since election night and i don't know about you. i'm still not done thinking about it or talking about it. in fact, the show alone is not enough to hold all my thoughts on it. there aren't enough minutes in the day and i've been accruing these postelection takes, and now i'm ready to launch them out into the world, fire them into the world like one of those t-shirt cannons you see at sporting events. this week on my podcast the guest is me with pod producer donnie holloway and i just basically fired up the t-shirt take canon. lots of extra spicy ones up into the rafters on our current political environment, what happened on november 5th, what happens next. so just scan the qr code research chris haynes where you get your podcasts, and about to say i was a really great guest. that is all in on this tuesday night. alex lightner tonight starts right now. >> is that a promotion for the podcast? >> i think it is. i think i have some pretty good takes. >> i think a level of self effacement there. >> is the opposite of self effacement. >> it must be self effacement because surely you can't be

serious, except that i'm sure your t-shirt gun of heartaches is actually phenomenal and brilliant. like you. >> like -- >> the best guest you've had on your podcast. >> not the best but up there. good interviewing by donnie holiday. >> tough guest. listen, i'm excited to hear it. i just hear you talking about it from 10 feet away. on just eating into the minutes of my show to talk more about your podcast. >> fire off my t-shirt gun. >> this is probably our greatest series of handoffs this month, postelection. put it in the television archives. okay. that's enough of that now point like i said, there is a lot going on or cannot just chris haynes talking at us for an hour on his podcast, but there is a lot of news tonight and to understand one of the biggest stories unfolding right now, we are going to have to begin by going all the way back to the

year 1988. george h.w. bush had just been elected the 41st president hand when the time came a few months later for bush to nominate someone to lead the department of defense, he chose this guy, former texas republican senator john tower. tower had served in the senate for more than 20 years. he was a well-known figure on capitol hill and he had some powerful allies including the republican leader in the senate, bob dole, who testified in favor of tower at his confirmation hearing. >> this committee, i think a very thorough examination in store. that's the kind john tower wants. he understands that. it's what he wants and the only way it can happen, when it's all said and done, there's no doubt in my mind of the next secretary of defense will be john tower of texas. >> there's no doubt in my mind that when all is said and done,

the next secretary of defense will be john tower. senator dole had good reason to believe that. after all, at that point, no cabinet nominee had been rejected by the senate since dwight eisenhower in 1959. but then something unexpected happened. among the people called to testify at tower's hearing was a conservative activist named paul wyrick. why rick was an influential conservative who would end up reshaping the republican party. you might think about him as the steve bannon of his day, if steve bannon were a lot more productive with his hours. paul wyrick established the heritage foundation, which decades later published the project 2025 agenda. so it was a shock when paul wyrick got up to testify at john tower's confirmation hearing and said this -- >> my concern stems first from questions regarding the nominee's moral character. the old saying goes that where there is smoke, there is fire, must give one pause in this

case. the smoke surrounding the nominee's personal life seems rather intense. i have made enough personal observations of this man here in washington to have serious reservations about his moral character. >> reservations about john tower's moral character. what paul wyrick was referring to there was the open secret on capitol hill that john tower had a drinking problem and was known to his colleagues as a womanizer. wyrick would later tell the press that a republican senator had called why rick before the hearing and pleaded with wyrick not to testify against tower. now tower did his best to push back on the allegations. he told the new york times, have i ever drunk to access? yes. and i alcohol dependent? no. have i always been a good boy? of course not. but i've never done anything disqualifying. that's the point. but the damage was done. people started calling their senators, urging them to vote against the tower nomination.

specific allegations about tower's drunken behavior started to come out. the fbi special inquiries unit began investigating these allegations because that is the kind of thing the fbi is supposed to do with important national security nominee's. when the time came to vote on john tower, the senate rejected his nomination. the final vote was 53-47 and president bush moved on to his second choice for defense secretary, richard cheney, as in dick cheney. he was confirmed by a vote of 92-0. that history of john tower 's nomination is especially relevant tonight, in light of new reporting about the men donald trump has chosen to be his pick for secretary of defense, pete hegseth. before this week we knew that hegseth had been accused of drunkenly sexually assaulting a woman in 2017, allegations he denied. but as paul wyrick said in 1989, where there's smoke, there's fire. this week the new yorker's jane

