since the day i was elected, it's been a witch hunt. but if i am guilty of anything, it is for loving too much slash fraud. fine. so, i am no longer congressman santos. i am just regular old professor major general reverend astronaut santos [laughter] protector of the realm, princess of jim ovia. [laughter] >> the last thing before we go tonight, say it to me, santos. if you are still looking for that perfect christmas gift for that special somebody, look no further. for just 200 bucks, you can get a personalized video message from your favorite disgraced congressman george santos. that is right. the princess of jim ovia herself is now on cameo. senator john fetterman of

pennsylvania already took advantage of this once in a lifetime deal to troll his embattled colleague senator bob menendez. in a cameo, he encourages menendez to stand his ground and not get bogged down by all the haters out there. and here's a look at some of the other messages that santos has reported so far. >> hey, your beautiful masters. >> they can booed me out of congress but they can't take away my good humor. >> screw the haters. the haters are gonna hate. >> don't let them force you out. don't let them bully you. >> botox keeps you young. fillers keeps you plump. >> you are fabulous, and you are going to slay 2024. in other -- santos news, hbo producer is making a movie about him, and, bowen yang, this could be your big moment. on that note, i wish you a very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late. i will see you at the end of tomorrow.

♪ ♪ ♪ i will see you at the end of so, here's the thing about tonight's show. i disagree with liz cheney about everything. my whole adult life on everything in politics, i would not just say that liz cheney and i were on the front proverbial teams, i would say we are from different proverbial planets and they are planets at war with each other. and she is a politician. i'm not a politician, i'm just a person. but i am definitely a liberal. and she is definitely a hard-core conservative. and i disagree with liz cheney on, really, on everything you can think of, on the environment, abortion rights, profoundly. i think she is not just wrong on abortion, she is capitol w wrong on abortion in a terrible way. i disagree with her vehemently on voting rights and on the iraq war and the afghanistan

war, and our relationship or lack thereof with iran, and our approach to terrorism, and torture, and guns, like also mining, and intellectual property, and the rules of the house of representatives. actually, i was even got mad liz cheney about fishing. and it's one thing you'll think we have in common. even on fishing i got at her. we are opposites. and it is not like a casual thing either. here, for example, is just one indication of the scale of this as an obsession for me. my differences with liz cheney. before the plan to meet her here this evening, liz cheney and i have met exactly one previous time, which she will not remember. it was in 2010, so it was 13 years ago. and even three years after that

one brief 2010 meeting, i was still on the show in 2013 playing clips of that meeting because i was still fixated on it. i still wanted to interview her about all of the money and profound ways in which we disagree. >> i have not been back to cpac since then because that year, i think i was a little cards. i was scarred with disappointment by a very, very disappointing encounter that i had at cpac with liz cheney. >> hi, i'm rachel maddow. >> i think that was it -- i don't know what she said. she smiled at me. >> what i said was, i would love to interview you sometime if you other want to do it. >> she said, oh, hi rachel. i asked to call but she never called. i would still love to interview you. i know you will never call. but still -- >> i would love to interview you sometime.

that interaction was 13 years ago. i was still talking about it, still begging for an interview with her three years after that, like, to second interaction. of course, she was never gonna say yes because why on earth would there be any advantage, right, in talking to someone who disagrees with absolutely everything you stood for in public life and politics. why would you want to do anything like that? and, again, in some ways this is funny and dumb. but it is also, i have to tell you, and i am being truly honest, it has been a serious thing to me. it has been part of how i understand myself in my political time as an american, that i am someone fundamentally opposed to the politics of liz cheney and her father dick cheney who was white house chief of staff and defense secretary before he was vice president. and what i still believe was the fundamentally disastrous george w. bush administration in which liz cheney also

served. i literally started writing books in the first place more than a decade ago because i had so much to get off my chest about what i thought was wrong with the cheney approach to war and foreign policy. the first book i ever wrote was inspired by dick cheney's minority report in the iran counter scandal during the reagan administration. that first book i ever read is literally dedicated to him. the former vice president dick cheney, oh, please, let me interview you. and that feeling extended to his daughter who was his political descendant both literally and proverbially in every way. and you want more one more level of it? . there is one more level of it. as dedicated as liz cheney's to her father dick cheney, they are profoundly close as father and daughter. she was profoundly loyal to him. there wasn't a room for a piece of paper to slight between them on policy. as close as they are, as much as she reviewers her dad, i

