Rep. Seth Moulton: Democracy on the Brink

Ken Harbaugh:

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Seth Moulton:

Trump is clearly going to do everything he can to chip away at the institutions of democracy. He's laid out these plans. Organizations like The Heritage Foundation are giving him the intellectual rigor to make it happen.

So, all those things point to a slow decline for our democracy. And it might not fall apart completely under Trump's term, but over time, the cancers that he injects into the system could be fatally corrosive.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions. My guest today is Seth Moulton, a former Marine Corps Officer who has represented the 6th Congressional District of Massachusetts since 2015.

He appears in the film Against All Enemies, where he delivers a prophetic warning about the threats to American democracy posed by extremist organizations that target and recruit military veterans. Seth, welcome to the show.

Seth Moulton:

Good to be here, Ken. Thanks for having me.

Ken Harbaugh:

Great to talk to you again. I want to go back though to mid-2016, you were running for reelection after a single term in the house, and I attended an event in which you talked about the danger that a Trump presidency might pose to the country.

You took a lot of criticism at the time, if my memory is correct, for comparing him to fascist dictators. And you even made the point that Hitler himself actually came to power through an election. And I know a lot of people in that room thought you were being alarmist.

I was on the fence, but you were right. I'm guessing that even though the past eight years have vindicated you, it doesn't feel good being that right.

Seth Moulton:

No, it doesn't. And comparisons with Hitler are always dangerous and I was much criticized at the time for making this comparison. I think I was the first in the Congress to say it out loud, although plenty of people were saying it behind the scenes.

Of course, since then a lot of people, including a lot of Jewish Republicans have come out and made this comparison as well. And the point I was making is that Hitler came to power through a democratic system.

Now technically, he lost an election, he was appointed. I mean, but the point is it was a totally democratic system that got him into power. So, dictators don't just take over countries like Putin is trying to do to Ukraine. They could come to power right here at home.

And I thought that some of the things that Trump was talking about at the time, some of the ways in which he operated, some of the ways in which he garnered support had frightening parallels with an incredibly horrific history.

Ken Harbaugh:

In 2016, we might have been able to rationalize away some of the support for Trump because his followers were ignorant of just how dangerous he was. I think that excuse is gone. We've seen who he is.

He tried to undermine democracy once already, and yet the bulk of the Republican Party still supports him. He's the presumptive nominee for president and it begs the question is autocracy what they want?

Seth Moulton:

Well, I mean, I think it shows that they're not just ignorant. I mean, I don't think Trump supporters are ignorant, I think they're angry. I think they're frustrated. I think that they are looking for someone to sort of carry out their frustrations on a national stage and they see that person in Trump.

I mean, in fact, one of the things I argued at the time was don't run against Trump with on a moral argument because people get the fact that he's immoral and they're still voting for him. They're not stupid. They get the fact this is an incredibly immoral guy; they still choose to support him.

I've also always said that I think Trump is a symptom not a cause. The problem with a second term is that he could actually become more of a cause. He could be a symptom of frustrations and problems in our democracy, but he could literally become the cause of the democracies demise.

Ken Harbaugh:

Can you explain how that might play out? Because we've talked about it on the show before. We talked about the guardrails that held, but just barely in 2020. What would a second Trump term look like now that Trump and the people closest to him have learned how to dismantle what limitations there might be on unchecked executive power?

Seth Moulton:

Well, there's a couple ways this could happen. I mean, the first is that the great nations, empires don't end of the day, they usually fade away and Trump is clearly going to do everything he can to chip away at the institutions of democracy. He's laid out these plans.

Organizations like The Heritage Foundation are giving him the intellectual rigor to make it happen. And he knows the kind of people he needs to put in place to actually affect his goals as opposed to people like John Kelly, Jim Mattis, who worked constantly behind the scenes to actually undermine what President Trump was trying to do. And of course, more of that evidence is coming out now that they're out of power.

So, all those things point to a slow decline for our democracy. And it might not fall apart completely under Trump's term, but over time, the cancers that he injects into the system could be fatally corrosive.

But the other way this could happen is through a much more dramatic foreign policy problem, literally a war. And no one's talking about this, but from my perspective, especially sitting in Congress on the House Armed Services Committee, I actually think the foreign policy danger of a President Trump's second term is most paramount.

What does this look like? Well, the biggest threat that we face in the world right now is a war with China. And if China decides to go ahead and invade Taiwan, something that Xi Jinping has said he will do, he staked his reputation on it. He stakes China's reputation on it.

