Hi, I'm Jonathan Capehardt, and I'm excited to share some great news. Both The Saturday Show and The Sunday Show are available as a podcast. Every weekend, I look forward to bringing you the most important political news and the newsmakers who are creating policies that affect your life. For me, it's all about the conversation. That's when news is revealed and understanding begins. Search for Saturdays and Sundays with Jonathan Capehardt and follow.

Thanks, Jules Homme, for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. We've got an interesting show for you tonight. I'm particularly glad that you're here for it. We're going to start a ways back, as we sometimes do. When Allied soldiers came ashore on the Coast of France on the beaches of Normandy for the D-Day invasion. They opened up a new Western front against the Nazis in Europe. That, of course, was a shock to the Germans. The Operation Overlore, the D-Day invasion, it relied on the element of surprise. The Germans really were shocked. They had been occupying France for four years at that point. They had installed a collaborationist regime that they assembled from pro-fascist and pro-Nazi forces inside France. The collaborationists and the Nazis together were ruling France, and they had been for years. Now, there was a French resistance to the Nazi rule and to the collaborationists, but the Nazis and their puppets were definitely in charge.

They were actually heading into year five of being in charge. They were really settled in in France.

Then here comes this shock arrival This invasion, hundreds of thousands, ultimately millions of Allied troops landing on the beaches and the cliffs of the northwest of France.

They are clearly planning to take it all back. The D-Day invasion, the Allied invasion, started on June sixth.

Now, on this date, on June 10th, 1944, just four days into the D-Day invasion, the Germans were reacting.

They had been, of course, shocked by the initial invasion. But a few days into it, they now realized the scale of what they were up against, and they had started scrambling their units from all over France, turning all the available German troops in France toward the northwest of that country to try to to stop the Allied advance.

That included a Nazi SS Panzer division that had been in the south of France, down by Toulouse. That division was ordered to essentially traverse the whole length of a country They head north toward where the Allies were advancing in from the beaches of Normandy. On their way north through France, toward the new Allied front lines, the new Western front, this Panzer division stopped in a village called Ouradour, O-R-A-D-O-U-R, Ouradour. Pro-nazzi French collaborators had told them, they told this Panzer unit that the French resistance was active in this town.

And they told them that the French resistance in that town had killed a Nazi officer. In response, that Panzer unit decided, yes, they were on their way to the north of France to go join the new Western France in the battle for for the whole war, to try to shore up the German lines against the big Allied invasion.

But they decided on their way there, they would stop and do something in Orador. They would destroy that entire village and everyone in it.

That Panzer unit rounded up every single man, woman, and child in that village.

They even rounded up random people who didn't live in the village but were nearby or who had the misfortune to be passing through the village when this Nazi unit made this decision.

That Nazi unit killed every human being in Orador, or everyone they could find, at least. They killed 643 civilians, the vast majority of them women and children. They used machine guns and they burned them alive. They looted the entire village, and then they tore down the village as best they could. They raised it. Or a door. This is what it looks like today. It's still in the ruins.

The French decided after the war that they would never rebuild.

They would leave the ruins, preserve them as they were left at the end of the war as a memorial to what the Nazis did. We have these photos of what Orador looks like today, literally today, because this morning, the President of France and the President of Germany visited the ruins at Orador to commemorate what they called the martyrdom of that village, to remember what happened in Europe, in France, under fascist occupation. Now, this is not the first time that French President Emmanuel Macron has visited Orador. Actually, 10 days before he was first elected President, he went there.

He visited the village just before he was elected President.

He visited in the company of the man who was then the last living survivor of that massacre. I said the Nazis killed everyone in the village, at least everyone they could find. The Nazis did kill over 600 civilians that day. But there were about half a dozen people from the village who, against all odds, in a miracle, managed by hook or by crook to survive. The last one of the survivors was in his '90s when he brought Emmanuel Macron to Orador in 2017. That last survivor has since died. But today, Macron went back to the site, to Orador, to show this place to Germany's President.