feel the same way about my dad. i wear one piece of jewelry, i wore my dad's high school ring. my dad's brilliant, and kind, and as far as i can tell, he is right about absolutely everything. he's an air force veteran. he's a very careful lawyer. and my whole life my dad was kind of the soul of moderation when it came to politics until liz that. the dick cheney vice president had the effect of an almost religious conversion on my own dad, moving his politics to what seemed about 50 points west of where they had ever been before. so, vehemently did he object, as did i, to the cheney brand republicanism during the george w. bush era. so, it's we are. like, the cheney family is the biggest touchstone that i have in american politics in my lifetime. it is a funny thing, but it's

also personal and real. and it is a thing that matters to me. and i say this tonight, not for, just for the g with factor of me having liz cheney here tonight, me having somebody tonight whom you never expect. i say this not just for the man bites dog weirdness of this. i say it because i think in civic terms, and in sort of american citizenship terms, i think it's really important how much we disagree. it is important how far we are on every policy issue imaginable. it is important that liz cheney is infinity, and i am negative infinity on the ideological number line. it's important because that tells you how serious and big something has to be to put us, to put me and liz cheney together on the same side of something in american life. i mean, i am sure, like, noah had a hard time convincing the mines that they should get on the same boat with the snakes, or the gazelles should hop on

board the arc with the lions. but needs must, normal combat, normal willingness to jump on each other, or run, or defend from each other yields to the imperative of the world destroying flood. where all land animals face the same fate, and all rules have to be put on hold because now we are either going down or all on the same boat. on the january 6th investigation in congress, you remember that the chairman was the gentleman on the left here, mississippi democrat bennie thompson. join the investigation, he told liz cheney, vice chair of that investigation, that he looked forward when it was all done to going back to our corners and resuming our earlier fights for now, for tonight, because where we are as a country, liz cheney is here to talk about something bigger than the

fights i had imagined having with her my whole life. and she sacrificed a lot to have earned the right to have that conversation. she had the number three job in republican leadership in washington and republicans voted her out of it. she was booted out from her seat in congress. major republican fund raising committees raised money of attacking her, again, who was the number three republican in washington. she voted to impeach former president trump for trying to overthrow the government by force and stay in power after he lost election with congressman benny thompson. she let the blockbuster congressional investigation into trump's plot against the country showing us all who did it and how. as a conservative, as a republican, one dynamic that i think makes it particularly valuable for people like me, democrats and liberals at least to hear from her, to know what she knows is that her life experience is so different.

and her colleagues are so different. her emilio is so different. her sidelines are different than mine. and i guess maybe for mules yours. she doesn't hear from liberal constituents sharing her on for taking on the would-be dictator in washington. she hears from congressional constituents in wyoming which gave the single largest margin of victory to donald trump of any state in the country in 2020. e in the ci mean, even as a lote country was repeatedly struck by the insanity of what's been happening in republican politics where she lives and among the people she serves and who elected her, it is all believed and earnestly so, and saying that helps us understand how dangerous it is. it makes it more explicable. i mean, here's an example of what i'm. this is from her book. this is about the infamous rudy giuliani hair dye press conference in the aftermath of the 2020 election. she says, quote, transfixed by

the hair dye dripping down his face, it was challenging to focus on what rudy giuliani was saying. but as he introduced sydney powell, he made this attention grabbing announcement. he said i don't think most americans know that our ballots get calculated, any of them, outside the united states. and it's being done by a company that specializes in voter fraud. according to giuliani, america had used, quote, largely a venezuelan voting machine in essence to count our vote. if we let this happen, we are going to become venezuela. what is he talking about, i thought. it's sydney powell going to provide evidence for this claim? powell stuck up to the microphone and explained to the american election system that's been hacked by dominion voting machines and smartmatic technology software, which she said was software created in venezuela at the direction of hugo chavez. she described a, quote, algorithm that she said switched votes from trump to biden and that had, quote, trashed trump votes. according to sydney powell, we learned about this only because trump got so many votes in 2020,

