records with jobs and unemployment numbers are the lowest they've ever been. 50 years and many groups in historically the lowest numbers we've ever had. regulations, low taxes we -- are country has never done better. >> so, a traditional easter message. and a reminder of just how much things have changed to get us off the air tonight. on that note, i wish you a good night. and from all of the colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late. taying up late rider and applebaum is just back from kyiv where she interviewed ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy in person. president zelenskyy announced that russian forces have begun the massive attack that has been expected for a couple of weeks now. targeting eastern ukraine, targeting the donbas. we're gonna speak with an applebaum coming up in just a few minutes. we're also going to be talking

tonight about a general judge striking down the mask rule. the mask mandate on airline transportation and public transportation. an unusual ruling from a judge in an unusual place to be making that kind of a ruling, but it effectively means that the mask rule for public transportation and domestic airline flights is off. it's no longer in effect as of tonight. we're talking more about that in this hour as well. in politics today, we've got another one of those days that feels, i guess, sort of normal to us now. but even just a few years ago, today's politics headlines would've been rejected out of hand that is completely unimaginable and over the top. i mean, we just saw the de facto leader of the republican party, former president donald trump, give one of his coveted endorsements to a candidate named j. d. vance who is running for the united states senate seat in ohio this year. that endorsement from trump was followed immediately, in no surprise, by mr. vance

launching a huge tv ad campaign touting the trump endorsement. bragging about how much he agrees with trump, how close he is the trump, how much trump likes him. but then that of course was followed almost inevitably by a former roommate of mr. vance sharing his text messages from 2016 in which mr. vance reportedly told people how he thought there was a pretty good chance that donald trump was going to be, quote, america's killer. i'm not saying trump was trying to be america's hitler, or aspire to be, that's what j. d. vance said. this guy really might be americas hitler. oh look, i've got it and for dortmund, let's put out ads bragging about it. in what world is this real politics? we learned that today about mr. runs just as the new york times posted the story about how the trump folks, including at least one trump lawyer, john eastman, are continuing, even now, their efforts to try to get various

states to retroactively decertify the results of the 2020 presidential election in order to get trump declared the winner of that election instead in order to get him reinstated into the white house now. this is not old news, this is not a rerun, apparently they're still working on the snow. still, and wisconsin, in arizona, in georgia, in michigan. they're trying to get the electoral college tally in each of those states decertified. trump himself is reportedly encouraging it. well, of course, insisting that everybody in the republican politics anything to repeat his claims of election is invalid, and that he should be in the white house. and one thing that is one thing. the fact the republicans almost without exception really are going along with it is another. as noted in the times tonight, quote, elected republicans of almost uniformly embraced mr.

trump's claims that the vote was stolen. and while that is inherently a backward looking thing toward the 2020 election, it's no 2022. it does sort of tell you how republicans are wired now when it comes to whether or not they're going to accept election results in the future. and therefore, whether we are still governing ourselves as americans, as if we are a democracy. quote, democrats and some republicans have raised deep concerns about the impact of the ongoing decertification efforts. they warned of unintended consequences, including the potential to incite violence in the sort that erupted in january six when a mob of mr. trump supporters stormed the capitol, convinced that he could still be declared the winner of the 2020 election. legal experts worry that the focus on decertifying the last election could pave the way for more aggressive and earlier legislative interventions. jay michael looting, a leading lawyer, for whom john eastman clerks, and whom president

george w. bush considered as a nominee to be the chief justice of the united states tell times tonight, quote, at the moment there is no other way to say it. this is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy. trump and his supporters in congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 where trump, or is disney, to lose the trump for the presidency. where they to lose the rights urgency, his supporters, and this congress, they are preparing and laying the groundwork no to overturn those election results. so, we'll have the midterms this year, and then for the next election, either trump is gonna be the republican party nominee, or somebody with his blessing will. and if that person loses, the republicans are effectively

already communicating that they will consider the results of that election to be invalid. they will consider that election to not count, and they're preparing for that eventuality now. in the late 1990s, in the summer of 1997, to be specific, long-awaited but still startling discovery was made. it was made in northern russia. the soviet union had collapsed earlier in the decade by the mid 90s, late 90s, historians were starting to get allowed into the old files. the security services and the soviet government. by piecing together documents held by the soviet era security services in siberia, russian historians in the 90s, for the first time, we're able to find a mass burial ground in northern russia. it dated back 60 years. in 1936, 1937, 1938, joseph stalin decided he would consolidate his power and hold on the soviet union by executing everybody thought was in his way.

