'The end of politics': Donald Trump makes offer of simplicity to voters 42:41

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Good evening from Manchester, New Hampshire. I'm Jen Psaki, and I know you are used to seeing Rachel Maddow at this hour on Mondays. Me too. Believe me, I'm usually watching her in my office after my show. Rachel is a little under the weather tonight, and she is resting her voice so she can lead our big all-night special coverage of the New Hampshire primary tomorrow. And I know that's what we're all looking forward to seeing her for. But don't worry, we will be hearing from Rachel in just a few minutes. And we have...

Overall, so much to get to tonight. We're less than 24 hours from the polls closing here in New Hampshire. We're here in New Hampshire doing our show from New Hampshire. And the last remaining challenger to Donald Trump is trying to pull off what would be a surprise win tomorrow in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Or at least to finish close enough to stay in the race, which may actually be the bar.

A day away from the vote, Nikki Haley is trying to prevent the New Hampshire primary tomorrow from being essentially the end of that race. Because unless something truly shocking happens tomorrow, and hey, shocking things do happen in politics, Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. And he's going to be the nominee because he has broad support among Republicans alike.

in the country, all across the country. He now has broad support even among communities that once seemed least likely to support him. For instance, if you look back to 2016, Trump, a twice-divorced, womanizing, casino-owning candidate with a long history of being pro-choice, just to name a few things, did terribly among Iowa's evangelical Christian voters, terribly. But in last week's Iowa caucuses, just a week ago, they pretty much lined up behind him.

And in the states after New Hampshire, there's every indication at this point that not just the evangelical community, but a range of groups that logic would tell you would not support Trump are doing just that. The political terrain of the Republican nominating process after New Hampshire is quite Trump friendly.

But New Hampshire is supposed to be different. Here in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley is taking the traditional approach, holding rallies and personally glad-handing voters in small venues across the state. That's what candidates normally do. Well, Donald Trump is pretty much just acting like the inevitable winner. And he is definitely not taking the traditional approach to campaigning at all. He's not hitting up New Hampshire diners. He's not holding babies the way Nikki Haley is, though maybe that's for the best for those babies.

Instead, he's been spending time in a New York courtroom. That's part of his strategy. Attending hearings about how much money he'll have to pay in a defamation suit from the writer E. Jean Carroll. This is on top of the millions a jury already ordered him to pay for sexually abusing and defaming her.

So, to be clear, Trump does not have to be in court for this at all. He's not required to be. He is choosing to be there. He's choosing to be there and to make enough of a spectacle of himself that the judge has threatened to throw Trump out of the courtroom. Apparently, Trump believes that is the best way for him to campaign for his party's presidential nomination. That's his strategy.

With federal and state criminal cases ahead of him, Trump is also making a point of telling voters that he believes presidents should have total immunity from prosecution, even if they commit crimes, even if they, quote, cross the line. His words, not mine. And when Trump did come to New Hampshire for a rally this weekend, he did not give the traditional here's my plan for New Hampshire's economy kind of speech or that candidates usually do. No, Trump's campaign message was, wait for it, this is a good one, aren't forceful

Aren't foreign dictators great? There's a great man, a great leader in Europe, Viktor Orban. He's the he's the prime minister of Hungary. He's a very great leader, very strong man. Some people don't like him because he's too strong. It's nice to have a strong man running your country.

It's nice to have a strong man running your country. Most bidding prognosticators would not have had Victor Orban on their Republican closing argument stump speech bingo card. But this is Donald Trump's closing argument in what may be the last seriously contested primary of his march to the nomination. He's not asking anyone in New Hampshire to vote for him despite his belief that he should exist outside the law and that the United States should be run more like a dictatorship.

Rather, he's asking New Hampshire voters to cast their ballots for him because of those things. That's his strategy. That is his message. And you may not like it. I understand. Believe me. But clearly, a lot of people do like it. Even in New Hampshire, the state where Donald Trump is getting his worst polling numbers of any Republican primary. The state famously full of independent voters who like to buck convention. It's the live free or die state after all.

So they like to keep things interesting. And New Hampshire is a state where Nikki Haley has been seen as having a chance of beating him.

