Rachel Maddow in Conversation

[Applause] [Laughter] Wow thank you all so much for coming [Applause] Wow did he say 4,000 people are here this is crazy I love you too thank you alright I'm sorry about the whole crutches thing I know it's melodramatic right it's a very boring story or I would tell it mmm thank you all so much for being here this is an overwhelming number of humans I am I'm just incredibly honored that you're all here I do a show on TV and I know that there are people watching but I can't see them and so this is coming face to face with something that I really try never to think about which is that a lot of people know what I do including the screw-ups every day so as a way to try to minimize the emotion I am actually going to change glasses so that with these glasses on I will not be able to see any of you which will make this easier for me all right okay so I did not set out to write a book about the oil and gas industry and I thought for sure if I did no one would want to read it and then this weird thing happened right around the time the book was ready to come out which is that the president started getting impeached and I I didn't do it but I'll take the applause and the the thing that's the thing that really surprised me is that this book is coming out and it's kind of about the thing for which the president is being impeached and so I had planned when I was going to go around and talk about the book and do events like this that I would read like the funny section of the book there's a really there's a section I really like that I think is kind of funny that's about walruses and I was like I go to Chicago room that's gonna slay they're gonna love the walruses thing because the president is now being impeached though for something that has to do with the thesis of this book I kind of feel like I should read from that part of the book just in part because I'm really looking forward to this conversation with Allison and some of your guys's questions and I feel like maybe this would be kind of a good predicate because I have a feeling there might be some appetite to talk about that and from the applause a second ago when I said the word impeachment I think I'm right so all right so I'll read a little bit and then I'll just say a little thing and then Allison will come out so here we go the reason I specifically kind of picked out this part tonight is because of those guys who got arrested a couple days ago Lev and Igor they one of the things that was interesting about that so they got arrested and charged with trying to funnel illegal campaign donations including illegal foreign origin Russian campaign donations to Republican politicians both to start a weed business but also to try to get the US ambassador to Ukraine removed as part of a scheme they were working on with the president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani and we know for mr. Giuliani zone account that the reason they wanted that ambassador out in Ukraine was because she was in the way of their scheme to get Ukraine to provide the president with dirt he could use against the Democrats in the 2020 election which is what he's now being impeached for so it all kind of ties but I thought it was it was interesting and like weird given the book that when those guys got arrested remember they got arrested at Dulles Airport and we think they moved up the indictment so that they could hurry up the arrests because they had one-way tickets out of the country and so they went and they swooped in and they got them at Dulles and they brought them to the nearest federal courthouse the relevant federal courthouse if you're ever arrested at Dulles Airport trying to flee the country as news you can use is the Eastern District of Virginia and so they've got brought in for their initial court hearing at the Eastern District of Virginia and the weirdest thing happened they got Paul manna Ford's lawyers what were they doing there what's your connection to all this did you guys know each other before so that was weird mr. Giuliani also says that one of the people who he's been working on this scheme with the one that the president is going to get impeached for the person who was giving him strategic advice on what the president might be able to solicit from Ukraine to help him in his next election one of the people he has been consulting with on this is Paul Manafort who is the president's campaign chairman but currently is a federal inmate and apparently mr. Giuliani has been working with him so there's the guys who are in jail now who have just been arrested and indicted there's the other guy who's serving a federal prison sentence those are those are the first three guys Giuliani is working with on this scheme and then there's another guy because when they got arrested at Dulles they had these one-way tickets and they were to Frankfurt but they didn't say that they were planning on staying in Frankfurt they were going to transit through there and mr. Giuliani again always helpful told a reporter for the Atlantic that where they were going was Vienna Austria and he was also on his way to Vienna Austria but they weren't going together it was just coincidence and we now know that the reason they were going to Vienna Austria is because they were at least either Lev or Igor I can't tell them apart yet by next week I will have it one of them was working for a guy whose name is Dmitri firtash who's in the book and what has emerged actually what he merged last night which is why I'm going to read this today is Reuters how to report that Dmitri firtash who is not in prison but is under arrest and out on bail and fighting extradition to the United States where US prosecutors say that he's an upper echelon associate of Russian organized crime and he's wanted on a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme Dmitri firtash is the one who has apparently according to Reuters been financing Lev and Igor in their latest exploits it may it also is starting to appear like maybe Dmitri firtash is the one who was paying Rudi for this work through love and Igor and like I said us prosecutors believe he's an upper echelon associate of Russian organized crime so I feel like it's all coming together and the president is gonna get impeached for this stuff but all of the people who are apparently were involved in in all of the people who were apparently involved in hooking them up with this are either in jail in prison or fighting extradition plus Rudy and so I feel like I have to talk about this stuff now quick because well once they're all in jail it's gonna be harder to get more of the story out so anyway that's the back that's the background the immediate news background which I think makes this relevant all right the biggest threat Putin had to keep it BAE was the prospect of strong rich stable western-oriented democracies in Russia's near abroad that sort of thing could not only challenge or constrain Russia's regional power it could conceivably the horror inspire the Russian people themselves leading them to demand a democratic say in their own government as well the solution was simple use Russian natural gas and oil not only to make money for the Russian state but also to keep neighboring countries corrupt and dependent it solved so many problems it reduced expectations for democratic governance and the rule of law in those countries it created a corruptly empowered political class invested in preserving the Russia dependent system that enriched both its practitioners and oftentimes also their families it also created comfortable space for organized crime to flourish the Russian government under Vladimir Putin's control has steadily become more integrated with all kinds of transnational organized crime in the former Soviet sphere and not just because Putin has tended to attract the kinds of broken nose Tufts who would otherwise be called henchmen if Putin hadn't made them so rich the beauty of putin's ever deepening kinship with the mob was that it gave him a whole other of levers with which to settle problems and to make problematic people go away whenever it might be unseemly to wield the overt powers of the state and so Putin's team in the Kremlin was delighted to utilize a man like Dimitri firtash Dimitri for attaches special skills could be used to shape Ukraine more to the Kremlin's liking to turn it from its increasingly worrying flirtation with the West with the work with the European Union with Oh God maybe even NATO so the Kremlin cut firtash a sweetheart deal in Ukraine virata's new company was given the exclusive right to buy gas from Russia to sell to Ukraine at a very large profit about eight hundred million dollars in clear profit in the year 2007 alone now Ukraine could just as easily have bought the gas with no middleman and no markup but Putin wanted both the middleman and the markup it cost Gazprom the Russian natural gas company