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- [00:04]
Christiane Amanpour
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Amanpur. Here's what's coming up.
- [00:09]
Al Gore
I think we are going to win this struggle, but the question is whether we'll win it in time.
- [00:15]
Christiane Amanpour
From Brazil, a global climate summit with few heavy hitters. Former Vice President Al Gore joins me on the leadership gap in the critical fight against climate change. Then, inside El Salvador's mega prison, we look at a new human rights report that tracks the treatment of Venezuela, Venezuelans deported by President Trump, plus the idea.
- [00:35]
Charlie Savage
That the country would be better off with a stronger presidency, with fewer constraints, with fewer checks and balances.
- [00:42]
Christiane Amanpour
The Dick Cheney doctrine. Does it hold up? Reporter Charlie Savage talks to Walter Isaacson about the life and legacy of America's most powerful modern v. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour. In London, indigenous protesters against deforestation have been making their voices heard in Belem, Brazil, the site of the UN's major climate summit. Dozens of demonstrators had forced their way into the Cop 30 venue and clashed with security guards while carrying signs and shouting that their land is not for sale. It is a signal of something we already know, that tackling climate change and protecting the planet is an enormous emotional and logistical challenge. And what it requires is real leadership. But the world's most powerful people aren't even at the conference. Presidents Trump and Xi are no shows. And so is India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. All big polluters. Meanwhile, the White House is doubling down on fossil fuels. One well known American trying to fill the leadership gap is the former US Vice President Al Gore. One of the earliest politicians to sound the alarm on climate change. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in part for his Oscar winning and prescient documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Vice President Al Gore, welcome to our program.
- [02:25]
Al Gore
Thank you very much, Cristian. I'm happy to be with you.
- [02:28]
Christiane Amanpour
What does it feel like to be the only vice president, the only member of an American administration, even if it's passed at the COP talks? Because this administration didn't send anybody, not the president, not the vice president, not even a technical team. What is it like being there without the full heft of the United States?
- [02:47]
Al Gore
Well, it's disappointing, of course, that the present administration has turned its back on the climate crisis. During his campaign, Donald Trump famously gathered a whole roomful of fossil fuel executives and said, basically, give me a billion dollars and I'll do whatever you want. And he is following through on that and even doing some things that go far beyond what they want. It's really unfortunate and one of the most unfortunate actions of this current US Administration is shutting down access to so much data that has vastly increased the degree of interest and the requests we're getting at this new Climate Trace coalition for the independent data that we're gathering on all of the point source emission sites for the global warming pollution all over the world. And today we presented action plans for how to turn that data into real reductions in emissions.
- [03:54]
Christiane Amanpour
So can I ask you sort of the big picture? Are you optimistic or neutral or pessimistic given that we've seen this current administration not only pull the US out of its own climate regulations, but also used climate as a weapon with its allies and its adversaries alike. I mean, urging them to push back on their climate commitments as well. What does that mean? At an international gathering like COP where you are, is there a path forward that you can see?
- [04:25]
Al Gore
Oh, yes, very definitely. There's a very promising path forward. And I think we are going to win this struggle. The question is whether we'll win it in time. We're in danger of crossing some very dangerous negative tipping points. But let me give you some examples briefly. You know, some people are surprised when you ask the question, how much of all the new electricity generation installed everywhere in the world last year, how much of it was renewable, solar and wind? The answer is 93%. And electric vehicles are fast following as a second big Trend. In September, 30% of all the new cars sold in the world were electric vehicles. And that is ramping up so quickly. And you know, 195 nations, all of them signed the Paris Agreement 10 years ago. Only one nation has withdrawn under Donald Trump. He did it before the last time he withdrew from the Paris Agreement. Following that, solar doubled in the US Electric vehicles doubled in the US Climate finance increased dramatically. And I hear from some other countries an observation that explains how some people with a US Perspective tend to overemphasize what Donald Trump can do and is doing. And they say, remember, 195 minus 1 does not equal 0. And we're seeing a lot of other countries stepping up. The momentum for change is still building very, very powerfully. It's like there's a big wheel turning in the right direction with some little wheels turning in the wrong direction inside it. But even they are being moved toward this sustainability revolution, which has the magnitude of the industrial revolution coupled with the speed of the digital revolution. So it is inevitable that we're going to make this change, but we need to accelerate the pace to in order to minimize the Huge dangers that we're encountering as we continue to put 175 million tons of global warming pollution into the sky using it as an open sewer, the accumulated amount there now traps as much extra heat as would be released by 750,000 first generation Hiroshima class atomic bombs exploding every 24 hours on the Earth. It's insane for us to allow that to continue. And the good news is we've got a lot of momentum to make the changes necessary to protect our future.
