announcer: you may pay as little as $25 for a 3-month prescription. tonight on "the reidout" -- >> in our next hearing on thursday the select committee will examine president trump's relentless effort on january 6th and in the days beforehand to pressure vice president pence to refuse to count lawful electoral votes. as the federal judge has indicated, this likely violated two federal criminal statutes. >> liz cheney tees it up, and if it wasn't already clear, it is now. this committee means business. they also just released stunning video testimony from a trump lawyer telling coup architect john eastman you better find yourself a good lawyer. january 6th committee member james raskin joins us to discuss what the committee will reveal in hearings to come, and it's a

growing cancer on our nation. right wing extremists now targeting the lbgtq community, and not just in idaho where 31 of them were unpacked from a u-haul and arrested, and the first polls are close right now in a south carolina primary as trump seeks revenge against two incumbent republicans. steve kornacki will join us from the big board. and first one of the big misconceptions from the trump presidency, that there were no adults in the room. that's not true. there were plenty of adults and couldn't contain him and didn't want to. the so-called adults are sharing what they really feel about trump's pursuit for power. we're talking about trump's closest allies, his own people narrating the case against him, star witnesses that included none other than attorney general william barr, a man who spent years defending and serving trump, not the american people, but who via video testimony had

this to say about the president'slize. >> bogus stuff and based on misinformation, idiotic claims and complete nonsense. >> strong words, right? on just how silly this was, a president so unwilling to listen to reason that barr could barely do his job, saying trump's false claims about the election led to his decision to leave the administration, interesting, curious, because back in december 2020, the same month barr announced the justice department's finding of no fraud in the election, he submitted this very weird solicitous and gratuitously fawning resignation letter heaping praise over trump's many successes and unprecedented achievements he delivered for the american people. let's not forgot how barr who infamously lied for trump and told newsmax he would still vote for trump in 2024 and then sometimes the adult in the room is your daughter who accepted

barr's assessment of no fraud but stood with her father at the ellipse. we heard from bill stepien's trump's campaign manager, maga faithful. he said he's part of team normal and he testified he distanced himself from trump's lies, a republican operative fired by governor cooper cupp during the bridgegate scandal and helps candidates running on the big lie, one primarying liz cheney. it's whether it's image to save face or the possibility that a team normal faction did exist during the trump campaign. these are trump people, aides, foot soldiers and biggest cheerleader. this isn't a story about the good republicans about the bad ones. it's not about bad guys who became good, and it's certainly not a story about redemption. these are the bad guys. they say they opposed trump's antics and nuttiness but they

sure were willing to walk right up to the line. they just weren't willing to crime it to commit the ultimate crime of overthrowing our democracy, and that doesn't make you a hereo. also a story with much more to come with thursday's hearing focusing on trump's pressure on mike pence. late today the committee highlighted the video deposition of eric hirshman, a white house attorney under trump. the day after january 6th hirshman spoke with john eastman, the lawyer who wrote memos arguing that pence could overturn the election. here's how that conversation went, according to hirshman. >> he started to ask me with something dealing with j.and preserving something potentially for appeal, and i said to him are you out of your f'ing mind? right. he said i only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on.

orderly transition, and he said i don't -- i said i don't want to hear any other f'ing words coming out of your mouth other than orderly transition. repeat those words to me. >> what did he say? >> eventually he said orderly transition. i said, good, john, now i'll give you the best free legal advice you're ever getting in your life. get a greatesting criminal defense lawyer. you're going to need it. and then i hung up on him. >> joining my know is congressman james raskin of maryland and member of the january 6th select commit. congressman, thanks fork here. interesting and definitive audio from mr. hershman. it seems to me that everyone with a law degree who was in any way involved in listening to what donald trump and people like rudy giuliani wanted to do with the exception of rudy giuliani and eastman understood that what they were describing was a crime. do you agree that what we're

hearing about are crimes? >> yeah. these are crimes. you know, what you need for crime is the fancy latin word mens rea and given that donald trump and his whole entourage understood that the big lie was a big lie they had a criminal state of mind. they had a criminal intention. they meant to deceive everybody and continue to drive their plot all the way up through january 6th, and what we're going to do in the next several hearings is take people through the various attacks on the rule of law in different critical governmental institutions, the department of justice, state legislatures and the vice president all the way up until january 6th where we see the convergence of this inside attempted political coup to overthrow the election with

