people leaning in on the square in a really big numbers there for sure a couple of 1000 people at this point probably keeps on the wrestling and they need people and they're getting really a raft of so far they have to. at least to see the people 1 here on the mall where we're at the process going on. calling the violence people to disperse to because there is a pandemic and also because the process that does not have a permit give it 90 bucks and make astra zeneca has cut its promise delivery to the european union blaming supply chain issues it's a severe setback to the blocks a vaccination program which is already suffering after pfizer biotech slowed to their supply told from 2nd impeachment trial got underway the week of february the 8th former president is accused of inciting the siege of the capitol building. tropical cyclone eloise has made landfall near mozambique's port city of bellaver which was devastated by cyclon e.-d. less than 2 years ago rivers in the surrounding areas were already swollen before the storm hit at least $3000.00 people have been evacuated from busey's district in the east so the rabia said its fall then air attack over the capital riyadh the kingdom comes under repeated attacks from hooty rebels in neighboring yemen the saudi led coalition into the did yemen in 2015 and has been at war with who these ever since the rebels have not claimed responsibility for this attack taiwan's defense ministry has reported that what it calls an incursion by chinese military planes on saturday taipei says 30 chinese bomber planes and fighter jets flew into the southwestern corner of its defense identification zone those were the headlines of the war with nic in half an hour's time next on al-jazeera is the bottom line do stay with us. hi i'm steve clements and i have a question now that trump's presidency has ended will he still be able to pull strings in american politics through the republican party let's get to the bottom line. with any world leader in history knows how to leave office with a bang it's definitely donald trump twice impeached banned from most social media and having inspired thousands to storm the u.s. congress to supposedly stop the steal of november's election he succeeded by the viking his people on political religious economic and geographic lines and now the business of healing in uniting the nation if it can be healed and united and even if it wants to be falls on the new president joe biden but there's no denying that trump's conspiracy theory rhetoric is still out there still captivating the imagination of untold millions in america from all walks of life and in congress itself so what's next for american politics and especially the republican party that donald trump lease behind my guest today is a prominent republican legal expert who's been talking about the dangers that trump poses to the country since he announced his candidacy in 2015 john ballenger was a legal advisor to the white house and the state department during the george w. bush administration and he's now a lawyer in private practice in washington d.c. john so great to be with you listen you have been worried about violence from the crowd for a long time you saw it coming really before anyone else did you organize the group of serious republican national security people against donald trump's candidate see when he ran but you after he came in you began blowing the with. oh and even recently you wrote in the lawfare blog that donald trashed donald trump is still a threat to our national security what is it about trump that has worried you all of this time and allow you to be precious about the violence we're seeing explode today. steve oh well 1st it's great to be with you. i guess what i've really seen and trump even back when he was a candidate and certainly we have seen this throughout his presidency is just how much he divide americans. we all know this now he delights his his modus operandi is to stick his finger in the most divisive issues whether it's religion geography politics we of course people have had differences in this country for a long time but donald trump is just delighted in trying to divide people. and i'm against another american so you know it it it came as no surprise to me a couple of years ago even that if he were driven from office either by election or through some other means that he was not going to go gently into the good night that he was going to call on his supporters to come and save him and frankly given how well armed many people are in this country it certainly occurred to me a number of years ago that he could call on people to come into washington try to save him and that there would be violence here in washington and indeed around the united states. john a lot of people who are watching this show wonder about these republicans that go on t.v. and you know poke trump and say he's not one of us and i sometimes wonder that they think that these republicans are not as republican as as you know donald trump but i want to explain the public to you know you are an advisor to george w. bush you are an advisor the congolese are rice you are about as republican as a republican can get am i right. well i guess i would say maybe in the old days yes historically had worked for a series of moderate republicans who i think very highly of and then fact to then ultimately joined to the most recent letter that i organized along with ken winston back in 2020 people like john warner of virginia bill webster the former director of central intelligence on the f.b.i. but sadly you know those republican so are now seem to be long gone and so it's hard for me frankly dick count myself certainly not a trump republican and if the republican party is in fact as he is fond of saying and others are fond of saying is the party of donald trump i don't want to have any part of that and indeed when we put together the most recent letter in august of 2020 of a locally what group of more than 150 former republican national security officials we probably spent more time