'Like dealing with a drug gang': Putin takes hostages to trade for captured spies and assassins 42:44

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Thanks to at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here with us. So it was four years ago. It was 2019, late August. It was a sunny day, a nice day to be outside at lunchtime. And lots of people were in Germany, in central Berlin. There's a nice park, a nice big urban park there.

quite near the German, kind of the German version of the White House. It's right near the Federal Chancellery, which is where the German chancellor lives and has offices. This park is called the Kleiner Tiergarten Park, and it's very fancy. It's lovely. Lots of trees, fancy buskers, sculpture. There's a big children's playground. It's big. It's about 17 acres right in the heart of central Berlin.

And four years ago, on August 23rd, 2019, a man rode into the park on this black mountain bike. The man had long black hair and a sort of neat beard. He was wearing Ray-Bans and a gray hoodie. He had a backpack on. He cycled over by the swing set in the park, and he reached into his backpack.

He pulled out a Glock 26, which is a 9mm pistol. It had a silencer screwed onto the end of the muzzle from his mountain bike.

He then used that gun to shoot a man who was walking in the park, shot the man in the back. The man fell to the ground. The man on the bike then got off his bike, walked over to the man who he had just shot, who was crumpled on the ground. And as that man lay there on the ground in the park, the man from the bike shot him two more times. One, two, both shots into the man's head. A very professional hitman kind of hit.

right next to the swing set in that park, right at midday on a sunny Friday in August in a packed city park in front of all the kids at the playground. Shot the guy once in the back, he fell, got off his bike, walked over to him, shot him twice in the head. This is just down the block from the German chancellor's office. With his target laying dead on the ground, shot three times,

the man with the gun got back on the Black Mountain bike and rode away. And here's how The Wall Street Journal describes what he did next.

Quote, with his target lying dead near the children's playground, the assassin hopped on his bike and pedaled away. He stopped at the nearby Spree River, changed out of his clothes and peeled off a wig revealing a bald head. He hurled his disguise and his bicycle and his pistol and silencer into the water, into the river. Then he shaved off part of his beard with an electric razor there on the side of the river. He did that.

So he's been wearing a wig. He's got a change of clothes with him. He's got the electric razor with him to change the look of his beard, takes off the wig, changes his clothes, uses the razor. Then he puts the gun and the silencer and the bike all in the river. OK, but wait, that's his transportation, right? Once he's thrown the bicycle into the river, how is he going to keep moving? Well, further planning, he had also stashed an electric scooter nearby on the riverbank.

And it was while he was trying to get away in this new disguise with the newly trimmed beard on the electric scooter that the police actually were able to get him. The unprofessional part of this otherwise very professional hit

is that apparently the guy didn't notice that two people, two passersby, had seen him in this part of his operation on the side of the river. They'd seen him take off the wig and throw the gun and the bike and the disguise and everything into the river, seen him change his clothes. Those two people thought that was weird enough that even though they hadn't witnessed the shooting, they called police about this bizarre behavior by the riverbank, and that is how police got him. But then once police had him in custody,

There started there and started a new saga because they had no idea who he was. This guy had no ID and all he would tell them over and over again was an obvious lie. He kept saying he was just a random tourist, had nothing to do with any of this. The Wall Street Journal also describes how how finally, after two years,

Investigators were able to piece together his identity and what brought him to that park that sunny Friday in August. They were able to piece together his identity thanks to his Russian special forces tattoos, thanks to his fake, brand-new issued passport, thanks to investigators like Bellingcat tracing his movements. Ultimately, in court, German prosecutors made their case that this guy, the guy on the mountain bike,

was FSB. FSB, what used to be the KGB. He was Russian Security Services. Specifically, they made the case that he was in the part of the FSB that sends trained Russian government hitmen all over the world to other countries to carry out assassinations on orders from the Kremlin. In court, they even presented a video of this guy killing someone else.

The exact same way, riding up to a guy on a bike, shooting the guy in the back and in the head. A different killing from years earlier. The German court ultimately ruled in 2021 that the bicycle-riding hitman had committed that murder in the park in Berlin. The court also concluded that the murder had been commissioned, it had been ordered by the Russian government.

