feed called and wokeness. it's random people, maga guys, 42 -- okay, this is not picking. stephen miller was one of the most influential advisers to the former president. the former president himself that is pushing a lot of these conspiracy theories. i do think it's significant. when you think about the times, we could talk about that the republicans, he gave a speech to that move. and he is sitting at that dinner table. it's bannon, it's matt gaetz, this crowd. you know, charlie kirk, stephen miller, it's the folks pushing the conspiracies are the ones we're gonna be closest. 1.0 that had conspiracy minded impeachment. >> unquestionably you'll have to come back and talk more about the young republicans there is a whole story there thank you for your time as always. that does it for me tonight, and the "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. hey, rachel. >> hey, jen, thanks very much. much appreciated, friends.

and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. so it was called "damn love," d-a-m-n love. it was a game you played on your cell phone. now i'll tell you, the premise was little bit dark, but straight forward. you see there is a grumpy looking person in the foreground on the left and a happy couple on the right. the grumpy person in the foreground is supposed to be you in this game. and your goal as a grumpy little troll is that you're supposed to break up the happy looking couple behind you. now you play against an opponent, and over the course of seven rounds, you basically have to choose between two scenarios that might cause a rift between this otherwise happy couple. and at the end of the game, the player that causes the most heartbreak is declared to be the winner. now this game does not exist, but these are real screen shots from it. congratulations, you just

plunged to the next rank, you awful person. it was little twisted, and it was very, very irreverent, but it was also kind of addicting. the creator of that game said the app was profitable pretty much right from drop, pretty much right from the start. she actually compared to it the mother of all video games. she compared to it pong. she said, quote, i'll tell you, it's as simple as pong. this is the dating equivalent. it's not complicated. it's simple. but it's fun. now "damn love," despite its profitability was more of like a side hustle for the scrappy early video game developer who made it. she did that video game thing. she did some other tech stuff. but her full-time gig was as a writer, a journalist. in the late 1970s, at the age of 36, that woman who developed that game, her name was

elizabeth, she submitted a story to the men's magazine "esquire", and she says the fact that it even got published was a fluke. an editor grabbed it out of the slush pile by janse and bought it and decided to run it. that first article in "esquire" opened the door for other writing gigs for her. more articles for "esquire," but also big powerhouse publications in the golden age of big men's magazines and big mass market magazines like "rolling stone" and "new york" magazine and glamour and the atlantic and "vanity fair." she carved out a niche for herself writing these often truly hilarious more or less eccentric gonzo stories where she would embed herself with famous or interesting people and with them do infamous or interesting things, and then she

would write about her experiences. and these stories ended up being as much about her subjects as they were about herself. that was the kind of gonzo style. so, for example, you know who fran leibovitz is. she interviewed the infamous curmudgeon fran leibovitz. and fran leibovitz hates to leave her apartment, let alone leave new york city. but this author took fran leibovitz camping, of all things. like the one thing that fran leibovitz constitutionally could never do, she took her camping. and then she wrote a hysterical piece about the whole thing for the cover of "outside" magazine. nothing much doing after we get the tent up, and fran is looking at the pine trees across the nedo. i say how nice it is to sit around and do nothing. fran says "you can do nothing in new york too, only there you get to do it on a sofa." you get the gist. she also followed a pack of basketball groupies around.

that was a truly scandalous article. she did an interview with the storied anchorman dan rather that was unlike any other interview with dan rather. it starts "would you consider cosmetic surgery?" ? "no," says rather. what if somebody says really, dan, you have bags down to here. it happens, says dan, gring. what is your age? rather says "i'm 113 years old. he grins all the way down to his clavicles. she also did a profile of the musician lyle lovett that is still to this day i think the definitive profile of lyle lovett. now it was sort of unheard of for women to write for not just big mass market magazines like that, but all the brassy men's magazines too. but our magazine writer elizabeth did it pro-livcally. she was the first woman ever to

be named a contributing editor associate "playboy." "the new york times" wrote about this weekend. they wrote about that as the time when people really did read "playboy" for the articles. it was a women's magazine, though, that really catapulted her career. in 1993, she got a call from elle magazine, the world's largest fashion magazine. the editor-in-chief had been reading her work. she wanted her to write a regular advice call for elle. and so she did. and she did it under her new famous byline, because elizabeth used just her first initial with her name in her by-line. in print, she was always e. jean carroll. her new advice column in elle was called "ask e. jean." and it ran for more than a quarter of a century. it's one of the longest running advice columns in the history of american publishing that column was so popular, it gave way to a daily television show by the same name, which aired on the predecessor to this very tv

