right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, ali. my friend, much appreciated. thank you for joining us this hour. happy to have you here. on the western border of russia in the northernmost part of that border you have finland. below you've got finland, below that you've got estonia and latvia. the really big country on the southwestern part of that border between russia and the black sea is the large nation of ukraine. lots of news about ukraine in recent years. russia recently took part of that country. russia is currently occupying other parts of it. but on top of ukraine, between ukraine and the baltic states, is the large and still quite soviet country of belarus. belarus did become an independent country when the soviet union collapsed in 1991. they established a new form of government. they constituted themselves as the republic of belarus. they held an election for president of that republic for the first time in 1994.

in that first election in 1994, they picked this guy, alexander lukashenko, to be their first ever president. again, they picked him in 1994. he is still there today. i say that belarus is kind of soviet because belarus is often described as europe's last dictatorship, and he is the dictator. but belarus is both effectively a dictatorship and also nominally it's a republic. it is a place that holds elections. and those two things may seem contrary, that you would be a dictatorship but also one that holds elections. but in practice, those two things often come together. i mean if you think about it, right, basically by definition, if you are an authoritarian leader, if you're a dictator, you don't believe in like checks and balances in government, right? you don't believe in anybody else in government, anybody else in any position in your country being able to interfere with you

just dictating what you want to happen and getting it. by definition, right? authoritarian leaders and dictators also don't have to believe in doing a good job in government, right? they don't have to. they don't have to worry about it. under authoritarian rule, there's no democratic feedback loop from voters and constituents that's going to get in your way of doing whatever you want, right? i mean if you are a citizen living under the rule of a dictator or an authoritarian leader and it turns out you don't have good government, right, you are dissatisfied with the governing skills of the dictator in your country and how your country is going under his leadership -- and it is always his, not hers -- right? what are you going to do if you're a dissatisfied citizen in a country like that? are you going to hold a demonstration? are you going to petition the leader with your grievances? really? maybe you're going to run for office to try to unseat the guy who you're unhappy with?

yeah, good luck with any of those things in an authoritarian country. that said, places run by dictators and authoritarians quite often do have some form of elections. but the point of those elections in an authoritarian system is not to, you know, actually set competing candidates and competing political parties and competing governing ideas against each other to let the people decide in a free and fair contest. i mean, the point of holding purportedly democratic elections in authoritarian states is just to validate the leader's hold on power, right? to sort of pseudo-authenticate the dictator's position both to other countries, but also domestically as well, right? you reify the position of the leader. you shut up anybody who complains that he's illegitimately holding office or

that the people of his country object to his continued rule. so in a lot of places that are dictatorships, you do get elections but there are often ways to tell maybe it's not the way we think of an election here, right? so like in turkmenistan, you get the president, quote, unquote, re-elected with 97% of the vote. in uzbekistan, the president gets 91% of the vote. oh, he's slipping, right? bashar al assad, the dictator in syria, announces 98% of the people have voted to keep him in power. really? tell me more. the castro brothers in cuba, 99% of the vote. kim jong-il in north korea, 99% of the vote. saddam hussein, 100% of the vote. you know, these guys working it hard enough, they could probably get 110% of the vote. in the right precincts. but, you know, after going through those kind of motions, you know, voila, the dictator

says to the world and to his own country, look, i've been overwhelmingly democratically re-elected to my post. the people love me. i'm not pushing myself on anybody. they've asked for me to stay. they love me. this weekend in belarus, the guy who has been the dictator there for more than 25 years, the first and only president that country has ever had since the collapse of the soviet union, he stood for re-election, and there's no reason to think in a real election that he would be re-elected. he has badly botched, for example, his country's coronavirus response, which has led to widespread anger and criticism. the economy in belarus is circling the drain. here's a specific dynamic that applies to belarus. it's in a very skpesk way, but it's understandable. his relationship with putin and russia has been very, very important to his power. russia has been propping him up, but his relationship with putin and russia has gone a little weird recently.

