brushing only reaches 25% of your mouth. listerine® cleans virtually 100%. helping to prevent gum disease and bad breath. never settle for 25%. always go for 100. bring out the bold™ . if it's thursday, our democracy is in peril. republican lawmakers in multiple states want to change how our elections are administered, as donald trump keeps pushing the lie that the vote was rigged. plus, pressure is mounting on president biden after the latest stripping of russian-based cyberattacks on

u.s. businesses. what we know and how we should respond. the chair of the house intelligence committee, democratic congressman adam schiff of california will join me ahead. a source confirms to nbc news federal prosecutors are indeed looking into whether congressman matt gaetz obstructed justice. it's all part of their investigation into potential sex crimes involving the congressman. we'll have the latest on that coming up. welcome to thursday. it is "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. the president and congress have a dilemma on hand when it comes to our democracy. it's bigger than simply trying to come to an agreement on say january 6th commission and bigger than any single priority, even the hr-1 sweeping bill on voting rights. what i'm talking about is the move among republicans at the state level aiming to give trump

allies more power to subvert election results, essentially rig the umpires, buy off the umps. a lot of conversations about voting laws has been about voting access. yes, there are hurdles, but hurdles you can jump over. but that's not what we are focusing on here. bottom line, these republican efforts can make the chaos of the 2020 election look quaint compared to what we might see in future elections. let me walk you through this, right now as you can see here, republican legislatures in states across the cup the coast to coast, montana to florida, are enacting a slew of new restrictive voting laws seemingly in response to the lies about election fraud being pushed by donald trump, still being pushed by him, by the way. amazing how many elected republicans just ignore, stick their head in the stands at this delusional stuff the president pumps out every day. this is not just about limiting access to voting. in some of the laws changes to how elections will be administered are what can be most impactful. let me take you to georgia.

that's a place where the law has already been enacted. this takes power away from the secretary of state's office. we knew, and you might remember it, they did intervene, they did defend the state's elections results from trump's attacks. they wouldn't be able to do that next time. now the legislature will have sweeping new powers over potentially certifying those election results. let me take you to the state of texas. a lot of the democrats have blocked a law right now to give the burden of election results, and it's expressly written into the law, the court can declare an election void without first attempting to find out how some individual voters actually voted. let me take you to arizona, where republicans are conducting the bizarre audit, if you will. the current law would strip the current state democrat of her powers to defend election laws before 2024. in arkansas a new law already on the books and it gives the state's election board a lot

more power to decertify an election official or simply take over election administration. so what makes these republicans measures so powerful is that there's basically nothing to counteract them in the democrats' federal legislation on voting rights. the legislation would expand voting access, it would try to limit gerrymandering, it would increase financial transparency when it comes to campaign finance money groups. it doesn't deal with election at the state level really at all. what we are seeing is a case of asymmetrical warfare, democrats battling over who gets to vote and republicans arguing over which vote gets to count. think of it this way, a close claim in basketball, baseball, a crooked ref or ump can tip the balance. a close election, that's what we are staring at. you win by ten runs, you don't have to worry about a crooked ump. you win by ten votes, you might.

with us now blayne alexander and a stanford law professor from stanford m.i.t. healthy election project. and joshua johnson, and america's scholar is also here. i want to start with blayne down in georgia. blayne, what is remarkable here, and i guess the best way to try to put it is try to explain, if we had a similar situation as we had in 2020, the secretary of state became a national, you know, folk hero to some because he sort of stood up and did his job against partisan pressure. could he even do his job the same way in 2024? >> it would have looked a lot different, chuck, and that's what a lot of critics are pointing to when you look back at 2020. here's why this matters. you talk about the fact essentially this law, one major component, it removes a lot of the power from the secretary of state and instead transfers that power to state legislature.

