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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  January 23, 2024 1:00am-2:01am PST

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good evening, from manchester where new hampshire. i'm jen psaki. and i know you are used to seeing rachel maddow at this hour on mondays. believe me, me too. i'm usually watching her in the
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office. rachel is a little underthe weather. don't worry. we will be hearing from rachel in just a few minutes, and we have overall so much to get to tonight. we're less than 24 hours from the polls closing here in new hampshire. we're here in new hampshire, doing our show from nooufl. and the last remaining challenger to trump is trying to pull off would be a surprise win tomorrow in the race for the presidential nomination or at least to finish close enough to stay in the race which may actually be in the bar. a day away from the vote nikki haley is trying to prevent the primary tomorrow from being essentially the end of that race. because unless something truly happens tomorrow, and, hae, shocking things do happen in politics, trump is going to be the republican nominee, and he's going to be the nominee because he has broad support among republicans in the country, all
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across the country. even broad support among communities that seemed least likely to support him. for instance, if you look back to 2016 trump a twice divorced womanizing candidate with a long history of pro-choice just to name a few things did terribly among iowa's christian evangelical voters. just a week ago they pretty much lined up behind him. and in the states after new hampshire there's every indication at this point thought just the evangelical community but a range of groups that logic would tell you would not support trump are doing just that. the plitdle train of the nominating process after new hampshire is quite trump friendly, but new hampshire is supposed to be different. here in new hampshire nikki haley is taking the traditional approach holding rallies and personally habdling voters across the state. but donald trump is acting like
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the inevitable winner and definitely not taking traditional approach to campaigning at all. he's not getting up to new hampshire diners, not holding babies like the way nikki haley is, though, maybe that is best for those babies. instead he's spending time in a new york courtroom, attending hearings on how much money he'll have to pay from the defamation suit from the writer e. jean carroll. this is on top of the millions jurors already ordered him to pay for sexually abusing and defaming her. to be clear trump does not have be in court for this at, he's not required to be. he's choosing to be there and to make enough spectacle of himself the judge threatened to throw trump out of the courtroom. apparently trump believed that is the best way to campaign. that is his strategy. trump is also making a point of telling voters he believes presidents should have totally immunity from prosecution even if they commit crimes.
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even if they, quote, cross the line, his words, not mine. and when trump did come to new hampshire for a rally this weekend, he did not give the traditional here's my plan for new hampshire's economy kind of speech candidates usually do. no, trump's campaign was -- wait for it, this is a good one -- aren't foreign dictators, great? >> there's a great man, a great leader in europe. victor orban. he's the prime minister of hungary. he's a very great leader, very strong man. some people don't like him because he's too strong. it's nice to have a strong man running your country. >> nice to have a strong man running your country. those prognosticators would not have had victor orban a trump speech bingo card, but this is trump's argument in what may his last single contested primary to the march nomination. he's not asking anyone in new hampshire to vote for him
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despite his belief he should exist outside the law and the united states should be run more like a dictatorship. rather he's asking new hampshire voters to cast their ballots for him because of those things. that's his strategy, his message. you may not like it, i understand, believe me. but clearly a lot of people do like it. even in new hampshire the state where donald trump is getting his worst polling numbers of any republican primary. the state famously full of independent voters who liked to buck convention. it's the live free or die state, after all. so they like to keep things interesting. and new hampshire is a state where nikki haley has been seen as a chance of beating him. but donald trump is still winning even here. the latest new hampshire tracking poll out today has him up 19 points. this is where he's doing the worst, i think it's worth repeating. so we can't shut our eye tuesday the fact what donald trump is pitching to volters, it's very, very appealing to a lot of
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americans. if we want to protect american democracy we better understand why. joining me now a professor of history at nyu. also the author of "strongmen." a very apt title for our conversation. and tim miller, editor at the bulwark and msnbc political analyst. tim, let's start with you. it still is a little perplexing. i mean donald trump is in new hampshire, praising victor orban, why does it work for him in this state or any state? why does it work? >> i can understand why it would be perplexing to some folks who have stop steeped themselves to what the republican base wants. but the republican base is looking for somebody that is going to try to combat their enemies. that was the big line about donald trump way back in 2016. it was but he fights, but these other guys on stage don't fight the left, the liberals, the immigrants, the gay teachers,
