matters at night. >> brittney griner, i believe a lot of people will be buying your jersey. i believe the wnba will have its greatest season ever, i think you are a big part of it. it is heroic how you stood up for yourself and stood up for other people in the time of your greatest trauma. thank you for writing this book and thank you for coming and sitting down with me. god bless you. that baby boy comes, tell him he has a extra godmother. >> i will definitely do that. >> that is tonight's reidout you can follow me on tik tok, on instagram and follow our show for me on instagram and tiktok.

that is tonight's >> hello, new york. thank you for joining us at townhall for this very special edition of why is this happening. he is talk, he is smart, please give a warm welcome to my colleague, msnbc's chris hayes. >> thank you. hey, oh, stop.

how are you? good. thank you. thank you. sit down, sit down. thank you. that is extremely kind. i hate attention and positive feedback. that was a really hard 20 seconds for me, so thank you. it is amazing to be here in my hometown of new york city. i've got some family here. so, tonight we are going to talk about democracy, and that word, we have probably talk more about democracy in the last four or five years that and all of my time as a journalist before that. even that as a topic seems a little weird. america is the democracy and

there is a certain kind of history your talk that is a certain part of american civic culture, deeply, almost kind of civic religion which roughly goes to the following. the founders rebelled against the tyranny of the crown, and the injustice of monarchy, and they conceived in liberty a new nation founded on a government by, of, and for the people. that's the lincoln gettysburg address version of it and they rejected basically the idea that there is some authority above all of us that has dominion over us, that each of us are imbued with the ability to determine our own fate collectively and that is a very difficult, messy process but

fundamentally, in the eyes of some of the founders, that is god-given. in the eyes of some others, it's a natural truth but the idea is that we all decide together what we are going to do and that's a simple, fundamental time and at the time, a radical vision and that is what separates us from the old world where you have monarchies and kings and queens and tyrants and then as time went on, various forms of blood and soil authoritarianism, ultimately fascism culminating in the second world war. you don't really get democracies in that part of the world and the way we think about them. there are some, obviously. there are democratic forms of government that exist before then. there are revolutions and compromises that got worked out in the uk and poland in different parts of the continent but basically, we are the model for the world, right? yes. we are the first ones. we figured it out. we slough off the yoke of tyranny and sees our fate. now, the other part of that story that we all know is a very complicated story, as one

british critic at the time said, the loudest cries of liberty come from the americans as they put their slaves, which is, by the way, an important point that they saw at the time. right? people understood at the time, there was an incredible ridiculous tension in american rhetoric about self- determination and democracy but the general story i think we have is we start with an imperfect democracy and work toward a more perfect democracy, the more perfect union that is in the preamble, and i think there is something to that story. i don't think it is a crazy story but it is basically the civic religion we have. but, i think there's another way of thinking about the story of american democracy, which is that america is the ongoing, dynamic site of a perpetual contestation over democracy,

that is the site of a constant pitched battle between forces on the side of democracy and forces against it, and the forces against them are not fringe characters and sometimes the forces against them are the most celebrated people in the country. andrew jackson, who is viewed as a small democrat because he railed against the elite and founded the modern democratic party with his populism and invited the people into the white house on the day of his inauguration, where they all got drunk. he was not in any recognizable sense, really a democrat in the way that we think of it today. i mean, he thought there was a cast of people who should rule over another cast of people. he was one of the major pursuers of the ethnic cleansing that made the continent what it is, right? he did not think that everyone had some universal unalienable rights and that all of us collectively should rule all of us collectively. he thought that the white man should rule over slaves and

over the indigenous people that populated the planet. i'm not saying this in a like andrew jackson is canceled way. i mean, he should be. to be clear, i'm talking in a specific way about how you would characterize the ideological belief system of andrew jackson. like, is it accurate to call jackson a democrat? i think it is. theodore roosevelt, who is on mount rushmore. theodore roosevelt founds what becomes the american empire in the pacific where we will rule over these people. they're not going to get the vote. they are subject to authority from on high and they are forced to be under that authority and not that different away than the remote

king and again with all these examples and giving, there are people at the time who recognize this. one of the most pitched debates that happens in history is about the trail of tears where people come to the well to say this is -- they didn't have the term at the time -- ethnic cleansing. this is totally unjust. at the same time, when we started fighting our wars under theodore roosevelt and pursuing american empire, there were people at the time, mark twain being very prominent among them, saying we are doing the thing we hated the crown for doing. at each moment in the american empire we have these fights over what the meaning of democracy is, there are contemporaries on each side of the debate. it is not this neat park where we start out confused and benighted and don't understand that slavery is wrong but then we sort of walk into the light.

no, they knew. they knew the trail of tears was wrong. they knew the wars in the pacific in the philippines, what we were doing, they knew it was wrong. there were people who very clearly saw what it was and that is true at every point and it is true up until the period in the run-up to world war two. that story, we learned, is basically the following. because of the trauma of world war i, the u.s. is reticent to get involved in a war on european shores. fair. we do there and fdr comes up with land lease. this is like the basic version because he realized something is going to have to be done but it's hard to get americans into this idea of a second war in europe just several decades later and then pearl harbor happens and we are in and we defeat fascism. right? go, us.

that's basically the story. and, that story also masks exactly the same thing. what is masked in those other moments from the country's founding to the trail of tears and jackson to the creation of u.s. empire in the pacific under theodore roosevelt, which is contemporaneous debates in the society about what democracy is and whether it's good. whether what we actually do want is for all of us collectively, as individuals, with sovereign rights over ourselves, collectively to come together to transfer that sovereignty into a collective, we that decides as a democracy how we will mark our fate, how we will go forward, or whether we want something else, dominion, rule by some group or person.