- [07:10]
Christiane Amanpour
So it's really good to hear the optimism. And I know that around the United States, for instance, on the state and local level, there's a lot of movement, despite what the federal government says, towards climate change and renewables. But I want to ask you, when even people like Bill Gates, who's put his money where his mouth is for decades, you know, on health and on climate, puts out a memo about Cop 30, he quote, It's a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change that's improving lives. He said climate change is a serious problem, but it won't be the end of civilization. Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate. What's your response to that? It just seems to be, you know, like diametrically opposed to what he's always said.
- [07:59]
Al Gore
Well, yeah, it was, it was disappointing and to some it was surprising. The only person who gave Bill Gates a rave review for his about face on climate was Donald Trump. He cheered loudly and said Gates is on Donald Trump's side now. It's also quite telling, Cristiane, that when Gates says we have to choose between climate and health, that the same day that he said that the highly respected Lancet Commission, the most authoritative body in the world on health, pointed out that this is the biggest health threat. The World Health Organization has long since said the climate crisis is the number one threat to health in the world. You know, there are almost 9 million people who are killed every year by the co pollution from burning fossil fuels, the conventional pollution that makes people sick and create lung and heart diseases. And if he, he said he wanted to take money away from climate and put it toward health, well, they're interlocked completely. I would advise Bill Gates that one of the best places to get some more money for health is to instead of advocating turning our backs on the most serious challenge humanity faces, the climate crisis, he ought to advocate for reducing the absurd government subsidies that taxpayers are being forced to pay to subsidize fossil fuel burning all over the world. It's ridiculous that taxpayers are forced by governments, including in the US massively to subsidize fossil fuels when they pose such a grave danger to humanity's future. And one other point, the same day he put out this report, not only the Lancet Commission, but that Category 5 Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica, knocking out one third of its gdp. And just the day before the news hit, that same day in the famous city of hue in Vietnam, five and a half feet of rain fell in 24 hours, 1.7 meters. These rain bombs that are far more frequent, getting much larger all around the world. And tropical diseases are spreading northward. The health impacts of the climate crisis are extremely severe. So it's a very misguided and puzzling in some ways. And I don't know, he didn't respond to the rave review from Donald Trump, so I guess maybe that's what he was shooting for.
- [10:40]
Christiane Amanpour
Maybe maybe some kind of protective crouch. I don't know. But I remember first meeting you, first interviewing you. You represented the Senate delegation at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, just before you were tapped to be vice president. And I know all those calls were coming through to you, but you wouldn't answer any of my very pointed questions. But here's what you did tell me about American leadership on this issue. Just take a listen.
- [11:08]
Al Gore
I believe, and many others do, that the task of saving the Earth's environment will become the central organizing principle of the post Cold War world, especially after the Earth Earth Summit. I believe deeply that the United States must be in a leadership position in this post Cold War era. And all of this mishandling of our country's relationship to the rest of the world here at the Earth Summit by the White House with its divisions, all of that has hurt our country's ability to be a leader on these important issues. And we should be. We have the record as a country to do it if we just stop backtracking on environmental protection.
- [11:57]
Christiane Amanpour
Wow. I mean, first of all, we both look so young. But secondly, you were really prescient. That bit stands the test of time. But, you know, so the question is if America. Well, you rate America where it is in terms of leadership right now, because for all I know, the Chinese are accelerating way beyond America on the green technology.
- [12:19]
Al Gore
Yes. And it's tragic that Donald Trump and his fossil fuel polluter allies are shooting America in both feet, metaphorically, where the economy is concerned. You know, here's a new statistic that's just out, Cristiane. China is now exporting to other countries, more green technology like electric vehicles and windmills and solar. The value of their green tech exports now far exceeds the exports from the United States to the rest of the world of all of the fossil fuels, all of the coal and gas and oil. And we're seeing this transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and electric vehicles and batteries and these exciting new technologies that are pollution free. They create three times as many jobs per dollar spent compared to the old dirty fossil fuels. And that's where the economic future is and it's aligned with the future we have to build for a clean environment. You know, the fossil fuel companies have been lobbying and spending very heavily to buy politicians. They're much better at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions. And they've captured a lot of them. And you know, upton Sinclair wrote 120 years ago in the US it's difficult to get a man to understand something if his income depends upon him not understanding it. And some of these politicians, which have been captured by the fossil fuel polluters, are scared to do anything that they don't want. And Donald Trump is leading the pack, but he's hurting the rest of the country. Now the good news is we have only three more years of his administration. We're seeing cities and states and civic society step up. Last year in the United States, by the way, all you look at all the new electricity generation built in the US 97% of it was renewable. So Donald Trump is a little bit like King Knut who famously tried to stop the tides and the ocean waves. He cannot stop this sustainability revolution. He is trying to slow it down. He may have do some damage there, but I think it is essentially unstoppable and we have to rebuild the US capacity to play that leadership role again.