insurrectionary mob violence that donald trump incited and helped to up leash against the government. >> i give you the quote of the great dan rather and he said funny what people will say when they're under oath that they didn't say earlier when it could have made a big difference. actually it's not funny at all. it's outrageous, a shame that will follow their names into history, and as we listen to all of these people testifying telling what they know it strikes me that they, william barr the first among equals here, knew that a crime was under way and being contemplated by the president of the united states, and no one said anything, nothing, to the american people. to me this does not vindicate william barr as he sits there comfortably laying out the case against trump. it condemns him. what do you think? >> well, thank you for saying that. you know, just telling the truth about a president of the united states who is hellbent on

nullifying a presidential election and installing himself in the presidency for another four years doesn't make you a hero and, you know, i know what bill barr did on june 1st in that paramilitary riot that was leveled against peaceful black lives matter protesters, and i saw the way that he defended donald trump at other points, but, look, donald trump was so clearly on a collision course with the constitutional government that a lot of people decided to get off of the team at the last minute, and i appreciate the fact that they are telling the truth now. in a moral sense you're right. it doesn't make you a hero. it's a great relief to see all of these people, his campaign manager, stepien telling the truth the attorney general of the united states, all of these

campaign aides, but we obviously don't want to overly lionize these people. >> they had a duty to wash. the attorney general wrote this, you know, sycophantic letter on his way out and yet there is a controversy inside the committee, that's what seems to be occurring between the chairman congressman bennie thompson who chairs the commit and some others who say, no, we're not going to do a filing to the doj. there won't be a letter to the doj saying we believe these are crimes that have been committed, and liz cheney who seems hellbent on making sure that that actually happens. where do you fall on that, on whether or not there should be criminal referrals made to the department of justice since you agree that these are crimes? >> yeah, i don't think we have an actual conflict on the committee. i think we've got semantic confusion generated by the media because we did a bunch of criminal conferrals for criminal

contempt of people like scavino and meadows and bannon and there's a specific statute that allows for congress to make criminal referrals for acting in contempt of congress. there's not a general catch-all federal statute that allows for congress to make criminal referrals to the department of justice, so obviously we have the power and the authority, and i think the duty to publish all the information we have about crimes that have taken place. we have even already committed ourselves to the proposition that crimes have taken place in the eastman litigation when the judge asked us whether eastman was covered by some kind of attorney/client privilege and we said, number one, there was no attorney/client relationship and even if they had it they have waived it and even if they

haven't waived such a claimed relationship, the privilege doesn't attach if you're engaged in crime and fraud, and we laid out all of the crimes that we saw at that point that donald trump had been engaged in, and judge carter accepted that analysis and repeated those crimes, and he said he thought it was likely that donald trump had committed federal criminal offenses so we've already committed ourselves to that proposition, but i think the ambiguity is there's not some kind of statutory formal structure for referring crimes to the department of justice. we can have our hearings. we can issue our report. we can state what we found, and so ultimately i don't think there's any difference between the chair and the vice chair on this. >> thank you for clarifying that. you know, in addition tock a congressman and a member of the commit, you're also one of my favorite people to talk constitution aol law with so i'm going to abuse the privilege and try to get to you talk a little constitutional law. michael lewdig, a luminary on

the conservative judicial sort of world to whom mike pence consulted on whether or not it would be a crime to try to steal the election by himself which he determined he could not do, we're going to hear lots of people laying this out, but what we've heard so far, and he said absolutely don't do it because he's a smart man. can you have a seditious conspiracy that involves violent actors who believe their purpose was to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power, to obstruct the congressional -- the handover, the ceremonial handover, can you have that? can you have memoranda from a lawyer acting ostensibly on behalf of the president or in his, you know, for him, to stay here's how you lay out, here's the way we could steal the election without having the president be a part of that crime? in other words, can you prosecute anyone below donald trump for seditious conspiracy and leave him out, and if he

