with the history of the biden presidency is written, the decisions in the coming days how to fight the coordinated and frannic assault on voting rights? america by republicans will be as consequential as any decision by covid, vaccines or foreign or domestic policies. these decisions will determine whether we continue to live in a democracy. according to the brennan center, 14 states have enacted 22 laws that will make it harder to vote. by far the most insidious are the prescriptions for dealing

with future allegations of voter fraught. as donald trump and his allying bludgeoned our democracy, and lobbied and strong-armed local officials. those efforts may have worked to overturn the results, if all of these voter suppression laws had been in place back in november. texas is the latest battle grown with democrats and the legislators there buying some but the brave actions will fail if -- here's bet on o'rourke even though they were in a fairly deep minority here in texas, i hole that are watching their example. these guys were able to stop a

bat bill. they have the numbers to do it, and democrats need to stick together, stand up and fight, we win. i hope the senate democrats will do that while they have a chance. >> the senate democrats and the white house now have a choice to make about how hard they have to fight for the one thing that oar. free and fair elections, they're pleading with the president to do so. >> we knew today the eyes of the nation watching actions in austin, that we needed to send a message. that message is very, very clear mr. president, we need a national response to federal voting rights. president biden over the weekend calling on congress to pass voting rights legislation.

from that statement, quote -- it's part of an assault on democracy we have seen far too often this year it's wrong and un-american. in the 21st century we should making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote. many democrats and activists don't feel like that's enough. we have seen how successful this president can be at using his bully pulpit to garner support for legislation. we saw it with the covid relief package and now with infrastructure. if this white house does not turn its full focus to federal legislation to undermine the suppression laws, mass calculating an election integrity laws s. this is a distinct 30b89 that this country -- the fight that's come to the president's doorstep is where we start this hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. my friend and former senator claire mccaskill.

and matthew dowd is here, political strategist. matthew dowd, you inspire a lot of my thinking on this. i want to start with us over texas, where all this heat was, but is not the only battleground. governor abbott saying he'll veto article 10 of the budget, which funds the legislative branch. of course, they did not abandon their responsibilities. the democrats in the texas legislature very much holding up their obligations to their constituents and the voters, but this is how bullies

i see a rep fanaticism. that's what this is. the republicans view the voter suppression push as existential. beto got way too close to ted cruz. they want to creche all of those, so for republicans, this is it. they're not t trying to vaccina americans. they're not trying to stop people from any of the problems. they're simply trying to stop the kind of voters who never vote for them from voting. they're trying to do it before theo midterm. this is the reason why it's happeningas so fast. what say you about the filibuster and the white house posture. >> well, i agree with everyone that joe biden needs to use his

bully pulpit to dpfd or democracy that's clearly under assault. now, i can argue whether or not it's a good strategy for a political party to say our main plank, the thing we believe in most is trying to keep people from voting. >> um, you know, i'm not sure that, in the long haul, is going toul help them, because everyon gets it. everyone seize what they're doing. they're doing it in plain sight. the other thing they're doing, as you and i discussed earlier today, that's really scary, and this is where i think joe manchin will pay attention, is where legislatures are trying to change state constitutions to remove the power of elected officials to stand up for the rule of law. they are trying to basically take the power away from secretaries of state, to run

elections in their states. that's what they're elected to do. by the way, joe manchin was secretary of state of west virginia. he understands that part. so i do think there will be tremendous pressure put on every democrat to try to fashion a bill that will, at a minimum, avoid a very long protracted court battle for some of this nonsense that they're passing in the state legislature. i do think the courts will be, you know, where we can stop a lot of erthis, because a lot oft is on its face nutty and unconstitutional, but that takes time, ast you know, nicolle, s in the short run, getting a bill through the senate that will protect some basic things, like if the people elected a secretary of state, they have the power to run an election. >> claire, i have 37 follow-up

questions, but i want to tell our viewers, president biden has taken the stage. he's in tulsa, he's the first president, i believe, to travel to tulsa to commemorate the race riots. as soon as he takes the podium, we will listen in. what is sort of dismitch mcconnell blew up the filibuster to pack the courts with extreme right-wing judges. why not blow up the filibuster for something more noble than that? >> i think there's ways that filibuster can be changed. listen, don't start yelling at me, everybody. do not start on twitter or anywhere else -- >> i would never, never. >> i taught you about all those folks out there that are going to like think i'm trying to defend those people that are protecting the filibuster, but i painfully remember what donald trump and the republicans who control the t house and the senate tried to the in the first

two years of his administration. i remember our ability to block it. our ability to stop the crazy, a lot of the crazy in the first two years, so members of the senate are worried about that. on the other hand, if the republicans actually have thean nerve to go this far and say that the federal government has no role in protect constitutional right to vote, i think you have a different situation that's going to bring about aat change in the culture rules at a minimum. i'm not going to go into the byzantine rules, that it's not a filibuster, but the bottom line is, iom think you will see something move our something blow up in the next 30 to 60 days. >> nicolle? >> go ahead. go ahead. >> i just want to say two things. i them claire is not -- right,

but even though we know it's a negative, we're going to restrict so many people from votingom it will overcome the negative, and i fear they'll be highly successful. it's not only to win elections, it's so they're not held accountable for unpopular policy. think inun texas, we took restrictions. they passed a heartbeat abortion bill, which doesn't allow women to have a choice after six weeks, and they're about to try to ban transgender rights in the state. they're doing all oferin that simultaneously, taking a voter's ability -- this is an issue for all voters, because what they're doing is they want to do stuff that you don't like, and you won't be able to hold us accountable. i think in the long term, ten years from now, will our democracy be okay? i hope so, i think, but in the

short term, the amount of damage they're doing is immense. >> we are going to listen now to president biden, who has just stepped up to the podium in tulsa to deliver remarks. in delaware, we have one of the most talentsed members of congress so, if i didn't walk around and pay my tribute to lisa blunt rochester immediately -- [ applause ] how are you, rev? good to see you. we have a distinguished group of people here, and i want to thank lauren for sharing the powerful story, and for helping the

country understand what's happening here.nd and to all the descendants here today, d to the community and civil rights leaders, members of the congressional black caucus that are here, thank you for making sure we all remember and we never forget. you know, there's a verse in first corinthians that says, for now we see an -- but then face-to-face, now i know in part then i shall know fully. i just toured the hall of survivors here in green within cultural center. i want to thank the incredible staff for hosting us here. [ applause ] thank you. if i didn't say what my father would insist on -- please excuse my tact, i apologize.

i met mother randall, who is only 56 years old. god love her. and mother fletcher, who's 67 years old. and her brother, her brother van ellis is 100 years old. he looks like he's 60. thank you for spending so much time with me. i really mean it. it was a great honor, a genuine honor. you have three known remaining survivors of a story seen in the mere dimly, now your story will be in full view. the event took place 100 years ago, yet i'm the first president in 100 years to ever come to tulsa.

i say that not as a compliment about me, but to think about it, 100 years and the first president to be here during that entire time. in this place, in this ground, to acknowledge the truth of what took place here. for much too long the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness, but just because history is violent, it doesn't mean that it did not take place. while darkness can hide much, it erases nothing. it eraing nothing. some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous they could be buried, no matter how hard people try. so this here, only the truth can come healing and justice and repair.

