. >> friend charlie sykes lays out the dangers with quote. putin is fully aware that he faces a divided u.s. and voices on the right are chanting the propaganda. putin can be forgiven if he thinks it's the maga world. and he may be especially emboldens if he believes that trump himself may return to the oval office. joining me now is clint watts. now a distinguished research fellow and the aforementioned charlie sykes from the bulwark and mike mcfaul is back with us. charlie, i guess -- when you watch those maga people, those people on the network that say those things and josh hawley with the little tiny hands that helped to lead the inrecollection is it possible to overstate the damage that donald trump has done to -- not to america in some ways through the republican party by embracing vladimir putin the way he's done? >> no. and of course, now we are seeing the mask taken off. there's a long tradition of dissent against american foreign policy and needs to be respected but this is an extraordinary moment where you have vladimir putin's di

with me charlie sykes, editor at large for the bulwark. charlie, my head is spinning.s woman can't decide whether trump is the worst thing or the greatest thing ever. and all that it says to me is that somehow in her nikki haley brain, she still thinks she can be president maybe? that's the calculus, right? >> who knows. or maybe she wants to be vice president on the ticket. i wrote this morning the question does she understand how ridiculous she looks ping-ponging back and forth? but again, this is your brain on trumpism. you point out this doesn't encapsulate what is going on in the party. the last several days have been awfully interesting, because a lot of these politicians are being asked difficult questions. who is right, donald trump or mike pence? was this legitimate political discourse? was the -- or was it a violent riot? and you can tell it's a really hard question for a lot of them. this is a very difficult moment. ron desantis refuses to answer the question. nikki haley and marco rubio becrowned themselves. kevin mccarthy runs away, literally in the hallwa

joining me now to try to answer that question, here on set with me, charlie sykes, editor at large, andl on foreign relations. okay, charlie, since you're here on set with me, your reaction to both what donald trump had to say on cpac and that montage of crazy we just saw, especially the chants of putin. come on. >> no, this is a disgraceful moment. this is not the party of league an any more, it's the party of trump. what you demonstrated there was the entertainment wing of the republican party is all-in on either being pro putin or anti-anti-putin. this is important because right now there seems to be a moment when most republic elected officials are reading the room and recognizing, you don't want to be justifying this aggression by vladimir putin and they're sort of sounding like they're kind of hawkish. but we have to remember that the entertainment wing of the republican party is still the dominant wing of the republican party. they are still the id of the republican party. these useful idiots out there may be looking bad at the moment, but don't, don't under estimate their abilit

i want to bring in charlie sykes and basil smikle, public policy program director for the roosevelt houser executive director of the new york state democratic party. welcome to you both. charlie, let me start with you on this one, because you know, i can't help but think about lock her up over and over again when we hear about these 15 boxes that were seized from mar-a-lago, not only from the former president but mike flynn as well. we have played it on this network numerous times and here we have the former president literally walking out with files, classified files, and bringing them to his florida estate and now being investigated for it. how ironic is all of this? >> well, thanks for that question. it would be ironic if irony had not been beaten to death with hammers about a thousand times over the last six years. i mean, look, this is a man who, you know -- this is a man who has the ethics of a mob boss, who has shown, you know, complete contempt for legal norms, believes that he is above the law. this is completely consistent with everything that we have seen about him, but also, i

joining me now, charlie sykes, msnbc contributor and editor at large at the bulwark and steve schmidtr of the lincoln project. thank you for coming to "the sunday show." charlie, should we even be shocked by the rnc's assertion that the insurrectionists were engaged in legitimate political discourse. i know you wrote a column about this for msnbc news. talk about it. >> look, you know, on one level, yes, it ought to be shocking to have the republican national committee embrace the insurrection. it is one thing to go along with trump's big lie, but the language was pretty extraordinary. on the other hand, look, this is a very old story, lots of off ramps the republican party could have taken, but it is now a wholly owned subsidiary of trumpism, beholden to the big lie. i think there are republicans who would like to finesse all this, they would like to pivot to talk about issues they think are going to win for them in 2022 and put trump in the rear view mirror. but what you saw over the last several days is the fact they can't, the republican party cannot finesse, the republican party

. >> joining me now, charlie sykes, and the former fbi double agent.nd tell us, because that way we're not just saying it. i said this last night on the show that the reason the american right or this faction of the american right loves putin and loves putin's russia is that in their mind, it's the white christian ethno state of their creams. hard on muslims and lbgtq people, no elections new york democracy, perfect, right? they're saying it now. i like that they're admitting it. your thoughts? >> yeah, no, i agree. except for one thing, joy. what they believe russia is not actually what it is. it's not a christian ethno state. chechnya is a muslim state. it was part of the soviet union. so this idea that they fabricated about russia doesn't hold true. of course, there is putin himself that is anti-lbgtq. but beyond that, this idea of this christian state, it doesn't exist. we know that russians don't go to church at the same levels of americans. yet they built this caricature that seems to justify what they want to -- the united states to be, they're

betsy woodruff swan, charlie sykes, thank you very much to both of you.ire, alex, i'll ask you to stick around a little longer. the need to return to some semblance of a normal pre-covid life with democrats across the country starting to recognize this as well. more states today announcing an end to mask mandates including in schools. our panel weighs in on that next. schools our panel weighs in on that next ♪ i think to myself ♪ ♪ what a wonderful world ♪ throughout history i've observed markets shaped by the intentional and unforeseeable. for investors who can navigate this landscape, leveraging gold, a strategic and sustainable asset... the path is gilded with the potential for rich returns. >> woman: what's my safelite story? i see inspiration right through my glass. so when my windshield cracked, i chose safelite. they replaced the glass and recalibrated my safety system. that's service i can trust. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ my name is douglas. i'm a writer/director and i'm still working. in the kind of work that i do, you ar

let's bring into our conversation charlie sykes, the editor at large of the bulwark, also an msnbc contributorpolicy program at hunter college. it is a sort of slow move to saying out loud what the republican party is, but in terms of its numbers, it may be the largest anti-democratic or hostile to democratic norm movement the world over, charlie, and i wonder why these men, and they're mostly men, think they can stand on the world stage and criticize the world's most heinous autocrats by saying nothing about the autocratic impulses of donald trump. >> well, this is what i loved about will's article. he's my newest colleague at the bulwark and i think he pointed out this paradox, that these guys are so tough when it comes to how we need too deal with autocrats like vladimir putin, but when they're faced with an autocrat in their own party who has made it absolutely clear that he might stage another coup, lindsey graham is the exact opposite. i mean, can you come up with somebody who is more like neville chamberlain when it comes to appeasement than lindsey graham. there is this weird cognitive