studio? i like it like this. is it you doing this? i don t even know. i m a kind of go along to get along dude. i like being with you, so if that s the cost of sharing a studio. we can raise it up, whatever you want. just feet away from each other. i ll just wear a sweater. thank you. have a good evening, chris. thank you for joining us tonight. i m ali velshi in for alex wagner. we re going to warm up in the next few minutes. president biden hasxt released s first campaign ad of 2024. and in that ad president biden makes clear what he believes will be the central issue of thisce election. i ve made the preservation of american democracy the central issue of my presidency. i believe in free and fair elections and the right to vote fairly and have your vote counted. there s something dangerous happening in america. there s an extremist movement who does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy. all of us are being asked right now what will we do to maintain o
our democracy? we are the united states of america. there is o nothing beyond our capacity when we act together. i m joe biden and i approve this message. that s joe biden s campaign message this year, that donald trump and theis movement he has encouraged are a threat to democracy. tomorrow the president s going to continue t to push that messe in a speech at valley forge commemorating the three-year anniversary of the january 6th attack on the capitol. and the message that president biden willss deliver there whil important will not be new. donald trump s threats to democracy are well-known. americans saw it when trump spent his presidency cozying up to dictators and shunning american allies. they saw it when trump did everything in his power to try to overturn the results of a legitimate democratic election culminating in a violent siege on our seat of government. they can see it now when trump openly muses about the idea of being a i dictator on day one
that seems to be the pattern in the election in 2020 and 2022 and likely to play it down in 2024. we re not focused on threats abroad. we re not specifically focused on the factif russia keeps marching forward. its relationships with other authoritarian regimes get tighter and we reit in for a ve difficult year at home and abroad. ben, what colonel vindman just said i thinkol is interesting. the threats have proliferated. the world is just fundamentally a more dangerous place than it was four years ago and what happens orea what we do not just what happens in ukraine, what americapp does, how americ leads in ukraine is something that not just our allies are worrying about and paying attention to, but more importantly perhaps our bu adversaries. yeah, i think that, look, we re living through a phase of authoritarian renaissance of sorts, of the ethno nationalist
that he gets attacked, the reason they try to take him off ballots or the reason that he is under indictment is about people being afraid that he is going to, yeah, disrupt the establishment applecart. and there s there really is a totally different reality that republican voters are living in. for example, we think it is extreme, obviously, that people attacked the capitol on january 6th because of a lie donald trump told about the election being stolen. but when you talk to republican voters as i do week in and week out, many of them take it as an article of faith the election was stolen, that democrats did cheat. and so if you live in that reality all the time, you don t think of trump as extreme, you think we re the ones who are wrong. obviously there s a challenge there for democrats in the election coming up, but for republican candidates running against trump is there any way to break through any of the stuff you re talking about?
agreements sphif they cannot do that, they re going to start to hedge, they re going to start bend from a pressure from a china or russia because the united states can no longer be relied on as l a cornerstone of their security. we re already dealing with that just because donald trump s previous administration. if he gets back into the white house, that s gone for a generation at least if it s something we can ever get back. that is how high the stakes are in thisgh election. it s important wehi realize that as we re struggling for democracy in our own country, that we haveur a massive role t play in the rest of the world. guys, thanks very much, we appreciate that. retired colonel alex vindman ann deputy national security advisor under president obama ben rodes we appreciate your time tonight lots more news to get to tonight including the ouster of former president claudine gay, also an assault in the faith of institutions. but first republican presidential candidates are making