network. she was asked to appear as a contributor to the big mega talk shows like the "today" show and "good morning america" and oprah. at one point she was a writer for "snl" for "saturday night live." that pit stop at "snl" earned her an emmy nomination. that cell phone game that i mentioned at the top, the breakup cell phone game was not her only business venture outside journalism. in the early 2000s, she started a successful matchmaking service. she also started a dating website. the latter was sold for the mid six figures. she's also written fife books over the course of her career. it is a body of work that spans decades. she has had the kind of career in publishing that a lot of young women in journalism dream of having prolifically published with an absolutely singular instantly identifiable writing

style, prabl practially universally beloved in the business. she has been described as quirky, cheeky, daring, gutsy, funny, trailblazer. people have called her the female hunter s. thompson. despite that illustrious, lengthy, enviable multifaceted creative, deeply impressive career, these days e. jean carroll is almost universally remembered for one of the last things that she wrote. it was her most recent book, in which e. jean carroll first accused former president donald trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in new york city in 1996. after she made that accusation in that book published in 2019 while donald trump was still president, he said she was lying about it. he said he had never met her, let alone assaulted her. and so she sued him, the sitting

president. and it took a while, but in the end, it has now resulted in a jury ordering donald trump to e. jean carroll more than $83 million. for defaming her with false claims after a jury determined that he was indeed liable for having sexually assaulted her that day in 1996. and of course what this was a civil case, right? this was lawsuit brought by one person by this one extraordinary interesting, totally unique person. brought by her against another private person. it's not a criminal case. nobody is going to jail. nobody is being criminally charged here. this is just about what the defendant owes the plaintiff, what he should be forced to pay to her to compensate her and to compensate her and to punish him for what he did. it is a civil case between two very identifiable, very unique individuals.

and as such, there are two ways this has resonated so much with all of us. there is two reasons why we care so much about what she has just been able to do. the first reason, the first reason it resonates, the first reason we care, honestly, is because of us as a country and who we are and the way he as a political figure is trying to change us as a country. >> you are promising america tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody? >> except for day one. >> except for? except for day one. >> meaning? >> i said i want to be a dictator for one day. >> i only want to be a dictator for one day. >> would you rather have four years of donald trump as a dictator or four years of joe biden as a president? >> trump. >> as a dictator? >> maybe. >> sometimes in life we all need a good paddling from the

principal to set our life on the right track, and this country does need a little bit of that. we need a lid paddling. >> it's nice to have a strong man running the country. >> would you rather have four years of donald trump as a dictator or four years of joe biden as president? >> donald trump all the way. >> even as a dictator? >> yes, yes. >> trump as a dictator. >> i think i'm choosing donald trump as a dictator. >> i'm going dictator trump for sure. >> i'd rather have donald trump as a dictator. >> the other day donald trump said on his first day he is going to be a dictate for a day. >> i like that. yeah, i like. that would you rather have a donald trump as a dictator for years or re-elect joe biden for four years? >> i would rather have donald trump. i'd like to see them repeal the roosevelt law so that he can be a president for a lot more than four years. but we -- this country needs a dictator. i hate to say that, but it's the truth. >> this is part of why we care, right. because putting him in court tests this whole idea.

what is appealing about a dictator? a dictatorship. what is appealing about a strong-man leader replacing democracy? having somebody who stays in power indefinitely and has unchecked total authority to do whatever he wants. what is appealing about that? not just why would you offer to be that. you can see the appeal to a person who wants to be that kind of person. but why would you want that in your country? the most appealing thing about a strongman leader, right, is that he be able to get stuff done. he'd be unconstrained. couldn't be stopped, you know. i alone can fix it through enforcing loyalty to him or death, by locking up his enemies, by breaking all the rules, government shoverment. that's what he is promising. this journalist, this

extraordinarily unique woman did is give us that first test of that prospect that has come all the way to fruition. this has run to the end now. this is the test. is he is strong man that he claims to be and that his followers believe him to be and that they so want instead of this messy democracy where sometimes other people get their way, he that? or is he a citizen, an american, who lives in a democracy? which has courts and laws. i mean, to be clear, the only reason to bring criminal charges against a person is because they've committed a crime. the only reason to bring a civil case against someone is if they have done something legally actionable for which they should pay. but once you believe a person has done those things, once they are in court, you're testing not only the allegations in that particular case, you are testing the system. you are testing whether the law that applies to everyone else can be brought to bear even on that guy who says he is absolutely immune.

