>> and kennedy had promised the nomination to stew symington the night before. he had actually promised him. >> wow. >> so he got up and said you know what? i'm looking at the electoral map. he is like steve kornacki. here we go. we got to look at the map. and the map says if you don't carry the south, you're losing. >> reporter: and that was the real purpose of the conventions in those days. the party might show up with different factions, but they would leave unified behind their ticket. >> the that was nbc's chuck todd. i know what i'm watching tonight. you can watch the 30-minute special "party animals" on nbc news now at 10:30 p.m. eastern. and that does it for us this hour on this july 4th. i'm ali vitali. thank you for joining us. happy fourth of july. next up, "why is this happening? with chris hayes and rachel maddow. ♪♪

♪♪ hello, new york! thank you for joining us live at town hall in new york city for this very, very special edition of "why is this happening? he is incisive. he is bighearted. he is very, very smart. and admit it, he is taller than you expected. please give a warm welcome to my friend, my beloved colleague, msnbc's chris hayes. [ cheering and applause ]

>> hello, thank you! hey, awesome. stop it! how you? good? thank you. thank you. thank you, thank you. sit down. thank you, that's extremely kind. i hate and positive feedback. that was a really hard 20 seconds for me. so thank you for cutting it short. it's amazing to be here in my hometown of new york city. i've got some family here. so tonight we're going to talk about democracy. and that word, we probably talk more about democracy in the last four or five years than i had in

all of my time as a journalist before that i would say. like even that as a topic seems a little weird. there is a certain kind of history that you're taught that i think is a part of american civic culture deeply, almost kind of civic religion, which roughly goes to the following. the founders rebelled against the tyranny of the crown and the injustice of monarchy. and they conceived in liberty a new nation founded on a government by, of, and for the people. that's the lincoln gettysburg address version of it. and they rejected basically the idea that there is some authority above all of us that has dominion over us, that each of us are imbued with the ability to determine our own fate collectively as a we, and that's a very difficult, messy process. but fundamentally, you know, in the eyes of some of the

founders, that's god-given. in the use of others, it's sort of a natural truth. but that's the idea. we all decide together what we all are going to do. and that simple, fundamental and at the time radical vision is what separates us here in the western hemisphere from the old world of europe where you had monarchies and kings and queens and tyrants. and then as time went on, various forms of blood and soil authoritarianism, ultimately fascism culminating in the second world war. you don't really get democracies in that part of the world in the way we think about them until after the war. there are some. like there are democratic forms of government that exist then. there is a bunch of failed revolutions. there are these sort of compromises that get worked out in the uk and in poland and in different parts of the continent. but basically, we are the model for the world, right? yes. we're the first ones. we figured it out. we slough off the yoke of

tyranny and we seize our fate. now the other part of that story that we all know, right, is a very complicated story. as one british critic at the time said the loudest cries of liberty come from the americans as they whitt their slaves. which is by the way an important point that they saw it at the time, right. like people understood at the time. there was an incredible ridiculous tension in american rhetoric about self-determination and democracy. but the general story i think we have is we start with an imperfect democracy and we work towards a more perfect democracy, the more perfect union that's in the preamble. and i think there is something to that story. i don't think it's a crazy story, but it's basically the civic religion we have. but i think there is another way of looking at the story of american democracy which is america is sort of the ongoing democratic site of a perpetual

protest station over democracy. that it's the site of a constant pitched battle between forces on the side of democracy and forces against them. and the forces against them are not fringed characters. and sometimes the forces against them are the most celebrated in the country. and drew jackson who is viewed as a failed democrat because he railed against the elites, and he founded the modern democratic party with his populism, and he invited the people into his white house on the day of his inauguration where they all got drunk. he was not in any recognizable sense really a democrat in the way that we think of it today. he thought there was a cast of people who should rule over another cast of people. he was one of the major pursuers of the ethnic cleansing that made the continent what it is, right? he didn't think that everyone had some universal inalienable rights, and that all of us collectively should rule all of us collectively. he thought that the white man

should rule over slaves and over the indigenous people that populated the planet. i'm not saying this in a like andrew jackson is canceled way. i think he should be. to be clear. i'm actually talking in a very specific way how would you characterize the ideological belief system of andrew jackson. is it accurate to call andrew jackson a small d democrat? is it accurate to call andrew jackson a believer in democracy? right? i think it's a little tough to say it is. at least in our modern sense, right, which is the best sense. these door roosevelt who is on mount rushmore. theate theodore roosevelt writes and says often that the white race is there to rule over the other races. he founds what becomes the american empire. in the pacific, where we will rule over these people. they're not going to get the vote. they're not going to be citizens. they're not full and equal.

they are subject to authority from on high. and they are forced to be under that authority. not that different a way than the remote king back at the time. and again, all of these examples i'm giving, there is people at the time who recognize this. one of the most pitched debates that happens in the american history on the floor of the congress is about the trail of tears where people come to the well to say this is -- they didn't have the term at the time -- ethnic cleansing. this is totally unjust. we can't do this. these people have inalienable rights. at the same time, when we started fighting our wars under theodore roosevelt and pursuing american empire, there were people at the time, mark twain being very prominent among them saying we're doing the thing that we hated the crown for doing. at each moment in american history where you have the fights and infrastructures over what the meaning of democracy actually is, there are contemporaries on each side of the debate. it's not this neat arc where we start out sort of confused and

beknighted and don't understand that slavery is wrong but then we sort of walk into the light. no, they knew. they knew. they knew the trail of tears was wrong. they knew that the wars in the pacific and the philippines, what we were doing, they knew it was wrong. there are people who very clearly saw what it was. and that's true at every point. and it's true up until the period in the run-up to world war ii. now that story we learned is basically the following. because of the trauma of world war i, the u.s. is very reticent to get involved in another war on european shores. fair. and we kind of dither, and fdr comes up with lend lease, right. this is like the basic version, because he is trying to sort of straddle. he realizes that something is going to have to be done, but it's very hard to get americans into this idea of a second war in europe in just several decades later, and then pearl

harbor happens, and we're in, and we defeat fascism. right? go us. that's basically the story. that story also masks exactly the same thing that is masked in those other moments from the country's founding to the trail of tears in jackson to the creation of u.s. empire in the pacific under theodore roosevelt, which is contemporaneous debates in the society about what democracy is and whether it's good. whether what we actually do want is for all of us collectively as individuals with sovereign rights over ourselves collectively to come together to transfer that sovereignty into a collective we that decides as a democratically si how we will mark our fate, how we will go forward, or whether we want something else, dominion, rule

by some group or person. that is an eternal debate in american politics. we're now realizing this in a way i think that we didn't appreciate until we found this moment in this moment now where we're debating it again every day. and it feels weird and it feels alien, and it feels like it landed from mars. hadn't we all come to a consensus on this? didn't we all agree that we're a democracy? wasn't it the fact that in the old days, we would fight along the 40 yard lines is the cliche, right? we didn't have extremes. we weren't actually debating. no. the debate has been there the entire time. and one of the most useful interventions in understanding the debate being there the whole time comes by way of this up and coming talent that i spotted -- [ laughter ] i got a pretty good eye.