that is an eternal debate in american politics. we are now realizing this, i think, and away we did not appreciate until we found ourselves in this moment now when we are debating again every day. it feels weird and a lien and it feels like it landed from mars. how did we all come to a consensus on this? didn't we all agree that we are democracy? wasn't it the fact that in the old days, we would fight along the 40 yard lines, is the cliche? right? we didn't have extremes. no. the debate has been there the entire time and one of the most useful interventions in understanding the debate being there the whole time comes by way of this up-and-coming talent that i slotted. i got a pretty good eye. in this really remarkable podcast called ultra that i came out a year ago, totally,

if you have not listen to it, go download it. subscribe to my podcast, too, while you are doing it, but download ultra. it is the story of basically fascist sympathizers in the u.s. prior to the war and their efforts and the incredible length they went to. i know, that subsequently has been turned, part of it, but i want to urge people because i read the book this week because i've been under the gun deadline wise, i want to urge people who listen to ultra to read the book because this book , see it? there it is, it is not just the pod cast and the book.

it goes further in this kind of a skeleton key for this particular moment and so without further ado, i would like to introduce the author of "prequel," my dear friend, my beloved colleague, rachel maddow. >> there are a lot of people. >> there are a lot of people. for those listening on the podcast, there is 20,000 people. never seen anything like it in my life. >> i'm wearing my reading glasses, so all of you are just little blobs, i can't see you at all, which is helpful. >> yes. can we -- i want to start on your way into this material, because i have to say it is an incredible talent that you have

, and this has been true on your television show for years, it's sort of finding these unexplored markets in american history, the stories that people don't know, then you tell them. your like what? like really, that actually happened? and ultra was an incredible example of that work i knew who father coughlan was, right wing anti-semitic preacher. i knew that. there was an american first movement. but that was kind of my canon for those things. i knew that on the nothing else appeared in that podcast so i wanted to start by saying, what was your way into this material because it really is not on the surface? >> i never set out to tell history story. i'm always looking for something going on in current

life. it is always sprung from something going on in the news and the thing i get dinged for, rightly, in terms of the way i do my work is that if i want to tell you about something happening in the world today, everything has to start with first, a meteor hit the earth and then the dinosaurs died and when their bodies dissolved -- i mean like -- >> that's good, that's a good bit. >> if that's not your way of thinking of the world, i can understand why that's alienating. i know i'm not everybody's cup of tea. well, thank you. i love you, too. but, that is the way my brain works and i was as unnerved as everybody but also kind of confused and interested that we were seeing all this alternate right anti-semitic and holocaust denial stuff around trumpism, so trumpism is happening in the electoral

politics phase then we have this thing that for a minute we call the alternate right. i don't think we call them anymore but it was seen them rise alongside trump and seeing them cheerleading for trump and st. thomas are -- seeing them as parallel movements i wanted to figure out how not only anti- semitism, but specifically, holocaust denial, has functioned in the united states. that was the starting point because if you go back far enough in terms of the origin of the holocaust denial, you get back to 1948 and holocaust denial is a lot of terrible things but one of the things it is, is weird. with so much evidence that it happened, how can we say it didn't happen? that is especially true in 1948 and there are lots of people in the world who witnessed what happened and so how can it be that it is a source of denial for a political movement? well, it's not that they honestly believe it didn't happen.

they're using holocaust denial for a reason, as part of a political project and that's what i got into in the 40s and that's how i found my defendants and how i learned that they all got put on trial and all cut off when the judge died and i thought you know what, i was going to tell a different story. i think i'm going to tell this one because i did not know any of it. >> you trace in the book different strands of pro- fascist, anti-semitic, -aligned -- nazi-aligned people in the u.s. there are some misfits in there but they are also operating in a discursive environment that is not closed off to what they are saying. tell me about public opinion around the question of fascism and the rise of it.

in 1931, 32. some of the people that you document in the book are then trying to, and sometimes at the behest of the german government, cultivate sympathy. >> yes, fascism was the movement of the future. fascism did not have the cast that we associate now retrospectively with nazi germany. the number one selling book in america in 1941 was written by charles lindbergh's wife, anne morrow lindbergh, and it was about how fascism was coming to america one that be fantastic because we can finally get some stuff done, and it was, in fact, a lot of people who have looked into it, believe it was ghostwritten by a guy named lawrence dennis, who was a leading intellectual fascist of his time. he actually wrote a book called "the coming american fascism." he went on -- one of the things we found were old nbc radio

archives from "town meeting of the year," which was a debate show they use to host on one of the nbc radio networks and one of the very first ones they did, they brought lawrence dennis on to argue for fascism against other people who were arguing against fascism and he wiped the floor with them. he totally won, but it was a popular thing. by the time you get to 1940, 83% of the american public is against us joining world war ii. that's what fdr was up against, and some of that was just, we don't want to fight another war, but some of that was, the people you want us to fight against we actually think have the better idea. >> how did they go about cultivating -- you talked about dennis for a little bit. he was worthwhile spending a little time on. >> no, there such a good twist when it comes to him. >> yes, but talk about him a

little bit. >> lawrence dennis had been a state department official. he'd gone to harvard. he was a very erudite, articulate guy, and he had kind of a sub stat contrariness to him. you could complement him without insulting you for complementing him. he was that kind of guy but also in his aggressiveness and contrariness, made everybody fall in love with him. men and women, old, young, didn't matter. everybody had a crush on lawrence dennis and he slept his way through the 1930s in a way that he did not understand why his wife minded. he was writing speeches and books for the isolationists, and the isolationists were not calling themselves fascist overtly, but they had the leading intellectual self described fascist in america writing this stuff, and dennis was a favorite of the nazi government in berlin and they brought him over for the nuremberg rallies.

they brought him to germany and gave him access to everybody up to and including hitler, and he used it to essentially become a very well- networked, influential person. he interviewed miscellany. he interviewed hitler. he spent time with all the most important diplomats and leaders of the time then came home and wrote speeches for isolationists and artists and books for isolationists wives and heroes. he was one of the trial defendants and he was so arrogant he not only defended himself in court but insisted that there should be mental examinations of his co- defendants, which they, once they realize that was a way out of it, agreed. they all wanted mental examinations. >> he is sort of the leading fascist intellectual american that you document, but there is also -- the seed is being planted in somewhat fertile

soil and i wonder if you could talk about why that is the case. there is the fact that world war i was brutal and awful, and there is an interesting thing that happens in both this book and "altar," which is people who totally understandably were like wow, that was a disaster, being prepared to be like, we are never doing that again. that posture, which is a totally rational posture, being the kind of slippery slope by which they end up in first, isolationism and then out right fascism -- given that you have the depression and then you have this sense of like, the brokenness of the american system and the messiness of democracy. all three of those things are running themes in the people that are pushing for the, proposing, or in the case of huey long, embodying an alternate to that.

