for the gifts you won't forget. the mercedes-benz winter event. a quick note before we go, if you ever missed the show, you find the show on cnn.com/podcast. search for anderson cooper 360. let's hand it over to michael smerconish. anderson, thank you. i am michael smerconish. good evening. the strongest evidence yet that the 2020 election was fair and square. and we'll learn how the election denialism is sticking around and

coming to your town. newly gathered data former president trump disputed in the 2020 race. the associated press reviewed every possible case of voter fraud. the numbers are minuscule. no impact on the final result. take a look, 25.5 million people voted in those states. joe biden beat then president trump by more than 311,000 votes there and how many votes from those 25.5 million were questionable? fewer than 475, less than one quarter of 1% of biden's victory margin in those states. it wasn't even close. and not all of that handful of votes were even for biden. and when the a.p. contacted trump for comment, he quoted a litany of afraid claims. like everything else in the mountain of evidence that the

election was legitimate, it doesn't seem to matter to those promoting the conspiracies at any cost. what were the foot soldiers told? what was spontaneous and what was planned? members of the oath keepers group allegedly gathered and stashed weapons in advance of the attack and cut through the crowd in military-like formation according to the justice department. there's a pipe bomber still on the lamb and more questions than answers about what happened at d.c.'s willard hotel where the night before january 6th there was a war room. key players in the trump world were there, steve bannon, michael flynn, roger stone and more. those same lieutenants are actively recruiting the next batch of foot soldiers for a crucial but quieter mission.

>> we don't have an option. at the school board level, right, at the county supervisor level, at the precinct level, this is -- we're going to take this back village by village. >> precinct by precinct. >> my guest has been working with researchers to track the effort happening across social media. in an eye opening piece in the "post," attention was turned to three targets, school boards, secretaries of state and supervisors of election. and he warned what could happen in the days leading up to january 6th. on december 19 he screen grabbed messages on parlor talking about building gallows. on december 30th, he spotted a proud boys video talking about how they'd go undercover to blend in. on new year's day he showed how bannon was trying to compare january 6th to d day. and he shared an oath keepers

tweet that learned of bloodlet on the 6th. ron is a former member of florida's judicial commission. he joins me now. ron, thank you for being here. so months before the election, you began monitoring these extremist elements. how come? what caused you to do this? >> well, at that time i was a lifelong republican and i was monitoring the more extreme elements of the party to try and persuade moderate republicans and independent voters to vote for joe biden. that's kind of how it started. >> there was a tweet from president trump on december 19 of 2020. he said "big protest in d.c. on january 6th, don't miss it, information to follow, be there, will be wild was also a part of

what he put out. how was that message interpreted by the people that you were monitoring? >> well, people forget january 6th of the third stop the steal rally. there were two in d.c. before that, early in december, and we had monitored those. we watched people that were involved in those previous two rallies. some of the same organizers. but they were kind of duds. they fizzled. there weren't that many people there. the second one was a little alarming. a lot of the proud boys and oath keepers showed up, but still it was kind of ad hoc. when the december 19th tweet was sent out by president trump at the time, i was monitoring their social media pages and they just

exploded. they just lit up. basically the consistent theme was the boss has given us our orders, this is the big one, let's all gear up and let's get ready. that's kind of like the proud boys' nickname for trump is the boss. >> in other words, this was like the bat signal had been put up in the sky and they were all going to respond in kind. >> yeah, i can't even tell you the difference between their traffic on social media from the 19th -- from the 18th to the 19th after that tweet came out. it was like night and day and it was very alarming. >> okay. so most of us were shocked by the events that unfolded on january 6th, but as i comb through your social media in the month leading up to the 6th, it strikes me that you probably weren't surprised by the way it all unfolded. am i wrong? >> not surprised in the least. i got a lot of pushback from the people who followed me on twitter, who have since deleted their replies to some of my posts, which basically was saying you're being alarmist, you're the first two stop the

steal rallies, not much happened. you're overhyping this, nobody's going to show up. i said, look, you can't compare the previous two rallies because this one, trump is getting directly involved. when i looked at some of the influencers and the leaders, the money that got involved, the busses that were being organized, different media platforms, telling people to come all across the country, i read things from people in california, washington, oregon, all saying they were going. and that was much different than the other two. and also saying what they were going to do when they got there. so, no, wasn't surprised in the least by what happened. >> as part of my introduction to you tonight, i said "perhaps coming soon to your town." what's going on today? what is now the outreach on a grass roots level? >> after january 6th, we saw the

