rick stengel, you were the only person to, i wanted to ask to put this into context for us.ated. it's just part of the portland story. this is part of the trump story. >> yes. you put it in the context of -- him being an authoritarian leader like other authoritarian leaders. he looks at their methods. i'd actually compare him to another authoritarian would-be leader which is richard nixon whom he claims to admire and emulate. i never thought there would be another president in my lifetime that would claim to be an admirer of richard nixon. and, remember, richard nixon also tapped the phones of journalists, investigated journalists, abused domestic and foreign agencies to spy on journalists. the fbi. donald trump is doing that all over again. and the fact that he doesn't understand the way government works, that he doesn't understand history is why he's doing it. and he has people who are not strong enough to resist him. not too get too far high up in the air, but president obama's beautiful oration at john lewis' funeral. he said democracy doesn't let go of itself. every gen

we are back with michael steele and rick stengel.chael steele, there's now a growing body of flash points and incidents where the military is, in realtime, trying to distance itself from the current commander in chief. that's in and of itself unprecedented. >> it is. and i think it's appropriate at this point. i think there's a lot of chatter, from what i am sure you have as well, nicolle and richard as well picked up the chatter around town around that period between november and january and what that may look like and what it hopefully doesn't look like. and i think, you know, given the way the president seems to treat the military and think about the military, they want to create that heisman moment where they create a separation between him as commander in chief and some of the things that he's out here supporting and promoting through his tweets, for example, where he's out there tweeting white nationalist, you know, videos. they on the other hand are saying confederate flags and this type of behavior is not going to be accepted

let's bring into this conversation, former top state department official, rick stengel and "new yorkgay. i described it as ptsd with elena beverly in the last hour. there's so much trauma among democrats about relying and trusting the polls, especially when they show the democrat ahead. but one thing i know from working on campaigns that you can take from these is that the national trends, the national tide shows rising prospects for joe biden and really plunging prospects for donald trump. >> that's true. it's also important that, you know, polls can -- as we understand, polls can only tell us so much. actually, four years ago, we were lacking in really good polling in the swing states. and this year, we have much better, more intensive, more frequent polling in the swing states. and so that really does give you more confidence about reporting the president's kind of troubles, i would say, haelding into the election year. the other thing to look at is the margin, which is significantly larger than hillary clinton had coming into 2016. so i think given the fact that donald trump almo

joining our conversation, former top state department official, our friend rick stengel.ust think it's amazing that two weeks after this story was first broken by "the new york times," there hasn't been any public rebuke of vladimir putin for placing bounties on the heads of soldiers. there hasn't been any public explanation or articulation or announcement of an investigation into what the times reported was at least three deaths suspected to be tied to the bounty program. and i'm always open to the idea there may be things that happen in the government that we don't know about, but the dots are undeniable. putin inching toward a cold war. dead american soldiers, donald trump's silence. >> it's just extraordinary, nicol nicolle. if you are commander in chief, your first and most important responsibility is to protect the men and women in uniform around the world. and you have the idea, the aspect, the possibility that a hostile foreign power is paying the taliban to kill american soldiers. and you're not outraged by it? you're not going insane about it? what you are doing

rick stengel. the vice president's trip delayed because there weren't enough healthy secret service agents and it would appear that a microcosm of what's happening in the country, the spread of coronavirus, is happening within this white house. >> absolutely. not just secret service agents but as we know that there are other kind of staff, even though it's not widely publicized, affecting people in the executive branch and i think that the part that's very interesting is that here you have not just the vice president's detail, but you can almost be certain that there are already people who are on the ground in south dakota, it is going to be the same story we saw in tulsa where we had people coming in from out of town into south dakota which is already seen an increase in cases and we are setting literally a petrie dish to create more cases when we are already struggling a as country, hospitals begging for some reprieve and i think perhaps most concerned for people like myself is that we have not h

. >> wendy sherman and rick stengel, thank you both for joining our discussion tonight.nk you. >> thank you. >>> and when we come back, together for the first time, joy reid and mary trump. that happened earlier tonight at 7:00 p.m. on joy reid's show when she interviewed donald trump's niece mary trump, who explained donald trump's strange and enduring attraction to vladimir putin. we'll show you some of that interview next. and joy reid will join us. workplace, safely, companies will need the right tools. that's why salesforce created work.com it's an all-new suite of apps, expertise, and services. to manage this crisis today, and thrive tomorrow. everything companies need to return to the workplace. let's reopen. safely. . even though i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib... ...not caused by a heart valve problem. so if there's a better treatment than warfarin, i'm reaching for that. eliquis. eliquis is proven to reduce stroke risk better than warfarin. plus has significantly less major bleeding than warfarin. eliquis is fda-approved and has both. what's nex

. >> we're joined by rick stengel former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. he's the author of several books and was the managing editor of "time" magazine. i keep thinking about that concept, information and tainted streams of information. i wonder if you have diagnosed a universal problem in sort of the distrust of information flows that don't come from a politician or a partisan that shares your belief system and you can go back and look at some of the earliest coverage. it cost trish reagan her job. a lot of people were skeptical of the science about the pandemic at the beginning. >> yes. what all of these populists have in common, and i would also call them authoritarian populists is a distrust of not only information but a distrust of science. a disdain for science. a belief in conspiracy theories. part of this populist idea is that i alone can fix it. i seem to recall somebody saying that. and what that means is experts don't know what they're doing. scientists don't know what they're doing. epidemiologists don't know what they're doing. i know how to