only a with truth. facing it. but that isn't enough. first, we have to see, hear, and give respect to mother randall, mother fletcher and mr. van ellis. all those lost so many years ago, all the descendants, for this community, that's why we're here, to shine the light, to make sure the story is known in full. may, 1921, formerly enslaved black people and their descendants are here in tulsa, a boomtown, a new opportunity on a

new frontier. on the north side,.

the children, with their -- and they went to bed at night, mother fletch. but a different wealth, a wealth in culture in community and heritage. one night, one night changed everybody. everybody changed. greenwood was a community to co itself. it was noty separatedto from t outside.as it wasn't everyone, but there was enough hate, resentment and vengeance in the community. enough people believed that america does not believe to everyone, and not everyone is created equal. native americans,

asian-americans hispanic americans, black americans, a belief enfierced by law, by badge, by hood and by noose, and it speaks to that lit the fuse. it was a spark that it provided, a fuse of fury. it was an inter, that turned into a headline, with a black male attacking a white teenager. a mob around the courthouse gathered, ready to do a lynch that young man that night. 75 black men, including black veterans arrived to stand guard. words were exchanged, then a

scuffle, then shots fired.s hell was unleashed, literal hell was unleashed. through the night and in the morning, a mob terrorized greenwood, torches, guns, shooting at will, a mob tied a black man by the waist to the back of their truck with his head banging along the pave as they drove occupy. a murdered black family drapes over the fen of their home outside. a couple knelt by their bed y praying to god with their heart and soul, and they were shot in the back, ofan their heads. private planes dropping explosives, the first and only domestic aerial assault of its kind onsa an american city, her in tulsa. eight of greenwood's churches

burned. mother randall said it was like a war. mother fletcher says all these years later, she still sees ll black bodies around. the greenwood newspaper publisher a.j. smitherman penned a poem of what he heard and felt that night. here's the poem. he said -- kill them, burn them, set the pace, teach them how to keep their place. reign of murder, theft and plunder was the order of the or night. that's t what he remembered in e poem he wrote. 100 years ago, at this hours, on this first day of june rise. from 35 blocks of greenwood

whomp left in ash and ember raise in 1,100 black homes and businesses were lost. insurance companies rejected claims of damage rejected claims of damage . yet no one, no arrests of the mob were made, none. no proper accounting of the dead. the death toll records by local officials said there were 36 people. that's all.

kykykh but, you know,ñi as we speak, t process -- the process of exhuming the unmarked graves has started.çóq at this moment, i'd like to pause for a moment of silence m and mothers, sisters, sons and daughters, friends of god and greenwood.ñi they deserve the dignity and they deserve our respect. may their souls rest in peace. p.

my fellowt( americans, this was notw3 a riot. this was a massacre.w3lp [ applause ]ñilplpcçóçó among the worst in our history, bu =q and for too long forgotten by our history.

most people didn't realize it a century ago, the second ku klux klan had been founded a friend oft( mine, jon meechñrñiñie-- j meacham wrote a book. there was a picture showingw3 aboutxd 30,000 members, in full÷ regalia, marching down pennsylvaniae1 avenue in washington, d.c.t(okñr

there were five, if i'm not mistaken -- i think it was five members of the united states upklan. local governors open members of the klan. mostt( people didn't realize ao century qxdçóago. one of the reasons why it was founded was because ofr me it wasn't about average can p americans. it was about making sure that all those polishq and even european catholics who came to thet( united states would not pollute christianity.okokxdxd

millions of white americans belonged to the klan. they weren't even embarrassed by it. they were proud of cit. that hatet( bec-i embedded systematicallyt( we do ourselveú no favors by preventingxd any o thisxdlpfár we want to know and not what we

we're a great nation.lpc the only way to build a common ground is to truly repair nl rebuild. iok come here tolp help fill th silence. the silencet( wounds wexd just toxdçó choose to remember, memorialize what happened here memoo that it can't be ed here erased. we know here, in thisok hallowe place, we simply can'tñi bury pn and trauma ñiforever. at some point, there will be a 3 reckoning, an inflectioné@h(oin

like we're facing right now as a nation. with many people we hadn't seen before, orxd simply refuse to s, cannot be ignored any longer. you see it in so manyok places. t

just madge g that just madge and the glue of our communities. as president, my administration oversees hundreds of dollars

from everything from aircraft carriers to railings in professional buildings to professional services. there's a thing called -- i won't go into it all, there's not enough time now, but i'm determined to use every taxpayer's dollar that is assigned to me to spend going to american companies and american workers to build american products, and as part of that, i'm going to increase the share of the dollars the federal government spends to small disadvantaged businesses, including black and brown small businesses. right now it calls for 10%. i'm going to move that to 15% of every dollar spent will be spent there. i decided to do that. just imagine, instead of denying millions of entrepreneurs the ability to access capital and contracting, possible to take their dreams to the marketplace to create jobs and invest in our

communities. the data shows young black entrepreneurs are just as capable of succeeding given the chance as white entrepreneurs are. but they don't have lawyers. they don't have -- they don't have accountants, but they have great ideas. does anyone doubt this whole nation would be better off from the investments those people make? and i promise you, that's why i set up the national small business administration that's much broader, because they're going get those loans. instead of consigning millions of american children to underresourced schools, let's get each and every child three and four years old access to school, not day care, school. and the last ten years, studies have been done by all the great universities that show that it would increase by 56% the possibility of a child, no matter what background they come from, if they start school at

three years old, they have a 56% chance of going all through all 12 years without any trouble. and being able to do well. and a chance to learn and grow and thrive in a school and throughout their lives. and let's unlock more than the incredible creativity and innovation that will come from the nation's historically black colleges and universities. i have a $5 billion a year program. give me the resources to invest in research centers and laboratories and high-demand fields to compete for good-paying jobs in industries of the future like cybersecurity. the reason why their students are equally able to learn as well and get the good-paying jobs that start at $90,000 or $100,000, but they don't have the money to provide and build those laboratories. so, guess what? they're going get the money to build those laboratories.

so, instead of just talking about infrastructure, let's talk about the business of actually rebuilding roads and highways, filling the sidewalks and cracks, installing streetlights and high speed internet, creating space to live and work and play safely. let's ensure access to healthcare, clean water, clean air, nearby grocery stores, stocked with fresh vegetables and food. i mean, these are all things we can do. does anyone doubt this whole nation would be better off with these investments? the rich will be just as well off. the middle class will do better, and everybody will do better. it's about good-paying jobs, financial stability, being able to build some generational wealth. it's about economic growth for our country and outcompeting the rest of the world, which is now outcompeting us. but just as fundamental as any of these investments i've

discussed is maybe the most fundamental. the right to vote. the right to vote. a lot of the members of the black caucus knew john lewis better than i knew him. on his death bed, like many, i called john to speak to him. all john wanted to do was talk about how i was doing. he died, i think, about 25 hours later. but you know what john said? he called the right to vote precious. almost sacred. he said the most powerful nonviolent tool we have in a democratic society, this sacred right is under assault with

