tv Velshi MSNBC January 8, 2022 6:00am-7:00am PST
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♪♪ ♪♪ good morning. it's 9:00 a.m. on the east coast. i'm ali velshi. it is saturday, january the 8th. there was a moment one year ago when it seemed that america was on the brink of reckoning about an ugly era of authoritarianism that the president ushered into our nation's capitol and our democracy. it seemed like the january 6th insurrection helped find clarity to an anti-democratic tyrant. mitch mcconnell and kevin mckarthy and lindsay graham clearly accused and rebuked the then-failed president for inciting an insurrectionist mob. >> the president bears responsibility for wednesday's attack on congress by mob rioters. he should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. >> all i can say is count me out. enough is enough. >> there's no question -- none, that president trump is
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practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. >> for a brief moment there we got a glimpse of a country that was united behind democracy against a common adversary, but that reckoning never fully materialized. mere hours after the insurrection. 147 republican members of congress still voted against certifying the legitimate results of one of the most secure and closely examined general elections ever conducted in america. in that moment the republican party signaled that they were not done with their coup attempt. within days republicans began writing a revisionist history of january 6th, one based on lies, delusions and conspiracies. the trump supporters wearing clothes and bearing trump flags were antifa in disguise.
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they threatened elected leaders peaceful protesters. the insurrectionist mobs that smashed windows of the capitol were invited into the building. andrew clyde, a republican congressman from georgia even said that the insurrection looked like, quote, a normal tourist visit. a year later those lies have taken hold of the republican party and many ordinary americans who identify as republicans. a recent poll by "the washington post" and the university of maryland, quote, protesters who entered the capitol on january 6th as mostly peaceful and a majority of republicans, 72% said that trump bears just some or no responsibility for the attack. on top of that, quote, 58% of republicans think biden's election was not legitimate. 62% believe there is evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, this despite
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overwhelming proof to the contrary. in arizona this week cyberin in jas, the company that conducted the so-called fraudit of the 2020 election announced it was shutting down after maricopa county conducted their partisan review of the election and a judge imposed a $50,000 a day fine on the company until it handed over documents as part of a public records request by the arizona republic. even though the cyberninjas were a partisan sham and lucrative griff. they have demonstrated that they have done their part in perpetuating this big lie. last thursday, representative liz cheney accompanied by her father dick cheney were the only republicans present on the house floor to mark the first anniversary of the insurrection. it's a stark reminder of the pathetic state of the republican party today. republicans largely remained silent and absent this january 6th including the former vice
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president mike pence, one of the mob's targets during last year's insurrection. however, pence may be compelled to speak soon. last night betty thompson chairman of the january 6th committee told npr that pence could be asked to cooperate in its investigation as soon as this month. meanwhile other figures from donald trump's orbit aren't just refusing to cooperate with the january 6th committee, they're pushing back with lawsuits. just this past week this guy, sebastian gorka and the foam pillow salesman both joined the likings of mark meadows ensuing to stop the committee from retrieving their records or compelling them to cooperate arguing that the committee itself is illegitimate and lacks the authority to conduct its inquiry. all of this is a reminder that there is still a lot of information that we do not have. there are still a lot of people out there who are continuing to undermine our democracy. that's because we never completely quashed the coup in the first place. as the midterms ramp up,
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remember this, the people we elect or re-elect this year will include officials who will oversee the administration of the 2024 presidential election and congress members who will certify the results of that election. these are unpleasant things to talk about. people are tired of talking about listening to this tale. people tell me that. why are you carrying on about this, velshi? we have to face these threats because what we do or do not do right now will affect the future of our democracy. among the challenges in america today is the threat of domestic extremism. joining me now is karl racine, the attorney general for washington, d.c. who recently filed a lawsuit against extremist groups the proud boys and oath keepers. he's a former president of the national association of attorneys general. his term just ended in the end of 2021. attorney general, good to see you again. thank you for joining us. speaking to jonathan greenblatt of the antidefamation league, they said about 21% of the
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people arrested so far for their participation in the insurrection on january 6th have an affiliation with far-right extreme groups like the ones that you are suing. tell me about this and what you hope to achieve by it. >> sure, thank you very much ali, and i enjoyed the interview on thursday that you had with jonathan greenblatt, the president and ceo of the anti-defamation league. ali, the district of columbia stood up and for the first time a state government lost a lawsuit against two hate groups here, the proud boys and the oath keepers and 30 other individuals who obviously and the camera doesn't lie, the pictures don't lie sought to overthrow our government, an insurrection. in the course of that violent action district of columbia metropolitan police departments, about 800 or so people went to the capitol, men and women and guess what they confronted, what
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you're seeing right now, people with flag poles, pushing and pulling them and punching them and throwing them down the stairs. michael fanone was told, take his gun and shoot him with his own gun. we, they were assaulted, three of whom have died by suicide. accountability is important. it's an american value. that's why we're suing the proud boy, oath keepers and the individuals we've named in our complaint. >> talk to me about why it's a civil complaint and not a criminal charge. >> it's a great question, and it is very important for your viewers to understand that my office principally is an office that has civil jurisdiction over adults and entities. our criminal jurisdiction is quite narrow and only applies to a sliver of misdemeanor actions.