in this really remarkable podcast called ultra that came out i think a year ago -- [ applause ] if you have no, ma'am listened to it, go download it. subscribe to my podcast too while you're doing it. but download ultra. and it is the story of an attempt of basically fascist simple nicer in the u.s. prior to the war and their efforts and the incredible lengths they went to. and i'm not going to spoil it. we're going talk about it in a second. and now that subsequently has been turned part of it. but i want to urge people, because i read the book this week, because i've been under the gun deadline wise, i want to urge people who listen to "ultra" to read the book, because this book, "prequel," there it is -- [ applause ] -- it is not just the podcast in the book. it actually goes so much further. it is an incredible read and is kind of i think a skeleton key

for this particular moment. and so without further ado, i would like to introduce the author of "prequel," my dear, dear, dear friend, my beloved colleague rachel maddow. [ cheering and applause ] >> thank you. >> there are a lot of people here in this room. >> there are a lot of people. for those listening on the podcast, there is 20,000 people in this room. [ laughter ] never seen anything like it in my life. >> i'm wearing my reading glasses so you're all just little globs. i can't see at all, which is

helpful. >> can we -- i want to start in your way into this material, because i have to say it is an incredible talent that you have, and this has been true on your conversation show for years at sort of finding these sort of unexplored nuggets in american history, the stories that people don't know and then you tell them and you're like what? really? that actually happened? and "ultra" was an incredible example of that where i literally -- i knew who father coughlan was. he was the right won't antisemitic preacher. i knew there was this american first movement. >> lindbergh. >> right. >> i read the philip roth novel. >> which was great. >> that was my mechanic for those things. i knew those things. i knew nothing else that appeared in that podcast. so i want you to start by saying what was your way into this material? because it really is not on the surface. >> so i never set out to tell a

history story. i'm always looking for something that's going on in current life. it's always something that is sprung from things that are going on in the news. and the thing i get dinged for, rightly, i think, in terms of the way i do my work is that if i want to tell you about, you know, something happening in the world today, everything has to start with, you know, first a meteor hit the earth. >> right. >> and then the dinosaurs died. and when their bodies dissolve -- >> that's a good bit. >> but if that is not your way of thinking about the world, i can understand why that is alienating. i know i'm not everybody's cup of tea. oh, thank you. i love you too. [ cheering ] but that's the way my brain works. and i was -- i was as unnerved as everybody, but kind of confused and interested that we were seeing all this alt-right neo-nazi and holocaust style stuff around the rise of trumpism. so trumpism is happening in the

electoral politics phase. and then we've got this thing for a minute we called alt right. it was seeing them cheerleading for trump and seeing them as parallel movements, i didn't understand why that was. and so i wanted to figure out how -- not just antisemitism, but specifically, holocaust denial has functioned in the united states before. >> that was the starting point? >> that was the starting point. how do -- because if you go back far enough in terms of the origins of american holocaust denial, which i did, you get back to like 1948. and holocaust denial has done a lot of terrible things, but one of the things it is weird. with so much evidence that it happened, how can it be that we say it didn't happen? that's especially true in 1948 when there are lots of people in the world who are witnesses to what happened. so how can it be that it is a source of denial for a political movement? well, it is not that they earnestly believe it didn't

happen. they using holocaust denial for a reason, as part of a political project. and that is what i got into in the '40s, and that is how i found my defendants. and that is how i learned they all got put on trial, and they all got off when the judge died. and i thought you know what? i was going to tell a different story. i think i'm going tell this one. because i didn't know any of it. >> there is -- you trace in the book different strands of pro fascist anti-semitic nazi-aligned thought and actors in the u.s. how would you describe -- because in some ways there is a -- it's a little bit of a misfit toys situation. there is some real odds once in there. >> yeah. >> but they're also operating in a discursive environment that is not closed off to what they're saying. >> correct. >> tell me about public opinion

around the question of fascism and the rise of it in 1930, '31, '32, when some of the people you document in the book are trying to, and sometimes at the behest of the german government, cultivate sympathy. >> fascism was the movement of the future. fascism did not have the cast that we associate it now retrospectively with nazi germany. the number one selling book in america in 1941 was written by charles lindbergh's wife, anne lindbergh, and it was about how fascism was coming to america, and wouldn't that be fantastic, because we could finally get some stuff done. and it was, in fact, a lot of people who have looked into it -- i can't say this definitively, but a lot of people believe it was ghost-written by a guy named lawrence dennis, who was sort of the leading intellectual fascist of the time. he actually wrote a book called

"the coming american fascism." one of the things that we found was old nbc radio archives from town meeting of the air, which was a great debate show that they used to host on one of the nbc radio networks. and in one of the very first ones they did, they brought lawrence dennis on to argue for fascism against other people who were arguing against fascism, and he wiped the floor with them. >> fascism crossfire. >> fascism crossfire. he totally won. it was a popular thing. by the time you get to 1940, 83% of the american people is against us joining world war ii. 83%. that's what fdr was up against. and some of that was just we don't want to fight another war. >> right. >> but some of that is the people you want us to fight against we actually think has the better idea. >> how did that go about cultivating -- we talk about dennis for a little bit. >> yeah. >> who is a worthwhile spending a little time on. >> oh, there is such a good

twist when it comes to him, yeah. >> but talk about him a little bit. >> so lawrence dennis had been a state department official. he had been -- he had gone to harvard. he was a very erudite, very articulate guy, and he was -- he had kind of a substack contrariness to him. you couldn't compliment him without him insulting you for complimenting him. he was that kind of guy. but also in his gruffness and contrariness made everybody fall in love with him. men, women, old, young, it didn't matter. everybody had a crush on lawrence dennis, and he slept his way through the 1930s in a way that he didn't understand why his wife minded. a lot of interesting stuff about him. but he was writing speeches and books for the isolationists. and the isolationists weren't calling themselves fascists overtly, but they had the leading intellectual self-described fascist in america writing their stuff.

