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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  February 10, 2022 1:00am-2:00am PST

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reassures me a lot. >> i agree. anytime matt gates is on a bill, i am always, like am i missing something? congresswoman katie porter, thank you very much. all right, that is all in for this evening, the rachel maddow show is "all evening. the rachel maddow show starting right now. ali is in for rachele. >> thanks for joining us at this hour. we have a lot of show to get to tonight. today, the january 6th investigation issued subpoenas for another senior trump white house official. trump trade adviser peter navarro. he has not been shy about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. he has actually written an entire book about it and given numerous interviews including more than one with my colleague ari melber right on this network. his face says it all in this interview.
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and pushing to overturn the election results. but tonight mr. navarro seems suddenly reticent when it comes to talking about the january 6th investigation. he says he cannot possibly speak to them without donald trump's permission. and so they need to go talk to trump's lawyers. that's not how a subpoena works. but okay. we'll be keeping an eye on that. also tonight, you remember that story we brought you earlier this week about the national archives discovering that donald trump took 15 boxes of white house records to his golf club when he left office? and how the archives had to get those boxes back because donald trump was not allowed to take them in the first place? well, now the archives has asked the justice department to get involved after reportedly finding what it believed to be classified material inside those boxes. we'll have the details on that story a little later in the show. and we'll be joined live by senator chris murphy who attended a classified briefing today that he called quote
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downright scary. like i said, lots to get to tonight. but we start in the great state of michigan again. last night, we started the show with a scoop out of michigan, about one part of the scheme that president trump and his allies pursued to overturn the 2020 election, and to keep trump in office. now, this was the part of the scheme that involved creating slates of fake presidential electors like the michigan republicans you see here, trying to get into the state capitol, a few weeks after the election. fake trump electors in multiple states that joe biden won forged and signed documents purporting to be real true electors from their state so that mike pence could be pressured to use those slates of fake electors to overturn the election. when he presided over the certification of the electoral vote in congress on january 6th. yesterday, we talked about this reporting from the detroit news, emails appearing to show direct
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coordination between the trump campaign and these fake electors in michigan. but there was another part of the scheme to overturn the election and it revolved around voting machines. last month, politico.com was the first to obtain this executive order apparently prepared for president trump that would have authorized the department of defense to go around the country seizing voting machines after the 2020 election. cnn then reported that a second executive order was prepared that laid out essentially the same scheme but would have authorized the department of homeland security to seize the voting machines instead of the military. "new york times" reported that donald trump personally directed his lawyer rudy giuliani to call the head of homeland security to ask that agency to orchestrate the seizing of voting machines in multiple states. the times says that donald trump also made the ask personally to a different department. another one entirely.
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in an oval office meeting trump reportedly asked attorney general william barr to have the justice department go seize voting machines. and just tonight, "politico" has published some of the emails passing around these draft executive orders, in mid december 2020. the email chain includes trump's ex-national security adviser michael flynn, rudy giuliani, the pal of rudy giuliani, the former disgraced new york city police commissioner bernard caric who was working with the legal team. the meta data on the draft order by the pentagon suggests it was created by someone who was not on the email chain, get this, a news anchor from a far right pro trump tv network moon looting with giuliani's crack legal team. make of that what you will. the point is, they were really focused on trying to get the voting machines. it wasn't a passing fancy. they tried three different ways
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to do it using three different federal agencies. try the justice department. try the military. somebody call homeland security. put rudy on the horn. but one of the strangest things about these draft executive orders is that they all include a long detailed section giving all of this background information on one small county in michigan. it's near the top of all of these drafts, quote, i donald j trump president of the united states find that the forensic report of the an trim county michigan voting machines and other evidence supported to me in support of this order provide probable cause sufficient to require action because of evidence of international and foreign interference in the november 3rd, 2020 election. end quote. and then the executive orders go on to describe how the voting machines in antrim county, michigan, showed that the whole election was rigged.
