that does it for me today. go bengals, be sure to follow the show on twitter, tiktok and instagram. a reminder you can list every episode of the show on a podcast of rape. search for inside jen psaki wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts >> tonight on the mehdi hassan show. tyranny of the republican minority from the state house in wisconsin to the chambers of the u.s. capitol. how right-wingers are pushing out democracy to a breaking point. i will speak to new authors on this issue. the real legacy of mitt romney as a moderate announces his retirement. how anti trump was? he and no evidence of wrongdoing. no problem for the gop. they are blatantly hypocritical when it comes to impeachment inquiries. we have the tapes. >> good evening, i'm mehdi

hassan. if you want to understand the seriousness and brazenness of the republican party's long-standing and ongoing and dangerous assault on our democracy and the rule of law there is no better place to start than and wisconsin. for, many the badger state won by joe biden just by 20,000 votes in 2020 is ground zero for the attack on american democracy. on, thursday the wisconsin gop voted to remove the states cheap election official megan wolf from office. just months before its first presidential primary. wolf has long been the subject of various conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election. she became a prime target for election deniers who falsely claimed that she helped rig the vote in wisconsin. after state republicans fired her last, week wolf vowed to fight back telling a reporter she intends to continue to serve until the matter is resolved in court. >> during my 12 years working as a nonpartisan election

official, i have learned that when politicians on either side of the aisle are upset with me, it's usually because i will not bend to political pressures. the senate's vote today to remove me it is not a referendum on the job i do. rather, a reaction to not achieving the political outcome they desired. >> wisconsin republicans are not stopping with the elections chief. oh, no. as reported on the show just a couple of weeks ago, they have the newly elected state supreme court justice in their crosshairs to. they want to impeach and remove her from the bench before she's even heard a single case. live, why would they do that? well, according to republicans in the state legislature she's already prejudge the case is set to be heard by the judge this turn. members of the state gop says the comments he made during the election campaign regarding redistricting mean that she should recuse herself from any

case involving the states gerrymandered voting maps. they argued her second f-16s from the wisconsin democratic party is disqualifying. similar behavior from other justices has never warranted their impeachment in the past. for the state which won over 1 million votes back in april. who cares, right? they are just votes. the great irony is that the wisconsin gop is only in power at the state level in both the state houses of legislature because of the gerrymandered maps because the state supreme court. back in 2018, democrats won the state assembly popular vote 53% to the republicans 45%. despite, that they took control of the house raking and 64% of the seats. a complete reversal of the vote. do those results sound like a functioning democracy to you? five years later, republicans in the state are trying to finish the job and entrenched

the anti democratic legislative advantage on once overall. in the words of a new york times columnist mlb, impeaching pro to say which at this time over this case would show a, quote, a breathtaking contempt for the people of wisconsin. the thing is, of, course it's not just a wisconsin gop that has contempt for the electorate. the national gop also. in congress this week, republican house speaker kevin mccarthy announced an impeachment inquiry into president joe biden. lest we forget won the popular vote by 7 million votes in 2020. republicans in the house want to impeach remove him from office because, well, they are not quite sure, is it because what his funded, or what he did? is it because of evidence they already had or evidence they need an impeachment acquire to uncover. they're all over the place. >> it is not supposed to be the evidence that leads you to pursue impeachment and an inquiry. >> what i want to know, it is what you believe is the bow standing evidence that you all

have to suggest bribery. what were they getting paid for and how come they set up 20 shell companies while he was vice president. what are the shell companies about? >> they are all great questions that we need answers to. >> with respect to foreign policy in the decisions the president made at that time with respect to money coming in to try to tie the two. you don't have the evidence no. we may find it later. >> we may find it later. for republicans, it seems the only election results they respect are the ones that they win. losing an election isn't just annoying to them or upsetting to them, it doesn't count. i guess heads up, i went, kelsey loses the gop approach for democracy in america in 2023. that's why donald trump will be on trial next year, both in washington d.c., and in georgia for trying to overturn an election he claims he lost. for a coup attempt involving fake electors and a violent attack on the capitol in the