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whoever the enemy of the day is. donald trump will fight them and they won't. i was struck listening to your interview with chris sununu in the previous hour. obviously you were going to give him a softball interview, but still his arguments against trump didn't seem straw, didn't seem like they were coming from a position of strength. it was a bit weezally. it's a bank shot, maybe is the better word. his arguments are like, well, donald trump might hurt other candidates or donald trump is a little uncouth. his opponents within the primary have not attacked him with strength, and that has allowed this to fester and congeal for him to gain more and more power. and so i think he's positioning himself as the alpha within the party. the voters are looking for an alpha, and i think that's why it explains why it's working in the republican primary and the
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general election will be a different animal. >> alpha is another word for strong man, i think, which trump just said at a rally this week, wouldn't it be nice to have strong man leaders? title of you're book. talk to us about why that is appealing to him and also what that means as it relates to victor orban and leaders in countries like hungary? >> yes, so he's been -- trump has been conditioning americans, educating americans to want that kind of leadership. what he's doing by talking about being the bad cop or rogue apple, he's asking them to accept anything he'll do. what is most interesting and talking ability a lot is avoiding jail. all strong men are corrupt and authoritarianism in essence is a system where the executive is able to domesticate the
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judiciary, et cetera, and be able to commit crime without paying any consequence. and the leaders who he's holding up, it's disgraceful that he's holding up as responsible leaders putin and kim jong-un, and xi jinping, and these are people who depend on violence and corruption and lying to their people to stay in power. but that's very self-serving of trump. he's interested in the absolute power they have and their ability to never be prosecuted. >> tim, i have a hard time thinking that most new hampshire voters or people who support trump understands what it would be like to live under an authoritarian leader. it's not as literal as that i think it's fair to a, but what do you think politically? you've worked on presidential campaigns. what is the best political push back here? is there something nikki haley could have been doing the last
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couple of weeks to better push back on this argument? >> well, sure. i think that the attacks against donald trump could have been, you know, more forceful and straight on. this is what i was saying about sununu, about others who have criticized him, desantis, everybody, right? donald trump is attacking his opponents aggressively, positioning himself as the attack dog, as the representative of the people. he's calling names, nikki haley birdbrain, saying she's a corporatist, she wants to go back to the old republican party people didn't like. if your response to that is, well, you know, chaos follows donald trump like a bad smell or your response is rightly or wrongly donald trump says some bad things, right? you're feeding into his argument he's strong, you're weak. but they did need to pick one or
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two things that worked with voters and say this guy is a loser, this guy didn't build the wall he promised you. you know, this guy is stealing your money to pay for his legal bills. he doesn't care about you, i do. whatever it is pick couple of things and go at him with purpose and aggression. nobody did that. would it have worked? that's unclear. we may be in a party that has a cultive personality. but nikki haley and ron desantis may not have even been in the game. >> every situation is different as you well know and cover and an expert on. over the weekend in germany tens of thousands of people came out to protest far right extreme. what do you think? is there anything we can take away from these mass demonstrations and reflect on as we look to what's happening in the united states now? >> yeah, i'm glad you ask that because we also had the recently in the fall an example of poland where they had, you know, many years of far-right leadership,
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and they had practically no abortion rights left, and they organized -- unity is very important so these are multiparty systems, but they had a coalition. and they also had optimistic heart centered messaging. literally they had a march of a million hearts. and these mass demonstrations are very important because it's a numbers game. you know, the far right is always the tyranny of the minority, and they're very loud, they're very scary, they intimidate, they stage coups like january 6th. and yet they're not the will of the people. and so mass demonstrations show other people that there are people who feel similarly to how they do. they don't really like, they don't really want authoritarian will especially a place like germany or also poland. poland was occupied by the nazis, it had a communist dictatorship. these are places that know the stakes, and the problem in
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america is that too many people don't have any idea of what the stakes could be, what it's going to be like to have an authoritarian state, and donald trump's telling you very clearly that what he wants to do. and this is what authoritarians often do. they tell us what they're going to do and who they are, and we don't listen to them or take them seriously until it's too late. >> wise words to end our conversation on. if people are telling you who they are, you should listen to memch and donald trump is certainly telling us who he is and what he wants to do in another term. thank you both for a really fascinating conversation. coming up next we'll be joined live by the person usually in the chair at this hour. my colleague, rachel maddow. we'll let her use her voice for a few minutes so she can save it for tomorrow. plus he branded them losers and delighted and mocked him on the campaign trail, yet republicans seem to fall behind
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donald trump. what happened? and later a brazen attempt at voter suppression of ahead of tomorrow's new hampshire primary. is it a dangerous sign and reminder of what's to come as we head towards the general election? we're going to talk about that as well a little later on. we're back after this. stay with us. er on. we're back after this. stay with us
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there's a great man, a great leader in europe, viktor orban.
