“The contradiction of Trump’s infallibility”

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Knowing what little time we have and how quickly this can spiral out of control, we still

have a lot of questions.

For instance, was the president fully briefed about the risks of all of this from the beginning?

And was he then able to take it all in and understand the complexity of this, how complex

it could actually get, and for the possibilities of casualties or other damage, the difficulty

of dealing with these people?

Or was he told this would be relatively quick in and out?

Where is it will live forever?

Was he Donald Trump able to take it all in?

Or anger wants to know the answer to that question, hi again everybody, it's not 5 o'clock

in New York.

It's quite convenient, apparently Donald Trump is never wrong, but when he is wrong, when

he gets something wrong, is the MAGA newscasters are starting to worry maybe he has, it must

be someone else's fault, right?

Maybe he was in briefed, so he can't fail, he can only be failed, or incapable of quote

when she say, taking it in, this isn't the first time the American people have been on

the receiving end of the, he got bad advice or bad briefing that he quote couldn't take

in story for Trump's grew up, we heard precisely the same narrative from his allies on tariffs,

which he's always loved, an immigration, which he's always pumped the adrenal glands of,

on Greenland, which he's always been obsessed with, and on the Fed, on judicial nominations,

on and on, but this particular iteration about whether or not he could quote, take it

in on Iran is quite different, one, men and women have died, two, the MAGA coalition,

as we've come to understand it over the last nine years, is blowing up before our eyes,

so this justification that quote, maybe he can't take in information represents a new, rather

insulting but subtle and ingenious, ever to split the difference maybe, to criticize Donald

Trump's acuity and capacity without criticizing the little taber himself, of course a completely

contradicts what Donald Trump is saying about all this, the White House is saying what the

cabinet's saying, they've all insisted from the beginning that military in the military

action in Iran, the war was a result of Donald Trump's gut feeling and instinct, a hunch

that Trump quote, felt in his bones, someone who thinks on a higher plane than the rest of

us, I guess.

And it was my opinion that they were going to attack first, they were going to attack,

if we didn't do it, they were going to attack first, I felt strongly about that.

I think the president prior to that phone call had a good feeling and the president's feeling

based on fact, this was a feeling the president had based on facts.

When are you going to know when it's over, is when I feel it, okay, I feel it on my bones.

So we are all waiting on Donald Trump's bones.

So back to Laura Ingram and the friends of Donald Trump's in the media.

We are now to believe that Donald Trump, who makes life and death more related decisions,

as his secretary says from the podium, based on his quote, feelings, and as Donald Trump

says quote, from his bones, we're now to believe that none of that is true, that Caroline

Levitt was lying, that Donald Trump's lying to bring killmead and as Laura Ingram put

it last night, Trump was the victim of a bad briefing that he quote couldn't take

in and quote, but who would have assembled the bad briefing?

I don't know, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pulsie Gavard, these are his people, there's nobody

else that has gotten us.

Former Fox anchor Megan Kelly made a, should we call it an adjacent point yesterday.

She targeted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who she said was quote, frothing at the

mouth right now at the thought of thousands of our soldiers going into Iran.

She said a bunch of other stuff about bubble wands, but we'll leave that out.

This is the rest of her quote.

So what is Lindsey Graham doing to support those troops and their families who are preparing

to put their lives on the line?

He's at Disney World, she added, little mermaid themed bubble wand and all.

Now whether or not these excuse makers understand that in questioning the advice that's been

provided to Trump, they're also questioning Donald Trump's mental fitness for the office

he holds and his ability to understand information is not clear to me, right?

You have to decide for yourself.

But again, to quote Laura Ingram, to take what she said on her program, which she seemed

to be reading from a teleprompter and I don't know that for a fact, but she said this quote,

was he able to take it all in end quote.

For now, apparently the buck stopped somewhere around there.

And so we start the hour.

President of Media Matters for America, Angela Karrison is here, off to joining us, Joe

Wall.

She's a former Republican congressman.

Iran for president in 2020.

He's now trying to, I don't know, what are you trying to, we'll get into your mission.