middle of the constitutionally mandated vote suitcase and process. the reason why they hate x respecting democratic outcomes, they know their own small democratic future is dire. they won the popular vote for president only once since 1988. george bush and oh for. the senate which is split down the middle, republican senators represent tens of millions of fewer than americans than their democratic party counterparts. the place like, wisconsin they need those gerrymandered maps just to stay in charge in the state legislature. the republican party's entire strategy for continued existence is a defense of minority rule. what harvard university professor stephen liske rightly called the tyranny of the minority. that's the title their new book. of, course it's a sequel to their 2018 bestseller how democracies die. and their new book, the two others document the, quote, authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. they point out how instances of

minority rule are growing more frequent. they make this rather startling point. imagine, they, write an american born in 1980 who first voted in 1998 or 2000. the democrats would have won the popular vote in every six-year cycle in the u.s. senate and all but one presidential election during her adult lifetime. yet, she would've lived most of her adult life under republican presidents, a republican control senate, and a supreme court dominated by republican appointees. how much faith, they ask, should she have in our democracy? >> as things get worse for the american political system, as republican rule becomes ever more entrenched, as 2024 fast approaches, it's a question that should hold on to all of us. joining me now is stephen olimpiyskiy and dan you zipper. they are professors of government at harvard university and coauthors of that book. tyranny of the minority, why american democracy reaches the breaking point. thank you both for joining me. congratulations on the new book. i wish you didn't have to write

a book like this. stephen, as i mentioned a moment ago back in 2018, he both wrote the book, how democracies die. five years later, you've written a sequel. we'll ever attempted to call the book how democracy died? how much worse of a position army and now versus 2018 when it comes to the dire state of our democracy? >> democracy didn't die. luckily we still have a very strong and robust opposition in the united states. we have federal institutions and we have strong media and a relatively robust independent judiciary. the fact that donald trump lost and eventually was removed from office in 2021 is a big deal. democracy stands a fighting chance. it is under threat. one of the things that we have realized observing american democracy over the last five years is that the problems run deeper. they run beyond trump.

they run even beyond the republican party. it's turned away from democracy. our institutions are protecting and empowering the authoritarian minority. >> yes. >> institutions are key. we can talk about some of that. daniel, we did end up calling the book the tyranny of minority rule. we have a whole bunch of people, mainly republicans, not just republicans, who believe that's a good thing. they say the founders in what the united states to be a democracy. they don't want majority or mob rule. they wanted a republic. can you refute the whole, we are republic, not unlike received nonsense fronts ralph rice? >> it's certainly true that we were founded as a republican, so far we want a monarchy. that's really what they meant. and over the last hundred 50 years, we've done the hard work in our country of making our constitutional or democratic. george washington self immediately after the founding said the constitution isn't imperfect document.

the founders have no it's up to future generations to improve it. so, the first 200 years after the founding, getting the right to vote, we began to elect senators rather than appoint them. what's tragic is that over the last 15 years, we've stopped doing that work. our democracy today has stopped doing that work as other democracies in other countries have. that's what we documented. but last 50 years, other democracies which started similarly have made their countries more democratic. what we've done our last 50 years a stop doing that and that's why we find ourselves in the crisis that we do. >> i just walked our viewers through what's going on in wisconsin, republicans are firing election officials, threatening to impeach the state supreme court justice. i have to ask, where is the noise from democrats on. this after the 2022 midterms the, democratic party kind of hoisted a mission of accomplice banner and said we saved democracy. how dangerous is that complacency when what the

republicans are doing in places like wisconsin, they're doing in plain sight ahead of 2024. >> have we lost even? >> -- >> we are waiting for stephen. we will bring on daniel. >> >> we should be complacent. our democracy genuinely is at risk. one of the things that we've learned studying other democracies around the world is that we often think the threats are all coming, people with air fifteens -- that is a threat. the problem is that very often democracies get into trouble. the historical record makes it plainly clear politicians who look like democrats, we call them semi loyalist these are people that look like democrats they may wear suits and ties and business suits and so on they turn a blind eye to uses. they in fact encourage and enable in thorough therrien as. them and we see that ramp into the united states around

