Paul Rosenzweig: Hello and welcome to Checks and Balances: Threats to this American Election. 

This new weekly podcast is sponsored by Checks and Balances, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers dedicated to bolstering the rule of law and opposing the degradation of American legal norms. 

My name is Paul Rosenzweig, and I'm your host. 

Joining me today as our first guest on our inaugural podcast is Bill Kristol, the well known author and political commentator. 

Before we begin the interview, let me tell you a little bit about this podcast and why we started it, and what we hope to achieve in creating this new forum. 

Nearly two years ago, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers got together with one idea.

That America's commitment to a neutral rule of law was under assault. 

And we decided it needed defending. 

As we said in our mission statement, we believe in the rule of law, the power of truth, the independence of the criminal justice system, the imperative of individual rights, and the necessity of civil discourse.

We believe that these principles apply regardless of the party or the person in power. 

America is assuredly a government of laws, not of men, and our goal in creating Checks and Balances was to remind the nation that free speech, a free press, separation of powers, and limited government are the bedrock of the American experiment.

And sadly, today, those values are under stress. 

More particularly, this coming election will see America faced with a fundamental choice about the direction of our national politics. 

The outcome of that election is absolutely vital. 

It's commonplace to say that each election is the most important one in our lifetime.

I certainly know I've heard that for almost every election of my adult life. 

But this time that bromide is a reality. 

This election really does matter in ways that no other election in our lifetime has. 

And so, as lawyers and citizens, we at Checks and Balances believe that defending the integrity of the election is essential.

Some of us will be poll workers. 

Others are writing and speaking publicly about foreign influence and fostering confidence in the election outcome. 

Others will, I'm sure, work in the court system to defend America's right to a free and fair election. 

And still others, like me in my day job, are working to improve the cybersecurity of the electoral system.

But most of all as lawyers, we can talk and think about the law. 

We can bring to the American public neutral analysis of what the law requires and how it applies to the upcoming election. 

Our goal in starting this podcast is to make sure that as many Americans as possible understand what the law allows and what the law requires. 

Our goal is to make sure that as many Americans as possible who are legally entitled to vote, get the opportunity to do so.

And most importantly of all, our goal in creating this podcast is to counter the false narrative that is being advanced by some in the public space. 

This is the narrative that the American election is at risk. 

This is the narrative that the election is going to be a fraud. 

This is the narrative that says that the only legitimate result is the one where a particular candidate wins.

This is assuredly false. 

The upcoming election will be hotly contested. 

It may even extend for far longer than Americans are used to, as votes are counted slowly and as court cases make their way through the court system and judges decide what will be counted. 

But, in the end, our goal, the only goal that America can accept, is that this coming election will be free and fair to the maximum extent practical. 

And that the results, whatever they may be, are ones that all Americans should accept as legitimate and valid.

One more observation before we take off from the starting blocks. 

Fostering free and fair elections is not a partisan issue. 

Not a right or left issue. 

Not a conservative or libertarian or liberal or progressive issue. 

It's an American issue. 

And that's why we started this podcast. 

We're going to bring on as guests people who understand what the consequences of this election are, what the laws relating to elections might be, how the federal government will interact with the election process over the coming months, and in the aftermath... and in the end, people who are able to give our listeners the straight scoop. 

Unbiased, fair, accurate information about what the law and policies are and about how to make sure that every legal vote is counted. 

That's our goal. 

We're going to do this every week from now until the election. 

And if necessary, until the inauguration in January 2021. 

Our episodes will come out every Monday, beginning on September 14th. 

And we hope you'll find it useful.

So with that introduction, let me turn to some substance, and our first guest, William Kristol. 

Bill Kristol probably needs no introduction, but I'll give him a short one anyway. 

Mr. Kristol is a well known political analyst, sometimes called a neoconservative. 

He's a frequent commentator on several networks.

He was the founder and Editor-at-Large of the political magazine, The Weekly Standard. 

And he is today Editor-at-Large of The Bulwark. 