Now, in 1944, about six months after Oradur happened, the Germans were still hanging on.

But thanks in large part to the D-Day invasion, they knew by the end of 1944 that they were losing. They were losing to Soviet forces in the East for sure. They were also simultaneously losing to the Allied forces coming in from the West. West. Once the Allies opened that new Western front with the D-Day invasion, they started pressing their advantage against the Nazis everywhere. They're not only liberating France, they clearly intend to liberate everywhere the Nazis have taken over.

They are pressing toward Germany itself.

Hitler knows that his military is on the ropes. It cannot sustain the losses they are taking on both the Eastern and Western fronts. About six months after After D-Day, about six months after Orador, Hitler decides he's going to mount a surprise of his own. He decides he's going to mount a huge German counteroffensive in Belgium against the Allies.

The Allies are basically closing in on Germany's own borders. When Hitler musters hundreds of thousands of men to mount a counteroffensive against them in the forests of Belgium, it absolutely is a surprise to the Allies. Nobody thought Germany still had it in them. Everybody thought the war was... Not everybody, but a lot of people thought the war was going to be over by Christmas that year. Where did the Germans muster 400, 500,000 men to mount this big new counteroffensive?

But they did. That German counteroffensive started in mid-December 1944. It began a six-week long battle that would be the single deadliest battle of the entire war for the US military.

Aside from That's the brutal toll of that battle.

That was the Battle of the Bolge. That battle also came with its own astonishing and unforgettable atroc. It was another German Panzer Unit, much like the one that killed the entire population of that French village, Orador. It was an SS Panzer Unit in Belgium. They ended up in the very outset of that surprise German counteroffensive. They ended up ambushing a bunch of Americans. The result of it was they took custody of a large group of American prisoners of war, unarmed American POWs.

These POWs Ws, again, they had surrenderd.

They had no weapons. The Nazis lined up those Americans in a field. The Americans have no weapons. They have surrenderd. They have their hands above their heads.

They are POWs.

But the Nazis They just massacred them in that field. They mowed them down with machine gunfire.

Like at that village of Orador, what is almost as unbelievable as what the Nazis did there is the fact that there were somehow, miraculously, some survivors.

There were some American GIs who had also been lined up in that field, who nevertheless lived. American GIs who played dead, who hid under the dead bodies of their comrades, who managed in the end to drag themselves into the woods to get away. And what happened to them? You will not believe me when I tell you this, but it would not be long before a sitting United States US Senator would vehemently object to those men giving testimony about what they saw, about what they survived, about what happened to their platoon mates, to the other men in that battalion, the other POWs who were massacred by those Nazis. Communities. A sitting US Senator tried to block the American soldiers who survived that massacre from giving testimony about it in Congress. He said the American people shouldn't hear it. He said it would be inflammatory. It would inflame the public. Against the Nazis who killed all those unarmed American POWs.

I find it absolutely insane to think about, but this became a very strange thing in American domestic fantastic politics.

I mean, there were unrepentant, leftover Nazis in Germany after the war.

They were trying to make the Allies in America, in particular, the real bad guys from World War II, and maybe that is understandable when you think about unrepentant Nazis who just lost the war.

But you really would not believe it.

The thing that's amazing is not that there were leftover Nazis who were trying to do this. The thing that you wouldn't believe is that they enlisted a lot of Americans to help them in that project, including taking a stand against the American soldiers who survived that POW Massacre and demanding that the Nazis who did it should be set free. This became a cause celeb in the right-wing press at the time. It helped launch the national career, the rocket ship ascendence of arguably the most radical and controversial figure in Republican electoral politics in the last 80 years before Donald Trump. While he was swimming in these very dark waters, darker than what seems possible for someone in mainstream American politics, he would go on to lead a movement of millions of followers who were increasingly radicalized by his increasingly radical rhetoric and tactics over time. His fellow Republicans were both repelled by him, horrified by him, while they also wanted in on some of the massive political energy and fanatical devotion that he attracted.

