american dream, a co-writer of a new musical, and the message she hopes a generation of dreamers will hear. let's begin this hour with how january 6th appears to push republicans to the brink, in calls for accountability ultimately morphed back into a appeasing the former president. in the end, it all boils down to power, and what it takes to hold on to it? today, we learned senate minority leader mitch mcconnell told authors of the new book, this will not pass, that he refused to risk his leadership role by confronting the former president. the book also reveals senator lindsey graham lashed out at trump, during the capitol attack. but we know he voted against convicting the former president. here is more what coauthor jonathan martin shed today on meet the press. >> lindsey graham he is extremely angry. he is almost shouting down the capitol police, as they try to address the u.s. senators, demanding they take action. forcefully, recapture the capitol, and in the same moment, he gets on the phone. and he telephones the white house counsel -- >> we've been hearing all of this. that's from various sources. >> i'm in the real. then he calls pat maloney and says, if trump doesn't at least people to go home, then the rioters in the capitol, we're gonna call for the 25th amendment. >> graham now joins a growing list of gop lawmakers who criticize trump behind closed doors, and not in public. graham is on the list with house minority leader kevin mccarthy, who is now scrambling to contain the fallout from leaked audio, in which he tells liz cheney he would ask trump to resign. he did not. and we are told to expect more bombshells when the committee kicks off public hearings in june. let's bring in democratic congresswoman eric swalwell of california. he is a member of the judiciary committee and the former impeachment editor. congressman, i wanna start with kevin mccarthy's comments after january 6th. take a listen. >> this is a serious bleep to cut this out. >> yeah, that, i mean it's potentially illegal what he's doing. >> well, he's putting people in jeopardy. and he doesn't need to be doing this. we saw what people are doing in the capital, you know, at least we came prepared with everything else. >> you think the president deserves to be impeached for his comments? that almost something that goes further than what the president said. >> all right, congressman, talk us through how the audio that we just heard comports with the public reality of what followed? >> alicia, the idea that you heard is exactly what you'd want to hear from a leader in our country, after january 6th. so what kevin mccarthy said privately is exactly the right answer, which is that we can't tolerate what others are doing. we can't tolerate what donald trump tried to do to our democracy. he took, at least privately, when he had that brief affair with courage, it's a political stance. however, he abandoned that. and just days later when he went down to mar-a-lago, kissed the ring, and instead of taking a pledge of allegiance to america, kevin mccarthy has since went to mar-a-lago, taken a pledge of allegiance to himself, putting his own party above the country. so the position where it now is a country that donald trump is still in power. he is the leader of their party. and if kevin mccarthy was ever speaker of the house, there is no backstop. there's no integrity that would protect against him going all in with the next coup attempt. >> congressman, you were at the capitol on january 6th. what questions do you want answered during the committee's public hearings next month? >> there's a real gap around what donald trump knew, as far as potential violence, and the days leading up to it. we know that he incited that violence because he said just 20 or so days before the attack, that it will be wild. and yet, you have to come fight for your country. you won't have a country anymore. but what did he receive about warning of the proud boys and the oath keepers and the other violent groups. what's funding that he and his allies provide? and of course, during the attack, what did he know, and what did he not do that could have saved more officers from the injuries they suffered, and our democracy from nearly losing everything? >> congressman, what do you see as the stakes of these hearings, both for democrats, republicans, for our democracy? >> yeah, this is a full scan, mri of our democracy. it's like a termite inspection on a home, and i'm afraid we're gonna get we're gonna find there's a rock on our democracy right now. it's infested with insurrectionists, and it goes all the way to the top. it's not just donald trump, it's insurrectionists who enabled donald trump. and then, you're gonna find people like kevin mccarthy, who had the right answer in the days after, privately, is no longer willing publicly to say the right thing to condemn this insurrection, or even come forward and cooperate. if he has nothing to hide, if he did nothing wrong, he would think it would be quite easy to try and help his country. but again, this isn't an america first crowd, as they tell everybody. this is a republican party under donald trump, first proud, and that is very, very dangerous with democracy on life support. >> congressman eric swalwell, thank you for being with us. i gotta say, you and i have kids about the same age. your ability to string together a coherent sentence, while having little kids screaming in the background, truly impressive! thank you so much for being with us. >> joining us now, barbara