i want to go now to journalists, ruth michaels, and she is in very rude. ruth, the iranian foreign minister has arrived in a root and we're wondering who does he meet with in 11 non? is it his lebanese counterpart or a member of hezbollah, or are the 2 basically one of the st? well, i've been a bus actually arrives today. he met actually met the cad, take a prime minister, and that's even a county. i'm using it with the speakers, the parliament. that'd be very easy for me among movement, which is a separate shared policy he has seen now increasing the with what's been happening is and increasingly powerful and important cigarette intensive, potentially securing a ceasefire and moving forward. and that's certainly the kind of statements that we saw coming out of both of those meetings. the rain in for administer. it said, according to the national needs agency of to the meeting during the meeting with the jeep account team, the cad take her prime minister. he said that he, his focus was on supporting lebanon against his radio, aggression in his was. and then also was talking about, you know,

on hundreds of displays. lebanese had been forced to cross into syria on foot with journalist ruth michaels in, in beirut. told me more about the talks with the uranium for administer a well of been a bus or actually arrived today. she actually met the cad, take a prime minister and that she'd been county hills and met with the speakers the parliament. that'd be very easy for me. among movement, which is a separate a she a party he has seen now increasing the with what's been happening is increasingly powerful and important cigarette intensive, potentially securing the ceasefire and moving forward. and that's certainly the kind of statements that we saw coming out of both of those meetings be rainy and for administer. it said, according to the national needs agency, out of the meeting during the meeting with an a jeep account team, the can take her prime minister. he said that he, his focus was on supporting lebanon against his radio, aggression in his was. and then also was talking about, you know, the assets to back a ceasefire, though in his words, he said that they would only support a

ruth. and so, michael, i want to ask you about fact-checking. it was subversive and j.d.he first debate said, hey, no fact-checking, and that is the deal i struck, and then scott pelley saying, that it was the largest audience that was available to him, and the people who were not high supply on your disinfo, and trump passed because there would be fact, and fact-checking. >> yeah. what we have to understand is that authoritarians like trump not only think that they are above the law, but above the truth, and that ultimately it is their right to determine what the truth is. and to that end, they create a fabricated world, and anything that's going to puncture that world which is also, and they can come over time to believe parts of themselves, they become like megalomanics, and any of that part is punctured, it is viewed as real aggression, and early on in his presidency, trump said to a reporter "the fake news is creating violence," because they were asking too many questions and talking about lying on his behalf, right. so it is viewed as an aggression, and thus, aggres

and michael beschloss presidential historian author of nine books on presidential history, and also "strongmen," that author joins me now. ruthomething. perfect moment of this -- one of the things about this mode of politics is that it's both sort of troubling and awful and also ludicrous in equal measure. sort of like, dear leader stuff. here's trump calling in to a news nation town hall to kind of, to, like, get a pledge of allegiance on loyalty from j.d. vance. take a listen. >> we have a call right now from former president donald john trump. >> i do have a question and i think will be an interesting one. answer to be easy. how brilliant is donald j. trump? >> but here's, first of all, of course, you're very brilliant, sir and we both agree. >> on one level a joke, a bit. also like, that's a -- that's a, putting him in his place making sure -- a form of politics i just haven't seen in my lifetime in america. >> no. these are authoritarian dynamics. political leads constantly demonstrating loyalty and the leader stages occasions for them to do that. the other side of this, many occasions of ritual humiliation, where elites