On Wednesday night's Anderson Cooper 360, the host lamented the state of America, as Trump Republicans keep challenging the 2020 election results. Then after a look at the tie in the Virginia governor's race, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman asked "How did this party get so crazy, this Republican Party, but what's going on with the Democrats, that they aren't just sweeping the floor when they've got a big idea against the Big Lie?"
Friedman said the Democrats have "gone too far left" and are messing up the infrastructure bills: "This is so exciting what they're trying to sell, and they have so poorly sold it. And that is what really Democrats should be asking themselves, how the hell could we be losing when we have a big plan? And all they [Republicans] have is a Big Lie?"
Then Friedman turned on Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley as nihilists:
COOPER: I can't tell if just, you know, we're in, you know, immersed in this stuff every day and watching it every day....I don't know, like is this -- I've seen societies fall apart. I've been to, you know, Bosnia, I've seen this stuff up close. I'm not saying that's going to happen here. But I don't know. Is it?
FRIEDMAN: I will see you one and raise you one. I lived in one of those societies. In Beirut, I lived there during a civil war. And you know what I saw, I saw politician after politician, think they could hack away at the government, promote conspiracy theories. And it would all be there, we'd all hold together until they took over and then they would do maybe the right thing. And you know what happened? After you do that for three decades, they actually hacked it apart, it fell apart. That's where Beirut is today. And once it's broken, it's gone.
That can happen here. There's nothing granted about this government. It's just people and norms. And when those people start abandoning those norms that support those laws and those institutions, it can go. You can't just tell those lies over and over again to you get in power, and then think the system is going to work for you.
You know, these Republicans, you have people like Ted Cruz, you have people like, you know, Josh Hawley, these are people who are ready to burn down the country, as long as they could be president of the ashes. That's what they're doing. As long as they can be president of the rubble, they're fine.
Cooper mysteriously concluded: "And you know what, I mean, those people, when society starts turning on itself, it turns on them as well. Like they think that they're, you know, they went to Harvard or wherever they went. I mean, the wheel spins pretty quickly when things start to spin out of control."
Does this sound like a moderate who can be moderator of CNN's "town hall" with Biden?
