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tv   Alex Wagner Tonight  MSNBC  September 13, 2023 1:00am-2:01am PDT

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90% of admirals and generals will be unconfirmed. we're going to have a military that will not be able to function. we've had the best military and fighting force in the world. this is doing serious damage, and it's on tuberville to lift. this fighting force in the world. this is going to do damage, and it's on tuberville to lift this. >> that is "all in" on this tuesday night. alex wagner tonight begins right now. >> chris, tommy tuberville is literally a case study in the tyranny of the minority. and it is not by coincidence we have the author -- well, it is kind of consistence dns but also a coincidence we have the authors tyranny of the minority on the set tonight. >> that's perfectly fitting. >> the framers did not envision tommy tuberville. thank you, my friend, as always. and thank tuesday you at home
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for joining me this hour. so today speaker of the house kevin mccarthy announced that despite having no real evidence, he is opening an impeachment inquiry into president biden. lucky for us we don't have to wonder whether or not this is a bad faith effort by speaker mccarthy, and that is because back in 2015 when he was pitching himself for house leadership, mr. mccarthy said the quiet part out loud. >> the question i think you really want to ask me is how am i going to be different? >> i love you asked my question, but go ahead. that was one of my questions. >> what you're going to see is a conservative speaker that takes a conservative congress that puts a strategy to fight and win. everyone thought hillary clinton was unbeatable, right, but we put together a benghazi special committee, a select committee. what are her numbers today? her numbers are dropping.
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why? because she's untrustable. but no one would have known any of that would have happened -- >> i give you credit where credit is due. >> i'll give you credit where credit is due. you got her kev, you got her. if you don't remember the benghazi hearings, then i'm very jealous. the republican led investigation lasted more than two years. it was longer than the investigations into watergate and 9/11, the jfk assassination, and pearl harbor. it was longer than all this. it cost taxpayers millions of dollar and the primary focus of hillary clinton, smack-dab in the middle of her presidential campaign. a campaign speaker mccarthy admitted people thought was unbeatable. when the benghazi hearings concluded, the final report found no evidence of wrongdoing by secretary of state clinton. but the facts aren't what
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mattered here. it was about the optics. it was about the messaging. that was the goal. it was about making secretary clinton look like a criminal on television for months and months so that she could become, again, in kevin mccarthy's words, untrustable. once republican husband planted that seed, they could litigate and relitigate clinton's trustability, again, on mccarthyism, over and over again in a campaign and a campaign that ultimately ended in her defeat. and now speaker mccarthy appeared to be running the same play against president biden just before the 2020 election. remember there's already been a republican committee in the house investigating president biden for months. earlier this year that committee released a report that confirmed much like the clinton investigation that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by president biden. but again the facts do not seem to be the point here. the point is to create months of conservative tv coverage that makes biden seem like he is in
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just as much legal hot water as former president trump. it is to make joe biden untrustable before the 2024 election with the hope that the race ends the way that it did for hillary clinton. this is what they got. if you can believe it, this is the plan. but given what donald trump is facing himself in the lead up to the 2024 election, four criminal trials, 91 felony counts including crimes related to trying to overthrow democracy and recklessly handling national security secrets, given all of that can republicans use an impeachment boom doggle for impeachment. 91 is not a small number, but remember the truth is besides the point here. remember back in 2020 the finance committees issued this
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joint report that among other things made a very, very specific claim that president biden's son, hunter biden, received a $3.5 million transfer from the wife of the former mayor of moscow. "the washington post" looked into that very specific claim. they even found the wire transfers the committees were referencing, but "the washington post" found no evidence that hunter biden was part of those transfers the claim was not true. but that did not mean that candidate donald trump would not use it. >> why is it just out of curiosity the mayor of moscow's wife gave your son $3 million. what did he do to deserve it? >> none of that is true. >> mr. president, please. >> totally discredited. and by the way --
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>> he got $3.5 million. >> that is not true. >> mr. president, it's an open discussion, please. >> it's a fact. you have raised an issue. let him answer. >> he didn't want me to let him answer because he knows i had the truth. his position has been thoroughly discredited. >> joining me now is david plouffe andgyne heilemann, the circus co-host and creator msnbc national analyst. thank you, for being here. john, my head already hurts. first of all, i have ptsd -- >> hasn't your head been hurting now for about seven years? >> decades honestly, but obviously we've seen this play being run before, right, and we've heard the name hunter biden. is there anything meaningfully different between the last time republicans tried to use this and what we are facing, what we
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are looking down into in 2024? >> well, i think -- let's be clear i think there's been some evidence that makes it appear there's a lot to look into in terms of what hunter biden did, and that story moves forward. there's also been questions the way the justice department has been treated under hunter biden. there's reason to care about them. they should be investigated as possibly committing crimes and possibly should go to iljail. what has not changed is there's no more evidence joe biden had anything to do with any of it in any meaningful way. so there's more griss to this i would say. there's more to it than the benghazi thing. there's more to say about that. >> also there's more to hunter biden. there is still nothing that ties any of this to joe biden.