But Donald Trump is still winning, even here. The latest New Hampshire tracking poll out today has him up 19 points. This is where he's doing the worst, I think it's worth repeating. So we can't shut our eyes to the fact that what Donald Trump is pitching to voters, it's very, very appealing to a lot of Americans. And if we're going to protect American democracy, we'd better understand why.

Joining me now, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history at NYU. She's also the author of Strong Men, a very apt title for our conversation, Mussolini to the President. And Tim Miller, writer at large for The Bulwark and an MSNBC political analyst. Tim, let's start with you, because the politics of this, I know we've all been talking about this and covering this for a long time, but it still is a little perplexing. I mean, Donald Trump is here in New Hampshire. He's praising Viktor Orban, the autocratic prime minister of Hungary.

How does this work for him politically in this state or any state? Why does it work? Yeah, I can understand how it would be perplexing to some folks who have not steeped themselves in what the Republican base wants. But the Republican base was looking for somebody that is going to try to combat their enemies. And that was the big line about Donald Trump way back in 2016. It was, but he fights. But these other guys on stage don't fight the left.

The liberals, the immigrants, the gay teachers, whoever the enemy of the day is. Donald Trump will fight them in a way that they won't. And I was struck, kind of listening to your interview with Chris Sununu in the previous hour. I'm happy that he's willing to do that. That showed him a level of courage. Obviously, you weren't going to give him a softball interview. But even still, his arguments against Trump didn't seem strong.

It didn't seem like they were coming from a position of strength. It was a little bit weaselly, right? It's a little bit, it's a bank shot, maybe is a better word, right? Maybe his arguments are like, well, Donald Trump might hurt other candidates or Donald Trump's a little uncouth. It's, you know, his...

within the primary have not attacked him with strength. And that has allowed this to fester and congeal for him to gain more and more power. And so I think that he's positioning himself as the alpha within their party. The voters are looking for an alpha. And I think that explains why it's working in the Republican primary. Obviously, I think the general election will be a different animal.

I mean, alpha is another word for strongman, I think, which Trump just said at this rally this weekend that he wouldn't be nice to have strongman leaders. Ruth, you are an expert on a lot of things, including strongmen, title of your book. Talk to us a little bit about why that is appealing to him, but also what that means as it relates to, say, Viktor Orban and leaders in countries like Hungary.

Yeah, so he's been Trump has been conditioning Americans, educating Americans to want that kind of leadership. And what he's doing is by talking about, you know, being a bad cop or bad apple or rogue cop, he's asking them to accept anything that he will do. And what, of course, what he's most interested in is that he's talking about it a lot is getting, you know, avoiding jail, right?

All strongmen are corrupt and authoritarianism in its essence is a system where the executive is able to domesticate the judiciary, etc., and be able to commit crime without paying any consequence.

And the leaders who he's holding up, it's disgraceful that he's holding up as responsible leaders, Putin and Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping. These are people who depend on violence and corruption and lying to their people to stay in power. But that's very self-serving of Trump. He's interested in the absolute power they have and their ability to never be prosecuted.

Tim, I have a hard time thinking that most New Hampshire voters or people who support Trump understand what it would be like to live under an authoritarian leader. It's not as literal as that, I think it's fair to say. But what do you think politically? You know, you're on the sidelines, you're covering this now, but you've worked on presidential campaigns. What is the best political pushback here? Is there something, let's say, Nikki Haley should have been doing over the last couple of weeks to better push back on this argument? Yeah.

Well, sure. I think that the attacks against Donald Trump could have been more forceful and straight on. And this is what I was saying about Sununu, about others who have criticized him, about DeSantis, not just Sununu, it's everybody, right?

Donald Trump is attacking his opponents aggressively, positioning himself as the attack dog, as the representative of the people. You know, he's calling names, like Nikki Haley Birdbrain. He's saying that she's a corporatist. She wants to go back to the old Republican Party people didn't like. If your response to that is, well,

well, you know, chaos follows Donald Trump like a bad smell, or you're such that as well, rightly or wrongly, Donald Trump did some bad things, right? You're feeding into his argument that he's strong, you're weak, right? And so I don't think that they needed to sound like MSNBC. They don't need to sound like me, you know, and rail against Donald Trump about every single thing and fear for democracy. But they did need to pick one or two things that worked with voters and say, well,

this guy is a loser. This guy didn't build the wall he promised you. You know, this guy is stealing your money to pay for his legal bills. He doesn't care about you. I do. Right. Whatever it is, pick a couple of those things and go at him with purpose and with aggression. Nobody did that. Would that have worked? It's unclear. We may just be in a party that is a cult of personality, but I think it would have at least had them in the game. And Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have never really even been in the game.

