Thank you. Thank you very much. It is great to be here in our friday night studio here in 30 rock. Its been a week of watching hurricane tear through the atlantic and watching the president lose his mind. Both of which have had big consequences. The devastations in the bahamas is truly horrifying. Well talk about that in just a little bit. Right now thankfully the storm seems to be pulling away from the u. S. East coast and go back out to sea. For most parts of United States we have been fairly lucky to miss the worst of what could have been. Perhaps no place was more lucky than alabama. [ laughter ]. Which was lucky. [ cheers and applause ]. Alabama said, no, no effects for the hurricane, none, because it never came any close to alabama. No one thought it ever would really, except the president of the United States. Who to this very day, mine like an hour ago, is still trying to convince everyone that when he said on sunday that alabama was going to get, quote, hit much harder than anticipated, that that was actually true. It wasnt true. The National Weather service said it wasnt true. Everybody knows it wasnt true. So then so then the president of the United States brings out a sixday old chart that has clearly been altered by a sharpie by someone, both bloomberg and the Washington Post report that trump drew the sharpie. Because of course he did. Who else would do that . It led to this bout of like, you know, like laugh to keep from crying humor. Thats very familiar to us in this era. Like, oh, ahha. Oh. The hashtag trump sharpie on twitter. This accurate image of trump golfing. [ laughter ]. These are new polling numbers that are just out. They look pretty good for the president. Is that the president s inaugural crowd size. You want to take a look at that. Also his hand size, which hes fixated on. And my personal favorite, i am americas first centor president. Thats me. Its ludacris. What do you do . You just laugh. Hes drawing with sharpies, but there really is a hurricane. The stakes of that are really important, but the situation in the oval office is absurd. Manifestly. The thing is were not alone. One place in the world extremely high stakes and complete absurdity includes the own, our close ally across the pond the united kingdom. There somehow the politics are even more bizarre than ours. This looked like the british version of an american tv show this week. Vice president mike pence was treated to what must be a very familiar experience which is having to sit next to a wildhaired world leader prading on meat products. Seriously look. Is it still the case that you know United States of america, the people of United States of america dont eat any british lamb or beef at all hagis . Its true. We dont eat a lot of hagis. Uk is having essentially a full scale societywide political nervous breakdown. Its a really crazy thing to watch, particularly because its a little like looking into our own future. Do you remember back in june of the 2016, the people of the united kingdom, they came together in a referendum and voted to leave the european union, to brexit. And im going to be totally clear with you about this. I do this for a living. Ive been reading about it. Ive been studying, and i remain completely baffle about what the hell is happening over there. Completely. All i know is that its like when a machine starts to break down and you start to smell the smoke before it explodes and thats what the entire uk governmental system is like right now. Boris johnson, of course, is the new Prime Minister, but he doesnt control anything. This week a guy from his conservative party literally walked across the aisle to leave the conservative party and take away johnsons majority from him. Right . [ cheers and applause ]. And johnsons hold on parliament collapsed. He has now lost three votes in a row. And amidst this chaos this guy who looks like someone drew him in a cartoon of the british to have decided to just lay down while everyone debated the fate of the nation. Theres people yelling at him to sit up and show some respect. People are yelling at each other all over the place, even more than usual. And no one knows whats going to happen. Literally no one knows. Its possible it is not the most likely scenario its generally a possibility that britain will dump out of the eu and will not have toilet paper, pharmaceuticals or bananas. Full out self imposed, self created nationwide catastrophe like the kinds that you would expect during war or in the aftermath of a Natural Disaster except theres no war and theres no Natural Disaster. They just decided to do this to themselves. That is what were watching. And thats why i cant keep my eyes off of it because i feel like im looking into our future. When brexit happened in summer 2016, we were all watching the Trump Campaign at the time and a lot of people were like, well, this is nuts and maybe entertaining but the guy is not going to be president of the United States. And then brexit happened. It was like, oh, oh. Oh, its completely possible. Its totally possible for democracy to just come together and collectively decide to do something insane. Thats a total possibility. And there are like a million headlines after the brexit vote. What does brexit mean for trump . Is trump americas surprise . And trump himself, who knew nothing about brexit a few days before brexit, started telling everyone like theyre calling me mr. Brexit. What does that even mean . And then he won in november, maybe you remember that. And ever since i feel like every time you look across the pond you are looking into our tone terrifyingly depraved near future. And as crazy and dysfunctional as our politics are, somehow they do seem even crazier over there. I think theres a reason for that. They dont really have a way out over there. Think about this, so theyre on a kind of collision course in the uk between direct democracy and Representative Democracy. Right . The country voted a marjority vote in a referendum to do a thing that is a terble idea. And if they do the thing thats a terrible idea, then they are keeping faith