They thought very seriously about putting him forward for the presidency. The reaction among close observers of him and his tactics looked It's so much like what you are seeing in the American press today about the fear of a second Trump term. You wouldn't believe that it isn't just a straight-up rerun. In his time, the people who stood up against him mostly got mowed down in politics by the strength of his fanatical following. That happened for a very long time until eventually, ultimately, it stopped happening and the forces against him prevailed.

I'm telling you this for two reasons. Number one, this is the thing that I have been working on for the past year. My podcast, Rachel Maddo presents Ultra, now has a season two, and it is out today.

Episode 1 is out today. You can get it anywhere. You get podcasts.

If you don't usually listen to podcasts, you don't know how to do that.

If you take out your phone right now, open the camera on your phone and point it at that weird-looking little circular square thing on your screen, you click on the little box that pops up on your phone, it will bring you right there so that you can listen to it. You can listen to it for free. It's free to listen to.

There are eight episodes of this altogether.

Episode one is out today. I hope you may want to listen. I have been working really hard on it, and I think I'm really proud of it, but I hope you I like it.

I hope you'll check it out. That's one of the reasons that I'm telling you this story. I have been working on this story. I have been working in general on stories about other times in our American history that we have dealt with really terrible threats to the country, where we have confronted really radical people with really radical designs to undo the fundamental things that make us who we are as a country who nevertheless get into political power and attract large voluings. This has happened to us before. The reason I have been working on this for the past couple of years, the reason I've been working on these projects, including this new one that launches today, is because for me, I feel like I really need to learn this stuff and fast. For me, there is a real urgency to learn these stories now from when we have contended with terrible challenges before, particularly when we're talking about powerful Americans advocating for authoritarianism or just flat out embodying it, particularly when it's about selling factually unhinged, conspiratorial lies to the American public, and half the public is mortified and mystified by that, but the other half of the public is super energized by it.

They not only believe these lies, they become their whole new reason to live.

The public gets bifurcated like that into Earth One and Earth Two, where some people are based in the reality-based community and some people are based in a different place.

That place is emotionally satisfying to them and radicalizing them, and it takes radicalizing for them, and it takes over their lives. We are living through a moment like that right now with what is ascendant on the American right, but we have lived through it before. I feel like I'm racing to learn these stories about Americans who have fought these kinds of fights before us for the simple reason that I feel like I need their ideas about how to fight it.

We need their ideas about how to fight these things. We need to see what worked and what didn't when Americans faced threats like this before. It doesn't mean that fighting them always works. Sometimes they get away with a lot of this stuff.

Sometimes people take on incredible risk and danger to themselves. Sometimes people risk their lives or give up their lives to fight these things.

But knowing the track record of Americans who have stood up against these kinds of dark and authoritarian and anti-democratic forces, knowing who else has tried it and what's happened to them is helpful for us calibrating our available responses now and knowing what to expect when we confront these dark movements.

That is why I've been working on this, and that is why that story is on my mind tonight.

But it is also What's on the news right now. I mean, one of the remarkable things about seeing the French President with the German President at the ruins of Orador today in France is that they took that tour of the ruins of that village today, that preserved memorial to what fascism did in Europe. They took that tour this morning. Just one day after the German far-right and the French far-right won shockingly large proportions of the vote and the European elections that were held yesterday. In both of those countries, the parties that did so well have ties not only to the old fascist parties of World War II era Germany and France, they both have current ties, including financial ties to Vladimir Putin and Russia. When President Biden and President Macron of France met in France these past few days for the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, President Biden said that he and President Macron agreed on a new plan to seize Russian assets in the G7 countries and use those seized Russian assets to provide even more support to Ukraine as Ukraine continues to struggle against the Russian invasion of that country. President Biden is just back from France for these D-day commemoration ceremonies and from those meetings with President Macron.

