Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/13/22

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Trump galvanized militia groups that led to the Jan 6. attack, panel finds

One user asked, is the sixth D-Day, is that why Trump wants everyone there? Another asserted, Trump just told us all to come armed. Hey, this is happening. A third took it even further. It will be wild means we need volunteers for the firing squad. Some who have since been indicted for their involvement in the attack on the Capitol also responded. One of them posted on the 19th, quote, calling all patriots be in Washington, D.C. January the 6th. This wasn't organized by any group. DJT has invited us and it's going to be wild. Some of the online rhetoric turned openly

homicidal and white nationalist such as why don't we just kill them every last democrat down to the last man woman and child and it's time for the day of the rope white revolution is the only solution. So one wrote, I'm ready to die for my beliefs. Are you ready to die police? Another wrote on the Donald dot win, cops don't have standing if they're laying on the ground in a pool of their own blood. Bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels, wrote one user. A commenter replied suggesting zip ties instead. One post encouraged others to come with their own blood. Bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels, wrote one user. A commenter replied, suggesting zip ties instead. One post encouraged others to come with body armor, knuckles, shields, bats, pepper spray, whatever it takes. All of those were used on the 6th.

Evidence from the January 6th committee describing how some Trump supporters responded to the former president's call to, quote, be there on the 6th. There were more dramatic new revelations from yesterday's hearing into the attack on the Capitol. The committee presented evidence that former President Donald Trump drew his supporters to Washington, D.C. on January 6th and planned all along to direct them to the Capitol to threaten the certification of the election. We also learned that when an out-of-control meeting, the now infamous unhinged meeting inside the Oval Office, didn't go the president's way, he then posted that now infamous tweet that the committee says galvanized and united extremist groups to descend on Washington with at least one top militia leader threatening bloodshed. We also heard from former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone for the first time and from a Trump supporter who said his life was ruined after he listened to the president's call to march on the Capitol and did.

Plus, a stunning revelation that Trump himself tried to contact a witness following the last hearing, even after the committee's warning about tampering. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have White House bureau chief at Politico and the host of Way Too Early, Jonathan Lemire, attorney and contributing columnist for The Washington Post, George Conway, and senior reporter for NBC News, Ben Collins. Good to have you all with us. So much to get through, Willie. What was your biggest takeaway yesterday? Well, that we knew some of the broad strokes of what we heard yesterday, but to hear it down and dirty in detail is stunning and maddening in many ways to know that someone like Sidney Powell and General Flynn had that kind of access without an

appointment can stroll in and sit with the President United States in the Oval Office and get him so riled up that they had him basically on board with the idea of the United States military seizing voting machines so that they could do their own audit on those machines that leads the President United States to write that tweet in the wee hours of December 19th that says, we'll be wild. And the bat signal is up. And you just read some of those. We just heard some of those texts in detail of the people who took that signal. Some of them prominent media figures, others just people online to say there's going

to be violence and specific violence on January 6th. And the president of the United States sent them to the Capitol to do what they did that day. Well, and you do wonder with all of the warnings why more agencies in Washington, D.C. didn't pick up Cipollone when he was in that contentious meeting trying to explain to the president and all the idiots that the federal government could seize election machines, no. I don't understand why I even have to tell you that is a bad idea. George, the president, who Liz Cheney correctly reminded us at the end of the hearing, is not a child, not a toddler, even though he acts like a child and a toddler, is not a child, not a toddler, even though he acts like a child and a toddler, behaved like a child, behaved like a toddler throughout this entire process. And again, went shopping for the craziest maniacal ideas that he could find. Absolutely. I mean, that's that's he has the emotional makeup of a three year old or a

four year old. But he is a 76 year old man and he is responsible for his actions. And what's quite remarkable is that this shouldn't have had one millisecond of discussion. And yet they took six, six hours. It took six hours of screaming to beat these ideas back. And then he goes right back at it. Two hours later, he's going to try something else, which is encouraging people to march on the Capitol. Yeah. Ben, what was your takeaway? And tell me, how how did our intelligence agencies miss the chatter when people were talking about bloodbaths, firing squads, all the things that were running around on social media in those days going up before January the 6th? Yeah, I don't know how they missed this, frankly. I was reminded of the All the President's Men quote yesterday. You know, these aren't very smart people and things get out of hand. It kind of seemed like these aren't very smart people and things went according to basically their plan.

That's the thing that I learned yesterday. Their plan was to create chaos and do as much chaos as they can with the armed groups they knew were on their side. And by the way, Donald Trump knows this. We have to stop pretending like he didn't know that these groups were with him. He didn't know these groups groups were with him, that he didn't know these groups were, you know, ready to go, basically. You know, he said in one of those phone calls to Brad Raffensperger, you don't know the Internet like I do. And what he meant by that, by the way, was you don't know that these these people are ready to go. These people are ready to fight for us. And that was just a couple of days before January 6th.

All of the crazy people were the people with power from basically a couple of days before Christmas until January 6th in this country. And that is deeply, deeply scary. And there's a picture painted, Jonathan Lemire, of this group, this freak show collection of characters. Sidney Powell, General Flynn, the My Pillow guy is on the fringes, sort of coordinating what's going to happen on January 6th. And there's this extraordinary moment where Pat Cipollone rushes. He gets word that these people are in the Oval Office on the 18th, rushes down, throws open the door and just basically says, oh, I know this is not good news that these people have access to Donald Trump right now. Yeah. Cipollone testifies. He walks in and his first question as he goes up to the CEO of Overstock.com is, who are you?

Yeah. And the question is, why are you here? Yeah. And that is shows the cast of characters that surrounded the president there in these five, his final weeks in office that so many of his senior staff at that point had already left. There had been a covid outbreak at the White House not long before people were sidelined or quarantined. And those who were still there mostly didn't want to entertain Trump's far-fetched lies about the election. So he found people who would. And that's Powell, that's overstock.com guy, and the like. And I think the other thing the committee did yesterday so effectively is that the narrative from Trump camp was that what happened on January 6th was spontaneous, that people just went there on their own. And instead, this was carefully planned. That draft tweet that suggested there was, though never sent, but was clear that Trump had ideas all along of directing people to the Capitol,

that he himself, as we know, intended to perhaps intended to go there with them. They knew violence was possible. They were encouraging it. That was the plan. And, you know, Mika, I've said before, we are fortunate in one sense that the first time fascists went into the White House, they were the fascists from Hogan's Heroes. Total idiots. Cheney with that bombshell moment yesterday when she said after warning Donald Trump and his people not to engage in witness tampering, what did Donald Trump do after he freaked out that Cassidy Hutchinson had revealed his behavior, his toddler-like behavior, his actually fascist-type behavior at the same time, he reached out. He called a witness, tried to witness Tamper after the warning from the committee. So we're going to show you a lot of testimony that shows all the different corners of what happened leading up to January 6th, including that unhinged meeting with these lunatics

that Pat Cipollone says, I don't even know how they got into the White House. Lunatics driving Trump toward more conspiracy series with no evidence. And yet, as you point out, Joe, and as Liz Cheney points out, he's still at it potentially. He is potentially still at it right now. Here is Vice Chair Liz Cheney points out, he's still at it potentially. He is potentially still at it right now. Here is

Vice Chair Liz Cheney revealing that instance of possible witness tampering. And one more item. After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump's call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice. Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously. George Conway, is this a shout out to an extent to the Justice Department?