incredible intensity like i've never seen, even though i got started as a public defender and a civil rights lawyer, with an intensity and aggressiveness we've not seen in a long, long time. it's simply un-american. it's not, however, sadly, unprecedented. the creed, we shall overcome, is a long-time mainstay of the civil rights movement as jesse jackson can tell you better than anybody. the obstacles to progress that have to be overcome are a constant challenge. we saw it in the '60s. however, the current assault is not just an echo of a distant history. in 2020, we faced a tireless assault on the right to vote. restrictive laws, lawsuits, threats of intimidation, voter purges and all. we resolved to overcome it all and we did. more americans voted in the last election than any -- in the midst of a pandemic, than any

election in american history. you got voters registered. you got voters to the polls. the rule of law held. democracy prevailed. we overcame. but today, let me be unequivocal. i have been engaged in this work my whole career and we're going to be ramping up efforts to overcome again. i will have more to say about this at a later date, the truly unprecedented assault on our democracy, an effort to replace nonpartisan election administrators and to intimidate those charged with tallying and reporting the election results. but today, as for the act of voting itself, i urge voting rights groups in this country to begin to redouble their efforts now to register and educate voters. and in june, it should be a

month of action on capitol hill. i hear all the folks on tv saying, why doesn't biden get this done? well, because biden only has the majority of effectively four votes in the house and a tie in the senate with two members of the senate who vote more with my republican friends. but we're not giving up. earlier this year, the house of representatives passed the for the people act to protect our democracy. the senate will take it up later this month, and i'm going to fight like heck with every tool in my disposal for its passage. the house is also working on the john lewis voting rights act, which is critical to providing new legal tools to combat the new assault on the right to vote. to signify the importance of our efforts, i'm asking vice president harris to help these efforts and lead them among her many other responsibilities. with her leadership and your support, we're going to overcome again, i promise you, but it's going to take a hell of a lot of work.

and finally, we have to -- and finally, we must address what remains the stain on the soul of america. what happened in greenwood was an act of hate and domestic terrorism. with the throughline that exists today still. just close your eyes. remember what you saw in charlottesville four years ago on television. neo-nazis, white supremacists, the kkk coming out of those fields at night, virginia, with lighted torches, the veins bulging on them as they were screaming. remember? just close your eyes and picture what it was. well, mother fletcher said when she saw the insurrection at the capitol on january 9th, it broke her heart. a mob of violent white extremists, thugs, said reminded her of what happened here in greenwood a hundred years ago. look around at the various hate

crimes against asian-americans and jewish-americans. hate that never goes away. hate only hides. jesse, i think i mentioned this to you. i thought after you guys pushed through with dr. king, the voting rights act and the civil rights act, i thought we moved. what i didn't realize -- i thought we had made enormous progress and i was so proud to be a little part of it. but you know what, rev? i didn't realize hate's never defeated. it only hides. it hides. and given a little bit of oxygen, just a little bit of oxygen by its leaders, it comes out of there from under the rock like it was happening again, as if it never went away. so, folks, we can't -- we must not give hate a safe harbor. as i said in my address at the joint session of congress,

according to the intelligence community, terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today, not isis, not al qaeda. white supremacists. that's not me. that's the intelligence community. under both trump and under my administration. two weeks ago, i signed into law the covid-19 hate crimes act, which the house had passed in the senate. my administration will soon lay out our broader strategy to counter domestic terrorism and the violence driven by the most heinous hate crimes and other forms of bigotry, but i'm going to close where i started. to mother randall, mother fletcher, mr. van ellis, to the descendants and all survivors, thank you. thank you for giving me the honor of being able to spend some time with you earlier today. thank you for your courage. thank you for your commitment, and thank your children and your

grandchildren and your nieces and nephews. to see and learn from you is a gift. a genuine gift. dr. john hope franklin, one of america's greatest historians, tulsa's proud son, whose father was a greenwood survivor, said, and i quote, whatever you do, it must be done in the spirit of goodwill and mutual respect and even love. how else can we overcome the past and be worthy of our fore bearers and face the future with confidence and with hope? on this sacred and solemn day, may we find that distinctly greenwood spirit that defines the american spirit. the spirit that gives me so much confidence and hope for the future. it helps us see face-to-face a spirit. it helps us know fully who we

are and who we can be as a people and as a nation. i've never been more optimistic about the future than i am today. i mean that. the reason is, because of the new generation of young people. they're the best educated, they're the least prejudiced, the most open generation in american history. and although i have no scientific basis for what i'm about to say, those of you who are over 50, how often did you ever see -- how often did you ever see advertisements on television with black and white couples? not a joke. i challenge you, find today, when you turn on the stations, sit on one station for two hours, and i don't know how many commercials you'll see, probably eight to five.

two to three out of five have mixed race couples in them. that's not by accident. they're selling soap, man. not a joke. remember old pat goodell used say, you want to know what's happening in american culture? watch advertisers. because they want to sell what they have. we have hope, and folks like you, honey. i really mean it. we have hope. but we've got to give them support. we have got to give them the backbone to do what we know has to be done as i doubt whether any of you would be here if you didn't care deeply about this. you sure in the devil didn't come to hear me speak, but i really mean it. i really mean it. let's not give up, man. let's not give up. as the old saying goes, hope springs eternal. i know we've talked a lot about famous people, but i'm -- my

colleagues in the senate used to always kid me because i was always quoting irish poets. they think i did it because i'm irish. they think i did it because, we irish, we have a little chip on our shoulder little bit sometimes. that's not why i did it. i did it because they're the best poets in the world. you can smile, it's okay. it's true. there was a famous poet who wrote a poem called "the tour at troy." seamus eaton and there's a stanza in it that i think should be the definition of our call today for young people. he said, history teaches us not to hope on this side of the grave but then once in a lifetime that long tidal wave of justice rises up, and hope and history rhyme. let's make it rhyme.

[ applause ] >> a speech equal parts soaring and biden-esque folksy there. president biden marking the 100-year anniversary since the tulsa race massacre, making clear that that is exactly what it was. he said, in one line that i think received the loudest applause, it was not a race riot. it was a massacre. honoring the survivors and their families. joining our conversation, kim atkins, "boston globe" columnist and msnbc contributor. jason johnson and claire are still here. jason, i want to come back to you. i think this may be the most important speech of the biden presidency in that he opened this chapter of so much violence and so much pain, and he tied it to three conversations we have

on this show every day, including the one we started with. a death bed conversation with the late, great john lewis where they talked about the right to vote being precious and sacred. john lewis confiding in the now president that it's under assault like we have never seen. the president making his way to acute awareness of the debate going on around him about voting rights in america, announcing in this speech that vice president kamala harris will be in charge of legislative efforts to help pass federal voting rights legislation, the john lewis voting rights act. he also came back to the theme that animated his run in the democratic presidential primary, talking about the soul of the nation. which we know from his early campaign announcement, the kkk neo-nazis in charlottesville are the reason he ran for president, to restore the soul of our nation. in a haunting section of the

speech, he asked everyone to close their eyes, and he talked about how the survivors of the tulsa massacre said it reminded them, 1/6, reminded them of the tulsa massacre. the president also re-upping the report from his intelligence community and fbi director that terrorism from white supremacy is the gravest threat to the homeland. jason johnson, your thoughts? >> you know, my most charitable interpretation of this speech is that joe biden believes that the effective way to speak to the american people is to sort of come out with this, hey, i just found this out too, you need to know too, right? because when i look at what happened in tulsa, it's been a hundred years. black historians have been talking about this for decades. we're down to only a couple people left who are survivors. what i wanted to hear, if you show up to a place that was the location of a massacre that took place in this country a hundred years ago, i'm sorry, and this may sound really reductionist,