The victim in this case in the park in Berlin, it was a Chechen man who had applied for asylum in Germany, saying he needed to leave the former Soviet sphere effectively because the Russian security services had made multiple attempts on his life. He feared for his life. So he needed asylum in Germany. He turns out was right about the Russian government wanting to assassinate him. And that being a real risk, what he was wrong about was the idea that Germany being in Germany could protect him from that.

And, you know, whether or not you remember this exact broad daylight kids playground swing set adjacent Kremlin assassination in a Western capital in 2019, you probably remember some of the other things kind of like this. Right. They kind of start to blend together after there's been a bunch of them.

The year before the German park mountain bike hitman, there was the Novichok assassination attempt. Remember that one? The nerve agent assassination attempt by Russian agents in Salisbury in England.

The Russian agents in that one just missed killing their target and his daughter, but they did kill a random British citizen who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Before that, it was Russian agents with the radioactive polonium poisoning plot. The fatal radioactive dose of polonium in the teapot, that one was in London. You might remember just in June, this summer, the New York Times reported on another plot by Russian agents to try to assassinate a guy in the United States, in Miami.

That plot was disrupted, but the Justice Department explicitly named the Russian government as directing that operation, and the Biden administration kicked out 10 Russian diplomats from this country in retaliation. I mean, there's so many of these things they blend together. Apparently, they've got a whole section of the FSB that's just for sending Russian government hitmen to other countries all over the world to carry out Kremlin-ordered assassinations.

Right? Because among the many fine and practical accomplishments of the Putin government in Russia, one of the things they do all the time is send professional hitmen all over the world to assassinate people in broad daylight, in city parks and city streets and department stores and parking lots. And then, when their hitmen get caught, the Russian government takes hostages. They take foreign hostages in Russia.

Which is why the 2019 Kleiner Tiergarten swing set assassination in Berlin is back in the news today, back in the pages of The Wall Street Journal today. Because the latest American hostage, the latest innocent American civilian hostage taken by the Russian government is a Wall Street Journal reporter, a young man just 31 years old. His name is Evan Gershkovich. And as The Wall Street Journal puts it in their headline now, quote, Putin wants his hitman back.

Meaning, the Kremlin is now signaling that if the United States wants to ever get Evan Gershkovich, if the United States wants to get this innocent American reporter hostage out of Russia, or

Or maybe some other Western hostages, some other American hostages they're holding, maybe U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan. If the Kremlin, if the U.S. ever wants any of those people back, well, the Kremlin is now signaling that they want some kind of trade that will give them back the swing-set mountain bike assassin from Berlin. They want their Russian special forces FSB hitman out of prison in Germany.

Not because he didn't assassinate a guy in broad daylight in a public park in Germany, but because they asked him to do it. He was just doing his job for the Russian government, and now they'd like him back. So they'll take American hostages in order to get him back. It's not even like dealing with a country. It's like dealing with a drug gang, right? Or like a cartel or some sadistic low-level mob boss, right? This is how they do things.

We've got the we've got the Berlin assassin from 2019 back in the news right now because maybe Russia wants to trade him for the American reporter they took hostage in March. Somebody end up with cement shoes here. Somebody going to be swimming with the fishes. Right. Are we checking each other for switchblades in our in our boots? Right. I mean, this is this is international relations. This is diplomacy. This is how you do it.

We've also got Viktor Bout back in the news. At the same time, right now, Viktor Bout, the Russian international gunrunner who's known internationally both for his mustache and for his nickname, the Merchant of Death. To get him back, Russia took WNBA star Brittany Greiner hostage.

February of last year held Brittney Griner in prison in Russia for 10 months. They only released her in December in an exchange for Victor Bout being let out of federal prison in the United States and shipped back to Russia. Now that their hostage maneuver with that young American woman, that American athlete, now that that worked to spring Victor Bout from prison, Victor Bout is apparently now going to go into politics in Russia.