january six as well as in states like wisconsin. you have normal looking politicians who are aiding and abetting extremism which ultimately gets democracy in trouble. it's very clear from the 1920s and 30s in europe. is very clear from the 1960s and 70s and latin america. daniel, nbc news is reporting that president biden is planning to deliver a major speech about threats to democracy after the second republican primary debate later this month. if you are writing that speech, what would you include in it? >> you, know he has a tough challenge he's facing a situation where his political opponent is violating basic democratic rules. we lay out three basic criteria. number one if you want to be a politician or you -- have to accept elections win or lose. number, to know you have to not use violence to gain power. number, three point i just made, you have to distance yourself from political groups and extremists and allies who engage in that type of behavior. what the democratic party is

now facing is a republican party that is overrun by elements that violate these principles it's important to call that out and to recognize that of course someday we hope to live in a democracy where we have two parties competing for the majority. at the current moment we don't. and as a result of our democracy has suffered. >> sadly, i still don't think we've got stevens audio or video. daniel, you wouldn't even make a lot of proposals in the book, like abolishing the electoral college and reforming the senate so it's more in line with the population. replacing summer -- for representation. a lot of those reforms would require constitutional amendments. therefore the overwhelming support of both parties at the congressional and state levels. your critics would say that's just magical thinking. that is not going to happen in the current american we have. what is your response to the? >> first, of all there's a great american tradition of making our democracy more democratic. and making our constitution more democratic.

each major point after the civil war there began in the 20th century, the odds looked very much stacked against reforming our democracy. what we are doing now is quite extreme. we have abandoned that, we no longer. -- that's the radical. thing there is a path forward. very clearly, there are some major reforms that don't require constitutional amendments. for instance, eliminating the filibuster or weakening the filibuster. opportunities to introduce voting reforms. this generates momentum this is how democracies change. developing momentum where people begin to think that we can actually once again take control of our own democracy. that's what we're arguing. >> it's a strong unnecessary argument. the book is called tyranny of the minority. thank you both. coming up next, reckoning with senator mitt romney's mixed history on donald trump as he announces his retirement in the senate. ith senate re eczema still disrupts my skin. despite treatment

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have read or heard about the glowing atlantic piece on utah standard mitt romney. it is an excerpt of an upcoming biography called romney, a reckoning, which details how the senator has been ostracized by his own party as one of only a few vocal anti trump republicans. apparently, many of romney's gop qualities have quietly agreed with him. the piece says it seems like every time he publicly criticize trump, some republican senator would privately express solidarity but could not say it out loud. what is more, we learned that the republican caucus burst into laughter as soon as trump addressed one of their weekly wrenches after -- which failed to find proof that he had done it in 2016. the atlantic profile kicked off a goodbye tour for mitt romney after announcing he would not seek reelection. he comes across somewhat of a hero, a sane and sensible republican, a relic of the pre-trump era. in many ways, that is true.

that is also skipping over a crucial element of romney's political history, both agent and recent. this was a guided indulged in racist birtherism against barack obama in 2012. he made jokes about his own birth certificate on the can became patronizing ran for president. there was this photo of romney dining with donald trump in 2016 as he vied to be the secretary of state pick. romney gushed about, it's saying he shared wonderful evening before trump kicked him to the curb. and there is what romney told the washington post just this week. trump invited both, not good candidates. how is that bravely taking a stand against the reelection of donald trump? joining me now to discuss this and more is journalist ali, also the author of the book go back to where you came from, and other helpful recommendations on how to become american. thank you for coming back on to the show. is senator romney the hero of this story? he voted twice for trump's conviction in the senate, but in the past, he also took an endorsement from trump when he was running for president. he endorsed trump in 2016,

trying to get a job from him. he's never apologized for being complicit in trumpian birtherism. he has been good in many ways. how do you assess it? it's complicated. >> it is not even >> -- the only reason we throw around a loaded term like hero for it mitt romney is because the conservative movement with their own assessment of the excerpt has been so extreme, the bar has been so lowered that if you simply hop over it in protection of our constitution and in a free and fair election, which mitt romney did, and we praise him for, it you're seen as a hero. as you laid out, this man has been utterly complicit in helping to nurture, enable, and create the modern conservative movement and republican, which according to the excerpt, has turned against him in such a violent way, mehdi, that he has to shell out $5,000 a day for security to protect his own family from republican voters. you and i are old enough to remember the 2012 election. we remember that mitt romney was interviewed for the gop, which means that like john