- [14:51]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay, so first of all, Donald Trump at the U.N. you remember, told the whole rest of the world that you're going to fail because climate change is a great big scam and a hoax and this and that. So that's his view. But also you talked about the economy and clearly it was the economy that motivated voters in the latest off year elections just last week, and brought a very different message to the fore, which is we want change. Can I just ask you, since you talked about economic pain, which was the number one issue for voters all over, what do you make of these elections? Should they be, can they be transposed to the midterms, you know, the next round of presidentials? How, how significant and strategically important do you think these elections like mamdani's win or the two governors in New Jersey and Virginia and Gavin Newsom in California. These were big wins with heavy margins for the Democrats.
- [15:51]
Al Gore
Yeah, it was a surprisingly huge landslide against all of the candidates Donald Trump was for and in favor of all the candidates that oppose what Donald Trump is trying to do. He hasn't solved inflation. He seems to think that he can take charge of the reality that we see with our own eyes. You know, I live in Nashville, Tennessee, the home of country music. And there's a famous old song that says, who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? Well, people who go into the grocery store and look at the prizes, they believe their eyes rather than the falsehoods that Donald Trump continues to put out. He says, up is down, black is white, the climate crisis is a hoax. And I think people in the elections last week sent a very powerful message. What it means for the midterm congressional elections next year remains to be seen. But I will say this. In the past, when the off year elections for governor in Virginia and New Jersey went one way, the congressional elections the following year went that same way. Look at New Jersey, where the pundits before that election were saying it could go either way. The Republican might win. Wow. The Democratic candidate won by even more than the Democratic candidate in Virginia did. And two races in Georgia were overwhelming the Supreme Court elections in Pennsylvania and the California redistricting plan was a two thirds majority. So I think the voters have made a very powerful statement. I kind of think that some of the Republicans in the House and Senate who have been so frightened to death that Trump will tweet something or say something that'll get them a wacko primary opponent. I think they're reconsidering this week. I think a lot of them are beginning to say their political future may be a dead end if they continue to just jump every time Donald Trump snaps his fingers.
- [18:02]
Christiane Amanpour
So do you think then it was a strategic error for the Democrats, a certain number of them, to cleave off the senators, to essentially. I don't know. It's been portrayed as capitulating, given the strength you say that they are demonstrating at the polls over the government shutdown now?
- [18:19]
Al Gore
Well, you know, I think one of the patterns we see in the Trump presidency over and over again is that he manages to confront people with a terrible choice, where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. And so I have compassion for those eight Democratic senators who broke ranks and voted to reopen the government. I understand their reasoning I also very fully understand the other side. And I think the jury is still out on what the longer term consequences of this action will be. And we're going to face it again in another month because it was a very short term measure that was adopted. So I hate to use the phrase we will see, but that's the appropriate response to that question.
- [19:11]
Christiane Amanpour
All right, Vice President Algore from Belem, thank you so much indeed for joining us.
- [19:17]
Al Gore
Thank you, Christian. Thanks for all that you do.
- [19:21]
Christiane Amanpour
And stay with CNN because we'll be right back after the break.
- [19:28]
Claire Duffy
I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, we are celebrating a special milestone here for terms of service, one year of demystifying technology, talking about how people can engage with new tools without getting played by them. Amazon just this week that we're recording announced plans to lay off 14,000 employees in part because it's trying to slim down its workforce because it thinks that AI is going to do more of the work in the future. I think we'll look back on this year as a really pivotal moment in terms of the way that AI is going to reshape the world. Listen to CNN's terms of service with Claire Duffy wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:14]
Christiane Amanpour
And now we've heard a lot about Trump's deportations, but what happens to the people he sends away? A new joint report from Human Rights Watch and the Central American organization Cristo Sal alleges that Venezuelans deported by the administration to the high security megaprison.
- [20:34]
Al Gore
Were.
- [20:34]
Christiane Amanpour
Tortured and subjected even to sexual violence. What's more, researchers have found that around half of those sent to SICART had no criminal history at all. So with me now is Juanita Gobertis Estrada of Human Rights Watch and Noah Bullock of Christo Sal, welcome to the program, both of you. Juanita, let me start with you. As director of the America's Division of Human Rights Watch, you've titled this report. Both of you, you have arrived in hell. We'll get to that in a second. But first, who are these Venezuelans who you're talking to and how did you even get access to them if They've been in Cecot?
