Steve Schmidt, so happy to see you. I haven't talked to you since election night as we were kind of processing the fact that Donald Trump was going to win the election. That was about three weeks ago, Steve, and I'm just curious how you've been able to kind of understand what

happened in this election and why.

Well, so I think in the end that Donald Trump is many, many, many things. But among them is not a hypocrite. And that is the high

card of American life. The unpardonable sin that you're full of shit. And at the end of the day, more clear now than when

we spoke, example by, example by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski is the performative nature of all of this.

Soon will be on the four-year anniversary of January 6th.

I watched it.

When CNN reported it as a riot, I tweeted out in that moment, that's not a riot, it's an insurrection.

It's exactly what it was.

And the American people, in the end, were unbothered by it.

And so we had a breach of the peaceful transition of power. And we had a failure by the

Biden administration and by Joe Biden both exceptionally and singularly to communicate effectively to the country.

When he became president, two weeks after that, that what happened was astonishing,

extraordinary, and there was nothing more important than it ever, ever, right, not happening again.

And so the entire focus of the administration should have been that.

Instead, he treated Donald Trump as a prop.

To be used to turn out voters like Voldemort in a Harry Potter movie.

And so for years, Trump was the justification for Joe Biden's, I'm breaking my promise and running for four more years.

During all of this, what Rose,

was oppositional to the media that you were part of.

The media that you were part of held power to account

when you worked at a network.

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