Maddow: With The Rule Of Law Failing Under Trump, Just Diagnosing The Problem Isn’t Enough | MSNBC

Just a couple of days after the 2016 US presidential election, a Russian-American journalist named Masha Gessen published what was basically an alternative concession speech for Hillary Clinton. Masha Gessen said on election night that same week in November 2016, when it became clear in the early morning. hours of the morning, an election night, when Donald Trump is going to win the presidency. Gessen argued that Clinton, instead of giving the speech that she gave, she could maybe have said this and I warn you this is a little dark, it's a little crude. but given that she wrote this basically hours after election night, it also feels strangely prescient

just

a few years later, so here's the alternative concession speech for Hillary Clinton

just

as Masha Gessen envisioned it.

Start thank you, thank you, my friends, thank you. We have lost, we have lost and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what needs to be said: we are on the brink, our political system, our society, our own country are in greater danger than at any other time in the world. world. Over the last century and a half, the president-elect has made his intentions clear and it would be immoral to claim otherwise. We must unite right now to defend the laws, institutions and ideals on which our country is based. That's not what Hillary Clinton said. on election night, but the week of 2016 election journalist Masha Gessen, who had spent most of her life in Russia and much of her journalism career writing about the rise of Vladimir Putin in Russia, said that or something like that is what Hillary Clinton should have said and the early Wednesday morning hours of that first week of November when the election results were released in that Masha Gessen article, I think it's still considered a milestone in these more than three years after the articles were remembered less for that alternative concession speech proposed by Hillary Clinton calling on the country at the time to unite to defend our laws and institutions remembered less for that than for the set of

rule

s that Masha Gessen established about how to survive and preserve your sanity in a country that is shedding its democratic foundations and the restrictions of the

rule

of law rule number one, the first on his list of rules, was the most memorable, the one that still wakes me up regularly until Today rule number one quotes believe the autocrat, he means what he says every time you find yourself thinking or hear others claim that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to look for a rationalization as an example.

Masha Gessen provides this quote. Trump has received the support he needed to win and the adulation he craves. Precisely because of his outrageous threats, crowds at Trump's rallies have chanted, "lock her up," and he meant every word quite fairly, which is, in fact, the world we ended up living in these past three and a half years. , but during the last 48 hours. while the Department of Justice has been plunged into crisis and chaos and for the first time we are starting to receive in-principle resignations from career Department of Justice staff who cannot stand what this president is doing to the justice system during these last 48 hours, rule number three. because Masha Gessen also stays with me I quote rule number three the institutions will not save you Putin took a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system the Russian judiciary collapsed unnoticed the capture of the institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster by a man once celebrated as a democrat to bring Turkey into the European Union, Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter-century's achievements in building a democracy Constitutionally, of course, the United States has much stronger institutions than Germany.

What Russia did in the 1930s does today, the

problem

is that many of these American institutions are enshrined in political culture rather than law and they all depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill its purpose and defend the Constitution. except that they depend on the good faith of the actors within them, boy, are we living that? That was Masha Gessen just a couple of days after the 2016 election, shortly after Timothy Snyder's book on tyranny was published shortly after the inauguration and followed a similar vein. of logic that looks at the lessons of the collapse of various democracies across Europe throughout the 20th century to learn lessons about how to protect our democracy and how to know if we are losing that fight to protect our democracy and what we should do then snyder quote history European society of the 20th century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse and ordinary men can find themselves facing pits of death with weapons in their hands, we might be tempted to think that our democracy Inheritance automatically protects us. of such threats.

This is a wrong reflection. Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who watched democracy give way to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the 20th century. Our only advantage is that we could learn from your experience. Now is a good time for Do It and he published this book right around the time of Donald Trump's inauguration and then the book, very short, goes on to lay out 20 lessons from the 20th century for Americans to consider today and some of these lessons , some of these rules remain. me up two, for example Timothy Snyder's rule number one, do not obey in advance most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given in times when these individuals think in advance about what a more repressive government will want and then offer themselves Without being asked, a citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what he can do.

I would amend that in our time I would say that a senator who adapts in this way is effectively teaching power what he can do. There is also rule number eight, which is to stay out of it, say that someone has to do it, it is easy to move on, it may seem strange to do or say something different, but without that concern there is no freedom when you set the example, the Spell of the status quo is broken and others will follow, that's right, here's the one that stays with me, right? Now, given what's going on at the Department of Justice and the kind of crisis we've been thrown into in terms of the rule of law in this country over the last 48 hours, it's Snyder's rule number to quote the defending institutions, it is the institutions that help us. to preserve decency they too need our help don't talk about our institutions unless you make them yours by acting in their name institutions don't protect themselves they fall one after another unless each one is defended from the beginning so choose one Whichever institution interests you, court a newspaper, a law, a union and take their side, that's interesting, right, we received this prophetic warning from the Russian-American journalistic institutions, they will not save you, they will fail, don't count on them to save you and we get another warning from the eminent historian of the collapse of democratic and rule of law countries in the 20th century, he says yes, institutions are important, but institutions collapse unless each of us actively defends and saves them of the types of pressures they are about to face.

