If you go back to 2015,
which was a different time
in American politics, there was major interest in finding some
sort of alternative to the burgeoning Trump MAGA.
Onslaught. 1 Conservative wrote a whole book
about what he cast at the time as potentially informed
conservative alternatives to what he called the reprehensible Donald Trump,
a book which advanced his own profile so much that
he saw an opening to run for office.
And then, as you see in the images on your
screen,
this individual lived out the very surrender to Trumpism,
that reprehensible dogma that he had actually spent all this
time in his adult life documenting and fighting against,
which is what he wrote about.
But he figured out after doing all that and doing
the book that Trump could help him win what he
wanted,
which was a Senate seat in Ohio.
The story of JD Vance is a blatant,
embarrassing allegory for the current era of Republicanism.
Having won that race, now,
that figure, Senator Vance, is going even further,
and that is the news tonight.
He's minimizing not only past efforts to steal the election,
but also trying to soften the ground as a sender
with the power he has from the voters to do
it again.
Basically, using the past failed plots that we know about
that we've documented for you
as his baseline to try to publicly normalize and promote
potentially ways to do this or something like this.
Again,
that tells you two things.
One, he knows Republicans might lose again,
which is why he's putting the effort
on resuscitating this If you thought you would win lawfully
and with the votes,
you wouldn't need these kind of plots.
And two, as you'll see in the headline,
he is seeming in these new remarks to support what
is an indicted set of plots
to exploit and use false
slates of electors.
If I had been Vice President,
I would have told the states like Pennsylvania,
Georgia and so many others that we needed to have
multiple slates of electors and I think the US Congress
should have fought over it from there.
That is the legitimate way to deal with an election
that a lot of folks,
including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020.
I think that's what we should have done.
Do not be thrown off by the sort of boring,
dry sounding senatorial speak. What he is saying is extreme.
If you matched it, if this were a Disney movie,
you would see a very scary villain screaming about taking
over the Empire or whatever it might be.
He says. What he is advocating there would be,
quote, legitimate, but he's actually talking about exploiting elector fraud
as a pretext to overthrow the results.
That fraud, as you can see here,
has been indicted in this country.
It is one of the Red Arrows we have tracked
for you.
Now that's one senator. But the entire party is moving
towards a formal position against democracy with these kind of
tricks.
So whether you're tired of this or not is not
the question.
We have to document this and face it.
They use that secret meeting we told you about at
the RNC to pass a formal statement backing the lying
Trump electors who tried to claim that they represented some
sort of result in states that Biden actually won.
Now that statement I should mention,
was even careful to draw the line at the law.
So even in doing what I just showed you,
JD Vance is also doing,
which is saying, hey, maybe we'll just toss any results
that don't support the Republican Party.
They go out of their way to also write that
that would be for those who lawfully served as Trump
electors and states Biden won.
Now these plots are in the open.
This is happening. This is now part of electioneering in
America.
And while we've had many problems in the last several
decades,
we have not seen people
say these kind of things blatantly out in public.
We've had voter suppression issues,
We've had secret plots. But now this is part of
the normalizing take Arizona where there's an actual proposed law
now,
a bill that would try to just say we don't
honor election results anymore.
The politicians will decide the bill claims the legislature and
no other officials shall appoint presidential electors.
And that bill, if it became law,
might not be constitutional, I should mention,
but this is what's happening out there.
The antenna suspect because the Republican behind this bill,
we can tell you actually has already backed
coup efforts all the way back to 2020.
He joined one of the plots last cycle this lawmaker
was one of the
fraudulent electors in Arizona who got busted.
That's him on the video.
There you can see him signing documents claiming in a
state that Biden won,
that he would make himself a Trump elector.
And then somehow they wood
forest that issue over to Congress
and create enough confusion, doubt,
maybe throw in an insurrection or violence and use that
as the pretext
to end American democracy. Now that plots under investigation.
The politician here only answered questions with questions when pressed
on his role.
Can we talk about whether you knew that that was
a lie?
That document? Why do you Why do you think it's
a lie?
So do you believe that Trump still won in 2020?
Then why? Why would you think the alternate electors are
a lie?
Why? Why? Why the sound of someone who knows that
even answering that question with any hint of ballpark accuracy
might put him in a lot of hot water?
Because not all these people are dumb.
The plots may look like they failed,
but they failed last time.
Whether they fail again or not depends on many things,
including society's response and vigilance on behalf of democracy.
That politician, we can also tell you,
was at the US Capitol on January 6.
He has not been accused,
however, of illegally entering. We just know from documented evidence
and photos that you see there that he was there.
So why is this the lead story again?
Is this an overreaction? Or do we as a society
need to be as vigilant or more so than the
people who are out there doing this,
passing resolutions, trying to pass laws,
trying to claim these dictatorial potential powers?
With former acting Solicitor General for President Obama's administration,
Neal Katyal, and Andrew Weissman,
former Mueller Prosecutor General Counsel for the FBI,
both these men have had other legal roles as well.