mayer published on shell reporting with new allegations against hegseth. that reporting alleges that during hegseth's time as the head of a conservative veterans group, he was repeatedly anticipated while acting in his official capacity, so much so that he needed to be carried out of the organization's events. it includes allegations that hegseth once took his staff to a strip club where he was so drunk he tried to get on the stage and dance with the strippers. his own staff reportedly had to intervene to keep hegseth from getting thrown out. of a strip club. it includes allegations that hegseth treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account for partying, drinking, and hooking up with women on the road. there are allegations that on another work trip, hegseth at a bar, drunkenly chanted kill all muslims, kill all muslims. in response to the new yorker story, hegseth's lawyer said we are not going to comment on

outlandish claims laundered through the new yorker, and then went on to a technical ability of award-winning investigative journalist jane mayer. and now tonight, literally just a few hours ago, nbc news released new reporting alleging the concerns about hegseth's drinking continued through his career as a host on the fox news channel. nbc spoke with 10 current and former fox news employees who described hegseth's ranking. two people said that on more than a dozen occasions during hegseth's time as cohost of fox and friends weekend they smelled alcohol on him before he went on air. one of the sources said they smelled alcohol on him as recently as last month. one former fox employee told nbc everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on air. he should not be secretary of defense, another former fox employee said. his drinking should be disqualifying. now in a normal world the allegations against pete hegseth would doom his

nomination the way similar allegations doomed john tower's nomination 35 years ago. but the trump era has made it an open question whether or not republican senators would exhibit any principles here. here was wyoming senator cynthia loomis on hegseth's donation yesterday, after the new yorker report had been published. >> they are throwing disparaging remarks at someone who has earned a great deal of credibility. our soldiers sometimes wild child's? yeah, that can happen, but it is very clear that this guy is the guy who at a time when americans are losing confidence in their own military, in our ability to project strength around the world, that pete hegseth is the answer to that concern. >> today hegseth was on capitol hill, working to shore up support with senators, and refused to respond to any questions about these

allegations. >> and you respond to any of these allegations? reports saying that you were seen drinking while you were coming into work. >> and now, tonight, nbc news reports that as many as six republican senators and possibly more are not currently comfortable supporting hegseth's nomination. if democrats although to oppose him, those six republican votes would be more than enough to end his nomination. but it is not just hegseth's support in the senate that is uncertain. hegseth may also have to work to stay in the good graces of donald trump. trump is not known for backing down in the face of controversy but trump has also been very public about his distaste for people dealing with addiction. trump himself does not drink, a decision he credits to watching

his brother succumb to alcoholism at a young age, and trump's position on addiction is not exactly one of empathy. >> i've also -- not only a brother, i've also lost a lot of her friends to addiction, like drugs and alcohol, and there are other addictions also, wrinkly. it would be nice if people would do certain things and leave certain ways but you're not able -- they're just not able to break it. but another way to solve the problem, don't have them. when i look at a friend that can't stop smoking, i don't understand why it's hard to stop. i say, stay away, just don't drink, just don't have it. if you don't have drugs. if you don't expose early on, you're not going to have a need for it. you're not going to have an addiction. if you don't drink alcohol you're not going to have an addiction. you're not going to have this insatiable urge to have a drink. >> that is held donald trump things about alcohol addiction. now allegations about hegseth's sexual assaults and impropriety are unlikely to move donald trump, a man who himself was credibly accused of assault or

harassment by more than 20 women. but the allegations about alcohol abuse being hauled out of strip clubs and dragged back to hotel rooms, and being wasted in public, what does that do to trump's enthusiasm for pete hegseth? from has already lost one of his top pics when congressman matt gaetz withdrew from consideration for attorney general, and a few hours ago trump's picked to lead the drug enforcement agency also withdrew his nomination due to conservative opposition to the covid-19 policies the lamented as a florida sheriff. that's according to the washington post. if pete hegseth's nomination goes the same way as those two, what does that mean for trump's other controversial nominees, people like kash patel, trump's pick for fbi director, who is especially threatened to use the department to go after from's enemies. order any of trump's controversial nominations that are even going to make it to a senate vote? and if they do, do they stand a better chance then john tower? joining me now is journalist and historian garrett graff