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so what we're doing in the district of columbia is everything we can to stand up for our american freedom and to defend our metropolitan police department officials. civil cases are, however, incredibly important. we know that in america money matters a lot. this used to be your beat, ali. and so by suing civilly, what we seek to do is hurt the men and women in organizations who plotted, planned and participated in this insurrection by taking their money and assets away and we than when you do this against ku klux klan members and other hate groups, guess what they do? they scatter, hide and frankly they're not as organized for the next time. sidely, there will be a next time. >> it will be a nice day when i can get back to my old beat of business and economics, but we're not there yet and there are other things to do like the
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preservation of democracy. let me talk about what jonathan greenblatt, and the other 79% not. a lot of them are facing misdemeanor charges, too. >> do you see them differently? do you see the purveyors of disinformation and hatred and extremism and by the way, the former president and his -- his kabal. do you see them differently than the majority of the people who were there that may have been dupes and swept up in this thing and may have been swept up in this and have fallen for? you have been watching the show and making important distinctions, because to be quite honest with you, the purveyors of hate, the people that don't want our freedom they want americans to be divided and to fight each other. i don't want that. i want people to know that we are much more alike and united than we are divided.
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that 21% number actually means that most of the people who were protesting were exercising peacefully their first amendment rights. we shouldn't try to lock them up or sue them because they disagree with us. we should fight the idea of war on ideas and the poll numbers that you recited prove that. we have to talk about what unites our country. >> yeah. i think that's a wise move and there are people who are open to debate. it's very hard, though, with the amount of disinformation and misinformation that's out there. karl racine is the attorney general for washington, d.c.. >> thank you. joining me now is ruth bendia. she's the author of "mussolini to the president" and "lucid" which follows threats to
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democracy. welcome. we spoke about 12 hours ago on tv and this is a great continuation of that conversation, and i want to pick up right where karl racine left off. about the 79% of people who have been arrested and charged in the riot and the insurrection of last year. we're not sure what they are. they're not members of the proud boys. they're not members of the oathkeepers. they have no particular association with right-wing or extremist groups and have no criminal records. i actually worry more about them than i do about the 21% who we know are members of hate groups and your experience with authoritarianism and the way democracies decline suggests they are actually the group we should be quite worried about, the regular people who fall for the big lie. >> yes, because what happens to societies is when figures like donald trump come up and they form a big tent and for all kinds of extremists and they bring them into the fold.