were prosecuted, how would that even work constitutionally and how would that play how the? >> well, they're rhettically, of course, you could. you could have a crime to overthrow or put down the government in the united states on behalf of a president who doesn't know anything about it. you also could have a seditious conspiracy to overthey or put down the government of the united states or to thwart its laws that includes the president, so that's just a question of fact. that's a question of evidence, and so hypothetically is it possible that there could have been a plot to install donald trump in as president and to keep him in and to stop the steal and to seize the presidency for four years without him knowing about it, theoretically, yes? is that likely to have happened, i don't think so? >> i think that he was the motor behind the whole plot. >> could then -- can you envision this ending without donald trump himself facing

legal consequences for that? ultimately. >> well, you know, i think donald trump will have his comeuppance. i think, you know, with dr. king, the arc of the moral universe long but it bends towards justticious and i think there will be justice for everyone who set these events into motion. i mean, people were killed. people died. we had an interruption of the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in american history. we had a violent assault on the peaceful transfer of power, destroying the peaceful part around interrupting the transfer of power for many hours. i mean, this was an unprecedented and extremely dangerous situation that could have led to anything from martial law to civil war. >> indeed. congressman james raskin, member of the january 6th committee, one of our favorite professors

to put on so we can teach a little constitutional law from time to time. thank you, sir. have a wonderful weekend. up next on "the reidout," we're learning more about the trump plan to install a new attorney general specifically for the objective of stealing the election and steve kornacki joins us with the latest on today's primaries. "the reidout" continues after this. today's primaries. "the reidout" continues after this but he was getting picky, and we started noticing some allergy symptoms. we heard about the farmer's dog and it was a complete transformation. his allergies were going away and he just had amazing energy. it's a no-brainer that remi should have the best nutritious and delicious food possible. i'm investing in my dog's health and happiness. ♪♪ get started at longlivedogs.com

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department of justice and to overturning the 2020 election and how that nearly led to a sunday version of the nixon era saturday night massacre. an explosive new report in "the washington post" details former doj official jeffrey clark's plan to take over the justice department and deliver the election to trump. in a meeting three days before the insurrection, clark discussed his plan to send a draft letter to key states, including georgia, urging the appointment of separate slates of electors. trump's acting attorney general jeffrey rosen and his deputy richard done hour, also in the meeting, had already rejected that plan. according to "the post" as rosen and donahue listened, clark told trump that he would send the letter if trump named him attorney general. history is calling, clark said, according to a deposition from donahue. this is our opportunity. we can get this done. donahue urged trump not to put clark in charge calling him not competent and warning of mass resignations by justice department officials. trump ultimately backed down on replacing rosen with clark whose

actions are under scrutiny by the house january 6th committee. a hearing on all of this originally scheduled for tomorrow has opinion postponed to next week. with me now former senator doug jones of alabama, a distinguished fellow for the center for american progress and paul butler, georgetown law professor and former federal prosecutor. thank you both for being here. let me start with you, paul, because this is pretty straightforward, and it actually kind of reminds me of what trump was impeached for the first time when he said to the president of ukraine, the now very much embattled by russia president of ukraine, i just need you to announce an investigation, just get out there and say that there's an investigation, say that there's fraud and then to create the pretext, right. he wanted the justice department to announce, you know, that in -- with their power they wanted a separate slate of electors because there was something wrong with the votes in georgia. that's a crime, right? >> it's just one of the crimes that's detailed in "the post"

article, joy. there was this bombshell, a couple of bombshells like that that go right to the criminal culpability of donald trump. when trump refused to make jeffrey clark attorney general, clark then asked if the justice department could write a formal opinion about the role of vice president pence and certify the election, and then trump tells everybody at the meeting the attorney, the deputy attorney general, the white house counsel not to say a word with mike pence. in other words, trump issues this stay-away order to the people he knew would tell pence that he had the constitutional obligation to certify the electoral college votes. trump did not want mike pence to be instructed on the law. that's strong evidence of trump's own consciousness of guilt that he likely knew that what he was trying to do was illegal and corrupt. >> and, you know, i do wonder