that the whole system broke. but we needed to be aware. she warns that the same sinister scope resided in voting machines across the country. her voice breaking with emotion, sydney powell said this was all stunning, heartbreaking, infuriating in the most unpatriotic act i can even imagine for people in this country to have participated in. she claimed that president biden, trump won by a landslide. we are going to prove it and we are going to reclaim the u.s. for the people who vote for freedom. cheney says the whole performance was too bizarre forwards. my daughter who had been following this closely and was disgusted by what trump's lawyers were doing texted me that night. she said, mom, i think it's safe to say that rudy giuliani's hair dye dripping down his face today was an act of god. but the damage had already been done. millions of americans including tens of thousands of my own constituents believe these lies. and they believed in the people telling them. one constituent called the

performance clear eyed and determined. this person said sydney powell struck her as forthright. she said that the trump lawyer had been, quote, shaking with righteous anger, quote, very persuasive. then she added, of course, the talking heads will dismiss them, have them. cheney says we were in danger statuary. the president and his legal team or making outlandish and false claims that struck at the heart of our electoral process. millions of americans believed them and the trump campaign continue to send emails and run ads, spreading the same falsehoods all over the country. donald trump was doing it nearly every time he spoke publicly. i knew how perilous this was. i knew it had to stop. the next day, november 20th, i issued a statement calling on president trump to put up or shut up. elsewhere in the book, here is cheney talking about the kind of thing she was hearing from her constituents back in wyoming and where they were getting their information. she said, quote, i also found that many of those in wyoming

who were the most upset or angry were not aware of the violence on january six. they believe the day to have been almost entirely peaceful one. they read the epic times, a quote, news website that presents extremely slanted reporting in the guise of a straightforward media outlet. they belie what they saw their social media feeds. they watched almost exclusively fox news or newsmax or oan. as a result, they were completely unaware of what had actually happened. more than if you believed that i should be pressing for joe biden's removed from office and donald trump's reinstallation as president. it's a valuable perspective, right? those are valuable sightlines, for any of us who have been struggling to understand the kind of grip this anti-democratic authoritarian movement has on our fellow americans. is liz cheney seeing it because, i mean, in my own life, it's because she's so different than me. i mean, she got just as many votes from those folks in wyoming in 2020 as donald trump did. and so, she knows them. and they thought they knew her.

it's also valuable to have a conservative republican member of congress writing about something we can't see from the outside, what's going on among conservative republicans behind closed doors while they are giving into this anti-democratic plot? we learned, for example, on page 124 of liz cheney's your book that a senior republican staffer on the rules committee wrote in the republican staff memo on impeachment less than one week after the january 6th attack on congress, this is the republican staff note. the person wrote, trump had committed impeachable offenses, calling what trump did, quote, a serious act, political in nature, that co-opted or subverted that political process and threaten the order of political society. that is the republican staff memo on impeachment after january 6th. previously unreported. we learned on page 74 that the day before january six, kevin mccarthy's general counsel, the top lawyer for the top republican in the house, told

congressman mike johnson that the effort he was organizing to get house republicans to sign on to trump's efforts to overthrow the election was an effort that was wildly unconstitutional in its basis. quote, later that night, i heard from kevin mccarthy's chief counsel, makayla carr. she told me she had made clear to mike johnson that his letter was wrong. she said that he knew it was. she said that he pushed back very strongly, excuse me. she said she pushed back very strongly when they discussed at that afternoon. and then cheney quotes from an email, he knows he is wrong on the fundamental constitutional principles. and his argument that he has some sort of power to individually determine, absent of process of any sort, that a state department their constitutional obligation. and then the remedy should be that, without any process whatsoever, the federal congress gets to overturn the will of the people. that's astonishing. astonishing, that is the top lawyer serving the top republican in the house,

telling him that what he is doing is unconstitutional as he is doing it. mike johnson, of course, is now no longer just an anonymous backbench of congress. he's now the leader, republican speaker of the house. page 32 of her book, liz cheney describes communications with senior republican staffers on capitol hill about the court filing that mike johnson in fact lead as part of trump's election challenge, concluding that he might personally have ethical issues as a lawyer, as in with his professional equity tayshawn for having made factual assertions to the court, and that briefing about he did not have factual information about. id not have factual information about. as you know, lots of trump lawyers have faced professional punishment for lies they told on trump's behalf. after the election, liz cheney in her new book effectively asserts that the house speaker mike johnson might be one of those lawyers. on page 228, she says