mcquade, msnbc legal analyst and co-host of the hashtag sisters in law podcast. and msnbc contributor, betsy woodruff swan, she is a national correspondent for politico first. i wanna get your thoughts on what we heard from congressman swalwell, betsy? >> i think it's notable that he's characterizing the forthcoming work of the select committee, as sort of an mri of american democracy. the idea that it has taken such a wide angle lens is not something that i've heard before. and i think that's a notable new way, kind of laying the groundwork for what people should expect going into eight hearings that are gonna be happening in june. according to the select committee chairman, the idea that it's going to be sort of a very detailed look under the hood, not just at the republican party, and not just of course the people who had a direct connection to the january 6th attack. but also broadly, at this state of democracy, at large, just kind of gives a sense of how ambitious and significant the overall project that this committee has undertaken and is poised to be. >> barb, of course, it is ambitious. it is significant. at the same time, when we play with that number of eight hearings, part of it is, this has to be consolidated. it has to be synthesized. there has to be a cohesive, coherent narrative that is told, that captures the attention of the american public, right? and is mindful of the fact that not everyone's gonna watch it from beginning to end. how do you do that? how do you fit this treasure trove of documents that they have acquired into a hearing? >> here's two thoughts. one is this is what prosecutors do all the time, and they conduct an investigation. they talk to dozens if not hundreds of witnesses. and then, they try to synthesize that which is most compelling, to share with the jury. they can't present all of it, and so they try to do it in a succint way that presents the truth in a persuasive way. and i think that's the same thing that the committee will try to do here. but i think one of the mistakes that perhaps the committee has learned from is the way the information comes down to the american people, it can have a real impact on how it's hits them. so when we have robert mueller 's investigation, when we had the impeachment inquiries, a lot of the facts kind of tripped out, and we kind of knew everything by that time they had the hearings. and there wasn't a lot that was new that came out there. and i think one of the things that i've heard representative swalwell say, and representative raskin say, is that there is information that has not been made public. so i think that sort of explosive information can be more compelling, perhaps, than what we've seen in the past. >> betsy, you have to break the news at several rnc staffers speaking with the january six committee. what are the rnc's potential ties to the insurrection? >> what's the select committee in particular is interested in, in regards to the rnc, is its digital operation and its fund raising operations. so specifically, the people that they're talking to have knowledge about the way that the rnc raised money by sending out fundraising claiming falsely, spreading the lie, that their election has been stolen from president donald trump. now, former president donald trump. we know that the select committee is really interested in the way that that light percolated, the way it spread, the way it influenced people. and the fact that they're really drilling down within the rnc shows that they're not just looking at people who are in trump's immediate orbit, but they're also looking at the republican party as an institution, as the way that the republican party in its most formal capacity, literally, cashed in on lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. and the fact that they've been able to speak to so many rnc staffers with such detailed knowledge about the nitty-gritty process, within the party, tells us that they have a lot more information about the inner workings of the gop then we have previously known. >> barb, turning to another trump investigation, the atlanta journal-constitution reports a special grand jury starts tomorrow in fulton county. what will the jury be looking for? what tools will they have? >> well, one of the things we all know, because it's in the public domain, is that there is this recording between donald trump and brad raffensperger, the secretary of state, in which donald trump asked him to find 11,000 votes, the amount that he needed to march in victory to win the election. what we don't know yet is whether there is evidence of corrupt intent, which is what would be required to prove a crime here. so the tools that injury has available to it is the subpoena power to compel witnesses to come in and testify, and to gather docs. now, i don't know that the trump end of the equation is gonna be particularly friendly or any friendlier to this group and they have been to the congressional committee. but the raffensperger side of the equation, maybe, and maybe willing to come in and they've got subpoenas, but i don't know if that side is more likely to contest those subpoenas. they may be likely to come in and tell the whole story. and i think they're probably, there's more there that needs to be examined. was this the only conversation that donald trump had with brad raffensperger? or others on his behalf? whether other meetings with other communications? because i thinl what they're looking for is not only made this request, but he did so knowing