sometimes, senator, how many of your former colleagues were aware and how many people were aware of this plan because it does seem like part of this coup attempt was number one an attempt to box mike pence in, you know, and create this alternate slate of electors and push him to use those instead of the real electors, but then also on the violent side intimidate both mike pence and the united states senate into going along with t.hard to get around the idea that this wasn't a pretty multi-facetted conspiracy, right? >> well, it is certainly multi-facetted and it's broad. there are so many things happening before, during and after, joy. i mean, that's i think a real stunning part of what's going on right now is you see so much of the planning and so much that was said that is still ongoing today. you can see it taking place in primaries tonight as we speak, the same things are being said. one of the things that i found most interesting though was the

fact that -- i don't believe that jeffrey clark was doing this on his own. this is an environmental lawyer. he was, you know, head of that division, solo part of that division. he had no experience in any of this. the e-mails and all suggest there were things being sent to him, letters being prepared. there's more behind this than we've seen so far. now whether or not the committee can get to that because jeffrey clark took the fifth when he was called which, by the way, was a fwarly smart thing to do rather than being held in contempt was to take the fifth, but the fact is i just believe there's more to this that was coming into the justice department, and thank goodness there were people -- you can say what you want about a number of the trump appointees, but at the end of the day there were a lot of nokes who stood up for that department and stood up for the constitution at the end of the day because we came real close. >> yeah. >> absolutely and threatened to resign en masse. let's go through because, you know, we know now that per

merrick garland that he's been watching these hearings which in a way you shouldn't have to watch. out got your own investigative authority. you don't have to watch, it okay, but there's so many crimes he could be watching and sort of picking up the straws on, you know, paul. let me let you listen to senator claire mccaskill because she put up one of the options of what trump -- of all the many crimes committed. this is one that could lead to some consequences, maybe. >> the other bucket that he really may have trouble with, the trump organization might and donald trump himself, is consumer protection laws. those typically are handled by state's attorneys general and not by the federal government, although the federal government could stick their foot in if they could find some wire fraud and it was big and blatant enough and this may turn out to be that. >> so campaign finance violations, wire fraud has been mentioned, you know, just -- the

bannon -- the stuff that bannon got in trouble for lying and telling people give me this money and we're going to build a wall and it turned out that that was a fraud. of course, he was pardoned. his partners in this that crime are the ones that will face the consequences. three men were charged with them. they have already pleaded guilty to them to conspiring to defraud and swindell donors. letitia james stood up and said i'm paying attention to this as well. could it end up being the state's attorneys general who wind up paying attention to the financial crime and fraud here? >> you know, i sure hope not, especially after a federal judge in california found that there's evidence of a criminal conspiracy between donald trump and john eastman to overturn the election, to subvert american democracy. the january 6th panel hearings are showing direct connections between the president's words and the bloody violent attack on

the capitol, so eastman was told by someone in the white house counsel's office that he clearly needs a good criminal defense lawyer. it's up to merrick garland to decide whether donald trump also needs one, but. sometim it's important to name the crime, and the crime that there's evidence that the president of the united states, the former president committed, is sedition. that he conspired to overturn our democracy and that's what he should be held accountable score? and the thing is, senator jones, the tragedy here is that the republican party has already benefitted from this crime because they have used it, whether they actually believe the stop the steal nonsense or not, to pass extremely restrictive voting laws that are going to make it very difficult for democrats to win future elections in states like yours, you know. they are using the big lie, whether or not they believe it. you have individuals who profited from it, mark meadows

got money. donald trump jr.'s girlfriend got money, using it to financially profit and politically profit, so in a sense donald trump's, you know, crime has already benefited his political party, right? >> well, it benefitted in a number of ways, but i want to make sure that we're clear about something, joy. what we're hearing from the january 6th committee right now is really stunning, but at the same time almost all of the evidence that we're hearing right now cannot be used in a court of law. it is not going to be admissible that way, an i've been trying to make sure folks understand that this january 6th committee is an investigative body, and their job right now is to put the information out there. let the truth become. you can hold people accountable when the truth is made public through so many ways, and that's important as we move into the elections. there are so many election deniers that are on the ballot. there are so many laws that have

been passed. it is important right now to get that truth out so that people will understand that as they are going to the polls. that -- and then we'll let the criminal justice system, you know, figure this out, and i think it will. whether state or federal, i think the criminal justice system will figure it out, and the most important thing is to get people to understand what's at stake here and what this committee is showing. >> yeah. excellent point. thank you very much for making it, former senator doug jones and, of course, paul butler. thank you both. still ahead, right wing extremists are marking pride month. and we'll have more on the january 6th committee investigation and the case against trump. we'll be right back. e case against trump. we'll be right back. to provide flexible pay options and greater workforce visibility today, so you can have more success tomorrow.