essentially that means the secretary of state, who previously was the chair of georgia's election board, no longer holds that role. now that role will be appointed by state lawmakers. the second is the state board, elections board. they will have the power to suspend county and local elections. the reason that matters is here in the state of georgia, both chambers are strongly controlled by republicans. you will remember back in 2020 secretary of state brad raffensperger spoke out very strongly. it was him and members of his office, gabe sterling and others, who repeatedly essentially pushed back on then president trump's unfounded claims of voter fraud, essentially saying there's no evidence of widespread fraud and the election was conducted fairly. at the same time during 2020, we saw a growing number of republican lawmakers, many of whom were siding with the then president, talking about the fact it was a fraudulent election, making those unfounded claims but also calling for very specific things. calling for a general assembly

to be called, special session to be called, and also calling for the removal of some of those state and local officials. had this law been this place back in 2020, you will remember the secretary of state would not have been the chair of the elections board and some critics essentially say that would have given those very same lawmakers indirectly more power over the state elections board and decisions that came out of that board, chuck. >> blayne alexander with a little bit of a primer on georgia, basically the first state to enact some of these changes. blayne, thank you. let me go to you, nate persily. i want to start with a texas -- part of the texas bill if it is enacted. here's what it says -- overturning elections, if the number of votes illegally cast in the election is equal to or greater than the number of votes necessary to change the outcome of an election, the court may declare the election void without attempting to determine how individual voters voted. obviously here, it doesn't say the court determines whether

votes were illegally cast, it would be interpretation of the court that the election official is determined these were illegally casted voted and the court would decide whether to use them. this does not sound like sane election law. does any of this make sense when it comes to what you worry about, which is healthy elections? >> it does concern me. and i will say this is part of sort of a suite of issues in trying to reserve the right, whether it's an estate legislature's hands or other political bodies, to overturn the result of an election. those are the most concerning parts of the bills, this transfer of authority away from nonpartisan election administrators or sort of slightly partisan election administrators toward more partisan officials who would oversee the process, and the lowering of the threshold for proof for an election contest is something that simply can lead to a lot of machinations we saw

after this election becoming more successful. one of the things i said about these laws, we really don't know what impact they will have and will only know the impact once it's too late. this is reserving the right for the possibility as you were describing before, if it's a close election, the forces that have been sort of behind the big lie, would have the upper hand in order to overturn the election. >> that's what we're looking at here. this is not going to be an issue if you win by five percentage points. this is going to be an issue if you win by essentially a percentage point or less, correct? >> that's right. in some ways these laws are trying to win the last war. they're assuming this last election will be the model going forward, where you have, for example, large number of absentee ballots or you have an election which is decided by less than a percentage point. so since the 2000 election in bush versus gore, we sort of have been thinking about how these thumbs on the scales could

be dispositive, and this is one example of that. >> what about criticizing certain practices welcome officials might take into their own hands? maybe some of it might be accidental if they send out a ballot before it was done and increasing, creating more of a criminal penalty, frankly, criminalizing -- some would argue criminalizing trying to do your job better, if you want to look at it from one perspective. this seems to be almost an attempt to dissuade election officials for doing almost any part of their job for fear of committing an accidental crime. >> that's another important aspect in some of these laws, that they're directly targeting local election administrators. let's understand the local election administrators were the heroes of the last election. the fact we were able to transform our election structure because of covid and have

turnout is because of the efforts of the local election officiators. in texas where they adopted curbside voting or 24-hour voting to deal with the pandemic, those are the folks being specifically targeted by the laws, the practices themselves, and as you were suggesting chilling innovations to deal with these emergencies in order to make more people vote. >> can our judicial branch intervene here and call these election laws -- i assume there's going to be legal challenges. do these violate the 14th amendment? >> it is being litigated once georgia passed the law, there were lawyers that went right into court. so there are two sort of large families of questions here. one is, can you prove that these laws are intentionally trying to discriminate on the basis of race? and that is always hard to prove because you're getting in the minds of legislatures and what is behind them. and even if they're not

intentionally grounded on racial discrimination, do they violate, as you said, the fundamental right to vote? that is challenging because there are many states that have different components of these laws, that a judge would be reluctant to try to strike them down nationwide. the final grounds for striking this down is if they have a discriminatory impact and that would be under the voting rights act but the supreme court in the next month is actually going to issue a decision in a very important case that would have an impact on that. >> let me bring in joshua and norm. you signed a letter with 100 other academics, and i should remind people, norm, you have been sounding this alarm before other people would even listen, what was happening inside the republican party. i want to put that up top here. sometimes i don't think you get your due on that front. but let me read from this, it could enable some state legislatures or partisan elections to do what they failed