that he had actually lost the election. >> betsy, of course, the new york case seems to be going in the opposite direction. this one is intensify, the other winding down. your sense of why we are seeing such different outcomes? >> because they're looking at a totally different subject matters. the case in atlanta is zeroing in on trump's behavior right after election day, while the case in new york was taking a look back at his financial dealings prior to becoming president. that investigation, specifically the district attorney's criminal investigation, related to trump's finances, has been ongoing for years. part of the reason it moved so slowly as it was because trump very effectively slowed it down, by going to court to fight to slow down, and to try to limit the access that those investigators had to his financial information. there has been some reporting indicating that if a prior district attorney of manhattan still held that role, the likelihood of charges being brought would be higher. however, he retired from the position, and a new district attorney came in. and the reporting that in the new york times, that the new district attorney just looked at the evidence differently than the prior district attorney. which sometimes happens with prosecutors. so that's why i think at this point, the biggest source of stress from a criminal investigative process on trump world, appears to be what's going on in georgia. >> barbara and betsy, thank you so much for getting us started. next, speaker pelosi makes a surprise trip to ukraine, vowing u.s. support, until russia is defeated. plus, the anti-immigration propaganda that is popping up on youtube. you're gonna hear from someone hoping to expose it. but first, to richard louis with the other big stories we're tracking here on msnbc. richard? >> thank you, alicia. a 10,000 dollar reward now on the table for information leading to the capture of an escape murder suspect and corrections officer. officials say vicky white was escorting inmate casey white, no relation, to a courthouse here in alabama friday when she disappeared. she was considered missing and in danger. it turns out that appointment never did exist. authorities later finding officer whites patrol car in a shopping mall two miles from the jail. the state of kansas is recovering after friday nights destructive tornado near wichita. more than 1000 buildings and homes were damaged by what you see there. the national weather service says the twister was an ef3, and it stayed on the ground for a whopping 21 minutes! president joe biden pay tribute to former vice president and minnesota senator walter mondale today. mondale was a longtime friend of biden, biden said he will never forget how mondale quote, affected so much love and life into his family, during his darkest moments. mondale passed away last month at the age of 93. more american voices, right after this. and when you book and pay throug you're covered by our happiness check out angi.com today. angi... and done. does daily stress leave you feeling out of sync? 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>> i think it's another strong sign of american support. i thought her message was right. she talked about helping ukrainians win. there's some concern that the recent visit -- that secretary lloyd austin, when he talked about the goal being to weaken russia so it can't do it to another country has concerned europeans. that plays into putin's sense that this is a battle between the u.s. and russia. it is another positive sign. lastly, i agree with representative crow, it is about weapons, weapons and weapons. this is not going to end soon. putin is determined to win. ukrainians remain outgunned. this is gonna be a long struggle. it's gonna take more than visits for ukrainians to win. >> max, to that point, you write in the washington post, the kind of aid the united states and its allies have been delivering is indicative of ukraine's growing success. in recent weeks, the west has been providing heavier weaponry, including artillery, tanks and long-range air defenses, these are weapons designed to win the war, not prolong it. how can this new aid change the course of the war. talk us through that. >> i think it's going to be a game-changer. i mean, the ukrainians are already doing very well. they won the battle of kyiv. they were using largely handheld weapons like stingers and javelins. now they are facing a much bigger battle, in the donbas region in eastern ukraine, where the russians are pinning their hopes on salvaging a victory out of this disastrous campaign. to hold them back, the ukrainians really need these kinds of long range weapons, including tanks, aircraft, artillery and drones. that is all being provided to them, a lot is being provided by the u.s.. keep in mind, how president biden is stepping up to the plate with bipartisan support. i mean, the latest package of 33 billion dollars that he asked for, with about 20 billion of that being military aid, keep in mind that ukraine 's entire defense budget is only six billion dollars. this is multiples of their own defense budget. it is not just the u.s., it is also poland sending a whole bunch of t-72 tanks. there's talk now about slovakia sending 20 nines, almost every nation in europe is sending heavy equipment, even the germans are sending some armored anti aircraft weapons. this is a massive effort because the ukrainians show they know what to do with where weaponry. they have the spirit to prevail. i think confidence in