but the problem is a lot of these people have been fed information that s not true. and now republicans have to repeat that series of lies in order to continue to basically pull them towards the voting booth for them. i want to talk to you about that hangover specifically as it relates to covid. carol, phil, you are sticking with me on the other side of the break. dr. anthony fauci today visibly still angry with the state of affairs when it comes to the pandemic. carol and phil in their new book write about trump s role in creating this distrust and division. that story is next. next ne a 5g . with all the entertainment you love. like disney+, hulu, espn+, and now google play pass so you can game in glorious 5g. we re calling it the biggest upgrade ever. because it is.
virus across this nation. right, because i m sorry, go ahead, carol. no, no, it s just sort of stunning because it happened for every single member of the insider team who was working so diligently to fight this virus. they had to come smack up against the president all the time. alex azar, tony fauci, deborah birx, everyone had this horrible moment where they tried to get him to do the right thing and he resisted them because it didn t play well on the evening news. phil, just as we can connect the dots between the big lie and what we are seeing now in the way of voter suppression across this country, you can also connect the dots between the president s resistance the former president s resistance to the science and the vaccine hesitancy that we re seeing today. that s exactly right. and it s not just his resistance to the science, but it s his hostility and an attempt to personally demonize the
nonpartisan outside january 6th commission. some have even spoken out publicly against the select committee that they re about to join. congressman jim banks last night putting out a statement that draws a false equivalency between the january 6th mob and black lives matter protesters adding, quote, make no mistake nancy pelosi created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the left s authoritarian agenda. jim jordan recently saying this to the associated press. quote, i ve got real concerns that this is all just political and that this is impeachment three against president trump. but for jordan, there s also the complication of what some might call a conflict of interest. as we learn just last week in a new book out from phil rut ger and carol leonnig of the washington post one of jordan s own republican colleagues, liz cheney, blamed him for some of the violence as it was unfolding. the book recounts her rant about jordan, quote, that f ing guy
that s also being repeated by republicans now, right? they are saying only donald trump can fix the situation that we are in. to what degree have they internalized his own delusion? you know, the president had forgive me, the former president has really hardened this narrative for himself, as phil and i learned when we interviewed him on the record in mar-a-lago in the spring for this book. and he s also hardened this conspiracy theory narrative, this idea that ideas that don t square with reality are true. the idea that vaccines aren t necessary, that the coronavirus isn t very serious, that hangover is hanging over our country. and he s hardened that for a lot of america because obviously many republicans want the base that donald trump commanded. they want the voters who were in touch with him, who loved him, who adored him, who saw him as a norm buster.
his grasp on power or create chaos that would benefit him politically. and one of their plots was essentially to resign one by one slowly if the president came with a dangerous, illegal or foolhardy proposal on how to use the military. it was the reverse of the saturday night massacre, if you will. phil, part of what kept coming up for me as i was reading the book was that this isn t all just in the rear-view mirror. it is possible to draw a direct line between what happened in those final days and what we are living through now. so you have milley saying the institutions, they might bend but they won t break. i don t know, is that exactly true? you look at these attacks on voting rights, this audit in arizona. are these institutions that are actually holding strong? you know, that is such a smart point. and i think what the final year of the trump presidency revealed for all of us is just how fragile these institutions are in this country.