He's just back, but he turns right around and heads back to Europe the day after tomorrow to go to the G7 summit, among other things, presumably to try to rally the other G7 of the Nations to support this new plan, to support Ukraine as much as possible, including this new plan that he and Macron have just agreed to involving seizing Russian assets to help Ukraine even more. In the American aperture here, what's going on here in our politics while President Biden is trying to rally the free world, trying to strengthen our alliances as much as possible to lead collective international will against a rogue dictatorship that has invaded one big European country already and has its sights set on more. Here at home, literally while President Biden and other American leaders were headed off to Europe for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. While they were heading off to Europe for that, what was happening in the American Congress? A fifth of the Republicans in Congress just voted that we should leave our allies altogether, that we should break up the big Western Alliance, that we should defund NATO. I think nobody really paid attention to this vote because this legislation was put forward by a very fringe member of Congress, a member of Congress who is known for her publicity stunts, and she is therefore eager Eager, sorry.

I am eager. She is easy to ignore. But it wasn't just her. 46 Republicans voted for this thing. A fifth of the Republicans in Congress last week voted to defund NATO. Don't just forget being the leader of the free world. Forget the whole idea of there being a free world at all. They saved that for the anniversary of D-Day. 46 Republicans voting to defund NATO. As radical as that may seem, particularly when you think about where NATO came from and why, the wing of the Republican Party that is pushing for this stuff, I mean, on its face, it seems unlikely that they would have such this way. Every few days, we get a new mugshot of one of their leading lights because so many of them have been charged with crimes. Today, it was their presidential candidate's personal lawyer who has had his law license suspended, who is under indictment. Rudy Giuliani's mugshot, just released today after he was arraigned in Arizona. You can put it up on the wall with all of the other MAGA Republican mugshots that we have accrued over the past year. Their presidential candidate is a convicted felon. Today, he had to meet with the probation office in New York, ahead of his sentencing, which happens a month from now.

People at his rallies not only wear T-shirts and fly flags that have his mugshot on them, they started carrying signs and wearing shirts that now say they are proudly voting for the convicted felon. At a rally this weekend, their presidential candidate described members of the mob of his supporters who physically attacked Congress and injured dozens of police officers. He described them in a speech this weekend as, quote, warriors. His warriors, the people who took part in that mob attack on Congress. His warriors. While a few days ago, two police officers who were both badly injured, fighting hand to hand with that mob to defend Congress, to defend the US Capitol. Those two police officers were jeered and booed by Republicans in the Pennsylvania State Legislature. They jeered them, turned their backs on them, and walked out. These are two officers who survived that attack. They were literally injured, fighting for their country, defending our seat of government against a violent attack. But the Republicans who jeered them and turned their backs on them and walked out, they want the attackers freed, and they don't want to hear what these survivors of the attack had to say.

You don't want to hear from the survivors and the witnesses. You want the attackers set free. We are going through some weird stuff right now, but we have gone through weird stuff before, and I do think that we can learn from it and that we urgently need to. That's why I've been working on all these projects. That's why I've got this new podcast out, and I hope you listen.

But it's not just the distant past. In the very recent past, when we got Donald Trump in the White House in the first place, you might remember what preceded that shock election result here in the United States in 2016. Our shock presidential election result in 2016 was preceded that year by some shocking and surprisingly right-wing election results in Europe, including the Brexit vote in Britain, which happened just months before Trump's surprise presidential victory here. I asked Ben Rodes to please join us here tonight in the wake of what is now, again, another round of what seemed to be surprisingly right-wing election results in Europe this weekend. Was it right in 2016 to see right-wing election results in Europe as a harbinger of what was coming for us in the fall of 2016? As President Biden balances his campaign responsibility responsibilities right now with back-to-back trips to Europe. He just got back from Europe. He heads back to Europe again on Wednesday. Do the election results from Europe right now, this weekend, have hallmarks that tell us anything about what to expect here and about how weird this is all going to get?

President Biden clearly sees our connections to Europe right now as absolutely key to the future of the world. Does what's going on in European politics right now tell us anything to expect about the future of our world here? Joining us now is Ben Rotez. He's former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama. He's co-host of the pod Save the World podcast. Ben, it's really great to see you. Thanks for making time to be here tonight.