Pick one and do something to Support him, so in the middle of the New Hampshire primary yesterday, right at this very important moment for the Democratic Party trying to choose its candidate to compete against Donald Trump, we understand this other story, this new milestone that we have achieved in the Trump administration in matters of government. of legal issues and it's a big

enough

story to generate divided front pages across the country today. This was the front page of the New York Times this morning. On the right, you see politics. Sanders is the winner in New Hampshire. left side in capital letters Justice Department moves to ease sentence for Trump Ally to US prosecutors quit Stone case after bosses stepped in to overturn them nationwide here's the Los Angeles Times and there again is the photo of the Senator Sanders triumphant image and you see the headline about politics in the middle of the cover Sanders leads Budaj in the New Hampshire primary but then, right under the masthead, there at the top, the competing story left two columns the prosecutors resigned over attempt to reduce Stones' sentence here's the hill Washington DC newspaper cites Justice Department in chaos.

Here is the st. Louis post-dispatch four column headline all caps bold headline right all four prosecutors resign stone case Trump Trump tweets concerns about Justice Department interference here's the headline in the Minneapolis Star-tribune today and yes, They have full coverage of Sanders taking victory in New Hampshire and also on the cover today, local Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is in third place in New Hampshire. We'll talk live with Senator Clovis Shar here in a moment right here on this show, but look at what's at the top of the whole front. page The Department of Justice rebels over leniency for Trump's friend, so we are here, believe them when they say who is right, you know, we are in that moment that this president actually promised during the campaign the right thing and everyone said at that moment how scandalous it was How much did it cross a red line for him to say as a candidate that when he was president he ordered his Attorney General to prosecute his political opponents.

He did order his Attorney General to initiate criminal cases under his presidential orders to serve his political needs. Punish enemies. Protect. His friends were outraged when he said he would do that as a candidate, but they believed him. Oh, here we are right and all the alarms are going off about this. This is a front-page thing and it is as serious as they think it is. Here is a former high-ranking official of the Department of Justice. who actually served for a long time in the Trump administration. David Loughman was head of the counterintelligence division at the Justice Department and called this a glass-breaking fire moment.

Here's former Attorney General Eric Holder going there too. Without underestimating the danger of this situation, political appointees at the Department of Justice are becoming inappropriately involved in cases involving the president's political allies In a statement last night, Attorney General Holder said that, among quotes, actions like these they put perceived and actual neutrality at risk. enforce our laws and ultimately endanger the fabric of our democracy. It is equally surprising that the Attorney General is stepping in to take on these cases of interest to the president, both to help the president's friends and to attack the president's perceived enemies, to attack anything that poses a perceived threat to the president. equally surprising president along with what Bill Barr is doing is the fact that the Department of Justice is now beginning to respond now there are resignations from the Department of Justice in protest three line prosecutors working on the Roger Stone case are withdrawing from that case After the bar intervened after the president expressed his displeasure with the recommended sentence that Stone had presented to the court by these line prosecutors, three of them resigned from the case and a fourth not only withdrew from the case but he resigned from the department entirely.

Former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer today describes that as a quote from a major event and to Bob Bauer, the least hyperbolic man in the world, that's like a ten alarm for him to call something a Important event. Bob Bauer says today that he quotes dramatically blunt responses to Mr. Trump's attack on rule of law norms has been all too rare: a resignation could trigger a red flag for an institution whose failures and officials may not be able to bring to light in any other way or as effectively as he says. , defends the rules of the rule of law in the very act of pointing out that they are

failing

, they are

failing

, so, as I said, alarm bells are ringing.

What dual arms are supposed to wake us up? In this case, we are all awake. What do we do now that we are awake? now you are hiding the importance of what is happening here the country is very aware of what is happening here all the people in a position to know how dangerous and bad this is have sounded the alarm and now what do we do about it? The idea of ​​being a country of law is not just about knowing the technocratic prowess of its law enforcement system and its justice system. I mean, that matters, but it's bigger than that, it's also bigger than individual politicians or powerful people who can escape. with unfair things when returning to work in some wayway the system, that's part of it, but it's not all, the reason why people use rule of law countries as a way to define what is not an autocracy, what is not an authoritarian regime, is this broader sense of what it means to be a country with the rule of law, I mean, those things matter, but the worst collapse and the most consequential collapse of capital, our capital rule of law, is when the law becomes a tool of the political leader where the power of the criminal justice system and law enforcement apparatus of this country is used for the pleasure and benefit of a president who was supposed to allow him to operate independently, but now we have crossed the line in that he told us he would do it and now he has done it. and all the alarms have been ringing, they are ringing incredibly loudly and we don't know what's coming next, but what do we do next?

