october 7th. so, we need to be doing everything. i think the president is doing everything, but let me tell you what the congress could do. congress could pass that money and send the message to hamas that we're going to support this effort and you need to make accommodations and get those hostages back home. >> congressman hoyer, thank you. that's going to do it for this hour. our coverage continues with katy tur reports right now. h katy tur reports ri ght now. good to be with you. i'm katy tur. what would a second donald trump term look like? six weeks before iowa caucusgoers cast their first ballots, there are warnings from multiple corners about the damage donald trump could do. the atlantic magazine has a special issue outlining what trump's actions would be on nato, on immigration, on the justice department, on autocracy and more. staunch conservative liz cheney is stating plainly that the gop can't and frankly won't reign donald trump in. and mitt romney is basically saying the same, telling a journalist that since trump he found a quote very large portion of his party doesn't really believe in the constitution. at the same time, there are some republican donors who are trying to stop trump before the general, urging the primary field to avoid the mistakes of 2016 and consolidate behind nikki haley. before they argue donald trump has a chance to carry out what he's promising, to destroy the quote, deep state, to legislate gender, prosecute charities, shoot shoplifters and to seek vengeance on anyone and everyone who has gone against him. >> on day one of my new administration, i will direct the doj to investigate every radical district attorney and attorney general in america for their illegal, racist, and reverse enforcement of the law. i will fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system like it has never been weaponized before. >> so much there and so much more. joining us now is "washington post" senior national political correspondent, ashley parker and punch bowl cofounder and msnbc contributor, jake sherman. ashley, a lot of what he's been saying has been on the campaign trial but it hasn't gotten the same sort of attention as in years past because news networks aren't covering it the same way. can you walk us through what he's been promising, what he's been sounding like on the campaign trial and why it's sounding so many alarms? >> sure. he has been sounding incredibly apocalyptic and like a strong man. you know, he has promised for instance to root out domestic, political opponents like vermin. he has warned that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country. that has some very specific historical echoes that people are understandably quite upset about. he's warning that the united states and the world could be slipping into world war iii and he is the only one who can save us from that. he is attempting to turn the tables and is accusing president biden of the very thing that his critics and opponents argue he's doing. he's saying that biden is the one who is attacking democracy and ruining the country. and while this is not sort of traditionally apocalyptic, he has also threatened or promised to take away obama care, which for all of those americans who rely on that for healthcare is a sort of different type of apocalyptic in its own way. >> when you're talking about vermin, i know you're alluding to the historical reference but it's important to be clear. it's a reference regarding hitler. let me ask you, jake, about former lawmaker, some current, who are saying hey, listen, this guy had one chance. he showed us what he was like. he tried to overturn the election in 2024. and hey, let's not go there again in case you forgot. here's liz cheney who's out with her new book talking about what the republican party would do if donald trump were elected again. >> he's enabled and appeased and collaborated with by people who know better in leadership in the republican party today. that's part of what makes him so dangerous. >> right. >> is people have been willing to look the other way and go along even when they know it's wrong. if donald trump is elected again, we really don't have to worry because the institutions of our government will prevent the worst he will attempt to do, but nothing could be further from the truth because those republicans, a house with republicans like mike johnson, a senate with people like josh hawley and mike lee, they won't stand up to him. >> jake, what is she talking about, not standing up to him? what does the republican party look like with donald trump back in power? the republican party in congress. >> let me give you an example of what happened today. mike johnson was asked about, he has alluded to the fact there's a misleading narrative about january 6th. someone asked him what is the misleading narrative. he said well how long do you have to unpack that and he went on to say, pretty stunning, that his staff is blurring out the faces of people who are in the capitol on january 6th because he doesn't want doj to be able to go after them. i mean, these were people who broke into the capitol, who were involved in an insurrection. so that kind of sets the tone for, for what the republican party on capitol hill is today. now, listen. we saw through four years of donald trump that members of congress, republicans in the senate and the house, did not stand up to him at all. they either didn't see the clip or hear the comment or whatever. so we could expect that to continue. and quite frankly, you know, i'll take issue with one thing liz cheney said and this is not, you know, i'm not taking a side here necessarily besides for saying that she said they know better. well, i don't know that is the right framing. these are people who support donald trump. that is what they know. they support donald trump. they want him to be elected. and that is where they're political incentives align. it's not as if they know better and they continue to do something for a decade you know. however long it's been since donald trump started running. they don't know better. they're supportive of donald trump and that's what people have to keep in mind when they go to the ballot in 2024 to elect a president and to elect a house. >> jake, what about what mitt romney said that since donald trump came along, he's come to the realization that a lot of people in his party don't believe in the constitution. doesn't believe in democracy. when you take that, mitt romney's assessment then you project it out if it's true, donald trump wants to go after his political enemies. we're already