Good to see you.

First, let me just ask you, for some of our viewers who may not have paid close attention to what was happening in the European elections this weekend, let me ask you two questions about them. Do you think they are important for us to pay attention to? Can you just give us a characterization of what happened in those elections?

Sure. These were elections for the European Parliament, so the European Union-wide Parliament. It's the only election that takes place every few years in which all of Europe votes. It's a good barometer of where opinion is in Europe. I think the two headlines are, The Far-Right made noticeable gains in the two largest countries in Europe, France and Germany. In France, the National Front Party, which is the Far-Right Party that used to be on the fringes of French politics, emerged as by far the largest vote getter in this election. To just build on what you're saying, Rachel, this is a party that is not only far-right, they've had ties to Russia. They got a $10 million loan from Russia within the last decade. So this is not conjectured, this is reality. And in Germany, the AFD Party, which has ties that go back into the neo-nazi past of Germany, that's never a good thing in German politics, obviously, they got over 15% of the vote. Not a huge total, but very alarming given the source here. Now, I want to be clear, in Other parts of Europe, actually, the center did hold. But I think the real concerning factor is in the two most important countries, France and Germany, we saw these far-right gains.

Do you think that it's right to look back at 2016 and see some of what was going on in politics in Europe as a harbinger for the shock election result we got in the fall of 2016 when Trump won? Do you think that these election results should be read as a harbinger of what's coming down the pike for us this year?

I absolutely do, Rachel, the commonality between the Brexit vote, the vote by the UK to lead the European Union in 2016 in the Trump election, was that it was a surprise. People did not think that Brexit was going to win that campaign. And they campaigned on a right-wing populist message. The slogan was take back control. And they ran against globalists and liberal elites and against immigration, and was very Trumpy in its message, frankly. And it foreshadowed what we ended up dealing with in the fall here. I think, Rachel, the warning in this election And you asked me a question when I came on to talk about my book a few years ago about far-right parties and their commonalities around the world. You asked me, well, what lesson should we learn? I always think about that. The lesson I take from this one, Rachel, is that there are incumbent parties in Germany and France that have defended essentially the status quo. Emmanuel Macron has been a defender of the European Union. Olaf Scholz in Germany has been a defender of what we would call the liberal international order. People are not listening to that message right now.

You cannot defeat these parties, these populist insurgents, by beating the defenders of the status quo. That's hard for a Joe Biden, who's President of the United States. But you have to simultaneously tap into people's dissatisfaction with globalization, dissatisfaction with inequality, sense that things are slipping out of control. It's not enough to just say, We're the responsible adults here. You have to get down and have a different message for how things are going to change. I think that that's the warning sign that Joe Biden should hear. Not enough to run on status quo here, not enough to defend even the things that we think are very important. You have to meet people where they are, and people are frustrated.

Ben Rodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama. Ben, thank you for making the time. I feel like when we need to widen the lens a lot and look at America in the world, you're almost always one of the first people I think to talk to about these things.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks, Rachel. I can't wait to check out the podcast, too. It sounds great.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

All right, we got much more ahead here tonight. Do stay with us.

Donald Trump has been found guilty of all 34 counts in his Hush Money cover-up trial, and he remains the presumptive Republican nominee. On MSNBC podcast, Prosecuting Donald Trump. Veteran prosecutors Andrew Weissman and Mary McCord break down what this verdict could mean for the former President and the American people, and what sentencing he might face. Search for Prosecuting Donald Trump now follow. New episodes drop on Tuesdays.

Msnbc is going to be live here all night.

Today's news requires more facts.

Palestinians and Israelis are blaming each other for the tragedy that has inflamed the region.

More analysis.

Most of the states with the worst rates of gun deaths are ones where Republicans control the state government.

And more perspective.

This is not just about women and pregnant people in Texas.

This is about people across this country.

The world's never been harder to understand. That's why it's never been more important to Try. Msnbc. Understand more.

