that report. and nbc news has not independently verified the allegations in the book. 17 days later, kevin flew down to florida and kissed his ring. and the this shows when republicans were presented a choice between democracy and trump, they chose trump. all of this, all of this news comes as officials at the justice department seem to be ratcheting up their investigation into plotters and members of congress and others close to the former president. joining me now is matthew dowd, founder of country over party. and the president of vote latino. matthew, reading through that new york times article today, i m struck by two things. one, just the sheer cowardice of
of the base that has become pointing to what president obama has said today, which i thought was a very important speech, has become so radicalized because of disinformation, they re afraid of the base. but they have no amount of courage. all of the things they celebrated of people and courage throughout our history, they won t even risk an election loss. it is striking, marie theresa. this is from 2020 when mike lee tweeted that democracy isn t the objective. liberty, peace and prosperity are. he laid out his understanding that we don t need a democracy. that in his mind it would be okay if we had the congress choose the president of his liking. as long as he got power, it s fine. they don t seem to have any red lines as long as they get power. and obama s speech was striking, because he s talking about the information universe that creates the base of people two
that that s because whatever he was getting was better than whatever he s getting out of the war in ukraine. why do you think vladimir putin didn t launch the invasion of ukraine while trump was president? i think he was hoping for a second administration, a second trump administration in which donald trump and john bolton s been pretty on point on this one, donald trump would withdraw from nato, and then there vladimir putin wouldn t have to contend with this notion of a nato response or a concerted response. donald trump would fracture any efforts to cohere around imposing costs on putin. that s what he was hoping for. in reality that didn t happen, so relatively quickly and with the opportunities presented by donald trump not continuing to rabble rouse, continuing to basically bring the republican party to oppose democracy and to sow discord he went for plan b. plan b was pretty straightforward. ukraine continues to slip
quote, i think our democracy is in trouble because unfortunately we have shar latins like the former president who don t care about democracy and only care about power. wow. judge walton s remarks mirror what the defense attorney basically said from what you said, also, and also the entire opening statement was that trump was spewing lies to encourage the assault and maintain the grip on the power and in the last segment you said we forget how abnormal this was to have a guy refuse to concede and acknowledge after 60 court defeats and then encouraged people to come to the capitol on january 6. i think that s what this trial got at. the trials are obviously about crimes committed. doj clearly going for the crimes committed in plain sight. the 1/6 committee as you have described and talked about
these men, who all knew what happened on january 6th was beyond the pale. we all know that s how they felt, because some of them said it on the floor of the house and the senate. but they didn t have the courage at the time when trump was the politically weakest to take action, because they were more afraid of losing power. more afraid that trump s voters would remove them from power. and that in the end is all they cared about. how do we defend a democracy with weak lings like mike lee, who is trying to defend himself when he was texting ideas on how to kill the election. basket in october, he said democracy is not even the objective of this country. your thoughts? well, first, i was struck by the same thing as you were in this. i always remember mya angelou s quote, courage is the most