Get us all talking again, and joining me at the table for the hour, political analyst Molly

John Fash, she's the host of fast politics, New York Times contributing opinion writer.

Angela, I have to start with you.

It is awkward, maybe, to have to spin this, which is obviously the charge they keep, the

burden they've decided to carry.

But I've not heard them say in what seems like a prepared read that quote, maybe he couldn't

take it in.

Is that, does that rank as the first time his mental fitness has been challenged on

the Fox in a scripted open?

It is probably the most significant critique of his mental challenge from Fox News, in particular.

And I think the point about it being scripted and not enough to comment is actually quite

significant as well, because it shows that it was deliberate and calibrated on purpose.

And Ingram is obviously a little bit out front here when it comes to that core part of the

pro Trump media of the Fox, of the Fox ecosystem, and I think it's an indicator of a larger

trend that we've been observing that we've talked about.

But this is a feedback loop beginning to break down.

And that is the other takeaway.

It's not just that she made that critique, that nature of the critique itself is an illustration

that this is extending beyond just, you know, Trump's handling of the war now.

And Joe Walsh, other than as Marco Rubio barely lived to tell, criticizing the size of his

hands, criticizing the size of his business man who walks around taking like the Alzheimer's

screen in public.

He walks around taking the Mocha test, tomato tomato, tamale man, woman child, I ace to

I ace to he's been telling us that for years, for Laura Ingram to challenge his mental

fitness, just feels like a big red line for her to have crossed.

Nicole, I don't, I don't know that she's crossed a red line.

It's the first potential suggestion.

But to me, the biggest takeaway is they're all afraid to say he's responsible.

He still owns this party.

They'll go after his advisors, they'll go after everybody who works for him, but they won't

blame him.

And Nicole, they can't blame him.

Look, when you are a conservative and you came out like I did seven years ago and I

said he's the problem, he's what's wrong, he's bad.

I lost everything in the day.

If anybody right now came out in the MAGA, you know, the podcast media world and said Trump

owns this, he screwed up.

It's his decision.

They'd be gone.

They'd lose their audience in a nanosecond.

They're all competing to be kind of the MAGA voice when Trump is gone, but they're not

going to go after the king.

Let me challenge you on that.

I mean, I made the same move in 2015 and so I know the path that you traveled.

I see something very different in the last people to join the coalition.

I mean, in Shangela, in Joe Rogan, in the, you know, Mana Spirit podcasters, they are

outright disgusted by the treatment of the Epstein files.

They are outright disapproving of the war in Iran.

I would add Sean Ryan to that group as well.

They are saying all these things out loud, are you sort of cleaving off the establishment

Fox anchors, Brian Kilmachon, Hannibal or Ingram, as people who won't go after Trump?

Because I see something different in the younger group of the MAGA coalition members.

I think any voices who are not overtly political like Rogan will venture further off.

Nicole, I'm not going to disagree with you because I still engage with MAGA every day.

There's impact on the margins, the Epstein scandal, file scandal.

That's moved some MAGA folks on the margins.

This war has moved some MAGA folk on the margin.

I guess I still believe that the 28 nominee, Republican nominee is going to be a Trump

he voice.

I think all of these folks know that they're just scrambling to get the most crumbs that

they can get so they can sit at that table when Trump no longer runs.

I see.

I think this will be a great conversation for you and I to have for the next three years.

I think that there's something, I think it'll be someone who may have staked out a different

position on Iran.

I think that Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly are making very deliberate comments and calculations.

Let me play what some of the people who we may be covering is 2028.

People who aspire to be present in 2028 have been saying.

We're not interested in being in Iran a year down the road, two years down the road.

We're taking care of business.

We're going to be out of there soon and gas fries, you're going to come back now.

What I want the American people and the people watching this broadcast to know is that fundamentally

what this is about is the destruction of their air force, which has been largely achieved.

The destruction of their navy, which has been largely achieved, the destruction of their

factories that they make all these weapons with, which is we're well on our way to achieving

and a substantial reduction in the number of missile launchers that they have so that

they cannot continue to threaten their neighbors in the future.

All of those objectives are being met ahead, on or ahead of schedule and should be able

to achieve in a matter of weeks.