seeing a house impeachment committee trying to investigate president biden, keep promising big things and keep falling short of that. what is the logical extension of that is donald trump is back in power? are we going to see congress try to do more than it's already doing? >> well, they're not going to do more to stop trump but i think they will be untethered from whatever norms they generally have. but remember, congress is a pretty high bound institution in the sense there's two chambers. there's all sorts of rules that can't be broken. famous last words, right? if what donald trump is saying the true, if he's going to do the things he's saying, congress really doesn't have the ability and certainly republicans don't have the political will or capital to stop him from doing those things. >> ashley, what about what his administration would look like? who would staff it? last time around, there were all sorts of people who called themselves the grown ups in the room holding on to things. do those sorts of people come back? >> those people are absolutely gone and they are replaced by people who have basically passed a fealty or loyalty test to donald trump. to go back a little, you and i both covered his 2016 campaign starting in 2015. i covered his entire presidency to its culmination in a deadly insurrection on the u.s. capitol. i don't think any of us would have described that period as particularly restrained, but what we would see in a second trump administration would be unrestrained in a way we have not seen before. all those people would be gone. all of those guardrails would deliberately be gone and a lot of the things he wanted to do and promised to do and tried to do in his first term and in his campaigns, he couldn't do because he didn't understand how a bureaucracy works. he has not changed but the people he's surrounding himself with, the way he plans to implement those plans would be different and he could be more effective in doing what he tried to do starting in 2016. >> ashley, good to have you back. jake, thank you as well. joining us now is former secretary of defense and secretary of the army. mr. secretary, thank you for being with us. let's talk about what would happen with nato. where does donald trump stand ond nato and what would that mean for the u.s.? >> well, first of all, good to be with you this afternoon. with regard to nato and having lived through this with him, i think one of the first things that would happen is he would withdraw support for ukraine and of course, if that were to happen, i think the whole effort to support ukraine and its war against russia would crumble because united states is kind of like the big block in the jenga tower. i think his next move would be to begin pulling us out of nato. certainly troops out of nato. countries and eventually, that could collapse the alliance. that's what putin would love to see, right? is the collapse of nato. so the next look would be does he start looking as he would discuss with me and others at the time, does he look to pull troops out of korea, japan and other countries who are allied with us. it's quite disconcerting from a national security standpoint. >> what does it mean for the u.s. if we're out of nato, no longer part of a system that offers protection in return for our protection? >> first and foremost, those regions of the world are less secure. the baltic states, poland, romania, other front line states vulnerable to russian aggression. you would see the same in asia from the chinese communist party and that ripples back to us. the united states would be less secure as well. it would be a retreat from the global stage after 75 years of leadership that america would withdraw. i think when that happens, you would see the international rules and norms that have been built up since that time eventually fade away and crumble as well. look, it would be a very bad situation. i won't say as far as distopian, but you would see so much of what we've come to know and experience. so much of the global order, the rules, regulations, norms that have made us all prosperous and allowed us to grow over the decades to slowly erode and collapse. >> what do you think his military officials would be? what kind of people? >> i don't know. the trump loyalists who at the end of the last term were really vying for cabinet slots in the future if they thought he would be in a second term. folks like robert o'brien. rick granell. others that had more senior positions in the administration. i think you'll see a lot of those people come back. as i've said, i think the first year of a second trump administration will look much like the last year if not the last few months of the last trump administration. as your reporter said, i think one of the big lessons he learned is people are policy and the litmus test going forward will be -- competence will be down the list. that's troubling. as compared to having a year, seven, eight months which is when trump kicked into a different gear in 2020, he'll have four years to go at it and really chip away at the institutions of government at our norms. we'll be able to you know enact his policy of revenge that he's been talking about and retribution. it's quite a dangerous time for our democracy if that were to happen. >> for those of us who don't remember what the last six months of his administration looked like up until january 6th, at least, what do you remember? what was going on then? >> i talk about this in my memoir. after impeachment in january 2020, that's when we started bringing real loyalists back into the administration. mark meadows came from capitol hill to be chief to have staff. he bringing johnny, rick from germany and he just forms a new consensus and these people then begin chipping way at i would say the competent people in the departments and agencies and come after department of homeland security came over dod eventually. it was around that time when as i recount in my book and i think we've talked before, he had conversations with me asking about can we shoot missiles into mexico. it was about deploying a quarter million troops to the border. eventually, it culminated. the long break between he and myself in june of 2020 when he wanted to deploy troops on the streets of washington, d.c. and that we shoot americans in the streets. it's hyper aggressive behavior and this willingness to flaunt norms and rules if you will. >> mark esper, thank you very much. coming up, tommy tuberville caves. what happened to get the senator to give up his military hold and what happened in virginia as a house exploded