rafters on our current political environment, on what happens november 6th, what happens next. just search chris hayes wherever you get your podcasts, and i've got to say i'm a really great guest. that is all in on this tuesday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now. >> is that a promotion for the podcast in. >> i think it is. i think there are some pretty good takes. >> i think the level of effacement there -- it must be self-afacement because surely you can't be serious, except i'm sure your t-shirt gun of hot takes is funaul phenomenal and brilliant with the best guest you've had on your podcast. >> not the best. >> tough guest. listen, i'm excited to hear it. not just hear you talking about it from 10 feet away. i'm just eating into the minutes

of my show to talk more about your podcast. this is probably our greatest series of hand-offs this month post-election for history. put it in the television archives. okay, that's enough of that now. talk to you soon. like i said, there is a lot going on, not just chris hayes talking at us for an hour on his pod cast, but there is a lot of news tonight. and to understand one of the biggest stories unfolding right now, we're going to have to begin by going all it the way back to the year 1998. george h.w. bush had just been elected 41st president. and when the time came for bush to nominate someone to lead the department of defense, he chose this guy, former republican john tower. 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 has a very -- i think a very thorough examination in store. that's the kind john tower wants. he understands that. that's what he wants. no way to have it. when it's all said and done there's no doubt in my mind the next secretary of defense will be john tower from 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 towers' hearing was a conservative activist called paul wiric. you might think of him as the steve bannon of his day if steve bannon were a lot more

productive with his hours. paul established the heritage foundation, which decades later published the project 2025 agenda. so it was a shock when paul wiric got up to testify at john towers confirmation hearing and said this. >> my concern stems first from questions regarding the nominees old character. the old saying goes where there is smoke there's fire must give one pause in this case. the smoke surrounding the nominee's personal life seems more 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. the open secret on capitol hill that john tower had a drinking problem squuz known to his colleagues at a womanenizer. a republican senator had called

wyrich before the hearing. he told "the new york times" have i ever drunk to excess, yes. am 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 it tower nomination. specific allegation about tower's drunken behavior started to come out. the fbi's special inquiries unit began investigating those allegations because that is the thing the fbi is supposed to do with important national security nominees. when the time came to vote on john tower, the senate rejected his nomination. the final vote was 53-47. and president bush moved onto his second choice for defense secretary, richard cheney-size

in dick cheney. he was confirmed by a vote of 92-0. that history is especially relevant tonight in light of new reporting about the man 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 wyrich said in 1989, where there's smoke there's fire. bombshell reporting of new allegations with hegseth. that allegation alleges during hegseth's time as part of a ethaverenes group, he was repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity. so much so he needed to be carried out of the organization's events. these include allegations 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 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're not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through "the new yorker," and website onto attack the award winning germalist ournalist jane mayer. hegseth's drinking continued through his career as a host on the fox news channel. nbc spoke with ten current and former fox news employees who

describe hegseth's drinking. two people said on more than a dozen occasions during hegseth's time as a co-host on 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 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 doom john tow's nomination 35 years ago. but the trump era has made it an open question whether or not republican senators will exhibit any principles here. here was wyoming senator cynthia loomis on hegseth's nomination yesterday after "the new yorker" reporting had been published. >> they're throwing disparaging

remarks at someone who has earned a great deal of credibility. are soldiers sometimes wild child? 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 and in our ability to project strength around the world, that pete hegseth is the answer to that. >> today hegseth was on capitol hill trying to shore up support with senators and refused to respond to any questions about these allegations. >> can you respond to any of these allegations of misconduct? >> are senators concerned at all? there's a new report that says you were seen drinking while you were coming to 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 all vote 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 work to have to stay in the good graces of donald trump. now, 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 lost not only a brother, lost a lot of friends to addiction, drugs, alcohol. and there are other addictions also frankly. it would be nice if people would do certain things and live certain ways, but they're just not able to break it. but you know the way they 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. if you don't have drugs, if you don't experience it 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 urmg ge to have a drink. >> that is how donald trump thinks about alcohol addiction. allegations about hegseth's sexual assault and imprupriety are not going to move him. but being in strip clubs and being tragged out of public, what does that do to trump's enthusiasm to pete hegseth? trump has already lost one of his top picks when congressman matt gaetz withdrew from attorney general. and a few hours trump's pick to