He's also the founder, director of the advocacy group Defending Democracy Together, which is responsible for such projects as Republicans for the Rule of Law, Republican Voters Against Trump and Republicans Against Putin.

Mr. Kristol, thank you so very much for joining me. 

Bill Kristol: Good to be with you Paul, and congratulations on this new effort. 

Paul Rosenzweig: Well thank you very much.

 So let's start with something that's ripped right out of today's headlines. 

What are we to make of the current reporting that the President considers military members to be losers or suckers?

Is this impactful on the election? 

And if so, how? 

And if not, why not? 

Bill Kristol: I mean, I honestly don't know. I think it should be. 

But I'm the person who said on national television the day after he called John McCain a loser for having been a POW, he doesn't like people who were captured, Trump said. 

I said, well, he's finished with Republican primary voters.

This was in, I think August or July of 2015. 

Republican primary voters will never tolerate this kind of disrespect for POWs, for members for our military. 

So, I don't know. 

People are so dug in. 

Maybe it won't affect much. 

I think it does remind us, and this ties in somewhat for your mission at Checks and Balances and all the work we've done at Republicans for the Rule of Law, and what you're doing now on the elections, it reminds us that Trump is not an ordinary American president.

I mean, when everyone thinks of the presidents of our lifetime or before, they understood they wanted to be, and they certainly understood they had to be almost, as by virtue of their job, respectful of our troops. 

Especially the ones who had made the ultimate sacrifice. 

That they wouldn't think of disrespecting them, and quite the contrary, they would go out of their way, even if it meant a long motorcade in Paris, perhaps, to pay their respects at the appropriate American cemetery. 

Trump really is different, and he just has a different attitude towards the country and towards those who served it. 

It's very unfortunate in my view that he's the president, but here we are.

But he also has a very different attitude, therefore, towards elections. 

It's not a kind of, this is something that's happened here for over two centuries.

 One of the great things about America, the peaceful transfer of power.

 The hopefully orderly selection of the next president. 

And if not orderly, at least a good faith effort to resolve the disputes.

Trump is not committed to that, honestly.

 It's all about himself, and he'll do what it takes to win. 

He'll certainly discredit, try to discredit the election if that's what he thinks it takes. 

And so, we all need to pull together, I think, honestly, at this point. 

Even people, incidentally, who are voting for Donald Trump, need to pull together and say, we need to have a fair and free election.

And one with credibility that people understand the mechanisms of. 

Paul Rosenzweig: Well, let me follow up on that because that's a good point. 

From your perspective, what do you see as the greatest threat to that integrity? 

To the normal, good faith transition of power peacefully in the American Republic?

Is it consumer confusion?

 Is it Russian disinformation campaigns? 

Is it legal action in the courts?

 Is it the chaos caused by misinformation from the political campaigns? 

What is it that Americans should be aware of now in order to kind of step back from the brink and avoid the chaos that nobody should want to have?

Bill Kristol: Well, I think a little of all of those, unfortunately. 

And I'd add one thing: Trump isn't just a candidate. 

I mean he was in 2016, and he created quite a lot of chaos.

 And Russian disinformation helped him, and there was collaboration of a kind, with Russia or at least an encouragement of Putin to get involved and so forth.

 WikiLeaks.

But now he's president.

 He has the executive branch at his disposal. 

Not fully at his disposal the way authoritarians do in other countries, thank God, because we have a system that's pretty entrenched here where there are rules, and regulations, and processes, and civil servants, and political appointees too who won't just do anything.

On the other hand, some of them will do some things. 

More than they should do. 

And that's a change from a couple of years ago where Trump's first wave of appointees, most of them, many of them at least, checked him. 

They kind of were internal guardrails within the executive branch. 

You've been there, you know what that's like. 

Very important, actually, even for a normal president who occasionally is tempted to do things he shouldn't do. 

With Trump, we're way beyond being tempted to do a few things that he shouldn't do. 

I think of Ukraine, incidentally, and that's a very good example. 

Everyone involved who sort of stopped him from doing what he wanted to do in Ukraine, to extort from a foreign government false information about Joe Biden.