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and that's why we have to seize all of the voting machines everywhere. now, i am not going to try and describe for you the entire conspiracy theory that revolves around antrim county, michigan, because i like you, and i respect you, and i wouldn't do that to you but you should know this, in the weeks after the 2020 election, the conspiracy theory that antrim county, michigan, contained the proof of a vast international plot by which the election was stolen from donald trump, that was at the center of trump's push to overturn the election. trump talked about it all the time. he tried to get the justice department to investigate it. just how nutty was this conspiracy theory? when republicans in the michigan legislature looked into it, this is what they concluded, i will read it to you, but i want to stress that this was republican state lawmakers in michigan, quote, ideas and speculation that antrim county election workers or outside entities
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manipulated the vote by hand or electronically are indefensible. the committee is appalled at what can only be deduced as willful ignorance or avoidance of this proof perpetuated by some leading such speculation. the committee recommends the attorney general consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about antrim county to raise money or publicity for their own ends. michigan republicans not only thoroughly debunked the antrim county theory, they thought it was so egregious that the people who peddled it should be prosecuted and yet antrim county was the explicit basis for draft executive orders directing federal agencies to seize voting machines. and here's where we get to today's brand new development out of michigan. last week, rachel reported that in addition to all of these efforts to get federal agencies to seize voting machines, when
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president trump invited delegations of republican state lawmakers from michigan and pennsylvania to the white house, a couple of weeks after the election, he also talked to them about seizing the voting machines in their states. that's according to the new reporting from "the new york times." and on november 20th, the very same day trump was meeting with republicans at the white house, for michigan, a lawyer for a michigan county sheriff emailed a trump lawyer, claiming that his local sheriff, this local sheriff, had seized voting machines and ballots, the sheriff by the way denied us to that he had actually done it. so now that we know that right on or around that same day, november 20, 2020, rudy giuliani asked the local prosecutor in antrim county michigan to please seize the voting machines for the trump campaign, now from the "washington post" today, quote, in the weeks after the 2020 election, rudolph w. giuliani and other legal advisers to president donald trump asked a
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republican prosecutor in northern michigan to get his county's voting machines and pass them to trump's team. antrim county prosecutor james rossiter said in an interview that giuliani and several colleagues made the request during a telephone call. rossiter said he declined, i said i can't just say give them here, we don't have that magical power to just demand things as prosecutors. you need probable cause. even if he had sufficient grounds to take the machines as evidence, rossiter said he could not have released them to outsiders or a party with an interest in the matter. legal scholars said it was unusual and inappropriate for a president's representatives to make such a request of a local prosecutor. i never expected in my life i'd get a call like this, rossiter said, end quote. trump and his allies tried to
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get the pentagon to seize the machines. then they tried to get the justice department. they tried homeland security. they tried state lawmakers. they tried a local prosecutor. they never got anyone to say yes. but they really, really did try to make it happen. joining us now is emma brown, investigative reporter for the "washington post," who broke the story today, with her colleagues john swaine and jackie alamaney, ms. brown, thank you for taking time to be here tonight, what is fascinating about this is the basis upon which they were creating these requests and these demands, this idea that sidney powell and others, and part of the trump legal team, had created that there were outside influences who must have been meddling with these machines, not just local democrats, but outside, foreign countries, that they were using this as a basis to seize the machines. i'm not sure what would have happened if anybody gave them the machines, or agreed with them. >> well, the thing that happened
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in antrim county that was different than anywhere else is that even though the prosecutor said no, i cannot do that, i will not hand them over, there was access granted to the machines by a court order, a local realtor, filed a lawsuit, and behind the scenes, giuliani's team helped once he was, helped with getting the machines, and inspecting them and then producing the 23-page so-called forensic report, that claimed massive vote fixing, claimed evidence of massive vote fixing, and that report was then used, that is what was cited in the drafts that you just talked about, it was used, came out on december 14th, the day the electors voted and giuliani that day put out a press release that said hey, this is undisputable, he said, undisputable proof of fraud, and it's reason enough that lawmakers should stop, they