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he's the prime minister of hungary. he's a very great leader, a very strong man. some people don't like him because he's too strong. it's nice to have a strong man leading your country. >> greetings from new hampshire where the republican front-runner would like to talk about the kitchen table issues like the strong man of hungary. very obvious closing message there and making american presidents immune from criminal prosecution, which would come in handy for donald trump. so, no, this is not your usual new hampshire primary-eve. we're looking at that tomorrow. joining us now is the usual host of the 9:00 p.m. hour, i know you've been missing her already, and the author of "the american fight against fascism," my friend and colleague rachel maddow. we're not going to make you use your voice too much, but thank you so much for talking to us this evening. rachel, let me start there. i've been sort of saying tongue in cheek about this is trump's closing message talking about viktor orban as he's campaigning here a bit in new hampshire.
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you've educated us all quite a bit on it. is this about winning votes in the new hampshire primary. >> first of all, jen, i apologize for my voice. i'm trying to hold it together health wise so i can have a voice for tomorrow night's coverage, so i'm so excited to be part of that, but that's why i sound a mess right now. on the viktor orban thing, listen, i think that's a very simple reason trump is making that the closing argument in what may be the last contested primary, and that's really what he's offering. this is the special sauce. donald trump is not leading the republican party and leading the republican field of candidates because of his youthful vigor or because of his, you know, policy preferences or because of his eloquence, right? none of that is going on. what he's offering is what he both sort of inherently offers and now more and more explicitly
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offers which is if you pick me, that'll be the end of politics and you won't have to deal with politics anymore. you won't have to deal with contested elections. you won't have to deal with contests or divisions when it comes to power. you'll have a strong man leader, and i'll just do what i want, and won't that be a lot simpler? that's what he's offering. that strong man model is what the republican base is enthused about. and that is something that sets him apart from every other republican candidate, and i think that we're naive to think that he's tricking people into picking him and then surprise he's acting like a strong man dictator. the side lines or domesticating of the judiciary in the congress, there'll be a man in charge and he'll get it done, and that's what he's selling and that's what they're very eager to buy. >> it seems very much like that.
