the humanitarian crisis worsens in gaza as the united states urges israel to do more to limit civilian casualties, but blocks a u.n. cease-fire resolution. former nbc news correspondent, martin fletcher, is here to discuss the latest in the israel hamas war. and courtroom clash. special counsel jack smith wins a key victory in special election case against donald trump, spelling out the evidence he plans to use against the twice impeached four times indicted on 91 counts, disgraced, former president. i am jonathan capehart. this is the saturday show. with the iowa caucus is less than six weeks away, donald trump leading in the polls, alarm bells of another trump term and its implications for american democracy are growing louder. this week at the new imes issued this morning. a second trump presidency may be more radical than the last one. noting that the forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term would, quote, all be weaker. a new special issu
professor barbara f walter the author of how civil wars start and steven marsh, the author of the next civil war. both of these books refer to the 30 years of sporadic violence in northern ireland in the second half of the 20th century. and imagining what a 21st century american civil war might look like. our next guest, o toole, reviewed both books in an essay that begins this way. in january of 1972, when i was a 13 year old boy and dublin, my father came home from work and told us to prepare for civil war. he was not a bloodthirsty zealot, nor was he given to hysterical outbursts. he was calm and rueful, but also grimly certain. civil war was coming to ireland, whether we wanted it or not. he and my brother, who was 16, and i, when i got older, would all be up in northern ireland, with guns, fighting for the catholics against the protestants. what made him so sure of our
saying that america is set for a civil war, it seems to me it misses the point that a lot of the stuff has been around for a long time. but also misses the point that actually thinking about the imaginary future can distract you from thinking about some of the stuff that is staring you right in the face right now, which is insurrection. and how you deal with it. there has been some political science analysis brought to this, including a score that professor walter users in her book about ranking democracies. i find it odd that he was the united states ever could have had a perfect score as a democracy, given that it has the united states senate, which is a fundamentally anti democratic creation, with two senators per state, but okay. let s pretend it was once a perfect democracy and it has descended. that creates the notion that the united states is now descending from perfect