it's now known as the great purge. it wasn't like stolen eliminated other political elites might be in line for his job, stolen ordered the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. by some estimates, more than 1 million people. and thanks to the records, historians started to get access to right after the collapse of the soviet union, in the mid to late 90s, historians were finally able to pinpoint a previously unknown site inside russia, northern russia. where as many as 9000 people had been shot in the great purge unburied. just a huge sites, and unmarked sites with hundreds of burial pets. 236 different bits containing more than 9000 bodies. ours every one of them shot, all the bodies just stacked on top of one another in these

hundreds of pits. all buried on site in this place those on marked and on memorialized for 60 years. they didn't find it until the summer of 1997. and once they found it, they put up these stones, these markers to commemorate it. it turned into a memorial for the victims of stalin. they started told an annual day of remembrance. after about 20 years, though, russian president vladimir putin decided that was enough. and he didn't want any more of that. putin, broadly, decided the stolen have gone a bad rap. the soviet union got a bad rap, stolen and particular got a bad rap. would it benefit is there for all of this history and stories that make him seem like such a bad guy, let me the soviet union seem so flood. let's restore the glory, right? sure, millions that, those people aren't around to tell their stories anymore, so i should anyone else tell a story, let alone here at. and so, the historian who had first located that site in northern russia was arrested. they charged him with being a

pedophile. the russian government then announced plans to bring bulldozers into the site. they're gonna dig up the bodies and show that this wasn't a mass burial site of stalin's victims, it must of been something else entirely. victims most of all been russians killed by foreigners, because of course, there was no gulag, there was no great tara, no great purge. stone was a standup guy. russia's history is pristine. anyone that says otherwise is obviously a degenerate. a monster. after the historian who heroically tracked down records and discovered that site, after he was locked up and charged randomly with pedophilia, did the same thing than the head of the local museum. glad effectively been the onside caretaker once it was

discovered. he had also been vocal in his opposition to the russian government, coming in and digging up with bulldozers. he too, they did the same thing to them. they arrested him, charged with being a pedophile. in both cases, the charges were widely believed to be trumped up and completely false, but they were nevertheless trumpeted on russian state tv. and the association they're trying to make was clear. you want to expose something about russia's very dark past, we'll, obviously you are a degenerate on a monster. not even a regular regular criminal, not even a regular person who's just wrong, not even just a regular criminal, but a monster who must be destroyed.

the local story and around the museum near the burial sites, those are caretaker for the rail side who spoke out against bulldozing it, it was widely understood that the allegations against him were the coolest time completely false. but they did the job. they failed as a pretext for locking him up. and he died in prison. you never saw freedom again. with those guys out of the way, the russian government has taken down the memorial at the site. every designated the whole burial site as a sightseeing local. used to be a heritage site because of the mass murder that happened there. they re-designated it now as a national sight seeing local. yeah, readiness for us. but a great spot for a picnic. we're all these big square fits? before he became when he is now, which is basically dictator for life, in the late 90s, vladimir putin was head of the fsb. he was head of the fsb when boris yeltsin was president of russia in the late 90s. and yeltsin, like also russian leaders, had a corruption problem. more specifically, the problem yeltsin on the 1997 was that there was a prosecutor in russia it was investigating corruption at the highest

levels of the kremlin, including yeltsin and his family. and for a time, it seems like that corruption relegation might be the undoing of yeltsin and his family and his cronies. volodymyr putin, as head of the fsb, to care of that problem for boris yeltsin. putin arranged for a videos of your broadcast on on gentle television. the show the prosecutor or somebody who maybe looked like the prosecutor in bed with not one but two, very young females. the video is low enough quality and was shot from sort of a angle that you couldn't necessarily tell with the naked eye with those granolas with these girls in this about. but, putin stepped up. and his authority as the head of the fsb. vladimir putin assured lotion public that he could guarantee that the man in the video was in fact that prosecutor. and so that was the end of that prosecutor. and that was the end of the corruption investigation into

boris yeltsin and his family. and in gratitude, or at least in payback, boris yeltsin decided that he would name, as an ex prime minister of russia, and then the next president of russia, that fsb guy well tomorrow, vladimir putin. that's how vladimir putin rose to power in the first place and russia. that's how he got control of the russian government. by generating, effectively, a false but if you're the acclaim against just the right guy at just the right moment. that's how you got into power. pedophilia, of course, is the most repulsive of all human behavior. it is so repulsive. it is so evil, that it makes a c read. it is almost literally unthinkable. and, therefore, understandably, it can make us stop seeing anybody accused of it as our