you bring him to court, and that is the test of us as a country. and that is why the court system looms so large in this era. that's why we've all become armchair lawyers in the last eight years. that's why all these former prosecutors and ex-litigators have jobs on tv now explaining stuff, right. that's why judges and the court system are so important and central in the age of donald trump and his takeover of the republican party and his promises of a strongman-style dictatorship. a would-be strongman says he is immune from the legal system. he is unconstrained by any institution and by anything in our government. e. jean carroll is the one who called that in question. e. jean carroll's civil case says i'm not a strongman, and neither are you. none of us are. no one can be in america because this is a democracy, and the law in a case like this, she says, the law protects me.

even from you. and so i will call the question. i will call on the law, the court system to show that, to prove that the strongman model does not work here, however people might want it. this is not europe between the wars. this is america. and that's the second reason that we care, right? that's the second reason this case, this huge $38 million judgment resonates so much with us. because she did this in a civil case, human to human, eyeball to eyeball, she did this in her own name and in her own personal defense, she called upon the law to protect her, a named person who was willing to put her name to the allegations and to show up in court and say it. so much of the calculus in our country right now, so much of the calculus frankly in the world right now, so much of the calculus about how to contend with trump is oh, how mad is he

going to be? how crazy will his supporters go? in historian tim snyder's seminal book on tyranny, this anticipation of the backlash, this worry about how upset trump and his supporters might get, this is a phenomenon that snyder describes as obeying in advance, as in do not obey in advance. do not give the tyrant or the would-be tyrant what they want because you fear what they might do otherwise. put more bluntly, the message is snyder's the lesson from the 20th century is the lesson is stand up, say no, have guts. be the one. how many of us would have the guts of e. jean carroll at age 80 to do what she did? to call his question, to test it. to make us decide it as a country, to render this would-be

strongman just a man. joining us now is e. jean carroll, who successfully sued donald trump for defamation. she is flanked tonight by her lawyers in the case, robbie caplan you see on the left and shawn crowley you see on the right. thank you all so much for being here. it's such a pleasure to see the three of you here and to you here. i'm really grateful you made the time. >> it's a pleasure. >> jean, let me just ask you, you guys have lived this case in one way or another since 2019 when trump was still in the white house and you published your book. how different it is now to be part of this case now that you are out the other side you have won this massive $83 million judgment? do you -- does it feel different to you now than it did while you were in the middle of it? >> rachel, thank you for that. incredible introduction. the three of us were shaking with laughter and tears in our eyes, laughing and crying all at the same time. you happened to put it in a

nutshell what we were fighting for. you did it. thank you so much, rachel. yes. i feel that this bodes well for the future. i think we planted our flag. i think we've made a statement that -- that things are going to be different, that there is going to be a new way of doing things in this country because of this indestructible team of lawyers, rachel. i am sometimes 50 years older than some of the associates on our team. i'm 40 years older than shawn. i'm 30 years older than robbie. and together, this team of brilliant young people have, as you said, stood up to the man,

who, by the way, rachel, is not even there. he's nothing. he is without -- he is like a walrus, snorting and like a rhino flopping his -- he is not there. that was the surprising thing to me. >> well, on that point, talking about being face-to-face with him, being in the same physical space with him for the first time since when you say he assaulted you in 1996. >> right. >> what you're describing there in terms of him being nothing, him feeling like an animal, feeling like not intimidating, was that a shock to you? because i mean, your guts here, your bravery here includes the physical bravery about being around him again. it sounds like it didn't go the way you expected it to once you were in the same room. >> no, rachel, i was terrified. i was just a beg of sweating

corpuscles as we prepared for trial. and four days before trial, i had an actual breakdown. i lost my ability to speak. i lost my words. i couldn't talk, and i couldn't go on. it was -- that's how frightened i was. but oddly, we went into court. robbie took the lectern. i sat in the witness chair like this. and she said, "ms. carroll, good morning. could you please spell your name for court." and amazingly, i looked out, and he was nothing. he was nothing. he was a phantom. it was the people around him who were giving him power. he himself was nothing. it was an astonishing discovery for me. he's nothing. we don't need to be afraid of him. he can be knocked down.