now that is in doubt. that has also sort of shook his hold on power in belarus. but, you know, dictators do as dictators do. in the days leading up to the vote, he arrested the senior campaign staff of the main candidate running against him. lukashenko had his security forces attack peaceful protesters in the capital city of minsk including yanking people off the streets and throwing them into unmarked vans. ahem. when his government announced this weekend that he had received, oh, say, let's call it 80% of the vote in this election, protesters nevertheless flooded the streets, and lukashenko called out the troops against them. and we have seen disturbing scenes out of the streets of minsk, police trucks driving at speed into protesters, the internet being cut off in parts of the capital, phone service being mostly cut off. the candidate who stood against

him in this election has now disappeared. the dictator, lukashenko, says he is facing a revolution that's trying to overthrow him, and that's why all this force is necessary, because he won't allow himself to be overthrown. well, lukashenko may or may not be facing a revolution tonight or in the long run in belarus. but what he is facing is a country that apparently does not want him in power anymore and is willing to say so. in a country under authoritarian rule, even when they hold elections, elections are not supposed to be for that purpose. they're not supposed to be a legitimate means by which people choose the future of their country. in an authoritarian country, under authoritarian rule, elections are just there as window dressing. they're just supposed to validate the ruler's hold on power. in hong kong, security forces have now started arresting even very well known, very well connected public figures including today arresting a media tycoon named jimmy lai. china has apparently looked around the world and decided

that this year, 2020, is the perfect time to grind out any special freedoms that hong kong has enjoyed in years past despite a constitution that supposedly protects those freedoms. under the draconian and far-reaching new security law that china has imposed in hong kong, security forces are now just straight-up raiding a major newspaper, denouncing it as colluding with foreign powers, security services raided the paper, searched the desks and computers of reporters, seized and arrested the executive in charge of the paper. why are they doing it? because they can. because they've been testing what they can get away with in terms of international opinion, and they're finding they can do whatever they want. i mean they've been arresting activists and demonstrators and pro-democracy politicians. they have banned a whole bunch of pro-democracy politicians from competing, from participating in the elections that hong kong was supposed to have this fall. but then after banning all the pro-democracy politicians from participating in those elections, they then did away

with any worries about what might happen in that election anyway by canceling that election altogether. they said, yeah, no, we're not going to do an election now. we'll hold it next year instead, maybe. we'll see. here at home, president trump, of course, has recently threatened to delay the election this fall here in the u.s. he does not have the power to delay the election, but he is raising that prospect for a reason. his attorney general, william barr, is now publicly denouncing american protesters and demonstrators as bolsheviks. he literally used the words bolsheviks and fascists and communists all at once. anything else? attorney general william barr has recently overseen the deployment of federal agents against american protesters on american streets this summer. with coronavirus infections now topping 5 million in this country, with a quarter of the world's cases in the united

states, with 164,000 americans dead, with front pages like this one -- this was the sam mck ram toe bee in california yesterday. you see those little dots? really hard to see what they all are. each of those is a coffin, pictorial representation of a coffin. 10,000 coffins on the front page, representing 10,000 californians dead from covid already and counting. with school reopening efforts going bust all over the country simply because the spread of the virus is not under control and schools cannot safely open until the spread of the virus is under control, with realistic economic prospects remaining bleak, again, because the spread of the virus is not under control and that not only affects schools. it affects work and travel and everything. with unemployment still above 10%, the highest level since the great depression. with the positivity rate in terms of test results in mississippi up near 21% as of

now, this far into it, which is astonishing. with texas' positivity rate above 19% today. i mean, even though it seemed like texas was getting better there for a while, texas' positivity rate is over 19% right now. for contrast, new york is well under 1% now. i mean, with current polls, even with many grains of salt about polling, with current polls showing the president losing to his democratic challenger joe biden in nearly every swing state in the country, with all of that and with what we have come to learn about this president and what he is not only interested in doing but what he is able to do to the government when he puts his mind to it, there are now real worries about the means by which he's going to try to hold on to power in less than 90 days when the election happens. in the lead-up to that election, during that election, and after. here, for example, is a recent ad, a political ad. it's against the president. it's from priorities usa, and i

want to show you this ad because i feel like it puts these worries in the starkest possible terms in a way that's sort of easier to show than for me to say. i will also tell you this ad is intense enough that if you are watching with kids right now, you might want to pause me for a second and not have the kiddos watch this, depending on the particular kiddo. i really believe this is worth seeing, but i will admit it's not for everyone. all right. are you ready? it's three seconds. i'm going to show it in three, two, one. >> i am your president of law and order. >> don't resist. >> i'm not! >> i am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers. please don't be too nice.