but cut a check. cut a check. the survivors of tulsa, their families are still there, and they've got nothing for it. even the state won't give them any money so the idea that the president's going to come there and talk about the terrible things that happened and then hop on a plane and no one is necessarily better off is a problem. i want to be really clear about this. yes, it is great that joe biden said that this was a massacre and this is terrible, et cetera. but we don't need programs for disadvantaged people. we don't need programs for excluded people. this was a black attack. white people went and massacred black people. and it happened all around the country during that time. and we need to be able to speak about that specifically. and i have to say this because it's also something very near and dear to me and i wrote about this in the the grio, i know that joe biden is a good, decent man, he wanted to recover the soul of this nation and he looks at things in a sort of optimistic way, but please do not tell us, in the face of an insurrection, in the face of what we see in texas, in the face of rising white nationalism

in this country, please don't tell me that a geico commercial with an interracial couple means we're turning the corner, because it doesn't and it diminishes what's actually happening in this country. so look, i know he was well meaning and i know this was intentional but i was left wanting after this speech and really quite frustrated about how serious this administration is taking the challenges that our country and in particular black people are facing going forward. >> kim atkins, he did effort to address, i think, some of what jason johnson is talking about with the announcement that vice president harris would have a role very similar to the one that joe biden had in shepherding through gun legislation after newtown, that kamala harris will now helm the efforts to garner support for voting rights legislation, that federal legislation would undo what are close to 400 laws circulating in 48 states, 22 of them have already passed.

that seemed like an acknowledgment to some of the feelings that i think jason is -- and the reporting that he has about the state of this president's efforts so far on these issues. >> yeah. and look, i understand jason's frustration with the lack of immediate action, and i know reparations, you know, cutting a check is one thing that is being discussed, but one thing that i took -- i'll take the other side. i was heartened at the fact that we had a president of the united states talking about not just what happened a hundred years ago but talking about the systemic barriers, particularly financial systemic barriers, that still exist today in 2021, that prevent black people from having the same shot at the american dream as everyone else, the ability to buy a home, the systemic racism that is inherent in buying a home to this day. there are stories and studies

that show that black folks, their houses are undervalued, that they are not shown the same properties even if they have the same financial records. i, as somebody who -- as a couple days ago is in an interracial marriage have had real conversations with my husband about what we do when we go to buy a house. is the fact that i may show up, might that put us at a disadvantage at getting our dream home? this is a reality. and these are the things that joe biden is talking about and making banks be more accountable to the communities that they serve, and in taking down these barriers that keep people from being able to buy homes and get -- helping black entrepreneurs to find capital. so, i don't know what that's going to look like at the end. we need real, concrete solutions that involve not just lawmakers, frankly, but also community members, community banks, large banks, we need the wells fargos and the chases at the table in this. but i'm at least glad that he is

talking about it. you know, it's been a hundred years since we've had a president speak this frankly about racism and how it's playing out. so, i understand jason's frustration, but at the same time, i think there is also something there that is a seed of something good if the president follows through. >> claire, i'm coming to you. i just want to say something. i want to thank both of you, jason, for being raw, for being real, for never trying to polish anything up, for telling me how you really feel and kim, to you, for being personal and for sharing. i've got the feels from every word that you both said and i thank you. i'm coming back to you, jason, i want to give you a chance to respond but i want to pull claire in because the president seemed to acknowledge these very conversations that are happening. he seemed to want to spend not a lot of time, and he didn't lower the parts of the speech that i thought were soaring in places but he did try to explain that there were legislative hurdles

to him getting everything on his agenda that's important to him, including voting rights legislation. he talked about senate rules. he talked about two senators who vote with the republicans all the time. he seemed to be trying to buy some patience, maybe, to both kim and jason's points. what did you think, claire? >> well, first of all, you know, i totally understand jason's point of view and why he has that point of view. i was certainly moved by the description of buying a home as an interracial couple and the pitfalls that you must consider. i think joe biden tried to do the right thing today. it may not have been perfect, but he was there and he was trying, and he addressed some things that he can impact even with executive orders, even with a federal regulatory ability

over banks. i thought one of the most important facts he gave in that speech was that black home ownership in the united states of america is at a lower rate today than it was when we passed the equal housing act. a long, long time ago. that is a shame upon our country, and i'm not sure i have heard a president lay out the lack of fairness in the insurance market and the housing market and all of the things that contribute to the wealth disparity in this country, and it's a black wealth disparity. i think jason's right about that. i think sometimes we're busy trying to say disadvantaged or this person or that person. there is real racism in this system, and i think joe biden, even though he may not have come at it as frontally as my friend jason would have, i think he was

very biden-esque, how he came at it, and i think it means he's committed to these issues. and i was encouraged that he spent as much of the speech as he did on the voting rights act. i think that's also a good sign. >> jason, i want to come back to you, i think, because you set the tone for all this. i want to let you respond to kim and to claire, but i just want to add this. i mean, for me, to hear him describe private planes dropping bombs on a city was -- and this is -- i'm ashamed of this but i'll just admit this on tv. there were parts of this story that i didn't know and i read about it in the newspaper and i know about -- i mean, is there a piece of this where educating the part of the country that maybe wasn't as knowledgeable as they should have been is, if incremental, still helpful? >> it can be helpful, nicole, but if you want to talk about sort of bombs being dropped on the black community, that happened in west philly 30 years

ago, right? like, this is -- that's not the only time it happened. that just happens to be one of the first times that domestic planes were used to attack black people in this country. like i said, i think joe biden's perspective is a sincere one. he really is a 70-something-year-old white guy who's like, look, guys, i just found out about this as well, and i think there's a lot of white americans, like, oh, wow, we did not know about this until watchmen and the 1619 project and so for that, i do appreciate it. the problem is, there has to be urgency, because after 100 years to basically show up -- it's like showing up to someone and saying, oh, man, you broke your ankle. everybody gets band-aids. you get a band-aid, you get a band-aid. no, this the as about that specific community. one of the things that's so interesting at tulsa and that i hoped the president would say is it is the textbook case for how you can implement monetary reparations. you have the people there. you have the insurance policies that were not listened to. you have the people who were ignored.

