>> i feel i let everybody down. >> how do you want us to think and remember anton? >> he was a good child. a good son. a good citizen. >> i want anton to be a symbol of what could happen to anyone's child. i want anton to be remembered forever. >> that is all for this edition of dateline. i am craig melvin. thank you for watching. this sunday, the threat to democracy. >> democracy's othe ballot. >> i don't think you're going to have another election in this country if we don't win this election. >> it's one of the top issues in the 2024 election. >> mail-in voting is totally corrupt. we have to watch the cheating.

>> after the fight over the 2020 election, what lessons have been learned? >> someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get killed. >> election workers facing death threats. >> we've seen a dangerous increase in threats against public servants. >> in 2024, the bad actors will be more coordinated, more strategic. >> we support every voter right free and accurate. >> this morning a by part can conversation with the secretaries of state in four key battleground state. plus, the threat of disinformation, artificial intelligence and the increase of heightened risk from foreign actors. i'll speak with anne applebaum and rene de-res ta. and in a year when we'll hold

elections, how will it work? joining us, peter banker, amna nawaz, evelyn far ka, and ben ginsberg. welcome to sunday and a special edition of "meet the press." ♪♪ >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this is a special edition of "meet the press" with kristen welker. good sunday morning. in just over five months voters will decide a presidential election with stakes that could not be higher for issues from the economy and abortion to immigration, foreign policy, and the supreme court. voters will pick 11 governors, 34 u.s. senators, 435 members of the house, decide dozens of statewide ballot measures, and

choose thousands of state and local ee officials. but in the midst of a historic election, 81% say the democracy is under threat. nearly a third of the voters feel so strongly about it they'll vote for or against a candidate on that issue regardless of that candidate's stand on oesh issues. for months president biden has tried to put democracy on the ballot. >> not since president lincoln and the civil war have freedom and democracy have been as solid at home as they are today. >> former president trump who's charged with 14 felony counts related to efforts to subvert the 2020 election continues to falsely claim he won and to warn his supporters not to trust the 2024 results. >> keep your eyes open, watch the cheating, the radical left, democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020. the radical democrats rigged the

presidential election in 2020, and we're not going to allow them to rig the election in 2024. the radical democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020, and we're not going to allow them to rig the election in 2024. >> mr. trump has refused to consent to the election results saying, quote, if everything was honest, i'll gladly accept the results. if it's not, you have to fight for the rights of the country. that sentiment was echoed by his supporters. >> do you think there's a chance of biden winning fair and square in 2024 ? >> absolutely not. >> 65% said they don't believe

president biden won legitimately. in a march quinnipiac vote, a third say they're not confident the votes in the election will be counted accurately. nearly 40% of local election officials surveyed this year by the brennan center said they have experienced threats, harassment, or abuse just for doing their jobs. as justice department officials put it last week, those threats have been supercharged online by new technology like artificial intelligence. >> if you threaten to harm or kill an election worker, volunteer, or official, the justice department will find you. the public servants who administer our elections must be able to do their jobs without fearing for their safety or their families. >> joining me now for a bipartisan conversation on how to save the democracy in 2024 are four chief election

officials from battleground states. brad raffensperger, al schmidt, jocelyn benzson, adrian fontes. thank you for being here for this really important conversation. we know it's a busy time for you, so we really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> we're looking forward to the conversation. let's start off with the fact that all of you sitting at this table had experienced a form of pressure from the former president from his allies in 2020. because, of course, they were not accepting the election results. secretary raffensperger, let me start with you. as we head into 2024, your state is dealing with two criminal cases surrounding efforts to overturn the election. is georgia ready for 2024? >> we are obviously ready and battle-tested. we showed that based on the 2020 results. we have voting i.d. for all

voting in georgia and early voting by 17 days and the results are going to be a lot quicker, but i think i've shown i'll do the hard work and fight every day to make sure we have fair, honest, and accurate elections. >> secretary benson, let me turn to you. 15 people have been indicted in michigan for their involvement in submitting fake slate of electors to congress back in 2020. how is michigan preparing? do you feel as though michigan is prepared? >> i'm really proud of michigan to ensure we're continuing to increase our elections. we'll have nine days of early voting in our state we didn't have in 2020, and we have more people signing up to be election workers on both sides of the aisle than ever before, and we've also developed efforts to educate our citizens about the truth about the elections to help go into communities to know who to turn to when they have

