亚当·希夫新书谈论美国民主 称特朗普统治时期为至暗时期

JUDY WOODRUFF: He is best known probably for being the chief prosecutor in former President Donald Trump's first impeachment trial. That case ended with an acquittal. But, in his new book, "Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff connects that episode to others in our recent history, including the January 6 Capitol riot.Chairman Schiff joined me here just a short time ago.Congressman Adam Schiff, thank you very much for joining us.If the title weren't jarring enough, you have also been saying that the risk of authoritarianism in this country has never been greater. Do you mean that?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: I do. There's this dangerous flirtation in the Republican Party right now with autocracy. You see it reflected in some of their preeminent spokespeople, like Tucker Carlson extolling the model of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian wannabe dictator. You see conservative political conventions now being scheduled in Budapest. And you see Republicans around the country attacking the independent apparatus of our democracy, these elections officials, and trying to strip them of their powers and give them to partisan appointed officials or boards.And that is a direct threat to our democracy and a pathway to authoritarianism.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I'm struck in the book by -- obviously, you focus a great deal on former President Trump, but how much you focus on Republican members of Congress. And you describe how many of them are good people who are persuaded to abandon their beliefs. This becomes a theme of the book. Give us an example of how you see their minds changing, their hearts changing.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: It is really a theme, a running theme in the book.And it goes back to something Robert Caro, the historian, once observed, that power doesn't corrupt as much as it reveals. And over the last five years, we have seen how power has revealed who certain people are. Bill Barr is a perfect example.Bill Barr, under the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, when he was first attorney general, was one kind of person. Surrounded, I think, by people of integrity, like the former president, we didn't get a sense of who he was. But later, tethered to a man without scruple like Donald Trump, we found that Bill Barr was also without scruple, that he would do almost anything to have a seat once again at the table of power. And there are so many other cautionary tales along those lines. But I also wanted to tell the story in this book about the heroes that emerged, the Marie Yovanovitches, the Bill Taylors, the Alexander Vindmans, those who showed great courage, because their example is what will lead us out of this darkness.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you think -- I mean, you call it darkness. I mean, do you see an end to the influence of Donald Trump?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: I do. And what really I think is such a terrible tragedy is, after we went through that horrible ordeal of the insurrection, there was a window when the Republican Party might have recaptured its identity as a party of ideas.