It's very important that there are no troops involved currently in this conflict and

there have not been troops involved at any point.

That to me has always been a red line.

It was within a sway lie.

I think that if there were troops committed to combat operations, Congress would need

to authorize that.

That's currently not the case.

And so I think the president and the administration are complying with the law.

I do not believe there is any scenario in which President Trump puts ground troops for any

extended period of time in Iran.

Iran is not a rack.

They are very different conflicts.

But extended is the key word here.

The reason I'm not saying no ground troops under any circumstances is the president may

well have an aspect of the mission that requires ground troops.

What's not going to happen is what we did in Iraq, which is sending in hundreds of thousands

of troops to be there for years and to try to run the country.

I think that would be a serious mistake.

Molly, I don't have enough time left to play all the times Trump said.

He would never take the country to war.

The suffice to say it's a factor of about 200 of what I just played from them.

Now, all the tapping their feet together in shiny red shoes and saying, you know, there's

no place.

I mean, that is delusion.

None of them can really be sure that the things that you know, JD bands, we're going

to be out of their soon and gas prices are going to come back down really.

So, evidence that that is true.

The calculations, they're following the law because there are no troops there.

They just moved 10,000 troops to the re, I mean.

What is your sense of the distance between what they're saying and what Trump is actually

doing?

I mean, and also even Trump says things like it's almost done.

It's over.

It's not over.

So, look, they're responding to the fact that this is very unpopular.

Boots on the ground, poles at like a single digits.

I mean, there is no world aid.

Right.

Eight.

So, boots on the ground is not popular.

This war, and we saw this from CPAC.

We saw this from these poles at CPAC, the straw poles.

Boots on the ground, the war is super unpopular.

So, I actually have a slightly different take on Laura Ingram because I think Laura Ingram

is on a network owned by Rupert Murdock.

Rupert Murdock is Trumpy, but also there's a larger goal of keeping the Republican party

together and not getting shellacked in the midterms.

And so, what I heard when I was listening to that was a little bit of manipulation.

Like, this is obviously you don't want to do this, but so probably someone is giving

you bad advice.

And then the other question, I would.

You didn't hear that maybe he can't take in.

I mean, that's how people talk about aging relatives who are losing their ability to

take in whatever they heard from the pharmacy, but when they're prescriptionally ready.

I mean, yes, yes, but I also did hear like a sort of gentle push to like, if you really

knew what-

To throw Tulsi Gavard under the bus?

Yes.

And to throw them all into the bus.

But I also think, I think that this, I do really see that there is like, people are

trying to get him not to do this.

And the question I have is like, who is, because we're seeing so many stories leaked about

you know, shoot movements.

So the question I think is like, who is leaking all of this stuff?

And why are they leaking it?

And I think they're worried that Donald Trump is going to do this.

Do what?

Do this invasion, this ground evasion, which no one wants, which is not enough troops.

I mean, we've seen reporting on the ground evasion is just that it's a terrible idea every

which way and that nobody wants it.

I mean, I guess the other problem is with the ground evasion is it's not clear what

they would do.

I mean, the Iran deal, much maligned by Republicans, I was about the nuclear program.

Marco Rubio's list of objectives, you can talk about it.

Marco Rubio there said, we are there for the destruction of the Navy.

We are there for the destruction of the factories where they make weapons.

And we are there for reduction in missile launchers.

Those are the stated military objectives.

Trump is talking about troops on the ground and it doesn't even align with what a secretary

state articulates as the objectives of the war that's ongoing.

Yeah.

And I think that this latest round of escalating critiques from newer voices, even Bannon,

is beginning to say some things that are waffling, but the Ingram thing comes at a very

specific time that we can't ignore the context of because it gets to your question, which

is that it comes right after he does an announcement telling everybody to watch Fox News

is Mark Levin, who gets out there and makes a very vigorous case as to why boots on

the ground troops need to be sent into Iran to secure all the nuclear material and then

get out.

And Trump tells everybody to watch this.

And that, to me, is the catalyst for this latest round of critique.

And it gets to the point that you were all discussing before about trying to walk him

back or stop him from doing this.

