0 once again, a member of donald trump's inner circle is telling on themselves confessing to their role in the ex-president's attempted coup. a few weeks ago it was former chief of staff mark meadows. he published a memoir and turned over documents voluntarily to the january 6th committee revealing among other things that he was involved in discussions about a scheme to stop the certification of electors for joe biden. now the confessions are coming from peter navarro, a former trade adviser to then president donald trump. in an interview with "the daily beast" he provides details about not keeping him in power. he worked closely with steve bannon and they plotted with many members of congress. navarro tells the daily beast, quote, we spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen including senators. quote it started out perfectly. at 1:00 p.m. gosar and cruz did exactly what was expected of them and that is the counting of votes. navarro admits the plan would not overturn the election on its own, but their hope was to run the clock as long as possible to increase public pressure on then vice president mike pence, to send the electoral votes back to six contested states where republican led legislatures could try to overturn the results. quote, my role was to provide the receipts for the 100 congressmen or so who would make their cases and rely and pardon the body of evidence i collected. that's kind of funny. first of all, the body of evidence was bunk, but what an amazing thing to say, the legal predicate, a remarkably forthright confession. of course, things played out differently than navarro had schemed of, violence ensued and we all know what happened next although you've got to say as the crowd was violently beating cops and concussing them and people were dying, they were delaying the vote, which was the plan of navarro and bannon and all the rest. just like the scam that peter navarro and steve bannon were playing and everything leading up to january 6th was based on the quote, legal predicate on the big lie that the election was stolen and the receipts that navarro was providing. the thing about that lie is that it is so broad it covers a wide spectrum of beliefs. it turns out unifying all these people is useful when you're attempting to overturn an elerkz by having this thing called the big lie that people can sort of put their own details into. there's the most outrageous and fringiest wing pushing conspiracy theories and we ridicule them because they're preposterous. they range from italian satellites to switching votes and maybe george soros was involved and many of these lies as preposterous and ludicrous as they are as cringy and funny they are, they were promoted by donald trump's own attorney, the people who represented him including sydney powell and lynn wood. >> there was and is still massive voter fraud across this country. it took all forms. it was not just the dominion machines. we have experts and a witness who have explained to us that these fraud exists in the dna of all of the software that was run by any voting system in the country. >> i challenge governor kemp to step up in front of the people and put his hand on this bible ask tell us that he did not take money from china. he did! so did brian raffensperger. >> we've already traced a lot of the money that did this back to china. we have internet white hat hackers, i think they call them who saw back doors open in the system and saw people in iran and china and hong kong and serbia and -- i don't know how many countries having influence in our election system. >> we're going to send that message to george soros. get out of our country, george soros! >> okay. i should say, just to be clear to the extent that there are fact checkable claims there, it's all bunk. lies, delusion, ridiculous. none of it is true. none of it, okay? i should tell you the companies that make the voting machines called dominion voting systems is suing her for defamation. the wild conspiracy theories did not catch on and they were getting laughed out of court left and right. donald trump turned to the poll workers and they were the ones stealing the election and the most prominent cases involves a woman ruby freeman and her daughter who both worked in the election office last year. freeman and moss became the targets of a slew of false accusations from president supporters who claim that they manipulated votes. another one of donald trump's lawyers rudy giuliani broad them up in testimony, he delivered to georgia state lawmakers last year. >> how can they say there's no fraud. look at that woman. look at them taking the ballots out, skirr yg around with the ballots, nobody in the room, hiding around. they look like they're passing out dope not just ballots. it is quite clear they're stealing votes. >> okay. again, totally untrue, all right? the video was deceptively edited to make it look like there was something sketchy, but there was no vote stealing going on whatsoever. again, there was an audit. they were recounted and recounted and it didn't stop there. donald trump himself brought up ruby freeman no less than 18 times during his now infamous phone call to georgia's secretary of state demanding they find enough votes to overturn the election results. trump referred to freeman as a professional vote scammer, a hustler. are you sensing a theme here in the way they talk about her? a known political operative who stuffed the ballot boxes. ruby freeman and her daughter are suing rudy giuliani, a right-wing cable channel and a far-right conspiracy website that spread the false accusations about that that resulted in threats and people outside their door and think, that menacing visit from an emissary of the trump campaign. freeman received that visit who happened to be a one-time publicist for kanye west. a message she delivered on january 4th just two days before the electors were to be certified is that freeman was to, quote, confess to trump's voter fraud allegations or people would come to her home in 48 hours and take her to go to jail. >> i cannot say what specifically will take place. i just know that they will -- [ inaudible ] >> ruby freeman, of course, to her tremendous credit did not give in. she said the devil's a liar. she'd have to think about it. so you've got these crazy conspiracy theories. they're all over the internet and the right-wingers are sharing them and the president is getting them. it's the italian satellite, and it's hugo chavez and the dominions and the ballot stuffers and all of that was ludicrous on its face and also embarrassing for everyone