Welcome Neil. I, I want to go to you first
with the question of is this
overreacting? Is this alarmist? Is this,
oh gosh, everyone's tired of talking about this or is
it as I I did suggest,
although I'll take your view either way,
important journalistically, legally and for society,
that we really document and expose how much of this
is going on,
efforts to basically normalize the stealing of future elections.
Ari, I'm so glad that you're talking about this tonight
because you know,
at this point we have a party of democracy and
a party of demagoguery.
And I think it's exceedingly clear what camp someone like
JD Vance falls into.
And the GOP as a whole is moving in a
frightening direction.
I mean, if condoning past attempts at election interference,
which happened in 2020 and now,
as you were reporting, working to pass new laws to
enable future interference,
if all that's not a threat to democracy,
I don't know what is.
And our constitutional founders understood that the words in the
document aren't going to be enough.
Madison called them mere parchment barriers.
And what he said. What our founders said more generally
is you need structural checks,
You need checks and balances,
ambition to counteract ambition. But they didn't give,
they didn't understand. We would have a party political party
structure.
The peoples would vote. People would vote out of party
loyalty instead of out of other things.
But it still worked pretty well because even with the
party structure you had people like McCain,
you know, people like Romney who would vote for what
was right even if it was they put,
you know, party, they put country over party.
And that's not true anymore.
That's what you're reporting. That's why this is so important,
what you're talking about tonight,
because this party has now become a party of coup
and a party of complicity.
And that's a frightening development
Andrew.
So I was thinking about
JD Vance's trajectory as you alluded to in terms of
what had got him to the public's attention.
I mean he might as well have called his latest
speech American elegy
given the import of what he is saying.
This is so anti democratic and
I should point out one of the comments that he
made was that if the Supreme Court rules against the
Trump position,
they should just ignore it.
In other words, that Donald Trump and the Republican Party
will now say what is the law.
The Supreme Court is part of our democracy.
The Constitution is part of our democracy.
The kind of thing that is being espoused is very
much
a choice for the voters as to where they want
to take this country.
And I think this is,
I think what you're engaging in now is an incredibly
important civics lesson.
And it is very hard to talk about this without
sounding like it's always,
you know, the hyperbole and saying the end is near.
But with statements from a sitting senator,
like the ones that were just made,
it's impossible not to go down that road.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. A sitting senator who,
again, is not just genuinely confused,
which is both of our lawyers,
can tell you it doesn't always
carry the day in court if you're generally confused about
doing illegal things,
But would be a little different than someone who,
as we know, documented publicly as an adult recently
how much he opposes not only a Trumpism but saw
it as a danger.
And so we see that,
as I called an allegory of this time.
There's another part of this Neil,
I want to ask you about,
which is some things in court are complicated and some
are not.
Sometimes in court, even a smart lawyer or,
you know, skilled practitioner ends up saying something,
answering a question a certain way,
and says it was so bad,
you just take it back.
You don't really do a whole big thing.
You just say judge. We said that we didn't mean
it.
I should have put it better.
You walk away from it.
And I want to point out that Donald Trump has
had to do that.
And again, I've told viewers we're very
tried to be thoughtful about what we're playing here.
But I'm playing this for a reason,
which is
his statements about the autocratic agenda,
if reelected, are so unpopular even,
And he's in a current Republican primary,
let alone the general election,
that he's walking them back.
And so that seems notable.
And I wanted to play this for you.
We're basically having, in many ways conveyed all this,
including dictatorial powers. Rah, rah,
rah. Now he's saying no,
that was just a joke.
Take a look.
And I said, I'm going to be a dictator because
he asked me,
are you really going to be a dictator?
I said absolutely I'm going to be a dictator for
one day.
I didn't say from day one executive orders,
what did that mean? That's what I'm saying.
It said very simple, I'm going to close the border
and we're going to drill,
baby drill. That's all. And then after that I'm not
going to be a dictator.
Now that was said in jest.
Quote that was said in jest.
Neil, what do you see there?
And does it work for him to convey all these
things which are basically plans normalize them
and then when pressed for voting purposes say,
well, maybe the maybe the stuff that's unpopular was jest.
Yeah, I mean it's all Trumpian doublespeak.
It's what he does. He says something outrageous then claims
to take a little piece of it back and the
like.
You know, Ari, forget about what he said about being
a dictator for one day.
Just think about what is Andrew and I've been talking
about for the last few weeks.
What he said, what he said his lawyers to out
in court to say,
which is he, a sitting president can go and murder
his political opponent and face no criminal consequences and,
you know, supposedly, you know,
murder the senators also who would oversee his impeachment trial.
I mean, that's Putin esque.
It's Soviet. It's certainly not American.
But that's the kind of power this guy claims.
And you know, you can't just chalk it up to,
oh, that was my lawyer because Trump was asked about
whether he stands by it afterwards and he said absolutely.
So, you know, given where he is,
you know, you know, smells like a dictator,
talks like a dictator, walks like a dictator,
He's a dictator.