and dennis was a favorite of the nazi government in berlin, and they brought him over for the nurenberg rallies. they brought him over to germany and gave him access to everybody up to and including hitler. and he used it to essentially become a very well networked, very influential person. he interviewed mussolini, interviewed hitler, spent time with all the most important diplomats and foreign leaders of the time, and then he came home and wrote speeches for isolationist senators and books for isolationists wives and heroes. and he was one of the sedition trial defendants. and he was so arrogant he not only defended himself in court, but he insisted that there should be mental examinations of his co-defendants which they once they realized was actually a which out of it, agreed. they all wanted mental examinations. >> he is -- he is sort of the leading -- the leading fascist american intellectual that you document, but there is also --

the soil -- the seed is being planted in somewhat fertile soil for a bunch of reasons. i wonder if you can talk a little bit about why that is the case. there is the fact that world war i was brutal and awful. and there is an interesting thing that happens in both this book and "ultra" which is people that totally and understandably was whoa, that was a disaster being kind of prepared to we're never doing that again. and that posture, which is not at all a crazy posture, a total rational posture, being the kind of slippery slope by which they end up in first isolationism and then outright fascism. you have the depression. and then you have this sense of like the brokenness of the american system/like the messiness of democracy. all three of those things are sort of running themes in the people that are pushing for,

proposing or in the case of huey long, embodying an alternate to that. >> yes. i think it's easiest to see it when you look at what the germans were secretly telling us. so one of the things we now know, and this is in "ultra" and it's in the book too is that there was a really big, really aggressive, really well funded secret german propaganda effort targeting the american people. and what were they trying to do? they were basically trying to do three things probably i guess you could narrow it down to. one was to support isolationism however they could. however you wanted to hear it, they would help you hear it. any argument against the americans joining the war, they were all for that. they also wanted to turn us against our allies by making us see fascism as preferable to every other form of government. so they're arguing that we shouldn't go to war to defend our ally, britain, because in what sense are they really ally? they're corrupt. they're an empire.

they're cruel. they're weak. the germans, who have a much better idea, are going to run over them in a matter of weeks. why would we side with the failing empire that we should resent and not with the germans who have a better idea. they're also trying to make us believe that we are inherently weak, that we should change our own form of government, and that by having a democracy, we are opening ourselves up to be controlled by the jews, to be controlled by international forces, to be controlled by those who would send us into the meat grinder of these wars, when really we should just let germany win inside of them. so really they were trying to articulate all of those through any american voices they could put in the mouths of. it was american congress, people like dennis, an american nazi agent who is running 12 different publications, it's publishing houses that they have bought, it's magazines. and the messages that they were trying to sell us, to me it's

just unnerving and clarifying to see them, because it is so much the story that we are still being sold by those who would prefer that we became a strong-man form of government instead of a democracy today. it's the exact same message. the cockroach. resilient creatures. true miracles of evolution. where there is one, others aren't far behind. always scavenging for food, the cockroach... well that's horrifying. ortho home defense max indoor insect barrier.

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well, the message is that there are -- it's not just that there are minority groups that ugh you out. these minority groups are secretly powerful. they're the hidden power behind the scenes, and you think you're controlling the government. you think you're voting for people, but your vote doesn't really matter, because there is a secret cabal. we can't really participate in a democracy, why would we give the secret cabal the vote? what the government needs to do is protect us from those people. we need a government that is strong, that has authority, that can protect us from those people. to vote is cute, but it's weak, and this is the only way that we can efficiently compete with the real countries on earth, the real strong countries, you know, you would say today china, russia, hungary. >> right.

>> and so that message is the same. it's to turn us against each other to make us believe that democracy doesn't work, to align us with strongmen countries in other parts of the world. the other piece of it is that there is no knowable truth, right. >> yes. this is really important. >> this is really important. and i can tell right now that this sounds woo woo, but it's not woo woo. it's very specific. one of the things they do is they tell you don't believe journalism, don't believe science, don't believe experts, don't believe history. it's all fake. it's all designed to bamboozle you. none of these expertise, none of these so-called source of expertise are real. the only knowable truth is something you feel in your gut. and let me tell you what to feel in your gut. separating us from the idea of knowable truth means we don't recognize real practical problems in the world, we don't recognize real practical solutions to those problems, which we should put our government to, and it means that

you're very susceptible to both conspiracy theories and you're susceptible to suggestion from the leader who wants you to do things that you probably would not do on your own steam if you had your wits about you. and that dislocation from the truth, don't trust the media, don't trust science, don't trust experts, don't trust any political opposition, don't trust journalism, that is part of the authoritarian project, and it always has been. >> okay. so here is one of the things that is so fascinating to me in reading the book. everything you just described, when they happen now, when versions of them happen now, there is this very i think somewhat ahistorical, but also understandable tendency to put them on the technology of the time. all of the same traits that i think we try to see as an outgrowth of some technological moment here, platform moment, it's just all there. they're just doing -- it's like analog versions of it. >> yeah. >> and it's as far as i can tell almost as effective. >> yeah. the thing that has changed i

think is the iterative nature of the media, your ability to talk back in the social environment. so what that does is i think it can work as an accelerant. so somebody says a lie to you, you repeat the lie back to them. okay, sheer bigger lie, you repeat that back, sheer bigger lie. it helps the messages be targeted better i think. but, yeah, there is a very, very famous celebrity pilot in her day. pilots used to be like the kardashians and the travis kelces. it was everything all together. >> who doesn't want a pilot? >> exactly. they were the celebrities of their day like you cannot believe. and after amelia earhart amelia earharted, the most female aviate trix was laura ingles. little house on the primary? no, her eighth cousin. >> don't get it twisted.

>> she flew an airplane over the white house and dropped pamphlets over the white house out of an airplane that were -- very impressive. also, you don't want to see those pamphlets. so she was actually working for the gestapo. she was an american who was on the payroll of the nazis. she was answering to the top gestapo agent in the united states, and she was like fully getting paid, had a monthly stipend. there is this great moment -- have you ever -- you know how you do times machine? if you have a "new york times" subscription, you can do the time machine. it turns out there is a limit how much you can use the time machine. >> you found it? >> i found it by spending a lot of time with laura ingles. >> like getting kicked out of the bar at 4:00 a.m. >> that's it. >> you are done. >> you are overserved on stories about laura ingles, nazi aiviaatrix. i got cut off and they called

me. i don't think you had my number. it was so weird. but she was so famous that there was an article in the newspaper, in "the new york times" in 1934 when she got a speeding ticket. article in "the new york times." by 1935 she was so famous there was an article in "the new york times" when she got a parking ticket. it was crazy how famous she was. and then she is working for gestapo and dropping flyers over the white house. there is this amazing story from when she goes on trial. one of the witnesses against her in her trial was a surgeon who operated on her who said after she was under the laughing gas, all she wanted to talk about was her swastika necklace. but one of the most influential and popular celebrities in the entire country. now her espousing the views that she had and being such a daredevil in the way she was expressing them, we don't have anything like that today. that's a different kind of power in terms of media. >> and that level of mass fame is harder to achieve now because of how fractured it is.

