Thanks to you for not missing this beat. That does it for me. The reidout with joy reid is up next. Tonight on the reidout and if the republicans decide that jim jordan should be the speaker of the house, there will, and by the way, i dont think thats going to happen. I think hell lose, but if they were to decide that, there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected republicans could be counted on to defend the constitution. Liz cheney speaking the truth about the Republican Leadership crisis. Which an esteemed professor who joins me tonight says should be setting off alarm bells that democracy is in trouble. Even trump is being talked about as a potential speaker. Plus, trumps renewed push to delay, delay, delay, including a heavy dose of whining about being unable to access all of the highly classified documents. That he used to have stashed in his insecure bathroom at maralago. And we begin tonight with the power of eight. Eight republicans, that is. The band of eight who rejected Kevin Mccarthy going against hundreds of their fellow republicans, all of whom voted to keep the speaker in place. Which means eight people can take over an entire institution. Pulling the plug on the house doing its job. Theres been a lot of chaos this week, hand wringing, and infighting, and its a scene we should be really worried about. Daniel ziblack told the Washington Post, quote f you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like. It should set off alarm bells that something is not right. Hes a professor of government at harvard. He knows a thing or two about what this work entails. Emphasis on the word work. This is work. They dont call it Public Service for nothing. But voters keep electing people who cannot do the job. Which is weird, right . Because these are the people elected to make crucial decisions about health care, your childs education, food safety, roads, bridges, and jobs. Its nose to the grindstone work. Not everyone is built for it. Many people have hired or chosen people to do far less. Think about it. Would you trust this person to run a Small Business in your neighborhood . Criminals are going to be criminals. Somebody wants to take you out and doesnt mind losing their life, theres not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it. Would you trust this person to watch your kids . Hes the one who is robbing hardworking americans to pay for karens daughters degree and lesbian dance theory. Would you even talk to this person about the weather . With due respect, sir, the farmers in my district recognize Climate Change as summer, winter, spring, and fall. What about letting these people make rules and set the budget for you and your family . Now we have Nancy PelosisGazpacho Police spying on members of congress. Be honest, you wouldnt hire any of these people to work for your business. Do anything for your family, in your house, rummaging through your paperwork or near you kids. Because that would be a horrible idea. Unproductive, risky, even dangerous. So why are so Many American voters hiring this quality of person to manage the 6 trillion budget of the largest economy in the world . Why is one of the richest, most complex, and highly advanced Market Economies on earth in the hands of painfully underqualified, unserious people . All spending must emerge from the u. S. House of representatives, per the constitution, which is why the house, the house is the one with the power to shut down the government by not agreeing to a budget. No one else in the government can do this job. But the Republican Party has a hiring problem, because the folks who work for them do not understand that this is a job. To them, this is just fun. Its a television show. Its entertainment. Its being famous. But its actually none of that. Its funding the pentagon, its managing the finances of the elderly, and making sure they can pick up their medicine. Its insuring Public School kids get their breakfast and lunch at school. So to put this job in the hands of what is essentially a clown car of chaos agents feels like an american suicide. Even worse, a suicide you get to watch on tv. Because that is what really matters to these people, lights, camera, spectacle. Which may explain why donald trump is considering a visit to the u. S. Capitol early next week. As House Republicans consider who should be their next speaker. Trump is ineligible for the post under the partys own rules barring anyone under indictment, but that hasnt sunk in with the party, which could also just change inrules. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted, if trump becomes speaker of the house, the House Chamber will be like a trump rally every day. It would be the house of maga. Aka, america would descend into a pit of chaos so deep it would take a century to repair. While revealing it really is just a party for them. Just a party, a circus, a rally. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer replied to Taylor Greene, quote, no thanks. Were good. We have seen a trump rally at the capitol already. Touche. And that rally that we saw on january 6th, 2021, wasnt Just Entertainment for the bored, angry, and unserious far right. It was an attempted coup. Joining me now is tom nichols, staff writer for the atlantic, and daniel ziblack, the coauthor of the new book, tyranny of the minority. Thank you for being here, both of you. I do want to go to you first, professor, because it strikes me that the era were in is both frightening and kind of comically unserious. I spoke with a gentleman yesterday on the show who used to work for paul ryan and john boehner. I wasnt a fan of either of them, but they didnt come across as completely unserious human beings. This new batch of maga republicans are both power mad, they want to run the country, but they want to run the country for no purpose. They just want to be on the front and be on tv. I cant see anything else they want other than for, i dont know, to zero out programs for the poor. What are we facing, and talk me down if im too too freaked out. Well, one way of interpreting whats going on is its a really close balance in the congress. Between republicans and democrats. But we have to remember that nancy pelosi with even a narrower majority was able to hold her coalition together. And so the only way to explain whats happening now with the Republican Party is its extreme radicalization. The left in the Democratic Party knows how toplay ball, how to get politics done. The extreme right of the Republican Party doesnt. What were seeing is the consequences of the radical zashz of the Republican Party. Yes, sorry, joy, but it should frighten us. Thats where im going to end my answer to you. You know, and tom, you wrote a really great article recently. Im sorry, go ahead. I see less humor in it than you do. Thats what i would have to say. I appreciate that. Thank you, sir. Tom, your recent piece pointed out, part of it is that people dont really know what the government does. So at a certain point, folks just are sort of entertaining themselves to death. They dont know what the government does. This person is more entertaining. Trump is funny. Biden is old, trump is hilarious to me. Not really understanding what the job is, but in the sense of congress, this is a 6 trillion economy. These people are in charge of divvying out the money, and they dont come in with any set of ideas theyre pushing, they literally, theyre like defunding ukraine is our line were going to draw in the stand. Thats like. 1 of the budget. Thats not causing our debt. I dont think ordinary people know that, so they think that must be the thing putting us in debt. I dont know if its a Communications Problems in the part of the media. Talk me down as well, or dont talk me down. What do we do about this . The Republican Party has half of the congress and they are that. I cant talk you down. When it comes to foreign aid, for example, most people in this country think that foreign aid is between 25 and 15 of the budget. They would like to see it reduced to about 10 , not realizing its 1 . I think your point about how people dont understand what government does is really important. Because they dont connect The Clown Show in washington to any potential harm to themselves. They feel very insulated from it all. And they dont understand that when things start to break down, it will be like what Earnest Hemingway said about going bankrupt, it will be gradually and then all at once. They dont understand what its like to have highways that are no longer maintained or checks that are no longer deposited to their accounts. Or air Traffic Control systems that no longer function. They dont get any of that because responsible adults have always stepped in to fix the chaos behind people like this. Theres a small percentage of people in elected government, policymakers, experts, administrators, that keep the government functioning every day. So people dont think theres any real danger to themselves. And people who are running this carnival, theyre insulated from this by money and power and privilege. Theyre not worried about what will happen if things go south. And donald trump just wants to stay out of jail. He doesnt care about whether or not the mail gets delivered. So you know, i think the word that we have been using here is unseriousness. The problem is, and i take the professors point, its not funny, but if you dont laugh, youll scream. Yeah. But this unseriousness paves the way to authoritarianism. It really is the road to hell because people theyre not even committed enough to some idea that is antidemocratic. Theyre not committed to anything. So they kind of find themselves along this road without really knowing how or why they got there, while everything falls apart around them. And then theyll blame everyone else for that, and that will just confirm their belief that democracy doesnt work. Right. And theres sort of a frog in a boiling pot piece to it, daniel. I was getting obsessed today, a big Washington Post story that talks about the fact you literally have a longer life span if you live in a blue state versus a red state or a blue county versus a red county, and how red state politics, theres like a frog in a boiling pot. People who live in ohio used to have a similar Life Expectancy to people in california. No more, california is like the second longest Life Expectancy. Ohio is muddling near the bottom. Why . Because the policies rich people in ohio that put in place that are great for them, deregulation, dont worry about the