debating about what we wanted to call ourselves than what we wanted to say about donald trump and the fact that we were going to vote for joe biden normally our 1st line would have been to say you know we're committed republicans but people felt we couldn't even say that anymore because the republican party has strayed so far you know the republican party were fond of saying used to be the party of lincoln the people who stood up against slavery and for the unity of the country and boy have we strayed a long way since that time. when january 6th came along and you saw an assault on the capitol and we're hearing you know evidence now and assertions now from the capitol police and f.b.i. that these were just not hooligans that these were one of the assassin and assassins who wanted to assassinate mike pence nancy pelosi and other members of congress. how did that make you and others like you who are republicans feel well 6 i've just distraught steve like like many other people. again i i thought i saw this coming it came as no surprise to me that trump was going to call on his supporters to come and rescue them and we have seen a a nastiness and a tendency towards violence around the country so it came as no surprise that people would engage in violent activity i guess it hadn't occurred to me that they would actually storm the capitol and be. invading the offices of members of congress that was that was really beyond what i could leave i get back that there was more going to be violence in the streets than i am storming of the capitol but obviously very very disheartening. you know your piece in lawfare blog warning about the dangers of trump still came out 10 days before the end of his presidency there were now about we're we're right at the end of his presidency this trumps still pose a danger even after having been shoved out of the presidency. well what i wrote it 10 days ago i really thought that he did i wrote that a couple of days after the violence at the capitol and realized that he had 10 more days left in office and he had put in. a number of his supporters in different government organizations he had fired the. secretary of defense fired other people so i'm still concerned about actions that he might take because he really. unhinged has not been acting even in the final days really as a president he's been. in his bunker nursing grievances and so it didn't concern me that he could take some action at that point today 5 48 hours before the inauguration i still worry about things that he might do. that he might issue to himself his family and possibly even to the people who raided the capitol but i have a bit more confident steve over the last 10 days that adults in the different national security departments and agencies at the defense department in particular but at the justice department and and elsewhere or any of them some inside the white house the remaining few will just push back on any really on waffle actions that he tries to take so i i worry a little less in these last 48 hours if he lashes out and make some just outrageous order i think people will just simply not want to be part of that if only for self-preservation. so do you worry a lot less after he's gone that donald trump out of the white house despite me you know tens of millions of followers you know and a whole string of you know white nationalist groups and q. and on scared conspirators that still see him as one of the you know their heroes do we have to worry about you know donald trump in his post presidency. well i think we do unfortunately this goes back to the 1st thing you asked me steve about what worried me about donald trump and he's going to continue to be a divider rather than unite or you know 6 days after $911.00 george bush for whom i worked went down to a mosque in washington d.c. took off his shoes you can look at the pictures of him standing there in his socks and gave a speech in which he said is salaam is peace and this was you know this was you know the world trade center in the pentagon we're still smoldering you're nearly 3000 people dead and that was george bush trying to unite people even when we really didn't know all the facts because he knew that it was important to call for calm you know donald trump in his post presidency is going to continue to be the incendiary individual ladies always been trying to undercut joe biden's message of unity and at togetherness at every step so i would like to see him marginalized i i i i think it's unfortunate that the senate would have to move forward with an impeachment trial at the same time that it's important for them to confirm new bided ministration national security officials and that really has to be their 1st priority but i think that sadly they should move forward with the trial of donald trump to ensure as best as possible that he has no longer a political force because it's obvious that he is not going to act like george bush or every other president in his post presidency and to be a statesman lie and stay out of politics he plans to do the reverse. john you know you're one of them the best legal minds i know when it comes to national security and the institutions of our government and how to set up various new institutions in times of war in times of conflict how to deal with you know detainees how to deal with national security decision making and i think one of the questions that's going to haunt us for a very long time is did our institutions really hold or did we just get lucky did we come very close to seeing you know an autocratic takeover in suspension of democracy as we know it and have known it and and and because those answers as a fork in the road lead you in very different directions and so i my question is one that institutions hold and do you still have confidence in the system or do we need to wake up and say guess what we became very we came very close to seeing this come undone and we now have to go back and look at what we do to prevent this kind of suspension of democratic practice if you will so where