questions about their vote. >> secretary of state schmidt, your take, how are you feeling heading into 2024? we remember back in 2020, it took pennsylvania a few days to count its votes. what are you doing to make sure that you're ready in 2024? will anything be or look different? the shapiro administration has been very committed to working closely with our county partners. we have 67 counties in pennsylvania, and it's really devolved to the county level. that's where the voting takes place. we've worked with them closely to improve mail-in ballot processing and all the rest. >> secretary, let me turn to you. what do you see is the biggest challenge? >> it's the per pep racing of

disinformation from the government officials within the united states of american, whether it's for political or other gain. this is the problem that's bigger than any other problem, the mis, dis, and mall information. we use all of the different techniques that are similar. we all check our voter registration rolls to make sure only voters get on. there are checks and balances all the way through the system to the end, and we're going to keep providing good elections for all of our voters across the country. >> go ahead. >> you know, one of the things, all of us have been part of the 2020 election in one way or another, and we've all seen how election officials around the country are committed to professional operations of euro elections, speaking the truth and ensuring we give the voters the confidence they need. so i'm really grateful for all of us and our ability to rise

above partisan affiliation and be professionals when it comes to administering this election and as we say, making it harder to cheat on this front. >> as a part of that, there is this election denialism, secretary schmidt. top election officials in 2020 called the 2020 election the most scure in american history, and yet more than a third of the country say they don't believe president biden won the election legitimately in 2020. how do you as secretary of the commonwealth of pennsylvania address that skepticism? how do you convince voters to have faith in this year's results? >> elections have changed a lot in pennsylvania in the last several years, but they've changed for the better. elections have never been more safe and secure with a voter verifiable paper record of every vote that's cast that is used in not one but two audits after every election to ensure the

tabulated results are accurate. so it's changed a lot. it's no wonder people have questions, and it's all our responsibility to answer those questions provided people are asking you questions. they actually want to know the truth about elections. when you know more about them, you have more confidence. >> secretary raffensperger, what is your take and what is your approach to the massive challenge that people are not believing the results and that the elections are secure? >> i do a lot of public speaking and giving them, i guess, a rare view of what happened in 2020 is where 33,000 voters did not show up on election day, republican voters who roted earlier in the year at the republican primary. i talk now how we have voter i.d. and 30 extra days of early voting and we can do a hand

recount of the text. we give voters the confidence in that. 99% of all voters in georgia had a very good experience, and on election night, we just had our general primary last tuesday, the average wait time was under two minutes. sometimes it was one minute. that shows you, we don't have long lines. it's a great experience. >> i think one of the critical components as well is it's not just those of us on tv who run elections. we have almost 10,000 jurisdictions across the united states of america. those are run by your neighbors, your friends. these are folks in our communities who are doing their level-best to ensure that elections continue to be accountable and safe and securing and when folks are missguidedly disparaging these elections based on misinformation, sure, we ear a lot of that. i'm hoping folks will come

around to actually asking intelligent questions, following flew when they hear the reality of the facts on the ground and go from there. we've got to all be listening to one another across the country. >> that's the key, listening. secretary benson, to the point about disinformation, how much of your time does this consume? how concerned are you? >> we said a lot in our darkest moments after the 2020 election when we were inundated with lies and misinformation in an effort to overturn a valid election. truth is on our side and transparency is our friend. we welcome people to ask questions and election workers to work up close to see how secure it is and how many layers we have to ensure only valid citizens are voting and we count valid votes and only valid votes. the offshoot of this as my come

league secretary fontes alluded to, you have the threats. you have to protect the people who protect democracy, and that's a lots of what we're doing to prepare this year. >> you take me to my next question which is about violence, threats against election workers. there's perhaps no more well known case than ruby free miami and shaye moss in your state, secretary raffensperger. they were election workers. they believe they were targetted in 2020. how can you convince people to do these jobs, to put themselves in the line potentially of threats? >> i know that some people just went on to do other things instead of coming back for 2024, but by and large in georgia we're actually in pretty good shape. the county's done a great job of recruitment. i always ask who has volunteered to be a poll worker. i always make sure to give a standing ovation to the person.