a pretty penny basically straight out of Russian government coffers but it was worth it firtash as well as some of Putin's other Ukrainian oligarchs would have plenty of cash to spread around to shape Ukraine in ways that Putin would appreciate some of that cash did go back to Moscow as tribute but even more of it went to prop up something called the Party of Regions which meant a whole bunch of that money passed through or ended up in the offshore bank accounts of the mercenary American political operative named Paul Manafort Paul Manafort helped the Moscow friendly party of regions when a solid plurality in the 2006 parliamentary elections in Ukraine and then he spent the next few years dinging Ukraine's strongest opposition leaders including those from the orange party Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was a prime target Timoshenko was a particular threat to Moscow's influence in Ukraine she had made herself the front-runner in the 2010 presidential election by seizing on that sweetheart gas deal that Dmitri firtash got from the Kremlin she promised to end that deal she made a good case why on earth should firtash his company should anybody's company be allowed to siphon off 800 million dollars in a single year by doing nothing by just playing this middleman role that nobody needed nobody asked for well manna fort and his team went right at prime minister Tymoshenko with full force they helped drive down her approval ratings to 20% six months before that 2010 presidential election even when she renegotiated the russia-ukraine natural gas deal in 2009 she actually got rid of that deal she cut firtash out she got rid of that middleman even her renegotiation of that deal wasn't enough to sway a majority of voters to her mana forts guy Yanukovych squeezed by her and into the presidency in 2010 mana fort received much credit for the ANA Kovich victory and he got a rich new contract as the new Ukrainian president's off-site political adviser and he got right to work one of Yanukovych his first acts as Ukraine's new president was to SiC a rabid state prosecutor on Yulia Tymoshenko lock her up Yanukovych's prosecutor charged Timoshenko with the crime of abusing her official powers by illegally arranging the new firtash free gas deal between Russia and Ukraine the accused her of corruption for having gotten rid of that corrupt deal Timoshenko had a lot of sympathy in the United States and Europe so mana fork got right to work on a multi-part expensive public relations campaign to destroy her reputation in Ukraine and also in the United States but they brought those corruption charges against her they prosecuted her they convicted her and they locked her up and with Timoshenko stashed in prison trashed by the American PR firms and American law firms that mana fort paid for Russia's men in Ukraine mob-connected Dmitry firtash got back into the gas deal which was better than ever his company's operating profit for the years 2012 and 2013 added up to nearly four billion dollars with that kind of money available for corrupting any actual governance in the interests of the people of Ukraine Putin's natural gas supply there hovered over the heads of the Ukrainian people like a sword Putin could tell things were going well when Yanukovych were an egg Don his campaign promised to move Ukraine toward greater cooperation with possibly even membership in the European Union Putin knew that wouldn't that couldn't ever happen the problem was the Ukrainian people appeared to really like the idea even when Putin promised 15 billion dollars worth of new aid to Ukraine the will of the Ukrainian people was clear they wanted the EU no matter Putin's largesse and the orange side revolted again what started on November 21st 2013 as a small demonstration in the main square in Kiev and the Madonn grew in just a few days to another 100,000 person protests the demonstrators took over the square and refused to leave a violent crackdown by police in the last days of November didn't quell the enthusiasm in the face of Yanukovych's armed security forces determined protesters strapped on pots and pans as makeshift armored and they took to the streets and the crowds kept on coming and growing this lasted through November through December putin thought the cold Kiev January would break the crowd if the security forces could not he was wrong in February as the Sochi Olympics kicked off they were still there by the tens of thousands wearing their makeshift 21st century defensive kitchen where huddled for warmth around trash can fires the protest had morphed from a demonstration about the EU question into a demonstration about democracy itself the will of the governed Ukrainians were calling it the revolution of dignity the demonstrators in Kiev were gaining courage in numbers and on February 18 2014 they armed themselves with slingshots and braved a gauntlet of Yanukovych's armed security forces and they marched on the Ukrainian Parliament when Yanukovych is security forces started killing protesters that afternoon the crowds retreated to their barricades in the Madonn and remained there through a terrifying night protected by a ring of fire Yanukovych's security forces broke out machine guns they scrambled rooftop snipers the next day and the civilian casualty list just kept growing and growing one defiant protesters standing behind a makeshift shield wearing a plastic helmet and a surgical mask yelled we are not afraid to die for freedom freedom is for us freedom is ours we will win and Ukraine will be part of Europe and Ukraine will be part of the free world and we'll never be slaves we will be free Putin watched it all with a growing sense of dread and a growing sense of anger here at his doorstep was the Western conspiracy America was the cause of all of this mess he was sure the last little bit I'm gonna read on the eve of the final day of the Sochi Olympics Yanukovych not lost his nerve he called off his security forces he turned tail and ran he gave over Kiev and the federal government to the orange revolutionaries the Ukrainian Parliament met in an emergency session legislators voted Yanukovych out of office in absentia they ordered the immediate release of Yulia Tymoshenko and she was freed and they voted to refer Yanukovych to the International Criminal Court to answer for crimes against humanity Yanukovych resurfaced a few days later in a Party of Regions stronghold in the Russia friendly eastern part of the country but he ran into protests even there thousands of his countrymen faced him down right there on his home streets chanting Ukraine is not Russia Ukraine is not Russia Ukraine is not Russia Yanukovych fled to Moscow Putin was done trying to make nice he'd had it with the United States he was sure it was the United States meddling on his turf vice president Joseph R Biden had been in and out of Kiev for years insisting that the Obama administration would protect Ukraine from Russia Biden said we do not recognize and I want to reiterate it we do not recognize any sphere of influence and he followed that up with what sounded like an insult the Russians he said have a shrinking population base they have a withering economy they have a banking sector and structure that's not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years they are in a situation where the world is changing before them and they are clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable Putin sort of took it personally so the good news is I scheduled a book tour and the publication of the book for the time when nothing is going on and I'm looking forward to talking a little bit tonight about how I do think that the oil and gas industry and its influence particularly how it works in the part of the world that is now an area of such focus for us I do think that links to the current impeachment crisis and I'm looking forward to talking about that but in terms of where this came from like I said at the top I did not set out to write a book about this industry I didn't start off knowing anything about this industry and people who know a lot about the industry probably think I still don't know anything but I I had two things that I was really stuck on and they both led me to this and one was this thing that I feel like we probably didn't know any of us in our lifetimes is going to become the fight of our lifetimes which is the fight between the rule of law between democratic rule of law liberal democracy and authoritarianism and to be facing structural and serious and potentially existential threats to our own democracy at home is sort of shocking enough I think for us as Americans but to see clearly that this is happening to us at a time when democracy is in decline around the world and authoritarianism is on the rise around the world I think should be centering for us it should make us realize that however America exceptionalism may function in our lives