Ruth, every situation is different in every country, of course, as you well know and cover and are an expert on. Over the weekend in Germany, tens of thousands of people came out to protest far-right extremism. What do you think? Is there anything we can take away from that, from these mass demonstrations and reflect on as we look to what's happening in the United States now?

Yeah, I'm glad you asked that because we also had the recently in the fall, the example of Poland, where they had, you know, many years of far right leadership and they had practically no abortion rights left.

And they organized unity is very important. So these are multi-party systems, but they had a coalition and they also had optimistic heart centered messaging. Literally, they had a march of a million hearts. And these mass demonstrations are very important because it's a numbers game. You know, the far right is always the tyranny of the minority.

And they're very loud, very scary. They intimidate. They stage coups like January 6th. And and yet they're not the will of the people. And so mass demonstrations show other people that there are people who feel similarly to they do that they don't really like. They don't really want authoritarian rule, especially a place like Germany or also Poland. Poland had it was, you know, occupied in the Nazis. It had a communist dictatorship there.

So these are places that know the stakes. And the problem in America is that too many people don't have any idea of what the stakes could be, what it's going to be like to have an authoritarian state. And Donald Trump's telling you very clearly what he wants to do. And this is what authoritarians often do. They tell us what they're going to do and who they are. And we don't listen to them or take them seriously until it's too late.

What wise words to end our conversation on. If people are telling you who they are, you should listen to them. And Donald Trump is certainly telling us who he is and what he wants to do with another term. Ruth Benghia, Tim Miller, thank you both for a really fascinating conversation. Coming up next, we'll be joined live by the person who's usually in the chair this hour, my colleague Rachel Maddow. We'll let her use her voice just for a few minutes so she can save it for tomorrow. We'll get her thoughts on what we just heard and what she's looking for tomorrow night.

Plus he's branded them losers and delighted in mocking them on the campaign trail. Yet Republicans continue to fall in line behind Donald Trump. Why are they closing rank behind the former president so quickly this time around? What happened? And later, a brazen attempt at voter suppression ahead of tomorrow's New Hampshire primary. Is it a dangerous sign, a reminder of what's to come as we head toward the general election? We're going to talk about that as well a little later on. We're back after this. Stay with us.

There's a great man, a great leader in Europe, Viktor Orban. He's the he's the prime minister of Hungary. He's a very great leader, very strong man. Some people don't like him because he's too strong.

It's nice to have a strong man running your country.

Greetings from New Hampshire, where the Republican frontrunner would like to talk about kitchen table issues like the strongman in charge of Hungary. Very obvious closing message there. And making American presidents immune from criminal prosecution, which would come in handy for Donald Trump. So, no, this is not your usual New Hampshire primary eve. We're looking at that tomorrow. Joining us now is the usual host of the 9 p.m. hour. I know you've been missing her already. And the author of prequel, A Fight Against American Fascism, a terrific book.

about World War II era history. My friend and colleague, Rachel Maddow. We are not going to make you use your voice too much, but thank you so much for talking with us this evening. So Rachel, let me start there. I've been sort of saying tongue in cheek that this is his closing message, talking about that this is Trump's closing message, talking about Victor Orban as he's campaigning a little bit here in New Hampshire.

But you've studied authoritarians quite a bit. You've talked about them quite a bit. You've educated all of us quite a bit on it. Is this really about winning votes in the New Hampshire primary? Well, first of all, Jen, I apologize for my voice. And I'm grateful for you having me here. I am trying to hold it together health wise so that I can have a voice for tomorrow night's coverage because I'm so excited to be part of that. But that's why I sound like a mess right now.

