trying to defend that policy.

>> are the children being used as pawns against -- could you say yes or no to that? >> the children are not being used as a pawn. we're trying to protect the children. >> how is this not specifically child abuse, these innocent children who are being separated from their parents? >> i want to be clear on a couple other things, the vast majority, vast majority of

children who are in the care of hhs right now, 10,000 of the 12,000 were sent here alone by their parents. that's when they were separated. >> according to baker and glass, are behind the scenes, secretary nielsen was ready to pack her bags and resign over that policy, which she opposed. one trump immigration advisor stephen miller first began floating in 2017. bigger and glass are right, once the public began sounding the alarm, quote, suddenly, trump officials who had pushed to take away children where denying that was their intent. attorney general jeff sessions who had privately told prosecutors weeks earlier that we need to take away children, and comments that were discovered by investigators long afterwards, sessions now told the public the opposite, saying we do not want to separate parents from their children. nielsen was -- that's what i effing said what happened, she told colleagues someone needs to get jeff sessions on the phone and tell him to halt.

even after trump rescinded the family separation policy that summer, nielsen's relationship with the president continue to deteriorate, because the president continued to ask her to an act illegal immigration policy. as baker and glass a report, in 2018, nielsen was already part of a group of trump officials, including john kelly, jim mattis, joe dunford, betsy devos, rains inky, who are on the verge of resigning en masse all of them were worried trump was off the rails. by 2019, nielsen formed a figurative mutual suicide pact with health and human services secretary alex azar. from their new book, quote, from the minute he signed the executive order reversing course on family separations amid a national uproar, trump basically regretted it and routinely threatened to consider turning it back on. as the president privately agitated to resume the practice, azar and nielsen agreed they would not go along again informed a mutual suicide pact. if trump did turn it back on, they would both resign together,

both knew a fight was coming. stephen miller would make sure of it. nielsen called her aide, miles taylor, now serving as our chief of staff, to let him know. it looks like stephen is going to be the border czar, she said. this is effing believed. we need to get ready. taylor called stephen miller and found the white house aide exceedingly excited to put on the crown, as he put it. miller said he was going to go full napoleon once in charge. i want to make sure you recognize that this moment was my coronation, wheeler said. my coronation. that anecdotal is just one of several new insights into an administration dead set on breaking laws, harming those with the least agency, and staying in power at all costs. bigger and glass or detail moments when trump asked nielsen to cancel, literally cancel, the ninth circuit court of appeals to, quote, get rid of the effing judges, and when trump asked john kelly why his

generals couldn't be more like hitler's nazi officers. the describe how close trump actually was to pulling the u.s. out of nato, and how the director of national intelligence, dan coats, was so disturbed by trump's interaction with vladimir putin he wondered what the russian leader had on trump. baker and glasser paid a full picture of a former leader who is still front page news on a daily basis, who might, at any moment, put his hat back in the ring to return to the white house, in 2024. he was still fighting multiple legal wars on multiple fronts, one is tomorrow, happening at a courthouse in brooklyn over mar-a-lago documents, another investigation happening in georgia, to ongoing with the justice department, another with the new york attorney generals office and the list goes on and on. joining us now is peter baker, new york times chief white house correspondent and co-author of the new book, out tomorrow, with his wife, new york or journalist, susan glasser. it's called the divider, trump

in the white house, 2017 to 2021. peter, congratulations on this book it is urgent in these times one trump is no longer just in their rearview, but potentially on the horizon, and thank you for joining me tonight. >> thanks for having me, alex. i appreciate it. >> the book is called the divide, or for a very specific reason, and you guys go, in the introduction, you set the stage as to why you are calling this book the divider. and you contrast to the trump administration to previous administrations. we make note of the fact george h.w. bush called for a kinder, gentler america, bill clinton vowed to be the repairer of the breach, george w. bush presented himself as a uniter and not a divider, barack obama famously declares there is not a blue america and red america, but the united states of america obviously, much of this never came to fruition despite the lofty ambitions of these administrations trump very specifically came into office, preaching about american

