in speaking with anne applebaum i found myself in a dark place for a few days. i wanted to put that to you to find out whether you see it through a lens darkly as well, or whether you are feeling more optimistic about strategy against it? >> well, rachel, i am very worried, concerned. i spent a lot of time thinking about exactly what anne applebaum and you and others are worried about and trying to point out, because i do think that we are facing a crisis of democracy, a crisis of legitimacy, a crisis that really goes to the heart of what the future of our country and many others around the world will be. so i spend my time trying to figure out what we can do about it, and i am not ever going to give up because there's just too much at stake. but first and foremost, we have to make sure more people besides people like you, me, anne applebaum and others who share our concerns, see what we see. because i think that the role of disinformation, the way that propaganda has been really weaponized and the increasing ability to manipulate people through algorithms and o

today anne applebaum writes at "the atlantic" magazine with admirable but somewhat dispiriting brevity, you see the headline there, "the bad guys are winning." quote, if the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over ideologies, communism, facism, virulent nationalism, the 21st century is so far a story of the reverse. she writes about how the anti-democratic autocracies in the world increasingly like to work together now. she says, quote, the corrupt state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt state-controlled businesses in another. police in one country can arm, equip, and train the police in the other. propagandaists share resources. troll farms that support one dictator's propaganda can also be used to promote propaganda of another. they also share themes, pounding home the same message about the weakness of democracy and the evil of america. quote, the centrality of democracy to american foreign policy has been declining for many years at about the same pace, perhaps not coincidentally, as the declin

i think we are seeing arguments of this for eddie like anne applebaum and others are saying generations that were alive in world war ii many of the younger generations who don't have the personal experienceav in warfare don't quite understand what it means to have nations fighting other battles on surround the world with enemy tanks coming to your city t and to be under occupation but many people in many parts of the world have had that personal experience. i guess what i would say is w wn people have experienced something they remember it and when they don't intend to bet forgotten. >> i think that's a traffic light and we will dive into that a little at in our further discussion but i do want to switch now to sandro to talk about what isth talked about in your book sandro because you died deeply intooo some of the core sort of structures that are fraction in your country making it more difficult for us to find communities built on our history and the inequity and the profound effect of determinate health on our ability to achieve health a and well-being. and coming off of what is a mo

i think we are seeing arguments of this a variety come people like anne applebaum and others are saying the generation of people that were alive during world war ii in europe dies off, many of the younger generation who don't have personal expense with warfare don't quite understand what it means to have nations fighting it out or other battle zones around the world where the citizens know what it means to have any tanks coming to your city and be under occupation. but many people in many parts of the world don't have personal experience with this. what i would say is when people have personal experience with something to remember it and when they don't it tends to be forgotten. >> i think those are terrific point and we will dive into that a little bit in our further discussion. i do want to switch now to sandro to speak about some of the key themes he speaks about in your book, , tricky because u dive very deeply into some of the core sort of structures that are fraction in our country, making it more difficult for us to kind of find community, it's built on our history, the inequity

ann applebaum joins me now. the way you frame this but my first thought when you talked about the first part of the 21st century is if you went back 100 years, you could have written the same lead in 2021, excuse me 1921, right? we were seeing these same forces rising and, obviously, inevitably led, we had to have hot wars to essentially decide the future of the globe in these directions. i read your article and i think, oh, my god, is this the inevitable start to something like that. >> it's not inevitable because nothing is inevitable and actually i think we made a big mistake over the last several decades imagining that liberal democracy was inevitable. that allowed a lot of us to think we don't have to worry about anything. we can go off and write books and we didn't have to be involved in politics. we could leave that to the politicians. but actually democracy is never safe. our founding fathers knew that. they wrote our constitution with the idea that democracy might fail in the back of their heads. they w

hill, i just want to follow up with you and read something along those exact lines that anne applebaumongs at the heart of u.s. foreign policy, not out of greed. did you ever think you would read that? >> no, i didn't and there's lots of other polling, not just the articles that anne and many other people that are writing and analyzing this but there's a lot of polling showing abroad that people no longer see american democracy as an example. pew polls and other international polls. and here, in the united states, showing great dissatisfaction among the population with party politics, representative democracy, people feeling that the two mainstream parties, the republicans, the democrats, are just not representing their interests, and a larger group of people are describing themselves as unaffiliated, disinterested or disturbed by party politics. this is also, i think, a great stain on us because our representative democracy, the roles of those two parties, the republicans and the democrats, they've always had an outward manifestation. the international republican institute, the nation

anne applebaum.so much for writing it. >> richard haass, do you have anything to report on, any nfl you would like to be? >> wow, so invalidating. it's not nice. >> the good thing is that the giants did not lose. i take it as a positive development in the nfl this week. >> why can't the giants and top market in america, why does the top market in america have a good football team? >> i ask the same questions of the jets and in basketball, you can ask with the knicks. i am not going next to baseball with you know who's sitting next to me. >> okay, break it up. >>> coming up, newly released e-mails revealed how the trump white house reportedly interfered in the cdc's efforts to warn americans about coronavirus. plus, chris christie details a conversation he had with donald trump last year when the then president seemed more concerned about optics than the former governor's covid diagnoses. "morning joe" is coming right back. "morning joe" is coming right back ♪ it wasn't me by shaggy ♪ you're never res