>> vote this out. that ad is called police state, again, it's from priorities usa. as a general matter, we associate authoritarian leaders and dictators with a government using violence at large scale against citizens of that country and also curtailing the rights and freedoms of citizens of that country, intimidating them, limiting the means by which anybody might object to that or get any recourse for it. that's the very visible, very scary stuff that we think about in terms of authoritarian regimes, what we're watching unfold right now, for example, in belarus. but as a political science matter, it's not as visual, but it is worth noting that as a matter of political science, we are also really used to seeing authoritarian leaders get

re-elected, not because they're popular, right? not because their beleaguered populations like them and freely choose them, but because authoritarian leaders only care about elections as window dressing, right? they only care about elections for the purpose of validating the leader's hold on power. they don't care about real, free and fair democracy. they don't care about good and fair government. if they were, they wouldn't be elected. but as a general rule, authoritarian leaders get re-elected in part because they're absolutely shameless about what they are willing to apply to an election to make sure they hold on to power. they are willing to use all the powers of the government that they control to ensure that they win the next election to keep themselves in power. as a general principle, that goes hand in hand with authoritarian leadership, and that's why authoritarianism and elections most often yield to what appear to be re-election results for authoritarian leaders. they bring the powers of the government to bear to ensure that they win the election to

keep them in power. now, we're going to be talking this hour about the u.s. postal service of all things. because of the pandemic, it has emerged as a brand-new, never-before-needed chokepoint in terms of the trump administration having potential direct influence over the next election and over voting nationwide. i mean, think about the contrast between this and previous elections. in previous elections, every state had basically total control over voting and elections, right? independently, all 50 states all doing it their own way, 50 different ways. that's how it's set up in our constitution. that's how we've basically done it. this year, simply because of the pandemic, all over the country, all of us in almost every state, we will all be, for the first time, relying on one part of the federal government, controlled by the trump administration, to receive and cast our ballots. we have procedurally federalized our elections by running all of our receipt and submission of our ballots through one part of

the federal government controlled by the president. and we don't think of the postal service as a particularly political thing. we don't think of protecting it as critical to our ability to stay a democratic country, but by circumstance and political eventuality, here we are. friday night we reported on nearly two dozen senior postal service leaders being summarily removed from their jobs by the new guy who trump just put in charge there. today politico reporting that the trump white house is actively working on ways they can sabotage voting through their newly tight control over the postal service. they are spitballing new ways they may be able to use the power of the government they now run to make sure that trump keeps hold of power by sabotaging the vote through the postal service. the postal service is a new weird part of that power dynamic simply because of the pandemic and the logistical imperatives that it's imposed on us. they're apparently going for it. that said, of course, there's no substitute for the justice

department being used that way too, right? having the justice department working for the president's political aims? that's priceless. clearing and protecting friends and co-conspirators of the president, people who would lie to law enforcement or cover for him to keep him from getting in trouble. the justice department directing criminal investigations and potentially prosecutions of the president's political enemies and his perceived opponents. i mean, that, as the president was coming into office, was seen as the sort of holy grail of what he might try to grab hold of in terms of corrupting the u.s. government to his own purposes and to bolster his own hold on power. well, you know, you talk about these things as worst-case scenarios. then they happen. then you just have to live with them and figure out the way out of it. we have now seen one by one, even the most supposedly independent federal prosecutors' offices pressured and in some cases taken over by attorney general bill barr with direct consequences for the prosecutions of people like roger stone and michael flynn