carnage, and living life on the divided, living his administration life on the dividing line that split america down the middle. talk to me about what you learned in the course of writing this, book about how deep-seated that desire to divide truly was within this man who was our president. >> you put your finger on it. other presidents didn't live up to the ambitions as you rightly said. at least they voiced them. they believed there was a role for a president in relieving the country as a whole. they didn't always live up to their greatest aspirations, but the understood that was something, in the american nature, that the leader of the country is supposed to represent all of us for president trump, it was always a strategy to divide. it wasn't just a campaign that you need to attack the opponent, dividing was part and parcel of his presidency from the beginning, dividing the country, dividing his own staff, dividing his party, dividing washington, and at times his

own family. it's the nature of who he is. he wasn't the one who caused the polarization in america that we see today, he, in some ways, is a symptom of, it but he took advantage of it he recognized, in a way, what is already happening, in our society, how much we are fragmenting, how much we were pulling ourselves apart, in a different tribe. that, in fact, became the launching pad for him to get to the presidency in the first place. pa>> the reason i focus on that immigration is because it's the perfect capsule for trump's desire to divide, right? this literal border wall, the notion of us versus them, who belongs here, who doesn't, who didn't. you note in the book trump believes he won the 2016 election because of immigration. i found that interesting. i think there are a lot of issues he stoked fear around, but not as forcefully and effectively as immigration. could you talk more about his remorse he had to reverse some of the policies, like family

separations at the border, and his reluctance to actually embrace that reversal? he wanted to go back to the period where agents were tearing children away from their parents >> he believes there is almost nothing that could be done that was too tough when it comes to stopping people coming over the border, and targeting immigrants in this country, particularly illegal immigrants, but legal at times. some of the legislation he endorsed would have cut legal immigration in this country as well. it's not just about whether people have broken the law coming in or not, it was a visceral feeling inside the party, and he started talking about building the wall at these rallies, he loved the response he was getting, it encouraged him to go further. he understood he was crystallizing the policy down to just these three words, build the wall. it was a powerful message to him to galvanize supporters, to get people to come to these rallies, to get them to vote for. him he needed to be as tough as he possibly could, and that meant unleashing people like stephen miller, hard-liners on

immigration who would be relentless and looking for every possible policy way to attack immigration, reducing the refugee camp, getting rid of asylum claims to the extent he possibly could. time and time again, trump would tell nielsen to shut the border, shut it down, even though, of course, there is no legal authority to do that. nielsen would tell him, that he would pound on her, and pound on her, bullying her to the point where she finally told colleagues, if she wrote a memoir, she would call it honey, just to do. it that's trump's attitude. he didn't carry people thought it was illegal, he didn't care if people told him he didn't have the power. he wanted it done. he pushed, and pushed, and pushed, until he found people who would do what he wanted to do. >> i found it staggering, you coach stephen miller at the moment he consolidates power saying, this is my coronation. this sense of entitlement and impunity is breathtaking, peter. could you talk a little bit more about the role stephen miller played and being the

architect of this, and the monarch, if you will, when it came to this draconian practice of child family separations? >> stephen miller carried about this issue more than anybody else. as a result, he became, sort of, the one person within the white house who made sure it was on the agenda every possible way it could be. he convene meetings of people from across the administration, sometimes without even cabinet secretaries knowing about it. kirsten nielsen, john kelly, they would discover afterwards that mueller was pushing some policy with officials who didn't even tell them what was going on. he was a very smart, savvy, bureaucratic player he figured out how to enact policy that would accomplish the goals he wanted to sometimes, even if the president himself wasn't fully on board, and he was relentless, pushing back against people he thought where week, like kirsten nielsen, like john kelly, like anybody else who told him, wait a second, let's follow the law here there are rules, there's also tradition he didn't like