to do in 2020, reverse the outcome of a free and fair election. and i guess that's the question, how do you combat this? i don't know if a federal law can combat this. >> that's absolutely right, chuck. and thank you. and i would say it may not even take a close election. remember that if nobody gets 270 electoral votes on the first go around, the house of representatives voting by states will decide the outcome of a presidential election, and republicans, even if they don't win a majority in the house, have a majority of state delegations. so you can imagine states even using robust victory by a democrat, say, to throw up a second set of electors to create a smoke screen to throw it to the house. if we had seen these laws in place in 2020, i'm not at all convinced we would have joe biden in the white house right now. we would be in the middle of a crisis. so the reality is that it is

almost impossible to create a federal law that obviates this. it's not entirely impossible. congress does have quite a substantial authority to regulate the time, matter and place of federal elections but not state elections. and you could presumably build in all kinds of safeguards to prevent these laws from overturning election results. but if the courts don't intervene and say that this has gone too far, given the ways in which you can intimidate election officials, the ways in which you could at least create a separate slate of electors and that possibility that even if one of the two houses went to the republicans in 2022, that they would use that in 2024, it's almost impossible without having a change in the set of rules that at least it overcomes earlier barriers and then we'll have to fight it out in trench

warfare. this is a bigger threat that i have seen to the country's democracy at least since the civil war. >> i was just going to say, joshua, i was going to go back there. i feel like we're reliving all of the different shenanigans that many tried to pull in the 19th century to keep power in different ways here and different laws that were built around reconstruction, just sort of to stop -- i mean, it does, this is case where history is at least running. >> i don't know it is. i think there are differences here that at least give me a little more hope as to where this might go. one is in the 19th century, america is a much more global country now and if the world lost faith in our ability to govern ourselves on such a fundamental level as having free and fair elections, i strongly believe that at a certain point, it would hurt the u.s. economy. if there's one thing republicans don't want to be known for, it's tanking the economy.

i think if the world begins to disinvest from the u.s. because it can't trust we are a nation of laws, that could change things quickly. that's one factor. the other factor is the american people. i think unlike in the 19th century, we're not in an information asymmetrical world. social media changes the way activism happens. if activists on social media can screw up the ticket sales for donald trump's social rally, who knows if all of these laws remain law. >> joshua, let me push back on that a bit. i can argue thanks to social media, that's why we have this sort of minimum barrier that we've met where you have one in four republicans believe, you know, a bunch of satanist pedophiles are running the country, and oh, by the way, the election was stolen and these folks are trying to get control over our election process. and oh, by the way, how are they spreading this disinformation? social media. >> one in four republicans, that

means 3-4 don't believe that. >> glass is half full with you, joshua. >> no, the glass is all true, the plurality of american voters are independent, then democrats then republicans. the majority of voters are not rpds, the majority of republicans don't believe this and on social media, once the whole population of who's online makes its voice heard, it's a lot easier, especially now that twitter and facebook have been raked over the coals for the way they dealt with election misinformation, and some people have given up facebook all together because of their inability to handle this. i think the conversation changes. i would not be surprised if at a certain point, you found a way to talk to one another about this, to look at republicans and say, you know, i'm sure you don't teach your children to be sore losers. i'm sure you teach your children to lose and win with dignity and with honor. is this what you want them to remember how you responded to

the 2020 election? is this the child you want to raise and the america you want to raise them in? i think, i have hope, that at a certain point the american people begin to talk to one another and say, hey, is this really who you want your children to remember you as being? then i think the argument might be over. >> norm, do you have that same hope? >> i think joshua is the embodiment of hope over experience. keep in mind, first of all, almost 70% of republicans still believe the election was stolen. keep in mind even on the day that we had a violent insurrection, an attack on the capitol, two-thirds of house republicans voted the election had been rigged. so we're not living in a world that is one we would like to live in. we're living in a very different environment right now, and it's an environment where winning takes precedence over all of the norms that we believed in for a very substantial share of