twice by this woman right here. >> well, by the team here. let me just -- ms. caplan, robbie, let me put this to you. as soon as the verdict, you said there is a way to stand up to someone like donald trump. and it felt like you were not necessarily advising your fellow lawyers or potential defendants, but you were kind of advising the country. did you mean that as advice? do you mean that as advice for republicans who don't want to go along with him but have been so far afraid to say no or stand up to him? >> i think in the moment, rachel, i meant it in the context of the court system and litigation. but in my guts, in my heart, i meant what you said. how you just described it, or how e. jean just described it. it is time, and we proved i think in this case, it is time to stand up to the united

states' current biggest bully. the way to do that is by using the facts and the law and our legal system to say that we're not afraid and we saw a jury of nine new yorkers stand up to him just as much as we did and say not only did you do this, but you need to pay her $83 million. >> ms. crowley, shawn, in closing and opening the trial you asked jurors to consider awarding punitive damages how much it would cost to make trump stop lying about ms. carroll, how high the number would have to be in order to deter him from continuing to do what he has been doing to e. jean. do you think the award in this case is sufficient to make him stop? >> it's really hard to say with someone like that. so far it has been, which i think is pretty remarkable given who he is and what he's done to e. jean pretty much relentlessly over the last four years. i do have to say that i think he

himself during the trial helped us make that argument by, you know, leaving court each day and posting on truth social and giving press conferences where he continued to defame her after having literally been sitting in court on trial for defaming her. and then just his behavior in the courtroom. he just refused to follow the rules, he was shaking his head, he was shouting, he walked out during robbie's closing argument, which is something i've never seen before in a court of law. and so i think that it sort of helped the jury to not just have to believe what we were telling them, but to get to actually see it with their own eyes the way that this guy just believes that he is not bound by any rules or laws. >> and it kind of tells you, if you think about it, who he really is. because after all, our thesis of this trial was, one, that he is a bully, and two, that he is incapable of following the rules. and then during the trial, he acted like a bully, and he wasn't capable of following the

rules. we almost didn't need to say anything. the jury just watched it. >> e. jean, robbie and shawn, if you don't mind staying with us for one more block. e. jean, i know you have been thinking hard about what you're going to do with all of donald trump's money. i'd like to talk with you about that. i'd like to talk to you about some of the developments that happened potentially related to the case since 2 verdict on friday. stick with us. great. we'll be back with the women of the hour and the lawyers who won her case. stay with us.

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alina, do you regret it? >> no, no. i'm glad you asked me that question. no, i'm not having any second thoughts about representing president trump. it is the proudest thing i could ever do. >> yeah, but how did it go? that was former president trump's lawyer alina habbah on friday just after the jury ordered her client to pay $83 million to e. jean carroll. we're back now with ms. carroll, who did successfully sue donald trump for defamation twice. she is here along with her attorneys, robbie kaplan and shawn crowley. thank you all for sticking with me. i wasn't going to answer this. it may be rude. you don't have to answer if you don't want to. you are both very experienced trial attorneys. you've been up against some of the best and brightest opposing

counsel in all sorts of different trials. how is president trump's lawyering? is he well represented in court? >> i'm going let crowley get to that. but i will say that what you heard just now in that tape of alina habbah leaving the court and kind of yelling at the reporters, that's what we heard every single day multiple times during this trial, but yelling at the judge. and it was unbelievably nerve-racking each time it happened, and it happened multiple times every day. >> yeah. thanks for handing that one over to me. i think that -- i think that she had a hard job and you could definitely see a difference between her sort of style when he was in the courtroom and when he was not there. she was much more disciplined and frankly acted more like a lawyer when he wasn't there.