also with me is susan glasser, staff writer at the new yorker. it's great to have you both on tonight and i'm eager to get your thoughts about what is a fairly kinetic situation here. susan, you've studied and reported on trump and his inner sanctum up close, and i kind of wonder how you think trump's own attitudes and ideas about addiction and alcoholism may be factoring in, if at all, to the weakening support here for his defense secretary pick. >> that's a really interesting point you raise. i think first of all we should say from has obviously chosen maximally confrontational nominees for some of these key positions in the government. fbi director, you mentioned kash patel, hegseth and the defense department, tulsi gabbard, the national intelligence. those are very radical choices and what's interesting is that the conversation here is that is not about the radical and

extreme views that they espouse. it's not about the agenda to essentially blow up large swaths of the national security apparatus of this country, but whether certain personal behaviors are such outliers that that might be the only disqualifier. and i think that it does appear that hegseth's nomination is running into trouble. if this were anything other than from's washington, i would say the signs are that he's never going to make it to a vote. but you know trump has chosen the path of confrontation. as you know, he doesn't like to back down from a fight, as long as there is a path forward i think he'll pursue it. but you know, six senators, the math here is that they can only lose four senators if all the democrats pulled together, so the math doesn't look good. when your mother is being cited as one of the bullet points in a case against you, i heard

that she's going to give an interview tomorrow to try to rebut that, but that email is pretty damning. my colleague james reporting. it's not just about individual allegations of drinking. the man was not able to run very small veterans organizations as a management change. the pentagon is the biggest one we have. >> i have to ask, eric, in terms of the character profile that's emerging here, i agree with susan. like so much, so many of trump's pics here are radicals. there people who don't care about what the norms are, about what the institutional history would dictate. this is kind of a different twist because i think when you hear about someone being hauled off from the stage at a strip club, too sick or too drunk to take care of himself, in

front's eyes that may be seen as a sign of weakness. that's the opposite of what he is wanted from his other pics, who are, in his eyes, i think strong enough to withstand the deep state, strong enough to withstand what he thinks of as a corrupted for the state, et cetera. this is a different kind of character flaw, i would say, in the eyes of donald trump, and i wonder how much that damages him but it also goes to the point that maybe they should've done a better background check on this guy, garrett. this is kind of why you vet your nominees. it just sort of seems like all of this is catching the man who chose him and the transition team that chose him by surprise. >> i think we've seen right from the election day that donald trump is not choosing a cabinet and leadership for his administration in the way that presidential candidates and presidents elect normally do. he's been casting a reality tv show. he likes people like pete hegseth because he thinks literally peeped looks good on tv. he's -- he's one of a large

number of fox news hosts and fox contributors who have been nominated to senior positions in the second trump administration, and that has all happened very haphazardly. you know the plan to make matt gates the attorney general happened on a single plane ride up to washington. matt gaetz was not on that list at the start of the plane ride and at the end of the plane ride he was the nominee. that's not the way that presidential administrations normally choose their most senior cabinet positions. >> susan, if the hegseth nomination does not proceed forward, if he withdraws his name allah matt gaetz, we also have his dea pick is also withdrawn his name. it is telling a story. these recent weeks of the trump transition effort tell a story of failure. this is i guess how are you looking at this in the context

of the larger, potentially even more controversial plans that from has announced he has for the country, but for which the details are scant. >> that's right. the details are scant about the contours of what he's already pledged to do are actually sweeping radical and they can go forward even if a number of nominees including this one blowup on the tarmac. and i think that's the risk, right, is that we've been so focused on the overwhelming evidence of the unsuitability of one or two or three of these nominees. first of all, he seems to be taking the swarm approach, not with drones but with nominees so there's so many scandals. it's hard to know which one to focus on and i think that's a, by the way, big part of donald trump's book from the very beginning and i think it might be effective so we are not even talking about nominating robert

f kennedy jr., a vaccine denier, to be in charge of our public health apparatus. we are not even talking about kash patel, who has literally threatened and put out a list of 60 names, explicit names of people in the deep state. he went on steve bannon's podcast. he said he wants to investigate and target all journalists who dare to oppose them in the 2020 election. things like that, we're not talking about that. we are talking about one guy who allegedly abused alcohol and did all the other things that he did. and i think the swarm approach is something to pay attention to, number one, that some of trump's controversial monies they get through, is historically speaking, the senate has a very hard time standing up to presidents and certainly this republican senate, there's not much evidence at all to suggest that they have the appetite to really one after the other down donald trump's nominees. so i think that is an important factor to consider here, is that there are so many