Let's get down to the nitty-gritty here. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Georgia became this benchmark for principled Republicans refusing to go along with improper, un-American machinations from President Trump. Governor Brian Kemp, Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, two very conservative Republicans, both nevertheless stood up to personal pressure from Trump to overturn President Biden's win in Georgia. Of course, all that pressure Trump brought to bear on Georgia Republicans and the ways in which those Republicans resisted, that formed the basis for Fulton County district Attorney Fannie Willis, filing a huge RICO case against Trump and 18 of his co-defendants in Georgia. That's one story of the state of Georgia after the 2020 election. Republicans standing up, the record of them standing up on what they had to stand up against, forming the basis for this sprawling, damning criminal indictment. The other story of Georgia since that election is all the work that pro-Trump Republicans have done to make sure nothing like that ever happens again, to make sure nobody can ever again get in the way of Trump seizing Georgia's 16 electoral votes, no matter what the votes say. The most obvious thing Georgia Republicans have done is use every tool at their disposal to derail Fannie Willis' prosecution of Trump.

In the latest development in that, three Republican-appointed judges have just put the whole case on hold while they take their time considering whether Fannie Willis should be disqualified from the case, thus guaranteeing that the Georgia prosecution will definitely not go forward against Trump before the election.

But that's only the start. In Georgia's most populous county, Fulton County, one Republican Elections Board member last month refused to certify the primary results there because you know, elections are scary. With the help of lawyers from a pro-Trump think tank, she has now filed a lawsuit seeking the power to block the certification of elections, which would, of course, throw November's results in Georgia into chaos, which is presumably the point. Meanwhile, just north of Fulton County, Republicans recently started agitating to take over an elections board in Cherokee County. Now, the board there, like other counties in Georgia, has always been evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. But Republicans in Cherokee County are no longer okay with that. They wanted a full-scale Republican takeover. When that was blocked, they came up with an ingenious new plan. They decided they would replace one of the Democratic commissioners who'd been nominated by the local Democratic Party with their own choice, their own choice for a Democrat, a new guy that none of the local Democrats have ever heard of. But don't worry, the Republicans who run Cherokee County swear that this guy they picked is definitely a Democrat. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that the Republican Cherokee County Commission chairman, Assured the board that the new member is a Democrat, even if the local Democratic Party is unfamiliar with him.

I assure you, he's definitely on your team. I know you've never met and I picked him, but trust me, pinky promise. Meanwhile, at the state elections board in Georgia. Republicans there just started writing a new rule that would allow county elections boards to conduct a, reasonable inquiry before they certify any election results. Instead of signing off on election results as county election boards are now required to do by law, they would be empowered instead to investigate those results as they see fit. The Journal Constitution notes that, the proposed rule doesn't say what a reasonable inquiry would entail before certifying an election. Yeah, why would you specify that? You definitely want every election-denying Republican County Elections Board member in Georgia just making it up as they go along, calling their own behavior reasonable. While the presidential election potentially hangs in the balance. Speaking of that state elections board, one of its Republican members was ousted last month.

One of its Republican members was ousted after Trump reportedly spent months calling Georgia Republicans, insisting that that election board member had to go because that person was not backing Trump's lies about the 2020 election.

And so, of course, the guy had to go. Trump's personal involvement in remaking the Georgia State Elections Board is just one of the revelations in new reporting from Rolling Stone. Their new piece is headlined, Georgia is Our Laboratory: Inside Trump's Plan to Rig 2024. It details how Trump's allies are working to make sure there will not be a straightforward election result in Georgia this year, given Georgia's swing state status that absolutely could be a deciding factor in how this whole election is going to go down. What is happening there?

What is happening to try to stop what is happening there? One of the reporters on that Rolling Stone piece joins us here next. Stay with us.

Stay up to date on the biggest issues of the day with the MSNBC Daily newsletter. Each morning, you'll get analysis by experts you trust. Video highlights from your favorite shows.

2024 is now truly the most important election in the history of our country.