All the same things that Putin did vis-a-vis Ukraine, when we all said, “Oh no, come on, he's not really going to do that.” Guess what? Dictators sometimes tell you what they're going to do. And if Xi Jinping goes ahead and invades Taiwan, America only has two choices.

Either we don't do anything, and deterrence falls apart all across the globe or we actually go in and defend Taiwan and we would win that war, I can say with confidence, but it would be disastrous. I mean, we're talking about the possibility literally of World War III.

And I know this is going to sound alarmist, but World War III could go nuclear, and it could be existential for humanity. That's actually what could be at stake here with a second Trump term because the foreign policy that he has proposed is so dangerous.

He said that he's going to let Putin walk all over Europe, and he said that he will not defend Taiwan, which if you want to deter and prevent a war with China, is about the single most dangerous thing you can say.

Ken Harbaugh:

Is there anything we can do legislatively to prepare for the nightmare scenario of a second Trump term and the abandonment of our allies? I know we're talking about shoring up NATO. Are there other initiatives that might be able to at least buy us some time if Trump wins reelection and decides to unilaterally overwrite the checks and balances and do what he offered Putin whatever the hell he wants?

Seth Moulton:

There's a lot that we could do, that's your question. Is there a lot we could do? Yes, there is. Here are some examples. We could take certain decisions out of the President's hands. For example, the Insurrection Act.

A lot of experts have come out and said that the ability of the President of the United States to use U.S. military troops domestically is too liberal, that needs to be reigned in. We could change the Insurrection Act. We could change the way that votes are certified in the electoral college to make the insurrection of January 6th, just less technically possible to occur. We could do things on the foreign policy front that you and I have discussed.

The problem with all of these ideas is there are legislative things that we could do, but with Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives, and as we've seen recently, essentially Donald Trump through the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene in charge of the House of Representatives, none of this is going to happen.

Ken Harbaugh:

He is calling the shots within the Republican caucus right now. What is that like? As a workplace, how do you work alongside people who tried to undermine democracy and who are now, I'll just rattle off a couple things, upholding aid to Ukraine, they are refusing to shore up democratic safeguards like making it harder to invoke the Insurrection Act.

I mean, take your pick. You have a completely dysfunctional Republican house that is answering not to their own electorate, but to the former president.

Seth Moulton:

I can work with people I disagree with. I do it all the time. I'm sure anyone listening to this podcast knows that you work with people you disagree with. It's often almost impossible to work with people that you can't fundamentally trust.

And the reason why we can't trust Republicans is because they'll say one thing, they'll say they believe in something, and then if Trump says something different, they all of a sudden change their minds. I mean, that's how pathetic the Republican Conference in the House of Representatives has become. They just do whatever Trump tweets.

And so, you can't really work in that environment. They'll say, they'll all vote for something. They'll say, “Okay, we have an agreement,” but then Trump tweets something different and they all go the other way. That's the problem right now in the House of Representatives, and it's why it's so unbelievably chaotic.

One of my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, came out today and said that Jesus himself could not manage this Republican conference. I mean, that's the level of desperation that fellow Republicans feel with their own colleagues and imagine what that is like for us Democrats across the aisle.

Ken Harbaugh:

Privately, do Republicans talk to you and say, “We want to do the right thing? We are trying to do the right thing.”

Seth Moulton:

Of course. I mean, remember when Trump was talking about, “Oh, locker room talk or something.” I mean, the irony is that the locker room talk in the House of Representatives on both sides of the aisle is about how dangerous Donald Trump is, how pathetic he is.

And how pathetic it is that Republicans just do his bidding all day long. And then these same guys put their ties on, go upstairs and get on TV and sing his praises to the end of the earth.

Ken Harbaugh:

You said he is a symptom though, not the cause. If Trumpism itself is rebuked come November, if Donald Trump is handed such a resounding electoral defeat that we relegate his legacy to the dustbin of history, do we move past this? Or if he's indeed a symptom not a cause, we have to deal with something else.

Seth Moulton:

No, that's right. We don't move past this until we're willing to look ourselves in the mirror and address these underlying causes.

And let me make an even more obvious point. When you have one major U.S. political party in the midst of a civil war, a civil war that's being fought in local elections and back rooms all across the country, but has come to a head in the House of Representatives where you've seen the chaos of the last few weeks, who saw three weeks last fall when we didn't even have a speaker for the first time in American history.

A civil war in one party, a party that's led by an indicted criminal, what does it say about us, Democrats on the other side of the aisle that we aren't cleaning up? I mean, we should be winning every election from school board, the President of the United States without barely even thinking about it. And yet we're not.