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they knight them and they use mainstream ideas using social media and propaganda and so january 6th was especially worrisome because all of these people found each other. we couldn't get the military to play the coup game so he got his own custom army together, and so this allowed them to know each other and these people who were not formally radicalized, but who owned weapons because of gun laws are indeed a dangerous constituency and they're loyal to donald trump and these are like authoritarian leader cult dynamics. >> the fall of actual democracies into autocracy and dictatorship is very rare in the world. when it happens, it's really, really bad. you are more worried about this insidious erosion to democracy
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that takes us down a road than a binary switch. most americans do not think we'll move from a democracy to dictatorship overnight. your view is we can keep on getting elections and keep getting less and less democratic as the years go by. >> yeah. today we still have military coups. there are still shock events like that. today it's often evolution and not revolution and this is part of the worry. victor orbon has been in power for ten years and little by little they take control of the judiciary and they take control of the election judiciary and it happens all of the time. donald trump accomplished a lot in his four years, but then he got voted out. we actually did something very rare in history. we interrupted a process of what we call autocratic capture of the state, of the bureaucracy by
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voting him out and we have to hold on to that and refine those energies if we are to construct a pro-democracy movement to defeat this. >> want to the ask you about something that you wrote in the newsletter about how we got here. i just had the conversation with karl racine and roger mcnamee about how we get to the place that we're in. we're living through a right-wing counter revolution about how january 6th fits in and trump's own revolution of reaction took place through threat and corruption. he converted the gop into his own personal tool while propagandizing including 100 tweets per day. the big lie getting tens of millions of people to believe this he actually won the 2020 election was made possible by the 30,000 lies and misleading claims that proceeded it. i ask you this question in the context of media. what do we do to not normalize
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this stuff so that it becomes acceptable to americans. >> these are questions that involve what you were talking about before about social media because propaganda works through repetition. you have to have the same message hammered home, but with small variations and that's what social media does so well. for several years i have asked people not to re-tweet donald trump when he was still on the platform because even though you may be criticizing it, you are helping it circulate and it's like circulation of extremism. it needs oxygen and that's what we've been given it and now he's no longer on the platform, and there are other ways and another part of it is unified messaging. he imposed a messaging on the gop and you see what happens to
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people if they don't follow the party line. the joke is that republicans are calling democrats tyrants and biden is a socialist dictator, but they have a party line. >> yeah? >> i never want to interrupt you, but i have an example of what you're talking about right now and it's ted cruz who has not for the first time said that the people who perpetrated the january 6th attack were violent terrorists. he said this. let's talk about what happened. he got called to account by tucker carlson on fox for calling the insurrectionists violent terrorists. let's listen to what he had to say on fox the other day. >> the way i phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy and it was frankly dumb. >> whoa, whoa, whoa. i don't buy that. i've known you a long time since before you went to the senate. you were a supreme court contender. you take words as seriously as any man who works in the senate. you used the phrase and i do not believe that you used that accidentally. >> tucker, as a result of my
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sloppy phrasing it's caused a lot of people to misunderstand what i meant. >> i'm sorry to have interrupted you, but i wanted to underscore your very point that you were making. >> yeah. you know, a lot of people laughed at this because they don't like cruz, and i don't like cruz either, but i view this with dread because what this is is authoritarian party dynamics, literally, they have a party line and it's not just about repeating propaganda. you have to enforce it, and this is what dictators do when people cross the party line when they say something that they shouldn't have said. gadhafi in libya, i write about this in "strong men." he would have people come on television to recant and confess their sins and saddam hussein did stuff like that. so what we're seeing with tucker who made him come on is the same kind of dynamic. >> that's remarkable. ruth, thank you very much for continuing to write about this. if my viewers do not follow ruth
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ben-ghiat. she has a great newsletter and talks about the great issues of our time. she's a professor of history at new york university and author of "strong men." >> there will never be justice for ahmaud arbery, but there is some accountability. we've seen covid cases rising with an infection rate rise five times as high as hospitals are being pushed to the brink again. a group of former trump administration officials banding together to make sure the failed former president doesn't find his way back to the white house. details ahead. this is "velshi." ayro stay... one step ahead. dove 0% is different. we left aluminum out
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the bahamian actor revolutionized pushing the entertainment industry to put them in roles beyond the 1950s and '60s. he made a point to play roles on the ugliness of racial injustice and he defined it with grace, dignity and poise. in 1964 at the height of the civil rights movement he became the first black person to win an oscar for "lilies of the field." he lit up the silver screen in three of hollywood's top grossing films. in the movie "in the heat of the night" he embodies tibs, a detective working on a case in mississippi who slapped bigotry right in the face, literally. >> in this greenhouse last night about midnight --
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>> poitier's role as a doctor engaged to a white woman in "guess who's coming to dinner" sent shockwaves across the country at a time when interracial dating was taboo and interracial marriage was still against the law in a number of states. poitier noted the weight of being first and often the only positive representation of black people in cinema. in his memoir "the measure of a man" he felt, quote, i felt very much as if i were representing 15, 18 million people with every move i made. poitier garnered a great deal of respect from the world of show business. he wonnon oscar, a grammy, golden globes, plus lifetime achievement awards from the naacp image awards and the screen actors guild and was award the presidential medal of
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freedom in 2009. poitier opened the door for countless other black actors who would go on to be oscar winners. he excitedly cheered on their rise while reminding them of their responsibility. >> welcome, young bloods. those of us who go before you glance back with satisfaction and leave you with a simple trust. be true to yourselves and be useful to the journey. >> poitier once said, quote, i think the way i want to live. i live the way i want to live and he did exactly that. after 94 years poitier's journey with us may have come to an end, but his indelible impact will live on forever. rest in power. 's d so he can enjoy the game.