>> yes. i think it is easiest to see it when you look at what the germans were secretly telling us, so one of the things we now know, and this is an "altar," and it is in the book, too, is that there was a really big, aggressive, well-funded secret german propaganda effort targeting the american people. they were basically trying to do three things, you could direct that down to. one was to support isolationism in any way they could. they were arguing that we should not go to war to defend our ally, britain, because in what sense are they really our ally? they're corrupt. they are an empire. they are cruel. there week.

the germans, who have a much better idea, are going to run over them in a matter of weeks. why should we side with the failing empire we should resented not with the germans, who have a better idea. they're also trying to make us believe that we are inherently weak, that we should change our own form of government, and by having a democracy, we are opening ourselves up to be controlled by the , by international forces, to be controlled by those would send us into the meat grinder of these wars, when really, we should just let germany when coincide with them, so they were trying to articulate all of those things through any american voices they could but their words in the mouth of, so it is members of congress, u.s. senators, people like lawrence dennis, who they were funding. it was george sylvester vera, who was an american nazi agent running 12 different publications. it is publishing houses they've bought, magazines and the messages they were trying to sell us -- to me, it's just unnerving and clarifying to see them because it is so much the

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>> the messages that these minority groups are secretly powerful and they are the hidden power behind the scenes and you think you are controlling the government. you think you're voting for people, but your vote doesn't matter because there's the secret cabal, and that means we can't all participate in a democracy because why would we give the secret cabal of about? what the government needs to be able to do is protect us from those people so we need a government that is strong, that has authority, that could protect us from those people. to vote is cute, but it's weak and this is the only way we can efficiently compete with real countries on earth, the real strong countries you know, you would say today china, russia, hungary. and so that messages the same. it is to turn us against each other to make us believe democracy doesn't work, to

align us with strongman countries and other parts of the world. the other piece of it is that there is no knowable truth. this is really important and i can tell right now that this sounds we will, but it is not we will. it is very specific. one of the things they do is tell you, don't believe journalism. don't believe science. don't believe experts. don't believe history. it's all fake. it's all designed to bamboozle you. none of these expertise, none of these so-called sources are real. the only knowable truth is something that you feel in your gut and let me tell you what to feel in your gut. separating us from the idea of noble -- knowable truth means we don't recognize practical problems in the world. we don't recognize practical solutions to those problems and it means you are very susceptible to both conspiracy theories and you are susceptible

to suggestion from the leader who wants you to do things that you probably would not do under your own steam if you had your wits about you. that dislocation from the truth -- don't trust the media, don't trust science, don't trust experts, don't trust any political opposition, don't trust journalism. that is part of the authoritarian project. >> is one of the things that is so fascinating to me. everything you just described, when they happen now, and versions are happening now, there is this very historical but also understandable tendency to put them on the technology at the time. all of the same traits i think we try to see as an outgrowth of some technological moment here, platform moment, it is just all there. it's like analog versions of it , and it is, as far as i can tell, almost as effective. >> yes, the thing that has changed is the iterative nature of the media, your ability to

talk back in a social environment, so what that does is it can work as an accelerant, so somebody says ally to you, you repeat the lie back to them. okay, here's a bigger lie. it helps those messages be targeted better, i think, but yes, there is a very, very famous celebrity pilot in her day. pilots used to be like the kardashians and the travis kelce's, it was everything altogether. who doesn't want a pilot? they were the celebrities of their day like you can't believe and after amelia earhart, the most female ava tricks, the culture, in the country was laura ingalls. wait, little house on the prairie? no, her eighth cousin. laura ingalls wilder's eighth cousin. she flew an airplane over the white house, and dropped

pamphlets over the white house out of an airplane. very impressive. also, you don't want to see those pamphlets. so, she was actually working for the gestapo. she was an american who was on the payroll of the tran08s. she was answering to the top gestapo agent in the united states and she was getting paid with a monthly stipend. you know how you do times machines for all the new york times article so if you have a new york times subscription you can use the time machine? turns out there's a limit to how much you can use the time machine. >> you found it. >> i found it by spending time with laura ingalls. >> you are overserved on stories of laura ingalls. like i got cut off and they called me. like how much i didn't even think you have my number. she was so famous that there

was an article in the new york times in one year in 1934 when she got a speeding ticket article in the new york times by 1935 she was so famous there was an article in the new york times that she got a parking ticket. like it was crazy how famous she was that she is working for the gestapo and dropping flowers over the this top of -- white house. one of the witnesses against her in her trial was a surgeon who operated on her who said after she was under the laughing guest all she wanted to talk about was her swastika necklace, and but like one of the most influential and popular stories in our country. her espousing the views that she had, and being such a daredevil in the way she was espousing them, like we don't have anything like that today. that's a different kind of power. >> that being a level of mass i mean, which is hard to achieve now.

there are a bunch of examples like this in the book and then there is henry ford. you know, it is so funny because i know again the broad strokes of henry ford. brilliant industrialists, basically created the modern means of -- the sort of modern factory method of assembly-line production, brought costs down in doing so, paid his workers a higher wage than others. also a raving anti-semite. that's like my two sentences on ford. right? the last part of that, that last sentence, like i knew it but when you read it in your book, when you re-encounter henry ford on the subject of the , and the lengths that he went to, i really don't think we -- you need to kind of reverse the order of that bio in the two sentences because it's like this guy was wildly

dangerous and bad and aligned with the worst forces basically. >> and i knew about ford's anti- semitism as if it were a private vice. no, he was a different thing. it was one of the things he contributed to this world. do you want me to read that part? >> i would like you to read that part.