The mere fact that he said, hey, everybody watch this thing because it explains the thing

I'm really thinking about doing.

It was a warning shot to everybody like, maybe we need to start being more, you know,

aggressive about pushing back against Mark Levin.

And then it gets to this broader issue that you're seeing cloud.

And this is one of the sharp critiques that Megan Kelly has is they don't really have

clarity as to what the goal and the objective is because what Trump is saying is really

different than what you laid out from Marco Rubio.

And it's really different from what's the right wing media wants.

And it's certainly very different from what Pete Hegseth wants, who's the single biggest

cheerleader of this.

And I think that is partly what Ingram was trying to play on as well.

But it is leading to the chaos, to the confusion, you know, or the last thing I'll just

say is that part of the benefit that Trump has had, we've talked about this is that he

has this massive media machine that can backfill or carry the narrative for him.

But even if they were all in sync, they still couldn't do that under these circumstances.

Even if they fully agree that this was a good thing, they couldn't do it because there

is not even the slightest bit of consensus as to what story they're even telling right.

Now.

And Trump is the center of that confusion in chaos.

Yeah.

And let me take age out of it.

Like, I'm not sure this is about an older person.

I mean, I mean, anyone that saw Jane Fonda literally with the ability to articulate the

entire mission behind, okay, this is not an age story.

This is about one of Trump's closest allies in the media saying, quote, I don't know if

he could take it in about a president who literally walks around talking about the results

of a mental acuity screening test.

And the synchronicity of those two things, a president acutely obsessed.

He started taking the mocha test in Fox News interviews in the year 2017.

And now one of his closest allies, someone who I think was rumored to have aided with

one of his debates that during one of the three times you remember, president, is wondering

on TV, quote, whether he could take in a briefing about what would happen when he launched

a war in Iran.

Just let that sink in.

No one's going anywhere.

When we come back, Donald Trump's big gaudy obsession, the other sign that I don't know,

the lights are on, but I'm not sure who's decorating the ballroom.

His massive, gilded ballroom with stairs to nowhere, it has been put on ice by a judge.

A judge blocked for their construction.

For now, we'll show you with a judge told Trump after a short break, also had wire Republicans

10 years into the Trump experiment refused to do anything.

The hold him accountable as Joe Alsh was talking about, whether it's his unilateral decision

to take the country to war or his corruption and grift, which are now taking place in full

view of the entire country.

They continue to let a deeply unpopular president run roughshod over everything our country

has stood for.

Senator Cory Booker will be here, another possible 2028 presidential contender, he'll be our

guest later in the hour.

The then White House continues after quick break, don't go anywhere.

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An important update to a story we told you about yesterday and another welcome instance

of the judiciary or judge reigning in what Donald Trump is doing and what he insists is

within his powers and authority.

This afternoon, a federal judge said now, in order to temporary halt on construction

of that monstrosity currently being attached to the White House, a planned 900,000 square

foot ballroom in his exclamation point, laden decision granting a preliminary injunction

to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon writes this quote,

The president of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations

of first families.

He is not, however, the owner.

I have concluded that the National Trust is likely to succeed on the merits because

no statute comes close to giving the president the authority he claims to have.

We're back with Angelo Joe and Molly.

I hell have no theory, I could real estate guy told he can't destroy something beautiful

and put in place, something gotty.

Yes, and I want to point out, Richard Leon, George W. Bush appointee, so not some Obama

judge.

The writing in this opinion is pretty shocked and it says, you don't own the White House.

The White House belongs to the people, which has fundamentally been a big problem and Trump

2.0 is belief that this is all sort of his.

The thing that I find the most interesting in this story is that then he decides Trump

that the true enemy here is the National Trust, the National Trust, which is a historic

trust, a historic preservation organization, and then goes on social media to call them

a radical left group of lunatics whose funding was stopped by Congress.

I promise you, I don't know these people, but I know that the National Trust is not filled

with radical left lunatics.

It's just another walless act, Angelo by Donald Trump, that by the time it was seen by

a federal judge, as Molly points out, went appointed by a former Republican president,

the sum of it is you have got to be effing kidding me.