when people told him he can't do it. his idea, being his coronation, finally, he felt like president trump had given him the power, the authority, that mandate to enact some of these policies, he wanted to particularly yet family separation it was a victory for him he was the one person, if you look back on these four years, the one aide who stays on president trump's good side, basically the entire time, never finds himself on the outs because he figured out how to manage the president, how to accomplish what he wanted to as best he could within the power they had, and to say on his good side. had, and>> there are plenty of t secretaries in the revolving door of the trump white house, something that's been written about a lot, eventually nielsen leaves, many of the other people that had their reservations leave. you make a point that, when the people who understood institutional integrity, who cared about the law, when they leave, a vacuum opens up that, under stage right, rudy giuliani and sidney powell, specifically talking in the end of the presidency. ivanka and jarred are basically done, washing their hands of this presidency, and, who is

left but people who enable him? it's a kind of delicate calculation. it's not that delicate, people left in the end. but there is a downside, right? you are a neighbor on one hand, if you are in the white house, and you have, a senate being who cares about the law, but you're the last gate keeper to an increasingly reckless president. did you sense there was concern after the fact, when these officials left, that they had effectively left no one minding the shop once they were gone? >> yeah, it's an enduring thing we came up with each time as we were researching this. book by the way, we did the research on this book after president trump left office this is the work of 300 interviews we did in the last 18 months, trying to learn what we didn't know at the time because people were afraid to talk, not willing to talk, told us things that didn't tell us at the time that's the value of doing a book like this, like an after action report. as you point out, a live action situation because it may not be over.

you're right, each time, people who work there told us of the struggle they had within themselves. do they work for a president and administration they found to be, sometimes, reckless, sometimes dangerous, pushing the edge of the law, or do they leave, and in some cases, be replaced by somebody they consider to be worse, somebody to be more deferential to the president, more willing to do the things they felt or unwise are reckless, or illegal? that was the struggle a lot of them had. you could see, in some cases, that's justifying, a way of rationalizing a decision because they liked being in power, they liked having top jobs, they had ambitions of their own. sometimes it was, i think, you know, a very painful struggle they had over what their responsibility to the country was. you could see there is a difference, right? john kelly and's up at four, in effect, with president trump inside the white house over all these things he thinks are wrong. he ultimately gets fired. if he had been there in those last days and months of the

administration, what would he have done? would he have a lot of people talking about martial law into the oval office, or would he have thrown himself into the doorway to stop them? he might not have stopped what happened over, wall but he would have been less willing to go along with it than his successor was, mark meadows, who seemed to open up the door to anybody who wanted to come in no matter how fringy or conspiratorial they might have been. there is this argument that it did make a difference what people who were not willing to go along the more extreme versions of policy and the president wanted to go on at a cost to themselves, and to others. >> guardrails, last remaining guard rails. it's critical reading right now, peter, especially as we enter a midterm cycle and another presidential election cycle. peter baker, new york times chief white house correspondent and coauthor of the divider, trump in the white house, 2017 to 2021, which comes out tomorrow. peter, thank you for joining us tonight. >> tanks for having me. >> we have much more ahead this

hour, following a particularly questionable moment during a trump rally this past weekend. we will take a look at how donald trump may be subtly or not so subtly courting followers of the extremist fringe qanon conspiracy. next, samantha power, one of america's top diplomats joins me live onset as world leaders convened for the first in-person un general assembly in three years. that is next. stay with us. us i would say that to me an important aspect is too... meta portal with smart sound. helps reduce your background noise. bring that sense of calm, really... so you come through, loud and clear. meta portal. the smart video calling device that makes work from home work for you.

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senate received a classified briefing from senior biden officials of the situation in ukraine. the house will receive a similar briefing tomorrow morning. this is a complex and a pivotal moment in the ukraine or. on the one hand, there has been this stunning counteroffensive from ukrainian forces in the country's east. they were claimed territory from russia and sent russian troops fleeing. that shift has prompted observers for the first time in months to talk cautiously about ukraine maybe winning the war outright, something previously unthinkable. this was the scene today in one of those newly-liberated towns. one that was liberated from russian occupation. more bodies were exhumed from a mass grave. ukrainian officials say they recovered 146 bodies so far, including many civilians and including children.