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so when you say there's more than benghazi with respect to a biden. >> i totally agree. so you're asking what's different. what's different is they have more grist for an illegitimate mill. that gives them fuel to run the same play. it's because hunter biden is in fact more problematic on his own then what happened in benghazi was which turned out to be a terrible loss of life but had nothing to do corruption but foreign policy that could be pinned on hillary clinton, that was truly a political nothingburger. in this case the children of presidents, the spouses of presidents, although david plouffe knows, his boss didn't have these problems. >> no, he did not. >> because he had the perfect family, essentially. but it's historically republicans and democrats who have had to carry that burden. it is still the case fublly or
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privately, there's still no real connection to joe biden. that is obviously not going to stop republicans. i think it couldn't, and in the end republicans lose in the house although kevin mccarthy keep his speakership at least for a little while longer. >> david, i want to get to the congressional dynamics in a second, but just i marvel this so far seems like the big play for 2024. you're not seeing anybody on the national stage disavow this effort. you're seeing his foot soldiers in congress march in line, and i wonder, you know, as a democratic strategist, what said the response be from the biden white house, and more broadly, you know, what do you make of this tactic? >> well, alex, i think assuming we're looking at a biden-trump matchup which smart money would suggest we are, one of the core arguments joe biden campaign
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would make amongst others what you're going to have now is all his deputy clowns, mccarthy and the other house leaders, you know, wasting time and money on an impeachment. there's plenty of arguments to make on joe biden's re-election as there is any incumbent. this i think only adds to the argument biden and his campaign can make, that americans don't want a return of the trump show. and i think john's last point is really important that this is happening largely because kevin mccarthy has to do this to satisfy the origins of his conference to keep his job. but in those swing districts in california and new york that gave them a majority, should there be impeachment hearings? should joe biden be impeached? this is going to be deeply unpopular, this is evidence we've been seeing for well over a decade now, where they've got this per vrlted universe like fox and breitbart and sinclair,
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and that's all they care about is speaking to that even if it damages the middle of a country and the middle of an electorate, which something like this i think will do. >> i do want to talk about congressional dynamics in just a second, john. but you've studied joe biden as a journalist, and one of the things that's been so enduring is this man's legacy of integrity and decency. you all remember the convention videos where it's like the amtrak employee talking about what a good guy he is. trying to up end what is now an decades american legacy is really hard to do. and i think republicans, they keep trying to do this with biden saying he's a tool of the radical left, whatever the particular arrow is that day, but none of it has really stuck thus far. and i sort of think it's a fool's errand to keep trying it, and at the same time -- >> and here's the additional
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tools, erin. if you pump enough mud and toxic obnoxious stuff out there in the immediate ecosystem, you're going to see some numbers move. what's happened is we see these poles that say a 61% majority said biden had at least some involvement in the business dealings. 42% think he behaved illegally. 42% think -- obviously that's 42% of the country which those are republicans. a bunch of other people think he might act -- but not illegally. the problem with all these numbers is the question of salience. people have lots of views about lots of things that they never vote on. and the idea the republicans are throwing all this money at joe biden and hunter biden and some of it might be sticking a little bit, but not sticking meaningfully in the sense that,
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yes, a higher percentage now was involved in hunter biden's business dealings. to me that's the thing if you go around the country and talk to people and i want to wait and see because that's the thing they're concerned about with respect to joe biden. they're not worried about this thing even if they say, yeah, it looks a little fishier than it did six months ago. >> david, to that end if you're talking about the margins which is really tight, do they care more about the fact that may have if you believe the republican spin may have been tangentally involved, do they care republicans are wasting time and money trying to spin something out of an impeachment inquiry. politically could you talk more about the price republicans pay