when he was, you could hear him telling her when to object and muttering things and loudly being frustrated with her. and i think she felt like she had to say things to the judge and to us and sort of put on a performance like you just saw in front of the tv cameras. >> e. jean, in terms of what you've just been through, i mean, to hear a lawyer as experienced as robbie kaplan saying it was nerve-racking to be in that room sometimes because of the way it was conducted, have to ask you, president trump has kept your name out of his mouth since being told he has to pay $83 million for what he's done in the past. but over the weekend he did start posting links online to articles that attacked you and denied your claims again. he seems to be pushing it already in terms of whether or not he is going to go back to calling you a liar and denying that he did what he did. if it -- if it came to it, if your lawyers told you that there

was another case and that you should go back and get more money out of him and sue him again, would you do it? >> absolutely. absolutely. >> it wasn't too much -- it wasn't too much wear and tear on you? i mean, the guts factor here is real in terms of how much you put yourself out there. a lot of strong people have been putting themselves -- wouldn't put themselves through what you've gone through. >> rachel, many people, as you know have, been through much worse than i went through at that trial. people suffered more difficult things that i have ever been through in my life. and i am more than willing to do it again because we achieved so much, much in a seven-day trial. we did what people thought was impossible. we beat donald trump. >> let me ask you about a way that you have talked about this,

e. jean. you have talked about the fact that this was not just you being passively victimized, but you fought, that it was a fight. and that's the term that you used. and everybody gets -- you know, everybody gets to choose their own terms to describe something like this happening to them. but you chose that term, and it seems like it's important to your sense of self and to your own sense of agency in knowing who you are and making decisions about what to do next. >> yes. >> what you just did 25 years after the assault was a different kind of fight, going at him at the height of his power and the height of his celebrity. and i wonder if you can talk about that self-conception and why it's important to you to know for yourself that you fought, but also so that the world knows that you both did fight and that you will fight. >> well, we're fighting not really, rachel, for me. it's now about fighting for all women. we're also fighting, and we

salute the women and men who have been assaulted and who did not survive. we are doing this for women around the country. who have been knocked down repeatedly. so it's really not about me anymore. we have moved beyond me. and as you say, the fight now is really to take back our future. this is a man who stacked the supreme court, took away women's rights over their own bodies. we would like to be a part of turning our eyes to the future and taking back our rights. >> you've talked about using some of trump's money that you're about to get to help shore up women's rights. do you know what that might be, what that might look like? >> yes, rachel, yes! >> tell me. >> i have such, such great ideas for all the good i'm going to do

with this money. first thing, rachel, you and i are going to go shopping. we're going get completely new wardrobes, new shoes, motorcycle for crowley, new fishing rod for robbie. rachel, what do you want? penthouse? it's yourself. >> rachel. >> nothing. >> penthouse in france? you want france? you want to go fishing in france? >> no. >> no? all right, all right. >> that's a joke. >> although, if me fishing in france could do something for women's rights, i would take the hit. i would obviously take one for the team. all right. as if you need persuasion in that regard. let me finish with a final question, and again, this is both for you, shawn, and for you robbie, and you guys can divide up responsibility here. but there are multiple cases here involving trump that are coming up. obviously, most eyes are on the federal january 6th case having

been up against trump in the courtroom. i'm wondering if you two have any advice in terms of what it's like to go up against him and his legal team in terms of the way he approaches his defense. that's part of it. but i also want to know if this big what everybody is expect tock a very large judgment against him and his company changed anything about the way that you approached the ask to the jury, the way that you presented evidence, the way that you're planning on making sure this money is in fact extracted from trump's wallet. how much do these cases interact with each other, if at all? and can various lawyers involved in these various cases learn from each other's experience? >> so the short answer to the cases interact with each other, absolutely all the time. to give you just one good example, in our case, we played at the end of our case not only the deposition that i took of donald trump in this case, but we played the deposition that the new york attorney general took in their case, because in that deposition, trump is

bragging about his brand alone is worth nor than $10 billion. he has $400 million cash on hand. the reason that was so relevant, in assessing how much money to award for punitive damages, the jury is not only allowed to, but supposed to think of the wealth of the defendant. so when we said, when shawn said give enough to e. jean to make him stop, they had to think what enough would be for donald trump. so the cases and kinds of predictable ways and unpredictable ways are kind of talking to each other all the time. . >> on the first question, you know, i think that one thing that i maybe wasn't prepared for coming into this trial is that when donald trump is stripped of, you know, all of the press and not at a rally, and there is no tv cameras, and he sort of has a small group of supporters around him, he's not that scary.