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>> his anti-semitism was frank and unchecked. he spewed it among family, friends, newspaper reporters, pretty much anybody within earshot. in the office, private chats, interviews, dinners, even on camping trips. a close friend wrote in his diary after witnessing one late night around the flat campfire diatribe, ford attributes all evil to jews. he ordered his engineers to forgo the use of any brass in his model t automobile. he called brass quote, jew

metal. ford said wherever there is anything wrong with the country, you will find the jews on the job there. he blamed a vast conspiracy for inciting his workers and stockholders to demand he share a sliver more of the ford motor company profits with them. he blamed jews for the gold standard in the federal reserve bank, for ruining motion pictures in america, for ruining popular music, for ruining baseball. ford was hardly the only radical anti-semite in the u.s. circa 1920, but in addition to his fortune and his famous name and his iconic company, he had a megaphone your average crazy uncle the riser lacked. he had twitter. now, i'm kidding. sorry. it's x i'm supposed to say. he had a newspaper. it was called the dearborn independent, which he had purchased for a song in 1918. the paper was a big money loser

in the beginning, poor to middling circulation. his editorial harangues did little to draw new readers. how many attacks on the manhood beaten ford in the michigan senate race did the public really want? oh, but truman h. newbury had stolen the election. one of the dearborn independence staffers was a veteran of the newspaper was. he had an idea. he wrote to ford's right-hand man, find an evil to attack. let's find some sensationalism, and low, the answer landed unbidden not long after, a newly translated english- language edition of the book titled "the protocols of the meetings of the learned elders of zion." the work was the work of the anti-bolshevik fascist. they portrayed it as the beginnings of a plot of all powerful jewish schemers to

take over the world. the protocols were built as the product of a surreptitious notetaker at a top-secret meeting where in these jewish puppet masters have drawn up a strategy. there was no secret meeting, obviously. there was no secret plot or surreptitious notetaker. the whole thing was a work of fiction, very considered, deliberate light and a dangerous piece of propaganda. ford and his newspaper were down on it with alacrity. they started a new weekly series in the dearborn independent based on the protocols. it would end up being a 92-part weekly series. every week for 92 weeks, headlines like these, the international -- jew, the

world's problem and jewish jazz, moran music, becomes a national music in this one. the perils of baseball, too much jew. these headlines were splashed on the papers of ford's paper, which were distributed in ford dealerships across the country. he also saw to the publication of his series in book form. it was entitled "the international jew." it ran to four volumes, nevermind that the protocols were exposed as untrue in 1921 right in the middle of his series. for dealers kept tossing the latest issue of the dearborn independent onto the front seat of newly purchased model ts all over the country. ford saw to it that the four volumes of the international were translated and published worldwide in 12 international editions, including one in germany. of all the contributions henry ford made to this world, one of them was this. the most prolific, most sustained published attack on jews the world had ever known. the german edition of ford's book had landed in the hands of one particularly gifted propagandist, when adolf

hitler's book was published in 1925, the author appeared to lift not just ideas, but whole passages from ford's own publications. the first edition extolled ford by name. hitler wrote, it is jews who govern the stock exchange forces of the american union. only a single great man, ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence. by this time, hitler had already sent to aid what he hoped would be ford's run in 1924. in december 1931 when someone showed up to interview hitler, she had a series that was called five minutes with men in public i mac. she had her five minutes with

hitler. she went to hitler's office and was surprised to find hanging on the wall behind hitler's desk, a large part less of a very famous american. hitler explained to the newspaper woman, i regard henley ford as my inspiration. the detroit reporter asked hitler that they point blank why he was anti-semitic. he said without hesitation, somebody has to be blamed for your troubles. i feel like if you go back in time to then, like the worst thing you could find, like if you could time machine yourself back to the future style, to see like your family or people you are interested in at that time, the worst thing you can imagine is that they would have a portrait of hitler at that time. i think hitler having a portrait of you -- that is like, i didn't know that was an option but that is worse.

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only place that is the case, but talk a little bit about that notion, that anti-semitism, which i think everyone understands is sort of ubiquitous and universal in some sense, it exists in many places in many different forms, not particularly one error, one place but i do think there is a sense that it is this endemic european problem, and that the u.s. was maybe like a little more immune from it and that just is not the case. >> yeah. i think one of the things that is unsettling about the henry ford dynamic is the idea that it was a west to east conveyance. you also saw that at the university of arkansas law school, the sent a young, important rising star nazi

lawyer to the university of arkansas to do a study of american race law because they wanted to learn about how america could be seen as a paragon of democracy and the good guy country in the world while oppressing african- americans to the degree that we were, while oppressing indigenous americans to the degree that we were and file conquering countries around the world and subjugating the people in those countries as subjects in that sense. how is it that america looks good in their constitution says none of this is possible but they are still doing it? they thought that was an excellent idea, and so they sent a nazi lawyer, heinrich krieger, to the university of arkansas to do a deep study of american racist law, and the way that you could have a 14th amendment and also jim crow.

they brought that. it was a nazi government production. they brought his report back to munich and berlin and used it as the basis for a discussion for writing the nuremberg laws to strip of their citizenship in germany. they learned some of that from us, and if you think that it is something in the german character that makes you susceptible to fascism, i invite you to spend time thinking about that anecdote. it is very disturbing. anecdote it is very disturbing. it's a quick and easy way to get my floors clean. wetjet absorbs and locks grime deep inside. look at that! swiffer wetjet. known as a passionate artist. known for loving the outdoors. known for getting everyone together. no one wants to be known for cancer, but a treatment can be. keytruda is known to treat cancer. fda-approved for 17 types of cancer, including certain early-stage cancers. one of those cancers is triple-negative breast cancer. keytruda may be used with chemotherapy medicines