that's where the rubber meets the road. it's great work. what we also have done, we have poll worker training for political party observers so a all of a sudden they're going through that poll worker training. they understand all thesafes the in place. >> one thing we've done as relates to the threat environmental, the shapiro administration created a task force with different agencies responsible for election agency administration, different agencies with law enforcement working together. so should any of that ugliness we all experienced in 2020 return, everyone knows whose role is what and how to communicate that information expeditiously, so law enforcement can do its job, the election officials can do the job they do, which is counting votes. >> and you have all received threats, am i right, going back to 2020?

show of hands. yes. secretary fontes, talk about that personally. how did that impact you? how did it impact your family? did you ever think, i'm going to quit my job over this? >> i never thought i was going to quit my job. it's going to take a lot more than that to get this marine off of his post. but i will say it impacted all of us. not just us but our families as well. but not just our families. when you have to tell your neighbors, hey, pay attention to come over or your kids have to have go-bags ready. that's a problem. i think back to what we were talking about just a moment ago, one of the ways i have been looking at this and addressing this is telling the really hard truth, and that is this. threats against elections officials in the united states of america is domestic terrorism.

terrorism is defined as a threat or violence for a political outcome. that's what this is. and i think the department of justice is really ramping up and starting to prosecute. we're working with law enforcement across the country to really start to address these things. it's not too little, too late, but we do have to address it for what it is. >> it strikes me how it's about instilling fear. instilling fear in us as elects officials and instilling fear in voters. >> did you fear --? >> certainly. when you have someone outside with a gun and you have a kid inside you're trying to protect, yeah, certainly i think about that. i think about the freedom fighters in selma. they were afraid, too, but they marched forward because we have a higher responsibility to our country. every voter does, to decide who we're going to be going forward.

we're going to be a country who lives up to ideals and stands up as a citizen and i think all of us have become more emboldened and committed to protect the state of democracy we hold dear in our country. >> secretar schmidt, how do you feel? did you do that? >> i guess put your head down and do it right. that's what we're all called to do. follow the law, follow the constitution. at the end of the day, every allegation that was ever raised, we checked it out and got back to people. as it relates to threats, really what bothered me the most were the ones against my wife and daughter-in-law. >> secretary schmidt, talk about it from your perspective. secretary fontes described it as terrorism. is that how you see it? >> it's to intimidate and try to

keep us at our elected positions from doing or not doing something that is their responsibility, which is sump a -- such a core foundation. we treat them seriously, take them seriously. we take steps to mitigate against them and that people are safe and feel safe at the end of the day. it's important that none of this that we've experienced should keep people from voting, should keep people from stepping up, and i think what we see across the country is people willing to do that, people willing to step forward and make sure that our system functions the way it should. i want to turn now to something that's getting a lot of attention, efforts to prevent noncitizens from voting. we should note that it's exceedingly rare, and yet some officials believe it's an urgent matter, including yourself, secretary raph epps berger? why? and we should note it's already

against the law if you vote and you're not an american citizen. >> i'm the first secretary of state in georgia to do a 100% citizenship verification. what we found was 1,600 people attempted to vote and were not on the registership and were not able to vote. we joust won a court case which came from the left, the coalition of the people's agenda and the new georgia project which was founded by stacey abrams. we won that cause because we stopped it before people were putting on on the voter rolls. any other state that gets used can use us as an example, a precedent. >> we were both going to jump in. >> i've got good news for everyplace. all of us want to make sure only u.s. citizens are voting in this

elections and all of us are following the law and we're ensuring only valid votes are counted in this state. we're all committed to that. regardless of our party affiliation, we're doing all that we can and more to ensure as the facts show in all of our states that only u.s. citizens. >> but the key point you said is federal provisions. there's no provision for state lawover than state law, so states should put in their constitution like the state of georgia, i've asked them to do, make sure american voters are voting. >> i think, secretary raffensperger, you proved the point with the statement you made. you did an audit and made an attempt. up in of those folks registered and actually voted. that means voting is secure in georgia, pennsylvania, and across the country. it's a red herring. arizona, by the way, we've had no-citizen voting law on the books for a long time, and we actually have a separate ballot

for folks who are federal-only voters. our standards are higher than everybody else's, but we've got folks making crazy allegations that they're not. so we really have to look at the response. >> quick response, is it really a red herring? >> there's the left wing groups trying to get noncitizen voting in local elections in washington, d.c., new york city, and in other cities, so if people really truly believe this, why are we getting sued by the left? >> what is clear is this will continue to be a topic of debate. i want to get to ai, because i know you all have something to say about this. secretary fontes, i want to turn to you. you turned yourself into a deepfake to make a powerful point. >> hello. this video was produced as part of our 2024 statewide election security tabletop exercise.