- [21:16]
Juanita Gobertis Estrada
Thank you, Cristian. These were 252 Venezuelans, the majority of which, as you mentioned, had absolutely no linkages with criminal organizations whatsoever. In fact, our report finds that only 3% of them had been convicted of any violent crime in the U.S. these were people from Venezuela, many of whom were escaping the persecution of the Maduro regime. In fact, at least 62 of them had been seeking asylum in the U.S. people that had been arbitrarily detained, even Churchill in Venezuela prior to leaving. So this is really honest migrants trying to rebuild their future. We were able to reach them when they were transferred back to Venezuela after the agreement between the Bukele government and the Maduro regime that ended up with the Release also of 10 prisoners from US residency or citizenship that were being kept in Venezuela.
- [22:14]
Christiane Amanpour
All right, so now you've just mentioned the 3% figure, you know, had been convicted in the U.S. now, despite all of this, the Trump administration defines the whole group as terrorists and gang members of the Trend awa. Now, Noah Bullock, let me ask you, under what legal grounds were their arrests and deportations permitted? Did the administration provide the kind of, you know, evidence that would justify this?
- [22:46]
Noah Bullock
No, Christian. That's one of the things that's most horrifying about this episode is that hundreds of men were ultimately disappeared into a terrorist confinement prison with no due process. They were never formally charged with crimes of terrorism or serious membership in the gangs. They never had a hearing. They were never convicted. One of the things that the prisoners or detainees said to our investigators was how horrifying it was to find themselves in the prison because they didn't even know why they were there, how long they would be there. The guards would threaten them and tell them that this is where they were going to die. These are men who were disappeared into ultimately a judicial black hole. And we should also remember that the crimes of forced disappearances are never legitimized in US Law. This is an action that happened entirely outside of the legal framework.
- [23:36]
Christiane Amanpour
So let me just read this from the Homeland Security in response to your to your report. This is, as I said, the Homeland Security Department response. At President Trump's direction, DHS deported nearly 300 trend and Ms. 13 terrorists to the terrorism confinement center in El Salvador where they no longer pose a threat to the American people. That is the official response. And then by some deal, the reason you were able to get hold of them is that they were then redeported out of El Salvador back to Venezuela. Right. The Venezuelans, Maduro, who's now under threat and attack by the US Took them back and that's when you were able to talk to them. So let me first ask you, Juanita, what did you find that they had described their situation in this El Salvador prison?
- [24:33]
Juanita Gobertis Estrada
We came to the conclusion that they faced systematic torture throughout the almost four months that they were at secot. Day in and day out, they were beaten by the guards they were beaten because they spoke out loud. They were beaten because they laughed. They were beaten because they asked to go to the toilet. They were beaten for protesting, for being beaten constantly. There were specifically at least four incidents in which those beatings were especially intense when they got to Secot, which is exactly why we decided the title of the report, because they were welcomed, quote, unquote, to this prison ass arriving into hell. They were beaten right after some of the official visits, particularly by Kristi Noem, Homeland Security director, because they had been during that visit saying, we're not criminals, yelling we're migrants, doing an L sign for libertad freedom and Spanish. And so after that, they were beaten. They were beaten after the International Committee of the Red Cross came in and interviewed them. And they were punished by the guards for telling the Red Cross kinds of beatings that they had suffered. And they were specially beated also after a couple of two of the protests in which they were protesting against all of this mistreatment. And they again were punished by the guards. This is why we have come to the conclusion that the US Trump administration is complicit in acts of torture and of enforced disappearance of these Venezuelans sent to El Salvador.
- [26:12]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay, so that is essentially the headline of your report. It's not just that El Salvador and the prison guards you're accusing, but you're accusing the United States of being complicit. So I want to read this by the US Government. They have claimed that it has. They have ensured, quote, that aliens removed to seekot in El Salvador will not be tortured and that it would not have removed any alien to El Salvador for such detention if doing so would violate its obligations under the Convention against Torture. So, Noah, both of you, let's go to you first, Noah, why then do you think, do you say the US Is complicit if this is their statement?
- [26:52]
Noah Bullock
Well, Christian, we've beenour organization has been documenting for the last three years systematic patterns of torture in Salvadoran prisons. Our organization has demonstrated that torture in Salvadoran prisons has almost become state policy. The report that we're presenting today demonstrates how institutionalized torture is almost as if there's a protocol for beatings. Also, our organization has documented that that torture has caused at least 420 deaths, including the deaths of four newborn children to women who have been detained under an emergency decree in El Salvador. This information has been reported to the State Department, and it's been reported in the State Department's own reports about human rights in El Salvador. It's been also reported in the Inter American Human Rights Commission's reports about El Salvador. So there's really very little margin for denial about awareness about the conditions of systematic and mass torture in the Salvadoran prisons.
