judiciary committee, sheldon whitehouse, of rhode island and former press secretary stephanie grisham on her time in the white house. plus facebook and the whistle-blower. >> no one truly understands the destructive choices made by facebook except facebook. >> former facebook employee francis haugen tells congress the company won't make its product safer because profits come first. >> i'm here today because i believe facebook's products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy. >> facebook pushes back. >> what you have here today is a former employee who didn't work on these issues, mischaracterizing documents she stole. >> i'll talk to facebook vice president nick clegg. and crisis averted, for now. >> i'm glad their brinksmanship didn't work. >> the senate agrees to raise the debt ceiling until december, >> chuck schumer won this game of chicken. >> but republicans rage against mitch mcconnell for letting it happen tonight. >> we shot ourselves in the foot tonight. we'll revisit the issue. joining me for insight and analysis are yamiche alcindor, moderator of "washington week," david french, the senior editor of "the dispatch" and former democratic congresswoman, donna edwards. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." ness from >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning. from our nbc news bureau in los angeles. every day it seems we're learning how fragile our democracy is. just this past week the senate judiciary committee released a report about how close we came to losing that democracy in the weeks after the election. the report provides new details on a january 3rd white house meeting where top justice department officials had to threaten to resign en masse to stop president trump from taking further steps to overturn the election. we also learned that last week mr. trump told his former aides to not comply with subpoenas from congress regarding the january 6th riot at the capitol, and a facebook whistle-blower told congress this week how the company returned to relaxed security measures right after the election, but before january 6th, even as mr. trump was lying about vote fraud, all because they wanted to keep up engagement and profits. so ask yours this. is it alarmist to suggest that our democracy is at risk, or are we really staring at the abyss? whatever side of the political divide you're on on that issue, getting to the bottom of mr. trump's actions on or around january 6th will give us all more clarity on how close we actually came to the shredding of our constitution and how close we could come again. >> i never conceded. >> donald trump in iowa last night, doubling down on the lie he won the election after a week of playing down the january 6th riot he incited. >> first of all, he didn't get re-elected. forget that. no reason to concede. >> we're not going to take it anymore. i see a civil war coming. i do. >> on friday the white house formally blocked an attempt by the trump attorneys to withhold documents regarding the january 6th assault. >> the president determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not warranted for the first set of documents from the trump white house. >> among the documents requested by the select committee, trump's twitter messages, his calendar, schedules, videos, photos, and call log. >> we want to know what was the president's involvement, what about people around him. >> urged on by trump, former adviser steve bannon told the committee he won't comply with a request for records and testimony. former chief of staff mark my meadows and kash patel are engaging, and dan scavino has finally received his company. >> the committee will probably, to those who don't agree to come in voluntarily, we'll do criminal referral. >> this as a new senate report describes trump's extraordinary efforts in the days before the insurrection to overturn the results of the election. >> we will win this. as far as i'm concerned, we already have. >> detailing at least nine times trump pressured justice department officials to overturn biden's legitimate victory, including a meeting on january 3rd when trump threatened to replace acting attorney general jeff rosen with a loyalist, jeffrey clark to carry out his scheme. >> the president was relentless. we were a half step away from a full-blown constitutional crisis. >> top leaders at the justice department warned they would resign en masse if he acted, as did white house counsel pat cipollone who called trump's plan a murder/suicide pact. a parade of former trump officials are recounting tum's obsession with overturning the election in an attempted coup. >> he was heightened, and he was so about, this was stolen from us, this was stolen from us. >> we all watched it happening. because it didn't seem to be behind the scenes clandestine in any way, it became normalized. >> but many republicans are still defending him. >> the president did the right thing. if he had made another decision, you would have had a problem. >> around the country trump allies are pushing laws that would allow republican legislators to more easily overturn the vote if it does not go their way. >> i'm alarmed, most people are alarmed that we're still facing issues of election disinformation. >> this is about going after the integrity of not only the election system in idaho, but people going after the integrity of the election system as a whole. >> this is without a doubt the biggest threat to our democracy in my lifetime. joining me is senator sheldon whitehouse of rhode island. he's a member of the senate judiciary committee which wrote this report on former president trump's efforts to overturn the election using the justice department as cover to do it. senator whitehouse, welcome back to "meet the press." >> thanks. good to be on with