somebody's show evidence of torture, and execution. this one site may contain more than 400 victims. the kremlin spokesman, dimitri peskov, today, it called the whole thing a lie. ukraine is painstakingly gathering evidence from izzy him and other -- atrocities committed by russians are very much real. meanwhile, the downstream collateral effects of the war across europe and the globe are deepening. they don't look to be going anywhere soon, particularly the destabilization of food and energy supplies. when it comes to the human toll of those ripple effects from the war, the person at the forefront of the u.s. government's response is samantha power. as the head of usaid, the country's agency for international development, and in recent weeks, she's been traveling from crisis point to crisis point around the world to places where a combination of natural and political disasters have wrecked infrastructure and caused dangerous food insecurity. all of it is aggravated by

russia's invasion of ukraine, not to mention climate change. samantha power brings to this role a very particular history. she served in the obama administration on the national security council, and then as obama's ambassador to the united nations. even before that, she was widely recognized as one of the world's experts on where crimes and genocide, and bringing the perpetrators of those kinds of atrocities to justice. at this precarious moment, for ukraine and the world, samantha power is here, in new york, where world leaders are gathering for the un general assembly, and i am very pleased to say she joins me in the studio now. samantha power, usaid administrator. studmadam administrator, my fri, it's great to see you. thanks for coming on set it is -- i'm going to say, it's terrifying time in the world. i want to start with ukraine and those images of the, you know, digging up of graves, the atrocities that have been committed there. do you think, and it's as someone who's written the book on this and you understand this

issue in a granular way. do you think there is a chance putin will be held accountable for this, or anybody will be held accountable, i should say? >> it's a great question, and certainly those images, those lives cry out for accountability, now from the grave. i'd say this is the biggest worry all along with this conflict, that you would combine the capacity for atrocities that putin had showed himself capable of, in places like aleppo teaming up with the assad regime, or seeing people get gassed to death with the military prowess of a superpower. when you see the lines being pushed back, and every time they are pushed back, what is unearthed, no pun intended, you see the stakes of this conflict, and in terms of the accountability question, all i can speak to you, it's for my own experience being, in bosnia

where, again, you had similar atrocities, mass graves, targeted attacks, use of sexual violence, the killing of children, along with elderly men and women, and the perpetrators started around with that sense of impunity that you see in the territories russian forces have occupied, and you have seen in crimea, and in donbas since 2014. it was these names now that became kind of iconic, associated with war crimes, and they were so smug, and so sure, and all the international community could do, and did, led by the, uss documents the work crimes, painstakingly interviewing the survivors, those scenes we see in izyum today, and not long ago, those are the same scenes we saw play out and people wondered would ever go to any constructive use?

even in recent weeks, when you hear grumblings of discontent, moscow, you start to imagine a scenario where, at some point, there will be different leadership in russia, just by definition, the tables are such that will happen at some point, that no matter what. life is long, certainly the sanctions, the export controls, all of those other punishments that have been put in place, accountability becomes part and parcel to any scenario, even after a peace agreement, were those things get reexamined, or loosened. so, the incentive structure changes overtime, and it's up to the united states and other countries to stick together, to continue to not only documented put yourself in the position to hold people accountable, but see the international criminal court process through the human rights house -- support usaid, support

ukrainian ngos on the ground who are now setting up 22 offices across the country, painstakingly documenting case after case, and there are 15,000 incidents of war crimes that have been documented so far. >> ukraine's top prosecutor said they've identified 34,000 potential war crimes, which is just a staggering number. that, i mean, that number alone can, and i think, cause people to be defeatist. i know you are hopeful that, you are pragmatic as well, time marches forward, regimes change but i wonder how much you think this information and the current russian posture is a different calculation than this sort of posture of genocidal leaders in the late 90s, right? we are living in a time where the russians can literally take the stance that none of this is happening, all of this talk

about whether it's war crimes or food insecurity, grain shortages caused by putin's war in ukraine, that's a conviction of the west. that's not real that ability to do that and say that, and have people believe them seems like a new development. pe>> do you think the practice f misinformation may be different for different channels, but is ultimately the same as it was? >> i'd say there is various countries, especially those involved in conflicts, that have a history of misinformation what's different is the hundreds of millions of dollars the russians are investing in media penetration around the world, and having traveled, for example, to kenya, somalia, zambia, malaria, sri lanka, pakistan in the last couple months, i have seen the information overload by the russian federation through sputnik and these other media. i don't really get the sense many people are buying it.