- [27:47]
Christiane Amanpour
So I'm going to play for you both this sound bite from an interview on 60 Minutes when President Trump was asked by Norah O' Donnell about immigration raids and whether they've gone too far. This is what he said. And this was just a couple of weeks ago, less than a couple of weeks ago. Have some of these raids gone too far?
- [28:08]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
No, I think they haven't gone far enough because we've been held back by the. By the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama.
- [28:17]
Christiane Amanpour
You're okay with those tactics?
- [28:18]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
Yeah, because you have to get the people out. You know, you have to look at the people. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown out of their countries because they were, you know, criminals.
- [28:30]
Christiane Amanpour
Let's have your reactions to that. That's the President of the United States. And you had said that only a very small percentage, 3% or so, had been convicted in the United States. And you had also said that the majority of those Venezuelans had fled Venezuela because of their oppression by Maduro, not that they had been thrown out of Venezuela because they were criminals. Explain your reaction to these statements, Juanita, please.
- [28:58]
Juanita Gobertis Estrada
So I would say exactly those two points. First, these are not criminals. These are not terrorists. These are migrants in many of the cases fleeing the persecution that the Republican allies that helped elect President Trump supposedly defended, those Venezuelans in opposition trying to defend democracy in Venezuela, trying to promote a transition to democracy in Venezuela. Well, it's that same very people. We documented one of the cases, for example, of one of the detainees that had protests in Venezuela to allow Maria Corina Machado to be able to run for presidency, that was arbitrarily detained, that was tortured while in jail in Venezuela, that escaped the country to escape a dictatorship, only to be then abusively deported by the US into an authoritarian regime, into a jail like Secot, to be tortured. And most importantly, even if there was any evidence of any participation of these people in criminal activities, which there isn't, the US as any other democracy, does not have a right to torture people, even if they believe are criminals, which these people are not.
- [30:12]
Christiane Amanpour
And, you know, we speak about the whole issue of democracy and what's going on in Venezuela when the United States is at some kind of a war with Venezuela right now, they call it a narco terrorist state. And they also talk about the lack of democracy in Venezuela. And. And the opposition leader who you mentioned supports this. She believes that this regime should fall because they lost the election and they lied about it. So she supports the action. I wonder, Noah, whether the fact that it's about Venezuela either complicates or explains this situation. Is there anything. I mean, you know, President Trump has used various. Is it the enemy alien act? Is it, you know, saying that Venezuela is kind of sending an invasion of illegals into the United States?
- [31:08]
Noah Bullock
Yeah, Just go back to your earlier point, too. It's important to remember that in democracies, presidents don't convict people. They don't pass sentences, judges do. And in the case of these Venezuelans, they were, you know, sent to a prison and imprisoned indefinitely without having seen even a single judge. Also important to remember that while the President of the United States promises to keep Americans safe from violent criminals, as Juanita pointed out, those claims are unfounded based on our investigation, and torture doesn't keep anybody safer. The issue with the Venezuelans is something that's affected us directly as an organization founded and based in El Salvador. Over the last four years, we've been under emergency decree in El Salvador, where due process rights have been suspended, and as I mentioned, that's led to mass and systematic human rights violations. When we came into contact with the Venezuelan families and they learned about the horrors of that injustice in the prison systems, even they thought that that was extreme. So there's an intimate connection between authoritarian governance in El Salvador and Venezuela.
- [32:14]
Christiane Amanpour
So let me just also ask you this, because I believe Cristo Sal has been, as you said, you're not only under pressure, but you've been, I think, kicked out, right? I mean, you've been thrown out. You've had to leave there. But I want to ask you what you make of the Venezuelan. Sorry, the El Salvadoran government response to cnn. In the past, El Salvador's government has said that it respects the human rights of people in its custody, quote, regardless of their nationality, and that its prison system complies with safety and order standards. Um, what do you know that either, you know, supports or refutes that claim?
- [32:53]
Noah Bullock
Well, we have an abundance of evidence about torture and killings in Salvadoran prisons. Cristian. Some of that is produced also in this report that we're presenting today. There is. We have documented documentary evidence, testimonial evidence, as well as forensic evidence and independent forensic experts that have concluded that there are extrajudicial killings happening in Salvadoran prisons. Like I said earlier, we've documented up to this point, 420 killings. It's very difficult to unsee photographs of tortured bodies. I think the evidence refutes the statement of the Salvadoran government.