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in congress if they move forward on this? >> what's fascinating to me, alex, now mitch mcconnell has talked about this through the years where they should have won senate seats in a majority any number of times, but they had candidates that appealed to those that would but they basically repel swing voters. the rest of the party, kevin mccarthy is presiding over a historical narrow house majority and seems like the lens he's looking at -- same thing presidential, they don't act as if this is going to come down to a small number of states. when i used to run campaigns, when you thought about an issue or a crisis or a scandal or an accomplishment through a political lens, all that matters is that's something that's actually going to drive vote. meaning is someone going to vote for you that wasn't going to? is someone now going to turn out
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that wasn't? if not, then it doesn't really matter. and i just think the republican party right now writ large is focused on the circuits, on this sort of perverted atmosphere and dome they have to live under and not thinking about to john's point, you know, in the phoenix suburbs, in the suburbs of atlanta, in waukesha county in wisconsin, in allegheny county in pennsylvania, the small number of voters that will determine this presidential election are not going to think his impeachment is important to them and i think will signal that they'll continue to be a party that's catering to the extreme right. and so it's very puzzling to me because we have election after election where republicans probably could have done better if they paid more attention to the center of the electorate. >> yeah, those are words to live by. you could have done better if you actually paid attention to the electorate, period. david plouffe, thank you for your expertise this evening as
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always. john heilemann, stay in that seat. >> i appreciate he says pay attention to the circus. >> we have a lot more to get to this evening including the creative ways they're using money to help pay the legal fees of defendants and it includes baby back ribs probably. but first alabama republican senator tommy tuberville seems pretty certain he'll continue to block military promotions even if he's not exactly sure of what is at stake. more on that coming up next. f wt is at stake. more on that coming up next.
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the senate is now back in session, which means tommy tuberville is back at his blockade. the junior senator from alabama and former football coach is still single-handedly holding up hundreds of military appointments. all part of his one-man pressure campaign to get the department of defense to stop faying for travel when a service member goes out-of-state to get an abortion or other health care. right now the arm squethe navy and marine corps are without leaders who have been confirmed by the senate. if senator tuberville keeps this up through the end of this month, the country will also be without a chairman of the joint
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chiefs of staff. that is because the current chair, chairman mark milly, must leave at the end of his term. the fact senator tuberville seemed to be unaware of yesterday. >> are you having conversations with dod or white house or anything? >> do you expect to speak to them before milley's retirement date? >> don't he'll go anywhere until they get someone confirmed. >> he has to leave. >> he has to leave. he's out. we'll get somebody to do the job. hopefully it's done by then. sooner or later they got to decide to do something. >> it's unclear who the "they" in the situation is, but by law the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff serves at the pleasure of the president for a term of four years. only in a time of war does not term limit not apply, and that is why the biden administration
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picked the administration months ago. charles q. round was nominated back in may but the senate has yet to vote on him. >> it's absurd. absurd. it's caused by tuberville, solely by tuberville. he has to back off. they should be telling tuberville and maybe they are privately that he should back off. >> as of right now senator tuberville is showing no signs of backing off. this is what he told "meet the press" this afternoon. >> i'm not holding up readiness. i'm not holding up these nominations. just bring to the floor who they want to be the chairman of the joint chiefs. he'll be nominated within two hours, and he'll be confirmed. they do not want to do that. >> with me here msnbc national
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affairs analyst and co-host executive producer of the show time, the circus on show time, my alma mater. >> okay, the politics of what's happening in the house are so bad for republicans. the politics of tommy tuberville his hold that, you know, is hurting the military and by the way also bringing up the topic of reproductive freedom over and over again, the politics are so bad for the gop. do you have thoughts on how republicans can even begin to play this? >> i don't really. i tried listening. we're so reflexively used to now thinking house republicans are the problem for republicans nationally, and palmparatively speaking the senate is and the trolley's gone off the rails.
