pennsylvania already took advantage of this once in a lifetime deal to troll his embattled colleague senator bob menendez. in a cameo, he encourages menendez to stand his ground and not get bogged down by all the haters out there. and here's a look at some of the other messages that santos has reported so far. >> hey, your beautiful masters. >> they can booed me out of congress but they can't take away my good humor. >> screw the haters. the haters are gonna hate. >> don't let them force you out. don't let them bully you. >> botox keeps you young. fillers keeps you plump. >> you are fabulous, and you are going to slay 2024. in other -- santos news, hbo producer is making a movie about him, and, bowen yang, this could be your big moment. on that note, i wish you a very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late. i will see you at the end of tomorrow. ♪ ♪ ♪ i will see you at the end of so, here's the thing about tonight's show. i disagree with liz cheney about everything. my whole adult life on everything in politics, i would not just say that liz cheney and i were on the front proverbial teams, i would say we are from different proverbial planets and they are planets at war with each other. and she is a politician. i'm not a politician, i'm just a person. but i am definitely a liberal. and she is definitely a hard-core conservative. and i disagree with liz cheney on, really, on everything you can think of, on the environment, abortion rights, profoundly. i think she is not just wrong on abortion, she is capitol w wrong on abortion in a terrible way. i disagree with her vehemently on voting rights and on the iraq war and the afghanistan war, and our relationship or lack thereof with iran, and our approach to terrorism, and torture, and guns, like also mining, and intellectual property, and the rules of the house of representatives. actually, i was even got mad liz cheney about fishing. and it's one thing you'll think we have in common. even on fishing i got at her. we are opposites. and it is not like a casual thing either. here, for example, is just one indication of the scale of this as an obsession for me. my differences with liz cheney. before the plan to meet her here this evening, liz cheney and i have met exactly one previous time, which she will not remember. it was in 2010, so it was 13 years ago. and even three years after that one brief 2010 meeting, i was still on the show in 2013 playing clips of that meeting because i was still fixated on it. i still wanted to interview her about all of the money and profound ways in which we disagree. >> i have not been back to cpac since then because that year, i think i was a little cards. i was scarred with disappointment by a very, very disappointing encounter that i had at cpac with liz cheney. >> hi, i'm rachel maddow. >> i think that was it -- i don't know what she said. she smiled at me. >> what i said was, i would love to interview you sometime if you other want to do it. >> she said, oh, hi rachel. i asked to call but she never called. i would still love to interview you. i know you will never call. but still -- >> i would love to interview you sometime. that interaction was 13 years ago. i was still talking about it, still begging for an interview with her three years after that, like, to second interaction. of course, she was never gonna say yes because why on earth would there be any advantage, right, in talking to someone who disagrees with absolutely everything you stood for in public life and politics. why would you want to do anything like that? and, again, in some ways this is funny and dumb. but it is also, i have to tell you, and i am being truly honest, it has been a serious thing to me. it has been part of how i understand myself in my political time as an american, that i am someone fundamentally opposed to the politics of liz cheney and her father dick cheney who was white house chief of staff and defense secretary before he was vice president. and what i still believe was the fundamentally disastrous george w. bush administration in which liz cheney also served. i literally started writing books in the first place more than a decade ago because i had so much to get off my chest about what i thought was wrong with the cheney approach to war and foreign policy. the first book i ever wrote was inspired by dick cheney's minority report in the iran counter scandal during the reagan administration. that first book i ever read is literally dedicated to him. the former vice president dick cheney, oh, please, let me interview you. and that feeling extended to his daughter who was his political descendant both literally and proverbially in every way. and you want more one more level of it? . there is one more level of it. as dedicated as liz cheney's to her father dick cheney, they are profoundly close as father and daughter. she was profoundly loyal to him. there wasn't a room for a piece of paper to slight between them on policy. as close as they are, as much as she reviewers her dad, i feel the same way about my dad. i wear one piece of jewelry, i wore my dad's high school ring. my dad's brilliant, and kind, and as far as i can tell, he is right about absolutely everything. he's an air force veteran. he's a very careful lawyer. and my whole life my dad was kind of the soul of moderation when it came to politics until liz that. the dick cheney vice president had the effect of an almost religious conversion on my own dad, moving his politics to what seemed about 50 points west of where they had ever been before. so, vehemently did he object, as did i, to the cheney brand republicanism during the george w. bush era. so, it's we are. like, the cheney family is the biggest touchstone that i have in american politics in my lifetime. it is a funny thing, but it's also personal and real. and it is a thing that matters to me. and i say this tonight, not for, just for the g with factor of me having liz cheney here tonight, me having somebody tonight whom you never expect. i say this not just for the man bites dog weirdness of this. i say it because i think in civic terms, and in sort of american citizenship terms, i think it's really important how much we disagree. it is important how far we are on every policy issue imaginable. it is important that liz cheney is infinity, and i am negative infinity on the ideological number line. it's important because that tells you how serious and big something has to be to put us, to put me and liz cheney together on the same side of something in american life. i mean, i am sure, like, noah had a hard time convincing