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washington, oregon and virginia. in california members of the proud boys harassed and threatened children and their families as they attended a drag queen story hour. police are investigating it as a possible hate crime. according to the associated press, these individuals are part of a massive right wing media ecosystem that's been pushing the idea that there are people who are trying to take your kids to drag shows. there are tr ha ns people trying to groom your chirpch these groups are emboldened by the rash of republican state legislatures that have proposed roughly 240 bills targeting lbgtq americans, half targeting transgender people specifically. make no mistake. their goal is to radicalize the same kinds of people trump and trumpism have radicalized on matters of race, immigration, abortion and demographic change and to do so by any means necessary. joining me now is nbc news senior reporter ben collins. thanks for being here. we reached out to you because you tweeted about watching the

sort of online weird oresphere, the online sphere, and that they were shifting when the january 6th hearings were actually starting to move people's opinion away, unsaid they were shifting towards lbgtq people. how broad is that shift and when do you make of it? >> yeah, that's their primary target now. we don't really have a cohesive narrative for january 6th. they have a cohesive narrative for what they believe the lbgtq community is doing their children. this is a month's effort, a year's long effort by the far right. in fact, in 2019 i did a story about how 4chan was specifically potion at gay men on twitter to try to say, you know, they were potion as gay men and then they would say pedophilia is part of our cause now. they would take real gay couple pictures on twitter to do that, to try to drag that into the

narrative and then the pandemic happened and they dropped it for a while and now they are back in this game. they realize they think they have a winning political issue with the center. i don't know if they do, but they believe that this anti-tr ha ns panic is something they can latch on to in mainstream politicians and so far politicians like ron desantis have been happy to oblige. >> there's the weirdosphere, i don't go on 4chan, but it's now migrated much like a lot of ideas of anti-immigrant, you know, demographic panic, all the other panics, critical race they're panic. they go from the far right sphere into mainstream republican politics because they target the same demographic of people generally, you know, white, non-college, you know, right wing christians, conservative christians, anti-lbgtq laws have been enacted all of these states. we'll put up a map to show you how it's spreading.

240 proposed laws. that's three a day according to pan america, 379 books or 33% of all of the banned books this year explicitly address lbgtq themes or have lbgtq protagonists or secondary characters. is this something that law enforcement is noticing more since we just saw what happened in idaho because they are noticing the race panic stuff? >> yeah. i think, look, what happened in coeur d'alene. it's very easy to get into their discourse. there's a group called unicorn right who has been in the discourse for years. people are keeping tabs on some of these groups, but problem is there are individual actors who may not act with groups like the

proud boys, other militia groups and those groups, the proud boys, this really want to get violent, they want to start fights and they don't want to murder people but the problem with the proud boys is you start physical altercations in the streets. is the capture of local police nearby strong enough to bat that away? i don't know. like, it really is a municipality by municipality basis, but i hope that people understand this. their primary enemy right now is the lbgtq community, both because of pride month and because they need an enemy. >> as january 6th takes hold, the flashy stuff goes off in some maga people, this is sort of replacing it. is this a branch of qanon because that's sort of similar to the qanon argument? >> right. there is this qanon-style

anti-groomer panic, that you know, it -- it really depends on how four want to go. you don't have to go all the way down the line to say they are eating kid and drinking blood and stuff. some of them do that believe that, that there are people who are doing that within the government, and it's sort of aligns with the anti-you know, trans and anti-lbgtq panic that's been happening in the last few months is they have fellow travelers here, and there are people who are earnestly anti-lbgtq or anti-trans who hate the proud boys and who do the believe they are on the same side of them. >> yeah. >> but they are trying to form a very broad coalition from the center right all the way to the militia groups on the very, very far right. >> and they are being mainstreamed by people like ron desantis. perfect. ben collins, thanks for keeping your eye on this stuff. up next, primary voters head to the polls in south carolina, nevada and south dakota. steve kornacki at the big board. he'll give us the latest after