their ability to win is rising. that's why you see all of this aid flowing to the ukrainian armed forces. >> at the same time, david, as max just laid out, russia is now focusing on eastern ukraine. what worries you most about this new phase of the war? >> the russians are being more methodical in this phase. they advanced far too quickly when they tried to take kyiv. and so, it's a back and forth battle now. the ukrainians take a village, the russians take another one. it is a question of, can ukrainians sustain this? there's new press reports about growing gas and oil shortages. it's now impacting civilians. it's part of a russian tactic to cut off supplies from the sea. there's an attack on an oil depot. again, the abide an administration has done a terrific job as max said, but it's going to be all kinds of aid. gas, fuel, humanitarian aid, as you mentioned, and budget support. i think the u.s. has to be patient. this is a critical few weeks, i emphasize weeks, it's not gonna end anytime soon. the ukrainians can prevail but we can't get distracted or divided when it comes to supporting ukraine. >> congressman schiff spoke to msnbc after his visit with pelosi to kyiv. i want you to take a listen and i will talk about on the other side. >> support the ukraine, our ally, the reality is that if russia gets away with this it -- there's no reason to believe it will stop with ukraine. we will be there, standing shoulder to shoulder, until ukraine's victorious. >> max, this past week russia said would respond -- putin said russia would respond to any outside intervention. how does the u.s. respond to these threats? how did they factor into these threats? their fault lines on both sides? here >> we have to be cognizant of russian threats, but we can't be terrified by them because that is what putin wants. he wants to basically scare the west into ending its support for ukraine. that's why almost every night you have these propagandists on russian tv threatening to wage nuclear war against the west. putin has dropped hints about his nuclear arsenal. at the end of the day, putin may be evil, but he has not suicidal. he is not going to start a new killer war with the united states. he knows it will ended rushes destruction. he may try to escalate within ukraine, sending more forces, he may threaten some kind of action against nato states around ukraine. but we should not be deterred by any of that. we should certainly keep an eye on, it we should certainly make clear to that the consequences of any kind of attack on nato states is -- we've already done, will be catastrophic for russia. something he cannot afford to do. i don't think he will do it. i think he is just brought bluffing right now and desperate and flailing, because he may understand, even though he is surrounded by yes men, putin may start to understand that he is losing this war. if the latest offense in the donbas fails, which most likely will. >> david, i know i've been talking with both of you about the response but i want to focus on what is happening on the ground. this weekend, russia's foreign minister claimed close to 1 million people have been evacuated from ukraine into russia. is this another sign of another possible war crime? >> it is. and it is chilling. i want to say, we don't know what's happened here. but yes, they said nearly half 1 million people have been forcibly left -- they've wanted to leave, these are civilians. that's a war crime. people have the right to stay in this territory if they want to. it is reminiscent of stalin taking huge numbers of non russian ethnic non-russians and moving them to different parts of the soviet union. it reminds me, sadly, up the war in bosnia which i covered where you had serbs take territory and then ethnically cleanse it of bosnian muslims and bosnian crow outs. it's the targeting of civilians that is a war crime. i'm very worried about what russia is doing with civilians. that includes children. >> what is at stake in this moment. max and david. thank you both so much. next, how white supremacist talking points turned into a movement on youtube? someone reveals how big the problem is it's going to join us. later, it is more than just a musical. the co-writer of americana, and the message it holds for dreamers. that's ahead. ahead (coughing) ♪ breeze driftin' on by ♪ ♪ you know how i feel ♪ copd may have gotten you here, but you decide what's next. start a new day with trelegy. ♪ ...feelin' good ♪ no once-daily copd medicine has the power to treat copd in as many ways as trelegy. with three medicines in one inhaler, trelegy helps people breathe easier and improves lung function. it also helps prevent future flare-ups. trelegy won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. do not take trelegy more than prescribed. trelegy may increase your risk of thrush, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. call your doctor if worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain occur. take a stand and start a new day with trelegy. ask your doctor about once-daily trelegy. and save at trelegy.com. nothing like a weekend in the woods. it's a good choice all around, like screening for colon cancer... when caught in early stages it's more treatable. i'm cologuard. i'm noninvasive... and i detect altered dna in your stool to find 92% of colon cancers... even in early stages. early stages. yep. it's for people 45 plus at average risk for colon cancer, not high risk. false positive and negative results may occur. ask your provider if