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i do think of him as a marathoning orter, but everyone has a different view of trump and his strengths. the question i know you've talked about it for a minute is how did we get here? how do you get to this stage where you have this person such a control over the political party, but even beyond the politics of it where that appeal of the strong man argument, this worship of dictators is so appealing to such a large swath of the country. >> i mean, i think there's ways -- first of all, we should be humble about it and recognize there are aren't that many 250-year-old democracies in the world. and democracy is hard. and most of the world is governed undera thor taitarian governance. there's nothing that makes us immune to the strong man. to talk about how susceptible americans were to the same kind
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of authoritarian messages that were working on the population in germany and that were working on the population italy and were working on the population in spain. i know it's a cliche but hitler was elected, mussolini was installed as a figure of the government. these messages, excuse me, me they have appeal. and there are ways that you can drive aa populous towards them. you can denigrate the government. you can say that government itself is the problem. you can make it so the legislative branch never works and is seen as an object of ridicule, pity and hostility rather than as one of our three branches of government. you can challenge the rule of law and say judges are all biased against people like you and the legal system doesn't work for people like us, and that we should denigrate the courts and the law and the legal system in a way that falls down along partisan or identitarian
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lines. all of those things help. flirting with the kind of conspiracy theories that make people look to mythical fantasies for solving their problems instead of actual government work, that helps. flirting with paramilitary violence where you bring violence into the political sphere. normal people are too intimidated to engage in normal political behavior. all of that helps. all of that sort of shunts a popialist towards authoritarian messaging as the only solution. >> i mean that was dark and real and honest and authentic just like you are about these issues. what are the other lessons from history about what might work or what is effective? we talked earlier in the show about the protests in germany. what works? what can be done in this country to push back on this movement? >> i mean the history works i think on a couple different levels. it's interesting to me watching
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those protests in germany this weekend, a cup olof things struck me. more than a million people turned out in germany, crowds so big in some places crowds largen than the marches. people had to shut them down. secret reporting where the far-right party in germany polling strongly in germany right now had secretly discussed mass deportations of migrants in germany, millions of people all deported all at once, and it was exposed in a sort of bombshell investigative reporting. but, you know, i mean that's what trump and steven miller are offering openly, and maybe people aren't in the streets for it because it wasn't bombshell reporting, they just said that's what they want today do. but that policy the far right afd party is working on in
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germany is exactly what trump and steven miller is talking about doing here as soon as trump is put back in office. they're literally talking about putting millions of people in camps in the united states, a revelation like that in germany got germans out by the hundreds of thousands and more than a million over the weekend saying this is nazi stuff, we can never see this come back in the civilized world whereas we've just absorbed it that it's something that trump is going to do. it's also what those crowds are asking for. they're asking for the german courts to ban afd, to ban that party as an anti-democratic party. and germany does have some history with that. in the post-war years in 1952 they banned parties that wanted to use the democratic process to come back in and dismantle democracy. they haven't done it since then, but they're ready to do it now with this iteration of the far right, and we're obviously considering that with potential insurrectionist being back on the ballot in multiple states.
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>> very much running for office. history repeats itself but there's also history and live things happening around the world important for us to also watch. now, finally, we have to let you rest your voice, rachel. i know you can talk about this all night, but what are you doing for yoifrl? we need to send you camomile, lemon, we'll deliver it to you. everyone needs you leading the coverage tomorrow night. >> i just have a thing everybody else has. like i had covid for the first time ever in october and took me a long time to get over it, and now i've got this cold it seems like everybody on the east coast has. i'm a terrible patient. i've got my daytime goo and my nighttime goo and i sleep and drink tea and it never gets better. if anybody out there has the secret sauce, i'll take it. but in the meantime i'm just trying to rest. >> you heard her. if you have secret sauce for her, we're going to collect it
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so she can lead the coverage tomorrow night. looking forward to seeing you for our primary coverage tomorrow night. still ahead at this point in the 2016 race donald trump didn't have a single congressional endorsement, but this election republicans are rushing to lend their support. what happened? why are they falling in line so quickly this time around? and later a folk joe biden robo call is targeting new hampshire voters ahead of tomorrow's primary. are we prepared for other deep fakes this coming november? we'll talk about that as well coming up. coming november we'll talk about that as well coming up. attention hearing loss sufferers!