fellow human. anybody abetting it or abiding it is basically the same thing. your brain instantly goes to a monster, right? understandably. it is the most repulsive of all human evil. and when confronted with, it we almost can't process it. and it is a deep, dark thing to recognize that about human nature, right? the capacity for some people for that behavior, for that level of evil, and our collective, massive, human revolution and rejection of that evil. but recognizing the. to decide that you are going to harness that for political gain. that you're gonna make it false accusations of that kind, systematically to reduce your political opponents to non human status.

that is a horrific abuse of its own. and has become one of the hallmarks of the modern authoritarianism not only, russia but especially in russia under vladimir putin. as i said, it's basically up and got his job in the late 1990s. i've recently been reading about the great purge, the great terror and specifically putin's efforts now to erase evidence of it. to erase evidence of past russian, past soviet atrocities. it is amazing to me. it shouldn't to, me but it's amazing to me that the use false pedophilia charges against gulag historians for that. to justify bulldozing that memorial site. but that's what they did, and they've done that repeatedly. it's an obvious and frequent enough political tactic in putin's russia, that, in 2016, not long after a bizarre 2016

presidential elections, the new york state times ran a feature on how this particular tactic kept coming up, increasingly in putin's russia. you see the headline there. those of russia's a child pornography is planted to ruin them. a story of a veteran soviet dissident who had resettled in cambridge, england, had somebody high contest computer and put child pornography videos on his computer. images he had never seen, and then they call the police on him. the police came in and grabbed his computer, and sure enough, they found all of this terrible, terrible, terrible material. which again, had been planted by a third party which was not him. a french citizen living in russia, working in a civil society group in siberia. they did the same thing to him. blasted it on him, call the police, they came in, failed to plant that for this. he fled the country. a russian environmental activists who was chased out of russia was living in exxon lithuania. he was working in a group then

investigated russian corruption. they did the same thing to him. planted false evidence, called authorities, authorities find the false evidence, he's ruined. quote, the idea that europeans and russian opponents of the kremlin are all sexual deviance with its for pedophilia is a strange but recurring theme in russian propaganda. so evil. it's so, like, meta level exploitative and evil and base and cynical. but of course the use, that right? because once you've planted that kind of false evidence, once you've made that false allegation, whether or not you planned evidence, it's not like a normal political allegation, even a normal criminal allegation, right? when it's about that, it activates our animal revulsion. and of that kind of a charges made against somebody in politics, it effectively kills that person off as somebody who

can participate in the debate and arguments on the fight anymore. they are effectively declassified as inhuman and monstrous, and they're gone. vladimir putin has been in power 22 years now in russia. and that particularly sick hallmark of his time in power has been a constant. he has used it against all different kinds of political opponents, and it always works. during the trump years here, we started to get the conspiracy theory called version of it on the political right. here in america. the qanon pro trump online cult built his whole bizarre sensual conspiracy theory around the same kinds of fall, fantastical claims, that everybody in the world who is in trump's allies on some big sky kinetic pedophilia rink. and sunday, trump will catch them all and bring en masse public executions of all the

democrats, and all the celebrities that finally will be free from the satanic pedophile conspiracy that runs the world. that's the basic idea of the bizarre pro trump qanon conspiracy theory cult. and on the one hand, it is freakish, right? it is truly bizarre. it is a conspiracy theory cult. and you have to be like an extremism anthropologist on just on any of the. on the other, hands it's been persistent in the trump era in american conservative politics. and, it does have this clear political points, which is why authoritarian movements and dictators do subversion of this all over the world. it's what some political scientists call, elimination this rhetoric. it's one thing for you to be competing in a democracy against your political opponent, right? i guess follow human beings five different ideas of a governing.