cologuard is right for you. we're in. lemons. lemons. lemons. lemons. look how nice they are. the moment you become an expedia member, you can instantly start saving on your travels. so you can go and see all those, lovely, lemony, lemons. and never wonder if you got a good deal. because you did. >> this week, dhs joined the fight against immigration disinformation, announcing a new government board to monitor u.s. mexico border. a study by the nonprofit group, define american, shows how persuasive these lies are, and are the major effect are having on voters, despite being full of misinformation. >> in 2020, we polled likely voters in swing states about their youtube viewing habits, to see those patterns that affected their beliefs on immigration. among those who watched youtube regularly, 63% talked with friends or family about immigration, after watching immigration content on youtube. 28% contacted a politician, and 21% change their vote for a representative. that's huge. >> the report revealing how the great replacement gerrymandering can spread online, taking the white supremacist talking points from thr fringe to our feed. joining me now, shauna siggelkow, director of digital storytelling at the fight, and what an immigration attorney and advocate. it is good to see you both. shauna, talk us through this diagram of the great replacement network. what did you learn about this theory's popularity online and where a channel, like msnbc, fits in? >> absolutely. first of all, thanks so much for having me. so define american organization, that i work out, is a narrative change organization. so we really believe that in order to change immigration policy, first we really need to change the conversation about this issue in the american public. so we advocate for better representation of immigrant stories in the media. and obviously, digital narratives have become more and more important in our age. so we decided a couple of years ago to really invest in looking at narratives online. and we started with this landscape analysis of youtube. so what we are looking at with that visualization is at the top anti-immigration content of the last 15 years. and what we found in our landscape analysis is that the majority of the most viral anti-immigration content actually is produced by a handful of organizations. and the reason why that's very important is, i think, there's a pervasive narrative out there that xenophobia and anti immigration rhetoric comes from individuals. it comes from citizens, and it's a populist, grassroots sentiment. and that's not what we saw on the research. what we saw on the research is that actually these messaging campaigns and communications strategies are highly intentional. they are centralized. and they come from were funded institutions. i know hassan it's gonna speak about that kind of network, which we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, decades of infrastructure, and essentially what we're talking about is an anti-immigration media machine. nothing like this exists on the pro-immigration or progressive side. and perhaps, that's the reason why we keep losing on this issue. >> yeah this is big money. this is not populism, to your point. before i move over to hassan, give us a sense of the kind of videos that are most effective on changing peoples minds on immigration. >> yeah, absolutely, one of the elements that we studied in our report is actually around the packaging of these videos. so we were really interested in the way these messages are disseminated and packaged. so we looked at different animation styles, different genres, different messengers, and what we found is actually most of the videos that are the top performing over the last 15 years are presented as explainer videos, sort of educational content. and we actually think that's why they're so effective, because they present their biases and kind of extreme messages, as if they're academic. >> right, to be clear, we're not showing viewers at this moment, because we don't want to spread disinformation. >> hassan, democratic congressman david cecily called out some of these narratives that we're hearing this week. take a listen. >> they have a 60 page memo prepared by the ranking member of this committee, as reported in the newspaper. that's a memo that includes misleading and provocative talking points that seek to betray migrants and refugees as perpetrators of gruesome crimes, as they confidential for internal use only document. and it's prepared so that the republicans can argue that democrats are seeking to, listen to this, abolish all immigration enforcement, and even encourage illegal immigration! so don't be confused, with all due respect, mister secretary, of your ongoing altercation with data and information committee. there's a whole plan about with this hearing is about, and it's about creating fox news spots that they can use. and i regret that you have to be part of this. >> so hassan, what i would like to do is connect the dots for us between the disinformation we see on youtube, the disinformation we see coming out of sitting members of the gop, and then, how all of that shapes both immigration policy and the experience of refugee, asylum seekers who want to come to this country? >> thank you so much for having me, alicia, once again. i was on the show last year. you asked me to draw a line also between the papers of john tanden and modern immigration policy. obviously, this report from define america, defying american, is actually one such