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challenges on friday to the biden administration's proposed vaccine and mask requirements which affect nearly 100 million workers in the united states. the court now under a trump spac super conservative majority announced it may block the biden administration's anti-covid measures with most conservatives voicing skepticism about the federal government's right to impose the rules. a decision from the justices is expected next week, but ironically, two of the lawyers arguing against the vaccine mandates had to testify remotely because they had tested positive for covid. covid cases come as covid cases and hospitalizations are soaring to some of the highest levels of the entire pandemic. the daily average of covid infections has now risen to more than 648,000 new cases per day. that's an increase of 228% over the past two weeks. that's an average, by the way. take a look at the right side of the screen and the actual last
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few days have been yet higher. daily hospitalizations are up 72% in the same two-week period, striking a daily average of more than 121,000 people being admitted, but again, if you look at the right side of the screen you'll notice the days have been higher than that. vaccines and testing are the two best tools in the fight against covid and we're dealing with a crisis of the unvaccinated a omicron drives a spike along testing shortage that's nothing short of a debacle. long lines and long delays in getting results. joining me is dr. laila stanford, pediatric and general surgeon and founder of the black doctors covid-19 consortium and she administered my first covid-19 test back in 2020. dr. stanford, thank you for being here. you, right in the beginning, before we had vaccines, before we had a talk of vaccines, you were sitting there saying people
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can't get tests in particular, people -- black people, in parts of philadelphia couldn't get tests, but generally speaking people couldn't get tests and you made it your business to get out there and find efficient ways of testing people. when you tested me we were at a large auditorium. the line was around the block. you tested hundreds and hundreds of people that very day. i'm fascinated in january of 2022 that we are still struggling with testing. >> yes. we are -- this entire pandemic have been reactive instead of proactive. we knew that testing, when you have it means you can reduce the spread with contact tracing. the rapid testing has a place, but we don't have the supplies and when people buy them at the store, a lot of employers don't accept them as being valid. the pcr tests are taking too long to come back. it's a horrible deja vu of what
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happened previously in our children and the unvaccinated and immunocompromised are really feeling the brunt of this right now more than ever. >> you've also been struggling with vaccine resistance, built-in vaccine resistance. in part, some of the places in which you work, people do not have general practitioners. they don't have a doctor normally. they're not even getting tested whether they have heart disease or diabetes so getting tested for covid have to be further off than that. have people been convinced by your work to get vaccinated? >> absolutely. right now the demand is for testing. so when people come in and they are scared to death and they're vulnerable and they're bringing their whole families, not everyone is positive when we do the rapid test. that is a prime time to say, let's get you vaccinated today. okay. mom is positive, but your children are not and they're 6
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and we have the vaccine right around the corner in our medical offices and please do everything you can to protect your family and that's working. even when you're requiring a vaccine with locations and employers, you have to make it barrier-free and accessible for folks. it's got to be in hours when they can get there and that still is not universally happening in our country. >> if someone is listening to you, and i hope they are given all you have done. you are in the top handful of experts of vaccinating without barriers, what would you most like to see done right now to eliminate the delays in getting the pcr tests and to allow people to get vaccinated as easily as possible. >> so first, we need testing and vaccinations for our kids in the schools, and i mean every day. not intermittently or sometimes.
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we need to re-introduce mask wearing. there's no reason why when i'm in philly most people are wearing the mask and when you go to the suburbs no one is wearing the mask. again, if you require a mandate and it needs to be accessible for folks to get it and protect your families and don't be around folks who you don't know their vaccination status and if i can say to our bureaucracy. in an acute situation you can't have the time it usually takes for things to get past because without those resources people are losing their lives. >> dr. stanford, always good to see you. we are grateful for the work you've done in philadelphia and the lessons we've learned from you. dr. stanford is with the covid-19 consortium. as ahmaud arbery's killers learned their fate on friday the judge did something unexpected and the courtroom fell silent. i'll explain next.