On the Viktor Orban thing, listen, I think that there's a very simple reason that Trump is making that the closing argument in what may be the last...

contested primary. And it's because that's really what he's offering. I mean, this is the special sauce. Donald Trump is not leading the Republican Party and leading the Republican field of candidates because of his youthful vigor or because of his policy preferences or because of his eloquence, right? None of that is going on. What he's offering is what he both

sort of inherently offers and now more and more explicitly offers, which is if you pick me, that'll be the end of politics and you won't have to deal with politics anymore. You won't have to deal with contested elections. You won't have to deal with contests or divisions when it comes to power. You'll have a strong man leader and I'll just do what I want. And won't that be a lot simpler? Um,

That's what he's offering. That strongman model is what the Republican base is enthused about. And that is something that sets him apart from every other Republican candidate. And I think that we're naive to think that he's tricking people into picking him and then surprise.

He's going to act like a dictator. What he's offering is strongman leadership, the end of politics, the end of elections, the end or the sidelining or domesticating, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat says, of the judiciary and the Congress. He'll be the man in charge and he'll get it done. And that's what he's selling. And that's what they are very eager to buy.

It seems very much like that. I do think of him as a marathoning orator, but, you know, everybody has a different view on Trump and his and his strengths. But, Rachel, the question that I sometimes think about, I know you've talked about a fair amount, is how did we get here? I mean, how did we get to this stage where you have...

This person who has such a control over a political party, but even beyond the politics of it, where that appeal of the strongman argument, this worship of dictators is so appealing to such a large swath of the country. I mean, I think there's ways. Well, first of all, we should be humble about it and recognize that there aren't very many 250 year old democracies in the world.

And democracy is hard. And most of the world is governed under authoritarian governance. And there's nothing magic about the American populace that makes us immune to the promises of strongman leadership. I mean, that's part of why I've done some of the history stuff that I've done, like in prequel talking about the lead up to World War Two to talk about how susceptible Americans were to the same kind of authoritarian messages that were working on the population in Germany and that were

working on the population in Italy and that we're working on the population in Spain. I mean, I know it's a cliche to note it, but Hitler was elected, right? I mean, Mussolini didn't have to literally march on Rome. It was a figurative thing because he was installed as the heart of the government. And so...

These messages, excuse me, they have appeal. And there's ways that you can drive a populace toward them. You can denigrate the government. You can say that government itself is the problem. You can make it so the legislative branch never works and is seen as an object of ridicule, pity, and hostility rather than as one of our three branches of government.

You can challenge the rule of law and say that judges are all biased against people like you and that the legal system doesn't work for people like us and that we should denigrate the courts and the law and the legal system in a way that falls down along partisan or identitarian lines. I mean, all of those things help. Flirting with the kinds of conspiracy theories that make people look to

mythical fantasies for solving their problems instead of actual government work. That helps. Flirting with paramilitary violence, where you bring violence into the political sphere and people are too intimidated. Normal people are too intimidated to engage in normal political behavior. All of that helps. All of that sort of shunts a populace toward authoritarian messaging as the only solution, as the only thing that'll work.

What I mean, that was dark and real and honest and authentic, just like you are about these issues. What are there other lessons from history about what might work or what is effective pushback? I mean, I'm thinking, you know, we talked earlier in the show about the protests in Germany. What works? What can be done in this country to push back on this movement?

I mean, the history works, I think, on a couple of different levels. It's interesting to me watching those protests in Germany this weekend. A couple of things about that struck me. One is the reason those huge crowds, I mean, more than a million people, like a million and a half people turned out in Germany, crowds so big in some places, the crowds were so much larger than the permitted marches, the police had to shut them down for security reasons. The reason people came out in Germany is because of reporting from a secret meeting

where the far-right party in Germany, which is polling very strongly in Germany right now, had secretly discussed mass deportations of migrants in Germany. Millions of people all deported all at once. And it was exposed in sort of bombshell investigative reporting. But, you know, I mean, that's what Trump and Stephen Miller are

are offering openly. And maybe people aren't out in the streets for it because it wasn't bombshell reporting. They just said that that's what they wanted to do. But that policy...

that the far-right AFD party is working on in Germany is exactly what Trump and Stephen Miller are talking about doing here as soon as Trump is put back in office. I mean, they're literally talking about putting millions of people in camps in the United States. A revelation like that in Germany got Germans out by the hundreds of thousands and more than a million over the weekend saying, "This is Nazi stuff. We can never see this come back in the civilized world."

Whereas we've just absorbed it, that it's something that Trump is going to do. So...