And Democrats, Democrats like me, we need to look ourselves and our party in the mirror and say, “What are we doing wrong? How have we lost touch with so many Americans that this crazy party, this dysfunctional party, this party led by a madman actually has a good chance of beating us?”

Ken Harbaugh:

So, what's the answer? What are we doing wrong? I suspect you meant it rhetorically, but I'm sure you've thought about the prescription for success. How do we get it right?

Seth Moulton:

Look, I don't think I have the perfect answer, but there are places where we clearly have lost the touch with the people that we represent. Some people have said that the Democratic Party has become a party of the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor, and everybody in between feels left out.

There are clearly a lot of Americans who are frustrated with their economic prospects and feel that there's no one in Washington really fighting for them. And so, they get a crazy man who comes in and says things that sound good to him or sound good to them or simply sound like he's challenging the political system, which obviously is I mean charitably what Trump is doing. And they're going to latch onto that.

So, Democrats have to recognize how do we actually address the things that Americans care about. I mean, here's an obvious one, Americans everywhere, including in my democratic district in Massachusetts are really concerned about the border and, or sorry, I should say Americans are concerned about the border, although Democrats too.

And yet a lot of democratic leaders in Washington say, “There's nothing to see here. The border's totally fine.” That's totally out of touch with reality.

A lot of people think that Democrats are more concerned about whether or not you offend someone versus whether you simply can tell the truth. And we've seen that happen at universities. I've been very critical of my alma mater, Harvard that seems to have lost touch with its own motto, very tossed, that's Latin for truth.

It should be seeking the truth, not just what's polite enough to say so it doesn't offend this constituency or that. And yet a lot of people on the campuses of universities like Harvard feel like they can't even express their views if they're not in line with the political orthodoxy of the moment.

So, these are just a couple of examples of where this sort of Democratic Party of the very elite and the very poor seems to be out of touch with so many Americans. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do think we need to be asking these serious questions, asking them very critically of ourselves.

Ken Harbaugh:

How do you understand the growth of these organizations? And we learned this in the film and have validated it since the film's release membership in these extremist organizations is actually growing even after January 6th. Numbers are increasing because they look at J6 as a massive success.

Seth Moulton:

And I'll tell you, there's nothing that bothers me more knowing that amazing American patriots who put their lives on the line for this country would actually join in an insurrection would support someone who is the biggest draft dodger of all time.

Donald Trump demeans veterans, not just John McCain, but he called the people who sign up suckers and people who got killed losers. That's what he thinks of veterans. That's what he thinks of people who serve, that's why they dodged the draft himself. So, the idea that any veteran in America would support someone like that just really knocks at me. I mean, it really gets under my skin.

But I think you can understand it when you just talk to veterans and some of the people who come back from our wars and are really frustrated with how they're treated when they get home, or the opportunities that they have when they get home. Who don't understand why the U.S. government is so quick to hand out help to people who cross the border illegally and they feel like they're not getting help themselves.

Like look, I get it. It's not that simple, I also think that if a family has fought their way up from a place like Guatemala where they're being hunted down by gangs, America should represent the values that we've always stood for, that are represented by the Statue of Liberty and should help people out.

But you can imagine the frustration that some Americans feel when they look at the news and they feel like people who haven't put their lives on the line for our country, who haven't done much service for others are getting more help and assistance and have more opportunities than they do. So, it's a very frustrating question Ken, to be honest.

But I think you have to answer it by trying to understand the experience of people who were in this position. By the way, it doesn't justify how they feel. It doesn't make what they're doing right far from it. But we have to understand how people who were good enough Americans to be real great patriots can get into this position.

And if it were just a few, you would just say, “Hey, these are just bad apples.” There are bad people everywhere, God knows or bad people I work with in Congress. But when the numbers are actually going up, as you say, we got to try to understand why more people would join these ranks.

Ken Harbaugh:

I share your sympathies and your desire to understand what's motivating them. I'm also glad you said they need to be held accountable because accountability matters.

Seth Moulton:

I mean, we are a country of laws. We are a country of laws, and part of being in government is convincing people, incentivizing people not to break the law. And then part of it is holding people accountable when they do.

Ken Harbaugh:

I imagine one of the biggest problems for you, and maybe it's just an occupational hazard of being a member of Congress, is that you have colleagues who have experienced no accountability. The veterans we're talking about, many of them, I'd venture to say most of them sincerely believe that what they are doing is right, that they are on the right side of history.

Your colleague Jason Crow, one of the good guys, 90 combat missions in Iraq makes the point in the film that the people trying to break through the barriers into the House Gallery where he was trapped with the other members, many of them swore the same oath to the constitution that he did.

Seth Moulton:

But the point is that our colleagues did.

