“A betrayal of the base”

Our current strategy of nation building and regime change is a proven absolute failure.

We have created the vacuums that allow terrorism to grow and thrive.

These globalists want to squander all of America's strength, blood and treasure, chasing

monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they're creating

right here at home.

Hi again everybody.

It's time to talk in New York.

That was then this afternoon with all the force of a rock-splitting crack of lightning,

Donald Trump's rank betrayal of more than a decade of foreign policy promises is cleaving

a first of its kind fissure inside the MAGA movement.

But his supporters are strangers to betrayal by any means.

He's broken his word with them and to them before and he'll undoubtedly do it again.

But the military action Donald Trump took in the early hours Saturday morning in Iran,

the war he started, is a sort of reversal fundamentally different on a anatomic level than anything

we've seen him do since he's been in our politics over the last ten years.

The best way to fully understand the depth and scope of that betrayal today might be to

hold our noses and submerge ourselves.

And then our broken promises of Donald Trump's no new war's mantra.

It starts with this 2016 campaign for president.

You can't fight two wars at one time.

If you listen to him and you listen to some of the folks that I've been listening to,

that's why we've been in the Middle East for fifteen years and we haven't won anything.

We've spent five trillion dollars in the Middle East because of thinking like that.

In a Trump administration, our actions in the Middle East will be tempered by realism.

The current strategy of toppling regimes with no plan for what to do the day after only

produces power vacuums that are filled simply by terrorists.

Gradual reform, not sudden and radical change, should be our guiding objective in that region.

You don't say in 2016, and then again in 2020, and then again in 2024,

Donald Trump tapped into a fatigue on the part of the American people,

in both political parties, to be honest, that fatigue and that grief and that exhaustion

that was associated with sending our men and women in uniform into harm's way.

Watch.

We had no wars.

They said he will start a war.

I'm not going to start a war.

I'm going to stop wars.

I was the only president in modern history who did not have any new wars, no new wars.

Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions that we will have prosperity

and peace for all.

At the time, it was Trump's advisor, Stephen Miller, who described the campaign of Kamala

Harris like this as a quote,

but war-mongering neocons who love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight

themselves end quote.

It's a sentiment that rhymes, so to speak, with a number of other top Trump figures who

might not be in government at all, had they not shared that worldview with Donald Trump?

President Trump campaigned against regime change wars when he ran for president.

But now he bows to the wishes of the neocons who surround him, clamoring for regime change

wars that he claimed to oppose this time in Venezuela and in Iran.

These powerful politicians dishonor the sacrifices made by every one of my brothers and sisters

in uniform.

Sometimes we're going to have overlapping interests and sometimes we're going to have distinct

interests and our interests, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran, right?

It would be huge distraction of resources.

It would be massively expensive to our country.

Just let that sink in.

J.D. Vans and Tulsi Gabbard work for Donald Trump now, they just work for him.

They subverted everything they've ever said publicly that they believed and they serve a commander

in chief who made the decision to do precisely what they publicly built their political identities

around and warned against.

It is an epic, a generational stabbing in the back, not just for those officials who've

been made to look like fools, that's being kind.

For the American people, again, who Trump continues to make fools of, people will vote

over him because they actually believed him when he promised he would not start any

new wars.

People who, as we said, have felt the sting of Donald Trump's portrayal before, rather

recently, on Epstein, on the economy, on inflation, on Second Amendment issues.

We could go on and on, but never, frankly, quite like this.

So we start the hour with our senior White House correspondent, Ron Hilliard, also joining

us, political analyst and host of the Bullwork Podcast, Tim Miller, also joining us,

staff writer at the Atlantic, a contributor at the Atlantic Daily Newsletter, Tom Nichols

is here.

He's a professor, emeritus of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College,

where he taught for more than two decades since you had the fanciest and most impressive

title, Tom Nichols.

I start with you.

Okay.

I'm sorry, I missed the beginning of the question.

I just your reaction to this question.

John and Rear, reversal.