americans, but in particular for the preponderance of elected republicans in the country. that's the danger we face, and it's an imminent threat, i believe. >> but i think we have to remember the nation is evolving to look very different from the current republican party, and they know this. we're a nation that's about to become a majority minority nation around the 2040 census. we're a nation that is getting younger, that's getting more diverse. we're a nation that over the arc of history tends to lean center left and the gop knows this. i think that old quote about the moral arc of the universe being long but bending towards justice holds true, and if there's one variable norm with due respect you cannot yet account for, it's the will of the american people to protect this democracy. at the end of the day, i believe that will win out. i'm 100% convinced that will win out. >> it's possible on that detour on the arc, we just are making a really, really, really long lump

here that hopefully will move. quickly, why haven't there been successful lawsuits that indicate if i'm a california resident, i have a better chance of my vote being counted than if i'm a texas resident, why hasn't that kind of lawsuit been successful? >> as you know, we decentralized election rules in the u.s. the rules of voting in california are very different than in texas. so in general the equal protection laws apply to states. so it's in the state we judge the fundamental right to vote. in some states, they fran enchiez felons, some disenfranchise felons. we have a great variety. and that's the foundation our great country was created. 3

up next -- ransomware is becoming an enterprise. many are coming from russia. how much should we hold the country responsible? the chair of the house intelligence committee, democratic congressman adam schiff joins us for that conversation ahead. rnings were e for better things than rheumatoid arthritis. when considering another treatment ask about xeljanz, a pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis when methotrexate has not helped enough. xeljanz can help relieve joint pain and swelling, stiffness, and helps stop further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections. before and during treatment, your doctor should check for infections, like tb and do blood tests. tell your doctor if you've had hepatitis b or c, have flu-like symptoms, or are prone to infections.

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welcome back with cyberattacks vital, people are trying to protect themselves against cyberattacks. it comes during a week in which we've seen or learned, more importantly, about cyberattacks that jeopardize everything from the food we eat to wait we get around. our own jake ward is in san francisco. he's been digging into what puts

companies at risk to becoming ransomware targets. jake, what have you found? >> reporter: chuck, it's strange to stand here or anyplace in america to see how rampant cyber is. muni was hit in 2016 by a cyberattack. they had to pay $27 million for their ransom. you can go to the art museum which was hit in 2018. you can go to ucsf hit a year ago. all of that has to do with just how easy it has become to hire and buy ransomware services. now, it is very important, i think, what the white house has put out saying we need to come up with international standards about this. we need, as business leaders, to

come up with a plan. there's all these things. but if you look at how easy it is to do it, how prevalent it is across the nation, it really brings into question, chuck, how are we going to deal with this? we're not talking about just making sure it's as illegal in every country or the president and putin when they sit down together and talk about it. it's also about how are we going to get the administrators museums, hospitals, beverage suppliers, beef sufficient -- suppliers to sit down and talk about how cyberattacks are so rampant, chuck. >> and then what if there is an effort to attack the country and this is a way to get attacked. jake, i love what you did in san francisco. nowhere you go in america probably hasn't been hit by ransomware. the chair of the house intelligence committee, representative adam schiff, will

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the summit. >> welcome back. the white house told reporters yesterday that president biden won't shy away from the issue of russian hacking in his upcoming meeting with president vladimir putin. russian attacks have surged in the past couple months, disturbing parts of the infrastructure. joining me now, democratic congressman adam schiff from california. congressman, let me start with it this way. you know, my staff and i were noting, is vladimir putin basically got a whole bunch of cybercriminals that he has said, we're going to let you do what you want to do. you can make a bit of money but make sure your targets are all in the west. is that what's happening right now to the united states? >> yes, i think that's exactly it. there are a number of criminal groups, cybercriminals operating from russian soil. as long as they don't go after russian companies, as long as they don't hurt the regime, they can operate with a lot of