and ongoing investigations into the president's businesses and his various lawyers, right? now we are steaming toward the election with a public promise from attorney general barr that he will unveil the results of a criminal investigation targeting senior officials in the obama administration, and that public reveal, he says, will happen before the election in which president trump, of course, will face off against the obama administration's vice president, joe biden. william barr promising that the results of the criminal investigation he has ordered and he is supervising into obama administration officials, that will be out before the election. use the power of the government you control to hold onto power. that's the game. that's how they do it. that's the basic principle. and, behold, into this life that we are now living and that understanding of the circumstances in which the president is trying to hold on to power, behold, here comes robert draper at "the new york

times" magazine with the next maybe biggest shoe to drop along these lines. he tells the story, the astonishingly, mostly untold story of how the intelligence agencies are falling to it now too. robert draper's long new piece at "the new york times" magazine is, i think, due out sort of over the course of the next week. "the new york times" put it on their front page for a hot minute this weekend and then took it down. now it's hard to find. i don't understand that at all, but this piece is making news now far and wide for good reason. robert draper speaks with 40 sources for this story, including multiple sources who he says have served in the intelligence community under this president. draper reports that last year, last summer, last july, the national intelligence estimate rendered as one of its key judgments, key judgment number two, quote, that in the 2020 election, russia favored the current president, donald trump. quote, the intelligence provided

to the n.i.e.'s authors indicated that in the lead-up to 2020, russia worked in support of the democratic presidential candidate bernie sanders as well. but the lead author of the nie explained to colleagues, quote, that this reflected not a genuine preference for bernie sanders but rather an effort to weaken the democratic party and ultimately help the current u.s. president, donald trump. interesting details, key judgments in the national intelligence estimate as of july last year. now, that's in place as of july last year. that's what the national intelligence estimate had concluded in part. draper reports, though, that the president was, quote, displeased with this assessment, and that resulted in the then-director of national intelligence, dan coats, being told to change that assessment. quote, i can confirm that one of my staffers who was aware of the controversy requested that i modify that assessment, dan coats tells robert draper. quote, but i said no. no. we need to stick to what the analysts have said.

dan coats says he was told to change that assessment july of last year. days later, from robert draper's reporting, quote, not long after he was approached about the change to the n.i.e., dan coats was fired as director of national intelligence, or, rather, the president announced by tweet that dan coats would be leaving much sooner than he expected to. so they forced coats out. then the next guy arrives. the next person installed in the director of national intelligence job is joseph maguire. when he's installed in that job, the n.i.e. still wasn't finalized, and apparently the white house still wanted that assessment about russia to be changed. and then in september of last year, with mcguire in post because dan coats had been fired, in fact, that assessment was changed. quote, no longer did key judgment number two clearly state that russia favored the current president according to an individual who compared the two versions of the nie side by side. instead the new version concluded that russian leaders probably assessed that chances to improve relations with the

u.s. will diminish under a different u.s. president. such a change, a former senior intelligence official said, would amount to a distinction without a difference and a way to make sure that joseph maguire doesn't get fired. but the distinction was, in fact, both real and important. a document intended to explain russia's playbook for the upcoming elections no longer included an explanation of what russia's immediate goal was. omitting that crucial detail would later allow the white house to question the credibility of the testimony of intelligence and law enforcement officials who informed lawmakers of russia's interest in trump's re-election in a closed-door congressional committee briefing early this year. it would also set in motion maguire's own departure in spite of the efforts to protect him. joseph maguire, who's installed as director of national intelligence after dan coats