and in our foreign policy there are times in life and there are times in the evolution of Nations when bold strong patriotic citizens can learn a lot from people in other countries who have gone through this too and I think we have a lot of fellowship around the world right now with a lot of people who are trying to figure out how to do this right and in thinking about trying to contribute something meaningful e to this discussion something meaningful to this discussion about authoritarianism versus the rule of law I felt like I'd heard a lot of generic statements about democracy being good and authoritarianism being bad and generic statements about needing to fight for it and I felt like I wanted to get more specific and I think part of trying to shore up something that's at risk is figuring out what's hurting it figuring out what is within our culture within our economy within our political sphere that is sapping the strength of democracy that's making it feel like a sham to so many people that's making strongman politics seem more attractive and I think you need to talk about big business when you talk about that I think the other thing that led me to this topic is something that you're probably less surprised by if you've ever seen the show which is that I'm kind of obsessed with Russia which I make no apologies for and but in all of the coverage that I've done and all the coverage that everybody in the media has done about what happened in 2016 in terms of our election I was really stuck trying to figure out the motive force for why why Russia did what it did in part because what they did was weird right there's like a guy who's connected to the Kremlin who runs like a social media factory that sounds like it's no fun and they're making they're creating fake American avatars and pretending to be Facebook groups that don't exist and then tricking Americans into going to demonstrations and also they're stealing Democratic Party risotto recipes and publishing them the name gusoff er 2.0 like what is this why is this happening and is why is it happening in this way these are odd tactics but also what's the risk and we risk and reward balance for Russia and this I mean as best as we can tell Russia seems to have thought that Hillary Clinton was gonna win too I mean they were doing their best to make sure that wasn't gonna happen but I think they still thought she was gonna win and if she had won I mean Secretary Clinton was already a hawk on Russia imagine if she'd come into the presidency with Russia having just taken this swing at her in our election to try to hurt her as president and to try to install her opponent had she become president they had to have known that things were probably going to go pear-shaped really fast but yet it was still worth it for them to try very very very very high-risk something that almost smacks of desperation well what I arrived at pretty quickly is that I think it's hard to understand Russia's own motivation in the world without understanding that their economy really sucks Russia is the biggest landmass of any country on earth they've got a hundred and fifty million people which is really big I mean Germany's eighty-five million people the UK 70 million people Italy's 60 million people South Korea 50 million people brush is a hundred and fifty million people they've got an economy smaller than Italy's smaller than South Korea's triple the population and the same and a smaller economy and that itself is something that Russian politicians are the answer for but it gets you to sort of the next question well why is their economy so bad especially when they float on a sea of oil and gas generally speaking it turns out that oil and gas is a terrible thing on which to build your economy and that's part of what went wrong in Russia that's part of a bad gamble that Vladimir Putin made very early on in his presidency the other thing though that I think is important is that oil and gas not only isn't a good thing to build your economy on the oil and gas industry when it's big enough it kind of makes it political weather one thing they're actually really for all the things they're not good at like they are for example not good at cleaning up after themselves really like paper towels is still like the apex of what they have to offer in terms of oil spills I mean they're fancy very expensive paper towels but it's paper towels that's what they use for all the things they are not that good at they're not good at cleaning up after themselves they're not good at sailing to Alaska they're not good at all sorts of stuff you think they'd be good at but one thing they're really good at is getting governments of all shapes and sizes to serve them to serve their interests as an industry in a way that tends to Hubble the ability of that government to do a good job serving any other responsible purpose and that dynamic to me ended up being fascinated fascinating setting aside whatever might be bad for your country in terms of having oil and gas production there what we see over and over and over again is that where oil revenues flow government tends to suffer and that's true even when it's tons of oil revenues the founding energy minister of Saudi Arabia says and I quote all in all I wish we'd discovered water the founder of OPEC says as far as he can tell oil is quote the excrement of the devil the founder of OPEC not only says that oil is poop but oil is the devil's poop it's like there's definitely a book there right I don't I don't know what else is gonna be in the book but that is in the book and you know oil companies are full of regular people doing regular jobs both myself and my partner Susan we both have family members close family members have worked in the oil industry it's nothing personal whatsoever but this is an industry that is sort of nuking the planet 76 percent of carbon emissions in the United States are from burning oil or burning natural gas it's basically we're the biggest economy on earth you're talking about more than three-quarters of our emissions that's the big enchilada that's it oil and gas does also prop up terrible governments around the world and they weaken democratic accountable governance everywhere they operate I think on Russia specifically it is also worth understanding how much of a lifeline the big majors of the oil industry and ExxonMobil in particular how much of a lifeline they have been for what has morphed into basically malignant kleptocratic dictatorship that has tried to reorder the world and undo all Western alliances and smear itself all over US and all over every other Western democracy they can get their mitts on and so that's I think where we get to a little bit of this issue of that this conflict we've got between rising authoritarianism and the rule of law but I also just want to say just a couple of things in closing I am really hopeful about the ability to do something about this I wouldn't have written the book of I didn't think there was if it was sort of a can-do thing and part of what I think is can do about it is that I think it's understandable I don't think this is something that is 3d chess don't I don't think it's a conspiracy theory I don't think it's something that is too big to fathom and I think the solutions about how to deal with that how to shore up democracy by reining in and containing some of the forces that corrode our democracy it's doable stuff and the sort of one of the stories that I tell in the book the sort of heroic story in the book that's based in the United States is about schoolteachers in the great state of Oklahoma I did a book tour event earlier this week in Tulsa was freaking fantastic 3,000 people coming out to see Rachel Maddow talk about the oil and gas industry in Tulsa yeah bring it it's great they said it couldn't be done but in Oklahoma is a great great great teaching moment for all of us because Oklahoma is a state where the oil and gas industry is incredibly powerful and we're in many ways that industry has co-opted and taken over what should otherwise be government for the people and there's no shame in that that happens literally everywhere oil and gas is produced in quantity everywhere on earth but because of that co-optation Oklahoma started to have some really serious problems I mean including man-made earthquakes but not just that and the way they responded was that they've kind of flipped the light switch on their democracy and Oklahoma did not become an environmental Haven and Oklahoma did not shut down its oil and gas industry and oil and Oklahoma did not become a blue state but Oklahoma citizens of all ideological stripes decided that they needed to take back what their government was doing from the industry that was strangling it and they showed up in quantity led by the teachers and by the students who supported them and they reorganized their state budget and I know the level of the gross production