Hello. Take a look here or a warning to Trump or both? All of the above. And he has a history of doing this. I mean, you know, there was a whole section, 50 percent of the Mueller report was devoted to his efforts to obstruct that investigation. And there were some incredible episodes there, one where he was trying to get his White House counsel to write a fake, false memo about something to say that Trump didn't do was trying to get his White House counsel to write a fake, false memo about something to say that Trump didn't do what he had asked the White House counsel to do, which would have obstructed justice. And so he's got this pattern of taking things into his own hands because not everybody is going to do the illegal things that he wants

them to do. Not everybody. He has to do things himself sometimes, precisely because people like Pat Cipollone and Hirschman would resist things that he would ask them to do, and they just ignore things that he'd ask them to do. And so he takes things into his own hands. And I just wish that somebody who picks up that, has a tape recorder at some point. Yeah, I hear you on that. Here's what we learned about that unhinged and explosive meeting at the White House that took place on December 18th, 2020. In video testimony, we saw how Trump's outside advisers clashed with White House officials over conspiracies of election fraud and outlandish efforts to keep Trump in power. I got a call either from Molly or Sherman that I need to get to the local office. So that was the first point that I had recognized. Okay, there was nobody in there from the White House. Mark's gone. What's going on right now?

I opened the door and I walked in. I saw General Flynn. I saw Sidney Powell sitting there. I was not happy to see the people in the Oval Office. And what? Well, again, I don't think they were providing. Well, first of all, the overstocked, I've never met this guy was actually the first thing I did. I walked in and I looked at him and I said, who are you?

And he told me, I don't think I don't think any of these people were providing the president with good advice. And. So I didn't understand how they had gotten in. I was asking, like, you claimed the Democrats were working with Hugo Chavez, Venezuelans and whomever else. And at one point, General Flynn took out a diagram that supposedly showed IP addresses all over the world and who was communicating with whom via the machines and some comment about like Nest thermostats being hooked up to the internet. So it's been reported that during this meeting, Ms. Powell talked about Dominion voting machines and made various election fraud claims that involve foreign countries such as Venezuela,

Iran, and China. Is that accurate? Sure. Was the meeting tense? Oh yeah. Uh, I, it was not a casual meeting. Explain. I mean, at times there were people shouting at each other, hurling insults at each other. It wasn't just sort of people sitting around on the couch, like chit-chatting.

Cipollini and Hirschman and whoever the other guy was showed nothing but contempt and disdain of the president. I remember the three of them were really sort of forcefully attacking me verbally. Derek, Derek, and we were pushing back and we were asking one simple question. As a general matter, where is the evidence? What response did you get when you asked Ms. Powell and her colleagues where's the evidence? A variety of responses based on my current recollection

including, you know, I can't believe you could say something like, you know, things like this. Like, what do you mean where's the evidence? You should know. Things like that or, you know, things like this, like, what do you mean, where's the evidence? You should know, you know, things like that, or, you know, a disregard, I would say, a general disregard for the importance of actually backing up what you say with facts. Derek and I both challenged what she was saying, and she says, well, the judges are corrupt. And I was like, everyone? Every single case that you've done in the country you guys lost, every one of them is corrupt, even the ones we appointed.

And I'm being nice. That was much more harsh to her. You know, Willie, what's so what is so shocking about this is the very conversations that we have with our friends, our acquaintances, members of our family that we've had over the past six months when we're like give me the evidence and and it's the same thing and they they go to chinese religious cult conspiracy websites or they talk about bamboo or they talk about the lie which has already been been disproven about uh people in georgia i mean they go through all of these idiot responses that have nothing to do with the facts. Giuliani could never present any evidence to any of the judges in any of the courts. And you can even talk to lawyers that have bought into this conspiracy theory.

And they're like, I don't know. I don't. Sixty two courts have said there's no evidence there. Even the Supreme Court of the United States of America, a six three Trump court said the same thing. Even Thomas and Alito out on the far, far right said on the Pennsylvania challenge, listen, there's not enough votes to overturn this election, but we should probably take this case on and just try to interpret what happens when a state Supreme Court overrules a state legislature. I mean, just facts and evidence all lining up that this was a fair election. It's overwhelming. And what's shocking is that the idiots that run these conspiracy websites, basically, those were the type of people that Donald Trump surrounded himself with. And make no mistake, we talk about forum shopping for judges. As lawyers, you're trying to find the right judge. And so you're forum shopping. Here, Donald Trump was forum trying to find the right judge. And so you're forum shopping here. Donald Trump

was forum shopping to get the right idiots, wackos, lunatics and insurrectionists in front of him in the White House. And it was hard. It was hard to find people as freaking crazy as Sidney Powell. It was hard to find somebody as debased morally as Rudy Giuliani. It was hard finding these crackpots that were so desperate to be around a president that they were willing to overthrow the United States government. Donald Trump found them. And that's because, Joe, reality had settled over the White House. The people who understood whether it was Pat Cipollone or even Attorney General Barr, all the people we've heard from during these hearings, he said, OK, we knew now the jig is

up. It's over. There's no evidence. It's time to move on. And so in come the QAnon conspiracy theorists. Here comes Sidney Powell. Here comes, as Pat Cipollone called him, the overstock person. That Mr. Pillow calling for martial law as he came into the White House. I mean, think about that sacred sanctum that is the Oval Office. And think about the collection of rogues and fools and conspiracy theorists that got to sit at the Resolute Desk and talk to the President of the United States to help plot a coup, including seizing voting machines. It's outrageous and a lot of it is criminal, as we're going to find out. Ben, you live in this universe online of these QAnon people. So just, if you can, just speak to a little bit of who Sidney Powell was in that world,

who she remains to this day, General Flynn, and why Donald Trump called on them in this moment. Sure. I think it's impossible to separate that inner circle from QAnon as a premise in those days. That's what was going on. When Joe just talked about forum shopping, he was probably literally forum shopping. And one of those forums, you know, message boards he wound up on was 8chan. Jim Watkins, who ran 8chan or 8kun um after um yesterday he testified at that at that hearing um but he was posting all of these insane things and his son was too and the president was retweeting them things about you know italian italians taking over the satellite satellites yeah they were running out of countries to blame this on by the end of it and that's

that's really not even a joke they're just running out of enemies they're like hugo chavez obviously a dead person they were blaming for this whole thing they were all in one space together this was a purely q anon cooked up conspiracy theory and they weren't coming from traditional like right-wing websites these were random anonymous posters on places like 4chan that were picked up uh by influencers like the my pillow guy like mike lindell who was tweeting them in the middle of the night in the days before January 6th. We were run as a country for like a week and a half from an intelligence standpoint by a group of QAnon people and extremists. Yeah, you know, George Conway, I ask this next question as a Baptist

who believes in deathbed conversions. I know there are going to be a lot of people watching out there that say, oh, these people are horrible and whatever. I believe in deathbed conversions. If at the last minute you save the republic, you're okay with me. So I want you to underline, with that as sort of our preface here,