lead the dea agency also withdrew. that's according to "the washington post." if pete hegseth's nomination goes the same way as those two, what does it mean for trump's other controversial nominees, people like kash patel, trump's pick for fbi director who has specifically threatened to go after trump's enemies? are there any of trump's confirmations that are going to even make it to a senate vote? and if they do, do they stand a better chance than john tower? joining me now is journalist and historian garret graf, also with me susan at "the new yorker." great to have you both. i'm eager to get your thoughts on what is a fairly kinetic situation here. susan, you've studied and reported on trump and his inner sanctum up close. i kind of wonder how trump's attitudes and on addictions and

alcoholism is factoring in here on his pick? >> that's a really important point you raise. first of all, we should say trump has obviously chosen mack. confrontational nominees for some of these key positions in the government. you know, fbi director you mentioned, kash patel, hegseth, and the defense department tulsi gabbard, the national intelligent. those are very radical choices. and what's interesting is that the conversation here is not about the radical and extreme views that they espouse. it's not about the -- 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, you know, i think that it does appear that hegseth's nomination is running into trouble. if this were anything other than

trump'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's a path forward, i think he'll pursue it. but, you know, six senators, the math here is they can only lose four senators if all the democrats hold together. so the math doesn't look good. when you're own mother is being cited as one of the bullet points in the case against you, i heard she's going to give an interview tomorrow to try to rebut that, but that e-mail is pretty damning. my colleague gin's reporting it's not just about individual allegations of drinking, the man was not able to run very small veterans organizations as a management position. you know, the pentagon is the biggest one we have. >> yeah, i mean, i have to ask in terms of the character

profile that's emerging here, i agree with susan. like so many of trump's picks here are radicals. they're people that don't care about what the norms are, what the institutional history would dictate. this is a different -- this is kind of a different twist because i think, you know, when you hear about someone being hauled off from a stage at a strip club too sick or too drunk to take care of himself, in trump's eyes that may be seen as a sign of weakness. that's the opposite of what he's wanted from his other picks who i think in his eyes are strong enough to withstand the deep state, strong enough to withstand what he thinks as a corrupted fourth estate, et cetera. this is different character flaw i would say in the eyes of donald trump, and i wonder how much that damages him, but also goes to the point maybe they should have done a better background check on this guy, garret. this is why you vet your nominees. it sort of seems all of this is

catching the man who chose hem 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 president-elects normally do. he's been casting a tv show. he likes people like pete hegseth because he thinks literally pete looks good on tv. he's -- there's a -- 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, you know, very haphazardly. the plan to make matt gaetz the attorney general happened on a single plane ride up to washington. you know, matt gaetz was not on that list at the start of the

plane ride, and a at the end of the plane ride he was the nominee. that's not the way presidential administrations normally choose their most senior cabinet positions. >> i -- susan, if the hegseth nomination does not proceed forward, right, if he withdraws his name on matt gaetz, we also have his dea pick who has also withdrawn his name, it is telling a story. these repeat weeks of the trump transition effort tell a story of failure. this is -- i mean, i guess how are you looking at this in the context of the larger, potentially even more controversial plans that trump has announced high has for the country but for which the details are scant? >> yeah, well, that's right. the details are scant, but 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 blow up on the tarmac. and i think that's the risk,

right, is that we become so focused on, you know, 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, you know, not with drones but with nominees. and so, you know, there's so many scandals, it's hard to know which one to focus on, and i think that's, by the way, been part of donald trump's playbook from the very beginning, and i think it might be effective. so we're not even talking about nominating robert f. kennedy jr., a vaccine denier to be in charge of our public health apparatus. we're not even talking about kash patel who's literally threatened and put out a list of 60 names, explicit names of people in the deep state. he wept on steve bannon's podcast. he says he wants to, you know, investigate and target all journalists who dared to oppose them in the 2020 election, things like that. we're not talking about that.

