risk. good evening from studio b in new orleans. site of tonight s national day of racial healing town hall, which i will be hosting tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern along with chris hayes and trymaine lee. i ll tell you much more about that a little later. we begin tonight with the real life confluence of a toxic stew of election denial, extremism, and political violence. the type of nightmare scenario that is all too real in america. police in new mexico arrested failed republican legislative candidate solomon pena, who they say orchestrated a string of shootings targeting democratic officials in the state. last november, pena lost to his democratic opponent in a landslide, by nearly 50 points. but claimed he really lost because of so-called fraud. apparently he s both an election denier and a sore loser. after the election, a very stable pena wrote on twitter, i dissent. i am the maga king. he later posted a photo of himself in maga gear, noting much like donald trump, he n
and the problem is that they are creating among a group of people who are already falling into the minority and not happy about it, and anxious about it, and you think about just what s happened in the last several years. threats against members of congress are up 330% since 2016. armed demonstrations are up 47% since the 2020 election day. armed paramilitary groups up 96% between 2020 election day and inauguration day. fbi hate crimes, 8,263, just in 2020. that s the highest number since 9/11. white supremacy propaganda and activism up 1100% since 2017. it definitely feels like there is a weaponizing of people s fear of minority status and of losing power and status. and you are very familiar with steve bannon, a self-described leninist, who wants this kind of camp of the saints war, he s