I want you to underline who these people were what pat cipollone and eric herschman and richard donahue i want you to underline for my friends say oh they're all leftists are there that these were the people that stood by donald trump when the muller report came out and we had evidence of obstruction of justice that would have landed anybody else in prison. These were the people who stood by and defended Donald Trump during the first impeachment when he wouldn't send weapons to President Zelensky and Ukraine, defensive weapons that Congress had already approved until Zelensky agreed to dig up political dirt on Joe Biden and Joe Biden's family. These are the same people who defended Donald Trump even through

the second. These were people that were the most hardcore Trumpers throughout his presidency. That was their job. They were his lawyers. They fought as hard as they could to defend Donald Trump when the rest of us were shocked and stunned and breathtaking by what Donald Trump did. I say this not for the lefties who are going to be enraged and say, oh, well, we must always hate them. I say this for all of my friends and all of my acquaintances who say, oh, well, this committee is all rigged and it's all lefties. These are all Trumpers that are testifying against Donald Trump. These are the most hardcore Trumpers who are saying this guy was crazy. This guy was out of his mind.

This guy was unpatriotic, this guy was unpatriotic, this guy was un-American. Absolutely. I mean, and Cipollone in particular, he led the defense team at the first impeachment trial. He was there in the well of the Senate and making arguments, some arguments I think were inappropriate, like making conspiracy arguments about the government of Ukraine trying to stop President Trump from being elected. And he was also, you know, he was there to the very, very end. And he was in charge as the White House counsel. He was ultimately in charge of vetting the judges that, you know, liberal viewers here would hate. And so, you know, these people were with Trump to the very, very end. And, you know, liberal viewers here would hate. And so, you know, these people were with Trump till the very, very end. And, you know, part of their job, I think, was to keep him from harming himself. I think that they all viewed him as, you know, a potential miscreant and they were

trying to protect themselves and him and the government and and and trump from himself but they were there till the very end fighting for him and they were trying to they were trying to protect him from himself yeah and and by the way by extension because we've seen they love their country yeah they're also trying to protect this country from things going sideways by allowing rudy giul Sidney Powell and other wackadoodles from going in and having influence. So, you know, Mika, we had a debate over the 40 years of the Trump administration. What do you make of these people all the way from the very beginning when you're talking about the generals and you talk about Rex Tillerson, you talk about all the other people that lined up to work for Donald Trump? There was always a question, well, how in the world could they do it? Most of the people justified

it by saying, I'm going to stay here because the next person will be worse. And we certainly found that out, you know, when you would have members, especially in the third and fourth year leave on the national security team. Here's a perfect example of why we as Americans should be grateful that Pat Cipollone stuck around and didn't quit in disgust and, you know, because he would have been replaced by Sidney Powell. Yeah. That Eric Hirschman or Richard Donahue didn't quit their positions in disgust because they would have been replaced by Jeffrey Clark or somebody even worse. So, again, we see here in the end that these people is as we were just talking about, these people stuck around and they stuck around to protect really not to protect Donald Trump from himself. They stuck around to protect the country from Donald Trump. And guess what? That's exactly what they did. At the same time, I say thank you. I do, too. At the same

time, you see how close we came. These hearings, there are so many revelations of just how bad it was. It's very hard to almost process it all, to comprehend it, and to have the appropriate reaction of shock, because it is relentless. He kept looking for one crazy after another. He kept moving on to the next. He had no regard for the law, no regard for the country, no regard for the Constitution, no regard for any type of order that the government depends on. Well, let's take it one step further. He had contempt, as we've always known, for the Constitution of the United States. He had contempt for Madisonian democracy. He had contempt for the checks and balances that have made our government the most resilient

and strongest government in the history of humankind. In these last two hearings you really see why the 25th amendment was was talked about. I mean it's stunning. The argument seems to be that President Trump was manipulated by others outside the administration. That he was persuaded to ignore his the administration, that he was persuaded to ignore his closest advisors, and that he was incapable of telling right from wrong. This new strategy is to try to blame only John Eastman or Sidney Powell or Congressman Scott Perry or others and not President Trump. In this version, the president was, quote, poorly served

by these outside advisors. The strategy is to blame people his advisors called, quote, the crazies for what Donald Trump did. This, of course, is nonsense. President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American, and he was told this over and over again. No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion, and Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind. Nor can any argument of any kind excuse President Trump's behavior during the violent attack on January 6th. Liz Cheney speaking at the hearing of the January 6th committee yesterday.

And these hearings have laid waste to the idea that Donald Trump did not know what was happening around him. And just hours after that December 18th meeting we've been talking about inside the Oval Office, President Trump posted a tweet that ultimately served as a rallying cry to his supporters. President Trump turned away from both his outside advisors' most outlandish and unworkable schemes and his White House counsel's advice to swallow hard and accept the reality of his loss. Instead, Donald Trump issued a tweet that would galvanize his followers, unleash a political firestorm, and change the course of our history as a country. Trump's purpose was to mobilize a crowd. And how do you mobilize a crowd in 2020?

With millions of followers on Twitter, President Trump knew exactly how to do it. At 1.42 a.m. on December 19, 2020, shortly after the last participants left the unhinged meeting, Trump sent out the tweet with his explosive invitation. Trump repeated his big lie and claimed it was, quote, statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election before calling for a big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, we'll be wild. Trump supporters responded immediately. Women for America First, a pro-Trump organizing group, had previously applied for a rally permit for January 22nd and 23rd in Washington, D.C.,

several days after Joe Biden was to be inaugurated. But in the hours after the tweet, they moved their permit to January 6th, two weeks before. This rescheduling created the rally where Trump would eventually speak. The next day, Ali Alexander, leader of the Stop the Steal organization and a key mobilizer of Trump supporters, registered wildprotest.com, named after Trump's tweet. So that will be wild tweet goes out at one forty two a.m. The early morning hours of December 19th. The committee then showed how quickly Trump supporters responded, treating it as a call to action for the events that ultimately took place on January 6th.