we're 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 nominees may get through because historically speaking the senate has a very hard time standing up to presidents. certainly this republican senate there's not much evidence at all to suggest they have the appetite to really one after the other vote down donald trump's nominees. that i think is an important factor to consider here is there's so many controversies it could help trump. >> garret, you have written -- you have an op-ed, 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 other trump's questionable choices. by the time you wrote this pete hegseth had already been his defense secretary pick. can you talk about the way ipwhich you see him independence

of whatever he might do to trump allies. that ain't nothing, but what he could do to the department itself in term of restructuring it and remaking it in his image, if you will. >> yeah, donald trump has chosen kash patel as his nominee for fbi director for a very explicit purpose, which is that he wants to weaponize 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 weaponized 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 reign 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 looked like. and we've spent 50 years building a series of guardrails and norms and new procedures and term limits to ensure that the fbi is never able to be weaponized like that again. and now we have a nominee coming in who are running some of that b-roll of kash patel before, who are explicitly participating in trump political rallies. the idea of any of the people who been atop the fbi in the last 50 years appearing at a presidential campaign rally is inathema to the bureau. so to have someone who is not only not independent of the president but also specifically loyal to the president is a deeply worrisome thing to consider. >> yeah, especially when you look at as you so helpfully do if you articulate or go through

the history of fbi directors and the presidents they served sometimes with great friction, that's kind of the point. garret graff and susan glasser, thank you both for your time tonight. appreciate you 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 milly? should president biden protect them from the justice department? paul rosenswine joins me to discuss that coming up next. ro discuss that coming up next. with the money i saved i thought i'd get a wax figure of myself. cool right? look at this craftmanship. i mean they even got my nostrils right. it's just nice to know that years after i'm gone this guy will be standing the test of ti... he's melting! oh jeez... nooo... oh gaa... only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪

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you say they've weaponized the justice department, weaponized the fbi. would you do the same if you're re-elected? >> well, he's unleashed something everybody we've all known about this for a hundred years. we've watched other countries do it. but if they want to follow through on this, yeah it could certainly happen in reverse. it could certainly happen in reverse. >> last year donald trump suggested he absolutely would use the fbi and justice department to attack his political enemies if he's re-elected. 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 pardon powers to protect trump's perceived enemies. paul argues in the atlantic that president trump must pardon

trump'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 former deply 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, unusual and black swan, if you will. and my thought was 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, to go as far as the law permits in combating thea thor tar- itarian excesses of trump. and the way i wrote about it 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 -- your earlier broadcasts 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, you know, one of the realities of being investigated is that the investigation has to cost even if you're not prosecuted in the end. you have to hire a lawyer, the mental cost, where the time, the resources. and 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 to other folks as well that 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 to the pardon power but other levers democrats might be able to pull. i'll read an excerpt from your 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. it is well pastime for responsible democrats to use every tool in their tool kit. does any part of that, i guess, worry you? one could have said the democrats when they were in control of the senate should have got rid of the filibuster and done stuff. well, now it seems the filibuster is the only thing going to stop trump from enacting the broadest, pernicious parts of his agenda. 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 trump and 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 had done so in the prior congress. and so it strikes me as essential to begin trying to take steps that can't be reversed or irreversible steps in the defense of say voting rights, for example, expanding the franchise, guaranteeing federally against state interference. you know, you would still have to contend obviously with the supreme court, but for two 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. and all good things i'm sure from their perspective, but they thought that would be how to re-claim america, and 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. thanks for being on tonight. >> thanks for having me. coming up the leader of south korea, a key u.s. ally declares marshal law in this country and then reverses it. what all that signals for america and it's own strong man fan club. i'm going to discuss with national security advisor ben rhodes right after this break. rhodes right after this break.