mccain and others, whom yes, they did some good things, they enabled it and stood by. they kept quiet with the birtherism, the southern strategy on steroids and the tax cuts for the rich, throwing out 47% of the population for those that don't know. check out the mother jones video in which he said, yes, we don't represent them, they don't pay taxes. he went along with all of it. because he had the audacity to do the right thing, which is to stand up for our constitution, his own base, which he helped to nurture, has turned against him. i would not call him a hero if, and in the rest of his life, he's a young man -- the only reason he's retiring is because literally he is fearing for his life. if he actively campaigns for democrats and against mega. if he does pull a liz cheney and do something more than this both sides fault equivalence. the last thing i would say, in the own excerpt, he warns joe manchin not to join the label as the independent party. because it will help trump to win. >> which first of, all just a

quick thing, he's not that young, he's in his 70s. i get your point. >> but trump -- >> listen, you are right about the fact that in the d.c. mandate, don't, run don't make it easy for trump to be reelected. then he goes to the washington post is we can say that both candidates are awful. that is, fine i'm sure that people at home, i'm sure a lot of them are awful in their own ways. you can have both sides for the reelection of donald j trump if you genuinely believe that he's a threat to democracy, and if you committed to the senate twice. that's what i find so hard to stomach. you also mentioned the five grand a day that he says he was spending in 2021 to protect his family. what is even more, even darker than that is that he says members of the house told him at the time that they wanted to vote for impeachment but they feared for their families safety. my understanding is that that has never happened before in american politics. people can argue and hate each other, but the idea that i can't vote a certain way but because you might kill me is pretty unprecedented in modern

american history. this violence that is at the core of trumpism. >> there is a huge nugget there that angus king warned him about, and that mitt romney warned mitch mcconnell before the january 6th insurrection that they might be in danger. they received no response. that means that all of these people who are utterly complicit, and mitch mcconnell with mitt romney and others, -- but >> he doesn't respond to the text, according to the piece he ignored the text. >> which is remarkable, because it was a fellow republican wanting him ahead of schedule. he is saying, hey, they're coming after all of us, and mitch mcconnell completely ignored. this is mitt romney, the standard bearer for the party in 2012. not some low-lying congressman. the fact that mitt romney chose to share this now and tries to write up as a hero, heroism requires sacrifice. it requires actions and deeds. defected he is both siding this, the fact that he is going to retire as a rich man shows to me that there is no heroism. he did the bare minimum and we respect him, but he is also

actively enabling movement, mehdi, which has further recognized and further radicalized. you gave the example of wisconsin, look at what is happening with alabama, senator tuberville, look at what is happening with florida. governor desantis. look at what is happening across the board. this is a violent radicalized anti-democratic movement that once power by any means necessary. if he wants to be a hero, show us what you're going to do once you retire and how you are going to fight for democracy. so far, this is nothing. >> last question as we have a lot of trader about president biden's aides lately, whether folks should be wary about how that will impact his reelection campaign, and any potential second term. i want you to witness what the republican front runner, a man named donald j trump. what he said a couple of nights ago. >> to buy a loaf of bread, and we didn't with a bomb or. we won an election that everybody said could not be one. we beat hillary clinton.

anne we would be in world war ii very quickly if we are going to be relying on this man. >> now, this is a man who says that he beat obama in 2016, on the verge of world war ii, and you need i.d. to buy a loaf of bread. if joe biden had said any of those things, i'm guessing that it would be front page news on every paper in the country. we just give a pass to the 77 year old openly delusional trump. the age debate is very weird, is it not? >> i don't give a pass, and not for the most is nonsense. joe biden, criticized for his age, two old men running for president. he just finished a trip in international trip, answering questions, and he knows that you do not need voter i.d. to buy bread. he knows that he ran against trump and not barack obama, and he knows that we fought world war ii and one. i fear that if world war ii did happen, i wonder what side trump would fight for.