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i think if you had a political iq test for the senate, the first person who would fail out would be tommy tuberville. hey, let's make the republican party look bad on the military and also raise high the issue of abortion and just hand these issues so democrats -- democrats love tommy tuberville. that's the breyer patch joe biden would like to live in for the next 18 months. bad for the country, great for politics. it's ridiculous mitch mcconnell is ready to kill himself. >> it is a testament to the fact no one is driving the bus honestly in either chamber it feels like. the fact mccarthy is making concessions to the far right flank and even mitch mcconnell can't talk tuberville out of his holes. >> it's one of the widespread that mitch mcconnell is not what he once, not exercising the kind of political iron leadership he once did.
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i think that is no longer operative in the senate, and the senate is not yet the house, but there's these flickers of it on the republican side. tommy tuberville is like a blaring siren of how out of control republicans can be in the senate and again how bad it could be for the party in 2024. >> john heilemann, my friend, thank you for hanging for two blocks. it's great to see you as always. you could sit awkwardly over there. still much more ahead tonight. how the fulton d.a. plans to try trump and his 18 codefendants all together in the georgia election case. those details are set to be released any minute now. we've been counting it down. more on that is coming up after the break. s coming up after the break.
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collected more than $1 million from the candlelit dinner, which is good news for rudy giuliani since trump is reportingly refusing to pay giuliani's bills himself. trump just pays for the candles. down in georgia three republican fake electors indicted for their alleged roles in a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election they are apparently also similarly in need of funds. but instead of candles add bedminster, a local republican party chapter is putting together a barbecue and silent auction in november to raise money for them. all these creative event ideas are part of what appears to be a season of fund-raising for fake electors and election deniers. it began in michigan last month with one of the 15 fake electors facing felony charges in that state, hosting a pool side pop up to raise money to cover the legal bills for all the fake electors in michigan. she charged $30 a ticket, provided all the snacks but told
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people on the invitation to bring your own drink. there's a lot of legal peril on the horizon. in georgia, for example, the defendants in that case are accused of participating in a wide ranging conspiracy to subvert the will of the voters. and now at this point at least five of the fake electors in that state have introduced motions to have their cases moved from fulton county to a federal court. but that effort is not going well. the first request to remove the case to federal court made by trump's chief of staff mark meadows, that was flatly rejected on friday by steve jones. and the fake electors who are all claiming they acted as federal officials when they cosplayed as legitimate electors, they can very well face a similar outcome. now, as for the future of all the 19 defendants in that georgia rico case, fulton county
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d.a. fani willis has until 11:15 p.m. tonight to try to convince a judge she can both fairly and efficiently try all 19 defendants together on october 23rd. we have some breaking news on that front just ahead. on that front just ahead. finger sticks, helps lower a1c, and it's covered by medicare. before using the dexcom g7, i was really frustrated. all of that finger pricking and all that pain, my a1c was still stuck. before dexcom g7, i couldn't enjoy a single meal. i was always trying to outguess my glucose, and it was awful. before dexcom g7, my diabetes was out of control because i was tired, not having the energy to do the things that i wanted to do. (female announcer) dexcom g7 is a small, easy-to-use wearable that sends your glucose numbers to your phone or dexcom receiver without painful finger sticks. the arrow shows the direction your glucose is heading-- up, down, or steady-- and because dexcom g7 is the most accurate cgm,
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♪ yeah oh ♪ now, try new dietary supplements from voltaren for healthy joints. october 23rd is six weeks from yesterday. it was also the day that the trial for the first two codefendants in fulton county d.a. fani willis' rico state in
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that case. the d.a.'s prosecution team has told the media and a judge they'd like to try all 19 codefendants together and they can do so by october 23rd. the judge in the case has asked the prosecution to tell him by this evening just how exactly the prosecution plan tuesday do it, and we've just gotten the prosecution's filing via the public docket and tonight the ap is reporting on some of its contents saying prosecutors still maintain all of the defendants together citing efficiency and fairness, quote, holding several lengthy trials instead would create an enormous strain on the resources over the county superior court and randomly have the defendants tried later. joining me now to discuss this breaking news is mary mccord, former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the doj and co-host of the msnbc