gets fired -- dan coats, says, no, i won't change that assessment in the n.i.e. maguire gets put in. maguire okays the change, this change to the intelligence, dropping the clear statement that russia was working to elect trump. joseph maguire was also the intelligence director who refused to forward to congress the whistle-blower complaint from a cia analyst about the president and ukraine, the complaint that ultimately led to kicking off the president's impeachment. and this is remarkable. ultimately from draper's reporting, it appears to have been the same day that joseph maguire testified about that whistle-blower thing in the morning, public testimony, he indignantly stood up for his own integrity saying in all his years in government service, his integrity had never before been questioned. in the morning he went up to capitol hill and gave this soliloquy to congress about sitting on the whistle-blower complaint to protect donald trump, and how nobody should question his integrity around that. that's when he did in the morning. and then that afternoon, what did he do? he went back to his office and voted to approve the national intelligence estimate that took out all the worst stuff about russia, all the stuff that the

white house wanted taken out. and then after doing both of those things to benefit the president, joseph maguire got fired anyway. the president fired him anyway because a deputy in maguire's office who was put in charge of protecting our elections against foreign interference, she briefed congress and told them the truth about what russia was doing in 2020 and why. and so the president fired maguire anyway. robert draper also reports that then homeland security secretary brigitte nielsen was upbraided by the white house when she warned foreign diplomats from multiple countries, including russia, that they shouldn't interfere in the 2018 midterms.

draper also reports that the 2018 cyber attack that shut down the internet research agency in russia in 2018 and stopped them from interfering in the 2018 midterms, draper reports that that was something that president trump had nothing to do with, and he did not order it. but this is just a remarkable story, particularly given the moment that we are in. the president bending the intelligence agencies to say what he wants said, to present what appears to be intelligence information but to present it in a way that looks the best for him and that omits things that look really bad for him, at his insistence. in robert draper's reporting, not one, but two directors of national intelligence have been fired shortly after they told too much of the truth about russia trying to keep him in power. in dan coats' case, he would not change that estimate in the national intelligence estimate. in maguire's case, his deputy told the truth about what russia was doing to re-elect trump in 2020. in both cases, soon thereafter they had to unexpectedly get out. in maguire's case, he kowtowed to president trump in other ways, tried to placate him in

other ways, but it doesn't matter. draper says, quote, the options faced by the intelligence community during trump's presidency have been start. stark. avoid infuriating the president but compromise the agencies' ostensible independence or assert that independence and find yourself replaced with a more sick fan tick alternative or bend and compromise the agency's independence and find yourself replaced anyway. leaders with authoritarian tendencies and designs do tend to get re-elected. whether or not they can get elected in the first place is one thing. once they've got the reins of

power, they will use the reins of that power to hold on and not leave. authoritarian leaders tend to get re-elected because they are willing to improperly abuse the power of the government they control to keep themselves in power. that is true as a general principle. there's no reason to believe that any country is immune from that. we believed heading into this presidency that the most potent, the most grave parts of our government, the really serious parts of our government, right, the parts of our government where abuse of those elements of our government could be catastrophic for our democracy, we came into all this thinking those institutions had enough internal strength, had a strong enough internal culture, enough internal protections, enough strong-minded and break career professionals in them that efforts to corrupt them would fail, right? that they could never be rotted on purpose and turned toward the political designs of a president with authoritarian intentions. that's what we thought we had. turns out this was not an idle test. this is our country now, and robert draper joins us live here next. joining us now is robert the sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now.

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joining us now is robert draper, writer at large for "the new york times" magazine. he's the authors of several books including "to start a war: how the bush administration took america into iraq." robert draper has just published this landmark piece of reporting in the "time" magazine called "unwanted truths: inside battles with u.s. intelligence agencies." among the scoops embedded here is news that the white house pressured the director of national intelligence to change an intelligence community conclusion that russia wanted president trump re-elected in 2020. the intelligence director at the time, dan coats, said no. he was then fired. his successor signed off on the change, but he was then fired after one of his deputies briefed congress that, in fact, russia is working to re-elect president trump this year. mr. draper, thank you for this reporting and for joining us here tonight to help us understand it. thanks very much for your time. >> my pleasure. thanks for having me on. >> i've said a lot of words about the even more words that