We learned this this weekend in The New York Times. Viktor Bout is going to be a real star in Russian politics. They're going to make him a real asset to Putin's dictatorship, the weapons smuggler to rogue states and terrorist groups, because that's the kind of hero Russia needs. It's just like an acute toxicity. There are lots of bad governments in the world, right? Lots of bad leaders, lots of, lots, lots of bad governments.

But this is like the difference between a scratch and a stabbing, right? What Putin is doing is something special in the world, something acutely, deliberately toxic, right? It's not a stomachache. It's food poisoning. In Russia, 10 days ago, Putin's government decided to declare that the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Dmitry Muratov,

Literally the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. Putin has just declared that he is a foreign agent, making it literally illegal for anyone to work with him in Russia, making it a crime to work with him. What is foreign agent-y about him? What is so evil and criminal about him? He's a newspaper editor. His newspaper has already been chased out of Russia under threat of imprisonment or worse.

But why wouldn't he? Why would a Nobel Peace Prize stop him? I mean, Putin's on like a kind of a Dr. Evil high at the moment, still apparently pumped after what appears to have been the plane crash assassination of the warlord he cultivated to force Russian prisoners to fight against their will in Ukraine, a man who at the time of his death—

was under federal criminal indictment in the United States for his alleged role in helping carry out the Kremlin's attack on our 2016 presidential election, to mess with American democracy, to try to make Americans hate and distrust each other more than we already do, and, not incidentally, to try to get a particularly pro-Putin Republican candidate, Donald Trump, into the U.S. White House. He's on the high from that assassination, that apparent assassination.

Today, Putin is preparing to host the leader of a neighboring country who is reportedly going to start supplying Russia with a whole new stream of weapons and munitions to use against the people of Ukraine. The armored train was seen to leave Pyongyang, and now Putin will be hosting in Russia the autocratic cult dictator of nuclear-armed North Korea. Because the North Korean dictator is the kind of guy who, frankly, really speaks his language these days. And really, what better ally could you look for?

when you're looking to scale up the largest land war in Europe since Hitler started invading his neighbors and kicked off World War II 84 years ago? Who would make a better ally when you're looking to scale up the terror against the civilian population and your unprovoked invasion of a neighboring sovereign democratic state, which you invaded to punish their grave crime of existing?

What better alliance can you imagine assembling to scale up that war and, of course, to take sides together against the country Putin most hates in the whole world, which, of course, is us, the United States. That's kind of the smell of things in Russia right now. That's the vibe from that particular government, from that particular leader. And so what is Elon Musk doing with them?

The Walter Isaacson, much-hyped biography of Elon Musk that comes out tomorrow includes a story about the Ukrainian military planning to launch an attack on Russian Navy ships in port in Crimea.

And per Mr. Isaacson's account, Elon Musk personally took action to make sure the Ukrainian military would not be able to do that. Mr. Musk making sure that the Ukrainian military could not use his Starlink satellite internet network, which is what Ukraine uses for connectivity on the battlefield, to advance that operation. He got personally involved to make sure Ukraine had its hands tied in battle. That was...

It's reported in Mr. Isakson's biography. It was first reported by The Economist in October. Then, last month, in The New Yorker, reporter Ronan Farrow reported more detail about how Elon Musk has been stopping Ukrainian forces from using this crucial supply line, from using Starlink in Kherson and Zaporizhia and Kharkiv and Donetsk and Luhansk.

Musk has been geofencing all of those places in Ukraine, fencing those places off from the Starlink satellite network deliberately to hamstring Ukraine's military, deliberately to stop Ukraine defending its territory in this war against Russia after Russia invaded them. So, I mean, not to get too simple here, but, like, Mr. Musk is American. He's an American citizen.

And it is the explicit, out loud, not at all hidden, totally overt, totally emphatic policy of the United States government to support Ukraine in its war against Russia after Russia invaded them. We provide Ukraine, our ally, lots of military aid and training and intelligence and all sorts of other assistance. They are our ally in that war. But

There's this one American private citizen who is intervening to try to stop Ukraine from winning the war, to try to stop Ukraine from defending itself against this Russian invasion, trying to stop it and, in fact, stopping it by turning their communication lines on and off at will as he sees fit or as someone sees fit. Because here's the crucial thing.