the mines that they should get on the same boat with the snakes, or the gazelles should hop on board the arc with the lions. but needs must, normal combat, normal willingness to jump on each other, or run, or defend from each other yields to the imperative of the world destroying flood. where all land animals face the same fate, and all rules have to be put on hold because now we are either going down or all on the same boat. on the january 6th investigation in congress, you remember that the chairman was the gentleman on the left here, mississippi democrat bennie thompson. join the investigation, he told liz cheney, vice chair of that investigation, that he looked forward when it was all done to going back to our corners and resuming our earlier fights for now, for tonight, because where we are as a country, liz cheney is here to talk about something bigger than the fights i had imagined having with her my whole life. and she sacrificed a lot to have earned the right to have that conversation. she had the number three job in republican leadership in washington and republicans voted her out of it. she was booted out from her seat in congress. major republican fund raising committees raised money of attacking her, again, who was the number three republican in washington. she voted to impeach former president trump for trying to overthrow the government by force and stay in power after he lost election with congressman benny thompson. she let the blockbuster congressional investigation into trump's plot against the country showing us all who did it and how. as a conservative, as a republican, one dynamic that i think makes it particularly valuable for people like me, democrats and liberals at least to hear from her, to know what she knows is that her life experience is so different. and her colleagues are so different. her emilio is so different. her sidelines are different than mine. and i guess maybe for mules yours. she doesn't hear from liberal constituents sharing her on for taking on the would-be dictator in washington. she hears from congressional constituents in wyoming which gave the single largest margin of victory to donald trump of any state in the country in 2020. e in the ci mean, even as a lote country was repeatedly struck by the insanity of what's been happening in republican politics where she lives and among the people she serves and who elected her, it is all believed and earnestly so, and saying that helps us understand how dangerous it is. it makes it more explicable. i mean, here's an example of what i'm. this is from her book. this is about the infamous rudy giuliani hair dye press conference in the aftermath of the 2020 election. she says, quote, transfixed by the hair dye dripping down his face, it was challenging to focus on what rudy giuliani was saying. but as he introduced sydney powell, he made this attention grabbing announcement. he said i don't think most americans know that our ballots get calculated, any of them, outside the united states. and it's being done by a company that specializes in voter fraud. according to giuliani, america had used, quote, largely a venezuelan voting machine in essence to count our vote. if we let this happen, we are going to become venezuela. what is he talking about, i thought. it's sydney powell going to provide evidence for this claim? powell stuck up to the microphone and explained to the american election system that's been hacked by dominion voting machines and smartmatic technology software, which she said was software created in venezuela at the direction of hugo chavez. she described a, quote, algorithm that she said switched votes from trump to biden and that had, quote, trashed trump votes. according to sydney powell, we learned about this only because trump got so many votes in 2020, that the whole system broke. but we needed to be aware. she warns that the same sinister scope resided in voting machines across the country. her voice breaking with emotion, sydney powell said this was all stunning, heartbreaking, infuriating in the most unpatriotic act i can even imagine for people in this country to have participated in. she claimed that president biden, trump won by a landslide. we are going to prove it and we are going to reclaim the u.s. for the people who vote for freedom. cheney says the whole performance was too bizarre forwards. my daughter who had been following this closely and was disgusted by what trump's lawyers were doing texted me that night. she said, mom, i think it's safe to say that rudy giuliani's hair dye dripping down his face today was an act of god. but the damage had already been done. millions of americans including tens of thousands of my own constituents believe these lies. and they believed in the people telling them. one constituent called the performance clear eyed and determined. this person said sydney powell struck her as forthright. she said that the trump lawyer had been, quote, shaking with righteous anger, quote, very persuasive. then she added, of course, the talking heads will dismiss them, have them. cheney says we were in danger statuary. the president and his legal team or making outlandish and false claims that struck at the heart of our electoral process. millions of americans believed them and the trump campaign continue to send emails and run ads, spreading the same falsehoods all over the country. donald trump was doing it nearly every time he spoke publicly. i knew how perilous this was. i knew it had to stop. the next day, november 20th, i issued a statement calling on president trump to put up or shut up. elsewhere in the book, here is cheney talking about the kind of thing she was hearing from her constituents back in wyoming and where they were getting their information. she said, quote, i also found that many of those in wyoming who were the most upset or angry were not aware of the violence on january six. they believe the day to have been almost entirely peaceful one. they read the epic times, a quote, news website that presents extremely slanted reporting in the guise of a straightforward media outlet. they belie what they saw their social media feeds. they watched almost exclusively fox news or newsmax or oan. as a result, they were completely unaware of what had actually happened. more than if you believed that i should be pressing for joe biden's removed from office and donald trump's reinstallation as president. it's a valuable perspective, right? those are valuable sightlines, for any of us who have been struggling to understand the kind of grip this anti-democratic authoritarian