Welcome to Beg to Differ, the Bullworks weekly roundtable discussion featuring

civil conversation across the political spectrum from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon's syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bullwork and I'm joined by two of our regulars, Bill

Galston of the Brookings Institution and the Wall Street Journal and Damon Linker of the week.

Sitting in for Linda Chavez this week we're delighted to have Jonathan

the Last editor of the bulwark and our special guest this week is Catherine Ramplet, columnist for the Washington Post.

As we speak, the House is Debating impeachment 2.0.

JVL, I'd like to start with you because the thing that got us here is something you outlined in your

newsletter today and you called it the biggest lie.

So can you just amplify on that for a minute?

Yeah, what the fundamental problem we have is that we've got something akin to polonium poisoning of our political

groundwater and that is the insistence by the president of the United States

and more than half of the Republican congressional delegation

that the election was fraudulent, that Donald Trump was the true winner of the election

and that the incoming president of the United States is literally illegitimate.

Is the product of a bloodless hunter.

And if one takes those things seriously, then people should be in a state of open revolt and revolution.

Should they not, right?

I mean, it would mean that American democracy has fallen and that we are in a state of

authoritarian, authoritarianism. And so this is, you know, I just don't see any way for anything to get better until this big lie is repudiated by the Republican Party in such a manner that their constituents believe it.

You know, or I should say, believe the repudiation is what I'm trying to say. And so what I look at the you know it is not enough for

Kevin McCarthy to as he did a few minutes ago say Joe Biden will be president because he won the election.

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