In Mr. Isakson's new book and in Mr. Farrow's reporting for The New Yorker, the thing that stands out here is this. Here's the quote from Mr. Walter Isakson's book about Mr. Musk intervening in the war to stop Ukraine from its attack on Russian ships. When Mr. Musk made that decision, quote, he had just spoken to the Russian ambassador. He just spoke to the Russian ambassador, and then he made the decision to cut Ukraine's supply lines so they couldn't fight Russia.

Here's how Mr. Farrow describes Musk's own description of who he was talking to when the Pentagon intervened to try to fix this problem, tried to get him to stop messing with Ukraine's supply lines, tried to get him to stop messing with Ukraine's ability to fight off the Russian military. This is from The New Yorker. Ronan Farrow is reporting, quote, "'To the dismay of Pentagon officials, Musk volunteered that he had spoken with Putin personally.'"

Another individual told me, meaning told Ronan Farrow, that Musk had made the same assertion that he had spoken with Putin in the weeks before he tweeted his pro-Russia peace plan. Musk said that his consultations with the Kremlin were regular. Musk later denied having spoken with Putin about Ukraine. On the phone, Musk said that he was looking at his laptop and could see, quote, "...the entire war unfolding through a map of Starlink activity."

This was like three minutes before he said, well, I had this great conversation with Putin, a senior defense official told me. And we were like, oh dear, this is not good. It is important that this one middle-aged, red-pilled, right-wing billionaire has taken one of the world's major social networks and turned it into a firehose of totally toxic, anti-Semitic, and pro-Nazi content.

now publicly blaming the Jews for the financial woes of his company while personally using his power and his public profile to boost and validate literally self-declared anti-Semites and white nationalists who are now the loudest influences on that network.

That's an important thing in the world. It also seems important that the U.S. space program, in its infinite wisdom, decided to make itself dependent on this same one guy for much of its important ongoing work, as space becomes more and more and more important to American national security. But given the role of Russia in the world today, given who they are and how they are conducting themselves these days, given the place Russia has in

Given the place of Russia in relation to America's place in the world today. How is it possible that it is the Russian government that is reportedly advising this one American private citizen, advising him about turning on and turning off the single most crucial supply line for the military in the country Russia is fighting? The country that Russia has invaded. The country that Russia has invaded that is our ally.

This is an American citizen reportedly taking advice from the Russian government about how to make sure America's ally loses this war against Russia. How is this happening? And how is it possible that the United States government is basically just a bystander here on this sunny day by the swing set?

Joining us now is Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, my friend Ronan Farrow, investigative reporter and contributing writer for The New Yorker. Mr. Farrow's recently published piece on this subject for The New Yorker is called Elon Musk's Shadow Rule. Ronan, thank you very much for making time to be here tonight. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Rachel.

First, let me just ask you if I have characterized your reporting correctly. I know that both you and Mr. Isaacson and reporter for The Economist and some other people have gotten to different pieces of this. So what I see is sort of the same story. Did I characterize your reporting accurately? And did you see it sort of the way I presented it?

You did. And I always respect how you give viewers the timeline of everyone who contributed to our understanding. I'd also point out the Financial Times, as this was happening, was doing good leading reporting about the outages in terms of coverage on the Ukrainian front lines. I

I talked to not just the officials you mentioned, but also Ukrainian soldiers on the ground who had the experience personally of being shocked as they attempted to advance in some of these critical areas where Russia was attempting to seize control and as they lost the ability for commanders to communicate with troops on the front lines. So, you know, there are varying opinions about how directly that contributed to, for instance, potential loss of life. But everyone around this seems to agree what happened is absolutely

as you rendered it, and that there was a grievous consequence for people on the ground. - I wanna talk specifically about Mr. Musk's communications with the Russian government. As you point out in "The New Yorker," and you're right, there's nothing illegal about an American private citizen talking to a foreign government that said it's not exactly legal for American private citizens to conduct their own foreign policy, contrary to the interests of stated US foreign policy. But we're sort of in that,

within those bounds, I think, a little bit in trying to figure this out. You reported that Mr. Musk has had direct conversations with Russian officials. We have seen Mr. Musk post very

obviously pro-Russian propaganda. After these conversations, you connect that communication. Apparently, Mr. Isakson connects that communication as well in time to Mr. Musk's decision to cut off this crucial communications asset for the Ukrainian military. What do you understand about his communication with Russia?