What do we do now that we are awake to what is happening? I mean,

diagnosing

that the

problem

exists is not the same as curing the problem, I mean, I think when everything is reasonably good and we read dystopian fiction or smugly read history about other countries that fall on hard times and lose the status of right, freedom and democracy when We imagine that these moments are happening to someone else or that they are happening in fiction. We imagine what would happen in this country when the things that make us a free country begin to collapse, when they erode, crumble and disappear.

I think if we're honest. The most naive fantasy we all have at times like this about what it will be like is that you know that good people who do good things will fix it, that they are intelligent people who are in a position to know, be alert to danger, and point out that this terrible Rubicon Rubicon has been crossed. that would somehow be

enough

to stop us from going further in that direction and bring us back to this safe side somehow would be enough to point out the danger so that we recognize the danger to make us not go there it turns out it turns out it's not enough, We still go there.

I mean, I think we imagine, when we tell ourselves optimistic fables about these kinds of things, that in the event that something went totally wrong and terribly wrong in the United States and the president's attorney general began to intervene personally in criminal cases. cases to help the president's friends and to initiate investigations into people he wanted to attack for political purposes. I'm talking about the movie version of things going wrong that way in America, one of the ways we start to pivot toward that guy's inevitable happy ending. of the movie is that we believe that principled people who are in a position to know what is going wrong and in a position to alert the country about it will say that they are resigning in protest, they will sound the alarm in that way that will let everyone know what that has happened and those renunciations will have such a dramatic effect, but they will catalyze a kind of positive contagion, they will become a moral beacon, they will set a moral example that other people will follow because other people will come out of what others, to any lethargy or fear in the one they have been in.

Come in and you'll realize that we don't all have to agree with this. Actually, this is something to save our country that must be stopped. It's time for you to know, lean into the proverbial gears of this machinery. We can all do something here. All of us who can should do it in the movie version of this, that's how we imagine this happening. In fact, last night a former Justice Department inspector general named Michael Bromwich released what he called a memo to all career Justice Department employees. He was the ex. inspector general of the Department of Justice and he says in this memo to all career employees of the Department of Justice that this is not what you signed.

The four prosecutors who dropped the stone case have shown how to report all cases of undue political influence and other misdeeds to the Inspector General who must protect your identity and you know that Michael Bromwich is in a position to know and give that kind of advice advice having until recently been inspector general at the Department of Justice, but at the same time that he gives advice, we have received word now that one of the people the president is looking to fire at this time is the Inspector General of the community of intelligence because what did he do wrong?

Well, he received a whistleblower complaint about misconduct and, in fact, what turned out to be illegal actions within the country. The Trump administration, including the president, and that whistleblower who saw those things and decided to go through proper channels reported that material to the Inspector General, who is legally obligated to protect that person's anonymity. The Inspector General dealt with that complaint basically the way the law said it should end. pass it to Congress, which the law says he should do, he really had no authority to do anything else, he followed the law and protected anonymity, that whistleblower, the Inspector General, now reportedly has his own head on the block , while the president destroys these systems at the root and while Republican senators search for the identity of that whistleblower, here is the question with these four prosecutors who step forward and resign at the Department of Justice because the president turns to the system of criminal justice and uses law enforcement to overturn the decisions of independent prosecutors. and instead insist on leniency for his friends and, not incidentally, leniency for people who could potentially testify about the president's own behavior related to the things that all these guys were accused of.

I mean, now that we have the resignations of these prosecutors, including a career prosecutor who has resigned entirely from the Department of Justice, what if the moral beacon phenomenon here doesn't work or is overshadowed and instead of waking up people and inspire others not to accept this dangerous fundamental gap and who are we as a country and how? our system works and why could the legal system be perverted in the hands of an authoritarian? What would happen if, instead, the example that we are living is being set by these principled resignations and also by the career public officials and diplomats who showed up? and he defied the threats and he obeyed the subpoenas and he told the truth and if the example that we have from them the example that is being broadcast to the entire country right now and every day since these people started coming forward is that when and if it is done the right thing when and if you stand up when and if you simply obey the law and don't accept something illegal the president wants you to do, what if the example that all these noble actors set is that if you do the right thing if you stand up if you say The truth is, if you resign in protest to sound the alarm, the result for you is that you will be crushed.

I mean, what is the example that has been given to the country with what happened, for example, to Alexander VIN Minh, I mean, colonel correct? van Minh testifies Dad, don't worry, I'll be fine if I tell the truth, he said in his opening statement to his testimony. I recognized that my simple act of showing up here today would not be tolerated in many places around the world in Russia, where his family had immigrated to this country as refugees in Russia. My act of expressing concern to the chain of command in an official and private channel would have serious personal and professional repercussions, but he said, you know, here in the United States.

