that they might lose an election, and so they gerrymander a system, or suppress the votes so that those margins that the governor, that abbott ran, probably not as high as they actually are, given the fact that texas is the hardest state in the country to cast a vote. and so, if you didn't have those restrictions in the place, those margins would probably be, you know, be a little lower. but, that shows the bankruptcy of that party. they are so concerned with just losing their election, they're willing to, you know, put it risk their reputation, their place in history, simply so that they win. and again, this is all about the acquisition and the retention of power at all costs. >> former attorney general eric holder, thank you so much. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> that is all in on this wednesday night. alex wagner starts right now, with my good friend, alex wagner. making some time with us. appreciate it. ipon this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now with my good friend alex wagner. >> to his point there it's as if i frequently wonder if you could

give some of these republican officer holders truth serum and get out why they were doing this, like why get into the whole election game. what woulde they say? i mean because power is one thing, but to really have no principle that you can particularly articulate. >> other thanar winning. texas is particularly interesting and interesting in a lot of these states, you're seeing it in missouri. the paranoia is so -- >> yeah, to boulder's point, it's a snake eating its own tail. thank you my friend as always. today the florida statehouse of representatives passedse a bill that prevents colleges and universities in florida from spending any money on anything that promotes equity, diversity, and inclusion. now it heads to florida governor ron desantis who will

undoubtedly signnt the thing. now, if you live in the real world and if the words diversity and equity and inclusion sound like positive things to you, what happened today in florida feels likein madness. but if you are a fox news viewer this might all make perfect sense. it might even seem overdue. let me take a step back. this is christopher rufo. he's now one of the people governor desantis has appointed to theor board of trustees that overseas new college in florida. haz trying to make the test case for anti-woke legislation. christopher rufo is also the reason your conservative uncle wouldn't stop talking about critical race theory at thanksgiving last year. in september 2020 rufo went on

tucker carlson's show to not only make his case against crt but to literally tell trump what he thought t should be done abo it. >> i'd like to make it explicit the president and the white house it's within their authority and power to immediately issue an executive order abolishing critical race theory trainings from the federal government. >> thanks to reporting from it "the washington post" we actually know former president trumppo was watching tucker carlson's show when christopher rufo made that request. three days later trump's budget chief sent out a memo demanding no federal money be used for crt. at the end of the month trump issued an executive order to the same effect. but it wasn't just trump who was listening. crustfer rufo was on fox all the time. hell appeared so often he converted a room in his house into a television studio complete with professional lighting and on-air light in the hallway so his wife and children would know when not to interrupt

him. fast forward nearly three years later and christopher rufo believes he has won. we've won the debate against crt, now it's time to dismantle dei. dei meaning diversity, equity, and inclusion. get ready it hear about it this thanksgiving. and that is why florida will no longer allow dei at its colleges. this isn't just the work of christopher rufo.f this is also the work of fox news. fox platformed rufo and helped make crt and by extension dei thens buzz words they are today. as unfortunate as that is if you care about diversity and equity and inclusion in society, as unfortunate as it is, it shouldn't be surprising because thisbe focus on stoking grievan and division, that is fox news' bread and butter. when you think back to the early

2010s it is easy to just think of donald trump when you think of the rise of birtherism, the completely unfounded conspiracy that brock wasn't born in this country. yes, donald trump was obsessed with thatd conspiracy, but the platform that was his megaphone, the platform that has made that conspiracy theory a mainstream talking point, the platform is fox news. >> i'm starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country. >> donald trump whoor we all kn was born in this country. i say move on, i believe you're born in the united states. >> he could put an end to this if he released his birth safety and lou dobbs is right to raise the question why doesn't he release it. >> it's not like the birth certificate -- it's like this whole segment of his life we don't know -- >> what are you guys talking about? >> what if he has barack obama's

real birth certificate, and that's what he got him the vp job. >> the blackmail. >> he's been blackmailing the blackmailed. >> fox news has always leaned in on a very particular kind of story, something readily acknowledged by fox news employees themselves. in a set of feature articles "the new york times" published on tucker carlson last year "the times" noted in the past few years fox has leaned harder into stories of quote illegal immigrants or non-white americans caught in acts of crime and violence. theyim offered up such coverage relentlessly during the trump years some employees refer to it by a grim nickname, the brown menace. this has been fox news' mainstay for a long time, fear mongering about the brown menace. but the person who took this fear mongering and turned it into a professional skill was tucker carlson. you might remember in june of 2020 in the wake of george