The timeline is fairly straightforward here, Rachel, and we have abundant evidence about it. Elon Musk very often likes to identify problems in the world and swoop in and try to solve them. There's a lot of upside to that. NASA's reliance on him is also an antidote to a situation where we literally had no way to launch American astronauts into space unless the Russians launched for us. So there are positives to this.

However, what we saw in the Ukraine case was Elon Musk swooped in, he was tweeting with Ukrainian officials, he was saying Starlink is on the way. Then over the ensuing months, I think he clocked the price tag of this, so there was a pragmatic concern, and there appears to have been an ideological shift. We're at conferences and in other settings,

And as you say, even eventually on Twitter, he started, for instance, putting out public peace plans that accorded exactly with what the Russians wanted. New referendums that might redraw the lines in favor of Russia. He started tweeting out information that the Russians often point to.

namely that there are areas around Ukraine's borders in which the local population, they like to say, would prefer Russian rule. That's something that Elon Musk parroted. So we see all of this that's public facing. Then we have the fact from multiple people now that he was in many conversations, it appears, with Russian officials and at least one with Vladimir Putin himself.

Later, as you pointed out, he denied that. But that does seem to be the case. And, you know, you cited a paragraph where there are unnamed officials saying that. I would point out there is also on the record people saying that Colin Call, you know, senior defense official who's very respected, is on the record in this piece talking about the conversation you mentioned in which Elon Musk was watching that map and

and said, "I talked to Vladimir Putin, not in another time," as he's later claimed, "not about an unrelated thing," very clearly implying about this in this timeframe. Well, the other thing that's so unnerving about that section of your reporting is just the idea of what Mr. Musk describes. On the phone, Musk said he was looking at his laptop and could see, quote, "the entire war unfolding through a map of Scarlank activity."

So if you've got anybody in the world, I don't care what nationality you are, but if you've got somebody who is saying that he's having direct conversations with Vladimir Putin, who is saying, according to lots of good reporting, that he is talking to the Russian government regularly and senior officials in the Russian government, and he simultaneously has access to information that shows, in his words, the entire war unfolding in

In terms of what the Ukrainian government is doing, what Ukrainian units are doing all over that active war zone, that's a very, very dangerous potential conduit of information just in terms of the conduct of the war. I mean, that's the biggest intelligence risk you could possibly imagine in terms of whether or not Ukraine's ever going to be able to win this thing.

Needless to say, Rachel, this is of grave concern to Ukrainians, to American defense officials watching this conflict and trying to advance American interests in the region. You mentioned that regardless of the legal lines, it is a unique phenomenon and potentially a problem when a private individual is brokering foreign policy like this. Elon Musk does have many of the powers of a state now. He goes on diplomatic missions. He poses for the kind of awkward smiling handshake photos with foreign officials, including Chinese officials.

that we usually associate with elected officials. And we have American officials treating him like an elected official because his power is unavoidable in these areas. And Elon Musk is also a good lens to which to view the perils of that because there's a lot of good he does. There's a lot of ways in which he's smart, but we also see erratic behavior.