foot soldiers get arrested. that's kind of what we were doing with several other people on social media for about a month or so afterwards was helping to identify the people in the crowd. and we did that. then we started looking, well, where are the organizers? where are the leaders? none have been arrested. where are they now? we started tracking them down, watching them form new web sites, new organizations. a lot of them came to florida. and i think at that point in time they were looking -- they were trying to figure out what they were going to do. then we saw their goal was to delegitimize the biden administration with all the election fraud stuff, to then disrupt and to regain power, influence and to make money. that's what we saw them do. they used different issues like vaccine mandates was fuel, mask mandates, crt they used.

the election fraud obviously. a host of different issues to get different people stirred up and to rally to their banner. >> when i now see unrest at school boards across the country, are you telling me it's coming from the same elements? and if so, is it organic or is it orchestrated? >> it's very orchestrated and it's the same people. it's charlie kerr, steve bannon, whose show i watch every day. he's kind of the yoda. he's the evil genius puppet master that eggs everybody on. he's on six days a week, i think ten hours a day on that internet podcast getting people all whipped up. we saw the organizations put in place, the mid-level groups like moms for liberty and other sort of, quote unquote, patriotic groups organizing. we saw them sending out scripts of things to read. we saw people traveling. >> are you in touch with law enforcement? i mean, you're like inspector clouseau there. also, the people that you're observing, are they aware of you? do you feel threatened? >> yeah.

i mean, i put my name on it. most of the people who do what i do are anonymous accounts. i decided to put my name on it. yeah, they know who i am. i read their traffic when they're talking about me. that happens all the time. >> finally, the question i asked a moment ago, are you working in concert with any branch of law enforcement and were you before january 6th? did you tell anybody in the federal government or law enforcement what you were seeing? >> i was forwarding everything to the fbi through their social media account. so, yes. things were being forwarded to them. they were being tagged on everything. and so, yeah. and we tried to notify the school boards when we know something's coming and let them know. >> scary stuff. but we're very grateful. ron, thank you so much for being here. >> thank you for having me on. >> what are your thoughts? tweet me @smerconish.

i will read some during the program. already, this has arrived. what is the difference between a violent protest and a coup? if it is shutting down government, then does burning down the federal courthouse qualify as a coup? i wouldn't have believed it was a coup because it all seemed spontaneous and organic. as i've been discussing for several nights now, there were lots of wheels moving in concert with one another. the reason i'm so eager to listen to run is he's filling in the gap. you had legal memos being written to bolster the trump without. they were leaning on pence, leaning on justice, leaning on the pentagon. what was being told to the foot soldiers, you've heard me ask. here's a guy who has been tracking all of that information and that piece of the puzzle and he's been doing it on his on. he's a lawyer.

he's a criminal defense lawyer, who is a former prosecutor down there in sarasota and he's been assembly all of the clues all along. one more if we got time for it. 16 committee is another d.c. dog and pony show. nothing will come of it but sound bites and donor cash. bill, i don't agree. i think already we're learning so much that we had no idea about it. how about the last 24 hours? also these members of congress who were reaching out on that day. if there were no january 6th committee commission, we wouldn't know that. we'd have closed the book on this entire chapter believing that it was much more spontaneous and unplanned or unorchestrated than the facts that are developing are pointing toward. the biden administration today releasing top secret files about the assassination of president john f. kennedy. so what are we learning 58 years later? and why is this taking so long?

investigative journalist gerald posner literally wrote the book on america's most infamous political murder. he's here to tell us next. ♪ ♪ [doorbell] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [doorbell] ♪ ♪ [doorbell] ♪ ♪