congressman jim jordan who was very nearly speaker himself, she says he may need the assistance of a criminal lawyer for sorting out the conflicting claims he made during congressional testimony about his communications with former president trump while the january 6th attack was underway. on page 17 of rubble, jim jordan gets this from liz cheney. quote, jordan made a memorable pitch to me to join the group. it went something like this, would you consider joining the freedom caucus? we don't have any woman and we need one. cheney says, as tempting as this offer was, i took a pass. on page 153, here is liz cheney's goodbye to congresswoman elise stefanik. quote, other members said they were upset that my impeachment vote had caused them trouble at home. they thought i should have provided them cover for their vote against impeachment. i had heard this complaint from an angry elise stefanik of new york. she told me that because of my vote to impeach, people or writing letters to the local newspapers, criticizing her,

and asking why she hadn't taken the same principled stand that i have. cheney says, quote, that seemed less my problem than hers. many of us who had known elise stefanik since before she abandoned all principal who are curious about how she had lost her sense of right and wrong. cheney says a number of the man who spoke in favor of removing me from leadership said they did not like my tone. i wasn't contrite enough nor out learned my lesson. ralph norman kept repeating that his problem when it was my attitude. we just got such a defiant attitude. a couple of my male colleagues were so enraged by my unwillingness to apologize, that they got themselves really worked out, it seemed, on the verge of tears as they lectured me. i tried to follow what the most emotional members were saying but it was not always easy. mike kelley of pennsylvania, for example, seemed angry because i had released a statement before i voted. and in an effort to describe how upset he was, mike kelly said, it's like you are playing

the biggest game of your life. and you look out and see your girlfriend sitting on the opponents signed. cheney says, these were grown men. this was 2021. i was standing at the podium in the front of the auditory, thinking you have got to be kidding me. other female members started yelling, she's not your girlfriend. yes i said, i'm not world friends girlfriend. she really isn't, truly. so upset about her tone about not taking the feelings into account. but she doesn't take their feelings into account. she is relentless about what she sees as going on and who is failing and how in realtime and why it's important. she is blistering, blistering throughout this book, particularly about people like speaker mike johnson, and about people like senator josh hawley, who she says deserved all the radical that he got during the january 6th hearings for running away after briefly

showing his fist for the mobs that we're about to attack the capitol. she is blistering about ted cruz who committed one of the worst cases of abandonment of duty for personal ambition i've ever seen in washington, when he proposed a multi day delay on certifying the election results, a strategy that liz cheney says was coordinated with the trump white house. liz cheney in her new book takes the bark of former speaker kevin mccarthy again and again and again. kevin mccarthy and mitch mcconnell are two men who cheney describes, each has the opportunity personally as individuals to stop donald trump's threat to the country. neither of them did so. both failed. mccarthy, she is just unsparing about. she reminds us that mccarthy rescued trump before january six, the day the tape came out of trump's call to georgia officials. this is from page 65 of the book. when i saw reports about the

call, i assume the audio of trump pressuring state officials to violate the law and overturn the election would mean the end of most of the objections to the electoral count in the house. i could not imagine numbers would continue to do trump's bidding. a short time later, after what we all assumed with significant pressure from trump, kevin announced that he would be voting to object. i was certain that kevin did not believe the objections or constitutional nor that they could be justified by any genuine fraud in the election. his chief counsel clearly did not think so. but this had never really been about principle for kevin cawthorn. that's when mccarthy says saves trump first-time, and then a second time after the violent attack on the government to try and keep trump in power. and then mccarthy went to florida and visited trump, and photographed smiling with him. cheney says on page 147, i want to see kevin when he got back to d.c.. mar-a-lago, what the hell, kevin? he tried to downplay the whole thing. he said he'd been in florida anyway when trump staff called him.

