> wow! >> we were trying to engage. this is not a criticism of this individual. i asked, who benefits when we all doubt the outcome of virtually any election, because we can't process the outcome of one race? the answer goes back to what i was saying earlier. our adversaries benefit. our adversaries tried to say that we failed and now we are doing it for ourselves. you have all voted in arizona. arizona had paper ballots for decades. very few changes in the election pasta's in 2020 because of covid -- process in 2020 because of covid. republik and started the mail ballot system. the same pieces of paper elected members of congress had been

elected to the electoral count just a few weeks later and there's no reconciling that cognitive dissonance. >> another question quickly? >> gerrymandering. is there a way to address this problem effectively before 2024? >> no. >> no. >> no. [laughter] >> can i make a point about this? reason know is because it's done with the census. i went back and looked, there is a theory that when you gender -- gerrymander, you get more ideologically extreme. i found that was true on the democratic side. the gerrymandered districts that were heavily democratic went more ideologically liberal. the moderate ones did not. on the republican side, they went far more conservative

regardless of how they were gerrymandered. just an interesting thing i discovered. >> one more quick question. >> i ask my question as a poll worker who believes that the audit process and the recount processes, i think we can stand up to that kind of a challenge. what scares me more are the things called board of canvassers or houses of representatives, state houses, who have tried to overturn the results of our precincts. i'm just wondering how -- should we be worried about that? >> we have to be vigilant about it. worried is probably a strong word. we've seen efforts notably in new mexico and arizona where the county boards or boards of

canvases or elections are called different things in different places sought to essentially cast doubt or a to certified results that professionals had come up with. the poll workers who were trained and clerks who were trained and professional and there were efforts. the good news is everyone of those has been challenged in court and failed. that's the good sign. we will still see efforts along the lines to challenge -- and thank you for being a poll worker and all of you who have done that. [applause] those of you who served, there's a reason you get trained for hours before the election. there's a reason you show up hours before the polls open on election day, which means you are waking up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. there's a reason you stay for hours after the polls close. there's a reason you have people observing you and watching throughout the day. there are checks and balances. close elections are close

elections.nothing . there's -- nothing we can do about them. there's a process we have. i'm not worried somehow losers will be anointed winners. i am worried these efforts will undermine confidence and lead to political violence. >> i'm sorry, we have run out of time, but i want to have you join me in thanking our panelists. they've done a great job. [applause] thank you all.