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should halt the voting of the electors. because we just can't allow this to happen. >> and it turns out that there was some error, it was human error, it was clerical error, upon which they based all of the claims. what actually did happen that rudy giuliani and others sort of blew up into this claim of international espionage and vote rigging? >> well, you're right. there was an error in antrim county and it was a succession of human error, clerical errors that ended in the wee morning hours of novemberer 4th, it looked like the results that showed that biden had won this very rural, conservative county that no democratic presidential nominee had won in years, and it was 3,000 votes and it was absurd and the county had taken the results down and said we're investigating. and what had happened was, and
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you know, there was a last-minute set of changes to some ballots in some precincts, because there had been errors on the ballots. and when they didn't update the machines correctly, to count the paper ballots, the right way, so when people filled out their ballots, by hand, and the machines that scanned them, scanned them, and when they went to go tally them all up, there was a problem. so what they did is they had to go back and fix that problem, but they still had the paper ballots that everybody had voted, that they could then check. so they tallied them up, they had the correct vote totals, eventually, and then they did a whole recount and with the paper ballots and found once the machines were updated correctly, they had counted correctly. >> they have a pretty robust system in michigan of being able to audit and recount things. it's not a lot of other states where you have to jump through a lot of hoops but there was a company that reviewed this,
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allied security operations group, and in that report that you describe, they said this. the antrim county clerk and secretary of state jocelyn benson have stated that the election night error was the result of human error, we disagree, and conclude that the vote flip occurred because of machine error built into the voting software designed to create error. end quote. and that's the heart of the trump claims and efforts to get those machines, that it wasn't human error, it wasn't some little thing, i don't know what they were saying it was, the italians or the venezuelans or whomever, they kept on coming up with but their whole argument was these machines were built to flip the election or to make biden win. >> that is what they were claiming. and it's been debunked as you said by the republicans in michigan, by experts of any stripes, but the report was written by a texas businessman and tea party activist, for
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republican congressional candidate, and it includes an exhibit that was created, if you look in the meta data, the document was created by katherine freese, a lawyer working with giuliani, he was on that call with the prosecutor trying to get machines, so she is part of this report in some way. and the emails that you were talking about, that came out in politico today, expressing the draft executive order. so many of the things that we learned today was that many of the same people who were involved in trying to get machines in antrim michigan to generate a report that would claim fraud were also discussing how that, how that report would be used in a draft executive order to seize machines elsewhere. >> russell ramblin is a topic for another night because it is a whole story unto itself. emma brown, thank you for your reporting on, this an investigative reporter from the "washington post," we appreciate your time tonight. just it a minute, we will
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have the latest on the breaking news that the national archives reportedly found classified material among documents that donald trump took when he left the white house. that's next. but first, we've got a development on a story we told you about last night. dc police say seven schools were evacuated today, after referring anonymous bomb threats by phone. and an eighth district school received a threat, the classes were not in session when the threat came in. police searched all the buildings, and nothing hazardous was found. dunnbar high school was one of the schools targeted today, the second time in two days. just yesterday the building was cleared after a bomb threat during the visit by vice president kamala harris's husband, the second gentleman, doug emhoff, dc police say they are working with the fbi and the atf to investigate these threats. tonight we're able to confirm a local news report that the department of homeland security, alejandro mayorkas has been briefed on the series of bomb threats and the dhs is
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monitoring the situation. whether they're related to the bomb threats called in to historically black colleges and universities, authorities are not making that connection yet and not ruling it out either. we'll be right back. on yet and not ruling it out either and not ruling it out either we'll be right back. and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 54, what's my price? you can get coverage for $9.95 a month. i'm 65 and take medications. what's my price? also $9.95 a month. i just turned 80, what's my price? $9.95 a month for you too. if you're age 50 to 85, call now about the #1 most popular
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tonight, nbc news has confirmed that the justice department has been asked to investigate whether donald trump broke the presidential records act while he was in office. we've known for years that the former president had a habit of ripping up documents after he was done with them. anything from briefings to memos to letters wound up shredded to piece, even though the presidential records act requires the white house to preserve presidential documents. and so aides would have to tape those ripped documents back together. the practice became an issue for the national archives and records administration, and the january 6th investigation in recent days because investigators have begun to collect thousands of pages from trump's records from the national archives as part of their look into the january 6th