controversies that help from. >> garrett, you have written -- you have an op-ed right to this end about kash patel and how unsuitable and dangerous he is at the doj. we are going to take some time to talk about him. you call him more concretely dangerous and worrisome than many of trump's other questionable choices, and i the time you wrote this, pete hegseth had already been his defense secretary pick can you talk about the way in which you seek him, independent of whatever he might do to trump's allies him and that ain't nothing, but what can you do to the department itself in terms of restructuring it and remaking it in his image, if you will? >> donald trump has chosen kash patel as his nominee for fbi director for a very explicit purpose, which is that he wants to weapon eyes the fbi against his political enemies. and the truth of the matter is that as a nation we know exactly what that looks like. we know what a weapon eyes the fbi looks like. it looks like what the fbi was

in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the final years of j edgar hoover's rain as fbi director. it looks like a bureau that abuses the civil rights and civil liberties of ordinary americans, that it persecutes political enemies and helps political friends. now congress, the american people, and the presidents of the 1970s recoiled from what that fbi look like and we spent 50 years building a series of guardrails and norms and new procedures and term limits to ensure that the fbi was never able to be organized like that again. now we have a nominee coming in. you were running the some of that b role of kash patel before, who was explicitly participating in trump political rallies. the idea of any of the people who have been atop the fbi in

the last 50 years appearing at a presidential campaign rally is an anathema to the bureau. and so to have someone who is not only not independent of the president, but actually specifically loyal to the president, is a deeply worrisome thing to consider. >> especially when you look at, as you so hopefully do, if you articulate the sort of -- go through the history of fbi directors and the presidents they served, sometimes with great friction, that's kind of the point. eric raff and susan glasser, thank you both for your time tonight. i appreciate you guys both. >> always. >> coming up, president biden pardoned his son, hunter, to protect him from future prosecution by trump loyalists, but what about trump critics like liz cheney and mark neely? should president biden protect them from the trump justice department? paul rosensweig joins me to discuss that, coming up next.

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certainly happen in reverse. it could certainly happen in reverse. >> last year donald trump suggested that he absolutely would use the fbi and the justice department to attack his political enemies if he was reelected. well, 48 days from now trump will have the ability to do just that. given this reality, this weekend president biden announced that he had pardoned his son, hunter, and today there are calls on the president to extend his pardoned powers to protect trump's perceived enemies. paul rosensweig argues in the atlantic that president biden must pardoned from's critics now. president biden has a moral obligation to do what he can for patriotic americans who have risked it all. joining me now is the author, paul rosensweig, former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the department of homeland security during the george w. bush administration. it's great to have you tonight, sir. i'm eager to hear about your own sort of personal evolution on this, because i know in 2017 you argued we defend norms by defending norms, not preaching them. a lot has happened between now

and then and i wonder how you're thinking about the president's pardon power today and how he should wield it. >> well, back in 2017 i thought that trump was an aberration, an unusual and black swan, if you will. and my thought was that you had to defend the norms of the rule of law, good governance, and the only way to do that was to maintain them even in the face of his aberrational behavior. today i think we know that trump is not an aberration. he's a phenomenon. he's a movement. and as such, what we have to do is recalibrate how we respond to that. and it now strikes me as essential to at least begin to play to the edge of the field, right 2 to go as far as the law permits in combating the authoritarian excesses of trump

and the way i wrote about in the atlantic is the pardon power. a pardon for hunter biden. a pardon for trump's critics would be completely normative breaking and it would be out of character, out of historical tradition. but at this point, i was listening to your earlier broadcast. you were talking about kash patel. he's got a list of 60 people he wants to prosecute. that's a real list. will he do all of them? i don't know. will there be resistance at the fbi? probably. but one of the realities of being investigated is that investigation has a cost, even if you're not prosecuted in the end. you have to hire a lawyer. the mental cost, the time, the resources. so it strikes me as perfectly reasonable to ask what can