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trump is superior to the current incumbent joe biden, that is clear. i signed a pledge to support the republican nominee, and i will honor that pledge. he has my endorsement because we can't go back to the old republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged forum of warmed over corporatism that nikki haley represents. >> i've heard and even written many endorsement statements, and let me tell you that is not a reading one. he seemed actually a bit under duress there for a moment. that is desantis begrudgingly i think it's fair to say endorsing donald trump after dropping out of the race this weekend. it's just a reminder how republicans are lining up behind donald trump in the republican presidential primary. it's all a stark example of how
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donald trump has come to dominate the republican party over the last eight years. when trump ran for president in 2016 remember not a single republican member of the house or senate or any of the sitting republican governors endorsed him before the new hampshire primary, not a single one. it wasn't until after new hampshire in late february in 2016 when trump finally got his ninety-first if dorsement from a sitting member of congress, and that sitting member was none other than new york republican congressman chris collins who was the first sitting member to endorse trump. now chris collins of course would later leave congress and get indicted and then convicted of insider trading. trump pardoned chris collins during his first month in office. that was his first endorser feels fitting for some reason. the second member of congress to the dorse trump in 2016 was another guy, this guy, congressman duncan hunter. congressman hunter was also forced to resign from congress after being charged and later convicted of stealing campaign funds. that's quite a track record
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there for the first two endorsements of his presidential campaign. donald trump also pardoned duncan hunter during his final days in office. i think there's a pattern kind of we're all seeing here. before trump became the presumptive nominee only 12 sitting members of the house had endorsed donald trump's capped d.c., a sixth of him were on their way to becoming convicted felons. that's what they had in common. only one sitting senator, one endorsed donald trump during that time. remember jeff sessions? well, that guy's been paying for that mistake ever since pretty much. a lot has happened since 2016. i mean donald trump has been impeached twice, tried to overturn an a legitimate election, stoked an insurrection, praised dictators over and over again and overtly claims he wants to be a dictator himself. but despite all of that somehow there seems to be an even greater willingness to look the other way. this time republicans are rushing, elbowing each other to endorse donald trump as soon as possible. more than half of all
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republicans in the house and senate have already endorsed trump. the leaders of the party committeevise called him the promative nominee. remember there's a primary tomorrow. tim scott became the latest high profile senator to endorse trump on friday. just a few minutes ago he spoke at a rally i mentioned in new hampshire. with ron desantis's endorsement trump now has the support of 11 sitting republican governors. south carolina republican nancy mace who just two years ago was fending off a trump primary challenger just endorsed trump today ahead of the state's primary. she doesn't seem to remember that part from a couple years ago. in just the last week republicans have started to fall in line behind trump at a break neck speed. so what does that mean for this race and for the republican party ahead of tomorrow's primary? it all feels so inevitable with everyone lining up. joining me now he was just here
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with me in new hampshire for a couple days. thank you for being here with us tonight. >> thanks, jen. >> it's great to see you. let me just start with what i just outlined because we often forget -- you don't because you were just covering it but in 2016 republicans didn't exactly coalesce around trump i think it's fair to say until after he won the nomination. i mean there were holdouts even then. why is this happening so much faster now? >> politicians are responding to the marketplace of their electorate, and their voters want more cowbell, they want more trump. and they are in fact responding to that. it's a classic example of the leaders deferring to their electorate. they're not leading. they're basically following what they perceive understandably so to be the preference of their voters. and that's really the long and the short of it. you know what's funny is the first statewide official to
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endorse trump in 2016 was also a governor and his name was henry mcmaster. i'm sorry, lieutenant governor. his name was henley mccaster of south carolina. he was the lieutenant governor. and the pay back from mcmaster for endorsing trump, the first statewide official to do so, jen, was that he was elevated to governor when president trump nominated the governor of south carolina, somebody whose name was nikki haley to be the ambassador to the u.n. so speaking of -- >> wording. >> full circle endorsement in 2016 one of those is still playing out today. the reason trump appointed her to the u.n. wasn't because they had a relationship because she came out for rubio he appointed her as a reward for him for being one of the first people in it country and first statewide republican official to endorse him in 2016 because to your
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point there were so damn few people in the party at that point who had dare stick their neck out for this, you know, celebrity casino magnate and hotel developer. >> i mean a lot has changed, right? he's done a lot since then. a lot has changed. and i think the question that is tricky but you may have a view on this. i bet you do is what is motivating? there's political survival, that's a motivator. there's fear if they don't endorse him, which i think is a big motivator. ron desantis in that video again he looked under duress like it was a hostage video like situation. >> hold up today's newspaper. >> exactly. it felt almost a.i.-generated. but what is motivating a majority of them? is it political survival? is it fear? is it a combination? what's it about? >> oh, i think for the folks facing the voters every two
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years or every four years or six years i think it's trying to stay on the right side of their voters. if you talk to these people privately a lot of them at least, not the true believers but a lot of them who came of age politically before trump, jen, they'll say what do you want me to do, my voters like him? and i i'll y always tell them one republican, actually a former governor today said the same thing. what desantis would have been honest about if he'd done that video on a truth serum is what do you want me to do, folks? i want a future in this party, i'm only 44 years old. and the voters still like trump, so like i've got to be for trump, and that's really it. to your point, yeah, there's definitely a bullying element because obviously if you don't get behind him, he gives you a nickname and he attacks you, which then leads to his supporters to attack you online and even worse like prank call your office or whatever. yeah, there's definitely an intimidation factor there, too. no question about it.