you. >> i want to start with -- i know you were limited in your investigation because you're the judiciary committee and this was about the actions of the department of justice. so how complete of a picture do you think you have of what president trump did, and what more would you like to know? >> we have a very complete picture of the extent to which trump was personally involved in this. this is a question in which you can actually connect the president of the united states to the scheme. the second thing that we know is it focused very heavily on georgia. so that relates and feathers into the georgia prosecution that's under way -- i should say the investigation that's under way down in fulton county. those two things link up. what we don't know is who was really behind this. the text of the transcript and the body english of the witnesses suggests they had very little regard for this character jeffrey clark who was going to be the new attorney general. they doubted his qualifications to even have that role. so it's a possibility, i suppose, that he saw this moment and grabbed it. but it's an equally real possibility that he was a cog in a larger machine, and we've got a lot of work do to figure out how that machine ran through this period, who was behind it, where the money came from, and what's been going on. >> do you think it's somebody other than donald trump? when i hear that, you're essentially saying you believe there's somebody else involved, somebody else was pulling the strings. who could that be besides donald trump? >> we don't know yet. but this guy jumped to a dark money enterprise, so he's been taken care of, jeffrey clark. there was a lot of activity around this with members of congress. there's just a lot left to be learned, and particularly as the old saw goes, follow the money. who was paying for this stuff, and how did it all work? >> the fact that these are former trump appointees that have divulged what clearly -- at least mr. rosen and some others, clearly divulging this because they are alarmed at the pressure campaign they were under. you have seen these folks behind closed doors. shouldn't the public see this? we have a credibility problem thanks to the former president. shouldn't the public see these folks under oath telling this story to the american public? >> yes, absolutely. it's really telling stuff, and when you consider that these were trump appointees, people willing to go right to the chalk line and in my slew even over it, when those folks saw this as outlandish and illegal and something that they'd call quit before they'd participate in, that shows how berserk this had gotten. and with that question, we then go on to the further question of, okay, how was this organized? was this really one little guy in the department of justice with a wild idea? i doubt it. >> how about bill barr. he resigned. that resignation to me looks more and more compelling all the time, meaning what did he know, why did he resign when he did? are you going to get him under oath to tell his story? >> well, i'm not going to try to predict what the investigation is going to continue to do, but this was an interim report. we will continue looking at these questions. >> i was also looking at this, and i was thinking back to the impeachment proceedings, the second impeachment, and this goes to the decision in the moment to hurry up with the -- on one hand, there was a move to get the impeachment done before he left office. but when it was clear the trial wasn't going to take place until after, this would have been highly compelling testimony at the impeachment trial, senator. maybe it doesn't find 12 more convictions or not, but considering that the public and the senate didn't hear all of this stuff, in hindsight was impeachment rushed? >> it's hard to say. obviously the longer you take, the more evidence develops, but at the same time you want to react to an insult to the body politic such as we saw. so i don't want to second-guess what the house did, although i bet you jamie raskin would have loved to have had footage of what we saw in the senate judiciary committee. the january 6th commission out there still looking at this question. there's going to be, i think, a good public airing of it. >> in the report you talk about some potential fixes. it does seem as if some of these fixes, it's really limited. you know the law, know the constitution very well. separation of powers. do you really think congress can pass a law that would prevent this kind of communication between the justice department and the white house? >> you know, we're working on that. i've been working this issue for a long time, and the white house and the department of justice have for a long time had a rule between the two of them of who is allowed to talk to whom about various issues. it appears they broke those rules this time. it appears, frankly, that they break those rules in every republican administration, and then we have to patch it back together again. that's always been done by rule, memorandum between the white house counsel and the department of justice. there's nothing that would prevent congress from stepping in and putting reporting requirements on that so the public knows when those rules are being broken. it's hard for the department of justice to say, you can't enforce this rule, it's our rule, when all we want is disclosure. >> by the way, considering how much the idea that the justice department is biased gets weaponized in politics, particularly on the right, do you think we should move to a system that appoints our attorneys general more like how we deal with the fbi, the federal reserve, where it's five-year terms and you try to create some sort of more distance between the justice department and political leaders? >> i think