Well, you know, the thing that's amazing is that this might be the only other thing besides

the Epstein files that will give traction within the Maga Coalition to breaking with Donald

Trump or at least criticizing him, because they didn't care about all the years ago where

one of his voters said to our reporter, we know he's lying.

We don't care.

He's a kind of a cruise missile that we aim at the establishment and hope he does a lot

of damage.

But there were two things that he could never really get away with lying to them about.

One was about Epstein, which he made part of his campaign and now he's hung up on that.

And the other was this drum beat about how stupid other presidents were to get involved

in foreign wars and not just to get involved in foreign wars, but in regime change wars.

And what is he doing now?

This is a war, I know Secretary Rubio today said, no, this is about the missiles and the

nuclear program.

No, Donald Trump keeps telling the Iranian people, rise up, take your government, seize your

freedom.

This is your day.

This is a regime change war.

This, as I said the other day, this is the most neocon war that ever neoconed.

You know, this is practically Operation Iranian Freedom at this point and he just turned

on a dime, but I think that they counted on him for just two things.

Not to lie about just those two things and this is an immense betrayal of his own base

and of an American public that didn't want this war.

Even though it may actually be that some good may come out of it, the public didn't want

it.

He hasn't explained it to Congress and so, you know, it's not just the MAGA base that's

been betrayed, but I think this one might have a little bit of a traction, especially

if there are, as he seems worried about more casualties.

One Hillier, Donald Trump has said a couple times now that there will be more casualties.

We have learned from the military this hour that six service members have lost their lives.

You have been to more Trump rallies than anyone I get to talk to on this show every

day.

So I want to ask you, did he ever deviate from that script?

We looked.

Did he ever say I will start a war with Iran to change that regime and did people ever

clap if he did?

In an attempt to explain and answer your question, no, but I think that what we did see over

the course of these last years was, at a minimum, a generous misinterpretation of what Donald

Trump, the candidate, was pledging when he said no wars.

This was a man who often touted the military might of American military forces under his

direction.

He called stupid generals, the ones that he fired and replaced them with individuals that

he said would represent the ethos of what America should be.

During the campaign, I would talk to folks constantly who said that they wanted Donald

Trump to be elected because our enemies would fear him and his leadership and his military.

And in so many ways, when Donald Trump said no new wars, he sort of would try to explain

that the Russia-Ukraine war wouldn't have happened if he had been president.

He said that Hamas wouldn't have attacked Israel if he was president, really honing in

on that ethos and the bravado and the hubris that Donald Trump has exemplified really kind

of in a way that we have seen from strong men in history's past.

And so I think when you go back to October 2024, there was a launch to 180 missiles toward

Israel.

And I was actually with the candidate at that time in Wisconsin.

And just before a campaign event, I asked him if he were president at that time, would

he have moved forward in using US military forces to strike Iran?

And he told me, I don't want to say what I'd use because I don't want to give up negotiating

abilities because so I don't want to say exactly, but they understand where I stand.

And so in so many ways, it was easy for them to put a placard on these signs and carry

this no new war's mantle.

But really what that was constructed around was the idea that enemies would fear the United

States.

And instead, what you have now with Donald Trump is the president.

I think he's somebody who feels like he hasn't suffered consequences for the killing of

some lady for the capture of Maduro or for last year's strengths of those three nuclear

facilities.

And so until there are consequences beyond these few American casualties, I think it's

a deep question as to why the president and whether he is willing to change here over

the next months or years.

The Atlantic reported that Donald Trump believed the men, the men and women that lose their

lives are, quote, suckers and losers.

And Tim Miller was one of the most, sort of electric pieces of journalism in his first

presidency.

He, he disputed it, he fought it.

It was confirmed in corroborated by Sarah Matthews around my table and by generals who

went on the record in the subsequent years and confirmed that he had said that.

There's also some really deeply disturbing reporting about him refusing to go to a cemetery

to honor veterans of World War I, who's visiting France, his military leadership of the military

and his chief of staff, who was then John Kelly went in his stead.

