evidence. former president donald trump, now, it s interesting. he had certain types of friends. friends like rudy giuliani who helped get him impeached twice. but in terms of like close personal friendships, trump is not included in your book. why? well, actually, i wanted to include him. i called someone as close to trump as anyone. we went back and forth. is there a first friend? even this person said at the end, had to admit he s friendless. he s a guy who just doesn t need a first friend. he s constitutionally and emotionally capable of living without one. i think at the end of the day his first friend is really his twitter feed for want of a better way to describe it. just the a ddoration of his bas. he would take friends and relatives to camp david. what he would do is closet himself in the cabin and call around to supporters to get affirmation. i couldn t find a trump friend as much as i tried. maybe he needed one. maybe that is something it can make a difference, as yo
i want to listen to part of that conversation. it wasn t stone walling. we weren t in litigation at all of these points. i wanted to make sure that i was not having conversations outside of that, whatever needed to be said needed to be said in a courtroom in front of a judge or a jury. he knew. he knew it was wrong when they were trying to reach out to him. that s what that says to me, michael. john, brianna, this is really interesting. clint hickman is this fellow s name, and he was a maricopa county supervisor, a trump supporters. it s not as if he were a detractor. what s most significant to me is he was supportive of donald trump, had met him on the tarmac. he had even gotten one of those campaign rally shout outs, but he s in a position now of authority relative to counting the ballots, and on two occasions when the white house operator reaches out for him, one of them interestingly was a new year s eve phone call, he refuses to take the call.
many states, which by the way is verifiably not true, it just didn t happen. his lawyers say this, quote, in brooks judgment, donald trump won the electoral college and should be serving his second term as president of the united states. brooks welcomes public debate with anyone who ignorantly claims otherwise. okay, he is wrong. right. so if he is perpetrating a lie on behalf of his constituents, that s his argument, two things could be true, one, he actually believes it or two he doesn t. so let s start with the he doesn t because that seems i think a lot of members of congress to fall into that one. if he doesn t believe it but he s perpetrating it on behalf of his constituents, is he possibly protected. there s many times lawmakers may be perpetrating something that s not true on quote unquote behalf of their participants. i don t know what it is, if he s dangerously delusional or dishonest, either way, i don t
think it s good for anyone, but i guess my response to that is his constituents had their voice. they voted for who they voted for, and they lost. just like many millions of other americans and do every presidential election cycle. the test is not my constituents would prefer donald trump to be president, and therefore i m just speaking their will, the test is we have an election, a person won that election who wasn t donald trump, neither brooks nor his constituents nor anyone else is free to then engage in willfully destructive conduct undermining the democracy because they don t like the results of the election. and it s inarguably true that the election was secure, was not riddled with fraud, and the fact that brooks is probably lying through his teeth, and knowingly running with something he knows not to be true makes it all the
do voters he s trying to attract accept that? i think voters that, well, maybe not that he s trying to attract because in a republican primary, you have got to be lock step with the former president of the united states. i think that most americans do fluctuate on many many issues. and that there would be a tolerance for a change in opinion. at least i hope so. my opinions certainly have changed over time, but the hiding of it, i think, is more problematic, than whatever it is he may have said initially. i thought it was kind of funny that tim ryan presumably, his democratic opponent in ohio in the general said there s one thing that j.d. vance and i agree on, neither of us voted for donald trump. i thought that was funny. michael last night, when you were hosting here on cnn, you had a conversation with an arizona election official that was contacted or attempted to be contacted during, you know, the whole big lie run up by both trump and giuliani.