. >> joining me now is tim snyder, history professor, author of on tyranny: 20 lessons from the 20th century. professor snyder, good to see you. you helped us understand in the early days after this january 6th insurrection, this concept of the big lie, the idea that regardless of whether we have evidence, and we can see it in 2023, much better than you could in the 1930s, 1940s, regardless of that, if someone lies enough about something, about how the election went, or what happened on january 6th, people can come to believe it. history shows us that. and what we have watched in the last two years is exactly what you warned us what would happen. >> yes, i mean, the important thing is the scale of the lie. you tell a lie that's so big that people can live inside it. you tell a lie that's so big that people won't believe that you would deceive them on that scale. you have to be a certain kind of person to do that with a certain kind of motivation. and fortunately, we did not have a politician like that in the form of mr. trump. we are now living, a lot of americans now are living insi

i had a really interesting conversation with your colleague tim, snyder, last night. which he was drawing a parallel to germany in the 1930s, and we were talking about how big and important country germany was, and tim made the point. he said the 20th century would have been germany's century, but for the fact that they did bad things and the railed their entire future. and the entire future to be america's entry, but we may be real that to. and in doing so, we make the real that for the whole world. >> it's totally possible. i, mean it's one of the things that we should be thinking about, regarding january six, and that is we don't know what comes next and, that is particularly true in an election year. we don't know what's coming down the pipe. we don't know how democracy will fare, and i know it's easy for people to point to that statement and say it's hyperbole, you're exaggerating. but as you pointed out just before the break, it's not exaggerating. it's very true. so, what happens this year could have a major impact on that united states, and it debunked, so hav

in historian tim snyder's seminal book on tyranny, this anticipation of the backlash, this worry about how upset trump and his supporters might get, this is a phenomenon that snyder describes as obeying in advance, as in do not obey in advance. do not give the tyrant or the would-be tyrant what they want because you fear what they might do otherwise. put more bluntly, the message is snyder's the lesson from the 20th century is the lesson is stand up, say no, have guts. be the one. how many of us would have the guts of e. jean carroll at age 80 to do what she did? to call his question, to test it. to make us decide it as a country, to render this would-be strongman just a man. joining us now is e. jean carroll, who successfully sued donald trump for defamation. she is flanked tonight by her lawyers in the case, robbie kaplan you see on the left and shawn crowley you see on the right. thank you all so much for being here. it's such a pleasure to see the three of you here and to have you here. i'm really grateful you made the time. >> it's a pleasure. >> jean, let me just ask you, you guy