it was created with both the consent and cooperation of the real secretary fontes, which, again s not me. i'm an ai impersonation of him. >> that's chilling. that's a pretty good impersonation. why did you feel that was necessary and what are you doing to combat a.? ai? >> i have to reach back to my past. we look to the weapons of our enemies and we train sfwen them as much as pop. ai is not a new weapon. it's an amplifier of disinformation. what i wanted to do is mike shower our election officials are familiar with it, we had processes to deal with it because our elections are run at the county level as well. we also had a tabletop exercise among several elections officials for the media so our media partners could know how to react to it and recognize it. and in june we're doing tabletop

exercises for law enforcement. the way we're dealing with it is taking away the newness of it early so our folks will not be able to not just recognize it but deal with it as quickly as possible. >> secretary schmitt, what are you doing in pennsylvania to address this? >> we're obviously monitoring this environmental. we have a team focused on it. i think one of the biggest concerns is how much ai has developed in the last few years. in 2020 we saw absurd threats just spread so easily, knuckleheads from other states putting guns in their cars and coming up to the convection center in philadelphia to keep from eligible votes being counted. people get motivated by somebody's idiot uncle posting something on facebook. this is a far greater concern. >> how do you address that, secretary raffensperger, when they're looking online and believing what they see? to that, it's getting out as quick as you can to break that

narrative so that conspiracy theory doesn't have time to germinate and spread all oeuf the country. >> we have to protect voters from being pooled by this new technology. like secretary fontesing we're always doing table talks. we're requiring disclaimers and diplomacy closers of ai technology, and i hope the federal legislation will pass as well to put this in every state. >> i can't thank you all enough. we'd love to have you all back. extraordinary to have you all sitting here at the same time. thank you. >> thank you. when we come back, we'll take a deeper dive into how disinformation is affecting countries around the world. our conversation with anne applebaum is next. r conversatioe applebaum is next.

>> welcome back. nearly three-quarters of americans believe

it is very or somewhat likely welcome back. nearly three-quarters of americans believe it is very or somewhat likely ai will be used to manipulate social media to influence the outcome of the election. admiral haines warned foreign actors including russia and china are taking advantage of new technology. >> russia relies on a vast multi-media apparatus which consists of its intelligence services and social media trolls. >> and joining me now are anne applebaum staff writer for the atlantic and author of the upcoming book "autocracy inc.: the dictators who want to run the world." and rene diresta.

i want to start with something you wrote in a recent article to open the conversation. you write, quote, a part of the political spectrum is not just the combined narratives that come from russia, china, and their ilk, but an active participant in croating and spreading them. what do you think the status of this phenomenon is five months out from our election? >> i think it's important to understand that for the last decade russia and now china and other autocracies have been seeking to influence and shape arguments inside the united states. they do this both for their own reasons because they want to demonstrate to their own populations that the united states is chaotic and divisive and is not there for a model of democracy, but they do it to simply weaken and divide us so we're a weaker power on the world stage. that's something that's been going on it for a long time.

we saw this in 2016 and there have been repeats since then. the new development is there's a part of the american political spectrum that's doing essentially the same thing, that also sees that it's in its interest to portray, whether it's the u.s. government or u.s. political system or u.s. electoral system as weak, degenerate, failing, and by doing so, they, there, boost their own argument, which is that we are a radical force who are going to take ore and change the system. and the odd thing that you see on the internet now is the two things reinforcing one another, so you can trace russia and chinese action, and you can then see it promoted and amplified by americans, and visa versa. >> renee, anne is talking about the fact that all of this divides america, and misinformation and disinformation are art the heart of that city.