you have reported here and have printed. let me just ask if i've got any wrong or you think i'm looking at anything wrong. >> thank you for asking because i did want to issue two clarifications. the first one and the most important is i'm not aware that joe maguire had anything to do with the alteration of the national intelligence estimate. this took place when his hands were very much full with the ukraine whistle-blower incident as you correctly pointed out. so this really -- when the -- he was testifying on the hill all day long, so he wasn't able to chair that meeting. so that's the first thing. the second thing is that, you know, i don't want the story to give anyone the impression that the intelligence community as a whole has been bent to the will of donald trump. there's still plenty of analysts and case officers who are doing very, very good work. the problem is that the people above them have been in the line of fire with the trump administration and have begun to water things down, such as the

intelligence products do not have the integrity that they once did. that does not mean they are saying black and white and up is down but they are saying things in a more equivocating fashion. we saw this most recently this past friday when an official and i released this election security report saying that for the first time, yes, it did appear that russia favored trump. but essentially in the same breath saying that china and iran favored biden, as if it were kind of a jump ball or something. that is the kind of equivocation that you did not see before the trump presidency. >> i feel like -- thank you for those clarifications and for drilling down on those things in that way. i feel like when i read at the beginning of your piece that dan coats was pressured to change the national intelligence estimate around russia's intentions for the 2020 election and he said no, it felt like, wow, that's really big news about dan coats to find out that that happened just before he was fired is itself a scoop.

but then to find out that the national intelligence estimate was, in fact, watered down sort of in the way that the white house wanted under joe maguire, it does seem like the sort of bending to the white house's will, equivocating on things that aren't equivocal, casting things in a way that is designed not to upset the president or put things in the ways that he likes. it does feel like it's not just pressure, but it's effective pressure that's actually working on the i.c. >> oh, for sure. you know, i should also probably point out, rachel, that the matter of russia and election security has been a sore subject since before trump's presidency. everyone knew in the nsc, in the west wing, and certainly in the intelligence community that to bring up the very matter of russia interfering in 2016, it's likely interference patterns through the midterms and into 2020, and most of all that it favored trump would be to call into question the legitimacy of

his presidency. that's how he would receive this. so because it was such an unpleasant thing, as i report out, then chief of staff mick mulvaney and then national security adviser john bolton went to considerable lengths to keep this completely off the agenda. and when it would get on the agenda, for example, when there was a single nsc meeting relating to russia and election security, kirstjen nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, didn't get five minutes into it before trump started interrupting her and asking her questions about the wall along the mexican border. so this has been a distasteful subject to him. people around him have known that and they have adjusted themselves unfortunately accordingly. >> and as they have adjusted themselves, it's not only maybe at least for a short term sort of lubricated their own relationship with the president to keep themselves in office among other things for however many more days they can sustain it, but it has compromised what the intelligence community has concluded or said about these things.

i guess i found myself wondering, because you talked to so many people for this piece, both people directly involved and smart observers, dan coats going on the record with you by name about what he went through and what happened here is just a remarkable achievement in terms of the reporting here, it just made me wonder if you got the impression through all of this reporting and all these conversations that there is a way out of this, that there is a -- that there isn't a no-way-out set of options for intelligence officials. particularly people at the higher end of the intelligence community. is there a way to do their work with integrity, without bending it to the president's will, in ways that aren't compromising and don't ultimately kind of screw over the president for short-term political survival? >> well, yes and no. i mean, if there are subjects that are not deemed politically sensitive, if the president has

no interest in them, doesn't care about them one way or the other, then those people working on those particular subjects are free to go about their business. but when it has to do something that is a hot button issue for the president -- russia is certainly right up there. but also we saw in late january 2019 when then-director coats gave his annual worldwide threats testimony and routinely just went over all of the foreign policy threats that this nation faces. but in so doing implicitly was issuing a stinging rebuttal to president trump's supposed foreign policy accomplishments by saying, in fact, that russia is interfering in our elections, and north korea absolutely does not intend to relinquish its nuclear capability. these kinds of things that coats got in hot water for it. i mean, the president brought him into the oval office and demanded to know why he was saying these things, and coats and cia director gina haspel said those are the facts.