It operates that way. But then there's also what those crowds are asking for. They're asking for the German courts to ban AFD, to ban that party as an anti-democratic party. And Germany does have some history with that. In the post-war years, 1952, they banned parties that wanted to use the democratic process to come back in and dismantle democracy. They haven't done it since then, but they're ready to do it now with this iteration of the far right.

And we're obviously considering that with potential insurrectionists being back on the ballot in multiple states.

Very much running for office. History repeats itself, as you often remind us. But also there's kind of history or live things happening around the world that are important for us to also watch. Now, finally, we have to let you rest your voice, Rachel. I know you could talk about this all night, but what is your what are you doing for yourself? Do we need to send you chamomile, lemon, ginger, echinacea? We'll deliver it to you. Everybody needs you leading the coverage tomorrow night.

I am a such, I mean, I just have the thing that everybody else has, you know, like I had COVID for the first time ever in October. And then it took me like a long time to get over it. And I like had some other things. Now I've just got this, this cold that it seems like everybody, at least on the East Coast has. And I'm a terrible patient. I've got like my daytime goo and my nighttime goo. And then like, I just sleep and drink tea and it never gets better. But yeah, if anybody out there has the secret sauce, I'll take it. But in the meantime, I'm just trying to rest up.

That's what you heard her. If you have secret sauce for her, we're going to collect it and we're going to give it to her so she can be here leading the coverage tomorrow night. Rachel Maddow, thank you as always. I hope you feel better and take care of yourself tonight. Looking forward to seeing you for our primary coverage tomorrow night. And still ahead, at this point in the 2016 race, Donald Trump still didn't have a single

congressional endorsement. But this election, Republicans are rushing to lend their support. What happened? Why are they falling in line so quickly this time around? We'll talk about that. And later, a fake Joe Biden robocall is targeting New Hampshire voters ahead of tomorrow's primary. Are we prepared for the risk of other deep fakes this coming November? We'll talk about that as well, coming up.

msnbc live democracy 2024 saturday september 7th in brooklyn new york join your favorite msnbc hosts at our premiere live audience event visit msnbc.com democracy 2024 to buy your tickets today

Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear. I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement because we can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackage formed of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.

I've heard and even written many endorsement statements. And let me tell you, that is not a ringing one. He seemed actually a little bit under duress there for a moment. That, of course, was Ron DeSantis begrudgingly, I think it's fair to say, endorsing Donald Trump after dropping out of the race for president this weekend. It's just the latest example of how Republicans are pretty much lining up behind Trump ahead of the New Hampshire primary. Right now, he is on stage with a trove

of leading Republicans who have already endorsed him are endorsing him. And it's all a stark example of how Donald Trump has come to dominate the Republican Party over the last eight years. When Trump ran for president in 2016, remember, not a single Republican member of the House or Senate or any of the sitting Republican governors endorsed him before the New Hampshire primary. Not a single one.

It wasn't until after New Hampshire in late February in 2016 when Trump finally got his first endorsement from a sitting member of Congress. And that sitting member was none other than New York Republican Congressman Chris Collins, who was the first sitting member to endorse Trump. Now...

Chris Collins, of course, would later leave Congress and get indicted and then convicted of insider trading. Trump pardoned Chris Collins during his first month in office. That was his first endorser. Feels fitting for some reason. The second member of Congress to endorse Trump in 2016 was another guy, this guy, Congressman Duncan Hunter.

Congressman Hunter was also forced to resign from Congress after being charged and later convicted of stealing campaign funds. That's quite a track record there for the first two endorsements of his presidential campaign. Donald Trump also pardoned Donald Duncan Hunter during his final days in office. I think there's a pattern kind of we're all seeing here.

Before Trump became the presumptive nominee, only 12 sitting members of the House had endorsed Donald Trump's candidacy, a sixth of whom were on their way to becoming convicted felons. That's what they all had in common. Only one sitting senator, one, endorsed Donald Trump during that time. Remember Jeff Sessions? Well, that guy's been paying for that mistake ever since, pretty much.