We also see how, as you mentioned, in the kind of radicalism he's displayed on Twitter, he does have a tendency to absorb and carry water for new views that he didn't espouse previously very rapidly. And in this case, he's also an individual who is buffeted by headwinds of incentives around his businesses and where they operate that are not always aligned with American interests. So, for instance,

half of all of Tesla's vehicles are produced in a Shanghai factory. That means he has to be in diplomatic conversations with Beijing. And he's a fairly transparent guy in some ways. It's not clear that all of his statements around this have always been accurate, like the Putin comments. However, he talks about it a lot. He goes in interviews with the Financial Times in one case and comes out and says,

I've talked to the Chinese. They're mad about me giving Internet access in Ukraine because remember, the Chinese have backed the Russians in this conflict and they're fearful of that kind of free Internet technology being given to their own people. So he's dealt with blowback for the Ukrainian support because of his unique geopolitical position. And that does underscore how dangerous it is to concentrate all of this power in the hands of private billionaires with their own interests.

Right. And it raises the question if he's being pressured and advised by the Chinese and the Russians, what's the relationship of the U.S. government to him, particularly when he's conducting effectively foreign policy against the interests of stated U.S. policy? Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ronan Farrow. Ronan, thank you for this reporting. Thanks for talking with us about it tonight. It's good to see you. Thanks for all you do, Rachel. All right. Thanks, Ronan. All right. Much more ahead here tonight. Stay with us.

There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM Rewards benefits or earning bonus bets. So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team. Hey!

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Weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC. A U.S. Senator destroyed by blackmail. He was not bound by the truth or by facts. The country's most outrageous political demagogue ascending toward the peak of American power. Millions upon millions of devoted followers. This is a story of heroes willing to face down tyranny and the risk to the country if they fail.

Rachel Maddow presents Ultra, season two of the chart-topping original podcast. All episodes available now. The attorney general of the great state of Alabama is this guy. His name is Steve Marshall. He's a Republican. As attorney general of the state of Alabama, Steve Marshall is in charge of administering and defending the laws within the state of Alabama and only within the state of Alabama, which may sound obvious. It does not appear to be as obvious to him.

With few exceptions, in Alabama, abortion is illegal now, basically at any time in a woman's pregnancy.

But the Alabama Republican Attorney General is now saying, now telling the courts, that he has the right to prosecute Alabama residents, not just for trying to have an abortion in Alabama. He says he can prosecute them, and he intends to prosecute them, if they help a woman leave the state of Alabama to get an abortion elsewhere, to get an abortion in some other state where it's legal. He says, quote, "...the legality of abortion in other states is irrelevant."

To just put a point on that, the attorney general in Alabama now says he has the right not just to ban abortion within Alabama's borders. He says the state also has the right to effectively ban abortion for Alabama women anywhere in the country, to prosecute it as a crime. No matter where you go, Alabama will follow you.

When Roe fell last year at the Supreme Court, the assurance from Republicans was that it would be back to the states now, right? It would be up to the individual states whether or not they wanted to ban abortion. Some states would ban abortion, sure, but if you lived in a state that allowed abortion, well, then you have nothing to worry about. Well, now we've got one state's Republican attorney general saying he's going to bring criminal prosecutions for abortions in states where abortion is legal.

Republicans' ambition on banning abortion, on locking people up for it, on banning it everywhere, it is intense and unabating right now. And along with the real-life consequences that has for women all over this country, this is also the sort of thing that has real electoral consequences, which you can see Democrats at work on here.

If I were president of the United States...

I would literally sign the most conservative pro-life legislation that they can get through Congress. Do you believe in punishment for abortion? Yes or no, as a principle? The answer is that

There has to be some form of punishment. For the woman? Yeah, there has to be some form. President Biden and Vice President Harris are determined to restore Roe v. Wade, and they will never allow a national abortion ban to become law. As long as they are in office, decisions about your body will be made by you, not by them.

That ad from the Biden-Harris campaign is part of a $25 million ad buy, which is big, running in seven battleground states. The Biden-Harris campaign is running this ad targeting anti-abortion Republican policies. Earlier than any incumbent nominee has begun running ads in the last two presidential cycles. They are up early and big with this message. It's a

It's a good reminder about the potency of the abortion issue heading into the election in November. But I think it's also a good reminder that Republican governance in individual states can easily become a national story, can easily become a defining problem for Republicans who are hoping nobody notices what they are doing in individual states. And I think we are seeing that happen right now in a state like Alabama on abortion.