Who he then considered his most dangerous opponent, interestingly, and who now is his opponent. 

Everyone who stopped him has left the government, basically. 

Many of them forced out.

 Some of them just left on their own accord. 

Certainly not well received by Trump and his team while they were there. 

And now there are more compliant people. 

Ranging from the Director of National Intelligence to the Attorney General.

He was there already, I guess, but certainly compared to the first couple of years.

 The Department of Homeland Security.

 Major parts of the US government are run by people who I don't think respect the norms, the guardrails, as they should. 

Now down in the department, there are plenty of civil servants who will try to enforce those norms.

So I'm worried about Trump. 

 I'm worried about things, disinformation, not just from the campaigns or from abroad, but from the government itself.

 Are we going to be confident if the Director of National Intelligence shows up on TV in mid-October and says, well we have information that China's helping Biden, rumors or some information, we feel we should make it public.

And now, we can't really explain how we have it. 

That China's helping Biden. 

I mean, you can imagine all kinds of things. 

So what's the solution?

 We all have to be on our lookout and blow the whistle.

 Voters have to be very attentive to the sources of information and make up their minds soberly. 

They need to vote, and make sure their vote is counted as much as they can in terms of voting earlier, and using appropriate processes, and not waiting for the last minute and so forth.

Election officials.

 I think people at the local and state level especially since we have such a federal election system, such a state based and even local based system, need to make sure that as much as they can, that processes are in place so that everyone can vote safely and in a healthy way.

And that might mean extending early voting, and having more places to vote, and making it easier to vote by mail, and so forth. 

And luckily a lot of the state level, we do have officials working on this.

 Some States where the officials are resistant, there are others who could put pressure on them.

 Business groups and so forth. 

So I just think we need a kind of full-scale effort across the board to make this election work. 

Normally you don't need that because normally no one is really threatening it much, and you have maybe a couple of mistakes or whatever, or just a very close election, but the normal election officials and election processes work reasonably well.

But here you have someone pretty determined, I think, to make it come out his way, if he possibly can, and he's the President of the United States. 

So it's a real test of the whole system and of all of us, I think.

Paul Rosenzweig:  Well one of the things that you've just described as kind of the degradation of trust in the federal government as a source of neutral information, how do we counter that?

I mean, surely nobody who's listening to this who's Trump voter is going to listen to Nancy Pelosi as his trusted, his or her trusted source of information.

 And with the President's degradation of trust in the press, people are probably not going to be listening to the New York Times or the Washington Post in the same way they have before, rightly or wrongly.

So where do you recommend people look to for a straight, honest, neutral information? 

Bill Kristol: Well, I think we all hope we're providing that, but I understand that the people will also say, you're against Trump, we can't trust you. 

Maybe they can then trust someone like General Milley, who's actually the serving Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or Secretary Esper, the serving Defense Secretary, when they say, "You know what? We shouldn't have done that in Lafayette square." 

Maybe they can trust recently retired flag officers and cabinet officers from the Trump administration who say, "Wait a second. I don't know this is quite Kosher. I'm not sure this is quite legitimate."

There are people who have left the Trump administration who are speaking up.

So, I think there are there more people than just people who have been against Trump for five years, who are alarmed about this situation. 

And I do think people need to take them seriously. 

These two Department of Homeland Security officials who've come forward in the last couple of weeks, Miles Taylor and Elizabeth Neumann, to talk about what Trump has - what they've seen.

And they were there. 

They voted for Trump, and they tried to make Trump's policies work. 

And they tried to check him where he tried to have him do things that were illegal or inappropriate, and they finally left and they finally felt they couldn't do any good inside. 

We, you and I, might dispute some of the policies they went along with inside, or maybe they thought they could do more good than they really did, but still they were making earnest efforts to advance what they saw as Trump's policy goals.

While doing it legally and appropriately, and they've left, and they're speaking out.

 I think some others may step forward.

I think that's a healthy thing, but people need to be alert, honestly.

Paul Rosenzweig:  Well, I think that's all good advice.