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important to note there will never be justice for 25-year-old ahmaud arbery. he was killed, but there is accountability. the three white men convicted of murdering arbery in february of 2020 will all likely spend the rest of their lives behind bars. travis mcmichael and his father gregory mcmichael who armed themselves and initiated the deadly pursuit were both sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. william "roddie" bryan who recorded arbery's last moments of life on a cell phone was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole only after serving 30 years. arbery was jogging in a suburb when the three men chased him down and killed him claiming they suspected him to be a neighborhood burglar. the judge asked the courtroom to sit in silence for a fraction of the time arbery was running in
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terror for the men that would ultimately take his life. his mother wanda cooper jones gave poignant testimony on the stand ahead of the judge's sentence. >> this wasn't a case of mistaken identity or mistaken fact. they chose to target my son because they didn't want him in their community. they chose to treat him differently than other people who frequently visited their community and when they couldn't sufficiently scare him or intimidate him, they killed him. >> joining me now is my good friend and the host of "the cross connection," tiffany cross. tiffany, this is the third time in a year that i have been surprised to the upside about a case against somebody who was -- who took somebody's life in what
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seemed to be an unjust way, a black person's life in what seemed to be an unjust way and just accountability has been delivered. >> yeah. accountability in our judicial system, still not in our legislative branch of government which completely fumbled police reform, ali. you are so right. listen, for every ahmaud arbery who did get some accountability, there are plenty of unnamed people whose encounters and their violent encounters were unrecorded and unjust. happy this case turned out differently for a change, but we have a lot to get to on the cross connection. it's good to see you face. i've missed you while you were out. coming up on my show we'll talk about the ongoing and urgent need to protect voting rights in our nation. i'll have congresswoman pramila jayapal and voting rights will be on the show. getting the message to the people that midterms are finally here. ali, you probably know this, but billions of dollars in personal
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property is being taken from law-abiding citizens each year by law enforcement with no cause. even if someone is merely suspected of a crime they can have cash, houses and other belongings seized and never returned. so i'm eager to get into that. we'll talk about how congress is intervening with legislation on this forfeiture asset of use. so quite startling to me. all of that and much more is coming up on "the cross connection," ali. i hope you'll stick around after your fabulous show and stay tuned. >> i absolutely will. it is great to see you, my friend. tiffany cross. stay tuned for "the cross connection," 10:00 a.m. eastern right after "velshi." they're calling out lindsay graham, mccarthy and trump, and it's members of his own administration. the entrance they make, the surprises they initiate. otezla. it's a choice you can make. otezla is not a cream.
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a group of republicans who used to work for the trump administration are banding together to make sure that the former failed president, their old boss, doesn't make his way back into the white house. former press secretary and chief of staff to the first lady stephanie grisham announced that the group will meet next week to, quote, try and stop donald trump and, quote, a kind of violence and rhetoric that has been talked about and continues to divide our country. donald trump isn't the only one being held to account for his role on january 6th. the republican accountability project is calling out some of trump's loudest and most loyal
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followers. >> the president bears responsibility for wednesday's attack on congress. >> president trump is responsible for provoking the events of the day. >> the rhetoric crossed a line and it was reckless. the president needs to understand that his actions were the problem and not the solution. this is the cost of telling thousands of people that there was a legitimate shot at overturn being the election. >> they told the truth then, why won't they now? don't move because i've got olivia troy, a former aide to mike pence and michael steele, former rnc chairman. i have the answer on the other side of the break. bes
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. all right. as promised, joining me now olivia troy, the director of the accountability project. they designed that ad before the commercial. she was a former top aide to mike pence. steel joining us, host of the michael steel podcast and msnbc political analyst, former lt. gov. of the state of maryland. good morning to both of you friends. it's great to see you. olivia, stephanie grisham talked about the fact you will be a part of this group taking a meeting next week talking about what to do about donald trump.
