we all know what happened that wednesday. joining me now, professor of law and political say lance, and one of the country s leading election experts, msnbc political contributor who s also a staff writer for the new yorker. as well as nicole home liu who focuses on conservative media. thank you all for joining us on this special show. rick, let me start with you. you ve been loud and clear on the threat to american democracy for sometime. a year on from january the 6th, how bad is it? how worried are you about this happening again, or worse? i think it was about a year ago i wrote a piece called, i ve never been more worried about american democracy. i m just much more worried. due to the reaction. the reaction has been either silence, or acquiescence. as donald trump has continued to convince millions of people
defense of democracy, rather than an attack. this is going to continue to develop into this divergent history of that day. the question is, how much do people who are in republican begin to buy in? particularly white americans. are they willing to say, you know, it actually wasn t that bad, we need to move on, we need to heal and unite as a country. that s the path that more americans truce, then i think we are in a pretty bad space. we re in a pretty bad space, and what s worrying is i want to look for signs of optimism but i m not seeing them. i appreciate all three of you coming on the show, tonight, to give us important perspectives. rick, jelani, nicole, appreciate your time. up next, as the world watched the deadly assault on the u.s. capitol, it seem like it might be a turning point. the republicans might finally say enough and stand up to
educate ourselves about some of that history. we can only hope. nicole, you ve been following conservative media. it s radicalization for many years. we talk about education and miseducation. did you ever imagine that conservative media would not only be able to create enough anger to cause an insurrection, but have the propaganda to create alternative realities about that insurrection, in the year since? well, certainly the development of propaganda has been part of what conservative media has been doing for decades. we have seen, if we look, back it is been growing in power, political power. steadily over the last couple decades. becoming more and more part of the republican party. i mean, was impossible to imagine right before the insurrection that something like this would happen? i think so. we had all of the pieces in place. what s more concerning, the propaganda effort that followed. we have all of those texts from people at fox news, who recognize in the moment that