It's Saturday, December 19th. The year is 2020. And one of the most historic events in American history has just taken place. President Trump in the early morning hours today tweeted that he wants the American people to march on Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. And now Donald Trump is calling on his supporters to descend on Washington, D.C., January 6. He is now calling on we, the people, to take action and to show our numbers. We're going to only be saved by millions of Americans moving to Washington, occupying the entire area, if necessary, storming right into the Capitol. You know, there we know the rules of engagement.

If you have enough people, you can push down any kind of a fence or a wall. This could be Trump's last stand. And it's a time when he has specifically called on his supporters to arrive in D.C. That's something that may actually be the big push. Trump supporters need to say this is it. It's now or never. You better understand something, son. You better understand something. Red wave. Red wave is going to be a red wedding going down January 6th. On that day, Trump says, show up for a protest. It's going to be wild. And based on what we've already seen from the previous events, I think Trump is absolutely correct. You better look outside.

You better look out January 6th. Kick that door open. Look down the street. There's going to be a million plus geeked up armed Americans. The time for games is over. The time for action is now. Where were you when history called? Where were you when you and your children's destiny and future was on the line? So that from Alex Jones is on the 19th. Tweet goes out early morning. Alex Jones gets to his supporters. Ben Collins, I was watching you watch that

because you've seen a lot of dark stuff in your reporting. Who are those people? How influential are they? And how significant was that tweet to the people you cover? Yeah, that ran the game. I actually think it's kind of important to note that I have no idea who Salty Cracker is. None whatsoever.

And I think that's actually good to note because that's how deep in the YouTube rabbit holes these people took this as a call for armed insurrection. And they did. You know, in the days after the 19th, you know, trended on Twitter was the hashtag cross the Rubicon as like as in like Julius Caesar, you know, declare a dictatorship. That's what happened in the days afterwards with these people. Also, 1776, again, that hashtag was in that same space. So who was pushing that? That couldn't have just spontaneously happened. It was a groundswell from the Alex Joneses of the world, but also the more standard bearer pro-Trump people. And they came together knowing that if they had enough people that day, if they had enough people on the 6th, and that was the one day they were planning

for, they could do something big. And I do want to say, too, the Wi-Fi password for other Stop the Steal events was see you on January 6th, exclamation point. Everybody was preparing for this one day. Donald Trump was not very good at planning one-day events. He was not a very big Super Bowl guy, right? Everything was two weeks down the road. But this was a specific day that he was planning since around Christmas time. And that is a brand new thing for how Donald Trump operates. So, Ben, if everybody's talking about this on social media, I want to circle back. If everybody's talking about this on social media, if it is trending on social media, where the national guard where were our intel agencies where was the fbi where was the washington police department where were all of these people i

remember hearing colin powell talking on january the 6th just just beyond himself, saying, where the hell is everybody? It's what we were yelling at the TV set as people were going in and desecrating the people's house, desecrating American democracy. We were yelling at the TV set, where is the blanking National Guard? Where are the D.C. police? And they just didn't show up. They had all the advance notice that they needed. What happened? Where were they? What is their justification even today? Yeah, I don't know the answer to that, Joe. You know, I'm not in the predictions business. I'm in the that just happened business in the news. And we had enough smoke on January 5th to write a story about how every single person that we talked to was like, we're nervous about tomorrow. From Congress to people in D.C. police.

You know, we talked to lots of different people and everybody said this is not the same chatter as as another Trump rally. This is something else. This is a very dangerous time. And it was in part because, you know, you know, that Steve Bannon expression, flood the zone with stuff. I think that's the G-rated version of that. The zone had been fully flooded at that point. Everybody was there with a different reason. Everyone was there with a different conspiracy theory about how the election got hacked. And they were all told the same thing. Somebody's got to do something about this. They didn't say who, but somebody's got to do something about this. So I don't know how this happened, Joe.

I've got to admit, I have no idea how this many people dropped the ball when every single person we talked to before January 6th said this was going to be very different than every other rally before it. Well, I think that's significant. And, Joe, I'm reminded of a story that my dad told both of us and told me. One of the first things he did when he became national security adviser was test how long it would take to evacuate the president, for example. And, you know, he did a false alarm and, but a physical, violent attack on our Capitol. That's not supposed to take hours to respond to.

That's not supposed to not trigger a number of major responses. Where was the National Guard? Where were the D.C. police? You know, what was the FBI doing? Where were the very people that could have gone up there and given? The Capitol Hill police that actually were it were fighting. They got inside. A mob. Where were they?

And why could we sit and watch our TV for hours? Because, you know, they were sitting there watching their TV for hours before they did anything. If you're if you're running D.C. police and you see this. Well, I'm sorry, I'm about to I'm about to say some profane things right now. I'm not going to, but just look at this. You're a D.C. police officer. You run the D.C. Police Department. You run the National Guard. and you're seeing these images, and you're seeing them live on television, and you do nothing. Nothing. We heard that Donald Trump waited three hours, over three hours before he did anything. He watched the violence. He watched police officers being brutalized. Well, of course, we understand he's he's a sick man. He's a fascist. We understand that he was actually rewinding and rewatching the most violent footage because he was he was so excited by what he was saying.

But what about D.C. cops? But we just have to. When they're watching. No, when they're watching police officers being brutalized and beaten to within inches of their death. What are they doing? Sitting, sitting, eating doughnuts in their in their headquarters. What are they doing? What was the fbi doing what was the national guard doing how the hell did this happen now listen i want to get to the bottom of all of this mika i want to find out obviously what donald trump did he i said the day after he should be arrested for sedition that rudy giuliani should be arrested for sedition but i want to know what the hell happened to our law enforcement agencies

that allowed this to happen. There, you know, obviously, are a number of different assessments going on. Jonathan Lemire, I mean, I'm looking at a Luke Broadwater report out of the New York Times, looking at the Capitol Police, which had clear advance warning about the January 6th attack attack and including the potential for violence. But officers were instructed by their leaders not to use the most aggressive tactics to hold off the mob. I mean, there's a lot of questions here as to why there was such, Jonathan, kind of a resistance to protect, you would say, the government's most, one of the government's most vital locations.