are you on that. i think we came very close to the center not whole not holding steve we had. a few individuals who were willing to stand up to donald trump. but you know our congress which was obviously supposed to be a check and balance. on the executive branch generally i'm certainly on a. deranged president as we all know republicans in the congress did absolutely nothing they enabled his behavior they looked the other way they said they didn't see it and that was that was really one of the most disheartening tanks i think to former republican national security officials and that was one of the reasons that we put together the 2nd letter to say that we were all going to vote for joe biden was because the members of congress were just not pushing back it's really hard to imagine what a 2nd term of donald trump would have been like. the judiciary did hold. the judiciary really has been the gold standard but i had hoped that earlier in the trump presidency that there would have been opportunities for the judiciary to have pushback that just were not that many cases early on where the judiciary drew a long line in the sand and of course they did up hold a number of his actions and when they didn't as we all know donald trump attacked judges personally and in very bitter terms to the point that the chief justice of the united states had to issue a statement a couple of years ago saying you know we don't have republican judges and democratic judges we have article 3 judges so i do think we came incredibly close to disaster and i do think some changes need to be made you've probably seen the. useful sort. of book of recommendations put out by my former colleague jack goldsmith at harvard and bob bauer who used to be a counsel to president obama coming together saying and light of what happened here are a number of recommendations for change to make sure that these kinds of excesses by the president see don't happen again. one of the revered people in republican circles is senator jack danforth you know you know the senator i know the senator he was ambassador to the united nations as well during the george w. bush administration a minister and he said that meant touring senator josh holly of missouri was one of the one of the biggest mistakes the biggest mistake of his political life what do you think should be done with senator holly senator ted cruz these people that fed the flames of tao in this election. well you know of course one of the really most bizarre engine fame's in addition to seeing senator holly. go out and insists that he continued to want to. vote on decertification was to see him go out and raise his fist in solidarity with those who had attacked the capitol now maybe at the time he did that he did not realize the violence that was going on i would like to see him apologize for that action. but it's unfortunate number of senators have continued to support the false narrative that donald trump and other set have said so it was good to see senator danforth really was a great man. and a great ambassador to the united nations someone who george bush really looked to as a moral compass come out and and and disagree with senator all one of the other things that intrigues me is you and i have been talking for years about how to neutralize terrorism and we used to talk during the times after the 911 attacks you and i did about conspiracy theories rampant in the middle east and almost in a way i would say disagree i was arrogant about it because you didn't see those kinds of conspiracy theories in america so so what could you do to neutralize them then when you fast forward today and you look at. radicalized groups in the united states when you you know worry about you know people insiders inside the u.s. military national guard being radicalized and part of a q. and a on conspiracy it sounds like a lot of the techniques that isis is used for recruitment somebody is using inside this country and nation do you know am i off track on that you have some of the same concerns. i do i know i've learned an awful lot about the country in the last 4 years to get back to this point about o'donnell trying to divide the country rather than unite the country i guess i would have thought 4 or 5 years ago that there was maybe 5 percent of the people in the country who believe these crazy conspiracy theories about you know. a palm and not behaving an american or the federal government really being the enemy i just really thought that was fringe and honestly maybe it was fred you know maybe go back and look at the polls and say that really were it 5 percent 5 years ago and that's that's unfortunate what really has happened with the president feeding these conspiracy theories you know his favorite expression of well you know people are saying. and you know fox news and others then echoing them i mean this is one thing where you really got handed to trump is the you know he's learned that through just repetition repetition repetition you know it really sank sens of the american psyche and now we have 304030 to 40 percent of the people in the united states think that the election was stolen. and one of the things frankly that worries me the most steve and that i think is going to be very very important for joe biden. is to restore trust in the federal government. to unite people so that they believe that the federal government is in fact a force for good. very disheartening from a as someone who spent time in a number of different government agencies the state department the white house the intelligence agencies the justice department to see all of these different departments and agencies attacked by donald. bye bye trump calling the state department the deep state department and calling the department of justice the department of justice with air quotes. this is really damaging and it's going to sink in. and joe biden is really going to need to work hard over the next 4 years to try to undo that damage and to combat these conspiracy theories and fat is going on as joe biden is trying to restore