He's someone who's said about John McCain and that he, quote, liked people who weren't

captured.

He made a similar smear against George W. Bush, his disdain and hatred for the idea of

sacrificing your life for your country is well documented.

And I wish that wasn't the first thing I thought of when I saw the news, first of the

four deaths and today the additional two.

But I pray for, for some conversion on his part that he doesn't believe that people die

serving their country are still, quote, suckers and losers.

Yeah, I, I didn't relate it though, it was just sticking back to the 2016 Democratic

Convention in Kizir Khan and I don't, I don't, I don't want to get the quote exactly right

of paraphrasing it where he's talking about his, how his son who was lost and how Donald

Trump doesn't care about anything or anyone besides himself essentially.

And like that is just the reality of this situation.

If you just look at, listen to what Vaughn said, you know, another way of putting what

Vaughn said is that Trump has his megalomy, maniacal belief in himself.

He believes that he's the tough guy, the bully on the, on the playground and that he can

go around and do this stuff and not suffer any consequences.

And there's this machismo that goes along with that, that has, you know, been part of the

fascist impulse forever.

And this is what I remember I co-wrote about Mussolini, right, it was that there's just

this machismo that's like, I can do this, this bravado.

He, I think has found himself a situation that he can't spin or demagogue his way out

of with his own base.

I believe right now and you would still only have the sixth death, which would be tragic

of Americans, obviously, that they've been Iranian deaths and others in the region.

And so I guess maybe that people would just forget about it and move on.

But I think this is just a fundamental betrayal.

And I hear what Tom was saying that had similar to Epstein, I think it's totally a different

category than Epstein.

I mean, like it was essential to the rise of Trump.

It was, I hate to ever admit this, you know, sometimes being an adult means admitted

he was wrong.

His impulse might have been wrong, but he was right about where the American people were

in 2015 and 2016.

I mean, you know, that old clip of jab, that's like traumatizing for me to think about

the 2016 debates.

Like I was wrong.

He was correct.

Like people were sick of it and they were willing to turn to somebody as vulgar

and unseerious as him because what they were being offered otherwise was Clinton Bush

and a similar foreign policy that the American people had decided had failed and that they

didn't want anymore.

And so it was the central item, maybe in addition to immigration, to his rise.

And so for him now to get involved in a regime change for in the Middle East that has no rationale

at all.

Like he can't even give his people a fake leaf about what this is for.

You know, look, I think that some of them will stick with him for a little bit because,

you know, people don't like to admit that they're wrong and that's a team jersey and all

that.

But if this continues to get worse and he gets into a quagmire, like this could really be

the issue that doesn't, you know, we spend a lot of time on here talking about issues

where it's like, well, could he go from 85% down to 80 with his base?

So, you know, could he go from 92 down to 80?

Like this is the issue that could split the base in half, that could split his party

in half because it is the central thing that he promised to his voters.

And he is just doing exactly the opposite in a way that is kind, that is hard for me to

really even understand how he could have, how he could have judged this to be something

that his own base would accept.

It's also a good window into how little he consumes, how exploitive he was of the

manosphere and right wing media because this is a hot war of words, Tom.

This is Mark Levin talking about Tucker Carlson and let me just stipulate, they are tarantulas

in a bowl.

There's no one to root for.

But in terms of how, what Tim is talking about, the solidarity behind Trump and Trump

is, is why he wins the Republican nomination three times in the presidency twice.

And in terms of how unpopular he is, he is well below 80 on this issue, GOP support for

attacking for the strikes over the summer was 69 percent in June's 55 percent now.

It's 15 points more unpopular today than after the strikes that quote unquote obliterated

Iran's nuclear program.

From the attack on Iran has 27 percent of approval rating among the public and just 55 percent

of Republicans, I think that's the lowest approval rating among Republicans out of anything

he's doing.

I think even tariffs high poll higher, 55 percent among Republicans, but I'll check that.