Yeah, and something you've seen as a pattern overall, laws aren't really a thing for him,

they're obstacles, that you just sort of either break through or work around, and that

is part of the real threat that we talk about.

It's not these individual one odds, it's the cumulative effect of a president that is

out there tearing down or undermining the rule of law, which is really the things that

sort of helps sustain America because it's something to grow on.

It's one of our biggest strengths.

I think about one of the things that I thought about that ruling aside from the judge's

use of exclamation mark points as well, is something Jamie Diamond said, because he didn't

give money to that ballroom, and when he was pressed on why he didn't, he explained,

I don't know if this is legal, I don't know what the next administration is just doing,

and I go back to that because it's a shame that more of the companies that enabled and

facilitated this at the time didn't hold firm.

This is also a consequence of capitulation, because they didn't have to enable and participate

in this, and that's to me is the one takeaway, is that to your point, he's always proven

to be breaking the rules, and if there was a little bit of a stiffer spine from those

that helped enable this, it would be a lot harder for him to do that.

They'd be like school bumps in a school zone.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's important to point out that our former parent company

Comcast is one of the companies that paid for the destruction of the East Room ballroom.

Joe Walsh, on this topic of capitulation, it's also unattractive.

I mean, politically it is on appealing to be a brand or company that capitulated.

These are the sorts of people that not even Donald Trump particularly respects.

He's out there trying to get former adversaries because they represent to him Conquest, not

weak people who capitulate.

What are you learning for the first time here and whatever it is, the 700th year of the

time is from the 90th year, I think, from the conversations you're having around the

country about what still works and what doesn't work so well.

Nicole, quickly, I just, he does not own that house, he's not the owner, it's our house.

And when we talk about capitulation, Nicole, oh my God, Trump's been able to be the fascist

and the dictator he is because we don't have a Congress and we have not had a Congress

from the moment Trump was sworn in, but thankfully the courts are catching up.

Look, Nicole, you know how I feel about Trump and my former political party.

They are an existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.

But I also believe that no matter who's in the White House, if we all continue down

this road where we hate the people we disagree with, I think the country and the democracies

in a lot of trouble.

I mean, think about this.

The most radical thing you can do in America today is have a conversation with somebody

you disagree with.

That's messed up.

So what I'm doing is every two weeks I'm traveling the country, that's what we're doing.

I'm putting people in a room who fundamentally don't agree where I'm locking the door

and we're having really tough honest conversations, not debates or fights, just honest conversations

so that people can learn how to listen and hopefully understand, we're filming these

conversations and we're going to blare them out all over the country because there's

a yearning, I think, from a lot of Americans to do that.

The organization Nicole is called Hope Not Fear right over my shoulder.

Hope Not Fear Project dot org.

One of the things that's tricky and I think it's great to get people in a room together.

Most Americans, I think, live in a family or a relationship or a workplace that is already

divided along these lines.

So God bless the people that don't navigate these relationships in their day to day life.

Most of us do.

One of the things that's tricky is this post-fact dynamic.

I mean, and I wonder, Joe, what, I mean, most many, some, a few, I'm sensitive to not

melining people.

A lot of mega people don't believe the facts of the killing of Renee and Nicole Good and

Alex Prattie, of the abduction of Liam Ramos, the six-year-old, of the treatment of children

at the Dilly Detention Center, of the deportation of men to El Salvador without with the Supreme

Court and a 9-0 ruling described as the denial of due process.

What is your best advice for injecting facts into the conversations?

To Nicole, to respectfully, but firmly put facts in the truth in front of them.

We had 70 some people in Columbus, Ohio from Maga right to far left and everywhere in between.

And immigration was the big topic because Nicole, we filled that conversation the day that

Alex Prattie was shot and killed.

And there were Maga folk in the crowd who didn't believe it.

There were Maga folk in the crowd who liked what ICE was doing, but we respectfully

and firmly kept putting nuggets of truth in front of them to the point that, by the end

of a conversation, the conversation, a couple of these hardcore Maga supporters, they acknowledged

publicly in front of the entire room that ICE is going too far.

And everybody else in the room broke into a clause.