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the nfl relies on cisco. here's one for the history buffs and conspiracy theorists. today the national archives released nearly 1,500 documents related to the assassination of j.f.k., some of which have never been seen by the public. it's been almost 60 years since the former president's assassination and yet the public still hasn't seen all the documents related to his murder, fueling more suspicion for many. so what's in the new documents and what is the hold up? we have one of the best scholars in the jfk assassination world. he joins us now, the author of "case closed: lee harvey oswald and the assassination of

j.f.k.," this is gerald posner. this is textbook stuff for how you fuel conspiracy. drip, drip. >> if you read it and what would you do? you'd hold on to files for 58 years and still refuse to give them over. this is preposterous. one of the things that makes it so frustrating as a researcher, historian looking into it, they keep changing the roles, moving the goalposts. after the j.f.k. film, congress decided to pass an act, you, 25 years, the fbi, get all the documents out about the case and it fell in the middle of 2017 when trump was president and they convinced him, the cia, hold on, don't release them all. i'll give you another 3 1/2 years. that false in october of this

year and president biden is convinced to give them more time. he said, by the way, release the documents today that you really don't have to fight about, that you're willing to let go and we'll only fight about the other ones next year. we found out there's a lot they want to fight about. they only released 1,500 today, holding on to about 15,000 more. >> i saw via the internet, not in print, but i say a headline from the "new york post" that there was some revelation. was there some revelation? >> not to make a headline in any newspaper, magazine or leadoff on the newscast, the problem is that the journalists covering the news today, many weren't alive when kennedy was killed and it's difficult for those of us even into the weeds on the case to know what's new and not new. it's almost an example of how not to do a document release. the national archives is putting material out there of documents

released but often has just had a word or sentence redacted and taken out in the past. now you have to find out where it was originally released, sometimes back in the 1990s, find the documents in the hundreds of thousands that have been released by the government and then compare the two and see what the difference is. the new york post took a document that said oswald had been in contact with a kgb agent just six weeks before. the document was already public since 1998, the information was out there. there was just one sentence fresh and new, didn't add to the story. the "daily mail" fell for the same thing and so did a number of tabloids. >> now you're being a buzz kill. do you think there will be a smoking gun of any kind in the documents? should they all be released? >> i don't think there will be a smoking gun that proves that there's a conspiracy, but do i think there's going to be smoking gun. what i'm interested in is the answer to this question -- could this assassination have been

prevented? that's what the documents might show us. did the cia know enough about oswald's instability in his trip to mexico city when he went to the soviet and cuban missions just six weeks before he killed kennedy? did they know he took out his pistol and slapped it on the desk? did he know they said he might want to kill the president of the united states. when he returned to the u.s. in october, what did the cia do? nothing. they didn't tell the fbi. it's the same as when hijackers came into the country a couple years beforehand and they never told anyone. it might have been preventable. the answer is in the documents. it would be mighty embarrassing to the cia and fbi if that's the case. no wonder they're fighting so hard.

>> the book you wrote on the kennedy assassination takes the provocative argument that oswald killed kennedy and he did it alone. you set out to do the research. the warren commission got it right. i'm sure you'd have sold more books if you floated and bought into a conspiracy theory. but thank you, i appreciate it. >> thank you, michael, very much. >> from social media, what do we have? let's face it. the jfk assassination screamed conspiracy. oswald being shot in custody and all of the irregularities. too many coincidences to be. it's funny you reference the magic bullet. arlen spector was a good friend of mine and someone for whom i worked. he was very proud, very proud of the fact that he was the originator of not the magic bullet, the single bullet, and he wouldn't allow me to call it the single bullet theory. he would interrupt me and in that distinctive voice of his he

would say, michael, you mean the single bullet conclusion. because he was convinced that he had proven it and then of course came oliver stone. next, joe biden -- listen to this now. joe biden should not run again and he should say that he won't run again sooner than later. that is the thesis of a provocative column in the the "new york times" this week that's causing quite a buzz. van jones and paul begala are here to discuss. that's next.

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visit your nearest xfinity store and see how the switch squad can help you switch and save. get $200 off a new eligible 5g phone when you switch to xfinity mobile. talk with our helpful switch squad at your local xfinity store today. i will not make age an issue of this campaign. i am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience. [ laughter ] i always liked the fact that mondale laughed.