So here's what Mark Levin said about Tucker Carlson, two pretty giant figures in

MAGA media quote, one day soon Benedict Arnold's name will be replaced with Tucker Carlson

as the greatest traitor to our country.

And his name will become a term of derision and contempt, disloyalty and sabotage.

And that is about Tucker Carlson saying things I'm not going to play it, I'll read you

a little bit of this.

He's calling Mark Levin's more mongering quote, pure insanity, what people like Levin,

who I'm not attacking, I feel sorry for because he's clearly living in hell.

What they're trying to do is a species of witchcraft and it's really simple, you repeat

something until it becomes true.

Comany must die, we're going into war, we're going to knock off the government, this is

good for us.

One who's against it is an anti-Semite and Nazi should be expelled, Benedict Arnold,

not allowed in the White House.

You keep repeating those things that are untrue until they become true.

Now do the 2020 election Tucker and then we could maybe be friends, but the idea that

these two figures have a public torrent of betrayal toward each other feels like the most

significant political development.

I guess since the minister broke up with Trump over Epstein, Tom.

Yeah, I'd never thought I'd have an ounce of sympathy for Tucker Carlson, but Levin

once called me a communist, so I talk our welcome to the family.

Part of the problem is that these guys all live in the attention economy, so having this

kind of fight is good for both of their brands.

The problem is that there are millions of people following each of them trying to figure

out where they are on this issue, and you're right, for once this is, they're no longer

not even in lockstep.

I mean, it used to be that when you saw these kinds of fights in mega world, except for

things like green versus bumper and things like that, normally they kept it kind of giving

each other side eye or shade.

This is now, they're just exchanging nuclear bombs back and forth, because I suspect the

people that went with Trump on this feel like fools, and nothing makes your angerier than

to have something like this put over on you.

As I said, I take Tim's point by the way about Epstein being kind of a qualitatively different

thing, but in all these cases, again, these were people that were willing to say, I know

Trump lies to me.

I know he's going to do tariffs, even though he said he wouldn't, and that I didn't think

he would, or I know he's going to lie about the second amount, well, I don't care, but

on a couple of things, the lie hits them at such a deep level that they look completely

hoodwinked, and you're going to see a lot of rage about that, especially as this goes

on, because I think the difference with one last thing, the difference between this

and midnight hammer was people woke up, Trump said, we hit their facilities, one and done,

it's over, no casualties, Iran's learned its lesson, and they could say USA and do the

chant, and all that business.

Trump did nothing to prepare the ground here.

He could have really set up something at the state of the union, he could have dared Democrats

to stay sitting for Iran, whatever, but he didn't do any of that, and then we begin these

operations, and it kind of trickles out, and you start hearing that it was these rallies,

and then Trump, yeah, we were involved, and then in the middle of the night, he puts out

this very weird video, this kind of tired old grandpa ranting on, and I think that the

more he just does with COVID, the more he rants on, the less secure people feel, the more

he says, the actually the shake year it gets, and I think that's true of mega world as

well.

I'll show you a little bit more of what this looks like, F-thoms and everything in

mega world, they're bleeped out, they're bleeped out, I don't want you to stick around

if that's what you're waiting for, and they'll show it to you anyway, don't go anywhere,

I also had much more on how Donald Trump committed, this betrayal we're talking about by starting

a new forum war, this one in Iran, after promising for years, you'd be the president to end

all wars.

Later in the hour, the absolute crazy reason you might have missed that Trump gave to help

justify launching war in Iran, and like so much that motivates Donald Trump, it has

to do with his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, or if it's Mark Elias, we'll try

to make sense of that.

Later in the hour, Devin White House continues, after a quick break, don't go anywhere.

We're all back.

The other remarkable thing about the betrayal is how quickly it happened, like it wasn't

hard to find any of the tape of Trump on all of these Manosphere podcasts, and it was

even easier to find them sort of clapping back.

This is podcaster Dave Smith, who endorsed Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2024.

I hope the Republicans lose the midterms this year, they need to, for the country, they

need to be destroyed, and no one from this administration can be supported in 28, JD

Vance, Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, she hasn't resigned yet, Tulsi Gabbard, to the

no war with Iran's shirts that she was selling, how much money you make off those shirts, Tulsi?