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attack on the capitol. the national archives confirmed last week that several of the records the trump administration turned over to archivists were torn up. and while some were taped back together, others had not been reconstructed by trump's white house. the national archives also reported this week that it had to retrieve 15 boxes of presidential material from trump's home at mar-a-lago. these were things like trump's accordance with north korean leader kim jong-un, the letter that president obama left behind for trump, when he left the white house in 2017, and gifts, things that should have been turned over to the national archives, when trump left office. trump instead took them home with him. turns out you can't bring white house souvenirs home. both of these habits, tearing up records, bringing documents and gifts back to his personal residence, they're both possibly major violations of the presidential records act. federal law makes it clear that the presidential records are not the property of the individual
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person who holds the office. they are public property. they cannot be destroyed. and now, the national archives is taking the unusual step of asking the justice department to investigate whether trump's handling of official white house record, including classified material, does in fact violate that federal law. now, within the past hour, we got word from "the new york times" about what could have prompted the national archives to take that step. here's the headline. archives found possible classified material in boxes returned to by trump. quote, the national archives and records administration discovered what it believed was classified information in documents that donald trump had taken with him from the white house as he left office, according to a person briefed on the matter. the discovery prompted the national archives to reach out to the justice department for guidance, the person said the department told the national archives to have its inspector general examine the matter.
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but the times doesn't know what happened next. meanwhile, the "washington post," which first reported on the national archives referral to the justice department, also reports that these discussions between the two agencies are preliminary, it's not yet clear whether the justice department will investigate this, but what does it take to decide whether trump's record-keeping regimen breaks the law? joining us now is alana cohen, former white house counsel and office of management and budget during the obama administration, i assume you're well briefed about what you're supposed to and not supposed to do with documents not just for the president but in these jobs that you've worked in, it's pretty clear, i mean it's got to be president 101, to realize you can't destroy documents in the white house, and yet, we've been hearing reports for years that donald trump does this. >> yes, thank you so much for having me. it's absolutely crystal clear
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when you enter one of those jobs in the white house, about what you can and can't do with presidential records, and what you can do with your own records. and you know, i would have never expected anyone among my colleagues to have, you know, torn up their records and taped them back together, or taken them even with them home to their residences. >> there is even talk and reporting about the fact that staff who knew the rules would go in, right after trump, wherever he was, retrieve documents that hadn't been ripped up, and take those that had, and try and piece them back together. sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully. so it's not that everybody in the white house can claim we didn't know that you're actually spoked to keep this stuff, it was obvious that you're supposed to, so what's your best guess about what this habit of ripping things up was about? >> i'm commend the staff for
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taping it together again and that's a difficult thin to do in the light that their boss deliberately flouted the rules and the law. and my best guess is the white house counsel would have repeatedly told the president, as well as the staff, how important it was to preserve documents, and that there's really no excuse then, in light of the fact that the warnings would have inevitably gone out and reportedly had gone out as late as, right up until the end of the administration, and there's no reason why he would have had, we have then taken those documents with him to florida. there would be no excuse for that. >> so let's explain that. we're packing up the white house to move out. clearly there's some stuff he brought to the white house that's yours and those go in your personal boxes i suppose. but they literally put aside separate boxes, we have, we believe the sharpie, the weather thing, it may have had
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correspondence from kim jong-un, a letter from president obama and other things that might have been classified, stuff that doesn't fall into the category of things i brought with me to the white house, a teddy bear that i really needed to have close to me, there seemed to be some curation as to some documents that went into the boxes that went to mar-a-lago. >> yeah, i can't say i totally understand what the, you know, the picture, the map with the sharpie circle had to do with the letter to, you know, another foreign leader, so, but the fact that he took some of the materials with him, and in particular, you know, letters to foreign leaders, is not, is not only problematic from a records perspective, it's problematic from a transition perspective. you really inhibbert the next administration, you know, by taking materials that are important to the national security of the united states,
