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  • -Dan, have you ever seen

  • anything like this in your career?

  • -No, Jimmy, I have not.

  • You know, I've been blessed to live this long.

  • I'm 89 years old, and I've seen a few things

  • over the years, including the Great Depression,

  • World War II, Watergate, 9/11 -- so many things.

  • I've never seen anything like this.

  • You know, my reaction, I think,

  • was the most common reaction of the day.

  • I cannot believe that I'm seeing this.

  • I can't believe I'm watching this.

  • As I believe you mentioned somewhere along the way,

  • it was like watching a very bad horror movie --

  • horror movie for our country. -Yeah.

  • -And, no, I've never seen anything like this before.

  • And neither has any other American, thank God.

  • And let us hope we never see it again.

  • -The last I heard is that the Senate wanted to go back in

  • as soon as they can and continue and get the count.

  • What happens now with the vote? -Well, what happens now,

  • I would say, Jimmy, having talked as we have seriously

  • about what happened today with the mob violence

  • and the mob storming into the Capitol,

  • history is going to record --

  • Today's big headlines are, sometime late tonight

  • or sometime tomorrow, the Biden election

  • is going to be certified by the Congress.

  • The Congress is gonna have their vote,

  • certifying the Electoral College vote,

  • and Joe Biden will be officially, formally,

  • the new president-elect of the United States,

  • and Kamala Harris will be the new vice president-elect.

  • That's going to be -- You know, that's set.

  • And history will record that as the big headline.

  • The second headline is that the Democrats are gonna control

  • the Senate, if these results in Georgia hold,

  • and this is the way it looks.

  • There are gonna be two new Democratic Senators in Georgia.

  • And, you know, this --

  • this is a whole new day for the country.

  • In 13 days, we have a new president,

  • new vice president, and if the Georgia results hold,

  • which I expect they will, this Senate will be controlled

  • by the Democrats,

  • since Kamala Harris has the swing vote.

  • It's going to be a new day for the country.

  • And those who took part in storming the Capitol today,

  • history will footnote them, but it will footnote them in shame.

  • The real people, the real heroes of this democracy today

  • are, one, my old friend, the late John Lewis,

  • Ms. Abrams, Stacey Abrams in Georgia,

  • and all those people who, in the runoff election,

  • in both parties, did what they're supposed to do.

  • They knocked on doors to take part in a Democratic process.

  • And once the count, the final count's in, they accept it.

  • These are the heroes of this day.

  • These people who've shamed themselves

  • and shamed our country by storming our Capitol

  • and going inside and taking part in violence inside the Capitol

  • are the ones that should be shamed today, and that's --

  • that really should be the news of the day.

  • Unfortunately, we're gonna be distracted for some time

  • by this nastiness that happened at the Capitol.

  • -Do you think Trump really believes that he --

  • the election was rigged, or does he have a different agenda?

  • -I do not. I will say,

  • "How could I know what's in Donald Trump's heart?"

  • I don't. And the straight answer

  • to your question, I think he knows exactly what he's doing.

  • I think he knows he lost.

  • He's the quintessential poor loser.

  • I think he, all along, took the attitude,

  • "If I don't win the vote, then I'm gonna try to make sure

  • that nobody accepts the honest vote."

  • I think he's known what he's doing all along.

  • I think he knows what he's doing now,

  • and I think he's feeling very good about himself,

  • because today, he got the whole headlines,

  • the whole attention, all came to him and his movement

  • away from the fact that Biden had won the election

  • and that two new Democratic Senators

  • had been elected in Georgia, apparently,

  • and the Democrats will control the Senate.

  • So I think he's feeling pretty good about himself

  • at this moment.

  • -What's next for President-elect Biden?

  • He has to unite the country.

  • How does he do that?

  • How do we move forward as a country?

  • What's at stake here?

  • -Well, what's at stake is the very future

  • of the United States of America.

  • You know, we have had the world's most successful

  • democratic government, the most successful democratic government

  • in the history of the world,

  • that ours is a constitutional republic

  • based on the principles of freedom and democracy.

  • The question has always been,

  • "Can we hold ourselves together?"

  • And that is the major challenge of the Biden administration,

  • and it's no small challenge, because well over 75 million,

  • 76 million Americans voted for Donald Trump.

  • And trying to re-establish some normal amount of unity

  • in a country, in a situation we're in now,

  • is a tremendous challenge for President Biden.

  • I do think he has to make the decision pretty early

  • whether he is to be a transitional president

  • or a transformational president.

  • That is, is he just gonna be sort of a president

  • who re-established some norms

  • but just was waiting for the next president

  • to be really transformative, or is he gonna try to be

  • a transformational president?

  • A lot of that depends on what happens

  • with those within the Republican Party.

  • How many of those in the Republican Party

  • hold on to the Trump fantasy and try to keep Trumpism in control,

  • or do they take their party in a different direction?

  • But the challenge for Biden right away is to decide

  • and to act upon whether he's transitional

  • or whether he's just a transformational president.

  • -Dan, I thank you for all the years of your work

  • in journalism, and I also want to thank you for your tweets,

  • because they are calming

  • in a lot of this craziness that's surrounding us.

  • And I thank you again for being on our program tonight.

  • -I really appreciate that, Jimmy.

  • I would like to leave it on an up note,

  • and I think we should.

  • You know, we all sang or used to sing "God Bless America."

  • "God bless America, stand beside her and guide her

  • through the night with the light from above and from within."

  • We might not sing it tonight, but we might want to hum it

  • and just play the words over in our head,

  • because if we hold steady, we're gonna be okay.

  • -My thanks to Dan Rather. You can see season eight

  • of his show, "The Big Interview,"

  • Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m., on Access TV.

-Dan, have you ever seen

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