they're really worried he said, trump is not eating. they asked me to come and see him. what? you went to mar-a-lago because trump is not eating! yes, he's really depressed. i was still trying to process this unexpected rationale, when given added, he keeps trying to talk to me about january six. and i tell him we can't. we are under oath. kevin said, we are under oath in the present tense as though he'd already been sworn in as a witness. as soon as one of kevin's lawyers warned him not to talk to trump about january six because they thought trump might be in serious legal jeopardy, apparently, kevin was trying to say back to me what he had been told by his lawyers. the truth was pretty simple, kevin mccarthy went to mar-a-lago and got his ability to raise money had dried up after january 6th, when it nearly every major corporate donor announced it would stop making campaign contributions to republicans who voted to object to the electoral college votes. kevin strengthen and our conference was derived from his fundraising ability. he was not a policy expert nor

era natural leader. and now, his strength was gone. kevin needed money. trump had a list of small dollar donors but given would have to go back to trump for them. and in order to use those lists, given would have to help donald trump cover up the stain of his assault on our democracy. it was a price given mccarthy was willing to pay every time kevin mccarthy's faced a decision of consequence. he has done the wrong thing. i told you, take the barks off him, and that's like a tenth of it. with mitch mcconnell, republican senate leader, she is more kind in her tone, if i may say. but she also pretty much puts him on the escalator in terms of where he's gonna be ending a pink for his actions for eternity. she says, quote, she never stopped wondering why mcconnell had opposed the creation of a 9/11 style bipartisan commission to investigate what had happened on january 6th. she said senator mcconnell was wrong to vote against convicting trump and his impeachment, especially because that one decision by that one

man and that one moment might have ended all of the peril for our nation. page 162, leader mcconnell who had made a career out of savvy political calculation and behind the scenes maneuvering got this one wrong. i had known model for more than 20 years. and i had respected him. a few good match mcconnell's mastery of the tactics of political leadership. but i thought he had made a number of serious mistakes in this case, including not agreeing to call the senate back into session for the impeachment trial, and not voting to convict. mcconnell had been telling me that he expected trump to fade away. i knew that would not happen. liz cheney's republican royalty to, the extent we have that in this country. she is now the sharpest thorn in the side of the republican party. and she is naming names, quoting emails, producing phone records, and explaining the stakes. she is taking zero reserves in

an effort that she says is aimed at nothing short of saving the country, making sure that this next election is not our list. she says if trump is reelected in 2024, it's likely that he will not leave powell our. in her new book, oath and honor: and the more and a warning, liz cheney says at the end, on page 365, gift trump is reelected to the white house, he will, in her words, dismantle the republic. and what that means is that everybody who wants us to remain a republic as to put every other thing aside and work together urgently right now to stop that from happening, which means specifically to keep him from regaining power. how does she propose we do that? she's devoting her political life to this cause. her book is out tomorrow, or tonight at midnight. the times describes it as a five alarm warning. i second that. i never thought i'd say this.

but liz cheney is right in issuing that warning, i believe it, a miracle of all miracles. she is here, joining me live, next. live next he doesn't even have a mustache. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ i got this $1,000 camera for only $41 on dealdash. dealdash.com, online auctions since 2009. this playstation 5 sold for only 50 cents. this ipad pro sold for less than $34. and this nintendo switch,

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and honor, more and a warning. its author's former wyoming congresswoman liz cheney. liz cheney, wow. thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> nice to meet you. >> really nice to meet you. >> is this weird to you as it is to me? >> it's certainly weird. your info brought back a lot of memories. but i think that it is a real symbol of how grave this danger is. but i also was thinking as i was watching it, the power of the fact that somebody, when you are on the political spectrum, and somebody who is where i am on the political spectrum are able to say this is a five alarm fire. and we have to put that aside and be able to say what are we gonna do to come together and save the public. >> yes, the fights that we

righteously and in good faith and vehemently could have with each other. because part of what we are defending is -- >> i want to come back to that -- >> definitely. we could do like a day on abortion, a day on mining, and they on fishing -- >> national security. >> definitely, are they on national security. let me ask you about a moment in your book that happens on january 4th. it's described in chapter nine of your book, and you described listening in on a call in which trump lawyers are briefing what we call surrogates. that's people who go on tv and talk about trump. and trump lawyer jenna ellis describes what they are envisioning for january 6th. the way you write it, in the scenario ellis described when pence was presiding, he could either refuse to open or refuse to count the electoral votes. they don't necessarily know you are on this call. you are listening in. it's two days before january six. was that the moment when it really became clear to you in