Previews of our podcasts and documentaries, plus written perspectives from the newsmakers themselves, all sent directly to your inbox each morning. Get the best of MSNBC all in one place. Sign up for MSNBC Daily at msnbc. Com.

Hey, everyone. It's MSNBC's Chris Hayes.

For the first time since 1892, we have an election in which both candidates have presidential records. It's a chance to take a a hard look at what Joe Biden and Donald Trump have actually done as President.

On a special Why is this Happening podcast series called With Pod 2024: The Stakes, I'm talking to experts about the two candidates' records on specific policy areas like immigration, taxes, climate, and more.

So you know what's at stake come November. Search for Why Is This Happening? And follow.

The ultimate authority is the voter. The Secretary of State was reelected by the voters of the state by a larger than any other... Excuse me. Order. Order. By a larger margin than any other statewide office. The voters... Order. Have demonstrated their faith, and therefore, I do not believe that at present we have the authority to oversee or investigate the Secretary of State. When Georgia's Board of Elections gathered to discuss launching an investigation election into Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, who had the temerity to say no when Donald Trump demanded he flip the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The lone Democrat on that elections board spoke out against doing this unprecedented investigation of Raffensberger.

As you heard, she was loudly shouted down.

In a new article titled Georgia is Our Laboratory: Inside Trump's Plan to Rig 2024, Rolling Stone reports this, The former President and his supporters who have been making concrete step-by-step progress in shaping electoral processes to his benefit. Across the state, MAGA diehards are devoting considerable resources to purging voter roles, intimidating election officials, employing legal dirty tricks, and ousting Republican officials and election appointees who haven't been initiated into the cult of Trump. Georgia is the sole battleground state in which the Republican Party has total control over the levers of power. Over the last four years, Trump-loving elements of the Georgia Republican Party have wielded that advantage in a crusade to convert discredited election conspiracy theories into policies well ahead of election day 2024. It's an alarmingly anti-democratic experiment that Trump land and much of the Republican Party hope to take national. Joining us now is Adam Ronzly. He's the reporter co-bylined on that sprawling Rolling Stone piece. Adam, thanks very much for being here tonight. I appreciate you making the time.

Thanks for having me.

What are some of the steps that Trump and his allies have taken to change the electoral process in Georgia?

So one of the most alarming ones that a source who has discussed this issue with Trump told us, an attorney, a Republican attorney, is they're planning to challenge the election result regardless of the result. We think of the threat to elections from Trump's behavior in 2020 as only occurring in the event that Trump loses. At the current state of polling, Trump is ahead in Georgia, if you believe the polling. But what a Republican attorney who discussed this with Trump told us is that, quote, You can't let the left get away with this cheating just because it didn't succeed, air quotes around cheating. And the plan is to challenge the result regardless of the outcome. And the intent behind that is essentially a permanent delegitimization of the election process, right? It is heads I win, tails you lose. I think you had already mentioned this a little bit in your intro, is that one of the things that people should be paying close attention to is that refusal to certify in the Fulton County Board of Election in the presidential primary. Because one of the things that's very, very notable about that is that the attorneys who filed that lawsuit work for America First Policies Institute, which is A very Trumpy organization filled with former Trump folks.

And what you see in those kinds of processes is the legal January sixth in miniature. Essentially, you're taking someone who is acting beyond their brief and trying to essentially insert themselves into the counting and assessment of vote tallies.

Adam, is this actually a fight in Georgia? You note, I think, importantly, that Georgia is a place where Republicans control all of the levers of power. We just played the sound of one Democratic member of the state elections board getting shouted down when she objected to what they were trying to do in terms of targeting Raffensberger. Is this fight joined where there is pushback against what they're doing, or are they essentially running the table by changing processes to their own benefit?