you have the state agencies that were handing out weapons to local white men to massacre people. like, you got all the data there, all the questions that we have about reparations are actually answered in tulsa, so that's why i'm concerned about the immediacy of it and if he was really sincere, and i think he is, and if i think our government is sincere, then tulsa should become just like selma. every democratic politician shows up to selma every year before an election. they should come back to tulsa and make this a focal point of our american discussion moving forward if they're sincere about repairing the damage systematic racism has done to black people and by extension, white people in america for the last 250 years. >> let's give him the benefit of the doubt, for the purposes of this conversation, this was ambitious if you put the intention to be sincere and to do and to make progress in a way that is meaningful, and i think jason is sort of setting the bar for what would be meaningful and

not just a nice speech, if you will. what did you hear on the voting rights section that sounds meaningful? because i, i guess, heard more at the highest levels, we're as worried as you are, we hear people talking on tv, that, hey, wait a minute, we're not in charge of the filibuster. what did you hear in the voting rights section? >> i think on that aspect, yes, it was good that he talked about that, that he tied it to it, the minute that he started talking about voting rights, by the way, you saw the people in that room get on their feet, because they understand implicitly how important that is. and he broke apart hr-1 from the john lewis voting rights act, which is a sign there, at least the last time i checked, there was a little bit more hope for the more limited john lewis act, perhaps, to get the blessing of joe manchin than the broader civil rights act, but yeah, i would have loved to have heard

even more urgency about this, that this is an important, crucial issue of our time, that without voting rights, if voting rights -- not just without. if voting rights are systematically eroded and taken away, nothing else, the conversation about everything else changes. that is square one. i think it was a step in that direction. i think the white house really needs to light a fire under congress under this, under the democrats in congress on this issue because it really is just so fundamentally crucial for all americans. it's fundamentally crucial to our democracy. we have folks talking about a coup. we have to shore up this democracy in every way that we possibly can. it's just that important. >> well, and claire, to tie it all together, you know, and then not sort of do that last piece of, you know, yanking it tightly together as a mission statement, maybe part of what he is

previewing, he said he will have more to come, but he very intentionally included a section of the speech about the gravest threat to the homeland is violence inspired by white supremacists. it's -- he's certainly -- sort of at the end of the parade, not the front, christopher wray was the first to say that, he said it in public testimony at the end of the summer, beginning of the fall. at the time, he had an attorney general in bill barr and a president in donald trump who not only refused to amplify it but it's not clear they worked with him to address it or protect the country. you now have an attorney general and a president who agree with that. the president, this was -- he amplified it in his joint address to congress, but i wonder what you make of this wanting, not just in the democratic party, but i imagine independent voters are gravely concerned about domestic violent extremism being the gravest threat to the homeland, this sort of distrust inside communities as well as this very

brazen public effort to disenfranchise minority voters. >> well, it's -- there's several different tentacles of this scary beast. one, of course, is trying to shut down our democracy by making it difficult for people to vote. one is people that had been in the highest levels of our government advocating a military coup in this country to reinstate donald trump. donald trump himself saying he expected to be reinstated and then we have the republican party in texas posing with this same nut, mike flynn, who's advocating a military coup, and we haven't even then touched the very ugly tentacle that that image that none of us will ever forget. i will never forget this image. it was probably the image that broke me up more than any other

image, and that was that man walking in the halls where i had the privilege to walk, proudly unfurling the confederate flag. that image is burned into my hard drive and i hope it's burned into a lot of people's hard drive, because that tells you all you need to know about what the people that were trying to commit an insurrection against our government, how black their hearts were when they are carrying a confederate flag, indicating that they are just fine if they could keep blacks second class citizens in this country. >> well, so, you brought us here, claire, i'm just going to follow up. i mean, since that happened, and i think that is, you know, a searing image for anyone who watched it, along with the har horror of watching one of our government buildings fall, forget who they were, but just to watch it fall, was no longer

in the control of law enforcement, no longer in control of the senators or the members of congress. it was taken over by white supremacists waving confederate flags and trump supporters waving trump flags. but fast forward. it seems like the crisis of 1/6 pales to the crisis of right now, having one of the two parties not interested in understanding why a confederate flag was unfurled and why a noose was erected to hang mike pence and why five people died and why no one knew they were coming. >> yeah. the two -- the absolute effort to shut down voting in this country is a kissing cousin to january 6th. they are closely related. because what they were trying to do on january 6th was to take over in a way that would invalidate voters. and what the republicans that sit quietly by and are refusing to say that there was no fraud,

that this is a big lie, the vast majority of elected republican officials in this country should go to bed with shame because they are refusing to say out loud what they know. and that is, there was no fraud. there's no reason to disenfranchise people, and by the way, it would be a good idea if we actually got to the truth of what happened on that day. but no, no, they're busy hiding or even worse, going down to kiss the ring of the other guy at the golf course. >> let me play this section that we're talking about. this is president biden today talking about 1/6 and making that comparison. let's watch. >> mother fletcher said when she saw the insurrection at the capitol on january 9 th, it broke her heart. a mob of violent white extremists, thugs, said reminded her of what happened here in greenwood a hundred years ago.

>> i want to bring into our conversation with kim and jason and claire my colleague, msnbc correspondent trymaine lee live from tulsa, oklahoma. we've been having an animated discussion about what worked and in jason's view, what fell flat but in pulling all of the open wounds in this country today, into this very sacred memorial of this massacre 100 years ago. >> reporter: nicole, i think it was such a clear-eyed laying out of history and in so many ways, kind of the fabric of systemic racism and the broad impacts that this violent economic dispossession that this community suffered, how it has this long tail that people feel today. and i think it echos conversations i've been having with people in this community for so very long. i think it's one thing to engage with the history, but in so many ways, the history was, in fact, buried, which is part of the broader suppression and oppression of the black people in this community. and so even as we're having these conversations about reckoning with what happened so

long ago, a hundred years ago, so few officials until relatively recently were even willing to discuss it publicly at all. it hadn't been taught in schoolbooks up until the mid-2000s, which is insane when you think about it. evidence was disappearing from old police department records. you had old newspaper clips disappearing from the city libraries. and so to have president biden here today talking about confronting the truth and reconciling with what actually happened here was met with some optimism here because the narrative still has not been centered on this community. i'm here on this stretch of greenwood avenue, across from the greenwood cultural center, with a few hundred people, staring over to the cultural center, waiting for joe biden to appear and there was a moment when a gray-haired local tribal official emerged and folks thought it was biden and they erupted in cheers. so people are waiting to get a glimpse of joe biden. but again, for him to do what so few politicians, let alone presidents, have done in terms of laying out with the brutal experience that folks have

experienced here, but also connecting the dots, i think, goes a long way to making people feel seen finally. it's one thing that people have been asking to be made whole, repairing what had been damaged but it's important for people in this community to finally feel seen because for generations, black folks, traumatized, carrying along that trauma, inheriting that trauma where there wasn't wealth to pass down whispered about this because folks in this community were devastated and the white folks in this community has gotten away with it so generations didn't want to speak about it. on the other hand, the white community, the power structure officials wanted to intentionally bury it and they didn't talk about it so we have this conspiracy of silence no more in so many ways and we'll see after the cameras leave, after we all go away, what happens next. we know there are divisions here with people raising money on the backs of the narrative, people raising tens of millions of dollars for greenwood, essentially, but none of that money is going back to the community or the three descendants, a hundred years old, who witnessed that

brutality. so while there are still wide divisions, perhaps we are at a moment where we can, as joe biden laid out, in a clear-eyed fashion, engage with this terrible history. nicole? >> well, trymaine, let me follow up. jason made this point about the survivors not benefitting from that. can you just flesh that out. help me understand that. and i just want to ask you about some of the more vivid lines of this speech and to also another one of jason's earlier points, there is an education piece to this, right? there are some people, probably white people, and i imagine this is something that gets papered over more in white communities or white households, that don't know the horror of this, the eight of the two dozen churches were burned. he described private planes dropping explosives and went on to describe the brutal way in which black tulsans were killed and what happened to their bodies, the internments.