movement has on our fellow americans. is liz cheney seeing it because, i mean, in my own life, it's because she's so different than me. i mean, she got just as many votes from those folks in wyoming in 2020 as donald trump did. and so, she knows them. and they thought they knew her. it's also valuable to have a conservative republican member of congress writing about something we can't see from the outside, what's going on among conservative republicans behind closed doors while they are giving into this anti-democratic plot? we learned, for example, on page 124 of liz cheney's your book that a senior republican staffer on the rules committee wrote in the republican staff memo on impeachment less than one week after the january 6th attack on congress, this is the republican staff note. the person wrote, trump had committed impeachable offenses, calling what trump did, quote, a serious act, political in nature, that co-opted or subverted that political process and threaten the order of political society. that is the republican staff memo on impeachment after january 6th. previously unreported. we learned on page 74 that the day before january six, kevin mccarthy's general counsel, the top lawyer for the top republican in the house, told congressman mike johnson that the effort he was organizing to get house republicans to sign on to trump's efforts to overthrow the election was an effort that was wildly unconstitutional in its basis. quote, later that night, i heard from kevin mccarthy's chief counsel, makayla carr. she told me she had made clear to mike johnson that his letter was wrong. she said that he knew it was. she said that he pushed back very strongly, excuse me. she said she pushed back very strongly when they discussed at that afternoon. and then cheney quotes from an email, he knows he is wrong on the fundamental constitutional principles. and his argument that he has some sort of power to individually determine, absent of process of any sort, that a state department their constitutional obligation. and then the remedy should be that, without any process whatsoever, the federal congress gets to overturn the will of the people. that's astonishing. astonishing, that is the top lawyer serving the top republican in the house, telling him that what he is doing is unconstitutional as he is doing it. mike johnson, of course, is now no longer just an anonymous backbench of congress. he's now the leader, republican speaker of the house. page 32 of her book, liz cheney describes communications with senior republican staffers on capitol hill about the court filing that mike johnson in fact lead as part of trump's election challenge, concluding that he might personally have ethical issues as a lawyer, as in with his professional equity tayshawn for having made factual assertions to the court, and that briefing about he did not have factual information about. id not have factual information about. as you know, lots of trump lawyers have faced professional punishment for lies they told on trump's behalf. after the election, liz cheney in her new book effectively asserts that the house speaker mike johnson might be one of those lawyers. on page 228, she says congressman jim jordan who was very nearly speaker himself, she says he may need the assistance of a criminal lawyer for sorting out the conflicting claims he made during congressional testimony about his communications with former president trump while the january 6th attack was underway. on page 17 of rubble, jim jordan gets this from liz cheney. quote, jordan made a memorable pitch to me to join the group. it went something like this, would you consider joining the freedom caucus? we don't have any woman and we need one. cheney says, as tempting as this offer was, i took a pass. on page 153, here is liz cheney's goodbye to congresswoman elise stefanik. quote, other members said they were upset that my impeachment vote had caused them trouble at home. they thought i should have provided them cover for their vote against impeachment. i had heard this complaint from an angry elise stefanik of new york. she told me that because of my vote to impeach, people or writing letters to the local newspapers, criticizing her, and asking why she hadn't taken the same principled stand that i have. cheney says, quote, that seemed less my problem than hers. many of us who had known elise stefanik since before she abandoned all principal who are curious about how she had lost her sense of right and wrong. cheney says a number of the man who spoke in favor of removing me from leadership said they did not like my tone. i wasn't contrite enough nor out learned my lesson. ralph norman kept repeating that his problem when it was my attitude. we just got such a defiant attitude. a couple of my male colleagues were so enraged by my unwillingness to apologize, that they got themselves really worked out, it seemed, on the verge of tears as they lectured me. i tried to follow what the most emotional members were saying but it was not always easy. mike kelley of pennsylvania, for example, seemed angry because i had released a statement before i voted. and in an effort to describe how upset he was, mike kelly said, it's like you are playing the biggest game of your life. and you look out and see your girlfriend sitting on the opponents signed. cheney says, these were grown men. this was 2021. i was standing at the podium in the front of the auditory, thinking you have got to be kidding me. other female members started yelling, she's not your girlfriend. yes i said, i'm not world friends girlfriend. she really isn't, truly. so upset about her tone about not taking the feelings into account. but she doesn't take their feelings into account. she is relentless about what she sees as going on and who is failing and how in realtime and why it's important. she is blistering, blistering throughout this book, particularly about people like speaker mike johnson, and about people like senator josh hawley, who she says deserved all the radical that he got during the january 6th hearings for running away after briefly showing his fist for the mobs that we're about to attack the capitol. she is blistering about ted cruz who committed one of the worst cases of abandonment of duty for personal ambition i've ever seen in washington, when he proposed a multi day delay on certifying the election results, a strategy that liz cheney says was coordinated with the trump white house. liz cheney in her new book takes the bark of former speaker kevin mccarthy again and again and again. kevin mccarthy and mitch mcconnell