They definitely have a built-in advantage. I think that's why Georgia, relative to other battleground states, is particularly interesting because it is more so than perhaps any other state, a fight for the soul of the Republican Party, particularly when it comes to their faith in free and fair elections. Yeah, even folks like Brian Kemp who was an absolute obstacle to Trump's attempt to illegally overturn the election in Georgia. Brian Kemp signed SB 202, which is a law that allows for a range of procedural chicaner January, Joe Biden called it Jim Crow in the 21st century. Even folks who have proven themselves to be obstacles to some of the more overt aspects of it, sometimes we'll just go along to get along. And so they definitely do have an advantage, and they are running the table in certain ways. But you do see folks like you mentioned earlier, like Ed Lindsay, whose resignation letter we obtained in the story. People I like that, you still do have these principled Republicans who are willing to stand up for what they believe in. But as you saw with the case of Ed, he had to resign under a great deal of pressure from not just President Trump, but from the grassroots of the party who believe in a lot of election conspiracies.

Yeah. The bare fact that a presidential candidate is personally lobbying to remove individual state elections board members ought to be on the front page of every paper in the country.

It's been reported by Adam Ronsley, reporter at Rolling Stone.

Adam, you and Aswan Su was saying, byland reporters on this piece. Again, Georgia is our laboratory. Thank you so much for helping us understand this. Thanks for doing this work.

I love to have you back.

Thanks so much for having me, Rachel.

All right. I appreciate it. We'll be right back. Stay with us.

Could have been the heat, I suppose. Temperatures were over 100 degrees at his outdoor campaign rally in Las Vegas yesterday. So hot, six people had to go to the hospital, another two dozen people had to get medical treatment on site. Could have been the heat, I suppose. Could also maybe have been that he was nervous about the fact that he was less than 24 hours away from his first meeting with his New York State probation officer. That meeting could be particularly nerve-wracking for him because one of the things a probation officer asks you after you're convicted of felonies is if you've been associating with anyone who has a criminal record. That's worth noting because if he is ultimately sentenced to probation next month while he's on probation, he will not be allowed to associate with anyone with a criminal record. For a lot of people, that wouldn't be a big deal, but for him, that's a big deal. That particular restriction really eats away at a lot of his very close social circle. So maybe that was all distracting him. I don't know. He maybe had a lot on... I don't know. Whatever the reason, he decided to venture into new territory in his campaign speech yesterday.

We're less than five months out from the election.

This is an important swing state.

He decided that what the landlocked citizens of Las Vegas needed to hear about from him in order to be persuaded to vote for him was his fear of boats, heavy boats, boats with batteries near sharks, Nevada sharks. I know you have heard that this happened.

I know you might have seen a headline about it or something or scrolled past it on a social media feed.

Have you actually watched it? Like uncut, straight through, just watched it unfold? It is very much worth watching. It's astonishing. My favorite part is the people you can see at the rally behind him who are really trying to follow along, but who clearly have no earthly idea what Uncle Ramble Standard is on about.

Just watch this.

What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you're in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery and the battery is now underwater and there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over there. By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark. I watched some guys justifying it today. Well, they weren't really that angry. They bit off the young lady's leg because of the fact that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was. These people are crazy. He said, There's no problem with sharks. They just didn't really understand A young woman swimming now. It really got decimated, and other people do a lot of shark are next to me. I said, So there's a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here. Do I get electrocuted? If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking, do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he didn't know the answer. He said, You know, nobody's ever asked me that question.

I said, I think it's a good question. I think there's a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I'd do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I'll take electrocution every single time. I'm not getting near the shark. We're going to end it for boats.

We're going to end it for boats. We're going to end that. We're We're going to end it for votes. We're going to end it for votes. Vote accordingly. All right, It's going to do it for us tonight. I told you tonight was going to be a show and a half.

Hi, I'm Jonathan Capehard, and I'm excited to share some great news. Both The Saturday Show and The Sunday Show are available as a podcast. Every weekend, I look forward to bringing you the most important political news and the newsmakers who are creating policies that affect your life. For me, it's all about the conversation. That's when news is revealed and understanding begins. Search for Saturdays and Sundays with Jonathan Capehardt and follow.