>> also here on state's exhibit number 8 in the -- we'll call it the second sentence here does he request a response. what does he state? >> look, the truth is that georgia secretary of state and gabriel sterling are the piece of pop you should be mad at. >> that is fulton county d.a. fani willis questioning a prosecution witness about the social media posts of trump codefendant harrison floyd as she seeks to revoke floyd's bond for allegedly trying footo the fimidate witnesses i and codefendants online. and along with it a possible preef pause in the fight. plus, i have a very special announcement to make. i'm going to tell you all about it later in the show. but we begin tonight with your wish is my chand. i say this all the time on this show. scaring is caring. we've told you repeatedly on this show what would happen should donald trump return to the white house. but don't take it from me. take it from the legion of yes men waiting in the wings, the thousands being vet for a second trump term like mike davis, an attorney doing the most to prove exactly how he'd serve trump in his mission to exact revenge upon his perceived enemies with no one to stop him. my friend and colleague mehdi asawn recently discusseded the conservative activist lawyer who folks like white nationalist accomplice steve bannon are pitching as a trump attorney general, which david responded to on social media. he threatened to denaturalize and deport medhi who's british american adding he's already got his spate picked out in the d.c. gulog and he'd put in the cellblock. to be clear the issue isn't white wing media activists on tv trolling although the open on bigotry is appalling, it's the fact mike davis could actually be trump's attorney general in real life. so just remember that name. as bill punch of the philadelphia infirer knows the gulog touting lawyer takes the abstract warnings the u.s. democracy is on the line in the 2024 election and brings them to life. and he quotes them in veneer of respectability, a member of the federalist society. he worked under iowa senator chuck grassly when he chaired the senate judiciary committee. he also clerked for neil gorsuch and helped get brett kavanaugh on the court. most importantly, niek davis fits donald trump' chest list to a tee. one articulated in "the washington post" piece how the otherwise competent people who served in trump's white house do not want to see him elected. according to "the post" trump has argued while in the white house he listened to people he should not have and made bad hires particularly at the pentagon. this time, trump said, he'd look out for people who are loyal and smart. the second term in office people close to him say would have people who actually support president trump in the words of one advisor. mike davis is going all out to prove to trump he is one of those people. and make no mistake trump is already casting from a list of super loyalists for a hypothetical second term like some of the characters who already helped him plot a coup. trump has already pledged to bring back michael flynn, a one time security advisor trump pardoned after he took the qanon pledge. and he's in contention for a senior role at justice. trump might have to pardon him to make that job offer depending what happens in clark's trial next november. might as well throw in sidney powell while we're at it. also plotting a return ironic white nationalist dracula stephen miller who returned in a senior role, already planning the most spectacular migration crack down. a second trump term could also inside with a fully complicit trump congress led by christian house speaker mike johnson. he traveled to mar-a-lago to kiss the ring on monday, meeting with trump days after endorsing the 91-count indicted former president. and in yet another sign of the wholesale trumpification of the republican party, one of the few republicans who voted to impeach trump after january 6th, former republican congressman peter miger of michigan who lost a primary over his impeachment vote now says he would support trump if he was the party nominee. call it what you will, pathetic, embarrassing. it is, however, the republican party putting its full embrace around the man who in turn is making fascism is autocracy the center piece of his third run for the white house. as he did recently, calling his political opponents on the left vermin. "the new york times" details how that authoritarian language has experts deeply concerned. quote, they said the former president's increasingly intensive focus on perceive underternal enemies was a hallmark of dangerous totalitarian leaders. he has insinuated that the nation's top military general should be executed and called for the termination of parts of the constitution. if he wins back the white house, he has said he would have no choice but to imprison political opponents. which brings me back to potential second term trump attorney general mike davis who responded to reporting from our colleagues at "morning joe" about this verypressant warning about trump's second term plans including imprisoning his enemies by posting on the hell app formerly known as twitter dear president trump, your wish is my command. you're telling us -- they are telling us who they are. please believe them. joining me now is pulitzer prizewinner for "the new york times" magazine and creator of the 1619 project. she's the founder of the center for journalism and democracy at howard university which recently hosted the democracy summit. and michael steele, former rnc chair, msnbc political analyst and host of the michael steele podcast. i think the first time donald trump ran i was telling my producers there were people around using the f-word, fascist. and people saying this guy is a blinking light of fascist language and ideas and violence and sort of dreams and people just didn't take it seriously. do you perceive that particularly our profession, that the media is taking more seriously this "the new york times" piece suggesting maybe. what do you think? >> yes, i do think that our profession is belatedly taking it more seriously. as you said they're actually using the word fascist, so hedging a bet, right, saying other people are saying these are fascist-like tendencies, but we are seeing an understanding that this is serious and that so many of the characteristics of fascism that we seem to understand innately when we see it in other countries, we are seeing it right here and we're starting to recognize it. though, i still think we are still struggling with how do you cover a major presidential candidate who does appear to be acting in fascist ways. there's a sense that if you -- if you call it what it is and maybe you'll turn off readers or viewers, or maybe you will not be able to reach the people who he speaks to. but as i said at the summit, our job as journalists is to reflect truth and not power, and i think we are still struggling with how do you consistently cover trump in the way he needs to be covered? >> yeah, and speaking of struggles, michael steele, the republican party i think has given up the struggle. what i have perceived among republicans even sort of former normy republicans like elise stefanik and others their tactic in dealing with a fascist onslaught is get on the iltral, get onboard. mike johnson who is a christian nationalist, full stop, but now he's also down with the fascism. they're all kissing the ring. they all fall to their knees. kevin mccarthy did it, mitch mcconnell did it. mitchmic kaunl said do whatever you want, just give me the court. is there yet inside the republican party