they're seen to be the biggest global risks in the next two years ahead of things like global warming, inflation, and other threats. what do you think americans can do to fight back against this, particularly given this critical moment for it? >> i think that study is very interesting. i intelligent to disagree. i would put a number of things a little higher, but i will say is the problem with disinformation and propaganda in general is it impacts your responses to address. we have to come together and function in a unified environment. when you have propaganda that sits there serving to e do provide people, there's no ability to have that consensus. there's no ability to address that collective action. so i think if the american people are going to respond and move forward, we have to realize

both domestic actors who again fit from it politically but also state and foreign adversaries, we need to see that for what it is ant continue to find some sort of shared american identity that enables us to keep moving forward. >> part of that, ann, we're seeing the way foreign adversaries, foreign autocratic leaders actually run their countries. you note that leaders like putin, bashar, nicolas maduro, they used to defend their lives. now they're not doing that. they're saying this is the truth. >> the real change and development in propaganda we've seen in the last decade and several decades even is that their goal is no longer simply to promote themselves, to promote a beautiful image. if you remember the soviet union

used to show posters of men with square jaws driving tractors and it was a lot of stuff about steel production. they've given that up because it was too easy for people to see and understand it was not true. what they do now is use repetitive lives, mostly about us or the democratic world, more broadly, and they rely freely and indiscriminately about everything. they'll use absurd metaphors, describe siri as a tour paradise in the middle of a war. they'll say a plane that crashed over russia was a malaysian plane and it was a plot. crazy insane stuff. the point of doing that is make people not believe anything. this is the famous tactic called

the firehose of falsehood. if there's lie, lie, lie, one after the next, people are going to say, i don't believe anything, e oom going to stay home. that's an authoritarian project and a project that's part of the electorate as well. >> renee, pick up on that point. within this context, i just had a conversation with doris kearns goodwin recently who said the country in some ways is as divideded as it was before the civil war in part because before the civil war, there were very divided media ecosystems, and that's what we're seeing now. to your point, people believe and choose what they want to believe. >> so when you have a media ecosichl where people are significantly divided and pole larrized, they're following influencers. not the media. you have aen entirely new medial ecosichl. they're drawn to somebody because they seem like you, they

relate to you, speak to you, understand, they know the memes you follow. they understand the deep lore of your community. these are the things we as a group believe. when you have those nearby communities and ecosystems that speak solely to those niche communities, what you hear, you don't have to persuade that community to believe something new. you sort of reinforce a belief they hold and you do a the same thing for a different group and a different group. you can create different scenarios. so we used to have for a brief moment in time as the historian you referenced is absolutely correct, there was this period of very, very fragmented media and now we're returning back to the fragmentation. >> renee, how does a.i. -- we just had a big conversation. how does ai play into that and how much does it con play

indicate efforts to to actually tell people, this is the reality, the truth, a real piece of inform sngs. >> generative ai is a tool and can be used in many different ways. it creates content indistinguishable from human context. you can use it to create text to run bots. we used to identify bots because they would be repetitious. we called it copy pasta. they used the same phrase at the same time. ai enables the operator not to do that. it's very cheap to create novel text. same with images. you'll see propaganda photos go out that are clearly edit. you can compare one photo to the other and see that that's happened. when you have a photo that's generated and there is nothing to compare it to. you don't have a single source of truth. so at that point you're relying

on an authenticaor to determine if it's real or not. >> anne, final thought to you. how much is this a there it? >> i think it's a fund mental threat. you look at what the issues are in the campaign. you should also look at where your nevadaings is coming and make sure that it's true. >> fantastic conversation. thank you both so much for being here, anne apple baum and renee diresto. when we come back, our "meet the press minute" is next. k, out the press minute" is next.

i don't want you to move. i'm gonna miss you so much. you realize we'll have internet waiting for us at the new place, right? oh, we know. we just like making a scene. transferring your services has never been easier. get connected on the day of your move with the xfinity app. can i sleep over at your new place? can katie sleep over tonight? sure, honey! this generation is so dramatic! life's daily battles are not meant to be fought alone.