>> yes. >> there is these people in the book, and laura ingalls is a great example you've never heard of, and they were massively famous at the time. there is a bunch of those you tell the story of, and then there is henry ford. you know, it's so funny because i know, again, the broad strokes of henry ford, brilliant industrialist, ford motors, basically created the modern means of -- the sort of modern factory method of assembly production, brought costs down in doing so, paid his workers a higher wage than others, also a raving anti-semite. that's my two sentences on ford. the last part of that, that last sentence, like i knew it, but when you read it in your book, when you reencounter henry ford on the subject of the jews. >> yeah. >> and what and the lengths he went to, i really don't think that we -- i think that we need

to kind of reverse the order of that bioin the two sentences. this guy was wildly dangerous and bad and aligned with the worst forces in human history. >> and i knew about ford's antisemitism as if it were a private vice. no. he was a different thing. it was one of the things he contributed to this world. do you want me to read that part? >> i would like you to read that part. >> do you guys mind if i read? [ applause ] ♪♪ in my life and i turned to food for comfort. a friend told me that i was the only one holding me back from being as beautiful on the outside as i am the inside. once i saw golo was working, i felt this rush, i just had to keep going. a lot of people think no pain no gain, but with golo it is so easy. when i look in the mirror, i don't even recognize myself. golo really works.

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he was one of the most successful and celebrated industrialists on the planet. his antisemitism was rank and it was unchecked. he spewed it freely in private tirades among friends, family, close business cohorts, newspaper reporters, or pretty much anybody within earshot. in the office, in private chats, in interviews, at dinner, even on camping trips. a close friend wrote in his diary after witnessing one late night around the campfire diatribe, "ford attributes all evils to jews." ford even ordered his engineers

to fogo the use of any brass in his model t automobile. he a custody brass a jews metal. ford said wherever there is anything wrong with the country, you'll find the jews on the job there. he blamed a vast jewish conspiracy for inciting his workers and stockholders to demand he share a sliver more of the ford profits with them. he blamed the jews for the gold standard and the advent of the federal reserve bank. he blamed jews for ruining motionictures in america. he blamed jews for ruining popular music. he blamed jews for ruining baseball. ford was hardly the only rad cat anti-semite in the u.s. circa 1920. but in addition to his fortune and his famous name and his iconic company, he had a megaphone your average crazy uncle theorizer lacked. he had twitter -- no, i'm kidding. sorry. it's an act.

"he had a newspaper. it was called the dearborn independent, which he had purchased for a song in 1918. the paper was a big money loser in the beginning, poor to middle circulation. ford's harangues did little to draw new readers. how many attacks on the man who had beaten ford in the michigan senate race did the public really want? oh, but truman h. newberry had stolen that election. one of the independent's editorial staffers was a veteran of the new york newspaper wars. he had an idea. he wrote to ford's right-hand man. find an evil to attack. let's find some sensationalism. and lo, the answer ended uned bien not long after. a newly translated english edition translation the meetings of the learned elders of zion. the pamphlet was the work of rapidly antisemitic russian fascists who were furious at the bolshevik's toppling of the

autocracy. not just a local affair; they portrayed it as the early innings of a plot by a cabal of all powerful jewish schemers to take over the world. the protocols was build as the product of a surreptitious note taker at a top secret meeting wherein these jewish puppet masters had drawn up their strategy. now there was no secret meeting, obviously. there was no secret plot. there was no surreptitious note taker. the whole thing was a work of fiction. a very considered, a very deliberate lie, and a very dangerous piece of propaganda. ford and his newspaper bore down on it alacrity. they started a new weekly series in the dearborn independent based on the protocols. it would end up being a 92-part weekly series. every week for 92 weeks, headlines like these, "the international jew, the world's problem". and "jewish jazz, moron music, becomes our national music." and this one, "the perils of

baseball, too much jew slow. the headlines were splashed on to the headlines of ford's paper distributed in dealership across the country. in book form it was titled "the international jew." it ran to four volumes. never mind it was exposed as make belief in 1921, right in the middle of his 92-week series. his weekly international jew essays continued without pause, and ford motor dealers kept tossing the latest edition on to the front seat of newly purchased model t's all over the country. ford saw to that it the four volumes of "international jew" were translated and distributed worldwide in 12 international editions, including one in germany. and put a pin in that. of all the contributions henry ford made to this world, one of them was this. the most prolific, most sustained published attack on jews the world had ever known.

the german edition of ford's book had landed in the hands of one particularly gifted propagandist, one adolf hitler's book mein kampf was published in 1925, the author appeared to lift not just ideas, but whole passages from ford's own publications. mein kampf's first edition extolled ford by name. hitler wrote, "it is jews who govern the stock exchange forces of the american union. every year makes them more and more the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of 120 million. only a single great man, ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence. by this point, hitler had already mulled sending german shock troops to major american cities to aid in what he hoped would be henry ford's run for president in 1924. when a reporter from the detroit news showed up at nazi party headquarters in munich in december 1931 to interview hitler, she had a series that was called "five minutes with

men in public eye." she had her five minutes with hitler. when she went to hitler's office, she was surprised to find hanging on the wall behind hitler's desk, a large framed portrait of a very famous american. hitler explained to the newspaper woman i regard henry ford as my inspiration. the detroit reporter asked hitler that day point-blank why he was antisemitic. he said without hesitation, "somebody has to be blamed for our troubles." i feel like you go back in time to that -- go back in time to then, like the worst thing that you could find, if you could time machine yourself back to the future style, see your family or see people you were interested in at that time, the worst thing that you could imagine is that they would have a portrait of hitler at that time. i think hitler having a portrait of you. >> is actually worse. >> i didn't know that was an