we'd have to watch out for unintended consequence there. i would say what we really need is to make sure that the senate is only confirming attorneys general who will be honest, who will stand up to the president when he tries to get them to cheat, and who will do the job and follow the law properly. unfortunately, what barr sold himself as to us and how he behaved were two very, very different things. >> at the end of the report, there's some talk of criminal referrals. what would be criminal in this case? >> i don't want to get into criminal referrals. we're still at the interim level. i would point to the geographic fact of just so much of what took place at the department of justice being focused on georgia, being focused on sending letters to the georgia legislature, saying they could open up in special session and redo the election and send a separate slate. to the extent that interconnects with the d.a.'s investigations into trump's personal efforts to threaten officials in georgia on the same question, i think, is a very ripe area for georgia's investigation, and we'll see what the department of justice wants to do with it. >> sheldon whitehouse, appreciate you coming on and sharing your intel and perspective. white house press secretary is one of the most high profile jobs in washington. you'd be forgiven if you had no idea what stephanie grisham looks like. that's because she's the former press secretary who never actually held a press conference. she has, however, written a book "i'll take your questions now," what i saw at the trump white house. it's a chatty account of her time with team trump where she was also chief of staff to melania trump who has responded to ms. grisham's book this way. ms. grisham is a deceitful and troubled individual who doesn't deserve anyone's trust. with that, stephanie grisham joins me now. welcome to "meet the press." >> thank you for having me. appreciate it. >> i want to start with you explaining why viewers tonight, today, should trust what you say in response to my questions. you lay out in the book, you admit that you were -- many times in trump world you're asked to misinform or perhaps lie on behalf of the boss. so you're doing a tell-all now. why should we believe you? >> i think that is a very, very fair question. i will let anybody who chooses to read the book decide for themselves. in short, i don't have anybody to answer for anymore. i had a lot of time to reflect and i really moved far, far away from the bubble in d.c. and had a long time to almost deprogram myself in what i went through and reflect on it and i thought i'd write it down. i thought if i'm going to write a book, i want to write something that is just honest and brutal and i don't spare myself in there either, and i hope that people will just take that for what it's worth. >> i'll start with some of the things. do you regret not resigning sooner? you waited until january 6th, after seeing everything you saw for four years. you wait until january 6th, some might argue the day everybody was wanting to run for the hills from team trump. why did you wait so long? >> right, right. again, fair question. i did -- for about the last six months i tried to resign a couple of times, and mrs. trump talked me out of it. in fact, i had a resignation letter written out with very specific points in it that i was ready to hand over at any moment. january 6th, of course, was my breaking point, and i was really proud that i was -- well, the first in the administration to resign. absolutely, to answer your question, i do regret it, and i did try for a while before. >> when do you believe -- do you believe president trump thinks he actually lost the election or not? >> i do think he believes it. that's been part of what has been scaring me as i've been watching from afar. you know, at first i wrl thought he wouldn't run again. i honestly thought this was a lot of his bluster, which he's good at doing. he's doubling down, will never admit to losing. i thought he was going to raise summon any to pay off legal bills, et cetera. but i think now because his base is reacting to him the way that it is and polls are showing that he is still very much the leader of the republican party and very, very few republicans are refusing to speak up about his role in january 6th, but also this current attack on democracy with regard to election integrity, i think he is going to run again. that's why i'm speaking out the way i am. i don't want him to run again. i think people aren't remembering that if he does run again in 2024, he'll have no guardrails because he'll never have to worry about re-election. so he will do whatever he wants, he'll hire whomever he wants. i think that includes people of the january 6th mind. i think earlier your guest was talking about the doj and it being it weaponized. imagine who he could put in the doj in 2024 knowing he's got no consequences there. >> you heard senator whitehouse saying, u you do have an idea of who was helping sort of fund and back these crazy claims of the president and his former chief of staff, mark meadows? >> well, certainly i know, as does the public, that there was rudy giuliani and sidney powell and some of those characters. i do know that there were a lot of private meetings in the residence taking place that were perhaps not taking place in the white house where there would be public documents about that. so hopefully the january 6th -- somebody who look into that, whoever the appropriate entity is. i don't have a specific name. i don't think it was one person. i think there were probably a few. >> so, walk me through election night and the day after. there seems to be some evidence that he was accepting what was happening with the results and then something changed. can you pinpoint it? >> i