>> first of all, he would not fight for anyone. what side would he take? that's a great question. would it be the side of the -- we will have to leave it there. thank you for your time. still to come, we went back and checked what house republicans were saying about impeachment in 2019. this is what they are saying now. i promise you that the brazen hypocrisy will stun. first, richard louis is here with some more headlines. good evening, richard. >> other stories watching for this hour, biden planning to send a team to detroit, quote early in the week do unite the auto workers strike. according to the white house officials, saying they spoke with the gm and had productive conversation today, rejecting an offer from stellantis. they will resume talks on monday. north korean leader kim jong-un had his return to north korea after a weeklong trip to russia. president vladimir putin hosted kim on wednesday, raising global concerns that north

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house republicans are saying in 2019 when democrats launched their first impeachment inquiry into donald trump after extorting ukraine under joe biden. in the wake of speaker mccarthy this weekend answering a impeachment choir for president biden, the same republicans are gung ho on impeachment and impeachment inquiries. even by their standards, the hypocrisy is breathtaking. we have the receipts. roll the tape. >> our job is to legislate. not to continue to investigate something in the back when you cannot find any reason to impeach this president.

>> that is why today, i am directing our house committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into president joe . >> the american people understand it, they want to get beyond this very partisan impeachment. >> i've been supportive of the impeachment inquiry going back to july. >> there are the votes to do this right, and so you're playing this game in the d.c. area committee. >> i think we can get the votes, we don't need that to move forward. >> i think that speaker pelosi overreacted. an impeachment inquiry is unprecedented. >> i'm very happy that we had the impeachment inquiry. >> speaker pelosi needs to end this infatuation with impeachment. >> we've been talking about bringing impeachment inquiries for months. >> their words. coming up, author and activist haley kline on how she grades biden's words and actions from climate change. plus, don't forget that you can listen to the mehdi hasan show anytime free when you get your

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to deny that we are in the midst of a dangerous climate emergency. according to nasa's scientists, this past summer was the hardest on earth since global record keeping began in 1880. president biden, who has bragged about the record money that he's put into fighting climate change, still hasn't

issued a formal declaration of a climate emergency, which prompted thousands of protesters to march in new york today ahead of the united nations general assembly, urging world leaders to take action. and their disconnect between the existential threat of climate change and the response to it from this white house? earlier this week on mike peacock show, i sat down with author and academic naomi klein, known for her activism on climate change to discuss the fascinating new book, doppelganger, a tripped into the mirror world. here is part two of that interview, specifically on the climate. >> you talk a lot in your book, doppelganger, about the language of the left and how leaders on the right have capitalized on that language and appropriated. leaders on the left of the center have also used language to give the impression of progress. is that something that you think president biden is guilty of when it comes to his climate change agenda? do you think that his climate

change agenda is actually quite radical for a democratic president? his people would say that it is record investment by the inflation reduction act. observer spend this much money on the climate. >> this tricky thing about the climate crisis is that both of those things can be true at the same time. it is absolutely true that the i.r.a. represents a historic investment in green infrastructure, clean energy, electrification of vehicles. and all of that is very much what we need. that addition also needs to be coupled by some subtraction. we have kicked the can on climate down the road for so long that it's not just that we've run out of road, the road is melting. if we think about some of those things that have happened this summer in phoenix, like people getting third degree burns because they fell down, just beyond horrific. this has been an extraordinary summer of climate disasters, it i really hope that it puts us

on emergency footing. when you have an administration that is doing a lot of the right things but at the same time is doing some really wrong things by continuing to approve the new fossil fuel infrastructure, it sends a mixed message. when you need that kind of leadership from above, which is -- you know, think about the early days of covid, daily briefings. this is the plan. this is what we are asking of you. i think we need to learn from that. they want declare climate change an emergency, and we should learn about some of the things we did wrong during covid. we asked a lot of regular people, and we didn't ask very much from very rich people. we allowed billionaires to massively increase their incomes, and that was part of the backlash. there needs to be that kind of leadership and i think that we need to take the profits from the dying days of fossil fuels and funnel it into this new green economy. >> there is a blocked that, and

that's the republican party. you point out and the new book, doc-able a gang or, the conspiracy theory -- really effective in demonizing science and particular climate science, the idea that environmentalist want to lock you in the house and not let you out. it's been mainstream within the republican party. have a look at what vivek ramaswamy had to say, the first gop primary debate last month. >> the climate change, it's -- the climate is a hoax. the reality is, more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change. >> obviously, that is nonsense. he ignores the fact that we have had 2 million plus climate related deaths in the past 50 years. the reality is that that is mainstream on the right. you are from canada, i'm originally from the uk. conservative parties in canada and the uk, and in germany, are nowhere near as bad as the modern republican party when it comes to flat out denial of basic science on the climate. >> yes, it is interesting, we are starting to see a pivot, which is not denying the