when police tried to issue a search warrant. first, the kingdom, the power, and the glory. what american evangelicals saw in donald trump and are they still seeing it for 2024? they are a vital voting block. tim alberta is here with his gripping new book. we are back in 60 seconds. gripping new book. we are back in 60 seconds. donald trump won 77% of evangelicals in 2016. in 2020, he won 84%. the enduring question is why a quote impenitant scoundrel could so handily enrapture what are supposed to be god fearing christians. tim alberta answers that question in the new book, the kingdom, the power, the glory. joining us now, author of the new book, tim, which is out today. the quote is your description of donald trump. what brought you to write this book because it's not just a book reporting about evangelicals. this is a personal book for you. >> yeah. so i grew up in the evangelical tradition. my dad was a pastor of a big evangelical church. that was my tribe. my community. those were my people. they still are my people. and you know, there was sort of this weird i don't know, conpartmentalization that i went through as i was getting older where i still love jesus. still walking with the lord, but increasingly feeling really uneasy and disillusioned with the state of the church. the institution of the church and the attitudes, behaviors, rhetoric. that was before trump came along. i always just kind of kept quiet about it and really in many ways, would almost reflexively defend those people because it's hard to you know, to feel like you're airing the dirty laundry of your family, right. but it just kept mounting and it just got to a point where i couldn't do it anymore. as i write in the book, obviously, it took something rather dramatic for me to reach that realization. >> you talk about your father's funeral and what happened at his viewing. i'm not going to give it away. it's sad. but it's very telling. i want to ask you why you think evangelicalism in the united states was such a fertile ground for somebody like donald trump to take hold. in 2016, he wasn't acted like a christian. he hasn't acted like that since then. he was calling his opponents names. he was lying. he was swearing. he was advocating violence. he's been twiced divorce. accused of cheating, et cetera. he got two corinthians wrong. clearly not a man who studied the faith. >> i think the simplest explanation is there's been an arc here, an evolution or maybe a devolution between trump and the white evangelical base. back in 2016, he was a last choice for a lot of these folks and it took a lot of persuading for him to bring them on board. he enlisted the likes of jerry fallwell jr. and franklin graham, mike huckabee. then added mike pence to the ticket. released the supreme court nominee list. all that was aimed at winning over the trust of and assuaging concerns of these evangelicals. a lot of them felt it was transactional. we give him our votes, he gives us policy. fast forward a number of years, it's different. the explanation for this cult like attachment to trump, this idea of an american kingdom that is ordained by god that we are somehow in covenant with the creator. that this is not just another nation, but this is a nation that is devinely blessed. it's hard for people outside the church to appreciate how many inside of the church have marinated in that rhetoric for decades and reached the belief that fighting for christian america is fighting for god. >> you go out and interview people and ask them what would jesus do. you ask them about stuff they're selling at rallies and how it doesn't align with the christian faith. you try to push people on their attachment to trump. is there anything surprising you found as you were compiling the interviews? >> one of the most discouraging things i enkournterred time and again was when i was press the leaders. the influencers. whether it's robert jeffries. ralph reed. greg lock. when you get these guys one-on-one and you really press them on specific things, specific believes, they'll sort of back off a little bit and even do a wink and a nod and kind of signal to you that like, yeah, i get you. it's been over to top. it's overkill. this guy, you know, it's not okay. but then they'll sort of justify it and say the ends here, the ends of preserving christian america justify the means of enlisting this uncouth, borish, you know, conspiracy spouting individual who is issuing these casual calls to violence and saying and doing things every day that are not christ like and yet, and yet, he fights for us. he's our champion. therefore, we can ignore the rest because the ends ultimately justify those means. >> you described it as when there are barbarians at the gate, you need a barbarian fighting for you. that's the way they see donald trump. let me ask you about 2024. we did a whole block about the warnings sounding about what a second donald trump presidency could look like and what it could mean for the institutions of this country and how far he would push it. some people belief it would be catastrophic, the end of democracy. where do evangelicals stand on donald trump in 2024? >> it's a complicated question with a complicated answer because the thing we have to appreciate is we're talking about tens of millions of voters. i would start by saying that a good chunk of those voters for generations have been singularly mobilized around the issue of abortion. what we don't perhaps appreciate you, i haven't seen a lot of reporting on this, this is going to be the first post roe v. wade presidential election and the question of abortion as a federal issue where supreme court nominations matter a great deal, that is now sort of depressurized. it's all happening at the state level. my point is that you could actually see a significant drop off in just raw turnout amongst some of these evangelicals. it's not to say his percentage, vote share will go down, i doubt it will. but in my reporting, i've come across a lot of these folks who have reached a place where they're exhausted with trump. they also can't entertain voting for joe biden for a host of reasons so they'll either vote third party or just sit the election out. >> why can't they? >> it's interesting. i just said abortion is depressurized as a federal issue but for many of these voters, they'll look at the idea of voting for any democrat immoral. something they cannot square with their conscious as it pertains to life. that's not even getting into other issues around transgender schools, the moral agenda. there are, we consider this spectrum of these tens of mil