can't. i was with mrs. trump most of the night, to be honest with you. i wasn't -- i -- when i walked past go to her room, he was surrounded at this point by a lot of people from the campaign and by his family, et cetera. and he was just angry and wanting somebody to call fox about calling arizona. when they went down to take the stage, i remember specifically there was still kind of a debate on what he should say when he took the stage. it was kind of decided he should say we'll see what happens, which obviously he did not say that when he took the stage. i think he just refused to give up. it's donald trump, right? he will never admit to being wrong or to losing anything. now he's doubling and tripling down because he's got so many people supporting that theory. i think one thing he's gotten really good at or he did get really good at as president is taking advantage of the base and this group of people who are so desperate for a voice, which i understand and support, but i think they're being taken advantage of now. i think he knows they'll do whatever he says. >> did you get taken advantage of by him? it was interesting to me that you sort of admit that you got into that white house, and perhaps you wouldn't have gotten there with another campaign. did he take advantage of you? >> i think -- i don't want to pin that on him. i definitely got very excited to be around this glamorous world of the trumps. certainly when i got into the white house, you do get heady with power. i don't know that he took advantage of me in that regard. i think that was my own weakness there. i wish i would have been a bit stronger. >> i've heard from several former trump staffers, some of whom share your concerns about him, but say every decision you made was always in the best interest of yourself, whether it was to stick in order to get a good job in the white house or now to do a tell-all when you need to make money. what do you say to that criticism? >> well, two things. if there are people who are sharing my same concerns, i wish they would speak up because right now looking back i don't think is what's as important in terms of personalities and who did what, why. i would disagree with that wholeheartedly. when i was in the white house, i lost a lot of friends and a lot of family, and i think i lost a little bit of my own moral compass. now leaving, yes, i got paid to write a book, but you cannot put a price tag on what is happening to me now. the right is mad at me. the left is mad at me. my family is getting threats. i'm being smeared. i'm being sued. i knew all that would happen. so when i wrote this book, i knew this was going to be a very, very tough battle. so, yes, i got paid, but there is no price tag for what's going on. i just find it to be very, very important for the country looking forward. >> you said one of the reasons you're speaking out is you hope he doesn't run in 2024. if he does, do you plan to actively work against him? >> if i'm asked to. if there's anybody who wants me to speak out or talk, yes, i will. i think that i had a very unique perspective in that i worked for the former president, i worked for mrs. trump, and i worked for both of them at the same time. i know the way they think. i know the way they try to distract. if there's any way i can be helpful to try to decipher some of those movements and what's going on, i would do that, yes. >> do you think if he's elected again, he'll destroy the democracy? >> i think it will be a very terrifying time. he's on a revenge tour right now, right, with the people who voted to impeach him. i think it will be nothing but revenge, retribution, and how he can been fit himself. i think there will be pardons happening. i think there will be very draconian policies that go way too far. i believe if he's re-elected again, it will be a really, really scary time. >> stephanie grisham, the one-time press secretary for former president donald trump and former chief of staff for the former first lady, thank you for coming on and sharing your perspective with us. >> thank you for having me. when we come back, i'll talk to a facebook executive about how the company handled the january 6th insurrection. stay with us. tion. stay with us having me. when we come back, it's another day. and anything could happen. it could be the day you welcome 1,200 guests and all their devices. or it could be the day there's a cyberthreat. only comcast business' secure network solutions give you the power of sd-wan and advanced security integrated on our activecore platform so you can control your network from anywhere, anytime. it's network management redefined. every day in business is a big day. we'll keep you ready for what's next. comcast business powering possibilities. welcome back. welcome back. on tuesday, the facebook whistle-blower frances haugen told congress in interest of making more money, facebook'sed some security safeguards just after the election and it ended up helping to inside the january 6th capitol riot. >> facebook changed those safety defaults in the run-up to the election because they knew they were dangerous and because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration of the platform back after the election, they returned to their original defaults. joining me now is facebook's vice president for global affairs, nick clegg. mr. clegg, welcome to "meet the press," sir. >> morning. >> thank you. i want to get you to respond to that specific quote from ms. haugen. i also want to put something up that you wrote after her initial "60 minutes" appearance. she said this is also why the suggestion that is sometimes made that the violent insurrection on january 6 would not have occurred if it weren't for social media is misleading. mature democracies hold elections all the time. germany