floyd's death and the midst of the black lives matter protests that followed it, tucker carlson went all in, on the brown mena. he spent the first part of the show listing all the unarmed black americans killed by police in the previous year and why the police said they killed them. carlson made a huge deal out of how menacing these unarmed black americans seemed to the police. on another night that month carlson ranted against black lives matter protesters saying this matterer is, quote, definitely not about black lives, and b remember that when they come for you. and what made what carlson said that month so disturbing wasn't that this is what the host of a major cable news program was saying but that he was finding an audience for it. that month tucker carlson's show broke the record for the best viewership t numbers in the history of n cable news. so stories about the brown menace are t tucker carlson's whole thing.

they have been fox news' whole thing for a very long time now. all of that is what makes this news so perplexing. "the new york times" has published a text. "the times" reports that fox newses executives were made awa of this at the very end of their defamation negotiations with the dominion voting systems. the texts had been redacted ippublic court filings. "the times" reports once executives learned of the text they made the decision to give tucker carlson the boot. the first thing i want you to notice was the time stamp here. this text was sent january 7, 2021, the day after the attack on the capitol. quote, a couple of weeks ago i wasof watching a video of peopl fighting on the street in washington. a group of trump guys surrounded

antifa kid and started pounding the bleep out of him. again, it's not how white men fight, and carlson continues yet suddenly i found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him. i really wanted them to hurt the kid, taste it. then somewhere deep in my brain an alarm went off, this isn't good for me, i'm becoming something i don't i want to be. the antifa kid is a human being. h i should remember somewhere someone probably loves this kid and would beab crushed if he wa killed. if i don't care about those things and if i reduce people to their politics how am i better than he is?

now, the idea this single text waste what tucker carlson was fired for is sort of tough to believe because it pales in comparison to the years of unvarnished racism core parts of his show, core parts of what fox news does most successfully, so there's a lot to unpack here. and we are going to have some expert help in doing so in just ang second. but before we do i want to play one more thing for you. this ishi video obtained by med matters. it's tucker carlson describing his feelings for the dominion lawyer who deposed him in the defamation case. >> the amount -- it was so up healthy the hate that i felt -- well, i never feel that way. but that guy, he triggered the

[ bleep ] out of me. >> it was so unhealthy the hate i felt. it's totally bad for you to feel that way. so said tucker carlson. joining us now are eddie glaud, chair of the department of african americanep studies at princeton university, and jemele. thank you both for joining me tonight. professor, how do you square what carlson and fox news have done to america with his very clear acknowledgement that hate is cancerous when it comes to himself and his own body? >> it's almost a kind of distillation of the work that mobs do in attacking scapegoats. so imagine the people who participate in a lynching, imagine them individually as persons who think of themselves

as decent. but getting caught up in the frenzy of the mob and suddenly findb themselves bloodthirsty. and the scapegoat, remember, works as a way to consolidate a sense of fragmented idea. that's too academic. what do i mean? when there's a sense people feel a sense of terror and panic about who they are, when the incoherence of america makes itself known, there's a need for a scapegoat, the violence directed towards the other whether it's black t people, whether it's immigrant, whether it's gay people, women. so p that scapegoat becomes a basis for a sense of coherence, a sense of identity, a sense of community. and in the midst of the violence, but this is the workings of the , mob, and the b does what it does. >> and tucker carlson does what he does and fox lives another day. jemele, the i don't want to call it -- it's not self-reflective,

but there's something happening in both these uncensored moments off camera that media matters has gotten ahold of and the texts themselves. it's not self-hatred. it's an acknowledgement what's happening to him and the way he's h thinking about things is poisonous, and yet he still needs to double down on his superiority when he talks about in the text he's adamant white men don't fight like this. that if he enjoys the blood sport of it all, he's no better than the antifa kid who's getting the living crap beaten out of im. how did you understand this correspondence? >> i -- i think i see it in similar terms to professor glaude. and for me the key thing is his statement t that this is not ho

white men. thinking about this in american history, thinking about lynching that may be, but that fact check aside it's clear carlson imagines his whiteness to be something of an ennobling characteristic, so it causes him deep psychological distress when it's p confronted to him he's n. and he has to rationalize that. having said o that, i also wanto say that part of me -- you know part of-- me wants to go down ts road of psychoanalyst of tucker carlson, but part of me recognizes he's very much a cynical operator. we know that he was actually a fan of donald trump, for example, said derogatory things about donald trump, very clearly sees his audience for lack of a better term, a bunch of rubes.