and he also can be controlled. his antics in the courtroom, we've talked about them, but at the end of the day, he did kind of follow the rules. robbie cross-examined him. he was in the witness chair, and he only got to answer three questions, i think. and he pretty much stayed within the bounds. i think when you have a strong judge like judge caplan who enforces the rules of his courtroom and you have real lawyers, you really can get him to behave sort of. and when he is stripped of all of the rallies and the truth socials, he is just a guy. i think e. jean called him the emperor with no clothes. that's not my quote, but he is not the guy you see on telephone. he is just a guy a sometimes acting like a petulant toddler, but just a guy. >> an american bound by the law, just as every american is bound by the law.

writer e. jean carroll, attorney robbie kaplan, attorney shawn crowley, you guys have made history a couple of times now. and you also have meant a lot and continue to mean a lot. you have been lighting the way i think for a lot of people in terms of both moral clarity and strategic acumen. and i really, really want to thank each of you for making the time to come talk to us. and i wish you all safety and rest. >> thank you, rachel. >> thank you very much. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. stay with us

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so we're following what could potentially be very big news in the ongoing war between israel and hamas. andrea mitchell and her team at nbc news reported tonight that officials from four countries, from the u.s., israel, qatar and egypt have agreed to a broad framework for a major ceasefire and hostage deal. this is a deal that would call for a halt in fighting for 60 days. it would provide for the release of the civilian hostages in gaza. there is more than 100 of them still held by hamas. each of the civilian hostages would be released in exchange for three palestinian prisoners currently being held by israel. then after a month against the 60-day ceasefire, after a month, the agreement would allow for the release of idf soldiers who are also being held as hostages. first female soldiers, then male soldiers. they would be released in exchange for thousands of palestinian prisoners being held in israel. so, again, a stop in the

fighting for 60 days, and ultimately, all the hostages released. that's the framework. now obviously the prospect of such a deal is heartening, but it would need to be signed off on by both the israeli government and hamas. so far that has not hooped. tonight hamas is reiterating that they're not going to release any hostages unless israel withdraws its forces from the gaza strip. a spokesman for israeli prime minister benjaim also said tonight that no final agreement has been reached. but they do have this painstakingly arrived at framework to get there, if they wanted. that news comes amid the first u.s. military fatalities from hostile fire since the start of the conflict in october. this weekend a drone strike on a small u.s. military outpost in northeastern jordan near the syrian border killed three members of an army reserve unit from georgia. more than 40 other american troops were injured in this attack. this is a base that has:00350 american service members, both soldiers and airmen.

the pentagon says this drone attack was launched by iranian-backed militias. and that's important because since the start of the war on october 7th, iranian-backed militias are blamed for more than 160 attacks on bases where u.s. military personnel are present. that's more than one a day. but this weekend, for the first time, one of those attacks was fatal. and the fact that it's being claimed by iran-backed militias is a very provocative thing in terms of what that means for a potential american response. at the same time, though, the u.s. is also releasing information about how this might have happened. pentagon officials are saying that the enemy drone flew in essentially at the same time that a u.s. drone was also in the air over the base. that possibly could have confused the air defense systems that would otherwise protect the base from attack. that complexity is leading to an

interesting situation. it's obviously urgent questions for president biden and the administration as to what any u.s. retaliation might be. three u.s. service members are dead. 40 are injured. but the u.s. is also explaining that what happened here might not necessarily have been a qualitatively different kind of attack than all of these 160-plus previous attacks, which frankly didn't result in calls for potentially devastatingly escalatory. it's a moving target at this point. very much a developing story. joining us to help us understand is courtney kube. she covers national security in the pentagon for nbc. thank you very much for being with us. let me ask you if i got that right. i know this is a developing story. some of the details are getting hammered out over the course of the evening. >> you did. here is what we know a little bit more about the potential, one of the theories for how this attack drone was able to get on to the base. you mentioned that it was coming