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like did we export this? how much is it actually coming from us? and this is -- and this is not the only place that's the case. to talk a little bit about that notion, that anti-semitism, which i think everyone understands is sort of ubiquitous and universal. it's not particular to one era or one place. but i do think there's a sense it's this endemic european problem and the u.s. was a little more immune from it, and that just is not -- >> not the case. i think one of the -- one of the things that is unsettling about the henry ford dynamic is the idea that it was a west to east conveyance. you also saw that at the university of arkansas law school. the nazis sent a young important

rising star nazi lawyer to spend the year at the university of arkansas lawyers doing a study on american race law because they wanted to learn about how america could be seen as a paragon of democracy and good guy country in the world while oppressing african americans to the degree that we were, while oppressing indigenous americans, native americans to the degree that we were, and while conquering countries around the world and subjugating people in those countries. their constitution says this is not possible but they're still doing it. they thought that was an excellent idea, and so they sent a nazi lawyer to the university of arkansas to do a deep study of american racist law and the way that you can have the 14th amendment and also jim crow and

also lynching. and they brought that -- it was a nazi government production. they brought his report back to munich in berlin, and they used it as the basis for discussion for writing the nuremburg laws to strip jews of their citizenship in germany. they learned some of that from us, and if you think it's something in the german character that milwaukees you susceptible to fascism, i invite you to spend time thinking about that anecdote. it's very disturbing. ote. it's very disturbing

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♪♪ there have been headlines the last few days about the sort of vision being put together around people around donald trump, about what a second term would look like and particularly staffing it and particularly who the lawyers would be and what the lawyers would do and how lawyers would approach their job. one of the things that i recognized in the last days of particularly the trump administration is that the rule of law, which is like a grandiose abstract term is just as a kind of sociological fact

is what a class of lawyers will or won't go for at a certain moment. in reality what it means is like when it's time to do the coup, which lawyers will be like, yes, and which will be like no? and that's like a socyoological fact as opposed to an abstract fact about law, because the law is no, you can't. but you get people with bad enough faith and bad enough intentions and sort of morally dubious enough and smart enough -- >> smart enough is important. >> they can come up with ways to make a colorable argument that, yes. we got lucky there were a few, but there were many more who didn't. but that didn't it comes down to that, which it sort of shows up in that fayetteville chapter, that's everyone who's operating the system of jim crow in the south knows what they're doing. that really haunts me because

it's what i think about the most when i read the stories about the 2025 project, about trump's plans, and about what ultimately the guardrail is which keeps liberal democracy and rule of law and not something like a dictatorship. >> right. and to be clear, i should just say this the book is called prequel not because of the bad guys but because of the good guys. there's no only hitler is hitler, only nazis are nazis. there's no modern analogy of german under hitler from 1933 to 1935. there isn't one, don't try to make one. the prequel for people to learn from here, the story that went before that feels like the antecedent to where we are now against americans who are fighting against the ultraright in this previous time. both in the government but also mostly outside the government people who are trying to outflank and expose them and

hold them to account. so that -- i know it's obvious to everyone here. it's important to say. but in terms of what's going on in contemporary terms, thinking about this project 2025 stuff, and i realize i'm having another one of those moments, which you know me well enough to know it happens all the time, which is everybody sees it one way and i i'm really stuck on a piece of it i see differently and i can't let it go. and that's the insurrection act part of it. this reporting in "the washington post" last sunday that trump -- project 2025 plan involves invoking the insurrection act on the first day that he is sworn in for his next term. and it keeps getting discussed as how crazy is it that trump wants to use the military against peaceful protesters. well, first of all, these protests are hypothetical. we don't know that they exist. also, there's nothing in them invoking the insurrection act that has anything to do with protest. if you in your first day of

office give yourself the power to use the military military against u.s. civilians on u.s. soil, do you think it matters whether or not there is a protest anywhere in the country tat day or any subsequent day? it is -- it is the czech ovian bloated gun sitting on the table in the first act of the play that will be used by the end of the play, and it is accruing power to himself in a way that it's not like they'll do it for 12 hours and then give it back, right? the idea of the authoritarian project is to gather all power to the leader both inside the government and outside the government, so you're not allow today be a political opponent. you're also not allowed today be a media critic, and you're not really allow today be a civic society if that civic society entails any opposition or criticism of the leader. this is how fascism works. there may be another government

that includes other sources of authority when the leader takes over, but those other sources of authority from the government will be either neutered or closed down. and so the congress will not function. the state will no longer be free. civil society will not be able to do anything that is critical or in opposition. political opponents will not be tolerated. ultimately disfavored minorities will be scapegoated and you head down an eliminationist path, and this is how these things go. to know that i will accrue all power to myself, i will unify civilian and military authority on day one and have that be the announced plan, it just means that we're there. this is -- this is it. it's not a -- we're not in a hypothetical confrontation with a leader who promises authoritarian rule. we are in an explicit choice. >> well, the choice part is the

part that i think a lot of people have a hard time with. and it's something that appears in the book, which is that, you know, fascism in both its italian and german forms and different themes because it functions a little differently there, but it is a popular movement. like, it's not -- it's the case of there was mass mobilization of millions of people and yes we want this, and there's a fascinating eirony to it in that it is a grass movement of actual supporters mobilizing in favor of what will ultimately be an authoritarian project that makes the civil society that allows for mass movements basically to go away. >> yeah. >> and i think a lot of people

probably in this room probably in the podcast and watching this probably are like how is this popular, and why is this popular? and i'm curious if you feel like you've got insights that you've drawn from this period of historical study. again, it's not like a precise apples to apples. but people wanting a charismatic leader who's going to fight for them and sort of defend their purity or -- >> embody the nation. >> embody the nation against its enemies foreign and domestic. that is a very -- that has been a very popular recipe. >> yeah. and there's different kinds of authoritarians. fascism is a mass mobilization movement, and that's also complex, right, because one of the things that happens in fascist societies becomes impossible not to be part of a movement, so you may be an enthusiast, but even if you're not, you're probably going to be

out there imagining the thing because there's no choice. you create the illusion of unitary nation who's subject to and a fan of the great leader about whom there's a cultive personality and who you're not allowed to oppose. >> in fact there's a huey long line you quote, and i don't think he was a fascist but he was an authoritarian, he says you can get to a point where it looks like a democracy and it's not a democracy anymore because people are so happy for you. no one is complaining anymore because you solved everything. this was his line. >> why bother voting? we all agree. that was kind of his line. it is amazing, too, that louisiana under huey long was routinely described as a dictatorship, and not like people were throwing that as an epithet, in court it was described as a dictatorship. it was a defense actually used by people who were put on trial in federal court for having been part of his immensely corrupt