and looking at his transformation over the course of his career you can make a very good case he just says what he needs to say depending on the audience he happens to have. and thatha to me is also part o this story, that this is a profoundlyly cynical person weaponizing for his own self-aggrandizement. >> i do want to place him as a figure inpl history, though, professor because he represents so much of the inherentance of -- of america on the topic of race, right? this idea of white nobility and white gentility has been used since slavery times to justify violence against j people of color. and tucker carlson is no

different in that attitude than white people were in the 1700s. and i think it shouldn't be shocking, but it remains shocking to me, and i think it's worthy of calling it out when we see it. the idea that the day after january 6th when a largely white mob attacks the capitol, and this man is drawing a line saying this isn't how white people fight. well, yesterdaye the day befor he wrote that text we saw how white people fought. >> absolutely. the past is never past. was was never was, and so what do we see? we see this kind of through line. we can trace the great replacement theory back to 1790 which establishes access to u.s. citizenship for white people only, when whiteness hasn't even been consolidated as a category. 1919, 1920 the rising tide of color against white supremacy,

and how that's connected to the french writers who writes "the great replacement." and before him, you know, "the camp of saints." that's 1973. all's of this stuff around whiteness has everything to do with the tricky magic necessary to maintain this illusion that somehow white people carry with them a sense of superiority, which means they should be valued more than others. and tucker carlson sits in that sweet spot and fox exploits it. >> you know, jamelle, as the professor so expertly says, the exploitation of fox on all of this cannot be ignored. we started with talking about what happened in florida with desantis, anti-dei, the republican party basically taking itsar orders in some way from fox news is a phenomenon that's shaping american life today, and i wonder if you think -- well, what you think of

that and also the degree to which the ouster of tucker carlson has any -- is a cause for any sort of introspection on the part of republicans who parrot this garbage and make it law? >> i doubt there'll be any intro'spections because of tucker carlson's ouster. this crusade against dei or crt which always seems to be a term of abuse against integration, this crusade doesn't seem to be resonating with american voters very much. again and again we ask voters do you think kids should be taught aboutho slivery in school, do y value diversity in the workplace, americans say yes. maybe this doesn't s filter dow entirely to the political commitments, but does suggest

the republican obsession with this may not be paying the kind of political dividends that they hope, and desantis' recent decline as a presidential candidate might be evidence of that. if there's any cause for introspection, and i highly doubt we'll see much, it's going to be because this stuff isn't working the way they hoped it would work to win elections. just to repeat myself too much, but i also think it's worth saying that part of the i goal thisth talking about what fox's interest, talking about the republican party's interest, part of the explicit goal of this is take people's salience and remove it from the real questions of education -- adequate funding of schools, making sure teachers are qualified, making sure there's educational infrastructure that can treat all students equally, redirecting peoples anxieties

and worries away from that and kindm of towards a kind of imaginary enemy, a kind of imaginary group of enemies that areou trying to put you down an denigrate you. and the people who benefit from this, as it is always the case, are, for example, the people who seek to make money on privatized schools, the very wealthy and the corporations, and the owners of capital who have a vested interest in syphoning wealth from public coffers. so i also think it's important to maintain that perspective as well. this isn't just an expressionf for prejudice but also deliberate political to divide people for cynical reasons. >> i'm sorry we don't have the entire hour to dedicate to this. a privilege to have beth of you

on the program. thank you for your time. we have a lot more to come thisege including the kremlin calling this explosion an assassination attempt against vladimir putin. plus donald trump plans to skip at least the first debates in the 2024 primary season. is that a good thing or a bad thing? and for who? that's coming up next. g? and for who? that's coming up next.

the republican national committee has announced there'll be at least two presidential primary debates for the 2024 cycle. the first one will be held in milwaukee. the second debate set to take place at the reagan presidential library. the rnc hadn't yet decided which news organization will be co-hosting that debate, and it could be anyone. it could be news max. who could know? whatever network the republican party chooses, those debates may very well end up being kind of a let down for gop voters? here's the lead from nbc news this week, former president trump may skip the republican depates this summer. that's according to people, quote, aware of his thinking. so the current front-runner for the republican nomination kipping out on the debate process seems like a bad thing, right? on the other hand, it means we might all be spared from this.