- we're not powerless. so long as we don't lose sight of what's important. don't be afraid to seize that moment to talk to your friends. - cloud, you okay? because checking in on a friend can create a safe space. - the first step on our new journey. you coming? reach out to a friend about their mental health. seize the awkward. it's totally worth it. >> welcome back. the u.s. has long played the role of promoting democracy arou the u.s. has long played the role of promoting democracy around the world dating back to the end of the second world war

and accelerated after the collapse. secretary of state madeleine albright joined this broadcast in 1977 ahead of a meeting with china's president. >> madam secretary, "the new york times," the headline, jong says u.s. is too pushy for democracy, that american democracy and freedom are not absolute concepts. do you agree with him? >> no, i don't. we've had a very interesting discussion with him also when i was in asia and variously when i travel is whether democracy is just a western concept, and i don't believe it is. i think it is -- we know that generally it is an accepted value that people should be able to make their own decisions and live lives the way they want to, and i -- if you go back his of theically, other parts of the world believe that people have inherent value and can make -- live their own lives. so i don't think it's a western concept that we're too pushy

about. i don't believe you can ever be too pushy about democracy. when we come back, what more needs to be done to restore public faith in elections? the panel is next. faith in ele? the panel is next. everybody wants super straight, super white teeth. they want that hollywood white smile. new sensodyne clinical white provides 2 shades whiter teeth and 24/7 sensitivity protection. i think it's a great product. it's going to help a lot of patients.

what is cirkul? cirkul is what you hope for when life tosses lemons your way. cirkul is your frosted treat with a sweet kick of confidence. cirkul is the effortless energy that gets you in the zone. cirkul, available at walmart and drinkcirkul.com. >> welcome back. the panel is here. amna nawaz, co-anchor of "pbs newshour," peter baker, welcome back. the panel is here. anna navaz, peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times." ben ginsberg, and evelyn farkas, executive director of the mccain institute.

thank you all for being here. peter, i want to start with you. you have covered every american president going back to bill clinton. i don't say that to date you in any way, but you look great. >> including mad lit albright. >> exactly. you have just written a book about former president donald trump five months out before the election. how much do you think this moment is testing our democracy? >> there are two ways of looking at our elections. one is the way you did with the secretary of state, which is you talk about the mechanics and the systems and what they're doing to make sure things are working. the other thing you talk about is the faith and confidence in the system, almost as important as how you organize your early voting or how you count is do people believe in the election reflects an honest counting of votes? what you show is 35% of americans don't believe that. that's the most critical

question of the moment right now. >> you're absolutely right. anna, pick up on that. you say election workers, they themselves felt threatened back in 2020, felt real fear for their families in this part of erosion and faith. >> absolutely. we know federal and state elected officials have faced an increase in threats. women and people of color are more threatened. it's not a majority but more than before. look, has our country survived periods of political violence before? yes, absolutely. the period leading up to the civil war, the war itself, you think about the state and white violence of whites over blacks in the '50s and a60s. even then, kristen, no one tried to stop the peaceful transfer of

power until 2021. i remember standing outside the capitol saying i have seep these scenes unfolding around the world in countries i've covered and now it's happened here. it's the idea that our democracy is not immune and that even though history is a guide in many cases, it's not a guarantee. >> ben, it's chilling the points that amna makes and the rising concerns about political violence, the rising concerns about whether there will be a peaceful transfer of power. you, of course, were on the national counsel of the bush/cheney campaign. i want to play a little bit and get your reaction on the other side. >> now the u.s. supreme court has spoken. let there be no doubt, while i strongly disagree with the

court's decision, i accept it. tonight for the sake of our unity as the a people and the strength of our democracy, i offer my concession. >> al gore conceding to formatter president george w.bush. what goes through your mind when you see that, ben, and how does that moment compare to this moment? >> it says how far we've come as a country, the differences between a defeated candidatein a very contentious election, accepting that because the understand substitution produces a result we need to believe in for the peaceful transfer of power. and fast forward to today in 2024 where without evidence, without close elections, we're calling into question the fundamental accuracy of our elections and the difficulties that that can cause. what it says, i think, we are in a very different position, maybe a precipice for the 2024 elections because of the third

of the country that won't accept election results because you have for the first time a major political candidate saying the election is rigged without any proof of that despite numerous court cases and other opportunities. >> evelyn, what are your biggest concerns as we head toward november? >> i mean i think my biggest concern like all of us probably is there isn't a peaceful transfer of pow e, that there's violence again as we saw in the last presidential election aftermath. this is something that no american wants to witness, and, frankly, the other part of it is, of course, there will be a lot of americans who question the elections, and that will not go away, even after the elections. even if there is a peaceful transfer of power. all the things you talked about earlier with the secretaries of state and miss and disinformation, we did a poll