any hint of a willingness to fight this anywhere? >> it is in quiet corners, and that's part of my frustration and the frustration of a number of us who are trying to elevate the conversation inside the house because the call is coming from inside the house, right? the horror that you're afraid of is there behind you in the closet down the hall, and it's no longer in the closet. it's actually kind of roaming the halls and taking out members as they find them in various chambers and organizations and so forth. so the reality remains for the party is what does this become? you have still, joy, a number of folks in the house, certainly in the senate, some governors around the country in office right now who believe a trump will not be the nominee of the party at the end of the day, "b," will get bast this even if trump is the nominee, he'll lose in november of next year. and then "c," we can all go down the yellow brick road together, and america will largely not remember just how bad ass we were. and the fact is all three of those assumptions are wrong. everything about it is wrong, and so, you know, the idea of democracy has become a foreign concept, it has become "other" to them as an immigrant or migrant coming into the country or a transgendered child. that's how they're seeing the world right now. and, you know, those of us still inside the house it's like, okay, i think we need to head for the front porch because it's pretty scary up in here. >> yes, indeed. i want to read just really quickly "the new york times" highlights some of them, but there are certain tenants of fascism that scholars in this area understand, and i'll just read what "the new york times" wrote about that, and they talk about a few of them. according toistorian pater hayes. fassism is generally understood as an authoritarian far right system of government. it features a cultiveersonalty leader, check, a strong man leader check, and the repeated denigration of the rule of law. there is also kind of a normalization of violence against perceived elites including the media. we've seen, nicolle, and i know you have tweeted about it. i don't know what we call it "x," former twitter about the way the country has responded to violence overseas including violence against journalists and the kind of muted response even within the press to the record number of journalists who died, for instance, in gaza, and the kind of -- do you perceive within even our profession and within the country that we're already kind of primed to accept a great deal of violence without outrage? >> absolutely. we have seen this normalization, right, like when you think about trump's campaign the first time where he was literally stoking violence at his rallies and encouraging violence and in speaking about violence, and you can never forget him saying he could shoot someone in times square and people would still vote for him. and so what happens is when you -- you constantly have that rhetoric, then you do start to get a bit immune to it. and i think that's what's we're seeing. we're seeing that across the board. and i also think it's really important to just take a second and know we've never had multi-racial democracy in america except for the last 60 years. it has always been contested. so what we are seeing is a rise of this -- this strongman leader who is not concerned about, you know, his people were supporting him they're not concerned about economic anxiety, it's demographic anxiety. and they are not embracing a democracy if democracy means a lot of people of color and other folks get to decide who leads our country. and so this is our response. and yet violence a huge part of that. violence has always been papart of american politics. we just have pretended it hasn't been. >> and, you know, the reality is the one time we did try what 12 years of reconstruction was violently overthrown with ferocity. and michael steele, i feel like americans have a sense nothing bad can happen to us because we are the essential special nation, but we are really not that much different than countries like let's say argentina, which now has its own trump. trump is now praising this man who's threatening -- he's saying he's going to do a complete abortion ban. he was elected in large part due to high inflation. but there's is triple digits, and ours is like 3%. and he was mainly supported by young, angry men who say, yeah, ban abortion, there's a sort of a factor or whatever it is, if conditions aren't that different, economic complaints, demographic complaints, complaints about immigration on and on and on, i don't understand how people understand that we can't be argentina. >> well, i think there's a number of elements that are at play here, which is why, you know, the challenge is trying to talk about democracy in layman's terms, if you kind of get where my drift is going there. just kind of bring it -- bring it to a point where it doesn't seem like it's a foreign concept to people to talk about these things and these behaviors, especially the behaviors. so the idea of sort of throwing around fascism, right, in this environment in america, it almost sounds elitist. it almost sounds like they're using big words. well, your mama never used big words when she was describing bad behavior before she whipped your behind. and i think that's kind of the space we need to get back into is breaking down this conversation, which is why democracy conversations that nicolle and others have having on campuses like howard and elsewhere become important because it's a way of sort of taking the mystery out of it and saying, no, these are the effects of this behavior, these are the consequences of this behavior. well, you look at argentina and go that's over there, this is not america. no, it is. let me tell you how it is. we just had in the last 30 seconds of conversation about the struggle of african americans in a post-reconstruction period or during reconstruction and how much the country repulsed against that and deeply fought against it in many quarters, that's part of that narrative and that experience that we can relate forward to today in what we're seeing in sort of breaking it down. but, of course, we can't talk about such things because that's a part of teaching black history as well. >> that's critical race theory, michael steele, and that's illegal in about 20 states. >> i'm sorry. >> exactly. our christopher rufo theory because that's what it is. valuable conversation. google fascism and tenants of fascism and scary is scary for real. coming up fulton county d.a. fani willis appears in court herself trying to revoke the bond of a trump codefendant for allegedly intimidating witnesses and obstructing justice, you know, the stuff trump gets away with on a regular basis. 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well, with a tighter more detailed, more narrow modified bond conditions for harrison floyd when he violates because we know he will, he shouldn't be read how to be a roman emperor, he should be reading crime for dummies because then he'd figure out how to not get into trouble. but it was a show of force. this was the first time d.a. fani willis since the release of that indictment has been in court for pretrial hearings. it made sense because it put the defense on notice of the kind of prosecutor, trial lawyer, litigator that fani willis delivers, the type of work and pns that she does. it was straight work today, and that's what was needed because this is the first time the d.a.'s office was on the offensive. on prior hearings it's been defense motions to dismiss, but today it was the s