And by the way, let me just say this, Jonathan, and then we'll go to you. Most of the people you see in these videos are white. I said it the day after. If these were black protesters, you better believe the cops would have been up there in a second. If they were Muslims, there would have been cops standing on top of the buildings with rifles and gunning them all down. I mean, there's no doubt, no doubt in my mind that these people were allowed to sit out there with Confederate flags, with Trump flags, desecrating the cross of Jesus Christ because they were white. It's that simple. It's that simple. And it was allowed, Jonathan O'Meara, to go on for hours before law enforcement did anything to

defend these these Capitol Police officers who were getting brutalized and beaten to death yeah there's no question that the vast majority of cap police officers performed heroically and bravely that day but not all and their actions have been kind of great scrutiny one question we do know the answer to is where is the National Guard and we know that the president Donald Trump didn't call them in and they had been conditioned to not respond because of something else Trump did. Let's flash back to June 1st, the protests at Lafayette Square, where FBI, federal law enforcement, and military personnel were used to clear that park for a political photo op. So therefore, the leaders of the Pentagon were very reluctant to step back in in what they perceived at the moment as another political protest. And it fell to the vice president to eventually call and call and call and say, we need help here. We need the National Guard.

George Conway, I want to ask you this. We just laid out. There were so many clues. There was so much advance warning that this was coming. And the president was stirring the pot willfully. It's about premeditation. Is this a thread here the Department of Justice could now be pulling? Absolutely. It's premeditation was shown yesterday by the fact that Kylie Kramer, I think her name

is, and Ali Alexander both knew beforehand that Trump was going to spontaneously call for a march on Capitol Hill. And then also by the fact that criminal intent is shown by the fact that he didn't send out that tweet to announce it. He did it surreptitiously. He was hiding his intent to have these people march out on the Hill. But still, to get back to the point that we were just discussing, it was obvious to the most casual observer that something bad was afoot. I mean, I was on this program on January 4, 2021, two days before the debacle, and we were talking about the danger of this, of a possible violence on Capitol Hill. I remember talking,, citing the will be wild tweet and

the fact that there were things on message boards talking about marching up to the hill and engaging in violence. I'm not a domestic intelligence expert. I'm not a journalist. I just have my smartphone and I was looking, I scrolled through some stuff and I'm reading and it's sort of obvious something was up and something was very dangerous. And we, you know, I think that one of the problems was, let's leave apart whether or not there was anything fishy going on in the government. One of the problems was because of that incompetence that we know that just basically encapsulates Donald Trump, we've talked about, people didn't take it quite as seriously as they should have.

Well, you don't have a president concerned about violence. You have a president who wants it. So that's the kind of biggest problem there. George Conway and Ben Collins, thank you so much for being on this morning. The committee has learned from the White House phone logs that the president spoke to Steve Bannon, his close advisor, at least twice on January 5th. The first conversation they had lasted for 11 minutes. Listen to what Mr. Bannon said that day after the first call he had with the president. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's all converging and now we're on, as they say, the point of attack, right? The point of attack tomorrow.

I'll tell you this. It's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen. OK, it's going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is strap in. Strap in the point of attack. That's Steve Bannon on January 5th, previewing the events of January 6th, the next day after an 11 minuteminute phone call with Donald Trump the day before. He knew what was coming. It was just one of many new revelations

from yesterday's seventh hearing into the attack on the Capitol. We will have much more on that testimony in just a moment. But first, joining us, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, also MSNBC contributor, our friend Mike Barnicle. Richard, let's talk about the president's trip. He's about to land in Tel Aviv within the next hour or so. First stop is Israel, West Bank, and then it's on to Saudi Arabia. Let's start in Israel. What are his objectives as he travels there? Doesn't really have much in the way of objectives, Willie. For so long, the Israeli-Arab fault line, the Israeli-Palestinian fault line was the defining line of the Middle East. It isn't anymore. There's no prospects for progress on peace talks. You've got a caretaker

Israeli government. You're going to have the fifth round of elections in a couple of years in Israel any month now. He doesn't have a big agenda. They'll talk a little bit about coordination on Iran, maybe about the potential, potential one day for some breakthrough with Israel-Saudi Arabia relations, but nothing's going to happen on what we used to call the peace process. So diplomatically, maybe just a stopover on the way to Saudi Arabia where the real action comes. Lots of challenges in front of them there. What does he do, first of all, on the question of human rights? We had Admiral Kirby on yesterday and said, yes, generally human rights will come up.

We asked many times specifically, of course, about Jamal Khashoggi and his murder. What should the president say to MBS? Well, it's what he says privately and what he says publicly. He's not going to get any breakthrough on it. I think the most you can get is some Saudi promise, if you will, not to do that sort of thing again, to continue to gradually open up the kingdom. He has to remember, he's showing up in a Saudi Arabia where the crown prince is quite popular. He is making changes in Saudi Arabia. If you're 25 years old in Saudi Arabia, he is holding out the possibility of a more interesting life for you. The average Saudi is not focused on what he did several years ago to kill a journalist. So the president can talk about it, but he's not going to get the

crown prince to essentially give the kind of public apology or promise that he wants. So, Richard, let's talk about how the Middle East that Joe Biden's going into is dramatically different than the one that, say, Barack Obama or George W. Bush went into. And we've seen this really with the outbreak of the Russian invasion into Ukraine, the outbreak of that war. The Saudis are playing both sides. Israel, at the beginning stages of the war, certainly disappointed a lot of policymakers in Washington for being closer to Russia than I think a lot of them expected. The UAE, of course, along with other countries, voted present on the Security Council. And they've all sent the message, you guys have taken us for granted for too long. We're not going to be your lapdogs. If you want our loyalty,

then this is going to have to be a more equal relationship. Talk about those new dynamics and how that's a challenge not only to Biden, but to future presidents. Well, the Middle East, Joe, is not seized by the Ukraine-Russia war. To the extent there's now a common concern in much of the Middle East, it's Iran. For years, as I was saying to Willie, it was the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Israeli-Arab dispute, then it was Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Now the real concern is Iran. And Russia is an economic partner to some extent with Saudi Arabia.

The Israelis have been coordinating with Russia on Syria. They're worried about the large Jewish population in Russia. So the president is not going to get great support for the Ukraine policy there. By the way, that's true of much of the rest of the world. Much of the world is not lining up with us. When we frame this as a matter of democracy against authoritarianism, much of the world is not democratic. This is not something that resonates with them. But where he can make progress, I think, is in coordinating policy towards Iran. The Iranians are marching ever, ever closer to having all the prerequisites of nuclear weapons. They continue to destabilize

the region. I don't think we're going to be able to resurrect the 2015 agreement. And even if we did, it wouldn't buy us a lot of time. So the real question in the Middle East is, what do we do to push back against the Iranian nuclear program and Iran advances more generally? And how do you basically persuade the Saudis and others not to mimic the Iranians? As bad as the Middle East has been for the last 50 years, we could be on the brink of a Middle East where you have several new nuclear programs. That's the challenge facing Joe Biden. So doesn't that threat that Iran poses not only to Israel and everybody in the Middle East, but specifically to Saudi Arabia,