tax for oil and natural gas in the state of Oklahoma doesn't sound like it's the thing that's going to save the world but when they turned it from 2% to 5% by people-powered demonstrations under the Rotunda in the most oil and gas captured government within the United States that to me was the path even among those Republican teachers most of them even in that conservative state to know that this is doable stuff and I am inspired by that I am also humbled and inspired and in awe of the climate activist movement that's being led by young people right now I think that it is no secret that they will win what they are trying to do they are going to win and the question for the United States for those of us here in the u.s. is twofold one how quickly are we going to get there how quickly can we make this decision and how ambitious can be can we be when we make it but also can we rise to the occasion of being the biggest economy on earth every Western oil major is either headquartered here or needs to do lots of business here and that means they are all de-facto regulated here and if the American public would stand up and do things at the federal level to regulate this industry that literally props up despot around the world that not only is game over for the climate in terms of them getting their way but that also erodes our own governance here and everywhere else they touch if we enacted the reforms at the federal level which is something we already started to do at the end of the Obama administration and it could be done it would have a worldwide effect in terms of shoring up democracy helping us make better decisions about the climate and making those decisions faster and with more ambition and it's within our reach and that to me is exciting and I will just close with one last thought which is I mentioned the paper towels thing it did surprise me in writing the book that the level of technological hmm that's the nice way to say this the way we overestimate the technological capacity of this large cup this large cut this large industry they're not as good as they think they are we overestimate their technological capability and we underestimate their geopolitical impact and if we are about to go through a worldwide reckoning in terms of the use of these fuels if we are about to have a climate driven reckoning where we turn away from this industry at last because we need to obviously we're all focused on what the environmental impact of that will be but I think it is worth thinking in advance about the fact that that's going to have a big geopolitical impact too because this industry does prop up terrible governments all over the world they prop up whole systems of governance all around the world and if their market share precipitously drops and if they lose the power that they've got both just in terms of their wealth and in terms of their influence and how much we need them I think we should expect that the boundaries of countries may change I think we should expect governance writ large to change I think we should expect a number of governments around the world to fall and quickly and that's not to say we shouldn't do it but it means that when that happens when that tipping point comes and it will come these activists are gonna win when that moment comes we need to be able to hold ourselves up as an exemplar of democracy why democracy is the best system that anybody's ever invented to show that it's strong that it works for the people and when other forms of government are in decline and in collapse we're the example of what you want to be and [Music] so thank you all for coming I'm super happy to have you here I'm gonna put back on my glasses so now you're about to reappear and Alison is here and we're gonna do questions over there if I fall down between here and there thank you if I blue to floor it I didn't bring the book over because when you have crutches you can't put anything in your hands so if you want me to like reference anything I'll have to crawl over we'll have someone run into us okay how's that sound great there's water here okay so I think it goes without saying after your earlier reception that it is such a pleasure an honor and a thrill to have you Rachel Maddow in Chicago it's in I love this city I cannot believe how many people are here it's amazing I just I'm thrilled so thanks yeah yeah we are too and and I as you were saying I don't think any of us anticipated that the world at this moment would look feel sound like a kind of Rachel Maddow opening of a except on steroids you know that everything you've been talking about you know you were able to say this week on your show the Russians did it it was the Russians you know after the Senate Intelligence report came out about infirmed previous reports as you said a lot of the characters that are in the book or that you've been talking about on the show Rex Tillerson is back in the news he kind of gone dormant he came back just for the book launch supportive Dimitri firtash I'm so glad you found that one of the most interesting parts of the book but you know he's actually the extradition they're trying to extradite him to Chicago have you got any Ukrainian connections or Dimitri firtash goes on trial in Chicago I will be doing the Rachel Maddow Show from so yeah I mean it must must boom I mean these are terrible times but it must feel kind of good to you hey guys you know I've been talking about this yeah writing about the end of the world and now here it is I really I was thinking about the Russia attack and trying to figure out you know as I said the sort of motive force for what they did would explain their desperation what would possibly make it worth it what I think that we're actually trying to get out of that election interference I think sanctions I think you can't understand any of it without understanding how difficult sanctions make it for Russia specifically because they are an oil and gas economy and their own oil and gas companies are terrible because Putin is terrible like you kind of have to get all those pieces of the story but it does kind of fall into place I wasn't trying to explain what Trump was going to get impeached for that was just like a bonus icing on the cake I am curious because when you any as you were kind of closing and bringing this together and talking about the stakes in this and thinking about democracy authoritarianism you know you characterize the influence of oil and gas on politics as petroleum powered governance saying that it has twin engines corruption in which the industry effectively effectively captures politicians and then capture in which the industry effectively comes to own the government and when you look at the operations of oil and gas in Russia when you look at the operations of oil and gas and their influence in the United States and of course this book is about how they intertwine and take that step back as you're asking us to do what are the differences and are the differences of degree or are they of kind between Russia and us yes the thing that Putin recognized about the oil and gas industry I mean Russia really is floating on a sea of oil and gas they they have a ton of it and they were among the first places in the world to ever drill it in the former Soviet Union and the Western Siberia noil sands are incredibly easy to drill you don't need very fancy technology in order to do it and so it's always been a stable part of even the Soviet economy before the Russian Federation but when when Putin got into power that's obviously the time when Russia is in transition post Yeltsin right and Putin sort of has a decision to make as to whether or not Russia is going to economically liberalize enough to have a diversified economy they're gonna have oil and gas at some level no matter what but in order to have a diversified economy and a well-balanced economy you kind of need like property rights rule of law a legal system that isn't just used to kill your enemies and and give favors to your kids you need a lack of general corruption at everything from the permitting process to the election process and that was it seemed terrible to Vladimir Putin the idea that you'd have to go through these sort of nation-building things in order to develop a modern capitalist diversified economy was not going to work for him and so he decided to kind of go all in on oil and gas to the basic basically to the extent where he took over the industry so that it could essentially be used as a power of that as a tool of the presidency right oil is power oil is corrupt and so Russia is a weak country with a weak economy which that what it would take to make it a strong economy he can't bear so it's gonna be a weak economy having a weak economy having a weak political structure that's essentially evolved into just this kleptocratic authoritarianism now there's not much to offer and it's not that's not the way you become a