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podcast "prosecuting donald trump." mary, let me first get your reaction to the prosecution's reaction and explanation of how and why all 19 defendants should be tried together, that it is about fairness and resources and efficiency. >> well, i understand that desire because no prosecutor wants to do 19 separate trials or really even five or six separate trials involving the same evidence and basically the same facts, and so i think -- and mind you yiesk not gotten to actually see the filing because it really hit the books, i guess, so i'm basing this purely on what the ap is reporting. so i understand fani willis saying we'd like to try as many together as possible, but i do think it's unrealistic here for a number of reasons to think all 19 can go to trial on october 23rd. first five have pending motions. well, four have pending motions to remove. one has a motion to remove
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that's just been decided against him. that's mark meadows. that is now up on appeal in the 11th circuit. the 11th circuit has set a breathing schedule, so five defendants might not even be going to trial in the state court. they might be removed to federal court or at least have a shot at that, and that might not be decided finally through appeals by october 23rd. the other issue is that you have people who asserted their speedy trial right, that is kenneth chesebro and sidney powell, and others have not asserted that speedy trial and might want to have more time to prepare for trial. so to force them to go to trial in such a really rapid clock here, october 23rd is just around the corner, that could really infringe on their due process rights. so i think what fani willis is trying to do here is say, look, we understand -- i don't know if she said this, but even if there needs to be some separations of cases and not all 19 at once, we
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don't want this to be piecemeal one after the other after the other. so if people want to have their trial separate from october 23rd, they need to at least maybe agree that they're not going to then one by one seek speedy trials and therefore splitting all of those people up into additional separate trials, because each time you assert your speedy trial right that means under georgia law you have to go to trial in the next term of the court, which is usually a month later. so that could be see how it could parse out very piecemeal if they all asserted at various times. so i think she's trying to get as many in trial at one time as possible, and the judge probably wants that, too. but 19 at one time on october 23rd, i just don't see that happening. >> the prosecution, mary, has maintained they're going to present the same evidence and the same number of witnesses no matter who's being tried. do you think that that's sort of an argument to try and get the judge to try as many at the same
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time as possible or do you think that's legitimate? because if they seem to -- again, i haven't read the filing either because it just went up on the docket, but according to the ap's reporting they're making the case suggesting the statement's going to be presenting the same evidence and arguments at each one of these trials. >> yeah, i mean they are right about that to a certain extent. when you're charging conspiracy, you're putting on the constitution, the constellation of evidence and conspiracy in each trial. however, different defendants are charged with different aspects of that conspiracy. when i say that i don't mean they're not charged with conspiracy as a whole because they are. the overt acts and the predicate crimes that various defendants are accused of, participating in, do differ. for example, you have the fraudulent elector scheme. you have the coffey county scheme to access the voting
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equipment. you have the shakedown scheme to intimidate and threaten and coerce ruby freeman and shaye moss. so there's different pieces of this. so depending on how the defendants were grouped, you could probably cut down the overlap in your evidence, not eliminate it completely, but you could focus more on certain aspects of the conspiracy in let's say a trial of all those involved in the fraudulent elector scheme. you could focus more on different aspects in a trial involving all those involved in the coffey county scheme. and we've seen cases broken up. think about what we just had in d.c. with the oath keepers. there were more than a dozen tried, and the judge thought that was too many to have go to trial at once, so we broke
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afforded under the constitution. >> yeah, the only issue i see there is that kenneth chesebro and sidney powell are going to be tried together maybe as aurally as october 23rd and they're involved in this vast conspiracy. already the collation is breaking down. i know we're going to hear lots more about it on your podcast soon. i appreciate your time and brilliant thoughts as always. >> thank you. >> still more to come this evening, the republican party has managed to cling to power through demographic shifts that might have otherwise relegated it to minority status, and we're going to hear from two experts on how democracies die and also what can be done to save ours.