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what can you tell us? >> well, i don't have more details to share right now. i think this is a preliminary discussion. there is a whole group of us who saw what trump is capable of first hand, who lived it first hand, who remain concerned about his influence over politics today, his influence over the republican party especially and we're watching these trumpists-like candidates that are also slated to run in the upcoming mid-terms. i think whether it's people in national security, people who were more on the political side of the house, we keep having these conversations? silos i say and individual conversations. i think we decide it would be good to convene and have a real discussion about what we're seeing here and what we might be able to do to counter what is happening here. >> michael steel, what do those conversations look like to you in the community in which you exist of current republicans,
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former republicans, people who understand that not divorcing from donald trump is going to be dangerous, not just for democracy, but for the republican party. has anybody got anything that you think feels concrete to eliminate the threat not just of donald trump but people like donald trump, because there are others? >> well, it's a multi-faceted challenge, ali, because you are not just dealing with the full frontal attack of donald trump. you have to really get your head around is the underlying roots that fuelled that attack the reason why mat gaetz and goldberg and other folks are out there acting and behaving their way. we just talked about tucker karlsson and ted cruz is because of that fuel that's coming from beneath the surface, the energy of a base that has you know
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retribution it wants. it has issues it wants to prosecute. whatever it happens to be. so the conversation tends to, from my perspective, tend to drill down to that level to understand that so that you can better deal with that a friend of mine put it this way, how do you reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into? that's the conundrum, the essence of this. a lot of people talk about oh, we got to stop trump. then what? you seen trump goes to rallies and talks about getting the shot and people boo him. >> he gets booed. >> right. so this is something that's beyond the thing that's right in front of you. you got to look at the energy that's pushing that thing to do what it's doing. >> olivia, you tweet out the other day, mike pence should do a favor and cooperate and release the stark photos of the reality january 6th displaying what trump and trumpism really
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means for our democracy when a president is capable of inciting an attack against his own vice president. for every member of law enforcement mike pence went out of his way to thank as vice president, action and accountabilities speak longer than words, the police officers protecting him on january 6th deserve the truth. you know mike pence. we've heard talk that pence or pens's orbit might be cooperating with this january 6th committee. there is some talk mike pence, himself, will get an invitation to testify before the committee. >> yeah. i think that's critical importance. no one knows all the details of what he lived that day except for mike pence. he noted what happened in the leadup to it. what he was facing internally in terms of the pressure on him to not do his constitutional duty and to fall in line with donald trump once again. he's done that multiple times in the four years he has stood by
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this man in the oval office. i will say i am grateful he stood ground that day. i think it's of great importance no you to come forward and speak honestly about what happened. i think he would do the country a much greater good by actually countering what continues to be the lie today carried forward and doubled down on the republican party by the majority of the republican party. so i hope he'll cooperate. i know the staff is. and i hope, you know, the reason i mentioned the photos is because that is history right there. >> yeah. >> that is the reality of what happened. and that need to be remembered so that it never happens again. >> michael, you talked about this the other day. i talked about it a while ago, that weird ted cruz that happened this week. he call the people that participated in january 6th violent terrorists. then he was made to go -- i haven't seen ted cruz back down on a lot of arguments in his life.
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he faces a lot of criticism. he tends to stick on hus guns. he went on tucker karlsson and grovelled, said it was clumsy what he said. it's a weird thing, it's alarming, it's more than weird. it's the idea that ted cruz got the message if you want to succeed in the republican party you need to tow the party line no matter what. >> yeah, by any other name. all this bravado and intellect from harvard, yale, fine institutiop to tucker carlson. are you kidding me? you cannot be that dapt and inept. this is the same guy that took it when donald trump said his father assassinated john ff. kennedy and his wife was ug lip. it is an absolute abuse of relationship. it goes back to what we were
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talking about a little bit. what level of intervention do we as current and former republicans, olivia, myself and others, what can we do but also greater than that, what can all of us do? this is a moment where the citizens have to look at this kind of leadership and hold these folks accountable. how do we do that? that's the rub of where we are right now. >> i think this is interesting. olivia, that's what you are, you are a citizen soldier. you decided at some point that party is just not more important than citizenship. and a lot open people have made the point that's what we all have to do right now. we all have to decide whatever this democracy is, we all need to do what we can do just as to stay nit today. >> absolutely. everyone has a role to play right now and we're going into the 2022 mid-terms and i know
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that historically, people tend to take a step back on them. but this is not the time to do that. and i am actually pleading that people pay attention not only to the national level but what is really happening at the state level as well. look at those races when it comes to act iss of state at the local level and state level. they're going to play a role in future elections. that groundwork that is laid that is being laid right now this past year when it comes to whatever voting laws are being passed, the groundwork laid in 2022, will impact what happens in 2024 and that is overall what will determine what happens to american democracy in our country. so it's going to take the coalition of the willing and michael is right, it's all of us playing whatever role we can in whatever capacity. >> let's start today, google your state representative, your state senior and find out who your secretary of state is. let's start by knowing who they are and what they stand for. thanks to both of you for the work you do in defensive
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democracy. olivia troy, director of the republican accountability project, former top aide to then mike pence, michael steel, former lt. gov. of maryland. one quick correction, benny made a mistake and said the irs extended the tax deadline until may. as of now the deadline has been extended for a handful of states affected by recent natural disasters. i don't know where betty lives. for more americans, the deadline remains april 18th, just a few days later than normal. by the way, it was a viewer who told me about this mistake so i thank you for that, please, if you ever encounter an error we make, please let me know. look up the irs protocol in your own state for more information. that does it for me. thanks for watching. catch me tomorrow morning on "velshi." the "cross connection" with my good friend
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