democracy, for every democracy. with it, anything is possible. without it, virtually nothing is possible. we have to come together and get it done. and we will. we are back with melissa murray, dan hilemon, dan goldman. melissa, that was i think the second speech the president has given about voting rights and democracy. does it, in your view, signal a turn of his folk to us think? what did you hear today? that address may have been given on an international stage but i think it was likely directed to his colleagues across the street in the capitol where we have major voting rights legislation pending, legislation that would seek to protect the right to vote, that has basically just been lying there, and languishing in congress. and it could not be more brave i know we talked about abortion and we normally don t think about reproductive lights linked to voting rights, but you
diminished in quality just across the board because the whole thing of it s just become so ugly and nasty, but there s no doubt that we don t have if you look at the democratic party, it has problems. not all the candidates are perfect. not have many people who believe in the jewish space lasers. none that i know of. that was my understatement. zero is the number. and you know, and are willing to believe in all these other crazy conspiracy theories, up to and including the big lie but you have a million other conspiracies. you have genuine qanon people in congress now and there s more running and those candidates are not just bad candidates, not compelling but also nut jobs and you see a lot of that on the republican side. when i got to congress in the beginning of 2019, i had never heard of qanon, and i remember asking my colleagues on the house intelligence committee, what is this? the way they described it to me is, it is this crazy, cockamamie thing from the right about how
the committee alleges that two of the people subpoenaed allegedly met with the expresident inside the white house on january 4th to discuss the lineup of speakers at the rally before the insurrection. one of the individuals is now a trump-backed congressional candidate in ohio. this expands the wide net cast by the committee as it investigates the causes, the events, the money, and the key figures involved in the deadly capitol insurrection and fends off a campaign by the expresident and his allies to obstruct their work. just yesterday, a stunning blow was delivered to the expresident in his toefrtd shield all of his presidential records from the select committee. it s one that may have major consequences for the other trump allies and staffers hoping to derail the probe. an appeals court rejected trump s bid to block the committee from getting their hands on his records, citing the fact that both congress and the white house agree that, quote, there is a unique legislative
launched a performance review of fulton county, which leans democratic. all of this, a prime example of the concerted, relentless, day after day after day effort by republicans to place trump loyalists in positions of overseeing elections all across this country. axios reports this. quote, trump is tapping his national network of allies to identify republicans who were weak in 2020 because they refused to go along with his efforts to overturn the election. no office has proven too small. his apparatus touches everything from unseating governors, members of congress, state legislators, secretaries of state, to formulating policy and influencing local school boards. one common thread with many of the candidates he s backed so far? they all support his efforts to overturn joe biden s victory. republicans passing legislation and installing loyalists to seize control over local elections is where we start this hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. charlie sykes is here.
that they have got to really start, on the other side, the democrats, the president down, on really ringing the alarm bell and letting people know where we are. they re not looking for votes that were stolen in wisconsin. they re not looking for votes anywhere. they re looking to stall enough time to keep their base energized to hopefully win back the senate and the congress in the midterm elections and head us into an area where, look at what they re doing with women s right to choose in a stacked supreme court by donald trump with three seats. what they will do at the federal courts. there is a plan, and the democrats are not telling people that we are on the brink of seeing the democracy that we knew, that we learned about in school, totally eradicated. and these people are playing the clock on us, and they re not talking that way.