not only did reagan laugh and the audience laugh but walter mondale to his credit, knew it was a great line. when ronald reagan laughed off age at a debate for re-election, he was 73. president biden in comparison is 79 years old one year in his first term. when talk of reelection comes up, the white house insists he has every intention of running again. but should he? after all, his approval ratings continue to sink and he has yet to score a win on key agenda items like build back better or voting rights. and he would be 86 at the end of a second term. brett stephens, "the new york times" op-ed columnist says, no, biden should not run again and he should say that he won't run again sooner than later. quote, the argument against this is that it would instantly turn him into a lame duck president and that's undoubtedly true but news flash, right now he's worse than a lame duck because potential democratic successors are prevented from making calls, finding their lanes and

appealing for attention. this op-ed isn't just coming out of nowhere. it's based on actual reporting from the "times" that there's endless chatter among dems about who it turn to should he falter. so there's no plan b. what do you think? do you agree with brett stephens that president biden should not run again and should say so? that's the survey question on my web site on smerconish.com. let's discuss it with van jones and paul begala. paul, you tweeted in anticipation of being here you would discuss what's being widely discussed in beltway back rooms. i'm not allowed in beltway back rooms. so what is the buzz? >> first off, in the beltway. they don't want to talk about the fact that we have 800,000 dead of covid or that vast

swaths in the west are being attacked. this is a difference between a columnist and a strategist. i've been both. brett stephens is an outstanding columnist, enjoy his column and read it. he's talking about the president talking a strategic move -- and he's at 49 in the polls, better than trump ever was. with insurrectionists having circled only a year ago. it would be crazy. every democrat would spend all the next of three years running for office. the congress would hate the senators, the senators would hate the government, the government would hey the cabinet, everybody would hate vice president kamala harris. >> i do think this column

reflect as disquiet. i think that when you think about is this a young guy's job, the presidency or an older guy's job? barack obama came into office looking like a young tiger woods and he left looking like morgan freeman, okay? this is a job that eats up young guys. so it's just difficult to imagine this being an eight-year job already in his late 70s. that's just out there for people. i think biden needs to look at some criteria for himself. look, is your progress going forward? i don't think he gets enough

credit, biden, for what he's been automobile to do but can he do more? hard to know. your public performances are sometimes uneven. if they get more uneven, that's a bad sign. these polls, wee got a good one today but some have not been that good. if your progress is uneven and your polls are down, you might owe it to your party to let younger legs grab the baton. >> paul, there is an answer to your lake duck argument. he said, "and what would that mean for the rest of the biden presidency? far from weakening him, it would instantly allow him to be statesman like, be liberating, put an end to the endless media speculation, inject enthusiasm into a listless democratic party and wholly addressing the country's immediate problems without worrying about reelection." are you persuaded? >> no, that's such fantasy. are you kidding? it would engender so much more speculation. there ought not be speculation. i've known joe biden a long time and i know his team. he is running. period. full stop.

he is in full command of the democratic party. by golly, he won 44 primaries and caucuses last time around, dominated a talented field and crushed everyone in his path last time around and he's going to do that again. it's going to happen. but the in fighting. he's standing astride a really complicated, multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-gender coalition in his party, which is what i think makes him a good president. doing that is really difficult. the last thing he needs is a distraction from his work and more division in his party. >> van, paul speaks with a certitude that biden makes reelection. i want him to be healthy all the way up to the very end. i can't see him running for reelection. for my this is conversation about what is he going to announce he's not going to do it, sooner or later?

you get the first word. >> if he runs, i'll run right with him. i love the guy. i work with him in the white house, he's an extraordinary human being. it would be nuts for him to do it now, completely nuts. i know biden. i think he'll look in the mirror. he'll have his open criteria. if he can't match his own criteria, he won't do it. >> thank you for being here. checking on social media, what do we have? patricia: i think joe biden should run again. it gives him time to get healthy. >> it suits the vice president if he were to decide not to go,

he'd wait until the 11th hour to disclose that because right now any competitor against the vice president is frozen. can't go out and fund raise and get a political campaign rolling where she doesn't need to given the position she holds. interesting conversation, though, isn't it? remember, that's the survey question. go to smerconish.com because last i checked, it was neck and neck as to whether people agree with brett stephens. from "friday night lights to pop warner, kids popping on pads and paying football. i've got an expert who played the game and is now leading the way toward understanding the toll that it takes. chris nowinski is next.