stronger and more influential country but he still sees Russia as having an international scale but having ambitions of international scale and so the reason that oil and gas was so attractive to him as something he was willing to rely on in its entirety was because if he could control them and wheel his tools he could use them as weapons against other countries and that's what he's done in the near abroad in terms of all the former Soviet states Ukraine first among them but that's also what he's doing with Western Europe I mean he can literally turn the lights off at will in Germany and in Ukraine and in lots of other places and that power is irresistible to him and it's really the only power that he's got and so to see oil and gas used as a weapon there and to see him make the because he wanted to control it himself he couldn't allow for there to be good companies run by strong guys who got rich doing it because they were good at the oil and gas business anytime anybody got good at it he would lock them up take their company and fold it into Ross and after gas problem so their help they have a terrible oil and gas sector even though it's all they've got its run by like his judo partners for money with seven it's all these guys with like noses that go this way and you know kicked dogs for fun on their coffee breaks I mean it's just they're terrible the Gazprom lost over 300 billion dollars of its valuation since this guy Alexey Miller has been in charge but he's still in charge because he's doing exactly what Putin wants them to do with that company it's they're terrible in order to drill oil and gas in Russia as they run out of the easy oil and gas that they were used to as they need to get to more challenging drilling locations like the Arctic sea and all these other places they want to drill they can't do it with the terrible companies they have they need to tap Western experts this is one ant with sanction this is one of the ironies right the rhetoric in the United States in some circles has long been that we are dependent on foreign oil and in fact foreign or at least Russian oil is highly dependent on our oil and and our oil expertise as they're saying it's a form of people like Rex Tillerson and Exxon yeah and not in it turned like it turns out there's like these amazing stories to tell about that I mean so Russia after what I was describing there in terms of Yanukovych turning tail and fleeing and Putin being really mad right what we all know what happened right after that right Putin invaded Ukraine and took part of it and in response the u.s. put sanctions on them and in 2014 who Rosneft had just done a half trillion dollar oil deal the largest oil deal in the history of deals Ross left of Justin a huge half trillion dollar deal with Exxon to go do some of this challenging drilling up in the Arctic among other places and Rex Tillerson is the one who did that deal lots of other Western executives have had a really hard time in Russia but Rex figured it out somehow he didn't Putin somehow saw eye to eye he was able to do this giant deal and they were up there drilling in the Arctic sea as or in the Kara Sea as US sanctions on Russia were going into effect as US sanctions on the head of Russia's national oil company we're going into effect and Rex and Exxon are still there going we need a couple more days we need a couple more days we have we need an environmental waiver we're worried about cleaning up properly because of the birds we're really worried about the we can't leave and they're trying to get one more day one more day one more day one more extension because they're trying to hit oil before they go and they do they hit oil and then the next day sanctions yanked them out of there and Russian oil and gas companies suck so badly that even with Exxon having drilled the well and found the oil and pointed them toward it they can't get it out of the ground and so since that day with that half trillion dollar deal on ice because of u.s. foreign policy Russia has been up against it this is the only thing they've got in their economy how are they going to get that oil they need this they need Exxon they need these Western companies well u.s. foreign policy says they can't use them well who should our guy who we just installed in the White House be put in charge of u.s. foreign policy then how about Rex it's an existential threat to them it was worth it right man they also did things despite sanctions like the annexation of Crimea and their developing oil and drilling there and I wondered but reading that story it's about you know what Russia is trying to do to maintain this power and hold on to it and it ensure a steady supply of it because it is all power to them but it's also about Exxon and Tillerson and others trying to figure out how do we work around the edges of these sanctions and what are the loopholes so we can continue to do this and it struck me in as all of this is coming together into that great big you know the the Rachel Maddow prophecy that is now on earth said that there's something similar in the way that President Trump and and some of the people around him are kind of you know right now they're not talking about the content of the impeachment and all the news that is coming out Gordon Sandlin just now is saying that he will go before Congress and talk about the quid pro quo they're talking about the legality of this and kind of refusing it and that is something that this president has seemed very good at to kind of test guardrails and then push right through them and ignore them and so as we're moving forward and as you're watching this what do you think to come back to that question of if we are the kind of stop you know this is where it stops our democracy we have to be the best what should the Democrats be doing to try and enforce those kind of democratic guardrails against them when he seemingly does not seem to care about them or even acknowledge them yeah I mean I what's been interesting I think with the president it's a very astute point I think is that I feel like what we've watched in real time over the course of his presidency is that he learns where these democratic norms are in real time by crossing them because he didn't know they were there like I'm not supposed to just give security clearances to my kids this is a problem oh you're bothered by this yeah I'm given security clearances to everybody you know like he learns what if the problem learns what's illegal or what the problem is by doing it and then decides to make a virtue of it and so that makes it hard to figure out like usually when people do stuff in politics that's bad like that getting caught is the start of it getting fixed but in this case getting caught is the start of the Republican Party trying to celebrate that at that crime is a new virtue and that shamelessness about about about what they're doing wrong makes it hard I mean our most of our tools within the Democrat within our American democratic process are based on shame that if you do this you will have to disclose it and once you disclose it people will criticize you for it and you will be ashamed and that is the disincentive for you to do the thing in the first place well not if you don't have any shame so it's hard but I mean the the thing I am I the thing I see the Democrats doing that I think is unavoidable but also keeps me up a little bit at night is that they are taking the things that used to be rules that the president has gleefully broken and that the Republican Party and the president's supporters have tried to turn into virtues because he has broken those things there the Democrats are now looking at those rules and thinking about making them into laws the things that you were just supposed to not do because they were disgusting or because they were politically unpalatable you will now not be allowed to do and that's probably necessary but it also change our democratic system and I don't want the judiciary to be the only check on our political officials especially because I'm very worried about the direction of the justice department right now I mean the the biggest norm that has been broken in this administration I think has actually not been broken by the president but by the Attorney General and the most serious thing that we have to worry about in terms of the drift of our democracy right now is I think the use of the US Justice Department to punish the president's political opponents and reward his political allies that that is something for which a former attorney general named John Mitchell went to prison in the 1970s and I'm I feel like if John Mitchell were alive right now and working in the Justice Department his only worry would be how fast he was getting promoted and I'm very very concerned about that and you couple that with the sort of neat this feeling among the Democrats that this stuff ought to be illegal so nobody else can get