line. because tanden realized that the messaging battle, the messaging battle is where the war would be won. and he was raising tens of thousands of dollars in the 1990s, you know, pre internet, on videos like, you know, ridiculous gambles videos mentioned and their report. so it's very deliberate. it's very funded. it's very well funded. and we see it coming out now, and shifting the entire discourse on immigration around immigration policy. despite the fact that it's not division of america that most americans believe in. most americans believe that it doesn't matter what language you speak, or where you are from, or how you love, or who you love, etc, you come here to prove yourself, and the tanden network believes in this great replacement theory, which is in reference to, as in your report several times and, this is what they've been peddling for 40 years. over and over, peddling fear of others, fear that america won't be america anymore, that they're gonna let all these immigrants in, black people are uncivilized, diseased, genetically inferior. and yes, they're actually argue genesis to actually believe in genetic hierarchy. so it's really, you know, unnerving and frankly, disgusting stuff. and all americans i think need to understand what makes this great replacement network tick. >> in spite of all that, in spite of all this effort, you describe a quote, movable middle group of voters. who are they? why are they important to this conversation? >> absolutely. so we define the movable middle as americans who are neither very pro nor very anti immigration. and this is an incredibly important demographic for us to pay attention to. the norman layer center, i think, it estimates around 19% of the population. that's enough to sway elections. that's enough to change policy around immigration and, obviously, in the 2016 campaign, we saw how immigration became the central talking point of the gop. and research sent from the brooklyn center, really dug into how digital spaces played a role in shifting immigration to the center of the campaign, specifically. and going to the 2022 midterms and the 2024 election, i think we really need to be paying attention to these narratives. >> shauna, hassan, thank you both so much for being with us. next, the american dream takes center stage. a co-writer of a new musical, putting spotlight on dreamers. he's gonna join us. later, twitter and elon musk, the president of media matters, and why he fears it could be more like fox news. -oh, that...? 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it's an important american story. it's a chapter for fights for civil rights in this country. it's something we have been, as consumers of news, hearing about for 20 years now or more. and it is to me the most important element is bringing this story to a global audience, in a way that is different than the way we consume the news. it is theater, it is musical, people go with open minds, open hearts. we really hope that it is a way of changing the way people think about immigrants and dreamers and americans. >> tell me about the genesis of this inspiration? >> well, the short version is that in about seven years ago, one of my co-writers, the director of phoenix theater, michael barnard and my other co-writer, jonathan rosenberg, got together with our lead producer, jason rose, and we started thinking about writing a story that brought up the story of immigrants in arizona. jonathan and michael started working on the script. i joined along, here in phoenix it opened in phoenix in april -- sorry, february 2020. and then we started making the script stronger and during the pandemic there was a possibility that once broadway reopened we -- there might be room for us. luck would have, it -- and talent, i guess. producers from new york saw the show and they gave us a shot at the world stage and off broadway theatre. we decided to make it happen. thankfully, we've had financial support from people and one leading organization -- , a civil rights organization that has decades here in phoenix. here we are, opening night tonight! very exciting! >> so, exciting -- it's not lost on me, it's not lost on you given the work that we both do in the communities we come from. that just a segment ago i was talking about misinformation, disinformation against these communities, the lies that are constantly perpetrated about who immigrants in america are. you are offering a counter punch. what do you want america know to remind everyone -- specifically about the patriotism of many people who call this country home? >> you don't need to be illegal -- have paper senior american, that you belong here. get up every day, go to school, go to work, be a member of the community. be a good neighbor, be a good parent, a good citizen. we don't need a authorization. however, it is necessary to have that legal authorization such so they can maximize their potential. this, to me, is not an immigrant story. it is an american story. it is really important for us to change the way we define american to borrow from the organization that was just here talking to you. what is really the meaning of american? who are we excluding and what are we losing when we exclude people from this understanding of the country and people that we have? >> fernanda santos, the musical theater garnered in me cannot wait to see this and have a new favorite musical. congratulations to you, thank you for spending time with us. still ahead, free speech or free for all? elon musk might do this to twitter. president of media matters has a thought or two. he will join us next. will join us next plus, superior nutrition. which is now more important than ever. only eggland's best. certified turbocharger, suspension and fuel injection. which is now more important than ever. translation: certified goosebumps. certified from headlamp to tailpipe. that's certified head turns. and it's all backed by our unlimited mileage warranty. that means unlimited peace of mind. mercedes-benz certified pre-owned. translation: the mercedes of your dreams is closer than you think. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ we believe there's an innovator in all of us. ♪ ♪ that's why we build technology that makes it possible for every business... and every person... to come to the table and do more incredible things. bonnie boon i'm calling you out. everybody be cool, alright? 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>> it's an update. when fox news was first a marriage, there was a value in, at least from the conservative side, speaking to their own audience. that does have power, but where foxes real power came in as they are actually able to get users. elon musk saw twitter as the best vehicle to do that. it is a little bit more nimble than other social media platforms. it has a disproportionate amount of influence given its user base. it is much smaller than facebook or youtube, and yet it has a lot more journalists, active corporations, active decision-makers. their engagement with that platform has significant downstream affects. twitter, compared to other platforms, has consistently been demonstrated that when they take an action, like against manipulated media or against revenge porn or different disinformation, their action ended up having a spillover effect that forced other social media networks to follow suit. i think he sees the capacity for twitter to do that, but instead of advancing the cause against extremism or disinformation, to unwind. it to actually be a vehicle to put pressure platforms into taking the opposite directions. >> so interesting. washington post ne reporting says digging into the rise of tech and media companies owned by rich and powerful men. and it reads, quote, information that courses over these networks is increasingly produced by publications controlled by few fellow villain airs, who have filled the void of the collapsing profit making journalism market with varying combinations of self interest and altruism. the role of social media networks, which have largely replaced print newspapers as the way most americans get their information -- it's a complicated issue because so few networks are dominant. i guess i have two questions, one, this is where people are getting their news and information, right? we're not just talking about a single platform. we're talking about a major way the lot of people begin to process, analyze, synthesize the news. how does that trend, that larger trend become harmful for democracy? >> look, it's still the most effective form of advertising. it's also the most effective form of political ideas, good and bad. the trend is only going to continue and increase. addressing it, and a platform level, is only gonna get more complicated as the threats get more complicated, as the platforms become more varied. to me, what matters now is that we are still dealing with the consequences. by no means are the platforms good, but they only recently started to grapple with a threat that was existing on their platform for the past ten years. that's only in the last couple years that they started to respond. this has the potential. even if elon musk does nothing, one thing we do know is that twitter, as a vehicle for actually being one of the vanguards of addressing threats is no longer in play. even if he changes no policy, the one thing that we know is absolutely going to happen is that it will no longer serve that role. the ability of all the platforms, cause the others are much less likely to take action, is greatly diminished. that means that bad actors, the threat of disinformation, and in particular, extremism -- who ties in with your previous segments. all those threats, all of that has a much clearer landing strip to proliferate. >> i do at some point want to get your take on whether you stay or you go. i think it's the meta debate that is happening on twitter right now. we will save that for next time. angelo carusone, has always, thanks for being with us. more american voices in a moment. at the top of the hour, i don't want you to miss the many hostin show. he'll talk to jocelyn benson about the republican agenda in her state, and how to preserve voting rights nationwide. coming up on 8 pm eastern, right here on msnbc. ♪ ♪ ♪ so that your little update can make a big difference. wayfair has all the easy upgrades from cabinet hardware to peel and stick tile. with flexible financing available on bathtubs, vanities and more, even your big projects are no big deal. because no one can make it yours quite like you. ♪ wayfair you got just what i need ♪ we hit the bike trails every weekend shinges doesn't care. i grow all my own vegetables shingles doesn't care. we've still got the best moves you've ever seen good for you, but shingles doesn't care. because 1 in 3 people will get shingles, you need protection. but, no matter how healthy you feel, your immune system declines as you age increasing your risk for getting shingles. so, what can protect you? 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