Quote dad, don't worry, I'll be fine. To tell the truth, well, it's not right, he has been fired from the White House, a relative of his brother has been removed from the grounds, a relative of his brother has also been fired from the White House, and has been removed from the White House grounds. Marie Ivanovich, ambassador of The United States, who was attacked in a strange and unfair way by the president's allies and by the president himself, lost her job as a US ambassador because of this, her career is already over; She is now retired and did not work at the State Department and it is not difficult to see why, given what was unleashed against her after her testimony, Ambassador Bill Taylor, who was called out of retirement, is basically a favor to the Trump's State Department to replace her in Ukraine.

She made the mistake of testifying truthfully; now he was removed from that position as well, I mean even those who might have thought they had something, you know, Trump Insurance Ambassador John Bolton Trump named national security adviser decided he would not testify told impeachment investigators the House of Representatives no no, I wouldn't decided that instead he would write it all in a book, well for your problem, the White House now says they will block the publication of his book and the president is reportedly trying To organize some kind of convenient criminal prosecution against John Bolton, Ambassador Gordon Sunlit might have thought he had bought Trump insurance.

An embassy himself, a complete diplomacy buff, bought an embassy under a million-dollar donation for Trump's inauguration. You'd think that would be enough to keep this president smiling, but no, it's not. He also fired the US attorney in Washington DC, appointed by Trump as a member of Trump's transition team, apparently did not jump high enough when the president's demands for his friends Mike Flynn and Roger Stone came to his door as US attorney in the jurisdiction where they were being prosecuted, from which she was unceremoniously removed. His position as Federal Prosecutor promised a different job and now that job offer has been withdrawn: it only took a few minutes for the resignation of those four prosecutors, those prosecutors who worked on the stone case, who resigned apparently on principle because of the perversion of that case by It took every minute for the president and Attorney General William Bar to start attacking them personally and threatening them as well now that they have come forward, what do we expect for them and their families?

So what do we do when we see the attacks? see the personal threats see the career destruction, the career destruction of those in uniform, and in some cases, the personal destruction of people involved in taking on this president or being involved in the investigation of this president in any way, I mean, seeing them destroyed makes us feel bad for them. as correct human beings who did nothing wrong who were doing their job who were brave and patriotic in some cases in the face of something very harmful that happened to our country and who decided to tell the truth it makes us feel bad to see them They retaliated to see them attacked, to see them harassed, to see how their careers ended, but beyond us feeling bad about it, I mean about us as a country, about the health of our country, about the health of our democracy, about our continued existence as a nation. of rule of law.

We need to continue to have those types of people who stand up and let us know what's going on to continue to indicate that it's okay to stand up to it and stop it, just squawking about what's going on with every additional person who is proven in the country that when You come out against this president your life is ruined it hurts us even more as a country in terms of our ability to resist what this president is doing so it's not about empathy with those people as important as that is it's not about be kind or decent to them or even represent or acknowledge their patriotism even if we don't have any of those feelings to protect ourselves as a nation, destroying them for showing up is something you can't stand, but what do we do? what we do to support the brave, let me end this because here's a little way to do it tonight at Georgetown University, Ambassador Murray Ivanovitch, whose career was destroyed, who was personally attacked first as part of some plan and then it seemed almost for sport. now, ultimately, it seems like they are making an example of her.

Murray Ivanovich tonight at Georgetown University received an award for excellence in the conduct of diplomacy from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. This is tonight, look what happened in the room. There tonight, when people saw Ambassador Jovanovic, you went on and on and on. Laurie Ivanovich was honored tonight at Georgetown University as the president and his supporters remain engaged as ever in efforts to destroy her for having the gall to stand up and testify truthfully about one of the countless things that have gone dramatically wrong in this administration because people who stand up cannot be allowed to survive.

What kind of example would that set? What can we do as a country to counteract that? What can we do as a country specifically to support people who come out and stand up and tell the truth and, if necessary, resign because there is no line that this president will not cross. I mean, tell me if you can imagine one, tell me what would be bad for America but good. for him, but he wouldn't do it because it would be badfor the country. Which is beyond the limits for him. Seriously, there is nothing I can conceive of as an advantage to him that he wouldn't do to this country to do well. now the alarm has sounded we are awake we are on point even if we are just pointing out this is not enough we have to recognize that pointing out where we are does not stop our country from sliding further into a non-rule of law situation by pointing it out sounding the alarm knowing that we are there is not enough we are there now we have to specifically plan how to survive and how to combat it Hi, I'm Chris Hayes from MSNBC thanks for watching MSNBC on youtube.

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