seat belt rules, we dont have to worry about water pollution. Thats great for rich people, but people in ohio are dying younger. I mean, people who live in nearby counties in pennsylvania literally live longer because of policy, the bureaucrats people call the deep state, are running the state as tom just said, and in the cases of places like mississippi and ohio and alabama, the policies that people who make money and dont care about regular people, those policies are killing people. The u. S. Is the only modern country that has an eightyear gap between the Life Expectancy of people with College Degrees and people without. Thats not true anywhere else but here. What you have is people who are then angry about not being able to pay their rent and angry about not being able to make a living or dying young or their kid died at 30 of a car accident because no seat belts and they get driven to the autocrat. They think the answer is the Entertainment Spectacle Of A Donald Trump who this week said the following. These are just some of his speeches. He labeled the new York Attorney general a racist and a monster. Mocked Paul Pelosifter he was assaulted by a home intruder. Called for police to shoot shoplifters on sight, and said migrants are, quote, poisoning the blood of our country. Thats nazi talk, and people are applauding it and cheering it. Its really simple, to be a politician committed to democracy, you cant engage in that rhetoric. You cant use threats of violence to try to gain power. Its really clear overwhelming majorities of americans want gun control, overwhelming majorities of americans want to deal with the climate crisis. And presumably, overwhelming majorities of americans want to live longer. The reason we dont have the policies in place to do that is because our institutions allow for small minorities to dominate our politics. We have seen this in the house of representatives. We also see this across our political system with the electoral college, the senate, the filibuster. A whole range of institutions to prevent majorities from getting what they want and what this means is that americans become increasingly frustrated and disillusioned from our politics and this is very dangerous for democracy. And then what do we do about it, tom . Because you have its a vicious cycle. The worse it gets, the more people double down on wanting this sort of Populist Trumpian politics which literally all it accomplished in trumps era was a trillion dollar tax cut for the super rich and everyone in their mind thinks they got Something Else. No, lots of rhetoric and anger and rage and hate, but not a lot else. But people are willing to just take that or the entertainment of a Marjorie Greene or a laurent boebert. They dont mind the humiliation of it. They just think its kind of funny. I dont know what you do if a substantial share of americans are okay with that and satisfied with that, and are just going to sleep walk us into an autocracy about that. You ask me to talk you off the ledge and then you ask a question where i cant talk you off the ledge because i dont think theres anything you can do about it, especially because so many people who support this authoritarian movement are older people. I mean people my age, in their 50s, 60s, 70s. Theyre not going to change. Theyre not going to change their mind. They are way too far up that tree ever to climb down. So some of this, there was a piece in the atlantic recently by someone who had been in a cult, who pointed out and said, you know, cults eventually die out because this older generation of people just wont be replaced because the kids, another way of saying the kids are all right. The generation is coming behind them are more sensible, but the question is, can we hold on to this democracy through that really dangerous period . I think the most important thing is not to become fatalistic about things like voting and about activism and about communicating with your elected representatives because i think one of the things that the far right counts on is that this minority, because it is so vocal and active, can exercise disproportionate power. When in fact they are the minority in this country, and they know it, by the way. Thats where their anger comes from. They are a minority and they know theyre a minority, so i guess the best answer i can give you is to say that you have to keep the faith. You cant become fatalistic about losing to these folks because the constitution and our democracy depend on it. Well said. Well said. Im still on a ledge, but at least im on here with smart people. I like being around smart people. Tom and daniel, thank you both very much. I appreciated that conversation. Up next on the reidout, trumps lawyers are certainly earning the pay. With a series of developments today in the multitude of cases against the repeatedly indicted former president. The reidout continues after this. Hi, im darlene and i lost 40 pounds with golo in just eight months. Golo has really taught me how to eat better and feel better. As long as you eat the right food groups in the right amounts, thats all it is. Its so simple and it works. Golo was the smartest thing i ever did. When you have chronic kidney disease. 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