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and correspondence with foreign leaders is of utmost importance, when an incoming administration is trying to decide its policy with respect to, you know, different countries. so he not only inhibberted future historians to hold him accountable through the record, he actually in hibbed the next administration which was hampered by not having a full accounting of how he handled certain correspondence, certain communications with other foreign leaders. you know, i'm curious, i thought the reporting that said that the archives recovered 15 boxes of documents but they didn't report on how many he took, so there are questions, actually not only, you know, the documents that he recovered, that they recovered, but during that one year period, whether there were other materials that had a
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different fate. >> it is a remarkable story. thank you for joining us for giving us your insight into this, the former white house counsel and general counsel of the office of management and budget during the obama administration. we appreciate your time tonight. still ahead tonight, a couple of excellent guests, senator chris murphy will be here live after he attended a classified briefing today that he called quote downright scary. and the historian tim snyder joins us live next to help us make sense of what is happening in canada's growing trucker protest. and what the department of homeland security warns could soon be happening here. y warns soon be happening here
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comcast business. powering possibilities.™ we're now on day 13 of what officials in the canadian capital of ottawa is calling occupation, for the past two weeks hundreds of truckers have been camped out on the street in the city centers, bringing the city center of ottawa a standstill, it is called a
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freedom convoy, originally came to ottawa to protest a requirement that canadian truck drivers crossing the u.s. border be fully vaccinated. the protests have since escalated and started spreading beyond the capital and now have entered day three of protesters blocking the busiest crossing in north america, the ambassador bridge, where links windsor, ontario, to detroit. about 200 people in vehicles are blocking or snarling traffic on that bridge, which carries 25% of all trade between the u.s. and canada, or an estimated $300 million a day. farther west, protesters in about 50 trucks are blocking the border crosser, between alberta canada and the state of montana. that crossing typically sighs more than $40 million -- sees more than $40 million worth of goods through daily. and another artery at the michigan canada border, it is important to note that as much
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chaos as the truckers and 18 wheel rers causing, their view on this issue is not popular in canada as all. more than 80% of the canadian public is vaccinated, almost 90% of canadian truckers are vaccinated. the protest wasn't even organized by the canadian trucking union, the largest of which has come out actively against the protests. so not only is this a fringe group of canadians, it's a fringe group even within the small niche of canadian truckers. but where this group is popular, this is interesting, where they found an incredibly large platform is right here, with american conservatives and american conservative media. their story has become a staple on right wing outlets like fox news, american conservatives from glen beck to marjorie taylor greene to the former president himself, have all championed their cause. hard not to miss the trump flies flying among the crowds in ottawa, also spotted in the crowds, confederate flags,
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q-anon banners, swastika, none of which are common sites in canada. in addition to giving this fringe group one of the world's largest mega phones this american attention means the protest verse been able to fundraise millions and millions of dollars further amplifying their cause. this is a genuinely complex political issue. people have the right to peacefully protest. i have strongly defended that. even if you don't agree with their point of view. and americans, conservatives in american media are fanning the flames here, taking what would be a local issue and giving it international attention. today, a copy cat freedom convoy trucker protest started in france. similar protests are under way in new zealand, and australia, and this afternoon, nbc news confirmed that the department of homeland security in the united states is now warning law enforcement and public safety officials that a copy cat trucker protest could begin in the united states this super bowl sunday. the dhs bulletin says that the
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department is quote receiving reports of truck drivers planning to potentially block roads at major metropolitan cities in the united states, in protest of, among other things, vaccine mandates for truck drivers. the protests could begin as soon as sunday in los angeles, to disrupt the super bowl. and then travel across the country to disrupt president biden's state of the union in dc on march 1st. as much as this is an issue of pandemic requirements and vaccines, it has somehow become an issue about democracy and how how we make decisions collectively. as these protests spread internationally and come to us here in the united states, how can we make sure we both defend the right to peacefully protest, and don't let fringe minorities bully us into accepting their point of view. joining us now is timothy snyder, a professor of history at yale university, he's the best-selling author of "on tyranny," 20 lessons from the 20th century. good to see you. this is a strange one.