How can you not return that money?

Well, I'll find the picture and show it to you, they sold no war with, oh, there it is,

no war with Iran, T-shirts, and that is at Tulsi Gabbard, G-A-B-B-A-R-D, yet that's

her.

No war with Iran, get our troops out of Iraq and Syria now, Tulsi, no war with Iran.

T-shirts, what do these people say now, Bon?

You know, I think that that's one of those where, at the least bit, there must be a reckoning

or a sober detailing of the position change, you know, and I think JD Vance is the other one,

right, I was on the campaign trail one, when he was running for Ohio Senate seat back in May

of 2022, and he'd talk about this, but then even in 2023, JD Vance, he had a long Twitter thread

in which he was very clear, he talked about, I hope we do better in the future referring

to the Iraq war, and I know that we won't until the people who led us into Iraq are scorned

and ignored across the spectrum, Iraq was a disaster, yes, but the best way to do justice

to be honored dead is to learn the lessons purchased by their blood.

There were 7,000 American men and women that lost their lives over the last 25 years

in the Middle East, more than 53,000 injured, and by JD Vance's own telling, he was 18

years old when the Iraq war began, and he enlisted in the Marines just one month later,

and he saw and lived the experience that so many other millennials did in terms of their

loved ones paying the price with their own blood, and I think that that is where, here

in this moment in these first 72 hours, there has not been a sober detail by the President

of the United States or JD Vance in terms of laying out and responding the difference

in which the beginning of the first Middle East wars, and what we have seen play out here

over the course of the last 72 hours, because in so many ways there's so much conservative

backlash online here, including by one, he's the writer, conservative writer Matt Walsh saying,

I can't take the gaslighting guys, I really can't, conservatives now running around saying

I ran, it's not been waging war on us for 47 years, then why didn't any of you call

for an attack I ran on any other point till now?

A lot of these same voices from Megan Kelly, to Marjorie Taylor Green, to Matt Walsh,

these are the folks that were very key to lifting up the likes of JD Vance into prominence

and really holding on for Donald Trump and carrying his political water over the last

decade.

Tim Miller, what does that mean for Democrats?

They should be very clear in opposition to the war.

And I think that I understand in the past Democrats, I think when it comes to national

security issues, they sometimes wrap their head around, they sometimes get wrapped around

the axel on it.

They don't want to see them weak, they're Republicans are more comfortable being jingo

istic and promulitary, and Democrats don't want to kind of seed that ground to them.

And so you see this sometimes, and folks are talking about this in the past, but even

now, let's worry, see some Democrats saying things like, you know, caviating it and you

know, talking, you know, focusing on how terrible the itola was, it's okay to talk about

all of that.

I wish the Iranian people were free.

I wish the women of Iran had freedom.

I'm not upset that the itola has gone.

But these clowns aren't going to do anything to fix it.

And we cannot trust them, they're liars, they're incompetent.

And they don't have to give any, give them any off ramp for any political off ramp at

least for, you know, kind of covering up that incompetence.

And so to me, I think if you're a Democrat, you just should be very clear about how we

do not support war with Iran, we do not support Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth

unilaterally taking us to a war with no rationale without offering any compelling case to the

American people, without coming to Congress and letting us vote on it or authorize it.

No, it's no, no, no, no, no.

And I think in this case, that puts Democrats on the right side of the American people

and on the right side of the policy in this because like these guys don't know what they're

doing and they're risking getting us into a big quagmire.

And I think frankly, the best thing probably is to just cut bait at this point.

And so I don't think the Democrats should feel at all compelled to, you know, try to,

you know, find the middle ground here or, you know, sound tough on foreign policy vis-a-vis

Iran.

Tom Nichols and Ron Hillier, thank you for starting us off, Tim Sixer, and a little

bit longer.

Come back, Donald Trump has, as we've been discussing, given many public explanations

about why he launched a war with Iran.