And when you're right, Nicole, these conversations have to be fact-based.

Well, God bless you for doing this work.

I want to hear more about it as the cycle sort of speed up.

Joe Walsh, Molly Dung Fash, and Angelo Carousel.

Thank you so much for starting me off today.

Up next for us, a potential Democratic candidate for President of the United States in the

year 2028, Senator Cory Booker will be right here at the table.

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Tens of billions of dollars, American lives, the worst oil shock ever, price is going up,

and what does this senate do?

Nothing.

It's a shame upon this body.

It is a surrendering of our duties.

It is a submission before Donald Trump and is authoritarian like inclinations to declare

war and not come to Congress as a constitution dictates.

That was Senator Cory Booker calling out his Republican colleagues for seeding their

constitutional duties, their constitutional powers to Donald Trump, even as his incompetence

is on full display and now being remarked upon by Laura Ingram along with his sinking approval

rating, which is now down to 33%.

Ingram's even as Trump is concerned with defending renderings of his White House ballroom

and talking about his future presidential library far more than he is with cleaning up

his own policy decisions and messes, things like reopening the straight of hormones or fixing

gas prices back home, prices that have now hit $4 per gallon or addressing the speculation

about corruption and rampant insider trading moments before his own major policy announcements,

many of them involving the U.S. military.

I want to bring in Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.

He's the author of a new book, Stand, which we'll talk about in a second.

I love that you write about, but John McCain told you to do.

Let's start there.

Because I think what's so great about what you write about is that being a statesman

has nothing to do with how hard you fight for your ideals.

Yeah.

And John was a guy that showed a lot of the virtues I talk about in this book as strategies

for how we get through bad times because he showed his vulnerability too.

He literally would tell me, I haven't been perfect.

He's like, I failed at times.

But I want you, as this old lion says to me, a new kid in the Senate.

I want you to not be a politician.

I want you to be a statesman.

And this is after he had been pulling out documents from filing cabinets of one picture.

I'll never forget of his lifeless body being pulled out after his plane crash and told

me stories about what it was like to be an POW camp for years.

And there's something missing in our country now.

Those kind of ideals that were held, held it by people on both sides of the aisle were

going way adrift of that.

And we need a national renewal and that's so much of what I wanted to call for in this

book.

You've seen to have sort of put the pieces together of being vulnerable and being honest

and talking about this moment in ways that a lot of people that resonate with a lot of

people that watch this show, but also fighting harder than a lot of other Democrats.

Why is that combination tricky for other Democrats?

Look, I come from my tradition.

So in the black community, you see people who often you can see their scars, you can

see their wounds.

They're not being silent about their pain and their hurt.

And yet there's something about that breaking when the society sort of shatters you that

gives you more points of connection to create more contact points with other people.

And I want for my party.

I think we help to pave the road to where we are right now.

I think we have failures that have to be owned up to.

This is exciting time, though.

This dark as it is, we're about to see something that happens every 20, 25 years, which is

a generational shift in American politics.

The last baby boomer president, the last baby boomer's heads of the Senate, it's really

his time for a new leadership.

And I think we need to get out of this easy reflexive left-right divide.

The real battles coming up are between the past and this future with a lot of challenges

from AI and technology.

It's also about the top versus the bottom.

We're creating this power of billionaires now that are putting more money than ever

possibly thought could have been imagined into our politics corrupting our government.

You've been reporting on it today about how people are using their privilege to trade

stocks, to get on these future markets and trade on insider information.

We're seeing the corrupting.

The highest court in the land has the lowest ethics laws, as billionaires, take them on fancy

vacations and give them gifts.

So this has got to be a moment and we don't just beat Trump.

It's not just what we're against.

We need to start talking about what we're for and having a bolder vision for what we can

be as a country and who we can be together.

I mean, no one likes any of those things, right?

Voters hate corruption and they're doing it out in full view.

There's a brazenness that suggests that they don't think Democrats can beat them.

Yeah, I think, so first of all, take a little responsibility.

I think that the Democratic Party should issue a lot of this same kind of gross money

in politics, individual trading stocks.