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i'm not even sure as a canadian that i knew what to make of this or thought it would be much but it is turning into something that's got tentacles and connections around the world with these anti-government protests, and gaining some connective tissue to bigger and sort of more insidious protests that we're seeing. what do you make of this? >> yes, i mean like you, i was a little bit uncertain at first, i have a lot of friends and colleagues in canada who write to me about the work that i do, and usually what they're writing about is their concern about their friends in the south, they're concerned about the united states. these last couple of weeks is the first time i've had a lot of canadians writing to me saying hey, you as an american, need to speak out about what is happening in ottawa. and i think they're right. i think what is concerning about this is, as you've already said, we're talking about a minority of a minority of a minority, i mean there's about 15,000 long haul truckers in canada, and maybe 10% of them are directly affected, that's 1500 people,
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and the thing they're protesting against is not actually canadian law, they're protesting against american law. it's american law that they have to be vaccinated. so protesting in ottawa makes zero sense. so it is a very small group with a nonsensical claim, which nevertheless has begun this spiral which threatens both the institutions of canadian democracy, as we see in the capital of ottawa and the canadian economy as we see in the border crossings. so what i worry about here we're see the model of a very small number of human beings using tools like trucks, funded from another country, as you've already reported, and fanned or encouraged by conspiracy theorists on social media, into an awful of political and economic damage very quickly. and i'm seeing this as kind of a model, a kind of dark politics that's emerging. >> the model doesn't exist in a
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vacuum, what do you think the interest is that's coming from right wing media in the united states in these protests? >> i think a big wedge of right wing politics in the united states is about the claim that government doesn't work. i mean it's a form of right wing anarchism, basically. and so if that is your view, you take to light the chaos in your own country and also perhaps especially in other countries, so it becomes kind of a parlor game to sit in florida, or in washington, d.c., or, you know, in a newsroom, and root the truckers on in canada, because you like destruction, you like chaos, you want to see the destruction of the administrative state, so if people are carrying that out before you, before your eyes, you're just happy. so i think, you know, the ideology here has to do precisely with dysfunction and disorder, and proving that government can't work. and of course the canadian government generally works extremely well so you can
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suggest that democracy doesn't work in canada, then you're making a strong argument about democracy in general. >> and of course this is why it is important to talk to somebody like you, because you study these matters not just in the united states but around the world. and there is a similarity to the types of protests that are going on around the world that seem to be anti-government, anti-something, not entirely focused on the cause at hand. as you point out, the restrictions that these canadian truckers are protesting by causing, you know, blockages and trouble in canada, are generally speaking not canadian laws. >> yes, i mean we don't have to go so far afield to find examples of this. i mean the united states for the past couple of years protests which presumably had something to do with vaccine mandates, branch out very quickly into much larger conspiracy theories. it is really striking to me that the conspiracy theories that turn up in the social media backdrop of some of the
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organizers of the protests are basically the same generic stuff and we also have in the u.s. and we find in europe or around the world. the same q anone, the same ideas about bill gates, it's all generic, it's all international now. and the other way to think about canadians and the rest of the world here and you can flip this around and think of america as kind of a bad actor, if russians are contributing money to a gofundme and then to this christian site, which then, you know, funding disorder in the united states, funding blockades, in the capital, funding blockades at border crossings, we say hey that is a hostile action, but this is effectively what we're doing, private actors in the united states and very well known ones who are organizing behind the destruction of democratic institutions and economic institutions in canada. if we watch somebody else do that, we would say hey, that's outrageous. i mean if a former president of another country did what mr. trump just did to justin trudeau and say a fanatic who destroyed
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his country, we would think that is really excessive, that is really outrageous, so i think in a way this puts us in the mirror. >> it is a very strange development, this whole idea of q-anon and trump flags and confederate flags in canada, it is just as you know, not a thing, and to see it becoming a thing is remarkable. timothy snyder, good to see you, the professor at yale university,'s the author of "on tyranny," we appreciate your time this evening. senator chris murphy joins us live here, in the next few minutes. after he had a classified briefing that he says really scared him. stay with us. iefing that he sayy scared him scared him stay with us on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 54, what's my price?
