Liz Cheney adds kick to Tuesday’s Afternoon of Conversation at Ideas Fest
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming GOP congresswoman, inspired an Aspen Ideas’ audience this week in the vein of cinematic emotional high that audiences used to find in pre-pandemic movie theaters showing feelgood blockbusters.
She implored Americans to be steadfast in their fight to protect democracy and remember, “The single most important issue is that Donald Trump never be near the Oval Office again.” Exactly the sort of rhetoric that stirred Americans across the country and got her voted out of office in her home state, still firmly Trump country.
By the time she wrapped up, the packed Benedict Music Tent made up of a largely liberal audience, as comes to Ideas Fests, gave her a standing ovation, cheering, applauding wildly. As she walked off stage, a music student came onstage and began playing a drum.
Then three female music students, playing “Yankee Doodle” on their flutes, descended the amphitheater stairs through the crowd, marching toward the stage.
The crowd seemed to applaud even louder.
And that was just the first in a series of the Afternoon of Conversation that also featured Cesar Conde, Katie Couric, Brian Cox, Briane Greene, Lester Holt, Walter Isaacson, Almar Latour, Lyle Lovett, and Jon Meacham.
NBC journalist Lester Holt asked Cheney tough questions about the likelihood ex-President Trump would be the Republican 2024 presidential candidate, given his current poll numbers and fundraising power. She said, “Republicans know how dangerous he is, yet have refused to say so are complicit.”
Holt asked if she would run for president as a third party candidate. She replied, “I’m not going to do anything that helps Donald Trump.”
She urged Democrats to “take him seriously,” worried that they were complacent about him winning the GOP nomination and defeating him in the general election. Democrats who daydream that way are “playing with fire,” she said.
Next up, Walter Isaacson interviewed author Jon Meacham and singer songwriter Lyle Lovett about the power of music with a message, including classic spirituals like “We Shall Overcome.”
Meacham co-wrote “Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation” with country superstar Tim McGraw. Meacham joked that he was hoping to write the book with McGraw’s equally popular country star wife, Faith Hill.
“Tim thinks Thoreau is an LSU quarterback,” Meacham said.
He pointed out that it may be easier for a song rather than a speech to win opponents over because people will listen to and be caught up by a song’s melody, infectious beat and engaging lyrics. But a speech usually lacks those charms.
Lovett said, “I’ve never been concerned about writing music about what’s going on in the world. I’m more concerned about making it to the end of the day.”
Meacham replied, “So is the rest of the world.”
Lovett delighted the audience with two songs. Then the men began talking about the lasting power of songs. Meacham said he once asked civil rights hero John L. Lewis about what he dreamed about that era expecting to hear about nightmares Lewis had.
But he said when his dreams at night were filled with sounds of feet hitting pavement and singing, the sounds of men, women, and children marching together into certain danger but united by a purpose expressed in song.
The mood was somber when Couric took the stage to interview Wall Street Journal Publisher Almar Latour about Russia’s imprisonment of his reporter, Evan Gershkovich. Russia has accused him of espionage, offering no evidence. He is being held before trial in a Moscow prison designed for political prisoners. He just lost an appeal of Russia’s decision to imprison him before trial.
Latour said the paper has hired a team of Russian attorneys to represent the reporter. But he told the audience that public opinion expressed in support of Gershkovich wields some punch, even if it’s putting on a lapel pin pleading with Russia to “Free Evan.”
Columbia University physicist Brian Greene charms audiences every year by bringing his son and daughter onstage to help him illustrate scientific theories. He quipped that this may be the last year he can coax them onstage.
Finally, Couric interviewed “Succession” star Brian Cox, asking if strangers approached him to ask that he utter his character’s signature line: “F*ck off.”
Cox replied, “All the f*cking time.”
He said at a Hollywood MeToo meeting, the women attendees took out their phones and asked him to say f*ck off while they filmed the moment.
He admitted that his castmate, Jeremy Strong, drove him nuts because he was so committed to method acting and staying in character off camera. His advice to Strong was to celebrate acting out a good scene by going to his trailer for “a hit of marijuana.”
His favorite actor is Spencer Tracy, and he loves watching him on TCM, the classic films channel in danger of being shut down by Warner Brothers.
Cox marveled that at the age of 77, he was playing the role of a lifetime in a huge hit TV series.
And he’s looking forward to a chance to play Bach in an upcoming film.
To reach Lynda Edwards, email her at ledwards@aspentimes.com.
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