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>> all right, jonathan, we've talked ability this kind of off-line behind the scenes, but let me put you on the spot a little bit. there's a primary tomorrow. what does nikki haley have to -- if she wins obviously that's a surprise, but what's the margin she has to get within in order to justify to her donors, to her supporters to stay in the race? >> i think if she comes within single digits, jen, in new hampshire tomorrow i think she can justify going to south carolina and trying to find an ally in her home state. that would be a hell of a race, it's a month long south carolina showdown. i think it would be armageddon in the palm meto state politically between trump and nikki haley. a sight to see probably make bush mccain 2000 like like tiddlywinks. if she loses 16, 17 points i think it's hard for her to
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rationalize staying in. at that point, i wonder if she'd better off saying i was the last person in the race, no one else could to do but me, and here i was. i was the last person left and i give it a go. if you're losing by 17 points that's sort of a case you make. and if you sue for a piece, you have an outside shot. i think it's harder for her to get vp or be in the mix. >> you don't want it until you want it, i guess. trump has told donors reportedly they have until february 1st to decide. if he shuts off the money that seems tricky for her but we'll see. jonathan martin, great to see you tonight. great to see you in new hampshire while you were here the last couple of days. coming up a fake biden robo call is encouraging democrats to kip the polls in tomorrow's new hampshire primary. what can the federal government be doing to combat this sort of threat as we head into the 2024
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today just a day before the new hampshire primary, the new hampshire attorney general's office announced that it is investigating what it says appears to be an unlawful attempt at voter suppression. yesterday several new hampshire residents got a robo call purporting to be from president biden. it wasn't.
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the white house has confirmed the call was a fake. but if you had received it, would you be able to tell? >> what a bunch of malarkey. you know the value of voting democrat and our votes count. it's important to save your vote for the november election. we'll need your help in electing democrats up and down the ticket. voting this tuesday only enables the republicans in their quest to elect donald trump again. your vote makes a difference in november, not this tuesday. >> malarkey sounds a lot like joe biden, take it from me, and that was right at the beginning of that call. we have no idea who was behind these fake robo calls although their likely intention hurting president biden and misleading voters seems pretty clear. we do not know how this artificial version of president biden's voice was heard, however experts tell nbc news it was almost likely created with some form of artificial intelligence. we do know is that fake content like this is getting more
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realistic and easier to make all the time, it's improving the technology of it. a little more than a week ago they published audio that claim shows long time trump advisor roger stone calling for the assassination of democratic congressman jerry nadler and eric swalwell. i should say nbc news has not been able to independently verify this audio, but it does sound like roger stone. but stone claims the audio is fake. and because how easy it is to make realistic seeming fake content like this now, it's very difficult to figure out what the truth is here, and people can use that to their advantage on both sides. but today's news about these fake biden robo calls in new hampshire, we're seeing how fake content like this could mess with our primaries, could mess with the general election. but how much more difficult could it get to tell fact from fiction by november? joining us now is chris krebs, cochair of the aspen institute's u.s. cyber security working group. thank you so much for joining me.