and made the best candidate win. when it's another thing of everybody at the other side of you and politics is a human. it is a monster. a beast. who you have to protect children from. and you must be eliminated if we are ever to have any sort of civilization. you don't compete against a monster and an election. you destroy them, right? you call for the public execution. and when it comes to power, the idea that you've let one of these monsters have power, because of something a small and pointless and besides a point is that when you get that election, will doesn't think -able. the election is much less important than keeping monsters at bay. elimination this rhetoric. playing with these kinds of false accusations, this kind of false accusation in particular, it is lurid, and disgusting, and shocking, and bizarre. but it is also playing with the worst kind of fire in terms of what we are capable of in our

understandable human nature. because, for people who believe these kinds of false allegations a, even for people who don't necessarily believe them explicitly, but the ambient lee observed that these are the kinds of accusations that are circulating out there about people in politics, i mean, that can be used to justify almost any level of history response. and a level of violence, even, and responds. that's why it's a dictators tactic. that is why it is a fascist, authoritarian, tactic. to use elimination honest tactics and characteristics like this against your opponents. to make up and use false claims like this to try to wipe your political opponents off the playing field. thou them no longer considered human. tell them considered not only not competitors, but not people fit to share the earth with you. that is why this spring, it was more than just disgusting and shocking, it was disturbing

when republican sitting united states senators on the conservative media decided that they would play that particular card against supreme court nominee judge ketanji brown jackson. judge jackson's record as a human being, as a public figure, as a judge includes nothing, nothing, nothing that justify the attacks on her of somehow soft on child predators. as somehow lenient on child sex abuse the way this fox news headline put it. but making those allegations about her, as radically unfounded as they were, well, it's top that qanon cult energy on the right. it tapped that elimination rubble shun that we've experienced as humans when -- they topped authoritarian purpose. in which it doesn't eliminate the political opponents, not just the political competitors,

not just as people as we disagree, but as inhumane monsters who must be physically destroyed. and you are seeing that kind of allegation made more broadly and more broadly, and we're fully all the time in the republican politics. we're seeing, it for example, in the debate around florida don't say gay bill. everybody is opposed to that beau, according to florida republican governor's office must, themselves, be soft on pedophilia. must somehow, themselves, be implicated in child sex abuse because you don't want an anti-gay civil rights bill passed. we are seeing a used more aggressively, more widely, more flippantly in republican politics all the time. but to see a used inside the united states senate in the mouths of united states senators at a supreme court confirmation hearing, how did that happen? well, the investigative reporter jane mayer who works and the united magazine has tracked that down. she has found the group that originated that disgusting and

totally false line of attack. she has traced them into the building in which they work. she has traced, a certain degree, the money that appears to support them. and she has tracked down there overall aim, which is to use these tactics and others to try to stop not just the supreme court nominee. to try to stop a nominee here and there today the cited they're going to fix this particular label. but they are going to try to stop every single nominee of the biden administration and every level using any accusation, no matter how much damage those along the way. gamers new investigation of the new yorker is just posted. it's titled, the slime machine targeting dozens of by the nominees in an escalation of partisan warfare, a little known dike when he grew perspective where the president 's entire slate. the group is claiming credit for having dirtied up judge jackson for doing the confirmation with these false

claims, even though she was looking friends. they're also claiming credit for actually stopping the nominations of multiple biden omanis with funds for more to come. jane mayer has figured out who they are and what they're doing, and she joins us next. and shows me how to get the most out of my workplace benefits. voya helps me feel like i got it all under control. voya. well planned. well invested. well protected. ♪ we could walk forever ♪ ( ♪♪ ) ♪ walking on ♪ ♪ walking on the moon ♪ ♪ some ♪ ♪ may say ♪ ♪ i'm wishing my days away ♪ ♪ no way ♪ ♪ walking on the moon ♪

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that you might have come across called bidennoms.com. when i first found out there is this biden noms website, i thought it was about the snacks that he is noming on. an ice cream tribute site. but it is actually biden nonstop come, it is about biden nominees for government posts. it is a website of a right-wing group called the american accountability foundation. it is not shy about with a group of setting out to do. they say, bidennoms.com, personal's policy, we are working to ensure the leaders within the federal government reflect the values of the american people, not that

liberal coastal elites and their woke allies in corporate america. and then just like they are hunting trophies, the site has had shot after head shot after head shot of biden nominees, some of them famous ones for sure, but some of them have never heard of. they are trying -- the thing that is unique about this, they are not trying to keep one person who don't like, or two people who didn't like out of a job, they're trying to keep every single biden nominee out of the job, or at least tried to dirty them all up along the way. everybody by denominated's going through the confirmation process, they are going after them simply because biden nominated them, all of them. now, opposition research isn't new, it's a gross part of how washington operates, but it has always been this. this group though is different, and jane mayer at the new yorker has been busy finding them out. quote, the american accountability foundations approach represents a new escalation in partisan warfare, rather than attack a single candidate or nominee the group aims to for the entire biden