election last week, without the disfiguring presence of violence. i understand why you wrote that sentence, mr. clegg, but why put in the safeguards before the election if you guys at facebook didn't think you had a role in potentially inciting folks? >> just to follow this very closely, what we did in the run-up to the election was put in -- obviously, it was an exceptional election happening at a time of a pandemic, obviously very stark polarization in this country, put in a number of exceptional measures. it's simply not true to say we lifted those measures immediately. we, in fact, kept the vast majority of them right through to the inauguration, and we kept some in place permanently. we permanently right now don't recommend civic and political groups to people. it's worth remembering what those exceptional measures are like. it's like closing all the highways and roads in a time because of a temporary runoff problem in one neighborhood. you don't do that on a permanent basis. some of the temporary measures were took, for instance, bearing down on the viralty of videos meant we were stopping the distribution of perfectly innocent videos that had nothing to do with tea lex at all. it was a mixture of permanent measures -- we did keep them up right to the inauguration. it's not true to say we immediately lifted them all. now we're going further. one thing we heard from users both in the u.s. and around the world since the election is people want to see, if you like more friends, less politics. we've been looking and testing ways in which we can reduce the presence of politics on people's facebook experiences. i hope that's useful context for what we did and didn't do and what we're doing going forward. >> why did you lift any of them, any of those procedures considering what former president trump was doing and saying and acting at the time. he was a firehose of misinformation. so why role back any of those security provisions? you clearly rolled back some. you want to dispute you didn't roll them all back. that's fine with me. why did you roll back any of them? >> as i said, some of them were very, very blunt tools, scooping up legal, enjoyable, playful content. we did that very exceptionally. it's a bit like throwing a blanket of the whole platform. we just let perfectly normal content circulate less on our platform. that's something we did because of the exceptional circumstances. i think it shows how sort of precautionary and responsible we were trying to be at the time. as you will also remember, we stopped running any new political ads for a week in the run-up to the election. we labeled huge amounts of content, including content from donald trump -- subsequently we said donald trump is not able to use our platform for at least two years. i don't think anyone can claim we haven't taken a lot of exceptional measures to meet those very exceptional circumstances. >> i want to get to the issue of labeling misinformation. you still allow the misinformers to get their information up. shouldn't there be just a flat policy? if you're a known misinformer, whether it's on covid or the election, whether it's one strike, two strikes, three strikes, maybe you can decide how many times you intentionally misinform, throw them off. you seem to want to find a way to keep these folks on. how does the warning label help? it keeps the misinformation out there. >> sure. the first thing to say is, of course, if someone keeps saying things which leads to real world harm, we kick them off. we do that on a very, very significant scale, i think far more significant scale than any other part of the industry. you're quite right. if someone is saying stuff that's going to lead to real world harm, that's simply not permitted on our platform. we bear down aggressively on hate speech. because of the 40,000 people we employ to do this work, 40,000 people is more than twice the number of staffers who work on capitol hill. we've invested $13 billion in this integrity work to bear down on misinformation and hate speech. again, for context, that's more than the total revenues of twitter over the last four years. that's actually been successful. hate speech, the prevalence of hate speech, the presence of hate speech on facebook now stands at 0.05%. that means for every 10,000 bits of content you'll see on facebook, only five will be hate speech. i wish we could bring it down to zero. we're not going do that. with a third of the world's population on our platforms, of course, you're going to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of human nature on our platforms. our job is to mitigate and reduce the bad and amplify the good. i think those investments, the technology and the evidence of how little hate speech there is now compared to a few years ago shows we're moving in the right direction. >> i want to go to the issue of how to regulate facebook. the founder and ceo wrote this, mark zuckerberg. he said, similar to balancing other social issues, i don't believe private companies should make all of the decisions on their own. that's why we have advocated for updated internet regulations for several years now. we're committed to doing the best work we can. at some level the right body to address tradeoffs is our democratically elected congress. on one hand this is a very reasonable statement. on the other hand, it sounds like facebook is saying, we're not going to do much until congress tells us what to do. do you want congress to write facebook's moral and ethical code? >> no, no, no. we're not advocating regulation to divest ourselves of our own responsibilities. of course, with the success of a big global platform like facebook, comes accountability, scrutiny, criticism, and comes responsibility. that's why we make those very considerable investments