I think the Republican Party has left being a party of ideas and ideology, and just become utterly, slavishly devoted to the former president. I view myself as strongly anti-Trump and strongly pro-democracy. GB: How have the last four years affected your thinking on bipartisanship, conceptually?ĪS: I came from a very nonpartisan background. When people tell you they want to turn the country into an autocracy, we need to listen. They’re holding political conventions in Budapest. They are celebrating Viktor Orbán, the wannabe dictator in Hungary, as their model. The Republican Party has become an autocratic culture around the former president. It requires every generation to defend it.
There’s nothing inevitable and inexorable about democracy. For folks who thought these things could never happen in America, well, now we have seen that they can and they have happened. We are still heading in the wrong direction. We are not out of the woods, by any means. Now, they’ve decided to continue proceeding with him along this destructive path. There was a moment after the insurrection where the Republican Party leadership thought about casting Donald Trump aside, but they had a complete failure of courage and will. Where do you think the GOP behavior is leading the country?ĪS: We are moving, as a nation, in an anti-democratic direction. Specifically, you cite the Benghazi episode as a precursor. GB: You write about how Trump did not start this Republican turn toward autocracy. I think making that case-making that record clear and public and doing so persistently-is our best defense to expose the misconduct that’s leading our country away from its cherished legacy as a democracy.
Often, it’s by using the instruments of democracy against itself. As we speak, Republicans are using the big lie around the country to strip elections officials of their duties and get them over to partisans in the hope and expectation that if they lose the next election, this time, they’ll succeed in overturning it. And they’re just getting more and more serious all the time.
How do you deal with the idea that your colleagues refuse to learn their lesson each time he goes one step further?ĪS: You can draw that straight line from one abuse to the next to the next. They are not bothered by the fact that he was ready to subvert our democracy. GB: You write about how Republicans refuse to acknowledge how far Trump was willing to go to achieve and maintain power. This conversation has been edited and shortened for clarity. I recently spoke with Schiff about how the GOP has eroded our democratic institutions, his conclusion that the behavior of his Republican colleagues-who know the truth and choose not to care-is pushing our democracy to the brink, and what can be done to save the country.
Midnight in Washington provides readers with Schiff’s take on the past five years as someone who lived it up close, and who was at the center of major investigations, from the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in our democracy and the first impeachment of Trump to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Now, Schiff has taken on a time-honored Washington tradition: He wrote a book about his time in the spotlight. Nunes, meanwhile, became Schiff’s main foil during the Russia investigation, claiming to have top-secret documentation confirming Trump’s bizarre theory that the Obama administration had wiretapped his campaign in a 2017 episode known as the “ midnight run.” Suffice it to say, Schiff and Nunes no longer text about the Raiders (and not just because the team has since moved to Las Vegas). “Little pencil-neck” or “Shifty Schiff” were just a few of the nicknames the real-estate-mogul-turned politician gave him. In turn, he became a frequent target of Trump’s derision. Most GOP members cared only about protecting Trump-and, by extension, themselves-from the former president’s abuses of power, no matter how much damage they were inflicting on American democracy in the process.Īs the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, the California representative was tasked with investigating Trump and his inner circle for possible collusion with Russian operatives during the 2016 campaign and with attempts to thwart the Russia probe once they came to power. After Donald Trump assumed office, however, any attempt at bipartisanship was painfully and obviously futile. Republicans were plainly more committed to obstructing the president’s agenda than to solving the country’s problems. On Sundays, Schiff and California Republican Devin Nunes would text about Raiders games.ĭuring the Obama years, that was hard enough. He formed workable, even collegial, relationships with his Republican colleagues. When Adam Schiff first came to Congress in 2001, he fashioned himself a Democrat eager to reach across the aisle to get things done.
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