president biden do within the bounds of law, even if it would not be normatively traditional to save his allies from that. and the answer is obviously pardon them. >> yeah. it seems to you and i think two other folks as well, the argument about institutional preservation in this moment is best relegated to academics, and that in reality it's time to play political hardball. and it sounds like you're extending that not just with the pardon power but to other levers the democrats might be able to pull. i'll read an excerpt from your atlantic piece. it has become painfully self- evident that democratic self- restraint is a form of unilateral disarmament that neither persuades trump to refrain from bad behavior, nor wins points among the undecided. it is time, well past time, for responsible democrat to use every tool in their toolkit. does any part of that, i guess worry you? one could of said the democrats when they were in control of the senate should've gotten rid

of the filibuster and on stuff. well now it seems like the filibuster is the only thing that's actually going to stop trump from an acting probably the broadest, most pernicious parts of his agenda. so how do you think about the cost/benefit analysis here? >> well, of course it worries me. it has to. it has to worry any sensible thinking person, to argue for breaching norms that have guided our country for 250 years. on the other hand, i don't think the democratic self-restraint is what is going to stop trump from acting. if, in the end, trumping the republican majority think that the filibuster is a barrier to whatever it is that they want, for example, they're going to get rid of it anyway, whether or not the democrats have done so in the prior congress. and so, it strikes me as essential to begin to take steps that can't be reversed, or irreversible steps in defense of, say voting rights

for example, expanding the franchise, guaranteeing federally against state interference. we would still have to contend, obviously, with the supreme court, but for 2 years the democrats had a majority in both houses and instead of doing transgressive, normative things like changing the electoral rules to prevent trump's cheating, they did normal democratic things. they passed the inflation reduction act and the bipartisan infrastructure act. all good things, i'm sure, from their perspective. but they thought that that would be how you reclaim america. and it turned out they were wrong. >> well it is a deeply thought- provoking position you have taken and written about very articulately. it's great to have you on the show, paul rosensweig. thanks again for your time tonight.

>> thanks for having me. coming up, the leader of south korea, a key u.s. ally, declares martial law in his country and then reverses it. what all that signals for america and its own strongman fan boy club. i'm going to discuss with former deputy national security adviser ben rhodes right after this break. this break. st our own tools. and sell them directly to you. no middleman. just quality tools you can trust at prices you'll love. whatever you do, do it for less at harbor freight. ♪♪

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local time last night, south korean president yoon suck you'll shucked his country in the world by declaring martial law. in a surprise televised address, accusing the government's opposition party of plotting against the state. now martial law in south korea means no protests, no meeting of parliament or political activities of any kind, and a takeover of all news media. despite that, and despite the fact that this all happened in the middle of the night, thousands of protesters gathered in front of south korea's parliament building and they demanded an end to martial law and the arrest or impeachment of president yoon. despite facing possible arrest south korean news outlets continued to follow the story, filming as south korean troops forced their way into parliament. armed troops were seen climbing through broken windows and barricading entrances, while parliament employees sprayed fire expenditures to block the soldiers from entering the parliament's main hall.

outside, a reporter from the washington post filmed as protesters blocked an armed military vehicle from approaching the parliament building. one demonstrator shouted, over my dead body, while literally stopping the car with their body. inside, south korea's parliament met in an emergency session in the middle of the night, in contravention of the newly imposed martial law. one member live streamed as they scaled a fence just to get into that building for that emergency parliament session. the chief spokesman of the government's opposition party said that the military entered parliament, trying to arrest the body's three seniormost members. despite all of that, 190 members of south korea's 300 member parliament managed to meet and they voted unanimously to rescind the president's

martial law decree. that vote took place just past 1:00 a.m. local time, which means that all of that happened in just over three hours. a president declared martial law, the military took over the legislature, the people protested, and the parliament overturned the president's decree. and now the military has just packed up and gone home. the leader of the president's own political party is demanding the president explain himself, while the leader of south korea's opposition party has referred to the president's actions as treason and called for him to step down immediately. and one of korea's largest unions, the korean confederation of trade unions, has called for its more than 1 million members to strike until president yoon steps down. if this was an attempted coup, it appears to have failed, but what does this all mean for the people of south korea moving forward? and what does it mean for the united states, which has relied on south korea as one of our

biggest allies for decades? and what is there for us here in the states to learn about the concept of martial law, as president-elect donald trump claims he will use the insurrection act to declare a national emergency and use the u.s. military here at home. former deputy national security advisor and roads joins me to discuss that, next. discuss that, next. like your workplace benefits and retirement savings. presentation looks great. thanks! thanks! voya provides tools that help you make the right investment and benefit choices so you can reach today's financial goals. that one! and look forward, to a more confident future. that is one dynamic duo. voya, well planned, well invested, well protected. —i have to find a babysitter. —i have a lot of questi alll all