with that vote, with direct democracy, but the representatives of the country think its a godawful idea. And if they manage to stop it, Representative Democracy win but what the heck did you do about that vote . Why did you go ahead with this big ref ren zmum what does that mean if you get a do over, right . Theyre trapped. If someone could pull the emergency brake they would. In fact, thats what the people who are abandoning the conservative party, walking across lines thats what theyre trying to do. Parliament has been around a long time, but it has faced this set of circumstances never. And it has to craft an emergency brake out of nothing in the midst of the speeding train and theyre watching the train hurdle towards impact which is some deadline where theyre no longer in the eu. They dont have a constitution over there. Its a little weird. Its sort of works for them. They have traditions. And people are testing all those traditions. Like some are so desperate now that the queen is somehow going to save them. Queen her majesty will fix it. Were a perfectly functioning democracy. Please. So over here we have a similar situation in some ways with a big advantage which is that we have emergency brakes on the train. We know democracies can come together and collectively select bad, bad ideas. Theyre capable of doing that. [ laughter ]. In our defense, in our defense, the bad idea, donald trump, was not democratically selected in the strictest sense, right . I was talking about the Electoral College last week. He did lose by 3 million votes. He was no a majority vote. [ applause ]. He was also the subject of two different criminal conspiracies to sabotage his opponent that we know of. All right. Always good to keep that in mind. Both the uk and the u. S. Developed democracies, landed in a situation where they have currently on a terrifying track and theyre trying to figure out how to stop the train and reverse course and britain is trying to figure out how to do it right now but we can do that. We can wait until the next election and hope the train doesnt crash by then. One option, but the constitution does provide two emergency brakes to pull before the next station. Like, in the constitution, they thought of this. If you made a terrible mistake and ended up with the most powerful person in the country and world was a criminal and abusing his office and committing misdemeanors hypically theres a mechanism to remove him. Years later, we passed another amendment, we ratified one to deal with the president who is not fit for office. Like, okay, lets just say hypothesi hypothesizing. What if donald trump lost his mind, no, what if he had a psychotic break in front of all of us and what if for the next 12 months all he talked about was alabama. Seriously. Play out the thought experiment. Okay. Days go by and every question at every press conference, every official address, at every event he does, every tweet is just about that it was going to hit alabama. At a certain point i think we would have to remove the guy, right . Like if he had a brake. I dont know how long it would take, but we would just, i think, come together as a country at some point, two months, six months, eight months of him still talking about alabama, but we have to take the presidency away from him. [ applause ]. You dont have to applaud that. Thats grim. So aside from a piece theres a 25th amendment and if hes deemed unfit and lucky now have have a consensus of his cabinet and republican party, we could theoretically avoid the disaster that the uk is heading towards because we do have an out. We do have an out. The question is do we have the political will to take the out . Look over across the pond at those mps who have abandoned johnson. Right . [ applause ]. Including, including Boris Johnsons own brother who is named joe johnson, which is perfect. And is like, i cant. I cant. Im leaving. Im out. I cannot be with my own flesh and blood. Im going to betray him to save the country and work on the emergency brake. [ applause ]. And if we had that attitude here, we could do it. We have an out. We are actually in a better position than they are. We dont have a deadline ahead of us where the country will have disastrous, enormous change that will happen. We dont have to fashion the emergency brake out of tradition. Weve got a system in front of us. It has been used before. It has been front of the nation and the question is, whether we have the people that have the courage right now to take the out. [ cheers and applause ]. Joining me now columnist of the intercept, first person to appear in all in live. How are you . Good. Confused. You and i had a good on going discussion about this parallels between brexit and the trump and the u. S. And one of the things that has been up until now in the case the tory standing by essentially this line. It broke this week. What is the significance of that happening this week . Oh, theres so much significan significance, chris. You el looquently explained in r introduction. The craziness in britain is beyond disbelief. Were in six days of sharpie gate. Every time you think american politics couldnt get worse uk says hold my beer. I say this to you, youre right to say that the americans have a get out and the u. S. Constitution provides get outs and its true, donald trump is for the next five years max, brexit is forever which what makes this whole october 31st cutoff such a big deal. Theres no going back. What you mentioned at the end, 21 conservative mps helped a Prime Minister lose their first ever vote since 1894. 