just talk about balancing the relief of being seen, in your words, with the retraumatizing of the horrors. >> reporter: well, we talk about the retraumatizing of a community that's being black in america every single day and watching the news or existing in communities that have been disinvested in and been deprived and have the violence on the state heaped upon us and the violence of hunger and the violence of lack of access to proper health and education. that's all there. but when we talk about those survivors and this idea of making them whole, sometimes i think reparations seems like some far-off idea because no one today suffered a specific kind of injury. but in this community, there are at least three people who suffered a specific kind of injury who are here when their families' homes were destroyed and when businesses were destroyed. and how even after they rebuilt into the 1920s and '30s and '40s, there were other efforts to heap another kind of violence, and then it was urban renewal, which drove a highway right through this community. there's the pain of not even still being able to identify the remains of those victims who were gunned down, who had, you

know, incendiary bombs dropped from airplanes, that kind of suffering, and then today, gentrification, this community who have been building itself back up, to be coming back and then being pushed out and priced out of a community that was their own. you think about through the '90s and 2000s, imminent domain, the government came through and swept through. oklahoma state university is here. sitting on a beautiful patch of land that once had been in black hands so it goes on and on and on, and this community, again, even though, i think, the folks i talked to are happy that returning the lands on this community, and the truth, the ugly truth is finally being known, as you mentioned, the trauma of those wounds being ripped open and what's more traumatizing is that nothing will likely be done about it. those survivors aren't going to get any of that money as it appears right now. this community, north tulsa, the less prosperous side, on the other side of the tracks, literally, disinvested in compared to the majority white, more prosperous south side, the school system, health,

everything. and i think in some ways, what we've done with all our reporting and the president coming here and all this is laying out the fabric here and the quill here so america can sit back and say, it happened in tulsa, it happened in rosewood, it happened in arkansas, it happened in new orleans, it happens time and again, and then we reveal the systemic nature, the coordinated nature of this, and so i think that idea of trauma, i don't think, has black people in this country, we have much choice. >> kim, i want to bring you back in on this idea of -- that trymaine, i think, is really putting a fine point on here, that the trauma isn't old trauma, you know? the first thing he said to me was you get retraumatized every time you watch the news when you're black in america. >> yes. the trauma is an old trauma, and the things that trymaine was talking about are not unique to tulsa. yes, this massacre was a horrific moment in our nation's history that was hidden for a long time until very recently, but a lot of the things that he

was talking about happening since, the, for example, the urban renewal that drove highways through that neighborhood, that happened in detroit. that happened in boston. that happened all over the country in the middle of the last century that tore black communities apart. and that was by design. that made it easier for people from the suburbs to get downtown and the black and brown communities paid the cost. that is one of the things that joe biden, it's highly unlikely that it will be a part of whatever infrastructure deal, if there is one, might pass, but at least he put it in there. he's talking about it, and he's recognizing that. this is such -- yes, there's so much more to do, and one speech by one president cannot even begin to get to where we need to be, but keep in mind, we are just months off of a president trying to do the very thing that tulsa did, which is prevent schools, students in schools, from learning the truth about race, signing an executive order

trying to block the department of education from teaching the truth about race, trying to block federal agencies and contractors, private companies, from doing diversity training to keep racism a secret in america because he didn't like it, because folks on one side think that talking about racism is a bad thing because it makes white people look bad or it makes white people not think that their country is as exceptional as they were taught to believe. this is a big 180 from just a few months ago. and yes, there is so much farther to go, but at least joe biden is recognizing reality in a way that few presidents, democratic or republican, have in many, many years. >> trymaine, claire, jason, and kim, thank you so much for this, for this conversation, for being here and covering this with us. when we return, much more on the fight to protect vote rights in america and the continued cost and threat of the republicans' big lie. it's now leading to the growing

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are just how damaging to the country is the big lie about imaginary fraud in the 2020 election? it is the very permission structure for every dark force in american political life today. gabe sterling of georgia warned us last fall that it could lead to violence, which, of course, is exactly what it did. that's exactly what ensued on 1/6. local and state leaders are now under constant threat. secretaries of state like secretary of state hobbs in

arizona, benson in michigan, because of the big lie, and yet the actions being taken in service of the big lie have gotten bolder and scarier. as described in the "washington post," the bill blocked by state senate democrats in texas this weekend included this. quote, the final version included numerous provisions inserted at the last minute, language making it easier to overturn an election, no longer requiring evidence that fraud actually altered an outcome of a race but rather only that enough ballots were illegally cast that could have made a difference. the legislation also would have changed the legal standard for overturning an election from reasonable doubt to preponderance of the evidence, a much lower evidentiary bar. so, it seems republicans are looking to lower the bar to overturn future elections based on a phenomenon, voter fraud, that didn't happen. didn't exist in the first place. bill barr couldn't find it. no one could find it because there wasn't any. run texas republican admitted as much, that the problem isn't so

much the reality of the fraud but the perception of fraud. here's congressman michael mccall. >> i think the intent, and i'm not in the state legislature, is to restore confidence in the elections that fraud isn't taking place. now, you make a good point, and i'm in a federal prosecutor and in a court of law, that hasn't really been born to bear. this may be more of an optics issue, restoring confidence with the american people. in my state, they actually do believe there was tremendous fraud. >> they believe it because you all lied to them. that guy saying that congressmen -- that confidence need to be restored, it's because republicans made them doubt it. right? they only need to restore it because the former president and all of his enablers in the republican party have undermined it over and over and over and over again. months and months of feeding their supporters lie after lie, an effort that now poses a

glaring national security threat. recent polling finds 28% of republicans agree with the statement that, quote, because things have gotten so far off track, true american patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country. joining our conversation, robert gibbs, former white house press secretary under president obama. also joining us, olivia troye, former top aide to vice president mike pence and now the director of the republican accountability project. and paul is back, host of the independent americans podcast, president of righteous media and the founder of iraq and afghanistan veterans of america. paul, to you first. from this national security perspective, this is -- i don't even know the right analogy anymore, but they all got together, they built a frankenstein, and now frankenstein is at war against our democracy, and they all say, well, we have to shore up our democracy from the frankenstein that they built. >> yeah. that frankenstein is the number one national security threat in america, and the pentagon has said it.

the commander in chief has recognized it. and the republican party is perpetuating it. the republican party that you knew was a party of honor and integrity. it was john mccain and colin powell and bob dole and john warner, who just passed. those people are long gone from our political discussion, from our national security discussion and from our reality and right now, kim jong un is thrilled. our enemies all across the globe are celebrating. putin is thrilled. osama bin laden somewhere is gone and buried and celebrating. this is what our enemies have always wanted, our own government to push for its overthrow. mike flynn, everybody should understand, mike flynn still gets a military pension. he gets $100,000 from the u.s. government. he still has his rank. he should be court-martialed and put in jail and be treated like the national security threat he is but some folks seem to be so thrilled we've taken off our masks they're forgetting about the national security threat that is right in front of us.