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at 11 p.m. local time last night, south korean president yoon suk-yeol shocked his country and the world by declaring marshal law in a surprised televised address accusing the government's opposition party of plotting against the state. now, marshal law in south korea means no protests, no meeting of parliament and political activities of any kind and a takeover of all news media. despite that and despite the fact 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 arrest and impeachment of president

yoon. despite facing possible arrests, south korean news outlets continued to follow the story, filming as south korean troops forced their way into parliament as armed troops were climbing through windows while parliament employees sprayed fire extinguishers to block them from entering. outside reporters filmed as protesters blocked an armored 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 06 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 said they entered parliament trying to arrest the body's three senior

most 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 3 hours. the 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. in one of korea's largest unions, the korean federation of trade unions has called for it's 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 ben rhodes joins me to discuss that next. security advisor ben rhodes joins me to discuss that next. dealdash.com, online auctions since 2009. this playstation 5 sold for only 50 cents. this ipad pro sold for less than $34. go to dealdash.com and see how much you can save.

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 co-host of "pod save the world." ben, it's great to see you. i am eager to know how you are processing what happened in south korea, a long-time ally of the united states, a country that may be 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, you know, is a relative young democracy since the 1980s, but has a really deep commitment to democratic values. they hosted a global summit on democracies at the urge of the biden administration just a couple of years ago. i think the main take away, alex, we're living through an age of contagion, we're living through an age of authoritarian contagion where we see strong man leaders kind of pushing the envelope in different ways in

all different parts of the world in countries like turkey, in countries like hungary, israel, we've seen it in the philippines. this is not geographically distinct. now we see it in asia and south korea. we are living through one of those periods, alex, where autocracy's on the rise, and everybody's kind of pushing the envelope. what we also learned is that what it 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. so these are not exactly republican party functionaries in south korea. we learned what it looks like when you have a uniform stance against this autocracy. >> 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 he is the guy that sang american pie for president biden in the white house. i think we have some footage of that.

can you play a little snippet to remind people? ♪♪ sorry i'm talking over this fantastic rendition. i think one of the things of people who have supported trump and are kind of ambivalent about him, they don't take him seriously because he has clownish behavior. there are moments of levity that punctuate his calls towards darkness. being an auto crat, being a dictator, being authoritarian doesn't mean you can't sometimes be clownish too, you can't have moments of levity. that same president singing american pie to president biden less than 24 hours ago tried to stage a coup. i feel there's a character of this autocrats and authoritarians that begs be flushed out a little bit more. >> yeah, that's right. there's kind of a cultive personality that grows up. this guy was relatively

unpopular, but you've seen the autocratic leader of el salvador who marched the military into his parliament more successfully. he calls himself the world's coolest dictator and 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 seem in some ways less threatening because he's up there in rallies kind of doing borderline stand up routines because the kind of reality show or what surrounds them in mar-a-lago. but if we listen to what he says, and this is the important thing i'd say, he says 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 that's not normal to have the military used in that function. and i don't know what it's going to feel like if that happens. the south koreans i talked to today, there's a shock of what we just saw of troops entering into the national assembly building, the sense of military back in their lives. and these are people with a living memory of this, as recently back in the 1980s. i don't know how americans are going to feel if donald trump makes good on his promises to deplay the military for the good of political purposes. >> do south koreans feel after a day like today democracy is strengthened or weakened? >> i think in the short-term there's a feeling of resilience and strength having stood up to this, but in the long run they've seen a norm eroded. they've seen the military involved in confrontations with their civilian authorities. there's a lot of uncertainty. what comes next? does the president step down?