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as we speak, six russian war ships are heading to the black sea from the mediterranean to carry out naval drills. it's all part of a massive set of military exercises put together by the kremlin involving all of its fleets from the pacific to the atlantic. the war ships will be stationed in very strategic locations. take a look at this map, between the black sea and the sea of
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azov, along the ukrainian southern border. today black sea news is reporting that the three areas marked in red on this map will be closed starting next week for russian missile and artillery training. today top russian military commanders including russia's chief of the armed forces arrived in belarus, which is the pro-russian nation that is just north of ukraine, ahead of a 10-day joint military exercise that is set to get under way there tomorrow. vladimir putin has also amassed more than 140,000 troops now, equipped with military horde wear, medical units and blood supplies, on ukraine's eastern border. russia has amassed new military forces in belarus again, right north of ukraine ahead of the joint military exercises that starts tomorrow. so what you see on this map is that at this very moment, russia has effectively surrounded ukraine, all ukraine's got that's not russia is its western borders which are nato countries.
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tomorrow, ukraine will also begin a new set of military exercises, ukrainian troops will start drills tomorrow, with armed drones, and anti-tank weapons provided by the united states. and its nato member neighbors. meanwhile, diplomatic efforts continue on multiple fronts to deter putin from invading this. week, french president emanuel macron travelled to moscow for talks with biden, president biden stonewalled by months of diplomatic conversations with russia have promised to hit putin personally with devastating economic sanctions to bring an end to the nord stream 2 national gas pipeline should russia invade its neighbor. that's important because russia gets a lot of money from exporting oil. left-hand side, new today, president biden's approved a plan to use u.s. troops in poland, also a nato country, to help evacuate americans from ukraine if russia does invade. there's a lot going on here. joining us to discuss this is democratic senator chris murphy, a member of the senate foreign
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relations committee, studying the situation in ukraine crossly and attended a classified briefing today on iran, a briefing he described as quote sobering and shocking, and i want to talk to you about that as well, senator, but let's start with russia, good to have you here. thanks for joining us. senator, we've got diplomacy, we've got ready for, you know, readiness for military action, and in between there, there's variations on appeasement and sanctions. tell me where we are on the continuum of an invasion and engagement with russia because of it. >> let's step back for a second and frame this up. this is a signal of russian weakness, this potential invasion of ukraine. this is a former russian republic, a former soviet republic, a country that was under the thumb of russia, just a decade ago, when russia had a proxy government installed inside kyiv, and today, russia has lost ukraine, ukraine people have decided that they want to
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be a part of europe, they want to be a part of nato, and the only resource left for vladimir putin on drag ukraine back into its orbit is the disastrous invasion that he may be planning so we have to address this on several fronts. first, we do need to give the ukrainians the ability to defend themselves. we're not going to put hundreds of thousands of u.s. troops inside ukraine but we can supply ukraine with the means to defend itself. second we need to make sure that russia understands there is going to be a devastating blow to their economy if they walk into ukraine, and we are showing them that, by really putting together an extraordinary set of potential sanctions. not just with the europeans but with many of our allies all around the disclosure. so russia's got a decision to make, this would be in my mind a massive strategic mistake. invasion of afghanistan by russia in 1980, if they went lieu with this invasion and we are not giving up on diplomacy
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but i think ultimately it is more likely that putin decides that the costs greatly without weigh the benefit and we have to show them those costs in the coming days and weeks. >> he would like something that would sound like the rest of the world, to the rest of the world like appeasement, he wants the commitment that nato will not recruit ukraine, that ukraine will not become a member of nato. back in the late 70s and early 80s there were a lot of countries between russia and nato, all as you described proxy russian governments all came to freedom themselves and lo and behold made the choice they wanted to be not russian allied. and all that matters is the ukrainian people get to make that choice, for themselves, and not to have it dictated to them by force. that's our interest. vladimir putin wants that not to happen. he wants ukraine and the russian fold, end of story. regardless of what ukrainians