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chase. make more of what's yours. daddy, is that where we're from? well, actually, we're from a lot of places. see, we're from here, and there... give dad a gift worth sharing, at ancestry.com to help prevent bleeding gums, try saying hello gumwash with parodontax active gum health. it kills 99% of plaque bacteria and forms an antibacterial shield. try parodontax active gum health mouthwash. new analysis from "the washington post" has found that more than 100 primary winners support donald trump's big lie. it's become a de facto price of admission in many of these primaries. in south carolina where polls just closed this hour, we're closely watching two trump-endorsed candidates aiming town seat house republicans tom rice, who was one of the ten

republicans who voted to impeach trump after the january 6th attack and nancy mace who did not vote to impeach but did blame trump for what happened at the capitol. with me now from the big board is msnbc national political correspondent steve kornacki. the numbers are coming in, and you're our numbers guy. what are we seeing, steve? >> let's start in the first district. you mentioned nancy mace, freshman republican congresswoman, donald trump has endorsed her challenger, and it looks like the early vote has been released so this is a small number of votes, but you do see nancy motor in the early vote at least in one county in this district more than a 2-1 advantage over katie arrington. a couple of things besides the fact that this is very early in terms of the total number of votes that will come in. one thing that we've seen in some republican primaries throughout this spring has been that the early vote, the votes cast first have been more favorable in a lot of contests towards the candidate who don't have trump's endorsement and

then the same-day vote, the folks who went out today and voted, the trump-backed candidates have done better that. that's one thing we want to see as more votes come in here is the initial batch of votes we're getting shows mace more than 2-1 ahead of arrington in the first distrifngt the other republican incumbent being targeted by donald trump. early votes, a very different story. here's tom rice. he's running behind and running significantly behind. it's only 4% of the total, but he's already, you can see, double digits behind the trump backed challenger. this is a state legislator, russell fry. take a look here and see where the votes are coming in in this district. >> we're getting the mother lode in the seventh district. this is where myrtle beach is where conway is. half of the district.

we want to get a real sense of this county. there's nothing from there yet, but three other counties right now looks like they are reporting at early vote and a quick start here for russell fry. the trumpbacked challenger. again, one thing to keep in mind is the more votes that come in, 509% rule is in effect, you know, rice draw a number of challengers. most of these republicans who are running in this race cited his vote to impeach donald trump as basis for his candidacy. if nobody gets to 50% tonight, the top two could go to a runoff, and, again, if rice is forced into a runoff, if he's well upped 50%, just give him the platforms of all of these other republican candidates, just about all of these republican candidate. they were hostile to rice. they were hostile to his vote for impeachment, so, again, we'll see much more to come in here, but not a start certainly that rice wants to see. >> it's interesting, steve, that

the anti-mail-in ballot, anti-early vote sort of idea that trump introduced, it's still impacting these primaries. >> yeah. we've seen this, you know, certainly ohio i think was the first state we picked up on it where you had sort of a more moderate republican candidate did well with the mail-in ballots, did well with the earlier votes. >> right. >> and then there was sort of a flood on the same day. we haven't seen it fully everywhere, but, again, i think here, and i'm checking to see if we've got any more votes, the one sort of thing to keep in mind when you see mace jump out to a giant lead like this, this is something that she would like to see, but there is that open question. let's see some same-day votes if they do happen to tell a different story but it is notable, mace and rice handled the trump question so differently in their campaigns. as you said, after mace initially went after donald trump over his actions on january 6th. >> yeah. >> she really spent most of this term in congress trying to make peace with trump voters whereas rice refused to back down from

the vote to impeach. >> seems to be paying for it. >> anything that comes up that we need to know just wave your hand and we'll bring you back here. steve kornacki, we'll discuss the election denialism trend