- [33:31]
Christiane Amanpour
So this is quite a pointed conclusion that you've come to, Noah, and maybe both of you together. But it's in the Cristo Sal report, I believe, or your end of it. You said the United States government has not been linked to acts of systematic torture on this scale since Abu Ghraib and the network of clandestine prisons during the war on terror. This was in Iraq. Disappearing people into the hands of a government that tortures them runs against the very principles that historically made the United States a nation of laws. Both of you, what do you expect to see? I mean, that is a, that's an accusation there. I mean, you're accusing, and we've talked about it a little bit before, Juanita, the US of being complicit. They will deny that clearly, as I read out. What do you expect to be the result of this report of yours landing?
- [34:24]
Juanita Gobertis Estrada
Well, Cristian, this is a report based in over 200 interviews. We've corroborated the testimonies with the reports of forensic experts. So we trust our findings. This has been a very rigorous investigation throughout the past eight months. It is very clear that under this Department of Justice, it's most likely that we will not have an independent and transparent investigation into these very serious crimes. But a time will come in which there is an investigation, as we've seen throughout the world, whenever there is torture. So what we do in human rights organizations is gather that evidence for when the moment comes, and it will come a time in which those responsibles need to be held to account and the victims of these very serious crimes are redressed.
- [35:16]
Christiane Amanpour
I'm sorry, we've run out of time. But Juanita Gobertis and Noah Bullock, thank you both very much for being with us with this, with this report today. And we'll be right back after this break. And now, from claiming emergency powers to imposing sweeping tariffs to ordering federal troops into American cities, President Trump's use of executive authority is straining constitutional limits, according to many experts. In a recent New York Times article, journalist Charlie Savage traces the blueprint for Trump's power grab back to the former Vice President Dick Cheney. Savage talks to Walter Isaacson about how Cheney set the stage for Trump and about his decision to back Kamala Harris in the 2024 election despite his own solid Republican status.
- [36:11]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
Thank you, Chris. John and Charlie Savage, welcome to the show.
- [36:15]
Charlie Savage
Thank you.
- [36:16]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
Former Vice President Dick Cheney died last week, and you've written something about him, you've covered him before, dealt with him in books. But let me read a quote of yours, which is a central project in the political life of former Vice President Dick Cheney was his push to expand presidential power. And the legacy he left became the groundwork for President Trump's own aggressive efforts to concentrate and unleash executive authority. Tell me about why Cheney believed that and how that has translated to President Trump.
- [36:52]
Charlie Savage
Vice President Dick Cheney had one of the longest and most storied political careers in modern American history. Everyone thinks of him these days as the vice president, the unusually powerful vice president to George W. Bush. But his career goes back to the Nixon and Ford administrations, when he joined as an aide to Donald Rumsfeld in the Nixon administration and quickly rose to become the youngest White House chief of staff in American history under Gerald Ford. And that was a unique period in the separation of powers story of American democracy. The power of the American presidency had been growing up since the end of World War II, during the early Cold War, under presidents of both power parties. And the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Famously called this escalation of unilateral authority and ebbing of congressional and judicial authority over government, the imperial presidency that peaked under Nixon and then collapsed because of the disasters of the Vietnam War, because of the Watergate scandal, and then because of congressional investigations into intelligence abuses under presidents of both parties, most notably the church committee investigation. And Congress kind of rewoke after a couple decades of doing very little as its power was being ebbed, and started reimposing checks and balances on the American presidency, passing a series of laws, framing and constraining what a president could do on everything from spending money to starting wars to wiretapping people, and much more. So from inside the Ford White House, from inside the beating heart of executive power, that did not look like a necessary constitutional correction. To Dick Cheney. It looked like an outrage. He thought that the American presidency was being weakened unnecessarily and unwisely, and that that in turn would weaken America. And so for the remainder of his career, he became a strong proponent of restoring, from his point of view, the imperial presidency, expanding executive power, getting rid of checks and balances that had been imposed by Congress in the 70s, and refighting those wars and winning them this time.
- [39:22]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
So let's explain what he figured out the president could or should do unilaterally and how that echoes with what President Trump is doing now. Give me some of the levers that he used.