21 senior mps abandoned him. His own brother abandoned him. Can you imagine happening can you imagine that happening in this city . Can you imagine 21 House Republicans voting against donald trump . Can you imagine ivanka trump quitting the white house in disgust . No, you cannot. Right. And theres the other part this makes this tricky in both places, right, i think for you and i view this clearly as a disaster both in terms of brexit and trump, but theres many of our fellow citizens on both sides of the atlantic who dont. In the case of the uk and here, like if you impeach donald trump, millions of people would see it as illegitimate, see you as robbing and trying to undo an election he won and fair square and uk there was a majority of people. People did come out and vote for this thing and that seems like it has to loom large for everyone figuring out what to do over there. Yes. Thats part of the problem. Even people opposed to brexit recognize theres a real democratic challenge on both sides. Parliament is supposed to be sovereign in the uk. Boris johnson is suspending Parliament Next Week for five weeks which has never been done before on that length of time to avoid these parliamentary debates. He said tonight in fact uk he was asked will you follow this law that was just passed in parliament to prevent a no deal brexit and he said he wont. He said its in theory. The Prime Minister of uk says he will defy the law. Who does that sound like . A president who said he would defy subpoenas. This is about democracy and the rule of law fundamentally. Unfortunately we unleashed on both sides of the atlantic these forces of populism, nationalism, ill liberalism and, yes, racism on both sides of the atlantic driving trump and brexit. How do you put those forces back in the bottle . Thats why things will only get worse on both sides before they get better. Theres one other big difference here and i think about this a lot which is you over there keep having deadlines. We have to do this or were dumping out of the european union. Here that doesnt exist. Theres not the sense of the ticking time bomb in the background. Every day we all wake up and roll the dice that theres not some huge catastrophe. It doesnt result in some genuinely generational horrible happening in the moment and i wonder sometimes if that makes us more complacent here than in the uk where everyone sees it coming . Yes. And i think thats definitely the case in terms of as i said, brexit is forever. So theres no undoing it. I think there is a sense come november 2020 americans will make things right and get rid of donald trump in an election. And of course the bigger issue is number one will he lose and number two, if he loses will he go . This is a man who wont accept a weather forecast. Do you think hes going to accept the election result . Thats a great point. Mehdi hasan, thank you for making time. Thank you. Dont go anywhere. Were talking climate with bill nye the science guy coming up next. [ cheers and applause ]. The weathers perfect. Family is all together and we switched to geico; saved money on our boat insurance. How could it get any better than this . Dad, i just caught a goldfish theres no goldfish in this lake. Whoa its pure gold. Were gonna be rich. Were gonna be rich it only gets better when you switch and save with geico. Sleep number 360 smart bed. St sale of the year on a can it help keep us asleep . Yes, it senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. Save 40 on the sleep number 360 limited Edition Smart bed. Plus 0 interest for 24months on all beds. Ends sunday. Now, theres skyrizi. I have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. 3 out of 4 people achieved. 90 clearer skin at 4 months. After just 2 doses. Skyrizi may increase your risk of infections. And lower your ability to fight them. Before treatment your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection. Or symptoms such as fevers,. Sweats, chills, muscle aches or coughs. Or if you plan to or recently received a vaccine. I feel free to bare my skin. Visit skyrizi. Com. [ cheers and applause ]. Were getting more accounts of what happened in the bahamas. There are 30 people that are confirmed dead. The Health Minister said, quote, the public needs to prepare for unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering. He warned of a staggering final count. Theyve been barely able to even search for the hundreds who are still unaccounted for. The destruction in the bahamas is a reminder of one of the central facts of the era of climate crisis, which is that it will hit with unequal force. It will affect everyone, but the places that are expected most exposed to climate impact, like caribbean islands, for instance, places that are poor, are going to experience catastrophe, and we need to think about what that means for all of us who share this planet. For that im joined by the host of the podcast science rules, bill nye the science guy. [ applause ] bill, obviously obviously hurricanes have been decimating the caribbean in the gulf of mexico for years. We have Historical Records of these things happening. What do we what is the science say, and what do we know about the ways in which climate affects these sort of extreme events . Well, people are continually trying to connect each extreme event with Climate Change computer models. But its quite difficult to do. But this we can say. Its how much bigger is a given hurricane now than it would have been before human caused Climate Change. So there is all this trouble now with not only the size of hurricanes, but how the winds aloft affect how fast they move. And as has been pointed out by many people over the last few days, its not the category number that matters. Its just how much rain does it dump for how long. Right. Along with the wind. In the good old days, there was not very much infrastructure in the bahamas or other caribbean islands because fewer people lived there a century ago. But now electrification and the ways of the developed world are making their way into these areas. So when everything is torn up, its a mess. So the people who live there, of course, its very troublesome. But thats just one example of other places around the world that are going to be affected even more strongly, where they have less ability to travel and change their way of life, and so on. This is a very serious problem. The poor people are going to be affected the most. But look, were all in this together. You know, new york, boston, parts of nova scotia are being affected by dorian. This is a big old storm, everybody. And there is also the ways in whic