A lot has happened. A lot has happened since 2016. I mean, Donald Trump has been impeached twice, tried to overturn a legitimate election, stoked an insurrection, praised dictators over and over again, and overtly claimed he wants to be a dictator himself. But despite all of that, somehow there seems to be an even greater willingness to look the other way. This time, Republicans are rushing, elbowing each other to endorse Donald Trump as soon as possible. More

More than half of all Republicans in the House and Senate have already endorsed Trump. The leaders of the party committees have called him the presumptive nominee. Remember, there's a primary tomorrow. Former presidential contender Tim Scott became the latest high-profile senator to endorse Trump on Friday. And just a few minutes ago, he spoke at a rally I just mentioned earlier with him in New Hampshire.

Now, with Ron DeSantis' endorsement, Trump now has the support of 11 sitting Republican governors. South Carolina Congressman Nancy Mace, who just two years ago was fending off a Trump-endorsed primary challenger, just endorsed Trump today ahead of the state's primary. She doesn't seem to remember that part from a couple years ago. Just the last week, Republicans have started to fall in line behind Trump at a breakneck speed.

So what does that mean for this race and for the Republican Party ahead of tomorrow's primary? It all feels so inevitable with everybody lining up. Joining me now to break that down, explain it, tell us what it all means, is Jonathan Martin. He's a senior political columnist for Politico. He was just here with me in New Hampshire for a couple days. Thank you for being here with us tonight. So let me start. It's great to see you. Let me just start with what I just outlined, because we often forget. You don't. You don't because you were covering it. But in 2016, Republicans.

Republicans didn't exactly coalesce around Trump, I think it's fair to say, until after he won the nomination. I mean, there were holdouts even then. Yes. So why is this happening so much faster now? Politicians are responding to the marketplace of their electorate and their voters want more cowbell. They want more Donald Trump. And so they are, in fact...

responding to that. It's a classic example of the leaders deferring to their electorate. They're not leading, they're basically following what they perceive, like understandably so, to be the preference of their voters. And that's really the long and the short of it. Jen, you know what's funny is that the first statewide official

to endorse Trump in 2016 was also a governor, and his name was Henry McMaster. No, I'm sorry, Lieutenant Governor, I should say. His name was Henry McMaster of South Carolina. He was the Lieutenant Governor. And the payback for McMaster for endorsing Trump, the first statewide official to do so, Jim, was that he was elevated to governor when President Trump

nominated the governor of South Carolina, somebody whose name was Nikki Haley, to be the ambassador to the U.N. So speaking of full circle Trump endorsements for 2016, yet one of those is still playing out today because the reason why Trump appointed her to the U.N. wasn't because they had a relationship, Jen, because she obviously came out for Rubio in the South Carolina primary in 2016.

He appointed her to elevate McMaster to be the governor of South Carolina as a reward for him for being one of the first people in the country and the first statewide Republican official to endorse him in 2016. Because to your point, there were so damn few people in the party at that point who would dare stick their neck out for this celebrity casino magnate and hotel developer.

I mean, a lot has changed, right? I mean, he's done a lot since then, but a lot has changed. And I think the question that is tricky, but you may have a view on this, I bet you do, is what is motivating? I mean, there's political survival, right? That's a motivator. There's fear if they don't endorse him, which I think is a big motivator. I mean, Ron DeSantis in that video, he looked, again, under duress, like he was in a hostage video-like situation. He had his own political agenda.

- Exactly, it felt almost AI generated. But what is motivating the majority of them? Is it political survival? Is it fear? Is it a combination? What's it about?

Oh, I think for the folks who are facing the voters every two years or every four years or six years, I think it's almost entirely trying to stay on the right side of their voters. If you talk to these people privately, a lot of them at least, not the true believers, but a lot of them who were kind of came of age politically before Trump,

Jen, they'll say, what do you want me to do? My voters like them. And I was telling one Republican, actually former governor, today this very same thing. I said, what DeSantis would have been honest about if he'd done that video on, like, a truth serum would have been, like, what do you want me to do, folks? I want a future on this party. I'm only 44 years old. And the voters still like Trump.

So, like, I got to be for Trump. And that's that's really it. And that's your point. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely a bullying element, because obviously, if you don't get behind him, he gives you a nickname and he attacks you, which then leads his supporters to attack you online or even worse, you know, like prank call your office or whatever. So, yeah, there's definitely an intimidation factor there, too. No question about it.

