your colleague, with some extraordinarily animated story telling about mitch mcconnell. i ve actually never read of him describing himself as exhilarated, but at the idea of trump s political implosion, which he predicted would be the outcome of january 6th, he described himself as exhilarated. that s right, nicole, and you know, thanks to josh dossi and the two reporters at the new york times, we know know ahead of when the january 6th committee holds its hearings in which we may learn some of the same material. now we re learning it in fresh realtime that immediately after january 6th s riot and the storming of the capitol, mitch mcconnell was elated, elated not about the riot. he actually was quite disgusted by the riot, as much reporting by all of us in washington revealed, but he was exhilarated that a president he had found impossible to deal with and was
something that all of us in the reality-based community understand and know, which is that everyone on january 6th believed that the rioters thought they were following trump s instructions and that trump could stop it, and that s why you have quarter after quarter from trump jr. to all of these people that were in trump s inner circle emailing the chief of staff, texting him and saying trump has got to do something. got to stop it and the like. and you know, the trump defense is, well, i didn t say the words kill or invade the capitol or something like that, which is a silly standard because basically, you know, if you re the president of the united states, everyone knows you have to avoid any sort of stray language that might in any way give aid, comfort, encouragement to acts of violence. trump did the reverse. he always comes creeping up to the line in order to do this, and you know, that s why these revelations, frankly, aren t surprising.
right now as we speak right now around disinformation. and while trump has said he s sticking with his own social media app, it s called truth social, his allies will no doubt make great use of the twitter platform, whether trump ultimately rejoins it or not. the fight over disinformation as trump s grip on his party strengthens and twitter gets ready to redefine the rules of a digital town square is where we start today. national post investigative reporter and an msnbc contributor, also joining us, neal katyal, former acting u.s. solicitor general, he is now a georgetown law professor, max boot s here, senior fellow with the council on foreign relations, a washington post columnist, and with me at the table, donny deutsch, friend of the show. i want to start with you, caroline.
foreknowledge of violence as a potential seems to involve all of them as co-conspirators, no? absolutely. i mean, there s no question that a substantial body of republicans was involved in a plot to overthrow the u.s. constitution to destroy our democracy, even to the extent of suggesting martial law, which marjorie taylor greene can t spill, but which she is in favor of or was in favor of at the time, and what is really appalling here, nicole, is that even though you have some of these fanatics in the republican party, the people who are actually running the gop on the hill, kevin mccarthy and mitch mcconnell, they are not fanatics. they are cynics and they are cowards. they understood how wrong this was, and they hoped secretly in their heart of hearts that trump would be discredited by his attempts to incite this insurrection. in fact, we know they had that they hoped that because kevin mccarthy was audio taped saying exactly that and the quotes from mitch mcconnell, but they re
presidential election and the brexit vote that same year gave silicon valley executives, u.s. elected officials, and the public a peek into what can go wrong when social media companies opt not to wade too deeply into what people say on their sites. russian propagandists amplified the views of deeply divided americans and britains, further polarizing the electorate. during trump s presidency, particularly in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic and then as trump and his supporters spread false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election, twitter, facebook, and youtube changed their tune about the role they play in fanning anger, lies, distortions, and division that left some people feeling exhausted and cynical about the world around them. and we should look no further than the elation on the right and the panic on the left to see where the fault lines exist