doesn't that give the president of the United States a card to play when he gets to Saudi Arabia? Without us, they're without one strong ally to prevent Iran from being worse than they are. You could argue that. The problem is the Saudis don't trust us. Over the last few years, we have not been there for them. When the Iranians attacked Saudi oil refineries, the United States under the Trump administration was nowhere to be seen. They obviously didn't like what the Obama administration did or did not do in Syria. So I think the Saudis are going to become both more hedging, hence the relationship with Russia, and more self-reliant. And the danger is that they turn to a country like Pakistan and they say, hey, we could give you some money and you could give us some nuclear weapons. I

think that is the dangerous possibility in the new Middle East. Richard Haass, stay with us, because we've got a lot of other issues to talk with you about. Of course, the January 6th committee hearing yesterday was an effort to draw a bold line between President Trump and the actual attack on the Capitol. And one of the key moments that we heard at the hearing led up to the attack on the Capitol, a meeting that took place at the White House on December 18th, 2020. In video testimony, we saw how Trump's outside advisors clashed with White House officials over conspiracies of election fraud and outlandish efforts to keep Trump in power. That meeting at the White House on the evening of December 18th, that night, a group showed up at the White House including Sidney Powell, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

After gaining access to the building from a junior White House staffer, the group made their way to the Oval Office. They were able to speak with the President by himself for some time until White House officials learned of the meeting. What ensued was a heated and profane clash between this group and President Trump's White House advisors who traded personal insults, accusations of disloyalty to the president, and even challenges to physically fight. The meeting would last over six hours beginning here in the Oval Office, moving around the West Wing, and many hours later ending up in the President's private residence. The Select Committee has spoken with six of the participants, as well as staffers who could hear the screaming from outside the Oval Office. What took place next is best told in their own words, as you will see from this video.

Did you believe that it was going to work, that you were going to be able to get to see the president without an appointment? I had no idea. In fact, you did get to see the president without an appointment. We did. How much time did you have alone with the president? I say alone. You had other people with you. Right. From his aides before the crowd came running.

Probably no more than 10 or 15 minutes. Was in that. I bet that's when he set a new land speed record. I got a call. Either from Molly. But I need to get to the Oval Office. So that was the first point that I had recognized. Okay, there was nobody in there from the White House.

Mark's gone. What's going on right now? I opened the door, and I walked in. I saw General Flynn. I saw Sidney Powell sitting there. I was not happy to see the people in the Oval Office. And why? Well, again, I don't think they were providing.

Well, first of all, the overstock person, I've never met this guy less. Actually, the first thing I did, I walked in, I looked at him, and I said, who are you? And he told me. I don't think any of these people were providing the president with good advice. And. So I didn't understand how they had gotten in. In the short period of time that you had with the president, did he seem receptive to the presentation that you were making? He was very interested in hearing particularly about the system funding and the terms of 13848 that apparently nobody else had bothered

to inform him of. I was asking, like, are you claiming the Democrats were working with Hugo Chavez, Venezuelans, and whomever else? And at one point, General Flynn took out a diagram that supposedly showed IP addresses all over the world. And who was communicating with whom via the machines and some comment about like Nest thermostats being hooked up to the internet. What response did you get when you asked this panel and her colleagues? A variety of responses based on my current recollection, including,

you know, I can't believe you would say something like, you know, things like this, like, what do you mean? Where's the evidence? You should know. Yeah. Things like that. Or, you know, I disregard, I would say a general disregard for the importance of actually backing up what you say with facts and you know then there was a discussion of well you know we don't have it now but we'll have it or whatever i mean if it had been me sitting in his chair i would have fired all of them that night and had them escorted out of the building flynn screamed at me that i was a quitter and everything. He kept on standing up and turning around and screaming

at me. And at a certain point I had it with him. So, I yelled back, rather come over or sit your effing ass back down. The president and the White House team went

upstairs to the residence, but to the public part of the residence, you know, the big, the big parlor where you can have meetings in the conference room. They call it the yellow oval? Yes, exactly. The yellow oval office. I always called it the upper. And I'm not exactly sure where the Sydney group went. I think maybe the Roosevelt room.

And I stayed in the cabinet room, which is kind of cool. I really like that. All by myself. At the end of the day, we landed where we started the meeting, at least from a structural standpoint, which was Sidney Powell was fighting, Mike Flynn was fighting. They were looking for avenues that would result in President Trump remaining President Trump for a second term.

The meeting finally ended after midnight. Here are text messages sent by Cassidy Hutchinson during and after the meeting. As you can see, Ms. Hutchinson reported that the meeting in the West Wing was unhinged. The meeting finally broke up after midnight during the early morning of December 19. Cassidy Hutchinson captured the moment of Mark Meadows escorting Rudy Giuliani off the White House grounds to, quote, make sure he didn't wander back into the mansion. Wow. Let's bring in former U.S. Senator now in NBC News and MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill and MSNBC legal analyst Charles Coleman. Jonathan Lemire, Mike Barnicle and Richard Haass are still with us all along with Joe, Willie and me. Claire, what was your

takeaway from yesterday? You know, I think that my overriding sense of depression was that he is still there. He is still the dominant force in one of the major political parties in our country. In my state, I have a bunch of folks running for the United States Senate that are continuing to talk about the big lie and embrace the big lie and the seditious conspiracy that this lie represents. And it is incredible to me that he is so emboldened by the fact that no legal action has been taken against him that he's calling potential witnesses to the hearing. I mean, this is a man who has no respect or regard for the law, none. And he has hatched a political party that has lost all respect for the law. And that is frightening to me because I'm not sure we're done with this yet until action is taken to show that the law works against this seditious conspiracy that's been laid out vividly by this committee.

Well, you know, Claire, I've said regarding Vladimir Putin, when people said, oh, what what Putin is doing is unhinged. And he's he's he's not the same Putin he used to be. He's lost his mind. I said, no, it's all it's all very. Actually, if you're a terrible human being, if you're a dictator, it all makes sense because he invaded Georgia in 2008 and nobody did anything. He invaded Ukraine in 2014, took Crimea in 2014. Nobody did anything. He went into Syria, bombed hospitals. Nobody did anything. And he thought the same thing was going to happen when he invaded Ukraine this time. Well, you look at Donald Trump. He's gotten away with stuff his entire life, even after he's president of the United States. You have the Mueller report. You

have 10 instances where if he were not president of the United States, he probably would have been charged with obstruction of justice. You have Mueller basically saying that, but then they pull up and they do absolutely nothing of note. There's no follow through there. You look at the Manhattan D.A., who has two prosecutors saying that they could get Donald Trump on crimes and the Manhattan D.A. kills that investigation. I mean, Donald Trump's been taught time and time again that in America, the old saying no man is above the law is a bunch of bunk when it comes to him. And I guess the question is, is Merrick Garland going to be one more person who undermines this sacred belief in America that no person should be above the law? What we didn't have before these hearings was a very clear picture with corroboration