involved. in fact, it's created legal liability for some of the people pushing those claims and then there was the laundered version. all right? it's important to see this. there was a more, let's say gentlemanly arm of the big lie and that was pioneered by josh hawley of missouri and ted cruz of texas. they were sort of wink, wink, nudge, nudge. they weren't saying the ghost of hugo chavez changed your votes in fulton county. no, what they claim was that the states were wrong to expand access to voting in the midst of a once in a century pandemic and that measures enacted to keep voters safe from a wildly infectious disease for which there was no vaccine like increased absentee voting and they were improper and in fact unconstitutional efforts to steal the election from donald trump. that was the pretext. the more sophisticated version they dressed up the big lie on which they hung their objections, electoral vote and their votes for what was effectively a coup. the same goal as peter navarro and lynn wood and sydney powell and donald trump. they're all marching in line. they just have different articulation. now we get one of most honest articulations and that comes courtesy of kentucky senator rand paul. yesterday he tweeted this endorsement from a piece of the american conservative alinling left wing interests unfairly secured the race in wisconsin for joe biden. and senator paul cites how that election was stolen, how to steal an election he says. and i'm going to quote. seeding an area with as many absentee votes as possible, and then harvesting and counting the results. do you see what that language is doing there? convincing them to complete the ballot, that's just convincing people -- persuading them to vote, vote for the person they want to vote for. and then harvesting that's just collecting them and have them go in a legal way. that's just the mechanism of voting. in other words, completely legal methods of increasing turnout, again, amidst a pandemic that's now killed 830,000 americans, a pandemic at the time was ravaging many areas that were -- what's the phrase we use -- heavy with democratic votes. often just code for a lot of not white people. so i have to tip my cap to rand paul and the american conservative because it gets to the big point of the big lie. here it is all on the page. it's not crazy stories about hugo chavez, italian satellites or someone stuffing a ballot. no, no, no, whatever the justifications are, the lie is there to back fill the fundamental uniting principle of the coup and the supporters of the coup and the collaborators and frankly most of the republican party based on, well, the way they voted on january 6th in the house and polling. that principle that brings them together whatever ridiculous stipulations they make they believe it is ilijitimate for the wrong kinds of people to vote in large numbers and vote in representatives to run the government. anything those wrong people do, heavily democratic areas, is illegitimate by default and by definition. and so because they won, they by definition stole the election from donald trump. janet griswald is secretary of the senate of colorado. her job was to oversee the 2020 presidential election, and she's been sounding the alarm to future elections. and she joins me now. i want to first just get your reaction to a member of the united states senate using the phrase how to steal an election in regards to what was essentially a voter turnout operation, a voter education operation, an attempt to get absentee ballots in the hands of people who needed it. like, what does it do to our democracy if someone that powerful and prominent is calling that stealing? >> well, thanks for having me on, chris. happy holidays. i wish it was on a happier topic, but what senator paul is doing is saying the quiet part loud. they don't want certain people to vote. and that's what extreme elected officials have been laying the groundwork for the last two years and it's dangerous. having u.s. senators, having former presidents spout lies and gaslight the american people make it easier for voter suppression, easier to install insiders, people who do believe democracy and election administration, and frankly could make it easier the next time they try another january 6th. >> we've now got polling i think out today that shows a majority of republicans saying they don't believe biden was legitimately elected. i believe that's the phrase used in the polling. it's become a canon, a litmus test issue for folks that are running. i don't know what your possible opponents might say on this issue and the voters of colorado. but i guess the question is how do you unwind that now that it has become -- they have succeeded in sort of propagandizing this lie? >> well, we have to continue to push back. for the last two years these extreme republicans have been spreading lies and using legal avenues to suppress the right to vote. since the beginning of this year we've seen 500 bills to take away americans' freedom to vote, 120 bills to subvert the vote, insider threats, think audits, death threats to election officials and it's going on and on and on. there's a couple things we have to do. number one, demand the u.s. senate pass voting reform and safeguard american democracy. but number two as you mention we are seeing this play out in secretary of state's races including in mine where you have people who deny the 2020 election now running for secretary of state. that's like putting an artnist arsonist in charge of the fire department. so voters will have a big job in 2022, and that's making sure we elect people to oversee elections who believe in democracy and upholding the will of the people regardless if they like the outcome of the elections. >> that part about liking the outcome of the election, to me that's also a key part here. there are i'm sure lots of people if you gave them a lie detector test they believe the nonsense being flown at them and ruby freeman and her daughter stuffing ballots. but they somehow went away in the aftermath of the gubernatorial election despite the fact the exact same rules had been in place during the pandemic. and all of a sudden those complaints disappeared. like they don't like the person who won that's the problem. >> that's exactly right. and not only in virginia. look towards colorado. prior to 2020 more republican voters used a mail ballot than democrats in two out of three general elections. mail ballots don't help one side or the other. they help the american people choose their elected officials, and that's what these extremists want to take away. so i