impunity in terms of any reaction from the kremlin. but it's more than that, chuck. it's also that they could be tasked, and this is the same situation in china as well where other cybercriminals can act with the indulgence of the chinese government, but also they can be given instructions, we want this data, we want this trade secret, we want you to infiltrate these government agents and provide us the data. so it's a symbiotic relationship between these governments and between these groups, and that ought to give us leverage to go after not just the groups but the countries that are hosting them. >> you say it ought to give us leverage. if i look back at what we've done, the hacking situation going back to 2016, the first couple years, most of the general public, they didn't necessarily feel the day to day. the only time a hack got in their way was when their credit card companies told them they had to get a new credit card.

other than that, that was about the only hassle. is this an intentionally led government attack on the country right now, or is this less than and it's still cybercriminals with a general set of instructions? >> i think it's more the latter. there are certainly things, i think, that putin has done to test the new administration, that massive troop buildup outside of ukraine, i think that was designed to chill what ukraine might do or the negotiations with ukraine or send a message to biden that this was our sphere of influence. i think this is a bit different. i do think we have seen an increase in these attacks, but frankly, that increase has been going on for years. i can remember years ago a hospital in my district being the subject of a ransom attack,

and they were seeking to extort was lower amounts. now the extortion rate has gone up, and they're seeking to outsource others. it's a proliferation and we need to harden our private defenses in north america, we need to harden our government offenses which are not good enough, but we also need to use our cyber capabilities to disrupt and take away some of the profitability from these groups. >> so how does that work? i mean, look, on one hand with bitcoin, yes, bitcoin is anonymous. but the wallets that -- you know, the other part of the bitcoin is you know every -- it's part of the block chain. all of it is identifiable. maybe you have control of the wallet, you can track the wallet and watch people use that money

and perhaps hold others criminally accountable like you would money launderers, could you not? >> i think historically we have been reluctant to use our cyber capabilities as more than just a general deterrent. we haven't been that willing to deploy them to disrupt either the cryptocurrency luker that these ransom groups accumulate, or in the case of the northern states, the ability they have to hack our networks. i think that system is breaking down, and i think it's going to have to. i think we could use our technological means which are the greatest in the world to disrupt these networks and disrupt the government as well as private hackers. >> sanctions look like they've been a failure. tell me why they haven't been, because it certainly looks like it has not deterred the behavior of putin, period.

so in that sense, why are -- why can't you make the case that sanctions have been successful? >> it all depends, i guess, on how much weight you're expecting sanctions to carry. i think they are an effective tool. i think they can be overutilized and have the false expectation that they're going to solve all our problems. they won't, but nonetheless, they do have a very real impact on the russian economy. they have a real impact on the russian oligarchs who baits them. they do have a value here, and i think we need to hold these countries to indemnify the victims, other than by providing some form of legal redress or sanctions that are equivalent to the losses that we're sustaining. we're going to need international cooperation to do it. i think one of the things that russia and china are greatly concerned about is when we partner with our allies around the world and we bring about

collective legal action to push back on their activities, but that's what we're going to have to do. it won't be a cure-all. but it does help advance the cause. >> so are you suggesting that whether it's jbs or the mta or the hospital you talked about, file a suit against the russian government? sue the russian government? >> the reality is we're not going to be able to bring these criminal hackers before u.s. courts. we don't have the jurisdiction to go into st. petersburg or moscow, wherever they're operating out of, to grab them and pull them into u.s. court. but i think we can seek to recoup the money. i think we can try to establish international rules of the road and laws that allow for liability in the courts, yes, but also a collective international agreement to sanction, at least force them to suffer the economic losses that they're causing the rest of the world by allowing these

ransomware attackers to operate freely. >> my friend tony likes to say there are no problems that can't be solved with money. there is always a money component, perhaps. the final question is this. the white house put out a memo to business executives essentially saying, hey, you better get your act together, too. i guess ultimately who is in charge of protecting us? the government or a private business? i understand i have some expectation, but at the end of the day, what can a business do that's greater than a government in protecting our privacy online or our finances? >> that's a good question. i think when it comes to critical infrastructure, the government is going to have to do more than admonish corporate america and protect themselves to the best of their ability. i think we're going to have to set and mandate criminal