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multiple conservative efforts in the house and senate and even on the supreme court all in service to an ex-president who has never won the popular vote, they are all have a strong reminder just how pervasive minority rule is in this country and just how far that minority is willing to go to maintain power. as harvard professors write in their new beak "tyranny of the minority" we have studied
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insurrections and efforts to overturn elections from all over the world to france and spain to ukraine and russia, to the philippines, peru, and venezuela. we never imagined we'd see them here nor did we advantage two major parties would turn away from democracy in the 21st century. this is a very, very timely book, guys. thank you for writing it and joining me on set tonight. let me just first start with, i mean we began the show talking about sort of the minority working its way through congress in terms of an agenda to attempt to impeach the president now. it's a minority of republicans, but still it is not a desire shared greatly by the republican public. what do you make of the republican party at this point? i know we read that quote, but is it a force of anti-democratic -- is it effectively an anti-democratic force in american society at present? >> well, in our book we proposed
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the senate criteria for citizens to evaluate whether a political party is democratic or not. and to be a loyal democrat, to be committed to democracy you have to do three things. you have to accept elections whenever it is, you have naitute use violence to gain power, to hold onto power. and most tricky of all, you have to distance yourself if you're a party or politician from groups, allies that undertake those first two violations. so that third criteria is really important because often you'll have main stream parties and politicians wearing suits and ties but turn a blind eye to or justify or excuse these other kinds of violations. and when parties do that, there's a term for that. we call that semi-loyal democrat. in the history of democracies, it's those kind of political parties that often kill democracies, so that's why we're worried about today because we see some of these signs in the united states. >> you said in the quote we read, you thought you'd never see the republican party
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effectively the party acting the way it has. is there a moment when that realization crystallized for you? is there a particular thing that really caused you to assess the gop in that way? >> well, there were several steps. we wrote our first book, "how democracies die with the rise of trump." and we were deeply disturbed early on by the republican party leaderships. there were very few trump supporters among the party leadership, and they could have moved much more decisively to block them or separate the party from him had they chosen to do so, but they advocated what we call their gate keeping responsibilities and supported it despite the fact they knew pretty well was was coming. they had an idea. and during trump's presidency i think this happened a little fasten than expected. but watching people like jeff flake and bob corker, eventually liz cheney go to every single
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republican who stood up for the law, who stood up for democracy, who stood up against trump, saw her or his political careers essentially ended. and so most republicans who wanted to continue their careers decided that whatever they thought privately of trump, they would become trumpest in public. and that's when we knew that this party was now a danger to democracy. >> and it's not just one party. it's also institutions that have effectively been bastterdized for lack of a better word and exert far more control than they should over american society, and it's a minority of people making those decisions. i'd love to get your thoughts on the supreme court and its very conservative bent that seems at odds with what americans actually want. >> we're really unique in the world in that in the united states it's possible for a minority, someone who loses an election to become president through an electoral college. we're the only country in the world with an electoral college.