sleet leaving every biden amani full stop they couldn't have successfully derail nominations like biden's nominee for control over the currency by drumming up a fake narrative that she was somehow a communist, an actual communist. also the nomination of -- four position of the federal reserve board, they claimed falsely that a delay in her disclosure of a stock trade was because she was somehow abused her position as a previous government employee to obtain some sort of secret financial benefit for herself. it was completely false. there is mud slinging, but then there is this. what is different about this is a wholesale approach to every nominee of the biden administration, and the willingness to levy these attacks, not only -- separate from the facts, but separate from many cases common decency at a wholesale level. joining us now is jane mayer, she is chief correspondent for the new yorker and author of dark money, the history of the

billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. miss mayor, it is a pleasure to have you, here thank you for taking the time. >> great to be with, you welcome back, and that was a fantastic introduction. i have never heard the phrase eliminationist before, but it is perfect in the scrubbing what this group tries to do. >> well, thank you, that is nice to hear you say. but when i was watching judge jackson confirmation hearings, and senator hawley and senator blackburn and conservative media started going down the line with her, it was shocking because the allegation they were making against her, saying she was too soft on sexual abuse of children was so divorced from the facts, it felt so wrong, but it also does dovetail with these other political tactics we see in political dictatorships and we are starting to see in the trump era of the republican party, and it really had me wondering who cooked this up because i don't think josh hawley made it up himself. it seems like you discovered

that this troop was the origin story for that false attack. >> yeah. halle had some little helping hands, and it was this group, the american accountability foundation, which believe it or not is a tax exempt organization, you can give money and get tax deductions while it scares everybody insight. it does sort of phony research basically, and pretty sloppy job if you really look into it. most of the mud that it slung has dissolved when you take a close look, but the problem is for a lot of the lesser known nominees, people are not really looking very carefully. what caught my eye about, it i was writing a little bit about the nomination of sarah bloom raskin to become the vice chairman of the fed for supervision.

she is incredibly well qualified. she was very well liked, liked by the banking world also, she had been confirmed twice before two very senior positions at the fed and treasury department with bipartisan unanimous support. suddenly there were these allegations that were a pretext basically, they had nothing to do with reality, that was kind of a made-up story on claiming that she had an ethical problem. they didn't really go after her for what i think is the real beef that they had with her which is she said a few things about climate change, and how it posed a risk to the economy. so i started looking at this group trying to figure out who are these people, and of course it turned out that a lot of the senators were getting their research from this group. the senators were getting their money from the fossil fuel industry, and they needed a pretext to take her down in order to stop the fed from including climate change as one of the things that it might consider us an important

economic risk. so anyway, i started trying to find out who these people were. >> you also read about the expensive lengths to which this group appears to have gone to come up with these speakers for some of these nominees including the woman who was denounced as a communists. when you describe them sending people all over the world to try and pick up stuff that they could mischaracterized and take out of context and used against her. senators avidly digested and threw it at her during this hearing, it raises this question, where they are getting all the funding to do this. you have been so good untangling how dark money works, what were you able to find out about where the funding for this group comes from, and who is doing it? >> well, surprisingly it -- the financial trail goes back

to donald trump. he has a leadership pac with hundreds of, over 100 million dollars and one of those million dollars went from his leadership pac to the conservative partnership institute which is an organization on capitol hill that is kind of like an island of all but for the trump administration. you have mark meadows working there, a number of other people from the trump world working there. and it spun this or other sort of group which is the american accountability foundation. so it really is an offshoot of the trump world and being funded in part by the trump world. >> jane mayer, chief washington correspondent for the new yorker magazine untangle-ing these knots one at a time for us. thank you jane, i appreciate your reporting, thank you for talking to us tonight. >> thanks for having me.

