loss. benny thompson said this week the committee is seeking testimony from eastman. what direction does the news of his email and his possible testimony take your panel s investigation? i think it highlights the importance of his testimony and just the extraordinary lengths of that donald trump and those around him were willing to go to overturn the popular will of the american people, to overturn our election. we saw in the public reporting about efforts at the justice department by jeffrey clark and others to use that department to try to coerce georgia into withholding the appointment of electors or appointing a different set of electors, and now we are learn at the highest levels in the white house with the president s former president s lawyers representing his interest trying to even in the midst of this attack on the capitol get mike pence to violate the constitution and overturn the election. we want a right to report, to recommendations that will help
more than 15 points away from the republicans. geographically, it s not much, but these are population centers. there s more than 2 million people here in these counties and cities. this is like coe county outside of richmond. these are big population centers in virginia and it was the exact opposite story. here s dramatic example, louden county. there s more than 400,000 people in louden county. biden won it by 25. let s roll back to the last election before donald trump came on the scene. look at this. 2012, mitt romney was four points behind in louden county. donald trump comes on the scene, now republicans are losing by 25 points. places like louden county, big population centers, suburban areas, metropolitan areas, a lot of white voters with college degrees. that s a group that s dramatically moved away from the republican party. here s the question for tuesday night. can glenn youngkin, the republican, this has been his big goal, can he roll back the clock to something like this?
this is something folks nationally are going to be watching. these two types of areas in virginia nationally, folks are going to be watching. i ll show you what we call the trump surge counties. these are areas of virginia the counties you see in red here, over the course of the trump era made significant we re talking 15 or more point swings. one thing to keep in mind, a lot of these are smaller counties. but let me give you a sense of what i m talking about. take a look at allegheny county on the border with west virginia. donald trump ends up winning allegheny. it s a small county, not a ton of votes. look what happens here because it s the story of what s happening in a lot of these counties. trump won by 44 points over joe biden last year. now, check this out which trump first ran in 2016, he won by 37. let s go back to the last election that didn t have donald
of the tropics. currently facing criminal charges for his handling of the pandemic. you write in your book that this authoritarian streak now runs through the whole republican party, but it is not unique to america. quote, all around the world there is a new competition between autocracy and democracy, and for more than a decade the autocrats have been on the rise. this trend toward authoritarian i am began before donald trump and will not have spent its force when he steps off the political stage for good. the experience of the last four years will require constant vigilance on our part so it does not gain another foothold in the highest office in our land. the reason i was struck by that, congressman, is very often when we talk about what we saw under donald trump and what we continue to see with this republican party, it s easy to see it purely in a domestic context. but this is not purely domestic. this is international. as the president steps onto the
kornacki? he s tracking what to watch for at the big board. it s crunch time in virginia. the democrat, terry mcauliffe, can he hold off the republican, glenn youngkin? this in a state that was big-time democratic last year. donald trump lost by ten points to joe biden in virginia. so there s a test here, a couple tests in virginia that i think everybody nationally is going to be looking at. what s interesting about virginia, how democrats ended up winning by ten points last year, it wasn t evenly spread out. it wasn t like every county kind of moved against trump the same way. actually, what happened is it was a tale of two virginias. there were areas of virginia that just dramatically moved against donald trump and went democratic. but there were other areas of virginia that actually became more republican during the trump era. they were outweighed by the democratic areas. but i want to show you those areas.