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urban headlands last few days about the sort of vision put together around people around. about what a second term would look like and particularly, staffing and particularly, who the lawyers what the lawyers would do and how the lawyers would approach their job. one of things that i recognized in the last days of the trump administration is that the rule of law which is like a grandiose and abstract term, is just as a kind of sociological fact, what sort of acculturation of a class of lawyers will or will or won't go for at a certain. in reality, what it that when it's time to do the coup, which lawyers will be like, yes. and

which will be like, no. and that is a sociological fact, as an abstract fact about the law because the law is no, you can't. but if you get people with bad enough faith and that enough intentions and sort of morally dubious and smart enough. >> smart enough is important plea they can come up with ways to make a colorable argument that, yes. we got lucky insofar that there was really not, there were a few, but there were many more who didn't. >> yes. >> but that idea that like, it comes down to that, which it sort of shows up in that fayetteville chapter, that everyone who is operating the system were lawyers knows what they are doing. that really haunts me. because it is what i think about the most when i read the stories about the 2025 project, about trump's plans, and about what ultimately the guardrail is that keeps us the democracy

under rule of law and not something like a dictatorship clean right and to be clear, i should just say this, the book is called prequel, not just because of the bad guys but because of the good guys. like there is no only hitler is hitler, only are . there is no water analogy to germany and the , there isn't one, don't try to make one the prequel to people to sort of learn from here, the story that went before that feels like the antecedent what we are in now where the americans who were fighting against the evil in this previous time. both in the government, but also mostly outside of the government, people were trying to outflank and expose them and hold them to account. and that is, so i should just, i was feel like, i know it is obvious to everybody here. it is important to say. but in terms of what is going

on in contemporary terms, thinking about this project 2025 stefan i realized that having another one of those moments which, you know me well enough to know it happens all the time, which is that everybody sees it one way and i am really stuck on a piece of it and i see differently and i can't let it go. and that is the insurrection act part of it. so the reporting in the washington post last sunday that trump, the project 2025 plan involves invoking the insurrection act on the first day that he is sworn in for his next term. and that keeps getting discussed as how crazy is that trump wants to use the military against peaceful protesters? well first of all, these protesters, hypothetical, we don't know that they exist, also there is nothing in them invoking the insurrection act that has anything to do with protesters. if you, on your first day in office, give yourself the power to use the u.s. military against u.s. civilians on u.s. soil, do think it matters

whether or not there is a protest anywhere in the country that day or any subsequent day? it is -- [ applause ] it is to copy and sitting on the table the first act of the play that will be used by the end of the play, and it is accruing power to himself in a way that, it is not like they will do it for 12 hours and then give it back. right? the idea of the authoritarian project is to gather all power to the leader, both inside the government and outside the government, so you're not allowed to be a political opponent, you're also not allowed to be a media critic and you are not allowed to be civic society if that civic society entails opposition of the leader. this is what fascism is, this is how it works. and there may be a form of government that includes other sources of authority when the leader takes over. but those other sources of authority in the government will be either neutered or closed down. and so the congress will not

function. the state will no longer be free , civil society will not be allowed to do anything that is critical or in opposition, political opponents will not be tolerated. ultimately, disfavored minorities will be scapegoated and then you had down and elimination missed path. this is how these things go. and to know that the, i will accrue all power to myself, i will unify civilian and military authority on day one and have that be the announced plan. it just means that we are there. this is it. we are not in a hypothetical confrontation with a leader who promises authoritarian rule. we are in an explicit choice. >> the choice part is the part that i think a lot of people have a hard time with. and it is something that appears in the book, which is that fascism, in both its

italian and german forms. differently in spain, actually. functioned a little different there. but it is a popular movement. it is not, you know, and this is the trump era. but it is the case that like, there is mass mobilization and tons of people and millions of people were like yes, we want this. and there is sort of a fascinating irony to this. which is it is a mass movement of actual grassroots supporters mobilizing in favor of what will ultimately be an authoritarian project that makes the civil society that allows for mass movements, basically to go away. and i think a lot of people probably come in this room, listening to this podcast or watching this have a hard time being like, how is this popular? how is this popular and why is

this popular? and i am curious if you feel like you have got inside that you have drawn from. it is not like a precise apples to apples. but people wanting a charismatic leader who is going to fight for them and sort of defend they are purity or their pace. >> embody the nation. >> embody the nation against its enemies, foreign and domestic, that is a very popular recipe, for sure. >> there's different kinds of authoritarianism. fascism is a mass mobilization movement and that is also complex because one of the things that happened in fascist society, it becomes impossible not to be part of the movement. so you may be an enthusiast. but even if you're not, you're probably going to be out there wearing the badge and doing the thing. that is, you create the illusion of unitary, of unitary nation. it is all subject to and

a fan of the great leader and who you're not allowed to oppose. >> huey long, i don't think he was a fascist but he was in authoritarianism. he says, you can get to a point where it looks like it is a democracy, it is not a democracy anymore because people are so happy with the leader. please god. >> no one is complaining anymore because you just solved it. this is his line about >> while bother voting? we all agree. that was kind of his line. it is amazing, too that louisiana was interest you would routinely described as a dictatorship. in court it was described as a dictatorship. it was a defense actually used by people who were put on trial in federal court for having been part of his immensely corrupt graph schemes in louisiana. the judge, the judges would say , well, you weren't huey long so you did not have a choice in

the matter. this is a dictatorship. you don't actually have free will so yes, you took the bribes but you are kicking them up to him. it was accepted that he was a dictator and that is why fascists love the idea of huey long and that is confusing if you look at authoritarianism as a conservative versus liberal thing because lots of things about huey long kind of look liberal. policy does not matter, it is about accruing all power to the leaders and that is all that matters. and they will say and do anything in order to get all the power. once they have got it, that is the point. >> there is a certain kind of specific visual grammar and sort of language syntax, and cadence to fascism or to broadly authoritarian movements. popular leadership holds. and there's a picture in the book of huey long big portrait and rallying and you see it immediately you're like oh, i