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been preparing for a huge new russian offensive in eastern ukraine. tonight ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy gave a video address to his country, and he announced that that long feared a massive russian attack has started. the new ground offensive follows a barrage of hundreds of russian missile strikes and

artillery strikes all across the entire nation of ukraine the day, but particularly in the east. he announced that things will get much much worse in the east. the besieged southeastern ukrainian city of mariupol outnumbered ukrainian troops there have taken shelter in this giant steel mill. the soviet union actually rebuilt the steel plant in mariupol to withstand bombings and blockades after it was destroyed by the nazis during world war ii. the splint is massive, it also has a system of underground tunnels where the ukrainians say as many as 2000 civilians are taking shelter right now, along with ukrainian troops that are mounting their last stand to try and keep that city under the ukrainian flag. as russia starts up this new

assault, the u.s. and other western allies are ramping up efforts to try and support the ukrainian military, for the first time ever the u.s. is sending heavy artillery to ukraine, -- 40,000 artillery rounds which at the current price would be a week's worth of artillery for the ukrainian military. if you have never seen a -- before it is a big modern cannon. the u.s. also says they are about to start training ukrainians on how to use these new -- which is important. and addition to the artillery, the u.s. is sending 11 new helicopters, 300 drones that are called switchblade drones. 208 apcs, armored personnel carriers. ten artillery radars. these latest shipments from the u.s. are a real escalation in terms of whether u.s. is sending. this is a qualitatively new weapon shipments from the united states. but ukraine says they still need more. in an interview a few days ago with an apple bomb and -- from the atlantic magazine at his presidential compound in kyiv, residents zelenskyy told them quote, when some leaders ask me what weapons i need, i need a moment to calm myself, because i already told them the week before. this groundhog day, i feel like bill murray. also, despite the -- ukraine has been able to hold off the russian invasion thus

far, zelenskyy told the atlantic, quote, the optimism that many americans and europeans, and even some ukrainians are currently expressing about the war is on justified. if the russians are not expelled from ukraine's eastern provinces, so lynskey said they can return to the center of ukraine and even to kyiv. it is possible. now is not at the time of victory. applebaum and goldberg continue, quote, ukraine can win and by win, zelenskyy means to exist as a sovereign, if permanently besieged state. only if ukraine i'll size in washington -- are in the country. he said, quote, we have a very small window of opportunity. again, an applebaum and her colleague conducted that interview with president

zelenskyy at his office in kyiv just days ago. she is just back from kyiv, and she joins us here live. stay with us. crazy commutes... crowd control- have a nice day alex (thanks ms. ellen) ...taking the stairs. that's how you du more with dupixent, which helps prevent asthma attacks. dupixent is not for sudden breathing problems. it's an add-on-treatment for specific types of moderate-to-severe asthma that can improve lung function for better breathing in as little as two weeks. and can reduce, or even eliminate, oral steroids. and here's something important. dupixent can cause allergic reactions that can be severe. get help right away if you have rash, chest pain, worsening shortness of breath, tingling or numbness in your limbs. tell your doctor about new or worsening joint aches and pain, or a parasitic infection. don't change or stop asthma medicines, including steroids, without talking to your doctor. are you ready to du more with less asthma? just ask your asthma specialist about dupixent.

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and it's easier than ever to get your projects done right. with angi, you can connect with and see ratings and reviews. and when you book and pay throug you're covered by our happiness check out angi.com today. angi... and done. >> quote, on or off camera, zelenskyy conducts himself with a deliberate lack of pretense. and a part of the world where leadership usually implied stiff posture and a pompous manner, and we are singling military authority requires a minimum highly visible bullets, he instead evokes sympathy, and feelings of trust, precisely because he sounds, in the words of ukrainian acquaintance, like one of us.

that is from an applebaum, and jeffrey goldberg writing in the atlantic magazine. they were just in kyiv to interview ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy and person, and applebaum is a pulitzer prize winner and writer at the she is the author most recently of twilight of democracy the seductive lure of authoritarianism. applebaum, thanks for being with us, we appreciate your time. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to ask you what you thought was most striking, and most memorable about your discussion with president zelenskyy at this time. i want to tell you first though, that what has stuck with me, and made me feel queasy since releasing your interview is his assertion that the optimism about ukraine's chances of holding out, the optimism that russia might somehow not win this war is unjustified. hearing that from him, has really turned my head and changed the way i was feeling about this. i want to ask what you made of that? and if you felt the same way? >> now that is obviously the

most important point of the interview, it is of course why he is doing interviews now. there is a real gap between the impression that we have here, and the feeling that we are really doing something, we are helping, we are making a big difference, and the impression they have their, which is nothing is happening fast enough. within arriving fast enough, and they are not pushing back fast enough. so, they are trying to -- the point is his comment about bill murray, i think it is groundhog day, i keep asking for the same thing over and over again. is that they have been asking for a harder weapons. larger weapons, more modern weapons for the last several weeks. they know where they are, they know which -- where they are stored, they say their planes they can come and get them. but they simply need the bureaucracy to move along faster. that is obviously the most important point of the interview. but the second important one