All right, Jonathan, we've talked about this kind of offline behind the scenes, but let me put you on the spot here a little bit. There's a primary tomorrow. What does Nikki Haley have to if she wins? Obviously, that's a surprise. But if she what does she have to get within? What's the margin she has to get within in order to justify to her donors, to her supporters to stay in the race?

I think if she comes within single digits, Jen, in New Hampshire tomorrow, I think she can justify going to South Carolina and trying to fight it out in her home state. That'd be a hell of a race, a sort of month-long South Carolina showdown. I think it'd be Armageddon in the Palmetto State politically between Trump and Nikki Haley. It'd be a sight to see, probably make Bush-McCain 2000 look like TiddlyWinks.

But look, if she loses by 16, 17 points, I think it's harder for her to rationalize staying in. And at that point, I wonder, you know, would she be better off saying, look, I was the last person standing in this race. Nobody else thought I could do it but me. And here I was. I was the only person left and I gave him a go. You know, I think...

So if you're losing by 17 points, that's sort of the case you make. And also, I think if you sue for peace now, Jen, you still have an outside shot at being VP. I think it's harder for her to get VP or even be in the mix if you have kind of a knockdown, drag them out for a month in South Carolina.

If she wants it. You don't want it until you want it, I guess. There's an interesting deadline coming up because Trump has told donors reportedly that they have till February 1st to decide. And if he shuts off the money, that seems very tricky for her. But we'll see. Jonathan Martin, thank you for joining me tonight. Great seeing you in New Hampshire while you were here over the last couple of days.

You too. Coming up, a fake Biden robocall is encouraging Democrats to skip the polls in tomorrow's New Hampshire primary. What can the federal government be doing to combat this sort of threat as we head into the 2024 election? It's a reminder of that. I know just the person to talk to. Stay with us.

Today, just a day before the New Hampshire primary, the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office announced that it is investigating what it says appears to be an unlawful attempt at voter suppression. Yesterday, several New Hampshire residents got a robocall purporting to be from President Biden. It wasn't. The White House has confirmed that the call was a fake. But if you had received it, would you be able to tell? What a bunch of malarkey.

We know the value of voting Democratic when our votes count. It's important that you save your vote for the November election. We'll need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not just Tuesday.

Malarkey sounds a lot like Joe Biden. Take it from me. And that was right at the beginning of that call. Now, we have no idea who's behind these fake robocalls, although their likely intention, misleading voters and hurting President Biden, seems pretty clear. We do not yet know for sure how this artificial version of President Biden's voice was made, although disinformation experts tell NBC News that it was almost certainly created with some form of artificial intelligence.

What we do know is that fake content like this is getting more realistic and easier to make all the time. It's improving the technology of it. A little over a week ago, the news outlet Mediaite published audio they claim shows longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone calling for the assassination of Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler and Eric Swalwell. Now, I should say that NBC News has not been able to independently verify this audio, but it does really sound like Roger Stone.

But Stone claims the audio is fake. And because of how easy it is to make realistic-seeming fake content like this now, it's very difficult to figure out what the truth is here, and people can use that to their advantage on both sides. With today's news about these fake Biden robocalls in New Hampshire, we're seeing how fake content like this could mess with our primaries, could mess with the general election. But

But how much more difficult could it get to tell fact from fiction by November? Joining me now is Chris Krebs, former director of cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency and co-chair of the Aspen Institute's U.S. Cybersecurity Working Group. Thank you so much for joining me. I couldn't think of anyone better to talk to about this and help explain it. So let me start with the basics here. I mean, how sophisticated would you have to be with computers to make facts?

fake audio like that one we just played of Biden, of those Biden robocalls we're seeing and hearing here in New Hampshire? Unfortunately, not particularly sophisticated at all. In fact, it doesn't require much more than some of the publicly open source large language models that can be used to create text to voice and even text to video.

And you really don't need much of a sample of whoever you're trying to mimic it. You can get a voice print off of about 30 seconds worth of of tape. And obviously, with with President Biden, there's there's much, much more than that. There's more than that of of you and me. So it is not a complicated tradecraft right now, unfortunately.

Anyone can make one, which is the thing that feels so, one of the things that feels so alarming to me. Now, one of the things as we look back to 2016, which we've been talking about a little bit in this show, is just what the threats are and what we're talking about, what we should be talking about. So are there nation states like China, Russia, those who have kind of intervened in our elections in the past, is this a tactic and a tool that you think they're developing that we should be watching more closely, talking more about?