>> paul, i'm going to press you on mike flynn because we haven't covered it yet and i'm not going to play it here, but he said this. this is mike flynn, who as you said, doesn't just get a pension but in the sort of half of america that is still enthralled with trump and trumpism, they heard this from mike flynn. he said a myanmar-like coup should happen in the united states. paul, just underscore how anti-american that is. >> he's calling for the military to overthrow our government. it's not the first time. he's been doing this for months. it's not even coded language. i mean, he's right out in the open. if someone from isis was saying this, every fbi and cia resource would be sending s.e.a.l. team 6 after them but for some reason, this guy can go on right. >> wing media and give public speeches and openly call for our military to overthrow the government and use his flag grade rank, use his title as a general, use that trust that he has with millions of people who still do believe and follow him.

he is undermining the very essence of our government. he's threatening our national security and he needs to be treated like the threat he is. he's taunting us, going on tv every day, saying you can't touch me and until we do something about him, he's a threat. >> olivia troye, i understand the politics of this, and i understand that as a blinding, overriding incentive structure for kevin mccarthy and mitch mcconnell. i don't see it for every person on fox news. i don't see it for every republican. i don't understand why -- i mean, because to paul's point, if these were foreign terrorists, there's no way that the republicans would be looking the other way when someone called for a myanmar-style coup in america. >> well, nicole, that's exactly it, though. that is the problem. the republicans are providing top cover for all these people because they're enabling it, so it's their big lie that they're pushing. it's the lies of election integrity. it's all of these dangerous conspiracies and rhetoric that

these elected leaders have fed to all these people that are inspiring all of this and emboldening it, so mike flynn is just delivering talking points that others have delivered along the way, and this is happening not just at the national level. we're seeing it right at the state level. we're seeing it at the local level and this is why this is so fundamentally dangerous because mike flynn, that was a call to action and he does this repeatedly and this call to action has happened before previously and it's concerning because that call to action reaches everyone. it reaches our military. it reaches law enforcement. it reaches people who think that this is their patriotic duty to take a stand. and they -- look, they view you and me, they view all of us as people who are, you know, against the democracy in their reality, because they see us as the enemy. they see elitism and they see the government as the enemy right now. and that is why this is so dangerous, and that is why republican leaders who haven't been held accountable for anything that's happened so far,

whether, you know, january 6th and all of the events there, that is a problem, because a pattern of behavior extends across the national security spectrum as well. >> you know, and robert gibbs, i guess to sort of pull this in, a white house is in charge of dealing with all threats. i mean, look, members of congress are too, so i hate to put this at the doorstep of a white house, but as you know better than anyone, every problem in the world comes to the doorstep of the white house. this white house and this president really just hit on a lot of this. i mean, he just said, in tulsa, that white supremacists backed domestic terrorism is the gravest threat to the homeland. they've also got almost 400 bills zipping through state legislatures all across the country that aren't even disguised. they are just brazen voter restriction laws.

they also seek to disempower the kinds of public servants that sort of held the line and probably guaranteed that there would be a transfer of power, albeit not a peaceful one. what does this look like, operationally, inside the white house, this sort of assault on truth, assault on democracy, and the national security threats that have been ushered in? >> yeah, great question. i think there's a couple of different buckets that you sort of put this in. the first, and it's been mentioned here, are the real concerning national security threats here. what michael flynn said -- by the way, on the weekend in which many of us spent time thinking about the many people in the military that gave the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedom -- is suggesting that very same military should, in fact, overthrow the government. it sounds very much, as we talked about here, a call to arms. and so, we shouldn't be surprised the next time violence breaks out, because that

continual rally that happened before the capitol was ransacked is happening at each one of these events on an almost daily basis, and somebody's going to take up arms, and somebody's going to storm that building again. i would say secondarily, there's obviously a conversation going on, each one of these comments, and you see this from the polling, undermines the legitimacy of the current president of the united states. a growing number of people find, on the other side, find this president to be illegitimate. we see and heard reports today that donald trump expects to be reinstated in august as if he's some, you know, player on an injured list in baseball. rather than, you know, a president that lost an election. so, the wiping away, as you mentioned, of truth, this idea that we're now making laws based on the perception of reality, not on the reality of what's going on, really becomes, for

this white house, and really for our democracy, a perfect storm. of threats, of violence, and the challenges that have to be really seared through each and every day just to have government function and just to keep people safe. >> i had mentioned that reporting, but it is true, what robert gibbs is saying. there is reporting that donald trump has started telling his people, his whoever he sends his statements to via carrier pigeon, that he expects to be reinstated, and it's ludicrous. it suggests some mental illness. it suggests other problems. but i wonder, paul, what those -- we've talked about extremism in the military. if you're among those in the military who sort of adhere to that belief system and you hear donald trump say, i will be reinstated at some determined

point in time and you hear mike flynn call for a coup, what threat do they present to their other people in military and all of us? >> the biggest threat we face as a nation right now. i mean, look, you can't dismiss them. like, trump can just be saying, i'm down here at mar-a-lago, just wait for me, me and mike flynn are going to come riding in and let's say it's 5% of republicans in america believe it. you're talking about millions of people. how would you like to be the detective of defense defending against millions of americans? granularly, you only need a couple to do a pipe bomb. by the way, the fbi is still looking for the pipe bomber from january 6th. you only need a couple people to create mass disruption. you only need one timothy mcveigh and every time donald trump and mike flynn and others are out there, they're calling to thousands, maybe millions of

timothy mcveighs who remain the most imminent and urgent threat we have. >> paul, do you have any doubt that that's their aim? >> no. i mean, this is like, how is this any different from anybody else who says, you know, i'm going to align my forces, consolidate my power, and i'm going to make an assault, whether it's political or actual, at another time. he's still the most likely gop candidate in the next presidential election. he's still got plenty of fund-raising capability. he's got plenty of media air time. he could just be, you know, consolidating and reorganizing for a future attack, whether that's political or something else. this has happened everywhere in the world. america is not necessarily different when it comes to situations like this. this is prevent lk, predictable, and we could be sitting here very soon talking about another january 6th, especially if almost half of the senate is too cowardly to even investigate it. 11 senators didn't even show up to vote. they didn't even show up to vote on an investigation on the number one issue facing our country. that's how urgent this is and that's how bankrupt in terms of courage our senate is right now.

>> well, and again, olivia, i've tried to also understand what the extremists themselves see, and if you're what paul just described as the gravest threat to the country, part of that radicalized group of americans who believes that donald trump will be reinstated and heard mike flynn call for a myanmar-style coup and then you see that kevin mccarthy is purging liz cheney for attacking the lie, and you see that marjorie taylor greene is still there, free to do what she wants to do, and you see that mitch mcconnell's against investigating, you think you've got the levers of government pulling in your favor, and you feel more legitimized so i wonder where the counterextremism concerns are or the -- any interest in protecting the homeland from this threat comes from. the republican party seems now to be on the side of those who threaten us and not on the side of protecting us. >> right, because they're

telling them that they're calling them to duty, that it's their patriotic duty, so what you have here is a whole group of people who see this as patriotism, who see this as defending our democracy, and that is why it's so fundamentally dangerous that this continues to be pushed, and i think paul's right. i think january 6th was the beginning. for me, you know, i was inside the white house one year ago today when i saw what happened with the clearing of the lafayette square protesters, and a manner that was very forceful and that never should have happened that way, and so i look back at that, i think about the law and order narrative, i think about the meetings that were had inside the white house, invoking the insurrection act, and the use of the military against civilians, and i think that this narrative comes up time and time again in these circles, and it's fundamentally dangerous to have people like mccarthy, people like mcconnell and a lot more -- a lot, all of these republicans, right, the majority of republicans will not come forward and start telling the