- [39:35]
Charlie Savage
Well, even before 9 11, the sort of first battle here involved executive secrecy powers. Cheney led aide who had been the executive, the CEO of an energy and military contracting company called Halliburton, led an energy policy task force for the Bush administration. And they fought a battle to the Supreme Court to win a ruling that they did not have to make public what energy executives were advising that policy task force to do. And that gutted a 1970s open government law called the Federal Advisory Committees Act. Notably, that act had required Hillary Clinton and the Clinton administration to have her health care policy meetings open to the public. But that was the first battle where they sort of crushed one of those 70s era reforms. And then after 9 11, there were numerous opportunities for the government to act in national security scenarios in ways that appeared to violate or contradict statutes in matters ranging from wiretapping to the torture of detainees to the holding of people without trial and so forth. And every time, Cheney and his top legal aide was a man named David Addington, who's perhaps the most powerful figure in the Bush Cheney legal team, would push the administration to do what it thought was necessary as a policy matter, not by going to Congress and asking Congress to adjust the law to permit what it is they thought was necessary, but to act in defiance of those statutes, based on idiosyncratically broad constitutional theories of a president's inherent and exclusive power to act without Congress, or in defiance of Congress by doing that, often in secret, though it later came out, they established historical precedents showing that those theories might be true, because in fact, the President had acted on those theories and that had happened. And so those theories would be available not just for them to do what they were trying to do in the moment, but for future presidents when they too wanted to act in a way that laws passed by Congress appeared to forbid.
- [41:51]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
What are the other legacies of? Former Vice President Dick Cheney was advocating the aggressive use of American military power and interventionism in many different things. The Republican Party under Trump at least, has rebelled against that, has rejected that aggressive foreign policy. Tell me about that split in the Republican Party and what little legacy of Dick Cheney is.
- [42:19]
Charlie Savage
Certainly, Dick Cheney was one of the greatest advocates within the Bush administration of going into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. And that, of course, was the greatest geopolitical blunder of the 21st century, I think many people now across party lines believe is the case, at least from the American government's perspective. And in many ways, the disaster of the Iraq war, both the grinding insurgency that followed all the American deaths, all the Iraqi deaths, the, the cement treasure, the rise of ISIS and so forth that followed set the stage for the change within the Republican Party in which Donald Trump could repudiate Jeb Bush in 2016 and the sort of attempt by Bush, Cheney style Republicans to continue leading that party and take over it as an American first person who was not going to be involved in regime change wars. That's absolutely correct. And when Cheney criticized him, Trump attacked Cheney for his role in the Iraq debacle. That said, it is the case now that Donald Trump is using the US Military to attack suspected drug cartel smugglers and summarily kill them in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, building up an enormous amount of force, naval force, but ground forces on ships in that area, and appears to be contemplating a regime change war in Venezuela. Clearly, members of his administration, chief among them Marco Rubio, his national security advisor and Secretary of State, would very much like a military intervention to change the government in Venezuela. And Trump is thinking about it. And so how that fits into his rise in repudiating these kinds of foreign entanglements is yet to be seen in terms of whether that was a sticking point or just rhetoric that was useful in the moment.
- [44:25]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
Your book takeover, published in 2007, begins with a really dramatic scene inside the White House bunker while the September 11th attacks are underway. And Vice President Cheney's in the room, he's in command and he issues an order to shoot down that United Airlines Flight 93 that seemed to be heading to the Capitol. Explain to me the significance of that.
- [44:52]
Charlie Savage
Yes, Cheney has been grabbed by his Secret Service and rushed downstairs into the White House bunker in Florida. Bush was famously reading to some children at the school and he gets hurried away and stuck on a plane. And their plane, Air Force One, is just taking off with no sense yet of even where it's going to land because they don't know what the scope of this attack is. That thing, you know, things are blowing up at the Pentagon and in New York, who knows what the final target is. And communications are bad. And the at this moment there's tracking what they think is United Flight 93, which is the one that was eventually crashes into a field in Pennsylvania, but was probably headed to the US Capitol. And the military asked what they should do and Cheney orders them to shoot it down. And why this is, it turns out not to matter because it turns out the plane by then had already crashed and they were looking at a projected track of where they thought it might be. It wasn't actually even in the sky anymore. But why it mattered was it illustrated Cheney's outsized role as a Vice President literally calling the shots on 911 and its aftermath and the sort of way that that administration started to cover up what was really going on or constrict the flow of information to the public and to Congress, because they later claimed, including to the 911 Commission, which was a creature of Congress, that Bush had authorized Cheney to give the shoot down order ahead of time in some earlier call when Cheney first got to the bunker. And there was no evidence that call existed in the logs of communications in and out of the bunker, in the logs of communications in and out of Air Force One, in the contemporaneous notes that aides to both of them were making, logging what was happening. And so it was an attempt to sort of clean up Cheney getting over his skis a little bit as the person who was actually giving the orders, but maybe wasn't supposed to be giving the orders. And a moment probably where they misled the 911 Commission.
- [47:10]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
One of the things I don't get is that Dick Cheney was very dismissive of congressional restraints on the President, congressional power, and yet he was a Congressman, he served in the House of Representatives, and his daughter serves in the House of Representatives. Why did he feel Congress should surrender so much of its authority granted in Article 1 of the Constitution?