one piece of evidence came early in the conflict, getting 141 votes to condemn the russian invasion at the united nations may not sound like a lot, there are 103 countries in the un, but i know, firsthand, from working their, most countries want to duck went a hard vote comes up 141 countries stuck their heads up, even though there was coercion, intimidation, harassment, claims that resources were going to be cut off, they still took that stand and many countries who abstained and didn't want to stay on the sidelines, didn't want to antagonize putin, of all people, you talk to them privately, and they are horrified, because every country has an interest in territorial integrity being sacred, and in one country, not lopping off part of a neighbor militarily. as quaint as that could sound in an era where putin the seeking to do just that, i do think it explains even the recent statements by prime minister modi, president xi

jinping, and others. there's a lot of discomfort, even among those countries that whose public -- russian misinformation as it's occurring in china. still, the leaders have a sense there is something awful, and massively destabilizing that one country has done to another, and thus to the international system. >> the fact that they are speaking out -- >> in their way, about this, it's significant. >> i have 1000 other questions to ask, you but we don't have time for. them i want to know, i want you to come back so we could talk about pakistan and climate change, and how to the job our aid systems are in terms of the crises we face as a globe. i know you're in town for the un general assembly. we thank you for taking some time out of your very busy and important schedule to share your thoughts with us. thank you for your time, as always. samantha power, thanks again. still ahead this hour, just how

cozy is donald trump getting with the qanon crowds? seen through morality this we can suggest quite cozy. five years since hurricane maria hit puerto rico. hurricane fiona as devastated the island with most of the island in the dark tonight. stay with us. questlove is the poetry of stillness. a thundering drumbeat. discovering the virtues of a wandering mind. conflict and climate change. a new black dream. the hidden melodies of trains. the sacred spell of words. this art was looted. the power of a dinner table. a country on the brink. carving a path through the heart of philadelphia. a story of love and obsession. affirmations, etched in vinyl.

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for the islands inhabitants, the storm is far from over. tonight, more than 1 million people remain without power and about two thirds of the island lack access to running water after the slow-moving hurricane dumped more than 30 inches of rain on the island of this weekend hurricane fiona is expected to continue to dump water across both puerto rico and the dominican republic throughout tonight the national hurricane center is warning these rains could produce life-threatening and catastrophic flooding along with mudslides and landslides. already, one person in the french caribbean island archipelago of guadeloupe has been confirmed dead at his house swept away by the flood, and more than 1000 people have been rescued in puerto rico itself. if you've been watching coverage of the hurricane, you've likely already seen this video of a bridge in the central mountain town being washed away by the floods. with power out across the island, news outlets don't have that many visuals to show you what's happening. this video is incredibly emblematic of the overall issue. the bridge is a temporary bridge installed by the

national guard after hurricane maria in 2017. it was meant to be temporary it was meant to be replaced by a permanent bridge that could withstand the sort of thing five years later, that hadn't happened. efforts to rebuild and fortify the islands infrastructure have been plagued by corruption, mismanagement, political red tape, more storms, and a series of earthquakes. it took 11 months after hurricane maria for all the power to be restored on the island 11 months you may remember the first company puerto rico higher to fix the grid after maria was insanely under qualified for the task they had a total of two full-time employees, but somehow they got a no bid contract to repair the entire islands powerlines that contract was canceled. after that, the president of a second company was arrested for bribing a fema official to lend a similar contract, but the fema fischel and president of that company have since pleaded guilty to offering and accepting that deal on top of the contracting scandals, it took three years for the trump

administration to approve fema funding to rebuild puerto rico's power grid a lot of that money has still not been spent. as of last month, the islands government had only spent about 5.3 billion dollars of the 28 billion that fema allocated were coast maria recovery. last, year after declaring bankruptcy, the government run power company privatized and effectively least its infrastructure to a private company on a 15-year contract that company was supposed to help repair and fortify the power system residency outages are still frequent if not actually worse than before large protests against the company, those have become a regular occurrence. company, those hlast month, pues governor his own administration behind the privatization denounced the company. as dangerous as it is puerto rico tonight is without power and clean water, it's unfortunately not unexpected. the governor says he expects restoration will take days, not months, like hurricane maria,