>> those were protesters outside of south korea's parliament late last night, chanting dismiss the martial law . just about 12 hours ago now, the president of south korea declared an emergency and directed the military to physically seize the legislature, which is controlled by the opposing party. despite the threat of arrest, the people of south korea, and the media, and the legislature managed to resist and martial law was ultimately ended. so what should we take from these last 12 hours in south korea, and what can the united states learn as a country, with a president-elect who openly considers imposing martial law himself? joining me now is ben rhodes, former deputy national security advisor under president obama and cohost of pod save the world. it's great to see you. i am eager to know how you are processing what happened in

south korea, a longtime ally of the united states, a country that maybe in some ways is different from us, but in some ways not that different from us, and are there lessons we should be holding dear as we look towards the second term of a trump administration? >> well it's an astonishing turn in a country that is a relatively young democracy, since the 1980s, but has like a really deep commitment to democratic values. they hosted a summit, a global summit on democracy during the biden administration, just a couple years ago. i think the main take away, alex, is that we are living through an age of contagion. we are living through an age of authoritarian contagion, where we see strongman leaders kind of pushing the envelope in different ways, in all different parts of the world, in countries like turkey, in countries like hungary, in countries like israel. we see them in the philippines. this is not geographically distinct. now we see it in northeast asia and south korea, and we have to take away from this that we are living through one of those

periods, alex, where autocracy is on the rise and everybody is pushing the envelope. what we also learned is that what looks like when the party of the president, even though they weren't the majority, every single member of the president's own party in that legislature voted against martial law.'s of these are not exactly republican party for missionaries in south korea. we've learned what it looks like when you have a uniform stance against this kind of autocracy. >> i do wonder, for people who haven't been paying close attention to south korean politics, the sort of most memorable image or impression they may have of president yoon is the fact that he is the guy that sang american pie to president biden in the white house. i think we have some footage of that. can we play just a little snippet, to remind people? >> a long, long time ago. i can still remember how -- >> sorry i'm talking over the fantastic rendition, but i

think one of the things we -- people who have supported trump and are kind of ambivalent about him, they don't take him seriously because he has clownish behavior. there were moments of levity that punctuate his calls towards darkness. begin an autocrat, being a dictator, being authoritarian doesn't mean you can't also be clownish sometimes, too, you can have moments of levity. and i use that example because that seemingly good-natured individual singing american pie to president biden for less than 24 hours ago tried to stage a coup, and i feel like there's a profile in sort of character of these autocrats and authoritarians that eggs to be fleshed out a little bit more. >> yeah, that's right. there is a kind of cult of personality that grows up. this guy was relatively unpopular, but you've seen niaid but kaylee, for instance, the authoritarian leader of el salvador, who intimidated his political opposition. he calls himself the world's coolest dictator and he kind of has this ethos of a crypto bro online. but he's assumed dictatorial powers.

i think the thing about trump is he can see, in some ways, less threatening, because he's a there at rallies doing kind of borderline standup routines, because the kind of reality show or of that surrounds him in mar-a-lago but if we listen to what he says and this is the important thing i'd say, he says that he wants to use the united states military in the streets, either to enforce a mass deportation of people who are undocumented, or potentially against his political opponents, as we know, reportedly, he wanted to do more aggressively in 2020 with the black lives matter protests. these are things he said he wants to do and i think americans don't realize it. that's not normal to have the u.s. military used in that function, and i don't know what it's going to feel like if that happens. the south koreans that i talked to today, it was a shock about

the images that we just saw, of troops literally entering into the national assembly building, the sense of the military back in their lives, and these are people with a living memory of this, as recently as the 1980s. i don't know how americans are going to feel if donald trump makes it on his own promises to apply the military for domestic political purposes. >> the south koreans feel like after a day like today, there democracy is strengthened or weakened? >> i think in the short term there's a feeling of resilience and strength in having stood up to this, but in the long run, they've seen a norm eroded. they've seen someone return to a tactic that hasn't been used in decades and south korea. they've seen the military involved in confrontations with their civilian authorities. so there's a lot of uncertainty. well, what comes next? does the president step down? there's obviously the strong calls for his resignation? does he get prosecuted? how can there be some form of