away with it the way Trump has those those things pull me in opposite directions mm-hmm yeah I you know I an audience question for you there's a number of things to be worrying about but there's also this question from Vicki Fogerty if and you've answered this already but since as you say everything's moving so quickly I curious to know what your answer is now low these three days later Vicki Fogerty asks if the evidence is there for impeachment do you believe the republican-controlled Senate will impeach so that's the first part what will the Senate do yeah I have no idea I mean it's very easy I think to look at Mitch McConnell from a distance and be like yeah okay but I also I do feel like we are in a special moment and it is worth appreciating the unique nature of the thing that our country is going through right now I mean President Trump has been very controversial since before his election and the idea that he is now being impeached in some ways I think feels inevitable feels like you know a relief for people who have been critical of his behavior but impeachment is is is a hen's tooth I mean it's a really rare thing it was Andrew Johnson in 1867 keep me honest I think they tried to impeach him in 67 and they failed and then they went back with like exactly the same articles innate to 1868 and they got him then and Johnson was not removed because of Furth for want of one vote in the Senate so that was the house impeaching him the Senate not removing him you have to get to the 90s before we do it again Richard Nixon resigned without being impeached yes they were drawing up impeachment articles but he resigned rather than face that so it's Andrew Johnson and Richard and and Bill Clinton that's it that's the only history that we've got as a country with impeachment and if you think that you can extrapolate from those two examples right to understand you know what's normal but if the Republican if the Senate does not yeah in vote to impeach what does that do to the Republican Party that's the second half of the case well I don't I mean I don't I don't know what's going to happen I don't know when the Democrats are going to take their impeachment vote and I don't know what they're gonna try to impeach him on I think the number of articles that they try to impeach him on may end up being very important just in terms of the game theory of all of this in terms of the numbers of Republicans who may find something in an article three that they didn't like in an article two when it gets to the US Senate I think that most democratic senators will likely vote to remove I think that Republican senators are basically thought to not have any chance of that but I also feel like we should be humble about that prediction I don't know what's gonna happen we don't know what's gonna come out and preachments only been going on for three weeks now and look how much we've learned we didn't even know Igor did you guys see the picture that circulated today which is Igor and Lev and Mike Huckabee and Igor or love again I'm sorry I don't know which one of them is literally holding a bag of money is this Halloween costume is it I don't know what will happen I think listen if Mitch McConnell was never going to do anything and he knew that from the beginning no matter what came out weren't you surprised when he came out and said in an interview the other day like actually we will be forced to take this up in the Senate as I understand the impeachment process but you don't have a choice we got to bring it up now he very quickly said now I don't know how long that means we'll spend on it and so maybe that means he convenes the impeachment trial adjourns it and it's over in the blink of an eye but he could have Merrick garland did this thing just as easily I mean Mitch McConnell is not that worried about the niceties of Senate procedure when it comes to getting something important that he wants for partisan purposes and I say that with great deal of admiration but he could have just said no there's no chance we're not taking it up don't bother he didn't which means he's keeping a door open for himself and I just don't think we should prejudge any stuff of this I think we need to have eyes open I think that Republican I think that Republican politicians and Democratic politicians right now could both benefit from our high expectations and lack of cynicism about this process expect the best and the most for almost all of these politicians what they do in this impeachment process will be in the first paragraph of their obituary and they all know it and that has a tendency to focus a person's eyes on the horizon rather than on their own feet and I think that we I mean if you are a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat or super liberal super progressive or the opposite expect the most and demand the most of people on both sides of the aisle right here this really isn't supposed to be a partisan thing this is supposed to be a patriotic thing and I think we should feel solemn about that but it's hard not to shrug at some of the high jinks there are some hijinks yes yes the tagline of your show so I want to move away from love and he or Gore and Rudy and Mitch to talk about you the tagline in their show is trying to increase the amount of useful information in the world so you do deal in reason and information facts rational arguments you try to ground us you know give us that solid solid standing but people I don't know how many people that I told you were coming who were immediately like I guess you know shocked so excited and then said I get so worked up watching this show oh I mean in fact I witnessed this I I hope this isn't tiem I you know I dated someone briefly who was a big Rachel Maddow fan watched the show and get enormous Lee worked up like this and this is not the reason we stopped dating but I did at some point feel like Rachel Maddow is a bigger presence in this relationship [Laughter] [Applause] [Laughter] wait can we talk a little bit about the nature of the worked up like angry anxious upset I think all of the above and so what I'm wondering is like you know your your reason and then the emotion and the reason what do you make of that emotion that emotional response because I don't think that's what you're necessarily going for oh no I don't I'm this is this concept that you're describing to me is new to me I I mean I I have friends and like friends parents in particular who say I can't watch you at night because then I can't go to bed sorry I got it and so I listen in the morning or watch in the morning because it's easier for me and that I just thought that's you know like I can't have chocolate after 5:00 was a constitutional thing I didn't know it was a widespread phenomenon she was saying that I don't know I mean I am how do I say this I I am a crier I am a person who easily I just I've either leak ride whenever I hear the national anthem I cry whenever I take the subway if somebody is busking in the subway even if they're terrible immediately waterworks I just like that and in that way I sometimes show emotion on TV without wanting to because I can't control it I mean I have little tricks and stuff but I can't really control it but aside from that being an easy crier I'm not that emotional a person and I don't think it helps me convey the stuff that I want to convey in the show to yell it or to have a fight with somebody about it or to you know pound the table I mean I know there's a little bit of that because sometimes I get a little wound up in what I'm doing but I I mostly I'm trying to convey information and so to the extent that what that is doing is creating a motion I have no idea what to do with that I don't I'm not I'm not trying to upset you I am totally happy okay okay I want to ask you another question about you you know you blend this like incredible wonkish attention to detail with this the satirist sense of you know the big picture and like weaving the story together and doing it with all this wit and glee and you know just energy it's really remarkable to watch and so you did a PhD in political science which I assume a place right on then steered poli-sci grad school you are a certified wok but we're about what about that storytelling craft and that biting wit you have that you're so famous for and that does draw people into you know I think that's part of why they get so emotionally engaged with you where did that come from is that is there was it always part of your worldview or is there a person or an experience you can point to that that brought that to you I don't know I mean I never intended to have this kind of a career you know like I wasn't aiming at media certainly I thought I was going to be an activist and so I pursued my academic career as sort of trying to build myself a good toolkit for being a better activist I never really I've never really been a person who could imagine my life very