Ken Harbaugh:

That’s what I'm getting at.

Seth Moulton:

And the president of the United States is supposed to be protecting the Constitution. And when you see all these insurrectionists rightfully convicted by a court of law and put into prison, which I mean even Republicans on January 6th and January 7th said, “This is chaos. This is breaking the law. We need to hold these people accountable.”

Well, all these people are being held accountable, and yet the person who inspired them, the person who inspired and led this insurrection, when it's his responsibility as Commander-in-Chief to keep the country safe, he is not held accountable at all. In fact, he has a chance of being the next Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful nation in the world.

Ken Harbaugh:

And some of your Republican colleagues are calling these insurrectionists people who have been convicted with a mountain of evidence of beating cops with flagpoles. They're calling them martyrs and hostages. How do we talk about accountability when you have that going on in a major American political party? Where's the accountability there?

Seth Moulton:

Well, I mean, a lot of people talk about how divided our country is and how you need to bring us back together, but I don't think you bring us back together until you hold people accountable for what they have done to break us apart. Where they have actually gone so far is to break the law.

And I think that there's something to be learned from history here is that nations that have gone through this and you look at South Africa and how they dealt with apartheid and held people accountable and then had some success of bringing the country back together.

You look at postwar Germany, postwar Japan and how they held people accountable for their war crimes. And after that accountability was established, they've been able to move forward and actually become some of our best friends and greatest allies in the world. Those are models that we have to look for too here.

And Germany and Japan, I mean, they weren't perfect. I mean, there were Nazis who were only held accountable 50, 60 years after the fact, but they didn't sweep this under the rug. They took it seriously. We took it seriously. And that's what has to happen here.

Ken Harbaugh:

Assuming we can get past this, I had a conversation with Reed Galen earlier today about the fact that we're such unlikely friends. In terms of policy, we're diametrically opposed, yet we're on the same side fighting to establish or reenforce these democratic safeguards.

I'm wondering how we ever get back to arguing passionately about the marginal tax rate. Do you think there's an opportunity here for Americans to realize what's really important given that we're staring into the abyss now. My hope is that we come out the other side of this and are a renewed country.

Seth Moulton:

I don't think I'd be still doing this job if I didn't believe there was an opportunity, if I didn't believe that the future could be brighter. But I don't think it's going to be brighter automatically. I think it's going to take a lot of work. And specifically, it's going to take courageous leadership.

Political courage is about doing what's unpopular just because it's right. In fact, by definition, almost political courage isn't fighting hard against the opposite party. It's being willing to go against your own. So, we need to see more figures, but especially more Republican leaders get up and say, “This is wrong, and we have to change.”

But I do think we can get back to where America has always found its greatest strength, which is that we are a diverse nation. We do have a lot of different perspectives, and we live in a society that values that. That wants us to debate each other, to find the right answer, to compete for the best ideas. But at the end of the day, we are able to come together and do what's best for the country.

And Ken, that's what you and I did when we were serving in the military. I mean, I had a platoon with marines from all over America with different backgrounds, different religious beliefs, different political beliefs. But at the end of the day, we were able to set aside those differences to do what's right for America.

And shouldn't that be what you expect, what all of you expect of your members of Congress, of those of us here in Washington, and frankly the president of the United States. We know people represent, I mean, in the house we represent 435 different districts all across the country, 50 different states in the Senate.

But at the end of the day, you should expect us to be able to put aside those differences when it means doing the right thing for our country. That's what needs to happen here, and it hasn't happened yet.

Ken Harbaugh:

Do you think there are enough Republicans left in Congress who have the moral courage to stand up and to tell their colleagues they're wrong to tell their nominee he's wrong? It seems like every time one of them sticks their necks out, they get chopped off.

I mean, Liz Cheney's not there. Adam Kinzinger is not there. Is there a critical mass that can do this or does the party need a wholesale reinvention?

Seth Moulton:

I mean, that's a great question, I don't know the answer. The numbers are definitely dwindling. But sometimes courage can come from unlikely places. I mean, we saw a glimpse of political courage from Kevin McCarthy when on January 6th, he told Trump to stand down from Mitch McConnell who came out on January 7th and said, “This can't happen again.” Of course, in both cases that courage faded quite quickly.

Ken Harbaugh:

It never lasts.

Seth Moulton:

But it's not impossible. It's hard though.

Ken Harbaugh:

You had a recent tweet in which you wrote, “Domestic terror organizations have been working hard to radicalize and recruit veterans to take up arms against the U.S. It's not enough to hold extremists accountable. We also need to strengthen our democracy, so we never see another January 6th.”