- [47:31]
Charlie Savage
You know, he talked about this interestingly in a speech that he wrote in 1988 or early 89. He was going to give it at a conference at a conservative think tank. And he never did because in the interim, the first President Bush nominated him to be Secretary of Defense. And he didn't want to go out and say something controversial when he was coming up for Senate confirmation. But we do have a pretty good guide to his thinking. And it's clear that he thought that Congress was ill suited institutionally and structurally to make decisions about foreign policy and national security. It was this diverse 435 people who were worried about getting reelected every two years. In the case of the House they had, they were prone to leaking, they could. They were not necessarily trustworthy to keep information secret. And it was just hard for them to act decisively as a collective decision making body. And he was less worried therefore about the risks that a bad President would act quickly and decisively with secrecy in a bad way. The sort of thing that the Founders were worried about when they created this system. He just thought the modern world at least was different than the world of the Founders. We have nuclear weapons, et cetera, and the Modern world demands one person being able to make a decision and move on without constraint.
- [48:59]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney were the only two Republicans present on the House floor marking the first anniversary of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. And I think Liz Cheney, you could pretty much say, gets excommunicated from the Trump Republican Party for her pushback and, you know, fighting against that sort of thing. What impact did all of that have on Dick Cheney's worldview and his view of unified executives?
- [49:35]
Charlie Savage
But I'm not aware of him publicly repudiating his earlier articulation in his career of the idea that the country would be better off with a stronger presidency, with fewer constraints, with fewer checks and balances, that the modern world requires a greater, unilateral, imperial presidency. He wouldn't use the term imperial, of course, but I think we do see in his dramatic criticism of Trump, especially after January six, and ultimately his defense of his daughter when she's running against a Trump primary challenger, in terms of attacking Trump, and finally, his endorsement of Kamala Harris, whom he clearly disagrees with, on 99% of policy issues, that he saw that policy issues were not the most important thing, that there was a structural interest in the United States in preserving democracy and the rule of law that supersedes all those other issues. And the idea of Dick Cheney, of all people, endorsing a Democrat for president, I think underscored that at least at the end of his life, he saw things a little bit differently.
- [50:57]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
Charlie Savage, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
- [51:00]
Al Gore
My pleasure.
- [51:02]
Christiane Amanpour
Such interesting analysis. And finally tonight, Washington has held a memorial service for Jane Goodall, the world renowned conservationist who died at the age of 91. Her advocacy inspired millions, including Leonardo DiCaprio, to get into climate action.
- [51:20]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
When most of us think about environmental issues, we tend to dwell on destruction and loss. And I'll admit it's something I've always struggled with myself. But Jane led with hope. I'll forever cherish every conversation, every adventure I had with her, every laugh, every whiskey we shared, and every time I got to spend time talking with my dear friend. May we all honor her by carrying forward that same fierce belief that we can do better, that we must do better, and that we have a responsibility to protect this beautiful natural world we all share.
- [52:04]
Christiane Amanpour
And that was a mission Jane Goodall started even at the age of 26, when she left England to work with the eminent naturalist Louis Leakey. He sent her to live and study the chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania. There, she made a groundbreaking discovery. The chimps were making and using tools and showing profoundly human traits. In Leakey's words, it meant that now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans. Right up to her death, Jane Goodall continued to travel around 300 days a year to advocate for conservation. In 2017, I asked her about the state of the natural world and she replied with a pointed question. How much of a mortal threat or a planetary threat do you think we're under right now? It's a huge threat. We are. You know, the big difference between us and chimpanzees is the explosive development of our intellect. So how is it that the most intellectual being to ever walk the planet is destroying its only home? A good question indeed. Jane Goodall dedicated her life to protecting the planet. And she hoped her legacy would give young people home and a sense of empowerment. That is it for now. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
- [53:26]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast.
- [53:31]
Claire Duffy
We feel almost a responsibility because we're.
- [53:33]
Juanita Gobertis Estrada
With you all the time.
- [53:35]
Charlie Savage
That's Dr. Sumbal Desai.
- [53:37]
Interviewer/Host (various, including Chris and Sanjay Gupta)
She is Apple's VP of Health.
- [53:40]
Claire Duffy
I want to make sure we're scientifically grounded in the work we do so that consumers have.
- [53:43]
Christiane Amanpour
Have confidence in the messages they're getting.
- [53:45]
Charlie Savage
For years, she's been thinking about how to bring medicine and wearable technology closer together.
- [53:50]
Christiane Amanpour
We have to hit a level of.
- [53:52]
Claire Duffy
Accuracy that we feel really strongly about.
- [53:54]
Charlie Savage
Listen to Chasing Life streaming now. Wherever you get your podcasts.