But the one he suggested shortly after the initial strike, Saturday morning, might have been

the most that bleep, crazy thing he said in about a week.

And of course, it has to do with his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020.

Mark Elias will be here to unpack that next.

We've been covering the varying explanations offered by Donald Trump and his cabinet

for the war in Iran while hours after launching the war in Iran, Donald Trump took to social

media and seemed to link the military strikes to conspiracy theories that Iran was somehow

responsible for his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

This claims could be dismissed as, what could do or bogus, but our next guess warns that

it is actually a sign of what Donald Trump will try to do in our upcoming elections.

Mark Elias writes in democracy, docket this, quote, Donald Trump is planning to use his

attack on Iran to justify a power grab over voting in the 2026 midterms.

He adds that Trump's posts about Iran and the immediate aftermath of the strikes are

quote, just the latest instance of Trump siding foreign interference as the motivation or

justification for unilateral executive action.

Trump is setting the stage to claim extraordinary powers to take over the 2026 elections from

banning mail and voting to imposing new obstacles to voting registration.

All of this will be justified on the grounds of national security and area where presidents

enjoy their broadest powers and typically receive the greatest deference from the courts.

I want to bring in voting rights attorney founder of democracy docket, Mark Elias, Tim

is still with us.

Well, every week, I keep thinking our conversations can't get darker or more disturbing and it

feels like they have.

Say more.

Yeah, look, I don't want people to be discouraged by this.

We know that Donald Trump is going to try to figure out every advantage that he has to

try to cheat in 2026.

That's what he did in 2020 and the aftermath, it's frankly what he's prepared to do in

2024.

But I think we'd also be naive and we would not be doing a service to free and fair elections

if we did not recognize that, you know, at about 2.30 a.m. Donald Trump posted on his social

media platform, Truth Social, that he had launched a military campaign against Iran.

Now that's weird that he announced it at 2.30 in the morning on his social media platform.

But the very next post, like literally the next thing back to back that he posted just

two hours later, was a connection tying the 2020 election and he claims the interference

in the 2024 election to Iran.

And I just don't believe that that's a coincidence.

I don't believe that that's a coincidence at the same time that he is trying to access

voter files around the country.

I don't believe it's a coincidence, by the way, at the same time that he is telling anthrop

one of the largest AI companies that if they don't allow the Department of Defense to conduct

mass surveillance on U.S. citizens, that they're going to be blackballed.

I think that all of these things are need to be viewed through the prism of the one thing

that Donald Trump cares most about, which is not losing power.

And the greatest threat to his power right now is that Democrats take control in the midterm

elections.

Now, I don't think Donald Trump's going to get away with this.

I think he's going to issue some new executive order that's going to claim foreign

interference as a premise for him having power.

And it is where courts have traditionally given the most deference to presidents.

But I also say in that piece that it's transparent what he's doing here.

And I don't think any court's going to go along with it.

And as soon as he issues that executive order, I'll sue him.

And we will win as we did last time.

And we continue to litigate against the Department of Justice in their efforts.

And so we got to steal our spines for what's ahead, but we shouldn't give up hope.

It's a sober message.

And I can hear how careful Margelaya was being in articulating the gravity of the threat

with the prospects for protecting ourselves from it.

But Tim, it's insane that the current president is trying to sabotage our elections.

And I take the importance of, especially at this moment, where Minneapolis seem to unlock

something in people that we still have agency, we still have power, we still have each

other.

Artists and athletes follow, and that's all really important.

But his reaction has been to tighten his stranglehold on our democracy.

Your thoughts?

Yeah, two thoughts.

One to echo Mark's last point, I'm not having people not get discouraged.

I like to steal a line that Trump used to say with the 2024 election, which is pretty

rare for me.

But so it's going to be too big to steal, too big to cheat, all right?

Like the victory is going to be too big for the Democrat, for these guys to steal it.

And I think that the Iran war, which we talked about in the last segment is going to contribute

to that.