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i couldn't think of anyone better to talk about this and help explain it. let me start with the basics here. mow sophisticated would you have to be with computers to make fake audio like that like we're seeing with robo calls we're seeing in new hampshire? >> not particularly sophisticated at all. it doesn't require much more than some of the publicly open sourced large language models that can be used to create text to voice and even text to video. and you really don't need much of a sample of whoever you're trying to mimic. you can get a voiceprint affabout 30 seconds worth of tape. and obviously with president biden there's much more, much more than tat. there's more than that of you and me. so it is not a complicated trade craft right now, unfortunately. >> anyone can make one, which is the thing that feels so -- one of the things that feels so alarming to me. one of the things as we look
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back to 2016, which we've been talking a little bit in this show is what the threats are and what we're talking about, what we should be talking about. nation states like china, russia, those who have intervened in our elections in the past, is this a tactic and tool you think we're developing, we should be watching more closely, talking more about? >> there's no question that they're testing and exploring the range of capabilities and the conversations i have with those in the national security community. they're absolutely concerned about state actors rolling a.i. into their broader information activities and whether that's, you know, technical hacking, cyber security threats or the broader information warfare that we're seeing increasingly a part of not just our elections but i would suspect over the several elections that are happening in '24 and '25 as well you'll see
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more and more of these a.i.-enabled threat vectors emerge. >> there are obviously a number of experts like yourself in the federal government. i have a kind of two parter here. what would you like to see them doing? but also do you have any concern about maybe the lack of understanding or knowledge broadly within congress about the threat of this? we saw this with social media, for example, back in 2016. >> yeah. yeah, well, you know, there are a number of different pieces of legislation that have been introduced particularly in the senate to address a.i. as it may impact our elections. in fact, there's a bill introduced by senators klobuchar, holly, coons, and collins that would address this specific risk of mimicking a political candidate. it would give them a couple different options including removal of the content as well as damages. of course that is just a piece
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of legislation introduced, and it'll take quite some time to get that in place. also the federal communications commission has different mechanisms they can use if it's seen as defrauding voters and the fbi has several different paths they can follow. but i think the real key here is similar to a number of the messages that we pushed out in the 2020 election, and that is, you know, if you ever have a question about information here, go to the trusted source. don't listen to someone on twitter "x" or whatever or a phone call you get. go to the source, the election official or the candidate themselves and verify the information that you've heard or read or whatever. >> you know, on the flip side of the -- that's very good advice and i think a lot of people are looking for exactly that. on the flip side, though, on the fake content problem is this problem of plausible deniability. for example, there's this example of audio released i just mentioned this at the top
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reportedly of roger stone and stone's denial blaming a.i., the kind of back and forth. it gives people an idea of what is true. how do we grapple with that. >> a colleague continued the term lawyer's dividend, and that's where this diffuse information environment where you can't really tell what's true. this is where the bad actors really thrive. and i think unfortunately we're well into that space where that information environment has really lost that touchstone of truth. and it is hard to believe what you read or hear, and when you add a.i. and you can say, you know what, that sounds like me but it's not me, somebody must have copied it, this goes to i think it's important for candidates and campaigns right now to do whatever they can to really print and certify the -- the video they use, the audio
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they use so that it can't be mimicked, or if it is they can say, no, this is not what i said, and president biden's executive order on artificial intelligence goes to that mechanism and what folks can use to take ownership of their likeness and what they may sesay or do or appear as. >> such an important topic i think booegs be talking a lot about between now and november, and these robo calls were just a reminder. thank you so much for joining me. one more story ahead tonight that we're looking forward to talking about that shows just how much affojump start new hampshire's residents like to get on the rest of the nation when it comes to voting. we'll be right back. voting. we'll be right back. ou need slap the label on ito the box and it's ready to go our cost for shipping, were cut in half just like that go to shipstation/tv and get 2 months free
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starting at midnight polls for the 2024 presidential
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primary will officially open in new hampshire. a trudigds dating back to the 1960 presidential election. my colleague stephanie ruhle will be live as the votes up to six -- that's right, six registered voters are counted. and as voting continues throughout the day tomorrow so will msnbc's special coverage. 4:00 p.m. eastern i'll be back and at 6:00 p.m. eastern rachel maddow would have had lots of tea and back in her chair alongside with the dream team of hosts and steve kornacki will be at the big board. and i'll be back with which republicans who are at the top of the ticket, who republicans in instate of new hampshire choose to be their nominee. that does it for me tonight. sadly, not everyone is willing to put our country first. here in new hampshire nikki haley has made an unholy alliance