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the price of playing the most popular sport in america in two images. one, a brain scan of phillip adams, a form are journeyman in the nfl. scientists confirm he had severe stage two cte, brain trauma brought on by head concussions. the other a crime scene where he murdered six strangers before taking his own life. football, so much of a thread there, its nickname is football city usa. adams spent almost 20 years playing the game. when you look at his brain scan, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to recognize of aaron hernandez's. it was key to the findings of adam's brain. christopher, what similarities do you see between this and the aaron hernandez case? a new study found nfl players are four-times more likely to

die of als than the general public. boston university researchers were key to the findings on adams' brain and the als study. the co-founder of the cte center played football for harvard, is a former professional wrestler in addition to having a ph.d. in behavioral neuroscience. what similarities do you see between this and the aaron hernandez case? >> dr. mckee noted that both of them had severe frontal lobe damage. they both have stage two cte, but it was extraordinary in the frontal lobe. with frontal lobe damage, you find personality and behavior changes and problems with aggressiveness and impulsivity. it makes sense that both would be involved, both would be moved with a scenario like this that really just rocks you. >> i think i don't have to say

correlation when talking about cte and football. i think i can say causation because of the work that you and others who work with you have done. but what about a propensity for violence or, as you say, impulse control? is that causal connection now established? >> well, it's something that -- we have 1,200 families who donated brains of former athletes and military veterans to our center. we consistently hear problems with mid life personal changes and multiple murder suicides with former nfl players that have been found to have cte. i think we have to be open to the idea that the disease is causing these behaviors and we need to do more to stop this, to support families, to support children of these men and just

do more. >> is there a treatment for cte? i read recently that o.j. simpson is among those former nflers that have cte. you start with depression, there's treatment, you start with memory, there's treatment. we don't have anything we can stop cte with. we cannot yet diagnose it with living people though we are going in that direction. we published that mris showed abnormalities that may help us diagnose cte. >> it's not an nfl problem per se, right? this this case he was playing football since age 7. >> no. that's something we really have to focus on, the roots of this tragedy and definitely the roots of this disease come from a choice that he made with his parents at 7 years old. we think about this as an nfl problem but we have proven we are giving cte to children who do not understand what cte is

and they're less protected at the youth level than they are at any other level. and we really have to reckon with that in america, that we are hitting in the head hundreds of times every year and causing a brain disease that can destroy their life. we have no idea of the scope of it. i will tell you we recently announced that 16 of the first 65, about a quarter of football players who stopped after high school that we studied have had cte. that's an uncomfortable finding. we don't think it's as widespread as in football players but it's definitely out there in high school players. >> what's the age at what you think a youth should begin playing contact football, if any? >> our concussion legacy program, only flag football under 14. there's no reason football-wise or health-wise to ever expose a

child to hundreds of hits in the head before age 14. and at 14 we have to have a conversation. there's no safe age to start getting hit in the head as much as football players do. >> not just a football issue. military veterans, another segment of society we see suffering from cte. >> it's become a big priority for us. we just launched project enlist. go to projectenlist.org to donate their brains and seek help. we have diagnosed this in dozens of military veterans. 9 of the first 11 veterans serving in iraq and afghanistan and were exposed to blast. >> christopher, thank you for being here. martin luther king's family calling for no celebration of his holiday next month unless there's action on voting rights. that's how serious a threat to democracy they see. but that and filibuster reform are not the only things that may need fixing. that's tonight's reality check with john avlon next.

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it should come as no surprise that polls show americans don't like the idea of of congress messing with he a state's electoral results. and yet that's what we saw republicans try to do on january the 6th. so how can we ensure the safety of our democracy by preventing that from happening again? solutions are not out of reach. john avlon has tonight's reality check. >> that's right, michael. look, there should now be no doubt that the united states suffered an attempted coup. but there's still a lot of doubt about what can be done to stop the next attempt. and without real legal accountability and legislative action january 6th will be just practice. now, we've been given laws by the civil war generation designed to hold insurrectionists accountable. from the anti-kkk act just invoked by the washington, d.c. a.g. to sue the oath keepers and proud boys to the 14th amendment section 3 which bars

insurrectionists who had sworn an oath to the u.s. from ever serving in government again. to laws in the federal criminal code designed to prosecute seditious conspiracy or rebellion and insurrection. but there's been little sign that the doj intends to use these tools. in congress democrats have proposed much-needed voting rights and election law reforms but they've been d.o.a. thanks to republican filibuster threats in the senate. and all this has led to a sense of impotency. even in the face of big lie believers taking over local election offices. when cnn senior reporter edward isaac deveare attended a recent democratic governor's association meeting he found folks fretting that while democracy might hang in the balance they weren't sure they could get enough people to care to make it a winning political issue. are you freaking kidding me? look, i know there's a lot of self-protective cynicism and pessimism out there right now, but difficulty is the excuse that history never accepts. and in fact there are two broad baseline reforms which have