trust in government what role is there for folks like you who right now have been supportive of biden given the choice but yet you don't really share all of joe biden's views mean are you going to get back into the game and try and we claim re hijack that republican party turn it into a different turn into a different course what is going to happen with those because you're one of the few and i remember you stood up early and loudly and bravely to challenge us but a lot of your colleagues did not they've been waiting to see how this comes out now ben sasse senator ben south you know he's all over ben you know he has a you know article out saying we've got to separate the republican party from the q and on conspirators it separates ekta where do you go from here in terms of trying to save and redirect the republican party. well steve at this point i think i and most of the people all the national security officials who signed the letter last summer are saying that we would support joe biden consider ourselves to be independent you know we're certainly people who served in former republican administrations and proud of it service for the country but you know. as i said who hear a number the people before signing up to these letter said you know i i want to be clear i don't consider myself to be a republican anymore so you know it just shows how far the party has strayed you know can only for me personally steve i don't really see light at the end of the tunnel right now so i don't see anybody who i see as a good leader of for the republican party you know certainly mitt romney has been saying absolutely the right things it very very bravely but i don't see him wanting to lead a new republican party and i don't see any other people out there who who want to reclaim the republican party the way it used to be a party of of principle a party committed to rule of law a party committed to uniting the country so. at this point i'm going to. go all in for joe biden and hope that he can succeed i really do i think it's that important for the country i mean sure and we've discussed this former republican national to officials i'm sure we're not going to agree on every national security policy but you know we we want him to succeed we really do we need to see him reengage with rest of the world unite us with our allies we burnish our our very tarnished image around the world including our commitment to human rights so i think frankly rather than. can criticize biden and his people and of course we'll have to see what decisions they make but i think the you know the things that joe biden has been saying for the last couple of months and see was elected really have been pitch perfect i mean more so candidly then than barack obama and maybe that's because obeid has been a consensus builder his whole life he's been someone who really has wanted to reach out to the other side so to have him keep saying you know i'm going to be the president of all americans i think really has been exactly the right message but as far as you know future of the republican party steve. we'll have to see whether. it's going to be like the phoenix rising from the ashes. at this point i don't see that the egg in the fire has cracked in that you know beautiful new bird is going to come out that's going to be the future of the republican party they're still going to be an awful lot of fighting you know look at list cheney who is now fighting david hold on to her seat after she very bravely stood up to the rest of the republicans and said that trump ought to be impeached well john bell enter legal counsel to president secretaries of state and the real architect of many of the legal frameworks we think about a national security really appreciate your candor and your time today thanks for joining us. steve it's great to be with you so what's the bottom line donald trump may be gone for the moment but he's inspired an activated a countless number of nations an angry many trumps some u.s. house of representative members from colorado to georgia themselves fan ors of the q. and a on conspiracy claims are following donald trump's recipe a factory speeches and fear mongering about their own country as demonstrated my guest today establishment republicans conservatives who ran the party for decades they don't buy trump ism they want it extinguished and they want it exiled from the republican party what will unfold now is a battle for the soul of that party a tough no holds barred contest to either suspend trump's right to that home or allow it to be the base of a growing and ongoing trump ism at the very core of american politics and that's the bottom line. when a parent loses nature to a terminal illness. they often feel that they've taken on the weight of the world. but mr huang is determined to find out what caused his daughter's death and brought him such heartache. the story of a committed to parent turned activist a father's protest of the viewfinder asia's series on al-jazeera. and for me to the point is good because the renowned for their courage under fire. one i want to east finds out what it takes to join the elite brigade. on al-jazeera . there is no channel the coverage of world news like legion the scale of this camp is like nothing you've ever seen at. all what we want to know is how do these things affect people we revisit made the stakes even when there are no international headlines. al-jazeera really invests in that and that's a privilege as a journalist. but i'm not going to haul the top stories here on al-jazeera and 1st hundreds of people have been arrested across russia during protests demanding the release of the kremlin critic alexina valmy protests are underway in dozens of cities around the country and is on record flood told the small by phone from one of those protests in moscow. at this moment that there is people leaning in on the square in a really big numbers there for sure a couple of 1000 people at this point keeps on the resting and they.

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