graft schemes in louisiana. the judge -- judges would say, like, well, you weren't huey long so you didn't have a choice in the matter. this is dictatorship, you actually didn't have free will, therefore, yes, you took the bribes but your kicking them up to him. it was accepted that he was a dictator, and that's why natives love the idea of huey long. and that's confusing if you look at authoritarianism as a conservative versus liberal thing because lots of things about huey long kind of look liberal. >> very left coded. >> policy does not matter. it is about accruing all policy to the leaders. and they'll say and do anything in order to get all the power, but then once they've got it, that's the point. >> there's a certain kind of, like, specific visual grammar and sort of language syntax and cadence to fascism or to broadly authoritarian movements, of sort

of popular leadership cults. and there's a picture in the book of huey long's big portrait over a rally and you see it immediately and you're like, i know exactly what this is. like there's the big picture of the guy, and i feel that way about -- to bring it back to contemporary, i feel that way about the use of the word "vermin." trump in a speech this week in a speech. when you see that photo and you're like i know what i'm looking at. it's like when i hear a populous leader describe the other people in the political spectrum as vermin, who have like infested the nation, i just know what that is immediately. >> everybody knows what that is, and i think he knows what that is. >> yes. >> there's also something -- there's a little bit of -- i don't know even know what we should call it.

i think of it as a playground thing that he does in terms of his politics. do you know where the idea of fake news came from, that phrase? that phrase was not donald trump's phrase. that was used to describe what was happening in russian information spaces where they were writing legitimately fake made up news stories and then siloing them into the u.s. news ecosystem through pro-russian sort of covert sources, and it was a legitimate thing. like this thing didn't happen in montenegro, but russian propaganda sources wrote this thing happened in montenegro and now weirdly there are right-wing news sources in america describing this thing that happened in montenegro that never happened in montenegro. it was a real thing and part of what was going on with russian disinformation and election interference efforts in 2016,

and people were starting to figure it out, that that was one of the weird things that was happening in our information universe in that election, and then trump adopted it, and said all news is fake news. and so then you couldn't use that term anymore to describe this one technical thing, which we had been previously describing, and without a term to describe it, we then lost track of it because then it became a thing that had meaningless name, and so then you can't talk about that thing happening. there's some of that, and i think that -- >> with what? >> with the use of the word vermin and with the way he's now calling his enemies fascists. he has started calling you and me and everybody in the -- everybody who's not team trump is a fascist, that he has to save the country from the fascists. and he's using this terminology, which is overtly and obviously fascist callback language. things like, you know, enemy of the people, yes, okay. but calling your internal enemy

vermin that needs to be u terminated, he knows what he's doing. and that will make everyone say, wow, that's the wildest thing i've ever heard, and fascist, fascist and then the word fascist doesn't mean anything anymore, and we don't have a word anymore to describe what this thing is that he's trying to get us to do. this is -- [ applause ] so as he starts to advance what i think is a more overtly authoritarian project, watch for him to call everybody else an authoritarian and a tyrant and a fascist. it's to rob those words of their function. >> there's lots of -- there are people in your book who want to be the next, you know, american hitler and don't have it in them. and are don't mean morally, and just mean like whatever the stuff is, the charisma or whatever it is.

and i guess i -- i was thinking about reading your book, like what is it the thing? what is the thing that makes huey long successful in becoming huey long? what is the thing that makes trump successful -- there's a particular kind of type like authoritarian populist demagogue. different people have tried it in different ways. it has a lot of commonality in the rhetoric, and some succeed and some don't. and it feels alchemical to me at some level. i can't tell you what it is. i understand the basic dynamics of it. i understand blaming some small disfavored minority for the nation's ills and the sort of invigorating feeling of solidarity that comes with the nation's blood coursing through the rally and all being directed in one place like a bunch of solar panels aimed up at a water

tower. so everything together, embroiled together. and i can get that and look at someone who's gifted at rhetoric and has presence and charisma, which is 100% true about him. but in the end it's like if you ask me to -- you know, if i had the nba draft of like fascist autocrats and i was like running them through the paces, i don't know in the end what makes someone work for someone and not for someone else. >> this is a very unpopular opinion, but i do not believe that the leader matters. >> this is what i sort of -- >> the movement matters. >> it's prior to -- he backs into it at some level. >> you need a country that is looking for an authoritarian solution. and you need people who are willing to submit themselves to the authority of the person who says they deserve it. so you've got -- like franco was

napoleon sized. like hitler was a dork. mussolini was a journalist and a socialist. >> those aren't the worst things. >> those aren't the worst things in the world, but like not a great linkedin setup for i then want to be little j. there's nothing about these guys that is inherently, that transform those countries against their will. those countries were subject to an anti-democratic, proauthoritarian movement that had skills, and the people were ready to do it. and so you end up with a huey long being very skelful in the project that he was part of. the person who fdr most feared running against in 1936 was huey long. and in 1935 as huey long was gearing up to start his presidential campaign where he was going to run against fdr and fdr believed if anybody could beat him, it would be huey. that in 1935 fdr was at the

summer white house in high park, new york, and he had summoned father cog von der leyen to come talk to him about the fact cog von der leyen was cleary supporting huey long. he believed cog von der leyen and long together would absolutely bring a fascist dictatorship within two years. it was an unstoppable force the two of them and he was there to talk cog von der leyen out of it. and as he was driving that day to talk to his house fdr was assassinated. >> spoiler alert. >> that was 1935 and that was the way things went that way. in terms of what huey long's power was, i think what was magic about him was his unbridled appetite for power. >> right. >> the thing that he did was, yes, he paved roads and he gave away free school textbooks, and he was a spellbinding orator, and he wore silk outfits, and

there's all sorts of things you could say about him. but really what he was a maestro of was power. and that was the thing that you need to be able to do, to be able to lead a society in that direction while telling a country -- while telling a people that they need to do it, that they can only trust you, and that their enemies are out to get them, and you're the only one who can protect them from those enemies. that's how it works.

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the moment i met him i knew he was my soulmate. help st. jude give kids with cancer a chance. "soulmates." soulmate! [giggles] why do you need me? [laughs sarcastically] but then we switched to t-mobile 5g home internet. and now his attention is spent elsewhere. but i'm thinking of her the whole time. that's so much worse. why is that thing in bed with you? this is where it gets the best signal from the cell tower! i've tried everywhere else in the house! there's always a new excuse. well if we got xfinity you wouldn't have to mess around with the connection. therapy's tough, huh? -mmm. it's like a lot about me. [laughs] a home router should never be a home wrecker. oo this is a good book title.