know exactly what this is. there is the big sure of the guy . and i feel that way about, to bring it back to the contemporary. i feel about that like the use. trump this weekend in a speech to describe there's something in the same way when you see that photo you're like i know what i'm looking at. i hear a populist leader described the other people on the political spectrum as vermin. infested the nation. i just know what that is. >> everybody knows what that is. and i think he knows what that is. >> yes. >> this also something, there's a little, a little bit of, i don't even know, i don't know what we should call it. i think of it as a playground think that he does in terms of his politics. do you remember where the idea of fake news came from, that

phrase? that phrase was not donald trump's phrase. that was used to describe what was happening in russian information spaces, where they were writing legitimately fake made up new stories and then siloing them into the u.s. news echo system through pro-russian sort of covert sources. and it was a legitimate thing. this thing didn't happen in montenegro but russian propaganda sources wrote that this thing happen in montenegro and now weirdly there are right wing news sources in america that are describing the thing that happened in montenegro that never happened. it was a real thing. it was part of what was going on with the russian disinformation and implement and election interference in 2016. and people were starting to figure it out that that was one of the weird things that was happening in our information universe in that election. and then trump adopted it and said all news is fake news.

and so then you can use that term anymore to describe this one technical thing which we had been previously describing and without a term to describe it, we then lost track of it. because then it became a thing that had a meaningless name. so you can't talk about that thing anymore. there is some of that. and i think that. >> with what? >> with using the word vermin. and with the way that he is now calling his enemies fascist. >> yes, he has started doing that. >> he has started calling you and me and everybody who is not team trump is a fascist, he has to save the hunter from the fascist and he is using this terminology which is overtly and obviously fascist callback language, things like the enemy of the people. but calling your, the internal enemy vermin that needs to be exterminated, he knows what he is doing. that will make everybody say wow, that is the most fascist thing i've ever heard. fascist, no you are the

fascist. and then all the sudden it doesn't mean anything anymore. it is just an epithet that flies around in politics and we don't have a word anymore to describe what this thing is that he is trying to do. this is -- [ applause ] so as he starts to advance, what i think is a war of overtly authoritarian project, watch for him to call everybody else and authoritarian and a tyrant and a fascist. it is to rob those words of their function. >> there are people in your book who are, ought to be the next american hitler and don't have it in them. i don't mean morally, i just mean whatever the stuff is, the charisma, whatever it is. and i guess i, something i was noticing about reading your book. what is the thing? what is the thing that makes you successful in becoming huey

long? what is the thing that makes trump successful in this -- it is a particular kind of type. authoritarian populist. different people have tried it in different ways it has a lot of commonalities to the rhetoric. and some succeed and some don't. and it feels alchemical to me at some level. i can't tell you what it is because i can describe it, i understand the basic dynamics of it. i understand blaming some small disfavored minority for the nation's ills and the invigorating feeling of start solidarity. the nation's blood all coursing through the rally and all being directed in one place like a bunch of solar panels aimed up at a water tower. everything together and boil it together. and i can get that and i can look at someone who is gifted at rhetoric and has presence and charisma, which is 100%

true with him. but in the end, it is like if you ask him to come if i had it nba draft of fascists autocrats, i was running through the paces, like i don't know at the end what makes someone work for someone and not for someone else. >> i have told you this is a very, popular opinion. but i do not believe that the leader matters. >> this is what i sort of think . >> the movement matters. >> he backs into it at some level. >> you need a country that is looking for an authoritarian solution. and you need people who are willing to submit themselves to the authority of the person who says they deserve it. and so you have got, franco was napoleon -sized. hitler was a dork. mussolini was a journalist and a socialist. >> those aren't the worst things.

>> they're not the worst things in the world but not a great lincoln set up for like you know what i mean? like there's nothing about these guys that is inherently, that transformed their countries against their will. those countries were subject to an anti-democratic pro- authoritarian movement that had skills. and the people were ready to do it. and so you end up with a huey long, being very successful in the project. the person who fdr most feared running against. in 1936, was huey long. and in 1935, as huey long was gearing up to start his presidential campaign, where he was going to run against fdr and he believed he could beat him, that, in 1935, fdr was at the summer white house in hyde park, new york, and he had summoned father coughlin to come talk to him about the fact that coughlin was clearly

supporting huey long, he believed that coughlin and long together with absolutely bring america to a fascist leadership within two years. he thought it was an unstoppable force, the two of them and he was there to try to talk coughlin out of it. and as coughlin was driving to fdr's house that day for that talk, huey long was assassinated. >> spoiler alert! >> [ laughter ] that was 1935, and that is the way things went that way. but in terms of what he belongs power was, i think what was a magic about him was his unbridled appetite for power. the thing that he did was, yes, he had, he paved roads and to give away free school textbooks and he was a spellbinding order and he wore silk outfits and all sorts of things you can say about him. but really, what he was a maestro of his power. he never met a source of

authority that he could not accrue to himself. and that was the thing that you need to be able to do to be able to lead a society in that direction. while telling a country, while telling people that they need to do it, that they can only trust you and that their enemies are out to get them and you're the only one that can protect them. that is how it works. works. will okay, so here's my most requested hack for stubborn odors. you'll need vinegar, a large salad bowl and... oh, hi! have you tried tide fabric rinse? it works after your detergent to fight deep odors 3 times better than detergent alone. i love that. try tide fabric rinse. known as a loving parent. known for lessons that matter. known for being a free spirit. no one wants to be known for cancer, but a treatment can be. keytruda is known to treat cancer, fda-approved for 17 types of cancer.