>> from everything i see has no respect for this person. >> well, that's because he's rather have a puppet as president of the united states. >> no puppet. you're the puppet. >> one second. >> more energy tonight, i like that. >> i guarantee you there's no problem. >> you call women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. your twitter account -- >> she doesn't have the look, she doesn't have the stamina. she's got a beautiful face and i think she's a beautiful woman. that is locker room talk. i'm not proud of it. >> are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups? >> what do you want to call them? give me a name. >> proud boys. >> proud boys, stand back and

standby. >> so what does it mean for the republican party that their current front-runner doesn't want to face any of the other candidates in the race? and is it bad for democracy, or is it good for democracy at least good for actual people in a democracy? i'll ask former white house press secretary jen psaki and politico's jonathan martin those many questions and many, many more coming up next. stay with us. many, many more coming up next. stay with us get the royal treatment. join the millions playing royal match today. download now. (woman) oh. oh! hi there. you're jonathan, right? the 995 plan! yes, from colonial penn. your 995 plan fits my budget just right.

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here's a headline from politico. quote, the desantis people are rookies, even trump critics say he's running circles around desantis. despite the legal turmoil surrounding him donald trump has been methodly undercutting florida governor ron desantis. he's been snatching up congressional endorsements, he's been blasting attack ads, and he's been basically dominating news cycles phut even intentionally. trump's campaign operation has shown an unusual level of organization and appears to chip away at his likely rival before that rival jumps into the race. to be clear nothing about trump the candidate has gotten more professional or organized. anyone can take a quick scroll of his truth social page to see this is the same perpetual swreenophobe that's been center stage since 2015 and if anything he's gotten worse.

trump's republican rivals are falling way behind him in a race to build a national campaign operation. what does that say about the republican party and the outlook for the primary season to come? joining us now to help us answer these questions are jen psaki, former white house press secretary, and host of course msnbc inside with jen psaki, and john martin, senior politico columnist at politico. it's great to have you experts on all this. is there harm, jen, in believing that trump's -- or seeing trump's organization to be more focused and strategb than it was in years past, is there harm in acknowledging that fact to be reality? does it dilute us into thinking the candidate himself may be somehow more potent and focused than he was in years past? >> well, i mean the bar is low, but i do think when it comes to

who has a message or strategy or version for running right now trump has a stronger message and stronger strategy. he's been impeached twice and indicted. people seem in a republican primary electorate to like him more than they like ron desantis. >> which is telling us a lot about the republican electorate. and let's hold that thought for a moment, jonathan, because i am -- are you surprised at the degree to which knowing how weak trump is, knowing that this could be a moment when the field is open, there is not more strategic organization from other campaigns, that trump is easily outclassing everybody else on a pure strategic campaign operation level? >> i'm not terribly surprised for a few reasons. number one, he didbri out a few

pros. secondly, it's donald trump. he has an incredible command of attention, and he just gets publicity because he's donald trump. you add to that he got indicted and that gave him at the very least a sugar high in the republican primary, and then the last fact which is his most formidable competitor at least right now has been largely focused on his legislative session in a remote state capitol, and you add all those things together and i can't say i'm terribly surprised. to me the big question is where does this race wind up in the fall after we had a debate or two? and is there still that kind of gap you're referring to between trump and everybody else? >> yes, and when we say after the summer we're also not just talking about after some debates but take talking about after potential multiple criminal indictments. it's the big asterisk when you're talking about all these things trump has in his favor,

robust trump campaign organization, donors. he also could be the first president to have multiple criminal indictments, multiple impeachments and just the legacy of donald trump. >> that is true. but what is also true and the baseline fact of all political campaigns if you are not winning, you cannot win unless you try to take out the guy or gal who's winning. and no one seems to want to take out donald trump right now. yes, governor desantis has been busy with his foreign trip. all those things have kept him busy. he's also run against everything and everyone except trump, women, women's rights. >> people of color. the lgbtq community. >> except for donald trump. and it's hard for him to take him out or beat him if he doesn't do that. >> and he's not trying to. to that end, jonathan, there's from politico eu some very choice reporting about how lackluster ron desantis has been on these foreign trips.