detail what they were gonna try to do? >> yes. you know, i had heard, obviously there had been talk about we're gonna have these -- i think stephen mueller has been talking about that. but it wasn't clear to me what the contours of this particular part of the plan were until i got to that phone call. and listening to them describe how these fake electors were going to be used. and the fact that they anticipated that vice president pence was gonna use them to refuse to count the legitimate electors, certainly a moment of intense concern. and as i got off that call, i ran into the capitol into the office of the parliamentarian of the house to say, wait a minute, this is what i am hearing is going to happen. what do we do about it in the joint session? how do we stop this? and it was very clear that there wasn't a lot of good answers to that because i knew,

i learned later, in the investigation that vice president pence and his counsel were having discussions with the senate parliamentarian. and the vice president, ultimately, you know, did his duty bravely. but if you are in a joint session of congress, you know, you are not in a position where there are a lot of legislative steps that you can take, except to basically move to adjourn. so, it was a very dangerous and chilling moment. >> i feel like a lot of the last seven or eight years has been me trying to figure out crazy versus dangerous. and i finally realized that crazy and dangerous can overlap. they can be the same thing. in that moment when it started to become clear what might happen, did it strike you as an insane thing they were going to try, which therefore might create a chaotic situation? or did it strike you that this is something that might actually succeed and effectively topple the government? >> you know, i had been getting these hints, you know, through the months after the election

of sort of glimpse into things that they were attempting to do. and each time, i sort of saw something come up, and i kept thinking, and i think a lot of us kept thinking, look, he's gonna bring these court challenges. of course, once the courts have ruled, he will concede and move on. and each time you thought we were at end, we weren't really at an end, and this was probably the most chilling moment where it was suddenly real that this wasn't just a sort of a pr effort to suggest they hadn't lost the election, but it was a very real plan to stop us from counting legitimate electoral votes. and frankly, that realization, that recognition, it was nauseating because it was so scary. wait a minute, this is what they're gonna try and do. >> you mentioned court orders there and use stress in your public remarks on this topic and throughout the book all of the different courts that ruled on the factual assertions that

were made about the supposed flaws in the election. and dozens and dozens and dozens of court rulings, including from trump appointed judges, all finding that those claims of fraudulent election were nonsense. and my sense from hearing the way you described that and how that is so woven into your sort of expository tactics around this issue is that you are worried about the courts being obey. you say over and over again in the book, you think there is no reason that trump should be expected to follow court orders in the second term, that he will obey the rulings of the supreme court if that judiciary tried to stand in his way. can you game that out and practical terms, but equally for people watching, who are not lawyers, and don't understand why that's the biggest deal in the world. why is that so core to what you are warning about? >> you know, because we live in a system in which we have to be

governed by law. and so, when courts issue rulings, we can disagree with them. you know, you and i probably disagree, for example, on the supreme courts ruling on obamacare. i think the court got it wrong. i have to abide by it. we all have to abide by the rulings of the courts. and if we get into a situation where we have a president who is charged with ensuring that the laws are faithfully executed, who has just this awesome power, and by awesome, i mean larger than, you know, the power that resides in just about any other individual in the world, to determine whether or not this country is gonna continue to be a republican, it's gonna continue to function as a nation of laws. we have a president who is willing to go to war with the rule of law, to ignore the rulings of the courts if he doesn't agree with them. that has the potential to unravel everything.

and i think people just need to think about, you know, if the court issues a compulsory order, if the president decides he's not going to abide by it, he's not going to obey it, it's not compulsory. and this also extends to criminal law, and it extends particularly when you are talking about a president, and you are talking about the pardon power. so, imagine a situation where, you know, the people around him, the lawyers that he's hired in the administration, you may have some who, you know, you can imagine them stepping up and saying, wait, we can't take that action. we can't do that for legal reasons. and the president combining both his determination to ignore the rulings of the courts with offering pardons to people who do his bidding. and it is a really toxic and very dangerous mix. and i think that people need to take seriously the potential that he will do that because in fact we are watching him and listening to him say he will do it. >> and it's a kind of a pane of