I'm happy that a lot of people in my party are leaning on some of those things.

But what Donald Trump is doing is taking it to a level never before imagined.

He's made more money in one year in office than all the other US presidents in American

history combined, openly grifting, taking millions and millions of dollars in payments

through his crypto schemes from the very countries that have huge national security interests

and they want things from us.

And suddenly, he's giving them things that were refused by presidents, Republican and Democrat.

We are in a time of crisis.

But if we make this all about Donald Trump, if we make him the main character in the American

story now, we make a mistake.

The main character has got to be what are we doing?

As King said, yeah, we're going to have to repent for the vitriolic words and violent

actions of the bad people, but ultimately, what we have to repent most for is the appalling

silence and inaction of the good people.

That's why I wrote this book stand because I want people who ask me what to do to tell

them we're the heroes we're looking for.

Let this be some inspiration and instruction about how other people who didn't have high

office in our past and in our presence are still forging change in these times.

What do you do if you regain power as Democrats in November?

I think we show that we are a governing party and not just an opposition party.

I think if we can get the Senate back, which is becoming more and more likely, especially

if we see the turnout sustained like they are, I think we show not only our ability to

check and balance a president.

Remember, this is a Congress controlled by Republicans that has completely submitted

to Donald Trump.

They have shown an advanced form of yoga to bend over backwards and do what he wants

them to do.

Really blowing up what our founder said is that the Senate should be a check on this.

Why do you think?

I think it's fear.

Jefferson said it.

Of what?

Of losing our violence.

So, Jefferson said, if the people are afraid of their government, there's tyranny.

If the government is afraid of its people, there's liberty.

And so, I see my colleagues who know what Donald Trump is doing wrong, but they're afraid.

For some reasons, we talked about what some people in media are as well.

They're afraid that Donald Trump will come after them.

They'll afraid that they'll $20 billion, $20 million will be put in a primary against

them.

There's a lot of reasons why they're fear, but that doesn't in any way excuse them.

Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney, I can tell you the colleagues I've had who stood up, whose

politics I don't agree with, but they showed profiles encourage by in the worst of times

when Donald Trump was doing horrifically bad things to our democracy and to the American

people.

They stood up.

But right now, we have a bunch of spectators in the Senate who are doing nothing as prices

go up, as millions lose health insurance, as we're in the worst oil shock we've had,

as they commit tens of billions of dollars to wars overseas, as they're cutting feeding

programs at home, and their silence to me, that complicity is almost worse than the actions

of Donald Trump himself.

Yeah, because for some of them, they have public statements that prove that they don't

believe in any of it, but they're going along with it.

It also projects incredible weakness.

We're going to ask you to stick around.

We have to sneak in a short break.

We'll talk more on the other side about the book.

Okay.

Stay with us.

12 hours now I'm standing and I'm still going strong because this president is wrong.

And he's violating principles that we hold dear and principles in this document that

are so clear in playing the powers of the Article I branch are spelled out and he is violating

them.

Don't take my word for Republican appointed judges, Democrat appointed judges are saying

it and stopping him and then he aligns the judge that did that.

When is it enough for people to speak out and not just fall in line to put patriotism

over a person that's in the White House?

That was exactly one year ago Senator Booker began his record breaking speech on the floor

of the Senate or back.

People still, when they talk about who they like and who's fighting, people still talk

about the moment and I think as someone who's sort of covered the second term, it's sort

of the first moment where it was clear that Democrats could fight that at least you were

going to fight.

Yeah, I think that we have a nation's national history that's littered with incredible

examples of people when it was necessary that stood up.

I know that night one of the things that made it powerful was not me, but just reading

the stories of courageous Americans and what they were doing.

But in the book, I write about a nine year old Jennifer Keelan Chathons who when the ADA

is not moving in Congress, she rolls her wheelchair up to the Capitol steps and inaccessible

building throws herself out and crawls up the Capitol step using her elbows and her

chin scraping them up.

You can give Alice Paul during the suffrage movement, again, frustrated this young 30-something

year old woman goes to the in front of the White House and does something that had never

been done before, the first person ever to protest in front of the White House is a 30-something

year old woman from Jersey and then she's jailed and does something years before Gandhi

would do it.

