Ted Lieu Is Beating Trump At His Own Game

From Cosmopolitan

Ted Lieu didn’t set out to become President Trump’s biggest Twitter troll.

But by the time the former reality television star got to the White House, in January, the congressman, who represents California’s 33rd congressional district, had made up his mind. He was going to be bracingly honest about the new administration - on Trump's favorite medium.

“Was charged $2.99 for coffee listed at $2.59,” Lieu tweeted a few days after the inauguration. “That's why I have trust issues. Oh, and the fact that @seanspicer at #WhiteHouse makes shit up.”

In March, during the healthcare debate, he @’ed Trump: “You truly are an evil man. Your job is to help Americans. Not intentionally try to destroy their lives.”

Lieu's Twitter feed balances on the precipice of dark, DGAF humor and full-blown outrage. And his knack for fighting fire with fire - or, in this case, tweets with tweets - has catapulted him to the pinnacle of the resistance.

Cosmopolitan.com caught up with the congressman off of Twitter to talk about how he got here, and where he draws the line in his taunts (ahem, Kathy Griffin).

In the last few months you've become one of President Trump's biggest trolls on Twitter. How did you take on that role?

It's not something I decided to do. Shortly after the elections, I sent out a public statement saying that one of the things that makes America great is our peaceful transfer of power. Donald Trump won the electoral college. We should give him a chance to govern. By the beginning of January, I concluded I was wrong. That Trump was so different - in a bad way - that I thought the best thing I could do was to resist him. And that's because he was attacking the institutions of our democracy, from the First Amendment and the free press to the judiciary. He was stifling internal dissent and then he was making false and misleading statements routinely. And to me, that's what takes us down the road to authoritarianism and that's why I decided to start resisting him.

How did it become a Twitter resistance? Did you study Trump's Twitter style to cultivate your own approach?

No. One, I decided, I'm just going to call it as I see it. And so I tell the truth, and I don't try to sugarcoat things. But I also decided that if you don't use humor or satire, then it's just too dark all the time. And one of my favorite literary works is A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. As you know, that was an enormously famous satire piece that was able to point out, you know, things to people in a different way. And I do believe that satire and humor can reveal truth in a way that sometimes doesn't get revealed through other means. And so I decided to, every now and then, use satire and humor as well.

How do you keep your sense of humor in these sometimes really grave situations?

Oftentimes [when] I wake up, I'll read something and I'll feel angry. And then I'll calm down a little bit. I'll think about it. And then I'll tweet something that talks about the issue, and if I can inject some satire and humor, I'll try to do that.

That definitely is a different style than the president's. You calm down before you tweet.

Yes. I - yes. I have learned to - that that's a good idea. I think it's a good idea [for] the president to do that, too.

The idea of slacktivism has been brought up a lot in the Trump era. This idea that, “Oh, I'm going to be passionate about a cause on the Internet, but not actually do anything in real life.” Do you worry that people will see your Twitter feed and think, “OK, well, I can just send out some tweets, or retweet Ted Lieu, and that's all I have to do to resist Trump's agenda”?

I don't worry about that, because all they have to do is just one slightly more time-consuming thing that's gonna happen on just one day. And that's next November. So if all those folks would just also vote, then we'll take back the House. And I can guarantee you that folks who participated in these marches and rallies are absolutely going to vote in a year and a half.

Other than a year and a half down the line, what do you hope people do when they see your tweets, or other things you've said about Trump, and get fired up? What would you point them to do now?

It is important to show up. Showing up at marches and rallies and town halls and protests. I remember I was really quite sad from Election Night last year until January 20. And then I remember waking up January 21 and seeing these amazing Women's Marches across America, and I thought to myself, That's the country that I know. And that's a larger populist movement that I'm seeing than Donald Trump's relatively small populist movement. And that gave me a lot of hope and energy, and from that day forward, I've taken a view that we'll flip the House next year. So one thing to do is to continue showing up, because it does send a strong signal, not just to your neighbors and people around you, but also to elected officials, because we’re all watching the same thing.

You’ve said Trump is a danger to our republic. What do you think is the most dangerous thing about him?

So I have no problem with disagreeing with people on policy issues, such as health care or trade or taxes. But to me, the problem with the president is that he takes very authoritarian actions in terms of attacking democratic institutions and then just uttering a large number of false and misleading statements that then make it hard sometimes for the people to know what is true and what is false. And to me, that is the greatest danger, that people start questioning basic facts and start not understanding the importance of democratic institutions such as the free press. I mean, to call the press the enemy is dangerous and just remarkably bizarre. The press is the only profession protected in the Constitution because of how important the framers viewed the press. But in authoritarian regimes, they control the press. And to me, going down an authoritarian path is the greatest danger that we face as a republic.

You recently called for Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, to be prosecuted because he didn’t disclose his contacts with Russians on a security clearance form. Do you honestly think Trump’s son-in-law could go to jail?

So that's a great question. If it was anyone else not related to the president, that person would be in serious trouble if they did the same thing Jared Kushner did. The White House does not deny that Jared Kushner omitted a series of Russian meetings from his security clearance form, also known as SF86. I filled out those forms as well. I just looked at the last one I did. A full one-third of the questions related to foreign contacts. It is very clear when you go through that form that foreign contacts are a big deal. It's one of the prime purposes of this form, to figure out what your foreign contacts were, when those occurred, so that investigators can then investigate, and see if you get the security clearance. And the form goes back many years. In this case, Jared Kushner omitted his Russian meetings that occurred within a few weeks of his filling out the form. There's no way he forgot about those meetings. And now we know those meetings were incredibly significant. One dealt with a secret back channel to Russia. The other was with the head of a Russian bank under U.S. sanctions. So we now know that when he omitted those meetings, it was deliberate. There's no other believable explanation, other than that he falsified his first security clearance form.

Do you think there’s something more sinister here, that he’s covering up?

I do. Because it’s not just him. Attorney General Sessions also omitted meetings on his security clearance form. If there was nothing there, why did so many Trump officials lie about their contacts and meetings with the Russians? So it's possible that we have 397 coincidences. Or there's something bad going on.

Kathy Griffin kicked up controversy yesterday when she pretended to behead Trump, and posed with a fake Trump head covered in blood. You’ve tweeted lots of photos of the two of you together at your town halls and in cable news green rooms. What do you make of this stunt?

What she did was wrong and inappropriate. She has apologized. And I'm pleased that she apologized for what she did.

Do you think an apology makes something like that go away?

No. I mean, she shouldn't have done it in the first place.

Trump is reportedly giving out his cell phone to world leaders, and telling them, just call me on my cell phone. What do you think Trump’s ringtone is?

[laughs] I'll bet you it's from one of the speeches, where he says "make America great again." He just loops that over and over again.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Follow Rebecca on Twitter.

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