But it is also happening on a separate but equally important issue in a really important swing state. And we've got that story here next. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, nos. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM Rewards benefits or earning bonus bets.

So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team, the BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM, the sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

new election matchup with new energy surrounding the race. There is an electricity on the ground. Join your favorite MSNBC hosts at our premiere live audience event to break down all that's at stake in this historic election. The election of 2024 was always going to be a big freaking deal. MSNBC Live Democracy 2024 Saturday, September 7th in Brooklyn, New York. Visit msnbc.com slash democracy 2024 to buy your tickets today.

Hi, everyone. It's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening? Author and philosopher Daniel Chandler on the roots of a just society. I think that those genuinely big fundamental questions about whether liberal democracy will survive, what the shape of our society should be, feel like they're genuinely back on the agenda. I think it feels like we're at a real, you know, an inflection point or a turning point in the history of liberal democracy. That's this week on Why Is This Happening? Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.

It's called the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. It's a very forgettable name, sorry. But it does something very simple. They look at political maps from around the country, district lines for Congress and state legislatures. They look at the maps for how well the maps create competitive elections, whether they give one side an unfair advantage over the other side. They look at the maps for fairness, basically, and then they give them a letter grade like the grades you get in school. Well,

Well, in the great state of Wisconsin, where the districts were drawn by the Republican legislature, the state house maps get an F. Same for the Wisconsin state Senate maps. Those also get an F for failure. The failure for Wisconsin democracy in those maps translates into a win for Wisconsin Republicans. The bottom line with those maps is that even when way more people in Wisconsin vote for Democrats, Republicans win most of the seats anyway. It's a nice trick.

Wisconsin voters appear to be just about fed up with this. Consider what happened this year when they voted for a new state Supreme Court justice. Liberal candidate Janet Protasewicz told voters the Wisconsin maps are wrong. She called the maps rigged. She said they do not reflect people in this state. Voters heard that message and they picked Janet Protasewicz by a margin of 11 points, a resounding margin.

Her victory created a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years, with just a huge win. And so Wisconsin Republicans freaked out. Before she hears a single case on the Supreme Court, Republicans are threatening to impeach her. They would need a majority vote in the House to impeach her. They have that. They would need a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove her, a two-thirds majority, which they also have.

Wisconsin Democrats are now launching a $4 million ad campaign to alert Wisconsin voters, a $4 million campaign to alert Wisconsin voters to what the Republicans are doing, to what the Republican plan is for this new justice that the voters in the state just elected by such a resounding margin.

The chair of the state Democratic Party told the national press this week, quote, the longer they push this forward, the more political price we want to build for Republicans and the legislature and the whole GOP machinery. This could become a fireball that eats all of them up through 2024. Joining us now is the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Ben Wickler. Mr. Wickler, it's nice to see you. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much, Rachel.

The thing that I think is, even if you don't know anything about Wisconsin politics, the thing that I think is shocking from the outside is the size of her victory in that statewide election and then the immediate move to remove her anyway, even before she's done anything as a judge. How is this being viewed inside the state? There's no more fundamental American value than the freedom to choose our own leaders.

So when Wisconsinites find out that a group of politicians led by Robin Voss, the Republican speaker of our state assembly, are threatening to overturn the last election just to lock in their own power and prevent the public from choosing who leads the state, they are outraged.

We've been flooded with calls. People are donating left and right. And more critically, they're calling Republicans in the state legislature to tell them not to do this, not to cross this line and throw out a race, a million votes that took place just a few months ago. It is...

Shocking. And this is a moment when everyone needs to weigh in to stop the GOP from essentially undermining the entire system of democracy in our state and creating a precedent that could spread across the country.

As I mentioned, Ben, the Republicans do, on paper, have the votes to do this. They certainly have a majority in the House, and they have two-thirds in the Senate, basically exactly, as far as I understand it. What that means is they have the votes to do it, but with zero margin. It means if there are any defectors from this plan, it won't work. Are any Republicans visibly getting a little nervous or wobbly about this?

