court of law. our elections in georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as i am governor. georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger also put out a statement writing this, the most basic principles of a strong democracy and accountability are respect for the constitution and the rule of law. you either have it or you don t. really strong statements from both these officials more even than they needed to be. they wanted to prove that point. joining us now professor at princeton university our friend eddy glaude. you have said to me i think with accelerated frequency either on-air or privately you worry right now the nation is being tested, that we re experiencing a series of crises. and there s an open question as to whether or not the country can rise to meet this moment. what do you think right now? do you have faith in the
narrative. what do you think about when you consider all this? you know, part of the exhaustion has everything to do with is it worth risking myself, risking my family to engage in the arduous work that democracy requires of us? and of course part of the terror of the moment is to get every day ordinary people to kind of make the decision not to engage, to get folks to have a startling responsibility for democracy itself. we saw this happening in the 1870s and 1880s, jonathan. there is historical precedence for this, but in each instance we bounce back. as people weigh the cost we have to understand democracy hangs in the balance and it s in our hands. whether we re afraid or not, we have to step up, and i think we have to be honest with ourselves, jonathan. violence is always looming on the horizon especially in this moment. and lastly, eddie, and it s a connected thought. there s been much said about how donald trump has really eroded
prison about once a month. i love kanye west. i don t know how you feel, but i know he has some idiosink contractsies but he s a musical genius. well, we might debate that. i think he s talented and a great what did you say before he wore the red hat. no, no, no, i enjoyed the first two albums. this last album, let s put it this way, the sophistication of his runs. yeah. it s diminished. they re not very good. what do you have against jesus? i have nothing against jaws jesus. i have something against bad rimes, though. the first five albums is good. we have david ignatius with us, former aide to the white house and state departments elise jordan. proffer at princeton university eddy glaude junior and chief white house correspondent the new york times, peter baker.
to citizens. the president refuses to acknowledge that reality insisting in september the increase in the death toll had been done by the democrats to make me look as bad as possible when i was successfully raising billions of dollars to raise money for people in puerto rico. if someone died of old age, add them onto the list. i love puerto rico. back with me is our panel joy reid, eddy glaude. the report is out, previous report from harvard that pegged the number around 5,000. what we know is it s in the thousands. anyone who has reported on puerto rico and talked to people, and i still to this day, this gets me. it s not just the failure by the government. there has not been any kind of special committee impanelled by the senate or the house jointly to get to the bottom of what happen happened, nothing. after the action report, zero.
all the members of the private club for rich people are secretly put in charge of the government agency. although it s not a joke. those men were given control effectively of the department of veterans affairs. they weren t government officials. they hadn t served in the u.s. military. what they were was friends of donald trump who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be members of his club. as propublica s isaac arnsdorf reported, they were the mar-a-lago crowd. they re involve in everything. they speak with v.a. officials every day on the phone, or they have them fly down to mar-a-lago at taxpayer expense to meet with them, to go over things. and they have a hand in basically all manner of policy and personnel decisions that have been coming out of the v.a. for the past year and a half. still with me joy reid, eddy glaude. this is astonishing for many reasons. donald trump and his crew being these idiots in the government, they don t know what they re doing. this guy, this do