infrastructure. it's a very unequal fight when it's a nation state against a private company. but here it's often not a nation state acting as the nation state, it's a group of criminal ransomware artists, and their large companies are on a better footing to compete and protect themselves. when it comes to things that are vital to american life, i think the government is going to have to require those companies to do a lot more than they are, and if they're not going to do it on their own, then we have to insist on it. >> adam schiff, chairman of the intelligence committee from california, thank you for coming on. i appreciate it. >> thank you. republican leaders are looking into whether republican congressman matt gaetz committed obstructive justice. i'll have more details next. obstructive justice. i'll have more details next. versus 16 grams in ensure high protein. boost® high protein also has key nutrients

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into the investigation of congressman matt gaetz. prosecutors are now looking into whether the republican congressman obstructed justice. joining me now is justice correspondent pete williams. obstructed justice in this case is code for witness tampering or what? >> that's the question. this involves a telephone call, according to officials, that was going on between matt gaetz and an ex-girlfriend who then conferenced in a young woman who has turned out to be a potential witness in this case. that's what the government is looking into. did that conversation amount to obstruction of justice? that's about all we know of this, chuck. we don't know when the conversation took place. was it before gaetz realized this investigation was going on? was it afterwards? that could make a potential difference, but that is something we don't know when the conversation took place. and it's pretty clear that this young woman that was joined into

the conversation is turning out to be a potentially important witness, but it's also pretty clear that whatever is going on with this case, we are months away from any kind of resolution of it, chuck. >> why do you say that? that was going to be my next question. is this something that's going to get resolved by labor day in some form or another with indictments, without indictments? is that the time frame we should be looking at here? >> i've never heard a specific date put on it. that's the question about labor day. a couple things are going on here. number one is they just got a conversation with glean berg, the associate of gaetz. they knew what he was going to say and now they're trying to figure out if he can prove what he's saying here. secondly, if you're a member of congress, there is just more careful work going on because of the potential constitutional issues, and that person's, you

know, an elected official so they want to be extra careful. the impression i get is that this thing is a long way from any resolution. >> interesting that you note the cooperation agreement and whether you want to connect the dots of finding out the construction of justice part of this investigation. we'll let others connect those dots if they would like. pete williams, thank you. >> you bet. another sign that the political world is getting back to normal. i'm actually in the regular studio today for the weekday show. new york city's eight mayoral candidates came face to face for the first time last night, and guess what that means? it got heated and personal over the economy, policing, crime, as well as each other's records and qualifications. one of the most tense moments of the nights came between the two supposed frontrunners, eric adams, and 2020 presidential candidate andrew yang.

>> you left the city in a very difficult time. you can't run from the city, andrew, if you want to run the city. >> we know you've completed the require tri fecta of corruption investigations. that's why people don't want you to be mayor. >> and i guess they want you to be mayor? what am i missing here? >> you both are right. >> my big takeaway, apparently andrew yang's movement is gaining real traction among candidates. the field is pretty crowded, polls continue to shift. remember, this is rank choice voting. whoever wins the democratic primary will be the favorite to succeed mayor devos. you never know what's coming up. whether to investigate the deadly siege of the capitol and

the consequences that could follow if we don't. chuck yagle and a republican senator joins me next. a republin senator joins me next. a blood clot which could travel to your lungs and lead to a pulmonary embolism. which could cause chest pain or discomfort, or difficulty breathing—and be deadly. your symptoms could mean something serious, so this is no time to wait. talk to a doctor right away, by phone, online, or in-person. welcome to allstate. ♪ ♪ you already pay for car insurance, why not take your home along for the ride? allstate. here, better protection costs a whole lot less.