one u.k. business figure said ron desantis looked bored and stared at his feet. a second business figure who was in the room said it was a low wattage performance and no one in the room was left thinking this man is going places. there wasn't any stardust. that is not the kind of reporting you want out there if you're ron desantis. >> no -- no, and especially if you're doing one of these foreign tours which are meant to present you on the world stage, alex, precisely the opposite how he came off in that piece which is somebody who can go toe to toe with other leaders around the world as competitors and as compatriots. look, i think if you ask anybody that they would acknowledge the last few months have not gone to their liking, and it doesn't mean there's not an opportunity still yet, but obviously this has been quite the jump. you think about his moment after the mid-terms, those few weeks where he was sort of the belle

of the ball in an otherwise pretty tough year for republicans. and you fast forward to today, well, that's been a pretty rocky six-month period. and going to really have to sort of step it into a different gear here once the governor will announce which probably will be here in the next few weeks. and i come back to those debates. maybe trump won't do one or the second of them, but i think we're going to have a lot more sense as to where this race is going because of what jen just said -- either desantis could confront trump on that stage and be an equal or best him on that stage and show the primary voters i can take this guy out, or he can't. and we'll know a lot after that. >> yeah. and then there's the sort of more existential question about the import of the debates in terms of the actual election, right? we were talking about watching the old clinton-trump footage which for some people maybe it was like ptsd material. do they matter?

because i think a lot of people watching the debates are like they're mopping the floor with them and then goes onto be president. >> they matter if you come from behind and you have a moment that goes viral on social media and you can raise a bunch of money from it, or because you have a moment that goes viral on social media and people take a second look at you. but what trump has said about why he doesn't want to do the debate, ignore all the stuff about fox and the hosts and all of that. to me, what stood out to me was him saying he has an insurmountable lead. to jonathan, point that may not be the case in a few months and also you do debates when you're behind, and that's not exactly true but i think it's reflective of the point unless you're behind there's really -- that's when you'll want to take somebody on and prove yourself and have a second look at voters

and raise money. >> between the lines i'm reading it matters more for ron desantis to show up to that debate, even if he's debating with the microphone he's got to show up. >> exactly for the reason he said. he's chosen to date not to attack donald trump. if you are on the debate stage, if you do not attack the guy ahead of you, that stands out. that does not look strong. also that's a moment when you are -- people are looking and seeing can you take him on, is he a better alternative? is he as fierce as the guy we like? and if you don't do that, people take notice. >> does desantis know he needs to attack trump, jonathan? >> oh, yeah. look, i think once you get in the fray with a political actor like donald trump who does not sort of adhere to the traditional boundaries of political decorum, i don't think he recognizes he's going to have to sort of scrap and not going

to be able to keep any kind of polite distance from trump. you don't want to get trapped in the mud with him which some of the 2016 candidates did, but he wanted to keep some level slightly at least above the sort of ground, but you want to make darn sure that you're confronting him, and that is no easy task. how do you not stoop to his level but still come out in a head to head challenge with trump in a debate? it is not necessarily that easy, but i think those viral moments are going to be -- it's not an hour and a half debate itself, it's whatever the moment is that stands out. you think about that famous episode, guys, where rubio and christie in new hampshire in 2016 went at it. it got played over and over again online and on tv in the days after that. i think those are the kind of moments desantis will need or by the way somebody else, a third

candidate who's not had a moment yet, who can use one of the debates to stand out. real fast, i had a column last week about trump and his question of debates. he's surveyed the members of a house meeting while they're having dinner and they said should i debate. and i think the majority at that table said you probably should because they're all going to gang up on you, and you might as well be there to defend yourself on that stage that night. so i think trump will ultimately show up. >> that's the most trump thing ever, survey a bunch of people and do the opposite of what they suggest. thank you both for your time tonight. >> thanks, guys. when we come back russia accuses ukraine of trying to assassinate vladimir putin with an exploding drone at the kremlin. ukraine says that is ridiculous. we'll get the latest on what ukraine is actually doing coming

up next. is actually doing coming up next.

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it's a shot of what appears to be a drone flying over the kremlin before exploding near the dome of its senate building. now the kremlin claims with no additional evidence it was a ukrainian attempt to assassinate president vladimir putin.