There's no question that they're testing and exploring the range of capabilities. And the conversations I have with those in the national security community, they're absolutely concerned about state actors rolling AI into their broader information activities. And whether that's technical hacking, cyber security threats, or the broader information warfare that we're seeing increasingly a part of

not just our elections, but I would suspect over the several elections that are happening in 24 and then 25 as well, you'll see more and more of these AI-enabled threat vectors emerge.

There are obviously a number of experts like yourself in the federal government. I have a kind of a two parter here. What would you like to see them doing? But also, do you have any concern about maybe the lack of understanding or knowledge broadly within Congress about the threat of this? We saw this with social media, for example, back in 2016. Yeah.

Well, you know, there are a number of different pieces of legislation that have been introduced, particularly in the Senate, to address AI as it may impact our elections. In fact, there's a there's a bill introduced by Senators Klobuchar, Hawley, Coons and Collins that would address this specific risk.

mimicking a political candidate, that would give them a couple different options, including removal of the content as well as damages. Of course, that is just a piece of legislation introduced, and it will take quite some time to get that in place. There's also the Federal Communications Commission has a couple of different mechanisms they can use, particularly if it's seen as defrauding voters. And as well, the FBI has several different mechanisms

several different paths they can follow. But I think the real key here is similar to a number of the messages that we pushed out in the 2020 election. And that is, you know, if you ever have a question about information here, go to the trusted source. Don't listen to someone on Twitter X, whatever, or a phone call you get. Go to the source, the election official or the candidate themselves and verify the information that you've heard or read or whatever.

You know, on the flip side of the fake, that's very good advice. And I think a lot of people are looking for exactly that. On the flip side, though, of the fake content problem is this problem of plausible deniability. You know, for example, there was this audio media release. I just mentioned this a little bit at the top. Reportedly, Robert Stone, Roger Stone and Stone's denial blaming AI, kind of a back and forth. It gives people deniability of things that are true. I mean, how do we grapple with that?

Well, Bobby Chesney, the dean of the University of Texas Law School and another colleague coined the term the liar's dividend. And that's when there is this diffuse information environment where you can't really tell what's true. This is where the bad actors really thrive. And I think, unfortunately, we are well into that space where the information environment has really lost that touchstone of truth. And it is hard to believe what

what you read or hear. And when you add AI and you can say, you know what, that sounds like me, but it's not me. Somebody, somebody must've copied it. This goes to, I think it's important for candidates and campaigns right now to do whatever they can to really print and certify the, the, the, the video they use, the audio they use so that it can't be mimicked or if it

If it is, they can point back and say, no, this is what I said. That's not what I said. And President Biden's executive order on artificial intelligence really does go to that watermarking and the mechanisms that folks can use to take ownership of their own likeness and what they may say or do or appear as.

Chris Krebs, thank you so much. It's such an important topic. I think we should be talking a lot about between now and November. And these robocalls were just a reminder. OK, one more. Thank you so much for joining me. OK, one more story ahead here tonight that we're looking forward to talking about that shows just how much of a jumpstart New Hampshire's residents like to get on the rest of the nation when it comes to voting. We'll be right back.

Starting at midnight, polls for the 2024 presidential primary will officially open in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, a tradition dating back to the 1960 presidential election. My colleague Stephanie Rule will be live as the votes of up to six. That's right. Six registered voters are counted. Then as voting continues throughout the day tomorrow, so will MSNBC special coverage.

At 4 p.m. Eastern, I will be back hosting another two-hour special live from New Hampshire. And at 6 p.m. Eastern, Rachel Maddow will have had lots of tea in Echinacea, and she will be back in her chair alongside a dream team of MSNBC hosts and Steve Kornacki, of course, at the big board. Where else will he be? Then at midnight, I will be back.

Hopefully with some news on who which Republicans are at the top of the ticket, who Republicans in the great state of New Hampshire end up choosing to be their nominee. So lots to look forward to tomorrow. That does it for me tonight. MSNBC Live Democracy 2024, Saturday, September 7th in Brooklyn, New York. Join your favorite MSNBC hosts at our premier live audience event. Visit MSNBC.com slash Democracy 2024 to buy your tickets today.