truth, and so inevitably, they're basically contributing to the radicalization that's happening across this country. they are not standing against the extremism, and we need them. those are the voices that need to come forward and say, enough. they need to start telling the truth, and they won't. >> you know, robert gibbs, as 1/6 was unfurling and i was heading up to the studio to anchor on that day with my colleagues, i wasn't sure what i was watching, and someone said to me, it's a national security story. so, i called former senior national security officials, one former senior pentagon official, one former senior white house national security official and one former senior intelligence official and they said the work of counterextremism has to come from within the trump movement. it has to come from within the republican party. god bless you and you may have facts on your side but you won't get through to them. if it has to come from the inside and the fact that they have become more egregious

enablers of the big lie, there are now 47 states passing laws based on the big lie, so the big lie is getting -- it's getting hardened. it's not -- no one is pushing against it. mitt romney on the day of the insurrection said, you have to stop lying to your voters. they did the opposite of what mitt romney suggested. how do we begin the process of deradicalization if the republican party has leaned harder into the big lie? >> it's a great question, nicole, and i wish i had an optimistic answer for you. i think it's going to take a very, very long time. i don't think, in many ways, even removing one person like donald trump from this equation is going to fix it because i think there will be others that will rush into the breach because a lot of voters have been trained to listen to these lies, and they're reacting to it, and donald trump got them excited about these lies, but in reality, the mccarthys, the

mcconnells and others of the world aren't acting against them because they fear their wrath, not just donald trump, but those voters' wrath so there's a lot of misinformation and counterprogramming that has to happen. there have to be more liz cheneys, more mitt romneys, people that are willing to speak out, and people that are willing to sacrifice their political careers to right this train back on its tracks, and i'm afraid it is going to take not just one, not just two, but maybe three or four national elections to get this out of the body politic, and i wish i was -- i hope to god i'm wrong about that, but i think it is going to take a really, really long time. every moment in which the republican party has had in the past five months or so since the inaugural to start the process of purging donald trump from this narrative, they've embraced

him. they've flown down there to meet with him. they've hugged him. they've invited him to more meetings. so, this process didn't start on january 20th. it hasn't really, in many ways, on that side, begun at all. >> it's brutal, but it's the truth. robert gibbs, olivia troye, paul, please stick around with us for more. when we return, it's the single biggest conspiracy case in the prosecution of the capitol insurrection. new indictments of members of the far-right wing militia group the oath keepers and why that group has been able to successfully recruit so many members of america's military and law enforcement agencies. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. use" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. climate deniers, polluters, lobbyists. but now... i do solemnly swear... ...finally a president who gets it. real leadership in congress. it's our moment to tackle climate change and invest in clean-energy jobs.

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there are major developments to tell you about in what is now the largest conspiracy case linked to the capital insurrection. federal prosecutors announced they will begin to make plea offers to members of the oath keepers, among the biggest groups to storm the capitol on january 6th. days after four more members of the oath keepers were indicted for their roles in alleged conspiracy to surge the capitol and stop joe biden's electoral college victory. one of the four, a florida-based security officer who spent 17 years serving in the marines is one of 45 capitol attack

suspects with ties to the military. u.s. prosecutors are criminally charged at least 19 alleged oes keepers or associates in the capitol riots. prosecutors say the oath keepers, a loose network of groups founded in 2009 that includes self-styled citizen militias targeted for recruitment. its members have provided security to some conservative politicians and causes in recent years. paul, i understand the why. what i don't completely have the ability to comprehend is the how. how do they provide security for republican lawmakers? how do they sustain this now? sort of when you look back at all the heat around the insurrection, are they recruiting more? or is there a chill on this? >> well, the how is because

republican lawmakers allowed them and even invite them and of course legit miez them. before 9/11 only national security people, intelligence people knew who bin laden was. in the military and the veterans community, we knew who the oath keepers were. this was another element of january 6th that was preventable. they have been recruiting for a long time. they have been gathering strength. and i think you have to look at january 6th not as the end but as the beginning. it is the beginning of what could be called a domestic insurgency. isis would be very happy to take the capitol. they would have locked that as a win. extremist groups will use that as a win and use republican cover to legit miez themselves.

they will use donald trump and mike flynn to perpetuate that. they're growing. they may be below the radar. it is a difficult thing to track, but they are a real organized, interconnected and immeant threat. >> and, paul, if someone -- obviously we have freedom of association here but it's carrying out criminal acts whether in the military or another organization, a criminal act is a criminal act. what do you do when you find out is part of the oath keepers but if they are actually running around with them and engaged in activities for protection, security? do you think that gets sort of -- did someone say something up the chain of command? >> it does now. i think that's an important question. it has to be recognized of course by national leadership. and we have to go all the way back for decades of presidential

leadership that failed to address this. until a year or so before, you could fly a con federal flag in a military barbarracks. now they have gotten more aggressive about screening. we've got to attack the extremist elements. we have to put them on blast. if you see something, you have to say something and we have to work around the edges to provide people with an alternative to extremism. that's not always about politics. it could be about, for example, infrastructure. i think the infrastructure plan is a way to slowly start to work people on the extremist edge into the future. show them they could be a part of the future. they don't have to fight the government. make them a part of the future. and i think that can be part of the long-term goal. but as robert talked about, it will be a generational fight. the war on terrorism is 20 years in. we will be fighting the war

against domestic extremism for at least decades. >> and, robert, to paul's point, you fight the war against domestic extremism with both hands tied behind your back. i mean, the restrictions on obviously there is freedom of association, there is freedom of speech. so it really isn't until you have committed a crime or you are sort of on the radar of law enforcement that you can do anything about it. how does that complicate those efforts? >> well, as you mentioned, it complicates them greatly. it will be interesting to see, as this process goes forward, you know, there is hundreds now under indictment. but it will be interesting to see, you know, what do prosecutors get for these plea agreements? you know, what information do they get a hold of that might help in getting broader networks to help us understand how far this goes and how deep this is and the process that can and has to be made to fight it.

so i think it will be an interesting thing to watch as we go forward because, you know, this is going to take a long time. this is going to -- we have made it a few times. but i think this is -- this is not something that's going to get solved quickly. and my hunch is that it is far deeper and far more intricate that we really know. and as i think we pulled that curtain back, we will be surprised at the depth of this. >> robert, paul, olivia, it wasn't an uplifting conversation, but it was real. thank you all for spending some time for us. i'm grateful. we have to sneak in a quick break. we'll be right back. ack. 92% saw visibly firmer skin in just 4 weeks. neutrogena® for people with skin.

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we're grateful. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. >> hi, nicole. welcome to "the beat." neal katyal is here. but we begin with this. the government of myanmar was overthrown by the military on february 1st of this year. it was chaotic and dramatic. hundreds of civilians killed. no western democratic leaders across the political spectrum said anything about that was okay. but now former general michael flynn, who famously pleaded guilty to lying to his own government during the mueller probe just appeared at a right wing event over memorial day weekend and while answering questions from someone in the audience, he said this about the coup. >> i want