volodymyr zelenskyy said ukraine was not involved in this incident. russia, meanwhile, is accusing its adversary of doing the very thing russia is now doing, which is ramping up it's own drone attacks across ukraine today. 21 people were killed after shelling attacks hit including a railway station and super market. and a staff writer from the atlantic came back from ukraine where she got a closer look how ukraine is faring. sometimes she writes the war is described as a bat between autocracy and democracy. the truth is the differences between the two opponents are not merely ideological but also soclogical. an open network flexible society one that is both stronger at the grass roots level and more deeply integrated with washington, brussels and the

silicon valley than anyone realizes. on one side farmers defend their land and 20 something engineers build eyes in the sky using tools that would be familiar to 20-something engineers anywhere else. on the other side commanders send waves of poorly armed conscripts to be slaughtered. it's great to see you here in america, on set. let me just first get your kind of reaction to the alleged drone attack by the ukrainians inor sy have no credibility. so whoever they think it is and whoever they say it is, nobody's going to believe it. it is true that the ukrainians have become interested recently in provocations, in trying to underline and emphasize some of the political divisions in moscow, but this is a very strange event. i mean why would -- why would you send a drone to kill putin and the kremlin when he doesn't live there in the middle of the

night? so it seems more like it was something -- it reflects something going on in russia. >> you pointed this out on twitter that it is an insane moment, that the onset of this war the expectation was ukraine would just be destroyed in a matter of day. and now we're talking about ukraine allegedly launching drone defenses -- >> russia has air defenses all around the kremlin now. as you say the war was supposed to be over in three days, six weeks at the outset. instead we have russians fighting over one another, worrying about drones, faking or not faking it's now focused on themselves. it's now a battle inside moscow over the war. >> i was riveted by your reporting from what's happening inside ukraine, and we excerpted that passage because it's such a testimony to how nimble and unusual the ukrainian fighting forces are. and i wonder if you could tell me more about your expectations going in and how that squared would your expectation snz.

>> so everybody expected this war as the defense minister said to us to be a war between a big soviet army and small soviet army. and what we didn't realize over the last eight years since 2014 ukrainians have completely remade their army and to deal with leads of volunteers, young people entering the army and they've completely transformed it in completely odd ways. so it doesn't work the way our army works. we went, for example, to a drone workshop. a drone workshop is a room kind of the size of this one with tables, and on the tables there's bits of glue and wire and a 3-d printer and what literally look like styrofoam airplanes. >> at some point they said these drones are used for wedding ceremonies. >> they've remade them into weapons, and that's of course at the low end of what they do.

there's a much more sophisticated level as well. they use really the most modern, sophisticated military software that ever being used is being used right now in ukraine. i mean, at the same time, they still have weapons it looks like leftover from the soviet invasion of afghanistan in the '80s. so it's a very big mix. i think one of the reasons why we found it so hard to predict what would happen is it's not an army that looks either like what we thought it would look like nor anything else. it's a really kind of partisan volunteer army, you know, pulling in whatever it can from wherever it can, and so far it's working. >> so resourceful but not entirely -- which is to say entirely dependent in some ways on american support. and how much fear did you sense that the ukrainians were worried about america giving up on support for the war? i mean we've been talking about tucker carlson. we know that zelenskyy called rupert murdoch or loughlin

murdoch to gin up more enthusiasm among some of the fiercest critics of this war. is there a recognizable sense that america is cooling in its ardor to fight this thing? >> i think the biden administration isn't cooling -- actually there was another aid package announced today. but, yes, they think long-term, they think down the line of course they're worried about the u.s. elections and of course they're worried about what happens if biden loses and what could happen down the line. they do spend a lot of time talking to republicans, talking to critic. zelenskyy tries to find a lot of different places to speak where he speaks at music festivals sometimes and speaks at universities because he understands it's a democracy and he wants to reach the public and not just the leadership. but they do know that, and that's why -- but i think they accurately also understand this is really a war not just for their territory, that it's a war

for a way of life, it's a war for the respective for borders, a war for all of our rules about human rights, about laws of war, and he wants to explain that to people. and wrng when he does do it, he's very convincing. >> well, and i think you can feel even from here the passion in the sense of principle that ukrainians are fighting this war with, and that such a sharp contrast to the russians who have been conscripted who don't want to fight this war, who have to be dragged into it, and forced into it, a war for nothing and presumably suppression. >> it's a clash of two systems. and it's not just an ideological clash, these are societies organized in a different way. ukrainians look look us in more ways than you'd think. >> and all the more reason to keep reporting on what is happening over there. it's an important battle being aged in unusual fashion. one of my favorite writers on all things international, and

it's great to have you on set. welcome back and thank you for being here tonight. we'll be right back. thank you r being here tonight we'll be right back. ♪♪ voltaren. the joy of movement. ♪♪ away things. fit together with away things. ♪ ♪ that's our thing. ♪ ♪

that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. and i feel this afternoon in a very real sense, i feel it in my bones b