those are the facts that we have been talking about in the nsc every day. those are the kinds of subjects where the top intelligence officials and for that matter the people who give the daily brief to the president find themselves walking into the propeller as it were. >> robert draper, author of this blockbuster piece of new reporting at "the new york times" magazine, "unwanted truths: inside battles with u.s. intelligence agencies." walking into the propeller is an absolutely apt metaphor for what you have described here. remarkable reporting. thank you. >> thank you, rachel. >> much more to get to us tonight. stay with us. with us

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late-breaking news that president trump's new handpicked head of the postal service had, without warning, removed from their jobs nearly two dozen top execs at the postal service, which has the effect of centralizing power over mail delivery under trump's new appointee there. that sudden shake-up came on the same day that democrats in congress asked the inspector general to investigate the dramatic last-minute changes the

new head of the post office has made to deliberately slow down the mail. this, of course, is all happening before the first national election that will be conducted mostly by mail because of the pandemic. but now today we have further reporting that the president and his team at the white house are busy dreaming up what else they can do to undermine voting this fall beyond just having trump's handpicked mega donor break the postal service on purpose. it's been remarkable reporting from politico today. quote, around the time trump started musing about delaying the election, aides and outside advisers began scrambling to ponder possible executive actions he could take to curb mail-in voting, everything from directing the postal service to not deliver certain ballots to stopping local officials from counting them after election day. quote, trump has mused to aides about what executive orders if any he could sign to curb voting by mail. some conservative allies have suggested trump could try to stop local officials from counting remote ballots after election day and direct the

postal service to not deliver certain ballots to voters using an emergency declaration. that's not so much a re-election campaign, which implies that the goal is to earn more votes than his opponent. it's more of a playbook for how to use the levers of power and the apparatus of government to keep the leader in power no matter what happens. oh, a pandemic requires that most people vote by mail? then we will set about controlling and disrupting the mail because we can. that said, can they? the president and his allies will not be able to do this without a fight. the democratic party's foremost litigator on these issues joins us live here next. stay with us. so what's going on?

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when allergic itch is a problem, ask for apoquel. apoquel is for the control of itch associated with allergic dermatitis and the control of atopic dermatitis in dogs. do not use apoquel in dogs less than 12 months old or those with serious infections. apoquel may increase the chance of developing serious infections and may cause existing parasitic skin infestations or pre-existing cancers to worsen. do not use in breeding, pregnant, or lactating dogs. most common side effects are vomiting and diarrhea. feeling better? i'm speechless. thanks for the apoquel. aw...that's what friends are for. ask your veterinarian for apoquel next to you, apoquel is a dog's best friend. marc elias is a big-deal lawyer in democratic party politics. he has argued and won four cases before the u.s. supreme court. he's represented dozens of senators and governors and members of congress and

presidential candidates. he and his team are currently litigating three dozen voting rights cases ahead of the november election. by necessity for this pandemic election, a lot of their work right now is aimed specifically at safeguarding people's ability to vote through the mail. well, today marc elias issued a warning that the u.s. mail service -- excuse me -- system is not ready for november, and he says that is partly by design. quote, the trump administration has turned to weakening the postal service in a cynical effort to keep people from voting. voters can't be forced to cross their fingers and hope that their ballots will count. our job between now and election day is to make sure we keep up the fight for voting rights, including making sure all ballots cast by mail are counted. joining us now is marc elias. he's the founder of democracy docket. mr. elias, i really appreciate you taking the time. thanks. >> happy to be here. >> is the stuff that is going on around the postal service, including this reporting today from politico that the president

and his advisers are thinking about executive orders to try to stop the counting of votes cast through the mail -- is this just one in a long line of things like this that you've been fighting for years, or does this feel qualitatively more worrying than the usual stuff? >> well, i think it's qualitatively more worrying for two reasons. first of all, for the reasons you set out earlier, which is that donald trump has, at a minimum, authoritarian impulses and seems willing to violate every norm that any other president would abide by. the second, of course, is that we are going to have more voting by mail in 2020 than we've ever had before. so all of the flaws in the process will show up bigger, and all of the ballots that are at risk will grow in size. >> the postal service is not a typical battleground. it's not a typical sort of arena in which we fight these things out. i mean, obviously absentee ballots are a thing, and overseas mail-in ballots are a thing, and we've always conducted some proportion of the vote by mail. there are a few states that have been doing mostly vote by mail for a long time now.