Yes, indeed. So now that the public is finding out about this plot at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, we set up a website at defendjustice.com with a scorecard. And if you go there, you'll see that we have our first Republican state representative who came out publicly and said, no, he would vote against impeachment.

We have a few that have told constituents that they're against, although they haven't said so publicly. And then we have a whole bunch that are saying nothing about their position. Our sense is that they realize that this is a total political disaster for them, that even if they successfully impeached a Supreme Court justice to lock in their power, which has never happened before in Wisconsin or anywhere else, there's never been a purely political impeachment. Even if they did that, voters would eventually have the final say.

So they need to step back from this brink. And frankly, what they're proposing is against the Wisconsin Constitution. So they have a pretty good exit ramp. They can just say they looked at it. It doesn't meet the standard that the Constitution sets out. They're done. If they don't do that, they're going to have to answer to voters for the rest of their political lives. Ben Wickler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Ben, I know this is a very hard fought fight in your state right now. Thanks for keeping us surprised. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much. All right, we'll be right back. Stay with us.

Here's something to watch, which might not otherwise be on your radar. This is for this week, this week ahead. There are 18 people charged alongside former President Donald Trump in the racketeering indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, right? Of those 18, only one is currently a serving elected official. His name is Sean Still. He's a Georgia state senator. He was one of the fake electors who signed forged documents claiming that Trump had won Georgia when he hadn't.

Now, Senator Still is under indictment. And here is a fascinating quirk of Georgia state law. When a sitting lawmaker...

is indicted for a felony, the governor is required by the Georgia state constitution to appoint a commission to review the indictment to determine whether that sitting lawmaker should be suspended from office while he or she is facing charges. So Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, is required to do this by the state constitution. He has now appointed a three-member panel of

He picked three Republicans, naturally. But under the law, those three Republicans on the commission have to report their findings by the end of this week as to whether this indictment against Senator Still, quote, relates to and adversely affects the administration of his office as a state senator. If they find that it does, Governor Kemp has to suspend Mr. Still from office for the duration of this case.

So, this is just worth watching, I think. This is going to be a real-life test of how much accountability Republicans are willing to dole out amongst themselves on this issue, especially after Governor Brian Kemp came out last week at a press conference and said he wouldn't be part of any Republican plan to remove Fannie Willis from office, the DA who was prosecuting the case against Sean Still and Trump and everyone else.

This piece of the accountability puzzle is now in the hands of Georgia's elected Republican officials. So it's going to be really interesting to see what they'll do with it, whether they'll let him keep on with his job as a state senator or suspend him. Also interesting to see will be a brief that Fannie Willis is expected to file tomorrow. In this brief, she's expected to explain how she thinks it would be possible to try all 19 defendants in the RICO case together.

and how she thinks it would be possible for that trial of all 19 defendants to start next month. At last week's hearing that touched on this, the judge in the case declared himself very skeptical that the DA's team would be able to do that because, among other things, the sheer volume of pre-trial motions that would need to be resolved before the trial starts for all 19 defendants.

Just tonight, Trump and Rudy Giuliani and other defendants have filed a whole slew of motions, including some that are just asking for the charges to be dismissed. But the court will have to deal with all of those things anyway. And Fannie Willis tomorrow will have to try to convince the judge in Georgia that all the defendants can all go to trial altogether all at once next month. Willis's office has to file that brief tomorrow. Then there will be a hearing before the judge on Thursday morning at 10 a.m.,

which will be televised. You'll be able to watch it live right here on MSNBC. One last thing before we go tonight. Good news. Today, the FDA approved an updated COVID-19 booster shot just in time for the new uptick in COVID cases that we are experiencing now and just in time for the rollout of the so-called seasonal vaccines like the shot you get for the flu or the vaccine for RSV they have now for infants and people over age 60.

So be on the lookout tomorrow. The expert advisory committee will meet tomorrow to give the final stamp on who qualifies for the new covid booster. But the FDA has approved it as of tonight. That's going to do it for us for now. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the O's or the no, no, no. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season.

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