♪♪ can i ask you a personal question? >> yes. >> so i make this joke when i talk about my job where i say something along the lines -- my staff has heard this. it's now going on eight years of my one precious life dealing with -- thinking about this

dude. >> huey long? >> huey long. and, like, obviously world's smallest violin i'm extremely lucky to do what i do, and i love what i do, but there's an exhaustion factor to it. you guys feel that way, too. there's exhaustion but there's also, like, got to be -- the movement on the other side. how do you -- are you exhausted, too? seriously because people ask me all the time and i'm like i feel for myself, i feel very mission driven. i feel like the stakes are incredibly high. when you just said what you said before about looking at the stakes day one and i feel that

way for much of it. that is animated and gives me a sense of zeal and energy. sometimes i'm like -- yeah, i cannot. and so i just balance those two, but i'm curious how you do. >> well, i think one thing you and i talked about this over beers, but one of the things that is a privilege and a pleasure of our job -- maybe not a pleasure. privilege. is that if you're here and if you watch msnbc and you know us from -- you're thinking about this stuff all the time, right? you're consuming the news all the time, and you're thinking about our country, and you are worrying about the worst people in america and what they might do next all the time. we all are. you then, have to do all of that and then go do your jobs. >> right. >> chris and i are doing all of that, but then our job is processing.

so it's therapy. we're all being put through the same rings and we get to talk about this stuff. to that end part of my day job has also been writing this book and doing ultra and working on other projects like that. i'm working on ultra season 2 right now. and what is energizing to me about that is, again, the good guys. you think the bad guys in this are obscure. most of them are other than coglin, but the bad guys are the americans who -- you know, the beleaguered secretary who is working for this minnesota senator, who is such a freaking creep every time she gets paid by the senate, she has to hand back half of her salary to him in cash. that's how much power she had in the workplace, and yet she went to the fbi. and she told the fbi what her

senator boss was doing with that well-known nazi agent. like that is a woman who did not sign for the marines and plan to pretend to be a paratrooper somewhere, but she was somebody who was not in a powerful position at all, and she did something that was really important for her country. i am very enthused to learn her story. i'm very enthused to learn about the guy who was like this really milktoast, like normal middle of the road guy whose field of expertise was direct meal advertising, and yet when his son came home from the first semester of college and was, like, dad, i'm getting all this propaganda, this anti-semitic, progerman propaganda at school, it's really freaking me out, i don't know what to do with it. he was like, well, i do happen to have an area of expertise that relates to stuff being sent in the mail, and he applied his random area of expertise to

becoming a one man expository journalist and investigator to find out and to literally document for the good of the country a multi-million dollar covert propaganda campaign that the germans were running through 24 congressional offices and multiple front organizations all over the country, and he exposed it. and he was an ad man. he was a random civilian who did this. i'm so energized by stories like that because who's going to be that sesecretary? who's going to be that ad man, raking for the adl in southern california and running a spy ring? >> this guy's amazing because they notice german groups and los angeles were starting to have hitler youth summer camps and they were worried about that. who are the heroes among us today who didn't sign up to be heroes but heroism is coming to their door? so i am energized by that. but i also feel like, you know, for all of us being a

250-year-old democracy is hard. there aren't very many, and the seeds of anti-democratic projects and authoritarian projects are within the heart of every person who lives in a democracy because democracy like you were saying at the outset, chris, is about us deciding something together, us as equals with our rights and our sacred lives given to us by almighty god, and equal before one another can decide together how we will be governed, and that is a beautiful thing unless you think that some of the people who are in with you shouldn't get a say because they're creeps. and who among us has not felt that way? it's not an evil thing to think actually i've got a better idea than you, you shouldn't get a say. it's a natural thing. but as small "d" democrats we have to be committed to the idea that this is a better system of

government than all the others for all of its flaws. the great, you know, tactical disadvantage for those of us who will fight for democracy is that fighting for democracy you have one tool to do it, it's democracy. you must use democratic means to defeat anti-democratic forces, and that can feel like fighting with one hand tied behind your back, but you're either a democrat or you're not. and that makes it -- it's hard. it's hard, and you've got to do it. s hard it's hard, and you've got to do it hi, i'm michael, i've lost 62 pounds on golo and i have kept it off. most of the weight that i gained was strictly in my belly which is a sign of insulin resistance. but since golo, that weight has completely gone away, as you can tell. thanks to golo and release, i've got my life and my health back.

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♪♪ i have a few questions for folks in the audience, and that perfectly segues to this which is from angela from stanford, connecticut, and she says how do you handle close friends or family or others that you know who have extreme or different political views? asking for a friend. >> i live in rural western massachusetts, and living in rural western new england, like dirt road new england has a lot of great things about it.

now we have the internet, which is new, which has really made things a lot better. but one of the things that i think as a kid who grew up in the suburbs and who lived ibcities my whole life and now have lived in the country for the past 20 years, one of the things it has taught me is that politics is only one thing in any one person's life. and even for people who are committed news junkies and political activists or work for a political party or they're even an elected official themselves, they also have bears getting into their trash. and they also have a lot of heart break about what's happened to the patriots. and they also have a lot of -- >> a lot of heart break. >> and they are taking care of their elderly parent who they didn't expect to be taken care of at this point in their life and they've got kids and parents and they're the responsible

family member, and they've got another family member who's in recovery that they're so hopeful for but also scared for. and there is, i believe, something really important that you can do in your nonpolitical life that will improve your political life, which is have personal relationships with people face-to-face that are about everything besides politics, too. and it's hard to do. i think post covid it's even harder to do, but do you have a book club? do you want to maybe start a book club? it can be on zoom. do you have a neighbor who lives alone? do you, you know, want to be a part of a civic group that's working on a local pipeline to come through your town? do you want a vet volunteer

hospital? something that connects you to the people in your immediate area that isn't about finding consensus about what's going to happen in the 2024 election is good for your community, it is good for your soul. and when things get very hard, being able to look at other people in the eye, recognize each other as humans can save their life. >> agreed. i've got another one. from rural pennsylvania. this is completely out of the blew, and i don't think a single person in the audience has given this any thought, but i'm asking anyway. >> good. >> what do you think of the latest polls? why do they show biden and trump neck and neck? [ laughter ] >> i don't know. ask president romney.