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want. >> and he wants america and europe to guarantee that ukraine will stay in the russian fold. i meant what i said, ultimately this is up to the ukrainian people as to whether they want to be part of a military alliance with russia, or a military alliance with the united states and europe. but a bedrock principle of democracy, and a bedrock principle of supporting democracy is to allow the people to make that choice for themselves. would very never before given vladimir putin or any other world leader a veto power on who a democratic nation wants to alie themselves with the united states or with a foreign power and not going to start now. of course, everyone knows ukraine is not joining nato any time soon. they just haven't met the qualifications. there's still an enormous amount of corruption inside ukraine that has to be addressed before they can join the nato alliance so this is a false complaint in many ways by putin. ukraine presents no threat to
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russian sovereignty. and everybody knows in the near future, ukraine is unlikely to join nato. >> let me ask you about the briefing you got on iran. when the united states pulled out of the iran deal in 2016, it was a fledgeling deal, but it was, taken a decade to get there, and everybody was at least talking to one another, and now, we have a situation where the iranians have hardened, and our neighbors in the region, israel, and saudi arabia, have hardened, the u.s. hasn't hardened, the u.s. under biden would like to get back to this deal. but it's going to be much harder to do. you talked about that today. >> i did. and i walked out of that briefing, you know, really concerned. the amount of time right now that it would take iran to get a nuclear weapon after they made the decision to do so is frighteningly short. much shorter than the time line before the nuclear agreement was signed. and you know, we essentially tested the theory of the opponents of the iran deal,
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because donald trump withdrew from it, he levied unilateral sanctions against tehran, he demanded they come to the table on all of their malevolent behavior, and what happened? everything got worse. iran's support for proxies in the middle east increased. iran restarted the nuclear research program and got much closer to a nuclear weapon and started shooting at american troops. we tried escalation. and it was a disaster. diplomacy is the only path forward to stop iran from getting a nuclear weapon. and interestingly, although israel remains opposed to the deal, our gulf allies who were opposed to it back in 2015 now support it because they do not want a nuclear arms race in the middle east. >> we'll have to talk about this again. it is an important issue what is sorts of getting sidelined. senator chris murphy, good to see you, a member of the foreign relations committee. we appreciate your time tonight. up next former president barack obama is about to do something he almost never does. details next. o something he almost never does details next
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before we go, two things for to you keep your eye on tomorrow, number one, nbc news has learned that former president barack obama will be meeting tomorrow with the house democratic caucus. the former president will participate virtually. also happening tomorrow, democrats from the senate judiciary committee will be meeting with president biden at the white house in person, about a potential supreme court nominee. earlier today, senate judiciary
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chairman dick durbin said he and his colleagues would like to get through the nomination process before the easter recess and that a nomination for president biden soon would make that process a lot easier. two big meetings for democrats tomorrow. let's see how they pan out. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. more states lift mask mandates as covid cases and hospitalizations continue to fall. as governors transition to a new normal, the question is, when will the biden administration do the same? plus, donald trump hammered hillary clinton after investigators uncovered classified information on her private email server. now, a possible turn of events. the question is, will the former president himself be investigated for mishandling sensitive government information? and another trump aide gets called to testify before the january 6th committee. peter navarro has