glass situation because once it's broken, it's broken. once an executive is not obeying a court order, then the judiciary is effectively neutered for the whole country. >> well, and i think it's important also, to recognize the role that the judiciary is playing now. and in a moment where we have not been able to count on, frankly, many of the republicans in elected office to uphold the constitution, you know, when we were living through a president who was not willing to abide by his oath and in fact was taking actions directly contrary to the law and constitution. the judiciary has almost without exception been absolutely stall work. and it doesn't matter, you can point to justice and justices appointed by democratic presidents and republican presidents. again, almost without exception, they have been just clearer and more dedicated and more, done

exactly what we need them to do, what we expect the judiciary to do at a moment when we are, you know, watching the former president and members of my party claim that the judiciary is somehow weaponized against us. but we need the courts. we need the judicial system. we need the rule of law to function. and that means you have to have a president in particular who takes seriously his obligation to uphold it. >> one of the other major institutions that trump is playing with along those lines as the u.s. armed forces. i want to ask you about that, when we come back. liz cheney is our guest. the book is called, oath and honor: and the more and morning. we'll be right back. stay with us. with us as americans, there's one thing we can all agree on. the promise of our constitution and the hope that liberty and justice is for all people. but here's the truth.

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congresswoman liz cheney is with us. her new book is called "oath and honor: a memoir and a warning", it comes out tomorrow or midnight tonight, for those of you counting at home. liz, you focus very early on in the book on the fact that trump, two days after he lost the election, he fired the defense secretary. why do you think he did that? and why it's important? >> first of all, to have a situation where a president who's lost the election, and so we should be going through a transition. and a transition is a period of time when the united states is particularly potentially vulnerable, and especially the defense department. you have to have a nonpartisan transition. you have to have a situation

where people are very focused on what is the good of the country. and people may recognize we may have lost the election, but those politics should not be part of any kind of decisions that are being made, especially during the transition period. so, to see donald trump fired his defense secretary, and we know now, of course, much more about what was happening at the time. i was very concerned at the time. he was also replacing other senior leaders at the department. we know now for example that he had told johnny mcentee at one point to ensure that the secretary of the army and the chief of staff of the army knew that if they issued anymore statements saying that the u.s. military had no role in our elections that they would be fired. and you know, when you combine that with the steps that we know mike flynn was urging him to take, mike flynn was urging him to take publicly, things like deploying the military in order to re-run elections in swing states.

and i think that's one of the real dangerous people have to focus on when we think about a potential second trump administration. you will take those people who were the most radical, the most dangerous, who had the proposals that were the most dangerous. and you will put them in positions of, you know, supreme power. and that is, that's a risk that we simply can't take. >> obviously, he has been playing with that, with the announcement about signing the insurrection act, invoking the insurrection act on day one. one of the other things that you've talked about, in terms of a second round, and whether or not january six was address rehearsal, or a first effort, and they'll be better at it the second time around. is the prospect that after the 20 4:20 election, maybe republicans will still be in control in the house? maybe mike johnson would still be speaker. given what mike johnson did in and around the 2020 election, what is the risk in terms of him potentially still being speaker of the house, and

controlling the house of representatives in the aftermath of the next election? >> you know, it is terrifying. and i say that with no, no pleasure. it pains me that that is where we are. >> you were friends with him? >> i was. we were elected the same year. our offices were next door to each other. and i believe mike to be a man of principle. what i learned was that he was willing to do things he knew to be wrong in order to placate donald trump. and, again, in a situation where you have a speaker of the house who, as you detailed at the beginning of the show, so clearly set aside what he knew to be the facts, what he knew to be the law, what he knew to be our obligations under the constitution, in order to try to help donald trump and his efforts in 2020. we cannot count on a majority of republicans, on someone like that to do the right thing, to uphold the constitution, if,

for example, we had an election that was thrown into the house, if nobody got to 270 electoral votes. so it's really serious. >> or if they needed to certify the electoral count? >> yes. >> the book is called "oath and honor: a memoir and a warning". we are back with liz cheney right after this. stay with us. with us dayquil honey, the daytime, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, honey-licious, power through your day, medicine. i got this $1,000 camera for only $41 on dealdash. dealdash.com, online auctions since 2009. this playstation 5 sold for only 50 cents. this ipad pro sold for less than $34. and this nintendo switch, sold for less than $20. i got this kitchenaid stand mixer for only $56. i got this bbq smoker for 26 bucks. and shipping is always free. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save.