but the idea that a national election would have this sort of chokepoint in this one part of the federal government where we see the president trying to exert new control, it does feel new. as a litigator who fights this thing, is this a new thing -- is this something new that you and your colleagues have to learn in terms of what levers there are to make sure that the post office does things right? >> yeah, this is entirely new. i mean, in that respect, you know, i'm flabbergasted that we are in a circumstance that donald trump first replaced the postmaster general with a political crony, and now is taking step after step after step, including a friday night massacre of 23 employees -- before that, there had already been resignations and replacements of the nonpartisan staff, and every day we get another indication that, as you say, the postal service is being weaponized to be a chokepoint against vote by mail.

and that is unprecedented in our history. make no mistake about it, we've had the postal service deliver ballots through wars, through a civil war, through a great depression, and never, ever before have we seen a president or political party try to weaponize it to systematically keep voters from voting. >> americans in some ways like to make fun of the postal service or complain about the mail and things like that. but i think by and large, people love the postal service and think of it as something that is, you know, not only rooted in the constitution but something that is sort of a miracle, that you can put a stamp on something, and it gets across the country almost always to where it needs to go, almost always in a surprisingly quick amount of time. i think people also have a soft spot for their letter carriers and for the people they know are involved in this. they're integrated into american life and our infrastructure of daily life in a way that i think people have a soft spot for.

given that and given the kind of stakes that you're describing, is there something that regular citizens can do to kind of -- to help in terms of protecting the postal service and to help in protecting this type of voting that we're all basically being forced into because of the epidemic? >> yeah, so i'd say two things. first of all, as you pointed out, the postal service is quite popular in red states and in blue states. in fact, it's even more popular in some respects or more necessary in rural areas that tend to vote republican. so one thing, you know, a lot of people come on your show and say, you know, call congress or put pressure on republican elected officials. this really is an area where putting pressure on republican elected officials can make a difference because their constituents very oftentimes in red districts really, really rely on the mail service. so that's one thing. the second is, you know, everyone who wants to vote by mail should and should have confidence in it. but they need to make sure they vote by mail early because what we're likely to see is not a

stopping of the postal -- of the post office or a halting of vote by mail but, rather, what we're seeing are systematic delays. the trump administration is taking efforts to make the mails move slower around balloting. so people should make sure they are registered, make sure they apply for their absentee ballot early, and make sure when they get it, vote it right away. get it in. don't wait until the last minute because getting those ballots in on time is going to be really very important for november. >> marc elias, democratic lawyer on elections and voting rights, thank you so much for helping us and for your clarity on this tonight. thanks a lot. >> thank you. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us.

here's one way to test if you're a rule of law dork. a little bit of a civics dork maybe. behold, the youtube page belonging to the u.s. court of appeals for the d.c. circuit. does it thrill you the way it thrills me? that page will light up tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. eastern for an audio only livestream in the mike flynn case. flynn, of course, was the first trump national security adviser. when he lied to the fbi about his contacts with the russian government, he pled guilty twice to having lied to the fbi about that. but tomorrow is the appeals court case over whether attorney general bill barr and the trump justice department will be allowed to somewhat inexplicably drop that prosecution even though the judge in that case says he will not be a rubber stamp for them doing so and he wants to look into why exactly they're dropping that case.

well, tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. we'll be able to listen in as ten judges hear that appeal in the mike flynn case. that should be fascinating. that does it for us tonight. see you tomorrow. raising concern, governors are calling for action. also new overnight the trump administration is reportedly considering a proposal that would block americans from re-entering the country if they are suspected of having the coronavirus. and a secret service agent abruptly escorts the president out of a briefing with reporters after a shooting near the white house.