that i said. that's why we are being evermore transparent in how our systems operate so people can hold us to account. we're the first company, for instance, every 12 weeks to publish data on all the content we act on and remove. we subject that to independent audit. but there are certain things no private company can do. only lawmakers can pass federal privacy legislation. we don't have nationwide privacy legislation in this country, which we clearly need. you do have it in other jurisdictions in europe, but not here. only lawmakers can pass legislation to strike the right balance so if people move data from one platform to the other, which is good for competition, you strike the right balance with the privacy safeguards which should be in place at the same time. that has to be enshrined in law. only lawmakers can create a digital regulator which we believe would be a good thing. absolutely, you're right. we're not saying this is somehow a substitution for our own responsibilities, but there are a whole bunch of things that only regulators and lawmakers can do. at the end of the day, i don't think anyone wants a private company to adjudicate on these really difficult tradeoffs between free expression on the one hand and moderating or removing content on the other, about which, as you know, there's fundamental political disagreement. the right thinks we take down too much content, we sensor too much content. the left thinks we don't take down now. we're caught in the middle in this political debate. in the end, lawmakers have to resolve that themselves. >> nick clegg, vice president of facebook. appreciate you coming on and sharing facebook's perspective here. >> thank you. when we come back, the growing instability in politics. how much is too much? this is just another sign of our polarization. the panel is next. growing instability in politics. how much is too much? thi i've been telling everyone... the secret to great teeth is having healthy gums. crest advanced gum restore. detoxifies below the gumline... and restores by helping heal gums in as little as 7 days. crest. the #1 toothpaste brand in america. ♪ look good feel good play good. gillette proglide, five blades and a pivoting flexball to get virtually every hair on the first stroke. look good, game good. gillette. in business, setbacks change everything. so get comcast business internet and add securityedge. it helps keep your network safe by scanning for threats every 10 minutes. and unlike some cybersecurity options, this helps protect every connected device. yours, your employees' and even your customers'. so you can stay ahead. get started with a great offer and ask how you can add comcast business securityedge. plus for a limited time, ask how to get a $500 prepaid card when you upgrade. call today. welcome back. the panel is joining us. yamiche alcindor, moderator of "washington week," david french, senior editor of "the dispatch," and former democratic member of congress, donna edwards, from the great state of maryland. the engagement of american politics and the electorate is getting closer and closer and at times a bit uncomfortable. here is a quick selection of just the last week. >> if you don't pass this, we're going to lose the midterm. >> we need a build back better plan right now. >> we need solutions, the build back better plan has the solutions that we need. >> no to vaccines. no to masks. >> yamiche, to sum up, that was joe manchin with protesters at his houseboat, kyrsten sinema being followed into a bathroom stall, and a school board member in sarasota being harassed at her own home. we know we're polarized. we're getting more combative, it feels, by the hour. >> i think that's a wise observation, and i think when you look at those videos, what you see is really a country increasingly at war with itself and increasingly at war with the truth. there are deepening traditional policy differences when you look at social policy programs, when you look at the way people are looking at tacking the wealthy. that's sort of at the heart of kyrsten sinema and joe manchin. but there's also this added layer of the fact that we're living in a pandemic and living through a time when americans are really debating over who can have access to the american dream and who can have access to the benefits of the wealth of this country. take senator manchin in particular. when i talk to my democratic sources, yes, they're frustrated with the fact that he's sort of wondering whether or not he wants to spend trillions of dollars on social policy programs that most in the democratic party do think are necessary, but they're also very bothered and simply disturbed by his use of the word "entitlement." >> right. >> that is a word that so many people see as stereotyping african-americans, as calling some sections of americans lazy. i think you're seeing both a passion in people having real policy differences, but also this real feeling that there are americans who feel as though they're being again criminalized and stereotyped as being locked out of the american dream. >> david french, i want you to react to something matthew cot anity wrote. it's something you could have written and touched on earlier this week. just when politics is most in need of a cooling-off period, interested parties upped the stakes of politics to national, civilizational and for global survival. when survival is your primary end, you're attempted to use any means to achieve it, even extrajudicial ones. david? >> yeah. he's exactly right about that. what's happening is we're in this cycle of malice and misinformation. so what we have extreme partisan animosity, republicans hate democrats, democrats hate republicans. when you're in that atmosphere of hatred, you're ready to receive misinformation about your