from witnesses that are Trump supporters and from data and electronic records of exactly what the president was doing and when he was doing it. We now know his intent. And really, I think if I were prosecuting the case, I would use this December 16th executive order that they talked about yesterday, where they were going to do all kinds of illegal things, including seize property without a warrant by our military and put this wackadoodle woman in charge of something. And then they take this to the White House, this illegal executive order, and the president acts on it. He actually, quote unquote, appoints Sidney Powell as a special

counsel for the United States of America. That became clear in the meeting yesterday. That is the seditious conspiracy that a case can be brought around. And I thought Neil Katyal put it perfectly yesterday when he said this Oval Office unhinged meeting was like a Star Wars bar. I mean, that's how nutty it was, this group of people that was trying to overthrow a free and fair election in the United States of America, the heart of democracy in the world. Yeah, I mean, you had this collection of crackpots. It would almost be comical if they weren't in that room to stage a coup against the United States government. Here's that moment that Claire is talking about. Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone talked about the plan to seize voting machines suggested by Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.

There was a real question in my mind and a real concern, you know, particularly after the attorney general had reached the conclusion that there wasn't sufficient election fraud to change the outcome of the election. When other people kept suggesting that there was, the answer is what is it? And at some point you have to put up or shut up. That was my view. Why was this on a broader scale a bad idea for the country. To have the federal government seize voting machines, that's a terrible idea for the country. That's not how we do things in the United States.

There's no legal authority to do that. And there is a way to contest elections, you know, that happens all the time. But the idea that the federal government could come in and seize election machines, you know, that's, I don't understand why we even have to tell you why that's a bad idea. It's a terrible idea. So Charles Coleman, another hearing, another round of evidence of attempted crimes anywhere. The discussion of criminal activity here, in this case, the seizing of voting machines so that this collection of crackpots could conduct their own audit.

We're going to go take the voting machines. We're going to use the U.S. military to do it. And we're effectively going to recount this vote. Well, Willie, when I think about this case and everything that's been laid out, particularly with respect to everything that's come out of this last seventh hearing that we just heard, when you're talking about attempt and what it is to attempt sedition, what it is to get into the notion of conspiracy, the notion of intent becomes so paramount. In any crime that you're trying to prove, almost any, there's going to be the element of intent that you have to establish. But when the crime is not successful intent, or when you have the notion of trying to plan it as part of an element of proof intent becomes so important. And I think one of the things that struck me as a former prosecutor, as I watched this yesterday was how important the testimony

of Mark Meadows actually will be and is in terms of tying all of this together. We've now heard from Pat Cipollone. We will likely hear from Steve Bannon. We don't know what's going to come out of that, if anything. But the person who can tie all of this together and directly connect this to Donald Trump is Mark Meadows. He's the one sort of X factor that we haven't heard from and that we don't know what he will say. And that's what we will need ultimately to close the door on this question of intent. I think the committee has done an excellent job of sort of laying it out step by step, piece by piece in terms of his knowledge of what was going on, President Trump's that is, his knowledge of what was going to take

place, how he egged things on in a very deliberate and intentional fashion. But Mark Meadows in his testimony will be the linchpin that will close the door on what it is that we're seeing. So, Charles, the former president apparently can't stop committing crimes. Liz Cheney, in her closing argument yesterday, teased, as she's wont to do, ahead to the next hearing, and said that they had evidence that there was a witness tampering and it was the former president in the last week or so reached out to a mystery witness. They have not identified who that is just yet, and may have had tried to influence that testimony. This whole hearing seems to be, we hear the phrase audience of one, that audience of one, Samarit Garland, part of justice. What

will they do with that? Well, Jonathan, for a lot of what I watched yesterday, even that last comment by Liz Cheney, I thought about the notion of pressure. And we have seen now an inordinate amount of pressure now go to Merrick Garland and the DOJ because the question becomes, what are you going to do and when are you going to do it? And so there's pressure on Merrick Garland. There's obviously pressure on House Democrats because they have to turn this into something before midterm elections. That's a conversation for down the road. And I do understand that. But now there's also I want to sort of add a different element. There's also pressure on the American people because the American electorate can no longer continue to ignore what many of us have been talking about, not only with respect to Donald Trump and his actions and what we've seen in some of the far extreme corners of the Republican Party, but also with respect to oath keepers and radical domestic terrorist extremists that we heard about yesterday in

the testimony from the witnesses. So when I think about what Merrick Garland will do with all of that, it's a lot of pressure on him, but he has to do something. He has to do something sooner than later. So the January 6th committee showcased the timeline of events just hours after that December 18th meeting. Trump tweeted out his now infamous will be wild tweet. And they showed then how that tweet was taken as a call to action by his supporters. The committee also presented evidence that the march on the Capitol was not spontaneous, but rather a planned event orchestrated days in advance. Take a look. President's own documents suggest that the president had decided to call on his supporters to go to the Capitol on January 6th but that

he chose not to widely announce it until his speech on the Ellipse that morning. The committee has obtained this draft updated, undated tweet from the National Archives. It includes a stamp stating President has seen. The draft tweet reads, I will be making a big speech at 10 a.m. on January 6th at the Ellipse south of the White House. Please arrive early, massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop this deal. Although this tweet was never sent, rally organizers were discussing and preparing for the march to the Capitol in the days leading up to January 6th. This is a January 4th text message from a rally organizer to Mike Lindell, the

MyPillow CEO. The organizer says, you know, this stays between us. We're having a second stage at the Supreme Court again after the ellipse. POTUS is going to have us march there slash the Capitol. It cannot get out about the second stage because people will try and set up another and sabotage it. It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the National Park Service and all the agencies, but POTUS is going to just call for it, quote, unexpectedly. The end of the message indicates that the president's plan to have his followers march to the Capitol was not being broadly discussed. President Trump did

follow through on his plan using his January 6th speech to tell his supporters to march to the Capitol on January 6th. The evidence confirms that this was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather was a deliberate strategy decided upon in advance by the president. And we learned that White House aides who were with Donald Trump on the eve of the insurrection told the January 6th committee that the then president was in a, quote, good mood. I was in the office in the Oval Office and he had asked me to open the door so that he could hear. I guess there was a concert or something going on. Did he say anything other than just open the door? He made a comment. I don't remember specifically what he said, but there's a lot of energy.