She went on hunger strikes.

There are so many examples throughout our history of people in times like this that stood

up and showed that one person standing in adversity, standing strong is more powerful

often than the people in the highest office in the land.

And that's what we need right now, a lot more of, there's still too many people who are

watching what's going on, but they're treating this democracy like they're spectators.

And it doesn't take much.

I show in the book in the very first chapter what one guy just volunteered one more hour

a week with a chain reaction that that set off, that changed a generation, even a generation

that was yet born.

So I'm excited about this time.

I'm anguished.

I'm hurt.

I am afraid.

I said to you off camera, things will get worse before they get better.

It won't work.

I think that this president is liable to do anything.

If you don't believe me, look at the storming of the Capitol.

But now he's gotten us into this quagmire in Iran.

We don't have a off ramp.

He's made things worse, a more extreme government, the choking of the streets of Ramos.

What could get worse?

He could put American boots on the ground.

Thousands of troops are being sent there.

We see two now, national heads of Department of Homeland Security, two of them saying I'm

not going to commit to not putting armed ICE agents at our polling places.

And where would those polling places would be?

They would be in probably blue cities when they would try to cause as much chaos as possible.

I am telling you, this man is liable to do as much as we let him get away with without

checking him and balancing him.

And that's not only the job of a cowardice congress right now, it's also the job of the

American people.

Because in a democracy, we still have the power of the people being greater than the people

in power.

I mean, in fairness, I feel like the American people are doing their part.

I mean, the first page of Timothy Snyder's on tyranny is about obeying in advance.

And what do you make?

I mean, what do you make of corporations obeying in advance?

Media companies obeying in advance.

Law firms, like Paul Weiss, this renowned Democratic sort of heavyweight-filled law firms

obeying in advance.

What do you make of all the capitulation happening as though Trump won't be gone in two years?

Yeah, I do not understand the levels and extent of cowardice, of wealthy, wealthy people and

corporations, law firms, corporations, universities with massive endowments, all bending at the

knee, tech firms, all bending at the knee.

History is going to look back at this, especially because he's liable to do more extreme things,

more outrageous things.

History is going to look back on where did you stand when our democracy was being tested

in the courts, being tested in Congress.

Where did you stand when millions were losing health and care?

And many people couldn't make a decision between rent and paying for their prescription

drugs.

Where did you stand?

But it is also a dark period like this that we find our backbone that people realize

their power.

And it's usually after dark times like this that we see new eras, really revolutionary times

of thought, FDR, JFK, often came out of really tumultuous, painful times.

And I think this is the makings of an American renewal, an American rebirth.

And I think at a time that half our country is losing faith that the American dream can

work for them.

I think we have a chance at the other side of this if we fight to redeem the very American

dream.

I'm glad you're at the book.

It's really important.

It's great reading.

And thank you for being here to talk about it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Senator, thank you very much for being here to talk about it.

Great cover.

Quick break for us.

We'll be right back.

My guest on this week's episode of the Best People Podcast is my dear friend and colleague

Alex Wagner.

We got to really get into it.

We had a conversation about exactly where we find ourselves right now.

Over one year into 2.0.

And the question she has right now for his supporters, take a listen.

This has become, at least for me, much more psychological than political conversations.

It's much more like, how are you hurting?

Like how is this man filling a gap or making you feel not less than?

And how can we, as your friends, family members or society, help not everybody can be dealt

with like this?

But I feel like because I have personal relationships with these people, it's like, okay, how do we

like fill in the cracks here so that you can understand that what this like drug dealer

is promising you is a short term high at great expense.

So I mean, it's not even like I try and argue immigration policy anymore or just like,

why are you lonely?

Why are you sad?

Why are you depressed?

Why are you angry?

Like, let's get at that.

As always, she is brilliant and full of insights.

You can listen to the entire conversation.

It's out now on YouTube.

You just scan the QR code on your screen to hear the rest or to listen by downloading it

wherever you get your podcasts.

One more break.

We'll be right back.

Thank you so much for letting us into your homes.

We are grateful.

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