after the midterm elections in 2022. only half found the election results were legitimate and the outcome represented the people. this trend is likely not to stop even if we have a peaceful election. >> former president trump is the only modern american president not to concede. there have been some democrats who have raised questions, doubted the election results. we saw that in 2004. we saw that in 2016. where is the line? >> yeah. sure. of course, we have. i mean, there have been plenty of sore losers in the history of american politics. if you lose an election, you look at why. you'll say the other size was somehow unfair or complain about the rules. we should have longer, early voting, or it's not fair they changed the rule us because of covid. whatever excuse you want to use. maybe it's something different. it's different than a handful of

con meng saying i object to what happened in 2020. and it's happening right now. the president at that time urged his vice president to single handed i will disallow the election that would toss them out of office. richard nixon certified his own defeat. we saw al gore who did the same thing. we have not seen anything like what we have seen what amna just talked about, the violence in these last four years, and i think that's an important difference. the false equivalence should not confuse people as to what happened here. >> amna, to some of the points you've made, there's an erosion in faith. it shows many are not confident. >> a third don't believe the results will be counted

accurately. a third still believe in the big lie that president joe biden did not win the 2020 election. a third at least believe our democracy is not functions well. this is in the context, we should know, of a decline in trust of all american institutions. congress, the supreme court, the proceed ya as well. and we shouldn't lose sight here. these institutions are made up of people. i don't believe it's about reversing the trends as much as it is move through this moment and if i find any sign of hope anywhere, it's two things. one, we had the highest level of voter turnout in 2020, two-thirds of the eligible voting population showed up. that's good for the democracy. that's a trend moving in the right direction, and it's also that nine out of ten americans agree on core democratic principles, the right to equal sides. >> do you think if the elections

were to be decided by the house of representatives or by the supreme court, would people believe that outcome today? what would happen? >> it very much depends on how we get there, what the facts are. every state has the ability to give a recount or a contest or litigation. those actions actually help to validate the election results. the real question is whether the candidates accept as part of the rule of law what's determined in those court cases and recounts and contests. so the factual record is what determines that. we are a nation of laws, not of people, yet it is the people who will set the tone on whether those decisions are accepted. >> no doubt about that. evelyn, 30 seconding left. the u.s. is the gold standard or is supposed to be for democracy. how is the world watching at this moment? >> the world is watching with a lot of fear and trepidation,

kristen. they saw the last time around. for the first time, as an hoa said, we had a violent transfer of power that shook politics to the core. they're watching and hedging their betting. they're very worried. >> thank you all so much for being here. we really appreciate it. when we come back, a reminder of what our democracy means to all of us on this memorial day weekend. of us on s memorial day weekend

craig here pays too much for verizon wireless. so he sublet half his real estate office... [ bird squawks loudly ] to a pet shop. meg's moving company uses t-mobile. so she scaled down her fleet to save money. and don's paying so much for at&t, he's been waiting to update his equipment! there's a smarter way to save. comcast business mobile. you could save up to 70% on your wireless bill. so you don't have to compromise. powering smarter savings. powering possibilities. people couldn't see my potential.

so i had to show them. i've run this place for 20 years, but i still need to prove that i'm more than what you see on paper. today i'm the ceo of my own company. it's the way my mind works. i have a very mechanical brain. why are we not rethinking this? i am more... i'm more than who i am on paper. >> welcome back. a closing thought as we head into this memorial day weekend. we fel welcomet back. a closing thought as we head into this memorial day weekend. we felt it was important to devote the broadcast to an issue that voters tell us is one of the most important for them in november. so thank you for joining us for this bipartisan conversation about how to restore trust in institutions and to openly discuss the challenges the nation faces.

and, finally, before we go, as we do every memorial day weekend, we remember the u.s. service members who have been killed in the past year serving the country. please spend some time thinking about those who have served. that is all for today. thank you so much for watching. we'll be back next week, because if it's sunday, it's mees the press. ♪ unhinged, diminished, and can't win a general election. those are not my words. those are some of the things nikki haley said about donald trump during the primary campaign. now she says, sure, i'll vote for him. sarah matthews and tim miller are standing by to tell