as for, water he hopes that situation will improve by the end of the week. president biden assured puerto rico's governor today the number of federal support personnel on the island would, quote, increase substantially. the fema's administrator, herself, scheduled to travel there tomorrow. tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of hurricane maria devastating the island, and the memories are still fresh. we will be right back. you may be missing a critical piece. preservision. preservision areds 2 contains the only clinically proven nutrient formula recommended by the national eye institute to help reduce the risk of moderate to advanced amd progression. "preservision is backed by 20 years of clinical studies" "and its from the eye experts at bausch and lomb" so, ask your doctor about adding preservision. and fill in a missing piece of your plan. like i did with preservision" new projects means new project managers. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. when you sponsor a job, you immediately get

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held a rally for ohio senate candidate j.d. vance in youngstown, ohio. his most forbid follower shut up as they do, but they did something they don't normally do. this is a video from that rally see if you notice anything different. >> we are a nation that allowed russia to devastate a country, ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and it will only get worse. it would never have happened with me as your commander-in-chief. >> you see what the crowd is doing there with their hands, holding up a single finger? the reason all of those people in the crowd were participating in that gesture is likely because that song you heard playing well trump spoke, that song sounds just like a song that is associated with the qanon conspiracy. the song is called where we go, one, we go all. trump officials denied the song they were playing at that rally was the qanon song. they claimed it was a different royalty-free song they use it

at rallies. the crowd at that rally believed what they were hearing was that qanon conspiracy and them. they were familiar enough with that to make that gesture as it played. for years now, we have been watching trump communicate with fringe and extremist groups using dog whistles, some of them none too subtle. he famously told the proud boys to stand back and stand by during the 2020 election, and a few weeks later, he refused to disavow qanon at nbc news town hall. >> let me ask you about qanon. it is this theory that democrats are a satanic pedophile ring, and you are the savior of that. can you, once and for all, state that is completely not true? disavow qanon in its entirety? >> i know nothing about qanon. >> i just told you. >> you told me, but what do you tell me, doesn't necessarily make it fac, to hate to say

that. i know nothing about it, i do know they are very much against pedophilia, they find it very hard. >> like i, said we have seen some of this before from. trump after january 6th, seeing trump appeared to openly court qanon feels dangerous. after all, qanon's believes are far stranger and even more fringe than your run-of-the-mill election denialism. they believe the democratic party is full of secrets, state and worshipping pedophiles. when donald trump was tweeting complaints about mueller's russia investigation, qanon was promoting wild conspiracies that mueller was secretly working with trump to arrest hillary clinton. they not only believe trump is still president, but also, one day, joe biden will be forcibly removed from office and trump will be reinstated as commander-in-chief. it's these kind of believes that lead people to dismiss the qanon movement, especially when there are other violent far-right movements to worry about like the oath keepers and proud boys. groups that helped plot of the

january 6th attack on the capitol. there are plenty of followers leading the charge on january 6th as well. their movement has far more reach than any of those other groups. last year, a pulled by the public religion research institute found qanon has become as popular as some major religions. 15% of americans say they believe the u.s. is secretly controlled by a cabal of second worshipping pedophiles. 15% of the country! if donald trump is now courting the legions of followers openly, in public rallies, how concerned should we all be? joining us now, jonathan greenblatt, national director and ceo of the anti-defamation league. jonathan, i find the staggering. it's as if we've all been sleeping, and not realized the sort of poison that has come in with the tide, and the degree to which it has spread all over this country. how has this happened? how was qanon got in this kind of reach? >> qanon goes back to 2017, when it first showed up on