And I think people being pissed about this and turning out and being engaged as we saw

in Minneapolis is going to play into that.

That set, yeah, it's extremely crazy.

This is where we are.

And the fact that these life or death geopolitical decisions are tied up in his adult brain conspiracy

theorizing about the 2020 election and their plans, whatever they are, for meddling in

the 2026 elections.

The Venezuela case is the same.

And one of the OG conspiracy theories that was floated about the 2020 election on the

MacaRite was that the Dominion machines were Venezuela and Hugo Chavez was about, it's

not even worth getting into all that, that Venezuela was tied up in it.

So then to float Iran now, again, whether or not like the President of the United States

is so insane and so detached from reality, that he thinks that Venezuela and Iran colluded

to prevent him from winning in 2020.

Why they didn't do it in 2024, I don't know, I wish they would have been better, I guess.

But either the president is so confused and deluded that he really believes this.

As Mark is saying, he is creating this preposterous conspiracy theory and as a pretext for meddling

in the election, either way, it is totally bananas, setting an earth to, it's like earth 19 type

you know, behavior from a president who has a lot of serious choices ahead of them.

So yeah, it's alarming and crazy.

I mean, it also costs Fox News almost a billion dollars to settle because it's a lie.

But I guess Mark, the calculation is that people won't rewind the tape that far.

Yeah, and just, you know, if you did rewind the tape, you know,

Jimmy, you've left out some countries.

Yes, he said that he and his cronies and his allies blamed Venezuela and the deceased

Hugo Chavez who died in 2013, but was somehow involved in rigging the machines for 2020.

He also don't forget his allies floated the idea that perhaps Italy

and some satellites were involved.

For me, Matt about involving Cuba, China and Germany.

So Iran's got a lot of company.

You know, this is not just a by-nat, a bilateral efforts to

undo elections according to the broader election in dire conspiracy.

It's a lot of countries, but this is all very serious stuff because

he's going to package all of this up for two audiences.

The first is his agreement audience.

The people who want a permission structure

to deny the outcome of elections that they lost.

And then the second is, as I point out in the piece,

the courts, because the courts are most deferential,

like, to presidents when it comes to foreign policy and national security.

Like, that's a real thing.

And we have seen a lot of damage be done.

Look at the migrants who are shipped to the Gulag in El Salvador.

You know, until that unraveled, there was a lot of damage done to those people.

So I don't think this is going to be a smooth process.

I'm optimistic that in the end, we will fight this back

and we will win in court as we did in the aftermath of 2020.

But everybody needs to keep in mind that, you know,

there were moments of touch and go in 2020.

And there were moments of touch and go in the post-election in 2020.

And ultimately, when Donald Trump didn't prevail in court,

he incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol

to try to overturn a free and fair election.

So, you know, I'm optimistic, but I'm also realistic.

And we need Nicole.

We need to make sure that all of their institutions

and all of our leaders have their fines sealed.

Like, they are not driven to pessimism.

They're not driven to hopeless.

But they're also not blinded to what is in front of them

and the challenges we're going to face.

Right. We're talking about return to something normal.

We're so far beyond that.

Well, have that conversation on the other side of a short break.

Stay with us.

We're back with Margaret Tim.

Um, Margaret want you to say more about living in reality.

Um, I saw that Trump, the Trump justice firm

it will no longer defend their illegal and unconstitutional

um, executive orders against law firms.

Um, because they are illegal and unconstitutional.

Judge Barrell Howell, who was the first judge to weigh in on them,

described them as quote, sending a chill down her spine.

Um, all the same, law firm after law firm after law firm,

I think starting with Brad Carp at Paul Weiss,

who wasn't even running Paul Weiss anymore,

capitulated and are now working for Boris doing,

I don't know what, at the Commerce Department.

Donald Trump will do whatever he can get away with doing.

And a lot of it isn't legal.

And alarming amount of it is unconstitutional.

And he will move on and bully someone else

if people stand up to him.

Why isn't that lesson sort of internalized,

writ large on the pro democracy side?