in according to pentagon officials at the same time that a u.s. drone was also moving towards the base, maybe coming in to land. and that may have confused the air defense systems. that's one of the options or the theories that the u.s. is looking at for how it was able to get on the base in the first place. they're also looking at the possibility it was flying at such a low altitude that that may have played a part as well. but the real reason that the number of casualties here is so high is because where this attack drone was able to strike and explode. it was a drone packed with explosives, rachel. it was right near an area where u.s. troops were sleeping. and because of the fact that it got through the air defense systems, there were no alarms to wake them up, sending troops to the buckers, as would normally be the case if there was some sort of incoming. because of that, there were people there caught unaware when this drone attacked frankly right outside of their sleeping area. >> so it's sort of a technical failure, a very unusual circumstance sort of a coincidental event in terms of

the american drone and the enemy drone being coincideent in the same airspace. is that a potential factor about why the soldiers weren't in the bunker, why they weren't defended the way they might have been. that affecting the way the u.s. is thinking about potential retaliatory actions? >> it's not so much thinking about retaliation, but it is thinking about security going for ward. one of the concerns here at the pentagon is this may be a new tactic. did some of these iranian-backed militia groups figure out a way they can get around the base air defense systems. you mention there have been more than 160 such attacks gwen bases in iraq and syria since october 17th. many of those have been one-way attack drones like this. but the majority have been intercepted, or frankly, they haven't made their way all the way to the base and they have just fallen outside. this is not the first time, though, that one has made its way there was a case several months ago where a drone actually landed on one of the

barracks areas at a base in iraq, and the only reason that we didn't have a catastrophic event there is because the drone didn't explode when it landed. it's not the first time that they have gotten through. but again, the fact that it was able to land in an area where no one was aware that it was coming, there was no time to rereact, and there were so many people who were there and they were frankly sleep organize at least in their birthing area at the time, that's one of the reasons this was so effective as an attack, april. >> courtney kube covering national security and the pentagon. thank you for helping us understand that. a complex story, but just devastating, obviously, for all the obvious reasons. courtney, thank you. >> thanks. >> the pentagon has announced the identity of the three soldiers killed. 46-year-old sergeant jerome rivers, kennedy sanders from waycross, georgia, and 23-year-old special i believe breonna moffet, all three killed in the hostile fire incident

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>> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ just this month, over the course of less than three weeks in three different states, the head of the republican party either quit or got fired. in like 17 days, we lost the head of the republican party in michigan and in florida and in arizona. starting with michigan, for weeks they've had duelling

republican parties, complete with separate websites, each claiming to be the real republican party. a few weeks ago you might remember michigan republicans voted to oust their party chair while she insisted the vote wasn't authorized and she still was the party chair. the people who say they voted her out then picked a new leader for the michigan republican party, insisting he is the real chairman now. well, now the national republican party, the rnc has weighed in saying they do think she was properly removed, but they don't recognize the new guy. so at the rnc winter meeting that starts tomorrow, neither of them will be recognized on the rnc's website. right now michigan's state chair is listed as vacant, because, sure, who needs a party chair in one of the top battleground states in a presidential election year. that's michigan. in florida, that state's republican chair was also ousted, no confusion about that one. he was ousted after a news report that he was being investigated for allegations of rape. police last week cleared him of the rape charges, but they're now seeking video voyeurism

charges for allegedly illegally video recording a sexual encounter without consent. then came arizona, where the state republican party chairman has just resigned following the release of a super fishy audio recording of a conversation he apparently had with failed republican arizona gubernatorial candidate kari lake. she of course insists that she won the governor's race in 2022, and she is in fact the rightful governor of arizona right now, even though you can't tell from outward appearances. she contends that the then party chairman tried to bribe her to stay out of arizona's senate race this year. he says that he resigned because she is threatening to release ostensibly damning more recordings, and he didn't resign. but that's how it's going. michigan, florida, arizona, three republican party chairs gone in 17 days. now in the not at all battleground state of oklahoma, looks like there might be a

fourth. this weekend it looked like james lankford was getting censured by the oklahoma republican party for daring to work on border legislation, which lankford has described as the most conservative potential immigration policy in 40 years. oh, how dare you work on that. the grave crime of course is that to work on it, he had to talk with democrats. oklahoma republicans felt that was unacceptable and censured him for it this weekend. except it turns out that censure may not have been an official thing. the republican party chair in oklahoma contends that the vice chair went rogue and held the censure vote at a meeting that was only being held in violation of the rules, so it wasn't a real meeting so it wasn't a real censure. because what would a republican party be without a skiesmatic fracture that results a serious question as to who is actually running the thing. behold your republican party today.

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