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have a second vote to inform the bipartisan commission with subpoena power. joining me now is a former defense secretary under president obama and a former republican senator from nebraska. it's chuck hagel. secretary hagel, welcome back to the show. let me start with this. the guy who replaced you, i think, voted for the commission, ben sasse, but the other senator, she did not. what would you your case to her? >> well, chuck, thanks for having me. i wrote an op-ed in the "herald" last week about this issue. i know that two of nebraska's three republican house members voted for the commission, and i'm very glad that senator sasse did as well. why senator fisher did not vote for it, you would have to ask her specifically. but what's happened here and you

look at the vote, i think in the senate it's pretty clear. six republican senators voted for an independent commission, a fair, free, independent commission. equal number of republicans, democrats, model on the warren commission. it's the right thing to do. what we've seen, chuck, it isn't just the vote on the commission last week. we've seen a breakdown in trust and confidence in our institutions in this country over the last few years in our leaders. we've segmented our politics, we've polarized our society. and so you've got variations of each party. you've got the trump republicans, then you've got traditional republicans and then you have variations of those republicans. same thing in the democratic party. the only way we can all be brought back together is some trust and some compromise to try to move america forward. i'm at a loss, chuck, why our elected officials don't understand -- i guess they don't

understand that the oath of office they took was not to a party, not to a president, not to a philosophy, it was to the country and the constitution. that's the answer here. everything we do to set that back, the crazy stuff going on in texas and other states, and i think what the democrats is proposing to the senate is wrong as well. >> let me ask you this. you split the republicans in basically three groups, and i think it's a fair trio of groups right here, the trump party, the sort of traditional republicans and those that have been aggressive, i think, in trying to go public and the problems of the party. it's the middle republicans i want to ask you about. the former president, frankly, to be generous either is deluded or demented himself, or he knows what he's doing and he's intentionally trying to undermine the democracy. why are the elected republicans who tell you privately and tell

me privately, yes, the dude in mar-a-lago is losing it or whatever and cannot bring themselves to condemn this publicly. >> well, i think it's basically a matter of the body politic, a prayed of losing in a primary, afraid of losing their seats. they've put their own seats, their political future, ahead of everything else, and they're constantly afraid. constantly afraid. and there's no north star anymore. there is no compass anymore. we desperately need leadership. you know, when i was in the senate, i had the good fortune of serving with a lot of tremendous leaders, and these were world war ii leaders on both sides. i mean, moynihan and democrats, lepp cans, you knew them all, the great john warner, and he really was a terrific person, chet stevens, john tracy. they got together, they worked it out.

they made sense. they understood what it took to make a democracy work, and it's compromise. you can't do it any other way because there's no other way except an alternate government. we use this segmentation and polarization in our country, and our country being off balance for their own political interests and their own interests of power. they lost sight, i think, of the north star here as to what the real fundamental responsibilities of public servants are. >> is there anything you would compromise on on this commission in order to get mcconnell to move on this? would you move up the report date to october 31st of this calendar year? anything to get an independent sort of stamp of approval on it? >> i think those kind of things you could probably compromise. i don't think you want to compromise on the fundamentals. the fundamentals are as fair and

free as any commission that i've seen in my lifetime. yeah, you could kind of nibble around the edges on it, but my guess is if there is another vote in the senate, you have the same outcome. i doubt you're going to move the rest of those republican senators. the problem with speaker pelosi going with the only alternative approach she has, because it will be seen as partisan. this was the whole point between the january 6 commission. it was nonpartisan. i think that's what the republicans were afraid of, and they were intimidated by the trump people and their own districts and states, and the president himself saying i'm going to be reinstated as president by august, and the election was fraudulent and we see this nonsense going on in arizona. so it just keeps everybody all churned up and we just can't move forward. but it's going to take leadership, chuck, real

leadership to break through. >> we know, and unfortunately, it's too powerful of a drift, i guess, in the right wing to make money off this polarization than it is to actually deal with the challenges of the democracy. former defense secretary and former secretary chuck hagel, thank you. "athletes and activism" streams tonight on "meet the press reports." kareem abdul-jabar, he and i have a one on one. msnbc continues with geoff bennett right after this break. f bennett right after this break with better outcomes. with app, cloud and anywhere workspace solutions, vmware helps companies navigate change-- meeting them where they are, and getting them where they want to be. faster.

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