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can ask a personal question? so i make this to when i talk in my job where i say, something along the lines of, my staff here has heard, it is now going on eight years. with, thinking about this dude. >> [ laughter ] huey long. we huey long >> [ laughter ] >> and like, obviously, the

world's smallest violet, i'm extremely lucky to do what i do and i love what i do. but there is exhaustion factor to it. do you guys are that way, too? [ applause ] but there is also like, there is a but there's also just like you got to be indefinable because the movement on the other side seems indefatigable. and are you, the are you exhausted, too? seriously, how are you, because people ask me all the time. i feel for myself, i feel very mission driven, i feel like the stakes are currently high when you said before, like we're looking at simply talking about this day one. i feel that way and i felt that way for much of this. that is animated, he gives me a sense of zeal and mission and energy. but also it is like, sometimes i am like, i cannot.

you know. and so i just want those two i'm curious about how you do it >> i think one thing that you and i have talked about this over the years. one of the things that is a privilege and a pleasure of our job, not a pleasure, privilege. is that if we are here and if you watch msnbc and if you know us [ applause ] you are thinking about the stuff all the time, right? you're consuming the news all the time and you are thinking about our country and you are worrying about the worst people in america what they might do next all the time. we all are. you, then, have to do all that and then go do your job. chris and i are doing all that i our jobs is processing it. so it is therapy. we are all being put through the same wringer that chris and i we get to do our day jobs and talking and that is a great which. and to that end, part of my day job has also been writing this

and doing the trend and doing whatever. i am ultra-seasoned, too, right now. and what is interesting to me about that is, again, the good guys. like you think that the bad guys in this are stuart, most of them are. most of the bad guys but the really obscure people are the good guys, are the americans who , you know, the beleaguered secretary who is working for this minnesota senator was such a freaking creek every time she gets paid by the sent, she has to hand back out her salary to hand cash that is how much power she had in the work yet she went to the fbi. and she told the fbi what her senator boss was doing with that well-known nazi agent. that was a woman who did not sign up for the marines to be a paratrooper somewhere but she

was somebody who was not in a powerful position at all and she did something that was really important for her country. i am very enthused to learn her story. i am very enthused to learn about the guy who was like this really milquetoast normal middle-of-the-road guy whose field of expertise was direct- mail advertising. and yet, when his son came home from his first semester at college and was like that, i think all this propaganda, this anti-semitic prude german pro- fascist propaganda at school. i don't know what to do with it and he was like, well, i do happen to have an area of expertise that relates to stuff sent in the mail. and he of light is random area of expertise to the coming a one-man expository journalist and investigator to find out and to literally document for the good of the country a multimillion dollar covert

propaganda campaign that the germans were running through 24 congressional offices and multiple front organizations all over the country. posted and he was an admin. he was a random civilian who did this. i'm so energized that stories like that because who is going to be that secretary? who is going to be that admin, who is going to be the guy working for the adl in southern california, running a spy ring of world war i veterans because they noticed that german groups in los angeles were starting to have hitler youth summer camps and they were worried about that who were the heroes among us today who didn't sign up to be heroes but heroism is coming to their door. [ applause ] right? so i am energized i am energized and i also feel like, for all of us, being a 250-year- old democracy is hard. there aren't very many. and the seeds of anti-

democratic projects and authoritarian projects are within the heart of every person who lives in a democracy because democracy, like you are saying, is about us all deciding something together us as equals with our rights and our sacred lives, given to us by the almighty god, and equal before one another, can decide together how we will be governed, that is a full, unless you think that some of the people who are in polity with you because they shouldn't get a say, and who among us has not felt that way? it is not an evil thing to think , actually, i have got a better idea than you, you should get a say. it is a natural ing. but as small d democrats we had to be committed to the idea that this is a better system of government and all the others for all of its flaws. the great tactical disadvantage for those of us who will fight

for democracy is that fighting for democracy, you have one tool to do it, it's democracy. you must use democratic means to defeat anti-democratic forces. and that can feel like fighting with a hand tied behind your back, you're either a democrat or you are not. and that makes it, it is hard. but we have got to do it. an alternative to pills, voltaren is a clinically proven arthritis pain relief gel, which penetrates deep to target the source of pain with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicine directly at the source. voltaren, the joy of movement.

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i have a few questions. and that actually segues into the. in stamford, connecticut, she says, i like this question. how do you handle close friend or family or others that you know who have extreme or different political views? asking for a friend. >> [ laughter ] i live world rural western massachusetts. and living in rural western new england has a lot of great things about it now we have the internet, which is new, which is really made things a lot better but one of the things that i think, as a kid who grew

up in the suburbs and have lived in cities my whole life, lived in the country for the past 20 years, one of the things that it has taught me is that politics is only one thing in any one person's life. and even for people who are committed news junkies and political activist or working for a political party or an elected official themselves, they also have tears getting into their trash. and they also have lots of heartbreak about what has happened to the patriots and they also have a lot of >> a lot of heartbreak. and they are taking care of their elderly parents who they didn't expect to be taking care of at this weight in their life and they got both kids and parents and they are the responsible family member and they have got another family member who is in recovery that they are so hopeful for but also so scared for. and there is, i believe,

something really important that you can do in your nonpolitical life that will improve your political life, which is half personal relationships that are face-to-face that are about everything besides politics, too. and it's hard to do. i think post-covid it is even harder to do. but do you have a book club? do you want to maybe start a book club? it could be on zoom. do you have a neighbor who lives alone who wants -- do you want to be part of a civic group that is working through your town. do you want to volunteer at the vet hospital? something that connects you to the people in your immediate area that isn't about finding consensus about what is going

to happen in the 2024 elections is good for your community, it is good for your soul, and when things get very hard, being able to look at other evil in the eyes, and recognize each other as human can save your life. clean yeah. [ applause ] >> up got another one, this is from pat in pennsylvania, this is completely out of the loop and i don't think a single person in this audience has given us any thought. clean nice lead-in, good. >> what you think of the latest polls? why did the show biden and trump neck and neck? >> [ laughter ] i don't know, ask president romney. i don't know. you are actually much better at reading pole than i am. you are, you do a better job, your more subtle with them and

everything i just look at them and go -- i feel like polls, in my adult lifetime, our garbage. except occasionally they are right. >> except when they are not. >> and so like yes, you can spend all your time worrying about the polls or you can work as hard as possible for the candidate you want to win. and you know, sometimes there is interesting information about like, a specific group of people who used to think this about your chosen candidate now this about that person. that might be helpful in terms of the way you want to go work for your candidate. but it is the point of them, especially for us, just as a public, for people who are not political professionals is that they tell you what work needs to be done. so if you're worried about the polls, calibrate your level of political involvement to match exactly your anxiety about the polls.