Yeah, so look, I think today is going to be remembered as one of the most important days

for the opposition movement against Donald Trump.

I realize that there's a lot of other stuff going on in the world.

But today was the day that the law firms that stood up tall

and said to Donald Trump, we will not bow down to you.

We will not obey.

We will not bend in any.

Today is the day that the Department of Justice dismissed their lawsuit against them.

Or dismissed, I'm sorry,

stopped defending the victory that the law firms had against the Department of Justice.

And what that means for everyone listening is that

the four law firms that stood their ground,

they can proceed on and have government contracts and enter buildings,

do all of the things that Donald Trump tried to deny them.

And for the nine or ten law firms that capitulated and collaborated,

they still have to provide free legal services to Donald Trump.

They still have to look at themselves in the mirror and explain why they settled a case

that wound up getting dismissed and that the Department of Justice then dropped.

They have to explain to their clients why anyone would hire them

when they were so cowardly,

when they lacked even the basic spine expected of any lawyer,

no less one who charges thousands of dollars an hour.

And they settled a claim and groveled in the Oval Office rather than standing up to fight.

And most importantly, they're going to have to explain to their children and their grandchildren

and future generations that were remembered them by name.

When democracy was under attack, when large institutions were asked to do the bare minimum

to stand up, not to show the courage that the people of Minneapolis showed,

not to show the activism of millions of people in those kings rallies,

but to show the basic minimum amount of decency and backbone.

They'll have to explain to the children, grandchildren, and future generations why they couldn't

muster that. And history will remember them as the great villains and the great cowards of this

era. And so I hope we celebrate today as a victory for everyone who stands up in

tall and does not bow down to Donald Trump.

And but I also hope we redouble our efforts to remember who the villains were,

who the cowards were, who had every advantage in life, and yet refuse to bear any burden

to do the right thing. We won't forget around here. Mark Elias and Tim Miller, thank you both

for joining me today. Really important conversation. One more break for us. We'll be right back.

I know there's a lot going on, but trust me on this one. This week for the Best People Podcast,

I got a chance to finish a conversation. We started on this program. Some of our favorite

guests, Princeton professor, Dr. Eddie Glod, former New Orleans mayor, Mitch Landryl,

and the Atlantic's Tom Nichols, who was on our program earlier in the hour.

Shall we say it was a little less structured. Everyone let their true feelings fly without

interruptions from breaks. They join me to try to make sense with this very moment in our country

and with our response to it, should be. Take a listen.

We exceptionalized MAGA and Trump and say that something's wrong with them,

but I keep thinking about a lineage. How many of these folk are the children of the children of

Nixon? Right. The way in which they think of the Imperial presidency. And now it's on steroids.

What's the soil that gave birth to this stuff? And if we understand the acidity of the soil that

produced it, then maybe we can not exceptionalize them, but can understand what's at the heart

of what we've produced. Because Donald Trump is just the boil. The rod is underneath.

Can I get you some of that though? I mean, Eddie, I expected you to, Tom.

No, no, no, no. That kind of taking you should say, no, no, everything's fine.

Everything is not fine, but I think it's dangerous to say almost in a kind of national

original sin sense that this is everybody. Because the other thing we've been talking about today

is how many Americans really are fundamentally, when faced with this, their impulse is to be

fundamentally decent and good. There is a lot more that came from. It was a wide-ranging

conversation. You won't want to miss it. You can hear the whole thing on this week's episode

of The Best People. Just scan the QR code on your screen or download it wherever you get your

podcast. Be sure to let me know what you think on Instagram or Blue Sky. One more break will be

right back. So tomorrow the battle begins for control of Congress with primaries in Texas,

North Carolina, and Arkansas. I'll get to join Rachel Maddo and our primetime friends for

analysis throughout the night with Alivel. She's breaking down real-time results. Special coverage

begins at 7 p.m. Eastern tomorrow night on MSNOW. Our thanks to you for letting us into your homes.

We are grateful to you for letting us into your homes. We are grateful to you for letting us into your