think it's incredibly troubling what's happening. elected officials should not lie. you know, senator paul very clearly does not believe in the right to vote for all eligible americans. that goes to the very foundation of our democracy. so we are seeing the worst attack on democracy in recent history, and it's incumbent on all of us to really pay attention to demand more from elected officials and make sure we turn all these big liars into big losers in 2022. >> there's legislation, of course, that the house has passed, the senate could pass that could create some federal standard, structural reforms. the fate of that will be taken up in the new year. thank you very much. >> thank you so much. next week is the one-year anniversary of when the angry trump mob stormed the capitol and tried to overturn a free and fair democratic election. as that anniversary looms "the washington post" reports the house committee investigating that attack plans to begin holding public hearings in the new year to tell the story of insurrection from start to finish. that presumably means everyone can watch those hearings on tv and learn the depths of planning that went into the coup all the way up to of course donald trump himself, which is a good thing because the right wants nothing more than for everyone to turn the page and move on. in fact, recognizing when what the violence that day is the subject of a letter from from a democratic congressman to president joe biden in which he calls on biden to use executive authority to recognize january 6th as a national day of healing. writing, quote, in less than a year since the insurrection republicans have already begun to rewrite the history of that painful day. a national day of healing can help ensure no one can erase this traumatic event in our history with a need for resources that help us individually and collectively heal. the congressman joins me now. i should say full disclosure, my brother luke works as a senior aid to you. i want to make that clear for everyone watching. i sat next to you at his wedding. let me ask you this, why were you motivated to write this letter, and why a day of healing? >> so, chris, i'm going to bring it home for you because i know you're from this area. a couple of weeks ago we buried a 17-year-old who was murdered outside of his high school in one part of my district, and we buried another 17-year-old who died by suicide in another part of my district. that rise in homicide, suicide, children's mental health is happening across the country, and it's been happening since the beginning of the school year. and you know i'm biased as a former educator. but we have over 100,000 people dead from the pandemic. we have the trauma from the insurrection. when i went to the capitol to finish certifying the election i looked into the eyes of my colleagues who were in the capitol. what i saw was terror. what i saw was horror. so considering the complex traumas of that day, what's happening now, continued covid, four years of donald trump, the big lie, tens of millions radicalized by the big lie, we need to pause for a moment, take a big breath, stop being in a rush to restart the economy and reflect on our mental health and well-being so we can figure out how to move forward. >> i wasn't expecting you to phrase that answer the way you did, but it's been a recurring theme on mine on the show. it feels weird to state the most obvious point you could state and yet i don't think it's stated enough, in which obviously people are way messed up in every direction after the last 20 months. clearly. i mean every social ipdicator you look at, we've seen a rise in homicides, we've seen a rise in drug overdoses. we have 830,000 people who have passed away, there's people in grief. and yes your point about everyone has this urge i think for normalcy or to get back to something, and there just seems like there is a lot of unrecognized trauma reverberating throughout society in massively destructive ways. and i don't know if a single day of reckoning does anything about that, but at least it's a symbolic starting point. there's something really to it about, whoa, hold up, what's going on? >> yeah, i ran for office partly because the year after trump was elected 34 kids died within the k-12 school system in the bronx, and 17 died via suicide. and no one was talking about it. no one in congress, no one in elected office that i saw was really talking about it. and if we don't center our mental health as a society and start -- start governing that way and thinking of legislation in that way, we cannot build back better as a nation if we're only talking about the health of wall street and the health of the stock market. the reason why legislation like voting rights matter and common sense gun reform and women's reproductive health and the george floyd justice and policing act and the build back better act, the reason those bills matter is they help rebuild a public trust in government and help our collective well-being as a nation. that's what your democracy needs and our economy needs regardless of if you're a republican or democrat. >> yeah, and it seems to me, too, it's going to be important and that's going to be a very fraud day for a lot of reasons. we think the former president might be giving a speech. i know the actual president, joe biden, will be giving a speech, folks on capitol hill. having some kind of declaration as a national day of healing strikes me also as an attempt to do some unifying. obviously there's certain divides that can't be stressed across, but an attempt to do that in some way given how fractured things are seems like it makes some sense to me. >> you know, reading about tens of million of people who still believe that, you know, biden is not a legitimate president and who are radicalized behind that belief will have said things like, you know, i am willing to bear arms to secure -- to preserve our freedom. and hearing those comments from members of congress, i mean hold on a second, right? are we talking about a civil war? are we talking about a race war? are we talking about survival of the fittest against a global pandemic that's killed 830,000 people, double the amount killed during world war ii? we're just not having the right conversations, and we're just trying to push through and be tough through this pandemic, and it's the wrong way to go about it, in my opinion. and to your point about unifying, i think healing a unifying concept and principle. and i think it's what the country needs because it's been dealing with covid and turning on the news and watching conflict happenin