political opponents. people are sometimes believing the wildest things about their opponents. this was part of the stop the steal, some of the wildest conspiracy theories wormed deep into some republicans' hearts. why? because they were primed to believe that democrats were so evil that that's exactly what they would do, and so we're in that position, and it is very dangerous. i mean, these up close and personal encounters with people, especially people living under an atmosphere of death threats, it is very dangerous. somebody is going to get hurt. >> donna edwards, i'll admit i have my own debate with myself about how concerned we should be, how alarmed we should be about the democracy. i sense there is this debate inside the elected democratic party. in particular, joe manchin desperately wanted to believe there's a normal routine to politics again, and i think others sit here and say, whoa, with donald trump out there, there is no return to normal. we have some polling that seems to agree on this. half of trump voters think that maybe the red and blue states ought to secede from each other. over 40% of biden voters think this, donna. where are we headed? >> i think it's a very dangerous time. people take their cues from leaders. the kind of cues they're getting now are divisive, are combative. i think that contributes to the environment that we find ourselves in. so it isn't just that there is a narrow margin in the house and the senate, but that that margin has actually been exacerbated because of the cues that ordinary americans are getting from their leaders. so i'm very concerned about our democracy. i'm concerned that people think the only way they can achieve something in our body politic is by violence, by secession. we haven't heard that kind of language in a couple hundred years. so it is really a dangerous time. but i think we have to have leaders who are going to step up, republicans and democrats, to just cool the jets a little bit, and i worry that even things like -- i disagree with senator sinema, but i don't think we should be chasing her into a bathroom. so we have to figure out ways in which we can engage that are worthy of our democracy. >> yamiche, i'm starting to think one of the reasons democrats are struggling to come together on the biden agenda is that there is a disagreement on the urgency of this moment. i think joe manchin believes we should return to a normal routine, hence, his hands in his face to the chuck schumer speech. and i think there are others who think, no, no, this time is different. do you think that's what's making it hardest to reach manchin and sinema? >> a sense of urgency is absolutely at the heart of some of the disagreements in the democratic party. when you talk to young democrats, base voters, some of the people who feel passionately enough to show up at senator sinema's class in arizona or joe manchin's boat, they feel like they're fighting for their survival in the middle of a covid economy where women are locked out at higher rates, people of color locked out at higher rates. they feel as though these are the times where they need the federal government to step in and say here is the lifeline that you have and here is the sort of lifeline to being able to access your future. then you have senator manchin and others who are sort of saying, okay, we need to sort of change this, but we don't want to change too fast and we don't want to have a wholesale retelling of the social policy. let's remember what president biden is essentially saying what he wants to do is overturn in a large and big way -- one of the largest ways in history, our social policies in this country. he's wanting to redo how we look at child care. that's a completely different outlook than what senator manchin wants to do, change people's lives bit by bit but in another way. >> kyrsten sinema is running the boston marathon tomorrow. some protesters have promised to be there. let's see how that goes. all right. i'm going to pause here. when we come back, how the voting block of america, hispanics, is now the voting block of the present. what that could mean for the next presidential election. stick with us. s. add a fourth: be curious. be curious about the world around us, and then go. go with an open heart, and you will find inspiration anew. viking. exploring the world in comfort. oof. you are busy working parenting, problem solving. at new chapter vitamin's we have been busy too. innovating, sourcing organic ingredients testing them... and fermenting. fermenting? 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"data download" time. for decades now, hispanic voters have been seen as a key voting bloc of the future. what the hispanic vote means is a harder thing to nail down. when you look closely, it looks less like a consistent voting bloc in favor of one party and more like a group of other american voters where geography has an impact. so for overall, the hispanic is 13%. in the 2020 election, it broke pretty heavily for the democrats, two to one for joe biden. when you start to look inside the numbers and the breakdowns by states and where you live, you start to see the differences in the hispanic votes. in the big blue states, joe biden won hispanic votes three to one margins. but in texas and florida that donald trump carried, he got more than 40% of the hispanic vote. that is not a coincidence. here is another thing you're starting to see about the hispanic vote. like the white vote, in rural america, hispanics are more conservative and, therefore, a bit more republican than in urban and suburban. check out this final step that shows how much more of a melting pot swing vote hispanics are becoming. 