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election deniers have won their primaries this year is matthew doubt. friend of the show. matthew, what do you make of that. ? the big lie is now standard for republicans and you just heard steve kornacki. people who oppose the big lie or oppose trump's insurrection they face a real challenge even keeping their spot. >> i think this is what we have seen all over. i think we are going to see it tonight not only in south carolina but we will see in an event a. every single candidate running on the republican side in nevada weather for secretary of state, u.s. and it or governor, are all competing over who is a bigger election denier. none of them are people that believe actually in the fundamentals of democracy. i was thinking about this before i came on today. it's almost as if excess democracy sitting out there and they're all competing about how many torpedoes they can shoot into it. and they're like, no, i can shoot three torpedoes into microsoft, i can do this. it's about that. steve was talking --

i run a lot of elections in my life, i kind of elections in my life. the standard thing was republicans do better in early voting and that's -- >> yep. >> for 50 years -- >> i've worked on campaigns where we lost because of that. 100%. >> democrats did better on election day. >> election day -- >> because they bought into this idea that there's something wrong with casting a ballot, even though it's easier, and it turns out more voters if they are able to use all the system, it's a bit like what's happened with vaccines, as soon as someone said it's wrong to take a vaccine, i'm not taking a vaccine, even though it's better for me. the same thing is now happening in voting procedures. but what's the scariest thing for 2022 is, joy, is that in so many of these races, election deniers are going to be sitting on the ballot, whether it's for secretary or attorney general -- look what's happened -- look what happened in michigan. you've got some notes on the ballot. so, these are the pillars that preserved imam chrissy in 2020. and they are trying to knock

down the last of those pillars. >> i have a couple of questions. number one, if somebody denies -- is an election denier, do they then accept the results of their own race and how do they justify saying that they were legitimately elected? >> that's the question. everyone kept posing it in 2021, republicans did reasonably well, down-ballot. they won seats in the congress and they did okay in the senate up until the georgia races in the special elections. and for state legislature they did well in state legislative races. they don't accept that logical point that you make, which is the same person that cast a ballot for -- cast a ballot for you as a congress person or state legislator, they just completely ignore that in the course of this. and i think it's really troublesome because we know that but for secretaries of state and governors and attorney generals, there is a high likelihood donald trump could have succeeded in what he did. >> of course. >> once you knock those pillars

down in those pillars are gone, that's why to me the race for 2022 -- we can talk about 100 issues -- the race to me is fundamentally about, are we or are we not going to preserve this democratic experiment that we have had for over 200 years? >> here is the problem. there is a non insignificant percentage of people -- i think in any society -- that don't really care whether their country is a democracy. they care whether people like them are in charge. and that means it's an autocracy, or a dictatorship, there's not insignificant number of people who don't care. we were joking today on our earlier call, our show call, that we could do a, where are they now for the maga election deniers and people involved with the trump insurrections. jim ellis has just migrated to another insurrectionist, doug mastriano. working on his campaign. >> [inaudible] >> absolutely. stepien, who is telling the truth now, he has migrated to another maga insurrectionist, an election denier. he's just gone to a different

campaign and wyoming against liz cheney. the question is, how do you run -- on the democratic side, to save democracy -- when there are some people in this country who actually don't care whether we are democracy? >> i think america has always had this a third, a third, a third, in which a third of the voters today, which is very similar to a third of the voters during civil rights, a third of the voters are 100% for, we need a democracy we need to make sure it's preserved. a third of the voters would just as soon have now talker see if it gets them what they want or they don't fundamentally believe inequality for all, like we've seen in our country's history, whether it is for slavery, women's rights, and then there's been this third of america that has stayed quiet, like, worries about whether or not what is happening in the grocery store or whatever is happening. that is who democratic candidates have to turn on. >> yep. >> because that is fundamentally who is going to make differences in this election. as martin luther king said, the

thing that would fundamentally change this are the people who are good of principle but who stayed quiet. >> right. >> and we have to get those people allowed. >> and we have to end indifference. indifference is what could [inaudible] our democracy. >> we have to lead them, not follow them. >> absolutely. whatever he says, matthew dowd, he's so smart. that is tonight reidout's, all in with chris hayes starts right now. idout's, all in with chris hayes >> tonight - >> i told him that [inaudible] people were shuttling out to the, that the claims of fraud were bleep. >> they all knew and didn't say anything at the time. >> [inaudible] characterized as being part of team normal. >> tonight on what we are learning about the complicity from the people surrounding donald trump, as he peddled his big lie -- >> i think we can see the plot unfolding here. >> democratic committee members oh lofgren and former republ