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what that means is someone who often wins the popular vote doesn't win control of the presidency. similar dynamic is at work in the u.s. senate where often the popular majority of voters doesn't reflect the majority in the sept, and this combines to affect the supreme court because the president picks -- nominate supreme court justs, the senate confirms them. take 2016, for instance, in 2016 we had a president who didn't win the popular majority nominating three justices confirmed by a senate not reflecting a majority of voters and a supreme court not reflecting a 6-3 majority. we see this, this is essentially minority rule. this is where the title of our book comes from. >> then the question is, okay, what do we do about it, and how do we fix it. i did not know that richard nixon wanted to do away with the electoral college. i think we have one of the headlines here. this is 1969, richard nixon, "i
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have not abandonmied personal feeling that the candidate who wins the most popular votes should become candidate." this was richard nixon and a bipartisan efforts so what happened? >> we grew up in an era where institutional and constitutional change is kind of off the table, it's not discussed. it's considered impossible. that actually hadn't always been the case. from the very beginning of this country our citizens and our leaders have worked to make our political system more democratic. george washington, the very year the constitution is written, wrote a letter to a friend saying this is an imperfect document and it'll be up to future generations to improve it, and that's what we've done whether expanding the suffrage or in the early 20th century and appointed sen, we have slowly moved and made our system more
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democratic. we stopped doing it in the late '50s. and one of the last series of efforts to abolish the electoral college came really close to passing. it was supported as you said by president nixon, by the american bar association, by the chamber of commerce, by more than 70% of americans, passed overwhelmingly in the house, had a majority in the senate but didn't get the two-thirds to get through. >> ironic. >> so we came really close. so there was a time when constitutional reform was considered important, good, feasible. and i think we need to get back to that american tradition of working to make our democracy better. >> yeah, and i would agree with you we need to get back to that tradition, but how do you do that when one of the main parties to that work is fundamentally anti-democratic the way it stands? >> it's a challenge, but this is something we have to embrace.
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i think there is a path forward. for instance, some in the last chapter we proposed 15 different ideas, so there is a way forward, and one key step is eliminate the filibuster, at least weaken the phil buster. if we were to eliminate that and weaken that and it would be possible for instance to get voting rights through. in the kind of sense reform is actually possible in our country, and that's what needs to happen to address these wigger challenges like the electoral college, like term limits for the supreme court, so that's the way forward. >> it's interesting because what you guys propose is fairly radical change. talking about constitutional amendments, changing the electoral college, you know these institutions that are seen as foundational to democracy are precisely the ones that lead to change. and it's actually an argument for democrats and republicans alike because we have a president who's loathe to get
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rid of the filibuster because he's an institutionalist, but what i'm hearing is in order to be a representative fairer democracy, we to change those institutions. it's not a reaction to -- it's the only way forward. >> what americans do not realize is we're the only democracy on earth that regularly uses the filibuster. every other established democracy in the world passes with a majority. it doesn't need 60 votes to pass. that's really undermining our democracy because americans look out and they see majority support doesn't control. they see majority support voting rights legislation, that a majority may support voting rights legislation, and none of this stuff can get through. so the will of often large majorities of the united states is being thwarted regularly, systematically, permanently by a partisan minority. that doesn't happen in other democracies. >> they update their constitutions, they move
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forward. it is an ongoing experiment in self-governance. thank you for writing this. it is essential reading in these times. and may i say it is also hopeful, which is really unique thing also in these times. thank you both for your work and thank you for being here tonight. that is our show for this evening. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. the months we were gone and the weeks, house republicans have uncovered serious incredible allegations into president biden's conduct. taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption. this logical next step will give our committee power to gather all the answers for the american public. that's exactly what we want to know, th

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