about zelenskyy, is that it is very clear that he is someone who also sees one of his most important tasks the reestablishment or the establishment in the first place of a different and more modern, and more accurate image of ukraine, of this country. he is someone who lives very much in our world, he makes pop culture references that you and i recognize, bill murray, beetles songs, other things, he sees himself as a democrat leading a democracy, he is a jewish leader of a mostly christian country, but that is not a problem because he believes in a civic patriotism, not an ethnic nationalism, something very like where americans believe in a kind of civic patriotism. something very like what americans believe in. and he wants to transmit that as well. i think he does it successfully because it is true, because he feels that he believes that, he is saying things that are not false. you can tell, simply by his manner, by the way he speaks. >> and, i think it's really helpful for you to cast this in terms of why he is doing

interviews, and what's the point is of the way he is talking about things and who is he is talking to. i think that is an important lens for us to keep in mind when we are looking at these things. with that in mind, are you persuaded by his argument that enough weapons shipped quickly enough could make a determinative difference, could actually stop russia from taking over ukraine? >> yes, i believe we are at a very balancing moment, the ukrainians did chase the russians out of the northern part of the country they did resist the first attack on kyiv, they did use extraordinarily creative tactics. they showed that they need to fight, they want to fight, not just professional soldiers but the whole population, all kinds of people who i know or have heard of or friends of friends who you would not think of our soldiers joined the army. all kinds of people are doing, whether it is one here jobs, computer jobs, working on

behalf of the country. i think they have shown they care a lot about maintaining their existence. you know, rachel, there's something is that a few minutes ago that really struck a bell, or rang a bell in my head. when you talked about this existentialist rhetoric, and this eliminationist rhetoric. sorry, this is the kind of rhetoric that the russians used about the ukrainians. the ukrainians know it. so they also believe that they are fighting for their country. they know that when the russians takeover territory, they don't just take over buildings and land, they are murdering people, deporting people, raping women, and so for them it is an existential battle in which every centimeter of territory matters. for us in washington, or in paris, or london, it doesn't mean quite the same thing. so the speed of weapons delivered really does matter. >> anne applebaum, staffer at the atlantic, author of ''twilight of democracy''most

recently, thank you for making that trip and writing this up with your colleague, and thank you for helping us understand tonight. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> all right, we will be right back, stay with us. down with rybelsus®. my a1c wasn't at goal, now i'm down with rybelsus®. mom's a1c is down with rybelsus®. (♪ ♪) in a clinical study, once-daily rybelsus® significantly lowered a1c better than a leading branded pill. rybelsus® isn't for people with type 1 diabetes. don't take rybelsus® if you or your family ever had medullary thyroid cancer, or have multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if allergic to it. stop rybelsus® and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or an allergic reaction. serious side effects may include pancreatitis. tell your provider about vision problems or changes. taking rybelsus® with a sulfonylurea or insulin increases low blood sugar risk. side effects like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may lead to dehydration,

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passengers no longer have to wear masks on alaska airlines, american, delta, southwest, united, or jetblue. those airlines tonight have all announced that masks are now optional on board planes. that list is likely to grow however, because today a federal judge in florida, a trump appointee struck down the cdc's mask mandate for planes, and trains, and other public transportation. now this ruling as unusual for a couple of reasons. the first is that it comes from a single judge who hasn't actually heard any courtroom arguments about this case, she decided that previously scheduled oral arguments said to happen next week we're, unnecessary. she canceled the oral arguments and just issued the ruling on written briefs alone. the second reason this ruling is a bit of a surprise, the

judge decided this would be enforced nationally rather than applying to the plaintiffs, which you know, keep that in mind next time you hear conservatives solemnly intone about how much they dislike judicial activism. but as of this moment, the cdc's mask requirement is not in effect, tsa is not enforcing, it airlines are starting to follow suit, same thing on amtrak trains and local subways. the white house says -- whether they want to appeal to try and get the mask requirement reinstated, we have no word on that yet, but we shall let you know. that is going to do it for us for tonight, see you again tomorrow night. now this time for''the last word with lawrence o'donnell''. good evening, lawrence. good evening rachel, and one other interesting note about the judge, was filed by the bar association to get there. unusual classification of not qualified to be a federal judge. they were nominated by donald trump. it's hard to get a not