 So in the context of being alert or being prepared, one of the things that everybody's talking about now is the idea that the election might not be decided on November 3rd.

 That we might not know who's won.

 Now obviously that's not true if it's a landslide for one candidate or the other.

 But the prospect of a close election, and even the even more significant prospect that the person who wins the in-person voting on November 3rd might eventually lose once mail-in voting votes are counted, has gotten people worried about the extended time that the election might take and the scope for game playing, if you will, during that extended time period.

 Do you think the election is going to be decided on November 3rd, and if not, how do we prepare for that? 

Bill Kristol: It may, it could be, incidentally, and some states that have mail-in voting count the mail-in votes on election day itself. 

And so they're reflected in the election night totals.

Now, there still could be votes coming in a little late that are postmarked by 8:00 PM on election day. 

Each state has its own rules. 

I know some States are trying to move up the counting, or at least the ready to count, so they don't have this long lag.

 States that haven't had much mail-in voting in the past.

So in Michigan, there's a bill in the Michigan legislature, the Governors for it, to allow them to count earlier.

 This wouldn't change anything in terms of the votes.

 You mail your vote in on October 12th, it gets to there at October 19th, right now, apparently in Michigan, I believe sits there and they don't even begin counting it until they counted the election night votes.

There's no reason they couldn't count it the day before, or that day, if they want to be super careful and then not release it, of course, to the polls close. 

So which is how Florida does it, so there's a lot of state by state activity, I think to try to get us more confidence about the result.

But it could be if it's close that of course we won't know.

We didn't know some Senate races in 2018 until two, three, four days later. 

And people just need to be ready for that. 

And I do think people are beginning to say in the media, and elected officials in different states, "Look, you may not know Tuesday night."

 And of course we didn't know Tuesday night in 2000.

And even in 2004, I remember I left Fox, I was on the coverage, and Kerry hadn't conceded in Ohio.

 It was pretty clear he was going to lose it, and therefore lose the election.

 You can see that I think, 11:00 the next morning or something. 

So, I think we can do that. 

We just need to be serious about letting all the votes get counted.

Now what we haven't had before as a presidential candidate, let alone a president, and let alone a president supported until now at least by the huge bulk of his party, not saying, "Okay, keep calm. I'm not conceding yet. Let's see how the votes get counted."

That was John Kerry, let's say in 2004.

 That was basically Gore and Bush in 2000.

 I think, and then argue about legal processes and so forth, and each had ad's, but there was a commitment to counting the votes and doing so legally and doing so at a timely way.

If Trump starts screaming and yelling that it's being stolen, and if Republicans back him up, then we're in a dangerous situation.

 And if he calls for people to take to the streets, and if he calls for the justice department to send people in to make sure votes don't get illegally counted and suddenly we have conflicts between state and federal authorities, that's all pretty scary.

 And that's pretty much like elections we've seen abroad that do not - it's not a happy story.

 There I do think we need Republicans to say no.

 And that includes Republicans like the Governor of Florida who says, let us count our votes in our state, if it's close.

And it includes Republican members of Congress and it includes Republicans at the state and local level. 

And they can all say we voted for Donald Trump, but we can't, we've got to have this election vote-counting go clearly and legitimately. 

And if they are disputes, we'll look at those ballots later and we'll go to the courts if some people want to argue we shouldn't count these ballots or those.

 I mean, this happens in elections, but indeed there needs to be a real resistance to demagoguery across the board from the media and from experts, but I would say also from Republican elected officials at both the federal and the state and local.

Paul Rosenzweig: So is that your nightmare scenario? 

I mean, I think by any measure, it is fair to say that Republican elected officials have not been aggressive in confronting President Trump.

 I say that is as neutrally as possible.

I think it's descriptively accurate. 

And so, is that your nightmare scenario that that lack of willingness to confront President Trump continues in the post-election timeframe and creates doubt about the legitimacy of the election that is unwarranted?

Bill Kristol: Yes, I think that would be terrible.

 And I think it's very important that people who have influence with these different officials, I mean Ron DeSantis in Florida has a lot of big donors.