4chan, which is sort of a corner of the web favored by extremists. and q, the supposed government insider, who couldn't reveal his identity, started doing q drops, or he would share information, and again he started to contrive these wild conspiracy is that, as you said, there was a cabal of pedophiles, satan worshipping pedophiles, manipulating the deep state in order to change the country. so, this started to gain steam on their followers, hence the qanon, started spreading this stuff from off of 4chan on to gab, on to your read it, on to youtube, on twitter, and facebook, and all over social media. >> what it feels like we are seeing is a dovetailing of the forces. the proud boys, the oath keepers, qanon, various elected representatives in the republican party are all saying the same things about stolen

elections, trump being the rightful leader, and it feels like that has helped launch this paranoid conspiracy fearmongering into the mainstream of the republican party. >> conspiracy theories have become the coin of the realm, or more people are getting their news from tiktok, twitter, that from television, and then times. we are at a moment. qanon preyed on this, and as you made the point, spread dramatically. none of the normal filters or barriers that would push out such craziness are there to mediate it. look, we track extremists, i could tell you, right now, the extremists are celebrating. they're celebrating on what remains of those sites. they're celebrating on social. they feel validated because qanon, after january 6th, didn't come to pass, after trump actually wasn't the president on january 21st, 2021. they were in decline, a kind of recession. they tried to build upon the

covid-19, the anti vax movement, and now they're trying to see this as a moment in time where they could come back into the mainstream. >> how much does this conspire to increase their numbers? the investigations into trump, the search of mar-a-lago, the anti government rhetoric trump is stoking, i'm sure claims of a stolen 2024, 2022 midterm election. how much does that then circulate more juice into the -- >> it's frightening about conspiracy theories. anything sort of validates them and proves them, right? qanon is almost a cult. they are unwilling to see the reality even though it's right in front of them. to your point, all these different factors, they play into their minds as if, oh, this validates this shadow conspiracy that's manipulating thanks. we track conspiracies, we fight antisemitism. there's a lot of antisemitism in this movement. to be blood liable, about power,

manipulation. this is as if it was out of the protocols of the elders of zion, a shadowy cabal of globalist manipulating events. this is why we should all be scared this isn't normal, to have one of the two major heads, parties trafficking in this, posting things on social media that a storm is coming. this is an apocalyptic idea, alex, like some armageddon is coming. it's not that joe biden will be the president, he should be tried and executed in public along with hillary clinton, and chuck schumer, and all these other elements. >> the idea of these enemies should be summarily executed, hong, whatever, it should terrify everybody. >> this isn't normal, and we're like frogs in the boiling water. we think, oh, trump, what harm could he do? this is incredibly harmful. it's like a child playing with explosive chemicals.

the reality is, we have seen examples of where qanon has inspired violence. we've seen people killed by individuals who are motivated by these qanon ideas. this is the moment for republicans responsible republicans, and people in public, public figures, to step up and say stop, enough, this has got to end. >> 15% of the country believes this is real. jonathan greenblatt, ceo of the anti-defamation league, thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you. >> we will be right back. ght back at citi, it takes a financial commitment to companies who empower people to lift themselves up. it takes funding and building on our know-how to help communities grow. that's how citi is helping create a better future by committing one trillion dollars in sustainable finance by 2030. because it takes everything to reach zero poverty. ♪ ♪

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very happy news to share. i and the whole team want to congratulate our beloved senior producer jen the wind beneath our wings and her husband matt on the newest member of their family, meet brandon! brandon was born this morning and clocked in at a whopping six pounds and 13 ounces mom says he is, quote, the cellist little guy ever. you've got a good one. mazel tov. congratulations, of course, to

brick brother liam who is promoted to the official title of big brother. we are sending you guys all of our love. we will have an ice cream party when we come back to work. that's the way to start the week. that does it for us tonight. it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. good evening. >> welcome to the most fun thing you could do, hosting the shows, and that's announcing to the nation the births of the staff of the show. >> it's the thing that matters, right? >> it's the thing that matters. two boys, good luck, sister! i have them myself. >> thank you, alex. >> have a great show, lawrence. >> we have breaking news upon breaking news tonight, and in the case of donald j trump versus the united states of america, the new york times is reporting the counsel warned donald trump last year