far into the future which is some subject for therapy and we could do it here but great time these chairs are coming it's do you mind if I lie down nicely and so I was sort of doing that in a kind of utilitarian way trying as an activist I felt like my what I needed to be able to do was understand the field in which I was working I was an AIDS activist and then ultimately became a prison reform activists and those things were connected and so I needed to understand the field in which I was operating I needed to be able to speak with lots of different people in order to receive information from experts in that field and then I needed to be able to synthesize the political aims of what I was doing into a story that would make the decision-maker change their mind and so like I did public policy as my undergraduate degree with a focus on healthcare because I was an AIDS activist and I felt like I needed that but I did a essentially a minor like an honors thing in in ethics which was the way that at the school I went to that's the way you minor in philosophy and the reason I wanted to do philosophy is because I felt like I wanted to be better at making arguments and when it came to doing a doctoral dissertation I had done a really heavily quantitative undergraduate degree I did a lot of statistics and stuff just that was again trying to become more literate in ways that I would help me make better arguments and be better at what I was trying to do and so I wanted to kind of balance that another way and and tell a big story about social movements and social change and that's what I did my doctoral dissertation on so much it's all about like just trying to get the next thing done that I wanted to do but I ended up at the end of it having been an activist from the time that I was 16 and having been trained in argument and public policy in the mean time and that ended up unbeknownst to me being a good background for doing the kind of work that I do now but it wasn't what I was aiming at and in terms of being goofy I think I I mean I think I'm just immature I mean I mean it literally I am immature but I don't just mean it like making fun of myself I think that I like have an eight-year-old sense of humor and so like the there's always going to be like oh like there's going to be a fart joke somewhere you know there's gonna be like I had to tell them like doubles excrement slays me like I'm kind of eight and so I that's how I think and if that's the way it comes out I think it works for some people it doesn't work for other people I mean there's a lot of joking around in the book even though this is a very serious oh it made me laugh out loud it seemed in that right so like I wrote a book six or seven years ago about the military also had lots of jokes and even people who like they teach that book at the US Army War College Wow right something is I've I've lectured on the book at West Point it's like it's great but like you'll talk to somebody who's like really into the Abrams doctrine and wants to talk about Selective Service in 1974 but they like are super mad about the jokes I made about ed Meese I'm like looking at me I am going to make jokes about him works for some people it works as leavening for some people but I think it also it's like iron filings in the dip for other people like it just doesn't acquired taste speaking of acquired taste I'm so good it's not speaking of iron filings speaking of acquired taste so as in you have an 8-year old sense of humor but you are very adult when it comes to your beverages of choice I have never interviewed anyone who got so many questions about cocktails oh good and Justin we can quickly digress a woman named Jody Masterton Masterson hey Jody you are very creative she suggested this is just a few of a much longer list of cocktail names that you might want to sip on like belly up to the bar with two R's Oh oh nice wet your whistle blower cosmopolitan and it groans the Leske which was the last nigrum Celestia oh very nice Celestia but the question I have is from John known that last name and he asks you what is the secret to a perfect martini oh I could go on you know if you know drinkers who are like semi-pro that when we start talking about like the one drink that means a lot to us it actually becomes almost a form of bullying like I have to be careful the way I talk about a martini because I come across as such a jerk so I'll be to the point vodka is not an ingredient in martinis vodka vodka isn't in there gin is in there but there is another thing that has to be in there there has to be vermouth this whole thing about like Winston Churchill used to glance at the vermouth and then exam and then not allow it to touch them or there's an atomizer with they're supposed to be vermouth dry vermouth yes okay and in I think the reason that people afraid of putting the proper amount of dry vermouth in their martinis is because somebody once served them something they called a martini that was accidentally made with vodka vodka mixes terribly with vermouth and so of course you want a very dry vodka martini because what you really want is just a glass of vodka if you are going to drink a martini it's both gin and a good amount like I do like a two-to-one some people do a 50/50 gin vermouth with good fresh vermouth that is a bottle that you didn't open in the Jurassic era it goes bad it's not that alcoholic you have to keep it in the fridge after you open it write the data on the label very important and if you like a lemon twist or an olive which are the only two options you if you have a lemon twist you do have the option of putting a little bit of orange bitters in your martini which does not taste like orange but actually counterbalances the lemon so you don't have a fruity drink I know it sounds counterintuitive but it works but you can't put orange bitters in your martini if you're using an olive because that's weird if you do use an olive it has to be a green olive and it can have a pimento if you want although it's not supposed to it can't have anything else inside it that's not a pimento and you have to stir it and it can't be more than three and a half ounces any other questions very nice things I could say about it but I'll try to stop now maybe the next book yeah I could write a whole book just about how about whether in my opinion I think that sounds a wonderful I I want to shift gears quite a bit Amanda Bolton says this is an audience question president Trump frequently postures and media's and adversary to truth and freedom how does that change the way you engage with the news or how you present the news that's a very good question all presidents hate the media and all presidents feel like they are uniquely horribly treated by the media and maybe they're right I mean maybe as we evolved as a country we're meaner to each successive president maybe I mean Who am I to say that they have distorted perspective but there is something different going on with this president that is about trying to deal Ajith amis the existence of journalism in the United States writ large the only other politician I know who's ever tried this on for size was my boyfriend Spiro Agnew which is part of the reason that I wanted to do that bagman podcast I did because I heard so I went and listened to some of his speeches where I mean he's like he's famous for this nattering nabobs of negativism his real speeches where he attacked the press and where he attacked the Justice Department and the prosecutors who were investigating him were like trump 1.0 really really and it was seen at the time as profoundly dangerous and the way that he attacked the media was particularly sort of had a had a barely camouflaged anti-semitic implication that he would talk about the media and the elites in a way that really he was making it quite clear that it was about the Jews and the Jews controlling everything and the Jews being out to get him and Agnew after he resigned the vice presidency ultimately would go on to be basically an international anti-semite for hire where he would in solicit income for an income from foreign governments that wanted to stir up anger against American Jews literally that's what he did to make money and so I feel like Agnew's ghost helps us understand how malignant this is and how close it is to really really dark even fistic aims and I also can see that it's an offshoot of what other presidents have done in terms of their complaining and so recognizing that this could curdle very badly and it's it's it edges up against that and I see that I also feel like the solution to it is not to get as serious about it but rather to try to brush it off a little bit and in my own life part of what it means is that I sort of refused to play these games where they try to turn us in the media against each other I know that people have different views about how best to approach this presidency and how best to approach