When we walked in, the staff was kind of standing up and assembled along the wall, and the president was at the desk, and Dan Scavino was on the couch and the president was dictating a tweet that he wanted Scavino to send out. Then the president started talking about the rally the next day. He had the door of the Oval open to the Rose Garden because you could hear the crowd already assembled outside on the Ellipse and they were playing music. And it was so loud that you could feel it shaking in the oval. He was in a very good mood. And I say that because he had not been in a good mood for weeks leading up to that. And then it seemed like he was in a fantastic mood.

Mike Warnickle, what they're talking about here is the president was being told by a lot of his people who worked in the White House that he lost the election. And then he was hearing outside the White House the mobs beginning, the people coming. And he was joyous that people were coming to fight for him, that they were there in his defense. It's a scene that's really hard to imagine, and yet this is what played out. This is how close we came. Mika, you know, yesterday's revelations, while not surprising in one sense, were shocking. Shocking, absolutely shocking, as well as what Claire McCaskill said, depressing. A malignancy occupied the Oval Office, an office where Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan,

others, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, you name it, men of honor, men of history, sat and occupied that office and tried to do their daily duty for the country. A malignancy occupied the Oval Office. A a twisted corrupt individual was president of the united states we just saw stephanie murphy who's going to be on with us a bit later she was born in vietnam in saigon ho chi minh city she's a gift to america and amer America gave her the gift of who we are and what we can do. And this one man who I refuse to name who occupied the Oval Office instead of doing his duty became a political arsonist and tried to burn us down, tried to burn down democracy. And Claire, to your point, that while it was depressing to watch,

you wondered about the strength that still exists in this movement in Missouri and elsewhere. I want to know from you what your opinion is of your some of your republican colleagues former colleagues in the united states senate who seem not to understand comprehend or do anything about the daily danger that this man still presents i think history is going to be cruel um to not only trump but you know if you look at his concentric circles, Trump's in the middle, then you had his inner circle and that inner circle divided into two team crazy and team normal. We're hearing from team normal in these hearings. They are finally they've grown a spine and they finally are saying out loud what they should have been saying out loud in December of 2020.

But the other concentric circle that we leave alone way too often are the hundreds of elected Republican officials that to this day are embracing the seditious conspiracy, embracing it by saying nothing by not people want to talk about todd aiken and me beating todd aiken that had everything to do with republicans standing up and condemning what he'd said republicans are the ones who condemned todd aiken a member of their own party none of them none of them with the exception of liz cheney adam Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, and every once in a while, a couple of others, have stood up to this man and said, stop it. You're messing with our democracy, you idiot. And I do not understand it. And I think history will judge them very harshly. And Joe, it's not we're not talking down ballot here. We're talking about prominent candidates running for the Senate, the United States Senate. We're talking about prominent candidates running for the Senate, the United States Senate. We're talking about prominent candidates running to be the governors in places like Pennsylvania and Arizona,

who as part of their platform, they are leading with this, that the election was stolen. So Claire is right. Perhaps Donald Trump will get justice as a result at the end of these hearings and if it moves to the Justice Department. But what Mike's talking about, the malignancy remains. It's left behind. Seventy percent of Republicans in most polls still say the election was stolen. The damage has been done. The question is, will these hearings laid out chapter and verse so specifically and testifying from Republicans, from Trump aides and advisers, will that change the way any of those Republicans feel? Will they turn away from Donald Trump as a result? Only if enough of the base turns away from Donald Trump or

if enough independents turn away from these lies. You look at J.D. Vance. We talked about him yesterday. Here's a guy who went to Silicon Valley, loved San Francisco, loved Silicon Valley, loved the tech world, thought it was, you know, the greatest thing in the world to be out there, loved being a venture capitalist. Then he moved back to Ohio and now he's spreading conspiracy theories about the election being stolen. So the question is, at the end of the day, will voters hold him accountable? Right now, a recent poll shows that he's fallen far behind. We asked the same of Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania. Will he come out and say that Donald Trump is wrong about the election being stolen? No, he won't, or else Donald Trump wouldn't have endorsed him.

So it's going to be up to the voters of these states. It's going to be up to the voters in November to actually end this madness because we know the Republicans won't do it themselves. And, you know, Richard Haass, Mike was talking about this one person, this one fascist that sat in the White House who was willing to undermine Madisonian democracy, was willing to undermine our constitutional republic. And he went through a list of presidents who sat in that Oval Office and did remarkable things for this country. Why don't we just take a president who resigned in disgrace, a president who still historians give low marks to, Richard Nixon, and let's not compare Donald Trump to James Madison or George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Let's compare Donald Trump to Richard Nixon. Nixon was a man who the Supreme Court told

in a unanimous verdict opinion to turn over the tapes. Nixon turned over the tapes. He knew he had no choice because he respected Madisonian democracy. You can take it all the way back to 1960. When he lost to JFK, he conceded the race despite the fact everyone around him said that JFK's campaign stole Illinois. And in fact, many historians still believe that JFK's campaign may have stolen Illinois away from Nixon, which would have, of course, made Nixon the president.

But Richard Nixon, in 1960, like Al Gore in 2000, after the five Republican appointees in the Supreme Court picked George W. Bush, said, you know what? There is something bigger than myself going into the White House, protecting this country from scandal, protecting this country from division is more important. And so Nixon and Al Gore both conceded when people around them did not want them to do so. Compare that to Donald Trump and my God, well, there is just no comparison whatsoever. No, absolutely. Nixon, for all of his flaws, and they were many, was a conservative. He actually did believe in the system. He was of the system. Obviously, Al Gore as well. So Nixon actually said in 1960, when some aides said he should have challenged the election results, it would tear the country apart. I can't do it.

What I think is so singular about Donald Trump is that he may have been the first occupant of the Oval Office who thought he was bigger than the office. He thought he was more important than the office he was temporarily occupying. And indeed, he didn't want to give it up. And that's what all this, that's the prelude of the backdrop to all this. So I'm constantly reminded of a story when I worked for President Bush 41. And one day I had to rush down. I got a call from John Sununu, the chief of staff. He said, the president needs to see you. And I rushed down from my office and he said, what do you think you're doing? And I said, well, you just called me, John. He said, well, put on your, you don't have your suit jacket on.

You can't go into the Oval Office that way. It would offend the president. It would be unacceptable. So I had to go back to my office, put my jacket on and come back. And President Bush, the father, had this sense that this was sacred space and that he was, again, the temporary occupant or custodian of something precious. And watching the stuff you've been showing all morning, watching yesterday, I am struck by the difference that these people had no reverence for the office they were sitting in the grounds and more broadly for American democracy and I I'm just so I shudder just what a close run think it was help something precious came very close to getting destroyed and that that ought to be the takeaway whether it's an educational takeaway or a legal takeaway

from these hearings. It's got to be to build in greater resilience into this democracy. President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, thank you very, very much. And MSNBC legal analyst Charles Coleman, thank you as well.