science, but this sort of over the top alarmism about the effects of climate policies on regular people. this is, again, an example of co-opting this concern around working people, and so on. the trouble is that there are little grains of truth in it. some climate policies have been a little bit unfair for working people. they have increased prices and so on. that is why we don't just need climate action, we need climate justice. if we don't have that, it is going to fuel the backlash. one of the things that i really have been thinking about lately, mehdi, what happens to all of the energy of covid denial and of anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine? now that all of the mandates have been lifted, a lot of it is pivoting towards climate. it is not the same denialism that we had a few years ago. it is mirroring the covid stuff. now they're saying that they're going to lock you in your house because of carbon. they are not denying climate change, but are just saying that it wouldn't be the end of the world. >> we can't escape the mirror

world, which is the title of your book. when it comes to climate action, you've described yourself as having an ambivalent relationship with the word hope. how do you approach climate optimism? it's a lot of activists that you say lead to alarmists. we have to tell people how bad things are, not be complacent. there's many climate scientists like michael mann, isn't that doesn't work, we have to give people hope and optimism. where does it stand on that debate? >> i think hope is something that we are in. i don't think that it is something that we have like a handbag. i think it is something that we are together through hard work and real victories. we need to be a lot better at telling stories, just a huge climate justice breakthrough in new york state. not just for green energy but for publicly owned and controlled green energy. that is great because it is adjusted solution, it means that the resources aren't going to some big company somewhere, but it is staying in the communities. you can re-invested in services. that is how you keep people inside. look at what's happening in

brazil now. bolsonaro is gone, you've had a cabinet that has indigenous eco feminists that are trying to save the amazon. we don't hear about that as much. i think that there are reasons for hope, they need to be tangible. it is not just an area very thing. n area ver thing. >> thank you so much for your time. >> pleasure. >> to watch my full interview with naomi klein, go to msnbc.com slash mehdi. will scan the qr could on your screen. coming up next, the rate at which children are living in poverty in this country is skyrocketing. who gets the blame for that? i'll tell you who should be blamed for that, next. or that, next. i was diagnosed with afib. the first inkling that something was wrong was i started to notice that i couldn't do things without losing my breath. i couldn't make it through the airport, and every like 20 or 30 yards

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not that the underprivileged are in and so-called welfare queens, that the republican love to demonize with racist stereotypes, choose to be port. it's a lawmakers in this country, through their policy priorities, and choose, every congressional term, to do millions of americans to the misery of poverty. and, that reality is never been more clearer than now. according to new data, the census bureau released on tuesday, the poverty rate rose to 12.4% in 2020, from 7.8% in 2021, the largest when your jump on record. poverty among children more than double double to 12.4% from a record low of 5.2%, the year before. and of course, of course, fox hosts, conservative grifters, republican operatic's, immediately seized on that headline. american and failed, the return of record poverty, said fox's charles payne. poverty has soared under biden, to the decried larry elder. child poverty more than double or double -- hashtag bidenomics, said former

trump pescetarian noted dancing with the stars contested sean spicer. and i regret the report that they're even some on the left to try to use it as a cudgel, with which to beat the biden administration. and democrats more broadly. bidenomics, in a nutshell, trip to time green party presidential candidate jill stein. however, what stein, as well as the folks on the far-right deliberately failed to mention, is that child poverty, in particular, went up after action by the biden administration in the first placed, reduced it to a historic low. recall that in 2021, biden, and democrats in congress, without a single republican vote, passed the american rescue plan, which one increased the benefits of the child tax credit, which provides a guaranteed income to families and children. and to, expanded the program's eligibility to millions more underprivileged families. it's impossible to overstate how successful that policy was. it brought child poverty to its lowest rate ever recorded, ever

recorded. and then, last year, joe biden let the expanded child tax credit expire. except wait, no he didn't. he tried to get it renewed, it was senate republicans, joined by that master practitioner of democratic cause play joe manchin, who killed it. manchin's reasoning? poor families were wasting pat cash on the program, on drugs. but wait, u.s. census bureau data found that people who receive child tax credit payments overwhelmingly spent them on pressing a cities like food, rent, utilities, clothing, and vehicle payments. who needs republicans pushing discredited reagan era myths about the drug addicted poor, when joe manchin can just do for them. in the words of the noble prize winning economist paul krugman, the sad truth is that this didn't have to happen, soaring child poverty wasn't caused by inflation or other macroeconomic problems, it was instead a political choice. yes, child poverty is a