20 states have at least one county where 30% of the population is hispanic. look how donald trump did in those counties in 2020. he lost ground in 21, but gained ground in 194. like ethnic groups and immigrant groups that have come to this country, for decades when you hit the third and fourth generation, you start to see those ethnic groups blend into the melting pot and break down like the rest of the american electorate. when we come back, meet the new boss, apparently the same as the old one. former president trump's hold on the republican party is only growing stronger. stay with us. (cooking timer rings) ♪ this is how we do it ♪ ♪ this is how we do it ♪ (tools drop) (squeaking sound) ♪ this is how we do it ♪ turns out, montell jordan knows how to do almost everything. and it turns out the general is a quality insurance company that's been saving people money for nearly 60 years. ♪ this is how... ♪ i got it, i got it, i got it. for a great low rate, and nearly 60 years of quality coverage make the right call - and go with the general. don't settle. start your day with secret. and nearly 60 years of quality coverage secret stops odor causing sweat 3x more. and the provitamin b5 formula is gentle on skin. with secret, outlast anything! no sweat. secret. ♪all strength. no sweat.♪ welcome back. well, there's one politician that probably best embodies donald trump's hold on the republican party right this week. it's chuck grassley. the senior senator from iowa and ranking member of the judiciary committee. here's what chuck grassley on february 13th of 2021 said about donald trump. he belittled and harassed elected officials across the country to get his way during the electoral college count. there's no doubt in my mind president trump's language was extreme, aggressive and irresponsible. that was his statement voting to acquit the president at the impeachment trial. earlier this week he said, he'd -- he let trump off the hook in the judiciary committee report saying he listened to his advisers. here is chuck grassley saturday night with donald trump. >> i was born at night, but not last night. so if i didn't accept the endorsement of a person that's got 91% of the republican voters in iowa, i wouldn't be too smart. i'm smart enough to accept that endorsement. >> david french, the chuck grassley legacy is going to be a survivor, i guess, is probably one way to look at it. is there any better explanation of trump's hold than chuck grassley these days? >> i think, look -- here's the explanation. i live in a red bubble, chuck. i live in a neighborhood that's about 85% republican. there's basically two broad categories of people. there are the people who are ready to move on from donald trump, they do not want him in 2024, and there are the people who are like the third bass boat in the boat parade. the trump supporters are very much more vocal. many of them, not all of them, are extremely vicious. this is the voice that republican elected officials are hearing constantly all day every day. the people who are ready to move on, a lot of them are exhausted. they're pulling away. they're not engaging. so only one voice is being heard, and it is the trump voice. but that is not the only voice in the gop electorate more broadly. >> it may be true, but donna edwards, i think that's part of the problem. one of the points of this show today that i wanted to make is this senate judiciary committee report was written based on trump appointees telling what really happened. stephanie grisham, no matter what you think of her, is trying to warn the country about a return of donald trump to the white house. why don't the former trump officials have any sway, in your opinion, with the republican electorate at large? >> well, i think it goes right to president trump. i think the former president, what he does is he dismisses those people. he harasses them in his public remarks, and i think it makes many -- kwiets afraid to speak up. you look at somebody like chuck grassley, and part of the reason that trump continues to have sway in the republican party is because there's no moral center and no moral clarity from senators like chuck grassley. >> yamiche, the other thing is, there seems to be no power in numbers. everybody is afraid, if they all join hands, they could rid the party of trump, but they're not doing it. >> they're not. really at the heart of this is fear, and at the heart of this is the idea that the threat continues. watching the trump rally yesterday -- i would only do it because i was coming on "meet the press" with you, chuck. i watched it from beginning to end. what i saw yesterday was a president who is continuing to not only lie but up the ante. he was telling people last night we're not going to have a country in three years, we need to take this country back. what you see is a republican party that cannot divorce itself from the reality that the former president is living in. in talking the democrats, they're so worried the energy is on the gop side. >> david french, stephanie grish happ, is she jose canseco, meaning you may not believe her on a lot of stuff, but you believe her on this? >> if you're writing a book and say that trump lies a lot, this is not exactly news. this is something that was seen all over the united states of america for year after year after year. the problem is his loyal friends always turn on his appointees. trump who was supposed to hire the best people is always being betrayed. he still never has made a mistake. so what we're dealing with here is it's not news. it is not news. at this point, if you don't know that already, where have you been? >> that's a fair point. that's all we have for today. thank you all for watching. thank you panel for being with us. we'll be back next week in washington. because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."

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