there's obviously strong calls for his resignation as he gets prosecuted. not warring in a violent sense but in terms of political combat. and is the military going to take a step back from politics? you know, was the military kind of pushed into this, or were they somehow kind of a part of this effort or at least evidence of the military? so these are all questions going to be on the table in south korea, but it raises the example for us how are we going to react, trump may not go on television and announce martial law and the military wholly taking over the government, but he can do things that move in that direction. again, the use of the military inside the united states or the enforcement of his own policies, the use of the justice department. how's 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 "new york uniformatively in that regard. ben rhodes, appreciate it. coming up what democrats need to do to turn their political fortunes around. wisconsin state party chair and a candidate to run ben wickler joins me to discuss coming up next. ben wickler joins me to discuss coming up next throughout this holiday season, and all the seasons. ♪ year round installation! ♪ leaffilter is the smartest call you'll make all season. so give us a call to save up to 30% on leaffilter. call 833 leaffilter or visit leaffilter.com. ♪ and you'll look like a genius this year. ♪

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1 in 5 us adults lives with a mental illness. someone in your family, friend, group or co-worker could be fighting a silent battle. let's shed light on the conversation around mental health and get comfortable being uncomfortable, because the more you talk about mental health, democrats continue to assess why kamala harris lost the 2024 presidential election, but

according to nate cohn in "the new york times" turn out was not the issue. even if nonvoters had been dragged to the polls it might not have meaningfully helped harass win the presidency. lower turn out in clark county, for example, would only explain one third of the decleaning support. the remaining two thirds of the shift toward trump was because voters flipped trump's way. joining me now is ben wickler, he's the chairman of the democratic party of wisconsin and is running for the chair of the democratic national committee. ben, thanks for being here. we're going to talk about that in a moment, but i wonder what you make of that statistic, that two thirds of voters in a county, in a key swing state flipped trump's way and why you have the working theory 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 democracy voters fed up by inflation and hit hard by high prices swung against incumbent parties left, right, and center. we saw that in the united

states, and i think what that tells us is that pocketbook issues makes a big difference especially for voters that are struggling to get by and are trying to figure out who's on their side. it's also the case the fight for reproductive freedom and against abortion bans 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 nationwide. we fought on that issue. it helped tammy baldwin win her senate race and helped flip 14 in our state. i think the key thing to remember is that you want to convince people to vote and vote for you. that means communicating everywhere. it means fighting in red areas and purple areas and blue areas alike, and it means showing who you're for and how the other side the trump administration republicans and all levels of government at this point are trying to rig the system for the megabillionaires who are surrounding donald trump at mar-a-lago against people across race, and ethnicity and gender, across this country. we're going to have to fight

back for the next four years if we want to turn this around. >> ben, you mentioned wisconsin which you know well. the reality is kamala harris didn't win that state. tammy baldwin, she managed to. i wonder what you think accounts for the discrepancy. >> we've been digging into this. what's interesting about wisconsin this year, we had a massive organizing campaign. vice president harris visited wisconsin over and over, campaigned hard. trump also campaigned in our state. haste added votes relative to what joe biden got in 2020. there was increased democratic turnout. there was 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 tammy baldwin who got a few thousand more votes than kamala harris, was able to defeat the republican. tammy baldwin won by a little less than 1% and kamala harris lost by a little less than 1%. that means both the presidential

and the senate race were incredibly close, and that is why you have to work year-round intensely to build up the support, find those voters that you can turn out. i think if we do that across the country, then we can win the house majority in 2026, win in state legislative races and flip governorships. there's a ton of damage donald trump is going to inflict and it starts right now. >> it sounds like someone who be the next chair of the democratic national committee. we'll be following the race, my friend. ben wickler, thank you for your time tonight. >> thanks so much. that is our show for this evening. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. i think there are questions that some members have, and we're going to be looking for an answer. >> are you among the members who have questions? >> well, i'm looking to be