reconciliation between really competing, warring factions, not in a violent sense but in terms of political combat, and is the military going to take a step back from politics? is the military kind of pushed into this or were they somehow kind of a part of this effort by the president, or at least elements of the military? these are all questions that will be on the table in south korea. but it raises the example for us as how are we going to react? trump may go on television and announce martial law, the military taking over the government, but he can do things that move in that direction. again, the use of the military inside the united states for the enforcement of his own policies, the use of the justice department, how is it going to feel if fbi director kash patel is starting to prosecute political opponents of trump or journalists how will we react in those circumstances? unfortunately thus far, the record of the last eight years is not uniformly positive in that regard go >> big questions as we deal with the spread of authoritarian contagion. ben rhodes, my friend, thank you for your time tonight. appreciate it. coming up, what democrats need to do to turn their political fortunes around.

wisconsin state party chair and a candidate to run the democratic national committee, ben winkler joins me to discuss, coming up next. oming . one up the power of liquid, one up the toughest stains. any further questions? uh uh! one up the power of liquid with tide pods ultra oxi. all

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democrats continue to assess why kamala harris lost the 2024 presidential election but according to need: in the new york times, turnout was not the issue. even if nonvoters had been dragged to the polls, it might not have meaningfully helped harris win the presidency. lower turnout for democrats in nevada's clark county, for example, would only explain one third of the decline in support. the remaining two thirds of the ship toward trump is because voters flipped trump's way. joining me now is ben winkler, chair of the democratic party of wisconsin and is running for the chair of the democratic national committee. then, thank you for being here. we will talk about that in a moment, but i wonder what you make of that statistic, two thirds of voters in a key county in a swing state flipped trump's way and what if you have a working theory on why that might be?

>> thanks so much for having me on, alex. when you look at this election, look around the world, everywhere, in every wealthy democracy, voters who were fed up by inflation, hit hard by high prices, left, right, and center, we saw that in the united states. i think what that tells us is pocketbook issues make up a big difference, especially for voters that are struggling to get by and are trying to figure out who is on their side. now, it is also the case that the fight for reproductive freedom and against abortion bands did motivate voters. it helped in a state like wisconsin to close the gap, the swing in wisconsin was just a quarter of the swing that we saw nationwide and we fought hard on that issue. it helped tammy baldwin win her senate race and helped flip 14 state legislative seats in our state, but i think the key thing to remember is that you want to convince people to vote and to vote for you and that means communicating everywhere, it means fighting in red areas, purple areas, and blue areas alike, and it shows who you are

for and the other side, the trump administration, republicans, at all levels of government at this point are trying to rig the system for the mega billionaires who are surrounding donald trump at mar- a-lago against people cross race, and gender, and ethnicity across this country. we are going to have to fight back for the next four years if we want to turn this around. >> you mentioned wisconsin, which you know well, the reality is kamala harris didn't win that state, tammy baldwin managed to. i wonder what you can say about the discussion between down ballot democrats and the top of the ticket? >> we have been digging into this, what is interesting about wisconsin this year, we had a massive organizing campaign. vice president harris visited wisconsin over and over, hit it hard. trump campaigned across our state. harris added votes, relative to what joe biden got in 2020. there was an increased

democratic turnout, but also a huge surge in turnout for donald trump, but some of those republican voters only voted for trump. about 50,000 people, a little more than that, didn't vote in the u.s. senate race, so that drop off meant that tammy baldwin, who got a few thousand more votes than kamala harris, was able to defeat eric huckabee, the republican. tammy baldwin won by a little less than 1%, and kamala harris lost by a little less than 1%. that means that both the presidential and the senate race were incredibly close, and that is why you have to work year-round, intensely, to build up support, find those voters you can turn out. i think if we can do that across the country, then we can win the house majority in 2026, we can win in state legislative races and flip governorships. there is a ton of damage trump is going to try to inflict but there is a ton of opportunity and it starts right now. >> the strategizing and planning, sure sounds like someone who might be the next chair of the democratic national committee. we will be following the race, my friend. ben winkler, thank you for your time tonight. >> thanks so much. >> that is our show for this evening.