it through enforcement, professor american history at yale university, and steven levitskiy is a professor of history at harvard university. two days before judge michael luttig got a phone call that may have changed the course of history for this nation. then, a capitol police officer who risked his life on january six is hoping to serve his country to different way, this time as an elected official. plus i will talk to california colorado secretary of state janet griswold on the heels of the decision to see whether trump is eligible to be on the stage primary ballot. another hour of velshi starts right now. good morning, it s saturday december the six. i m ali velshi. it s been three years since that mob attacked the united states capitol as part of donald trump s desperate attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 presidential election. that attack lasted only a few hours, but the long shadow of the violent insurrection continues to loom large over american dem
Kayla tausche at the white house. And this is cnn its friday, may 3, right now on cnn this morning, secret tapes, extortion claims, and one blatant lie. Its all in a days work in one day at Donald Trumps Hush Money Trial President Biden paving the way for thousands of dreamers to receive obamacare benefits. And a massive tornado strikes Central Texas with damage and some injuries reported ahead. Well have the latest details and the forecast as more severe storms could be on the way 6 00 a. M. Here in washington. Heres a live look at New York City and some man look at that beautiful sunrise. Love it. Great way to start the weekend. Good morning, everyone. Im kasie hunt. Its great To Be With You sex lies and donald trump on audio tape as the first ever criminal trial of a former president continued for another sorted day, the jury appearing to hanging on every word as that they heard a call between trump and his then lawyer, Michael Cohen that cohen had secretly recorded heres the tape n
fundamentally disagree that there should be some carve out in the constitution for the president. donald trump should not be above the law, above the constitution. a president should not have that type of power. it would set an extremely dangerous precedent to say that a president can break whatever law reconstitution prison that they want to as president. that is what would really lead us to a downward spiral and a degrading of democracy like we ve never seen before in this country. in the last hour, i spoke with a colleague from maine, secretary of state janet pelosi concluded that section three and four of the 14th amendment is self executing, meaning that a criminal prosecution is not necessary in this case to determine whether donald trump is disqualified. however, as you just pointed out, there was not a criminal prosecution in this case, but there was a process, a very robust process, in colorado and in maine that determined that donald trump engaged in insurrection. so we are
and i think it s really important to note that we re not the world s oldest democracy. we re a very young democracy. we went to democracy until the voting rights act. black americans were not allowed to vote in much of the country. so, we weren t at all a democracy. that s important. why is that important? because when authoritarianism threatens the practices of the past return. and that s what we re seeing. with the attacks on schools and the attacks on universities, we re seeing a push to erase history. to replace actual history with a narrative of the dominant group. we re seeing attacks on voting rights, a return of jim crow, similar return of jim crow type practices. people returning to the authoritarian practices of the past, and that s what we re seeing in the united states. we re seeing a return to mccarthyism. we re seeing a very clear return to mccarthyism. we re seeing, for essentially calls for a house of un-american activities.
think. there s a great freeze that a professor at princeton who studies hungry uses. which is authoritarian legal -ism. which means that the law is being used, not as a tool of the rule of law, or a tool of democracy, for even ensuring quality, but twisted in a very subtle and almost imperceptible ways. to change the functioning of democracy itself. so, when you look at some of the detailed stuff that you ve seen coming out for trump s second term, if he does in fact when, things like replacing large chunks of the federal bureaucracy. to a lot of, people that doesn t resonate. oh, chasing staff. who cares. but actually that matters a great deal. because those people determine, in very little ways, what the law means. they re the ones implementing it. so if trump is changing over a huge chunk of the department of justice staff, replacing long term salaried professionals with political cronies, all of a sudden, the law can be abused as a tool of going after s