received bipartisan support which could actually be passed this congress, and they'd help defend our democracy. the first is affixed to the 1887 electoral count act to protect against election subversion efforts. this is the ambiguously written law that trump's legal team tried to use and abuse to overturn the will of the voters. it's time to fix this hot mess consistent with the constitution. the good news is that it's already got cross-aisle appeal backed by scholars at center right think tanks like aei and libertarians at the cato institute. joined by ben ginsburg in the national review. the role of the vp needs to be clarified. the ability of state legislatures to submit alternate state of electors should be restricted and the threshold for contesting a state's elector should be raised so that the will of the voters isn't usurped by a handful of hyperpartisans in congress. this is the least we can do to avoid a contested election in a & a new constitutional crisis. now, the second baseline is reforming the social media

algorithms that have helped our nation go collectively insane over the past several years. by elevating the most extreme combative and conspiracy-driven voices over actual factual information. facebook whistleblower frances haugen explained to a senate subcommittee why this is so critical. >> i strongly encourage reforming section 230 to exempt decisions about algorithms. user-generated content is something that companies have less control over. they have 100% control over their algorithms. and facebook should not get a free pass on choices it makes to prioritize growth and virality and reactiveness over public safety. they shouldn't get a free pass on that because they're paying for their profits right now with our safety. >> that's right. and while republicans and democrats want social media reform for very different reasons, there are at least two current bipartisan bills that propose modest steps toward fixing our addiction to these

socially destructive algorithms. the filter bubble transparency act, backed by conservatives and liberals in the house and senate would give people the ability to opt out of algorithms that show content based on personal data. another bipartisan senate bill would impose transparency on social media companies by requiring them to release internal algorithm data upon request to independent researchers vetted by the national science foundation. this would give the public a lot more information about how our information is being used. these are not silver bullets. they would not solve all that ails our democracy. but they are solid steps be demonstrated bipartisan support. much more needs to be done but it's the least this congress can do to address some of the core sources of our democracy's crisis. and that's your "reality check." >> good stuff. anger causes engagement and they have our number in social media. that's my takeaway from part of what you had to say. >> that's true. >> thank you, john, we'll be right back with some reaction to tonight's program. could be hurting your stomach.

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i don't suppose you can sing, can you? ♪ the snow's comin' down ♪ -mommy? ♪ i'm watching it fall ♪ watch the full story at www.xfinity.com/sing2 i'm eager to see this, the results of tonight's survey question, which is this, do you agree with brett stevens that

president biden should not run again, and he should say that he won't sooner than later. more than 10,000 voted. the result, 45/55. the nos have it. 55% say no. 45, not an insignificant number, say yes. interesting. begala seemed certain tonight, did he not, that biden will absolutely run again. van, i thought a little less so, which is interesting as well. here's some of the social media reaction that came in during the course of the program. the january 6th committee needs to move fast if those involved with the insurrection fear there will be consequences, might be the only way to save our democracy. if republicans take over the house, it might kill our democracy. i thought the same thing, especially in the context of bannon and his contempt situation where a hearing is like months down the road. there's definitely an effort afoot by republicans, people who don't want there to be a full investigation, to run out the clock. and they want the clock to be run out because they're convinced they'll retake the house of representatives, and if

they do that will be the end of the january 6th investigation. also from social media tonight, "identifying the lies are important for history but has truth been too far abandoned by a party of the country, if we can't convince people of the horror behind what happened on january 6th then it's not a day of tragedy, it's a day to aspire to." i think that ron phillipkowski was an interesting guest in talking about how he just as a citizen was monitoring all of the events on social media that gave rise to what transpired on january 6th, and really i think brought us a step closer to answering the question of how was it communicated to the foot soldiers on january 6th what their role was supposed to be. very quickly, one more i think i can do it. "we need younger and more diverse leadership, my humble opinion is pete buttigieg, stacey abrams and amy klobuchar are the future of the party.