political, a policy choice. there's nothing natural or inevitable about. we as a country, as a society, choose to inflict poverty, and hunger, or millions of kids. and the person to blame for this is not joe biden, not most democrats even, it's all of the republicans, and joe manchin. i have to ask, how does joe manchin sleep at night, knowing children in this country, including in his state of west virginia, are going to sleep, poor and hungry, because of him? i know i would be able to. coming up, at nine with -- congressman robert garcia discusses democrats plans to defend president biden from an evidence free impeachment choir. and, election law expert rick's with -- his warning for american democracy, and of the 2024 election. that's next, nine pm eastern, live right here on msnbc. but stick around, because a man joins me next, and we will discuss the wild, wild word, of

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we'll be right back here next sunday at eight pm eastern, you can now find the show at the msnbc hub peacock. new episodes of the show air on peacock every thursday. but now, it's time to head over to my good friends ayman. ayman, good evening. lauren boebert, the gop congresswoman fringe colorado,

as you know, is a proud conservative, a devout christian, a grandmother, who settles the virtues of family values, emanating orchids, have a listen. >> speaking as a mother of four boys, enough is enough! i don't send my boys to school, to receive indoctrination from the woke mob, or to be sexualized by groomers. here's the bottom line, let's stop grooming our children. >> stop grooming our children, she said that in a tweet. she said, take your children to church, not drag bars. so imagine my surprise, my shock, my horror even when this week, she was spotted on camera, there is an image of her doing lewd acts with her boyfriend, at a live performance of beetle juice, the musical, in denver, surrounded by families, and children. perhaps being removed from that venue. so i guess even once again we

are seeing that very printable gop phenomenon. every accusation is a confession. >> and listen, by the way many i'm not sure you know this, but the guy who lauren boebert was engaged in that looting act with is actually the owner of a gay friendly bar that hosts drag shows. so again, the sheer hypocrisy to denigrate drag friendly bars, and then to warn of their dangerous to society, all while being caught with the owner of one. but listen, the bigger takeaway here is not about just the hypocrisy of republicans like boebert, it's really the way of this behavior has been normalized, and tolerated by the republican party. i mean, all you've got to do is look at people like george santos, and the lives that we have whole told -- look at something like ken paxton, surviving impeachment for his alleged corruption. and, everything else that he is accused of doing. a few years ago, all three of these republicans, because of their behavior and their acts,

they would have been deemed so outrageous to hold office, they would have been forced to resign in shame. but not in today's republican party, not in donald trump's republican party. they barely get kicked out, and they get to keep serving in office, as we see. >> it's worse i think, amen. i think it actually helps them, i think are going to see more of lauren boebert. because what happens is, there we are, the liberals don't like, us they're annoying, so they rally around these people, who objectively have done outrageous things, said lies, like george santos has done. and yet, there is absolutely no accountability. of course, it's not just true of george santos and can cap action and lauren boebert, it is donald j trump himself, the leader of the party he never faces any accountability. of course you have these mini trump's, the having disgustingly, in public, and zero count ability. can you match of what happened to lauren boebert in 2010, or 2005, or even 2015? >> yeah, and a final point really quickly medhi, it has to be even with the evidence presented to the american

public, at some people still refuse it. it's not enough that you know, the theater came out and said hey, we removed her because she was being disruptive. she came out with her own version, she tried to spin it. and then, they were compelled to release the video, to show that she was vaping, that this was happening, this behavior was happening, because nowadays, republicans have the ability to tell their followers straight applies even in the face of hard evidence. >> don't believe your lying eyes. >> don't believe your lying eyes, exactly. great show as always, i enjoyed it, have a very good evening. >> coming up tonight on ayman, breaking reaction from president biden on republicans evidence free impeachment inquiry, and how damaging this could be, for the republicans 2024 chances. plus, democrats plans for fighting back, i'm speaking with congressman robert garcia, the hills oversight committee. and then, fani willis's case, live and in color, the critical importance of broadcasting this week's hearings, in the georgia election trial. e georgi election trial