Is that just a moral appeal or are there things you are thinking about working on with your colleagues to prevent another J6 from happening?

Seth Moulton:

No, it's not just moral, it's practical. I mean, some of the proposals that we discussed earlier, things that we can do to change our loss through legislation to make it less likely for this to happen in the future.

To put in checks and balances protections so that the president can't just mobilize troops for example at a whim, so that we don't have such an arcane system of counting votes in an election that people feel like they can manipulate it.

But of course, the problem is that under Republican leadership in the house, the Congress is dysfunctional now. I mean, they can't do anything. They can't even pursue their own agenda, let alone a bipartisan agenda to improve our country. So, we have a long way to go. But this isn't just a moral call, it's a practical call for saving our democracy.

Ken Harbaugh:

Do you worry about the active duty, military? We've been talking about veterans, but we remember what happened in 2020 where you had the Insurrection Act one order away from being invoked. You had the 82nd airborne on the outskirts of DC.

How worried should we be about, I guess on one hand, executive overreach misusing the act of duty military, on the other hand, rogue elements within the military deciding in the case of say a contested election that their president is say Trump instead of Biden. I think there's a lot in there, but what are your biggest concerns?

Seth Moulton:

Fundamentally, I have a lot of confidence in our armed services and our troops and in our military leaders, but there is a risk here, and we have to acknowledge that risk. And I have supported and voted for amendments on the House Armed Services Committee that should go into the defense bill to address these issues of extremists in the military.

It's a small number. It should not offend anyone that we want to get them out of the military. And yet Republicans have consistently voted down these amendments as so many of them have not survived. So, there is a problem. I don't think it's widespread, but the question of course is could this snowball out of control? It's a risk we need to be aware of.

Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah, definitely. When you're talking about Republicans voting down these amendments, I immediately think of Tommy Tuberville saying he doesn't see white nationalists in the military. He sees fellow Americans, Trump supporters.

Seth Moulton:

Well, Tommy Tuberville's never been in the military, so he doesn't know much about who he sees in the military.

Ken Harbaugh:

Isn't he the most military person in Congress? According to him?

Seth Moulton:

Unbelievable. What a phony.

Ken Harbaugh:

I know. I talked to, wasn't Mark Kelly, the one who called him out on the floor for calling himself the most military person in Congress?

Seth Moulton:

I don't know, but he clearly thinks way too highly of himself to put his life on the line for the country. That's abundantly clear.

Ken Harbaugh:

Is it a game for these folks? When you see the Hawley’s fist pump a violent mob, when you see Ted Cruz and his inflammatory rhetoric, J.D. Vance, my senator, and his constant harping about the election fraud that never happened. Surely, they know that their rhetoric has real world ramifications, but at some level it seems like they're playing a game.

Seth Moulton:

Well, they do think it's a game. They think it's incredibly self-serving. And in some ways it has been self-serving because they're elected members of Congress. I mean, J.D. Vance contradicts his behavior every day in his book that he wrote a few years ago.

Josh Hawley is clearly the biggest wimp in Congress, although Tuberville might give him a run for his money, and yet he keeps getting elected.

And Tuberville, his football coach who thinks he's qualified to be a member of the United States Senate, single handedly damaged our national security more than probably any of our major adversaries in the last 10 years. So, what does that tell you about who these people are and what fundamentally drives them every day?

Ken Harbaugh:

I'm going to play a quick clip from the film and would love your reaction. “Veterans who swear that oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic of all Americas, they should understand how dangerous and unpatriotic this insurrection was. They were trying to overthrow democratic election results. They shouted for the hanging of our own vice president. That's a coup attempt.”

So, Seth, I think this gets to the heart of the film. We have buddies in uniform. We have men and women we led who are on the other side of the proverbial barricades because they've been lied to. They believe they're doing the right thing, but they're not because they've been lied to.

What do you say to the veteran out there who lives in this information ecosystem that has completely warped their perception of reality?

Seth Moulton:

I want to say to them, you're being played. You're being played man, and you got to wake up and understand what's going on here.

Ken Harbaugh:

Thank you, Seth. Appreciate it. And I know you got to go vote. I am heartened every day that I remember that we've got folks like you in Congress. Keep up the fight. Thank you.

Seth Moulton:

That’s very generous Ken, thank you.

Ken Harbaugh:

Thanks for listening to Burn the Boats. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We're always looking to improve the show. For updates and more, follow us on Twitter at Team_Harbaugh. And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to rate, and review.

Burn the Boats is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Our producer is Declan Rohrs and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our audio engineer. Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia and David Moss.

I'm Ken Harbaugh and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.