 He has a lot of people whose goodwill he cares about going forward.

 He's the Governor of Florida.

Presumably he's tried to see to it that Florida has a good election.

A fair election in which everyone's vote is counted once. 

He's got to stand up on election night and say, look, President Trump may have his doubts, but I'm the Governor here and we're going to do this right.

And if it's too close to call it right now, it's too close to call right now, and we'll get back to you in 48 hours. 

And we're going to count as transparently as we always have and so forth.

 So that's yes.

 Anyone who has influence with Republicans, either at the state and local or the federal level, I think needs to tell them "It's fine if you don't want to vote for his impeachment, maybe you didn't think it really rose to that level. If you don't want to, insist on more accountability from Congress that you and I, Paul, think should exist. Okay, they have greater trust in the executive branch. If you have some dubious interpretations of some executive orders as being legitimate, okay. I suppose that's a reasonable disagreement, but you really don't want to start monkeying with the basics of the elections and the peaceful transfer of power."

 So I think it's important that anyone who has influence with Republicans say that to them and then to people who have influence.

 The lawyers need to say it to their friends and the Federal society and in Republican legal circles, with whom they may disagree about a lot of issues, have disagreed about the law about a lot of issues for the last three years, but need to say, this is the line that you really don't want to cross. 

Paul Rosenzweig: Well, that's certainly the thrust of why we've started this podcast is that this line, the sacrosanct nature of the American electoral process with all of its warts and flaws is the line that we can't cross.

And that if we do cross it we're no different than any other, than a Banana Republic, it seems.

I certainly hope that it's a line we don't cross.

 So, you, and I can talk to our friends who have influence.

 What about the citizen and who doesn't have influence?

 The average American who is listening to this podcast and is asking himself, what can I do?

What one thing can I, as an informed American consuming information, what can I do in the next 60 days to help improve the integrity of the American election?

 What advice would you give him or her? 

Bill Kristol: Vote.

 Get your family and friends and colleagues to vote. 

You do have influence on maybe not at the president or on a national media, but you have influence on your local officials and you can try it to ensure that they are running a free and fair election.

 They're not putting obstacles in the way and not playing into narratives about how the whole thing is rigged and such.

 They can, people can volunteer as poll workers, or sometimes you get paid actually to be a poll worker or observer, and try to that way personally play a role in having this election work.

 We have a wonderful, it's kind of a wonderful system in the U.S. 

It's a little - it can cause its own trouble, but where we have hundreds of thousands of American citizens who take this role on election day.

 It's not a bunch of bureaucrats, not a bunch of paid state officials, mostly who run this, who make the system work. 

So I think anything people can do at the local level, and the state level, to try to get the system to work and try to get people to not call it the dis, not create this nightmare is really important. 

Paul Rosenzweig: On that note, I will say, thank you for joining us Bill. 

That was wonderful. 

I appreciate your coming on board. 

We're going to try and end each of these podcasts with a little bit of good news to make the week better.

Today, I've chosen Facebook and the good news that they're going to put a stop to new political ads the week before the election.

In the fight against disinformation, this is really a welcome acknowledgement by Facebook, that this time around they're going to treat the threat as real, and they're going to try and do something about it. 

John Maynard Keynes has reported to have said that when the facts change, I changed my mind, and it's really nice to see some people in public life like Mark Zuckerberg, following that advice.

And that's a wrap for our first show. 

Thank you for joining us. 

We'll be releasing a new show every Monday.

 This episode, and all future episodes, will soon be available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, and anywhere else that you download podcasts.

 We hope you'll subscribe. 

We'll also archive the podcast@cnb.org, if you want to find them on our website.

 And if you have feedback, we'd love to hear it.

The email is podcast@checks-and-balances.org. 

There's hyphens between the words there. 

Thanks again to Bill Kristol for joining us on this inaugural podcast.

 I'm Paul Rosenzweig, your host.

 Remember, as Ludwig von Mises said, "It is the rule of law alone, which hinders the rulers from turning themselves into the worst gangsters."