i mean you're actually much better at reading polls than i am. i feel like -- no, you are. you do a better job and more supple with them and everything. i look at them like -- i feel like polls in my lifetime are garbage except occasionally they're right. >> except when they're not. >> except when they're not. yes, you can spend all your time worrying about the polls, or you can work as hard as possible for the candidate you want to win. and, you know, sometimes there's interesting cross path information about, like, a specific group of people who used to think about this your chosen candidate now thinks this about that person. okay, that might be helpful in terms of the way you want to go work for your candidate. the point for them especially for us as a public for people who are not political professionals is that they tell you what work needs to be done.

so if you're worried about the polls, calibrate your level of political involvement to watch exactly your anxiety about the polls. if you're freaked out about it, just do something. again, like, do something with other humans. you'll be better for it, and you'll be more resilient, again, in difficult times. >> this is from debbie p. in chapel hill, north carolina. i think i might have pet debbie before the show who came here from chapel hill to see us today. this is a trade craft question that i also have having watched you up close for years. how do you come up with such amazing topics that sart out seeming totally random and drive a stake through the heart of a relevant event? >> it is that -- it's that meteor thing. i think i have -- >> but how? how? i want to get real brass tacks.

process where does this -- where does the seed come from the random anecdote that is the start of the thing? you're reading all the time, or you follow some -- like -- >> in general it's good to read all the time. the one thing i always tell people in our business is if there's one piece of advice i could impart to you, well, if you're a female person who's coming to this, first of all never show your emotions, no one will understand. but otherwise male or female. >> good tell. >> still true, hello. but in general for everybody read beyond the assigned reading. like whatever the assigned reading is what's going on in the news cycle, read beyond that. you never know what's going to be relevant. read stuff that interests you, that is nonfiction, that is journalism and history and that is academic works that interests you. you never know when it's going

to be relevant or a helpful contribution. the way it works on a day-to-day basis is that there's something going in the news i'm interested in or confused by or want to understand better, and i keep looking stuff about it that interests me, and teach myself that thing and then i teach other people that thing. but it depends -- again, like your mileage may vary. my story telling style does not work for everybody, but if you don't mind coming along on the journey that i am on, i really believe over the course of one conversation you can get to a graduate school level of complexity with anybody as long as you're willing to start together in kindergarten. and that's why i -- that's why i -- like some people don't like that i repeat things, that i'll restate and loop back and restate and loop back and restate as we're going through. and some people find that very frustrating. like i heard you the seventh

time, i didn't need it the 17th. but that's because we're starting here and going here, and we need to make sure we're all there every step of the way. the weirder the topic or more unfamiliar the proper nouns are, i think the more you have to pay attention to the way you tell the story so that by the time you get to the point of it, there is a, oh, like it all comes together, i got it. and the way i always -- like my shorthand for myself is that by the time we get to the end of the story, i want you to understand it well enough that you can tell somebody else, not just like send a clip of rachel doing it, but you've got it so that you can tell that story. like that's what i'm always trying to do. >> have you -- have you tweaked -- what are changes you've made to your method of like in process and in final versions over the course of the long career you've now had doing

this? >> the "a" block keeps getter longer, which is -- sorry. if you represent one of our advertisers, i'm particularly sorry. that's a real consequence in that regard. yeah, i don't know. like i said, i do have this kind of one gear brain, and so i don't think that i've changed very much in terms of the way that i think about the news. i tried for a while to pay attention to the visual elements that are on the screen while i am talking, but that didn't work, so i gave up on that. that was like my big try, my big effort to try to notice what's -- >> i feel like you're very involved in the production element. >> yes. but i don't look at them while i'm talking. >> oh, yeah, you can't look at them while you're talk. you were looking at them while you're talking? >> well, i'm not aware of -- i will choose what elements, but i don't know when they're on the screen and i don't speak to them, and i don't know what you're looking at. them, and i don't know what you're looking at.

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>> so noem. >> i think i know part of the answer to this. i'm curious to hear you say. fe lease t. says, how do you decompress, given the critical nature of your job? >> there is a little bit of fishing. i -- since i switched to mondayo instead of being on five days a week -- i know that you guys don't -- i know. i know. more, more, more, more, more, more, more. thank you. here's the thing. i couldn't keep -- i was dying. and so i'm sorry that i'm only there on mondays, but i am alive.bu >> i really can't overemphasize how unsustainable her entire work flow is. truly great. >> it's really bad. but the one thing that i've --

now i'm one day a week so now i'm not dying, so that's good. except i did used to count for compartmentalization purposes on the schedule of t daily live show. what that meant is no matter how long i worked during the course of the day, i am live at 9:00 p.m. eastern, no longer live at 10:01 -- sorry lawrence. and then at 10:01, i am done and will not work the rest of the evening unless there is some breaking news thing. and i do whatever i need to do until the morning when i work again. it's an on switch, off switch, on switch -- a switch. and the switch is only there on mondays. so, what's happening is that i'm just working seven days a week, and i'm working until midnight every day. because i'm doing all these other things, which are fantastic. and it is -- actually it's -- it's bad. iy have to fix it. >> all right. last question from g. jared in millerton, new york. what keeps you up at night?

>> wine. i used to do friday night cocktail moments -- >> oh, i remember. yeah. >> if i'm in the same room with something that is over 80 proof right now, i'm awake for five days. a glass of wine, and i am up at 3:00 in the morning being 50 years old. so, that is the true story about what's keeping me up at night. i just outgrew the ability to make cocktails. but in terms of this work, i do -- you know. one of the reasons i said that thing about trying to have some in-person connections with other people who live near you in your life right now, one of the reasons that i said that and i've been trying to tell people that when i've been speaking at audiences for this book tour and stuff -- is just because i do think that we are going to have a really hard year. and i think it's going to be a

really weird year. and if it goes very badly, it's going to be more weird, bad years after that. but regardless of how it goes a year from now, it's going to be a really tough year. and therefore, i want us all to make ourselves as resilient as we can. and that means not having baggage trailing behind you that you don't want to be trailing behind you. it means making up with your estranged family members. it means getting to know your neighbors. it means if you have very serious concerns about politics, it means working in a political campaign. it means having something to do with the civic life of where you are so that you are not alone while we have a tough year in this country. this has come for us in this generation, in this country, in this lifetime. and it does not come for every generation.

it has come for us. and we need to be up to it. b and it means you cannot live in your phone. you cannot -- [ applause ] you can't build from a position of despair and feeling powerless. and you need to have people who you can call, not just because they're on your side, but because you know them and they know you and you are americans together in a a difficult momen. and i just -- i want that kind of resilience for us all. and so, sorry to book club. >> rachel maddow, ladies and gentlemen.cl [ cheers and applause ] ♪♪ ♪♪

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