joining us once again is liz cheney. liz, you were effectively sounding this alarm. you are telling americans to

stand up and try to save the republic. you have cautioned that if trump's return to power, it might be our last election. you are basically telling people to stand up by voting against trump. when i think about people watching at home, you know, like somebody just got off their third shift, a retired teacher, or a college student watching on their phone right now, i don't know if people necessarily feel like that action is enough to respond to the kind of threat that you are alerting us to. what else should people be doing besides casting their vote in a way that you see is right to try and defend the country right now? >> well, i think it's about more -- i think certainly trump is the most significant threat. but i think that we are facing an emergency across the board. i think people need to think about, first of all, running for office themselves. and i say that with great seriousness. you know, if you look at the threats our country is facing,

we need serious people in office. and i don't care if you agree or disagree with me on any range of issues. if you are gonna fight for the constitution, and you are gonna defend the constitution, and you are gonna be a serious and faithful public servant, then please run for office, please vote for people who are gonna do that. and in this last election cycle, for the first time in my life, i endorsed democrats. and these were women that i work with either on the armed services committee or on national security issues, in other ways woman whom we had disagreements. but i knew they care deeply about this country. they were gonna do the right thing. and they were running against election deniers. and we have to make sure, if you look at election denialism across the country, and if you look at the extent to which some of the trump forces are organized from the local level up to the presidency, those of us who believe in the constitution and who are going to defend the democracy have to be organized in the same way. and it means being willing to set aside other issues.

and it means making sure that when you cast your vote, you're not doing it based on partisanship. and it means helping to educate people and talking to people about how gravely, perilous, and significant this moment is. >> i feel like what you described as a cult of personality, was more likely to emerge on the right than on the left because i feel like people on the right have been getting told by the republican party my whole adult life that government is the problem, like ronald reagan said. and we need voting restrictions because democrats cheat. and we need unregulated guns, not just for hunting and self-defense, but because we need to stand up against government journey, and all the stuff that maybe works in the short term, but in the long term builds towards wreck radicalism. and that's why i think they are more inclined to develop that on the right more two on the left. i think you agree with that

strongly. >> i'd say is the way i look at is those of us on the right in this moment had a particularly great responsibility and duty because this threat has emerged from the right. we can talk about why that was. i think that, you know, frankly, there are millions of people around the country who feel like they are not heard. and although trump managed to convince them that he will be their voice, you know, which is of course a complete lie, but they bought it. and he played on that patriotism. but right now, it's partly why i have been so, so disappointed with what i have seen from other members of my party in their unwillingness to step up. i think we have a particular duty to step up. >> and you look ahead to a year from now, heading into the next election cycle. if trump wins, if trump is the nominee of the party and he wins and he's back in power, what is your life like?

and what do you think the nobel patriotic righteous fight to save the country at this point? >> i don't even want to imagine a situation where he has won. i think we have to do everything we can to stop him in terms of, again, the kinds of things we've been talking about, working in a very non partisan fashion. but i also, rachel, think about it from the perspective of my kids. you know, there was a moment right after january 6th where i was having dinner with my husband and our two youngest kids, who happen to be our sons. and i looked at my sons across the dinner table, and i had this realization, you know, i grew up in a country where i did not have to wonder if you are gonna have to one have a peaceful transfer of power in the united states. and all of a sudden, it occurred to me, my god, maybe they won't be able to see the same thing. and that is why it's so fundamentally important that we ensure democrats and independents, republicans that

we work together, we vote together. we make clear that donald trump is not an acceptable alternative. he is not the lesser of two evils. he is a unfit man for office. he's already shown us what he will do and he can never be in the oval office again. >> it sounds like you really don't want to think about what resistance or fighting for your country or trying to hold on to democracy looks like with him in power. i mean, you won't go there. >> well, we're gonna be successful in making sure that he is not elected president again. >> let me ask you one last question, and i mean this, i think coming at it from the understanding that i got from your book and from what i come to understand about your spirit about these things, which is that, you know, after you got voted out of your republican leadership job in washington, it was very clear that you're gonna lose your seat in congress as well. and you did not quit. you decided you were going to make them a vote you out and not make it any easier for them. but