if you are freaked out about it, just do something. again, like you do something with other humans. you will be better for it, and you will be more resilient. again, in difficult times >> all right, this is one from mep and chapel hill, north carolina. i think i might have met debbie before the show. i think that is you. this is a trade craft question that i also have. i have watched you up close for years, had you come up with such amazing topics? that start off seeming totally random and drive a stake through the heart of a relevant event? >> it is, it is that meteor thing. i think i have >> but how. i want you to get real brass tacks process. like where does this seed come of where the random anecdote that is the start of the thing?

you are reading all the time, or you follow some set of -- >> in general, it is good to read all the time. the one thing i always tell people in our business is like, if there is one piece of advice i could impart to you, well, if you're a female person, first of all, never show your emotions, no one will understand. but otherwise -- >> good time. >> still true. but, in general, for everybody, read beyond the assigned reading . like whatever the assigned reading that is going on in the news cycle, read beyond that you never know what is going to be relevant. read stuff that interest you that is nonfiction and that is generously and that is history and that his academic work that interest you. you never know when it is going to be relevant and when it will be helpful. so just in general. but the way that it works on a day-to-day basis is that there is something going on in the news that i am interested in or

confused by or want to understand better and i just keep looking stuff up about it until i find something that interests me and i teach myself that thing and i teach other people. but it depends, again, your mileage may vary. my story telling style does not work for everybody. but if you don't mind coming along on the journey that i am on, i really believe that over the course of the conversation, you can get to a graduate school level of complexity with anybody as long as you're willing to start together in kindergarten. and that is why i -- [ applause ] that is why i repeat, like some people don't like that i repeat and i will restate and i will back in restate. and some people find that very frustrating. like i heard you the seventh time. i didn't need it the 17th. but that is because we are starting here and we are going here and we need to make sure that we are all there every step of the way. and the weirder the topic, the

more unfamiliar, i think the more you have to just really pay attention to the way you tell the story so that by the time you get to the end of it, there is a, oh, it all comes together. i've got it the way that i always, like my shorthand for myself is that by the time we get to the end of the story, i want you to understand it well enough that you could tell somebody else. not just like the clip of rachel doing it but you have got it so that you can tell that story. that is what i always try to do. >> have you -- what are changes that you have made to your method of in process and final versions? the long career you have got ahead of >> the a block is getting longer , sorry. if you represent one of our advertisers, i am particularly sorry.

a real consequence in that regard. yeah, i don't know. like i said, i do have this kind of one gear brain and so i don't think that i have changed very much in the way that i think about the news. i tried for a wild to pay attention to the visual elements that are on the screen while i am talking, but that didn't work. so i gave up on that. that was my big try, my big effort to try to notice. >> i feel like you are very involved in the production elements. >> yes, but i don't look at them while i am talking. >> you can't look at them while you are talking. if you're looking while you're talking? >> i'm not aware of, i will choose when i, but i don't know when they are on the screen. i don't beak to them and i don't know who you are looking at. especially for those sudden gush moments. always discreet protects like no other. with a rapid dry core

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little bit i'm curious to use say from norfolk, pennsylvania, had you decompress due to the critical nature of your job? >> there is a little bit of dishing. i am since i switched to mondays instead of being on five days a week, i know that you guys don't -- more, more, more. thank you. here's the thing, i couldn't, i was dying. and so i am sorry that i'm only there on monday but i am off. [ applause ] >> i really can't overemphasize how unsustainable her entire workflow is >> it is really bad. but the one thing that i, like now i am one day week so i'm not dying for that is good except i did used to account for compartmentalization this is, on the schedule of the

daily live show. so that meant as a matter how long i work during the course of the day, i am live at 9:00 p.m. and no longer live at 10:01, sorry, lawrence and then at 10:0 when i am done and i will not work the rest of the evening, there is a breaking news thing and then i will do the ready to do in the morning before i start working and there was an off switch and and on switch, off switch. a switch. and the switch is only there on mondays. so what is happening is that i am just working seven days a week and i'm working until midnight every day. because i'm doing all these other things, which are fantastic. and it is actually, it is bad. i have to fix it. >> last question from jared in millerton, new york. what keeps you up at night? >> wine [ laughter ] i used to do writing cocktail moments.

>> i remember that. >> if i am in the same room with something that is over 80 proof right now, i am awake for five days. a glass of wine and i am up at 3:00 in the morning being 50 years old. so that is the true story of what is keeping me up at night i just outgrew the ability to. but, in terms of this work, i do , one of the reason that i said that thing about trying to have some in person connections with other people that live near you in your life right now, one of the reason that i said that and i have been trying to tell people about when i'm speaking at audiences, this is because i do think that we are going to have a really hard year and i think it is going to be a really weird year. and if it goes very badly, it is going to be more weird years after that. but regardless of how it goes a

year from now, it is to be a really tough year and there were , i want us all to make ourselves as resilient as we can. and that means not having baggage trailing behind you that you don't want to be trailing behind you making up with your estranged family members commit me getting to know your neighbors, it means if you have very serious concerns about, it working in a political pain. it means having something to do in the civic life of where you are so that you are not alone while we have a tough year in this country. this has come for us, in this generation, in this country, and lifetime and it does not come for every generation, it has come for us and we need to be up to it and it means you cannot live in your phone, and you cannot [ applause ] you

can't hold from of despair and powerless. and you need to have people who you can call, not just because they are on your side, but because you know them and they know you and you are americans together in a difficult moment and i just, i want that kind of resilience for us all so sort of a plug. >> rachel maddow, ladies and gentlemen. [ applause ]

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