journalism and some people think cable news is evil and some people are mad at the New York Times and some people think that the you know Jeff Bezos iteration of the Washington Post means a thing and some people really hate Fox News even the news side of Fox News inside and I I feel like at this point we're if we're in the if we're in the news business and we're in the journalism business then we are all on the same side and even the people who hate me I will love back and so it's a it's I mean if is everybody here subscribed to their local public radio station do you pay money if you're look pay money to your local public radio station you have a great public radio here you really do and it needs and to support local reporting the best thing you can do for journalism in your country I don't know what's going on at Chicago unless they're Chicago reporters reporting it in a way that I can pick up in New York and make into a national story right I wouldn't have took I wouldn't have had the Flint water story had there not been local reporters working in Michigan and Clinton telling that like you can't survive with the national media even if it's a great national media that you like have to support local local journalism and you need to support journalism as a craft I don't know if in if your kid or if you've got kids or grandkids who are in middle school and high school right now but do you know if at the middle school or high school that attends to your family do you know if they've got a student paper if they don't have a student paper would you consider getting together with some of your friends and endowing one if they're not if they've got that would you consider endowing proto television journalism podcast for the jet for the journalism class and the 6th grade at your local middle school I mean we need to grow investigative reporters by the bushel in this country for the sake of our democracy we were we were talking backstage and I get nutrients need two more questions in concern now I gotta let you go I'm sorry I've talked so long you're amazing no apologies this is kind of a great time for journalism we were talking about that your book which not only paints this incredible picture of the the the threat of the oil and gas industry and why we need to think about this and become closer to it but the number of excellent reporters represented in it whose work you bring back to life if we feel like we don't have access to useful information that's really not the case there's so many amazing reporters we were talking in backstage about she said by Jody Kanter Megan Chui who are joining us next Tuesday I'm very excited and their book and then Ronin Pharaohs catch and kill now these are two books that talk about the media in different ways she said is about the the force of the New York Times and how that helped them carry that investigation for it gave them a certain credibility pharaoh has a different experience he says the media company MSNBC NBC that he worked with in stymied him tried to shut down and I'm wondering given that there are both books about me too and given that you've just thought a lot about corporate responsibility visa vie the oil gas industry and the ways in which governance can get twisted with sort of trying to serve shareholder values mm-hmm what do you think the role of corporate responsibility is in relationship to me to boy I mean first of all I think that media companies are companies and companies need to be internally improving on these issues right that the ways of doing business in the media business and in lots of other big business have to change and when there is a reckoning in these things the companies need to recognize that evolution and not resistance is the way to deal with those things and so I think first and foremost media companies need to be seen as companies that need to do their own work there in terms of the reporting around me to stuff I mean the to the extent that there are gatekeepers for this kind of stuff if the gatekeepers are compromised the stories aren't going to get out but that just creates I mean Ronan's book right as far as I understand it is a story that he was chasing which is about Weinstein and then the other story that he discovered along the way when he started to investigate what was keeping him from getting the story about Weinstein and the proper outcome of that process is that he is able in the end to tell both stories one of those stories who want to pull out surprised for and one of them he's about to have a number one best-selling book that's gonna knock me off the charts and so I mean I think I've read Megan and Jodi's book I've not read Megan Ronan's book cause it's not out but I one of the things that I am incredibly buoyed by for both of them is that I think those books are gonna make people who read them in college decide to go to journalism school because it is about the nobility and bravery and civic mindedness and rigor of journalism done well and it's as exciting as hell I mean it really really is and so that's what welcoming so speaking of nobility and bravery and civic mindedness and this is the last question I hate love you to stay for an hour way back in 2010 in regard to fake politics and the dearth of political facts you said on your show let's argue let's have the great American debate about the role of government and the best policies for the country it's fun it's citizenship its activism it makes the country better when we have those debates and your country needs you it needs all of you it needs all of us so if we armed with one of your fabulous martinis take those hard marching orders how do we leave tonight and start that debate Wow I would I would say a couple of things I do I do I am not a particularly green person like I don't come from an environmental background my partner's very green and like kind of tried to make our lives more sustainable and everything and I just I'm not really wired that way and I'm trying to get better having written this book about the oil and gas industry and the way it is corrosive toward our ability to make good democratic decisions now on the way toward the climate apocalypse you think that would motivate me to be like you know like taking a sailboat everywhere and I'm I'm not I'm intellectually there but my life hasn't changed to make those accounts and so I feel you know embarrassed about that and humble about that but I also feel like it's worth being real about that and we don't we're not all going to become full-time activists and we're not all going to run for office and we're not all going to lead a movement but we can all do something more than we are already doing and if you are incredibly motivated by the president if you have if you feel like president Trump is a motivating force like nothing you've ever had in your life the what in your life shows that if you want him out of office or if your incredible supporter of President Trump and you really want him to stay in office what are you doing to make that happen this is a time when I think we have all started to realize that you can't necessarily know what the thing is that's gonna make the difference in the world you can't know what's gonna inspire people right I mean these viral moments that spread on social media of regular people doing things on the middle of a day when they woke up that morning and thought it was gonna be a day like no other and they ended up doing something that changed the conversation of the country of 300 million people for a week you know we're in a position right now where our ability as individual citizens to do stuff gives us a new form of responsibility and to the extent that the climate matters to you are you doing other kind of political work and can you factor climate into that to the extent that the president matters to you or this next election matters to you what are you doing not just to follow it on TV but to actually participate try to try as much as you can to change the outcome and the way that you want it to go I just think this is just close are saying this having all of you guys here in person to me is the reason I was so like nervous and jittery at the beginning is because we spend all of our times with our screens on right I mean you guys see me behind the TV screen I know but we also spend all of our times with our through all of our time with our phones and with our computer screens and that's so much the way that we understand the mediated world right now but none of you are doing that right now you're all here in person you came out here bodily to see me in person to be among all of these other thousands of you who came out to do this in person to be at a live event to imbibe words to hear a conversation to have new thoughts and to be around your fellow man while doing it and that is something that you don't have to do but you did it and you're here and it means the world to me and to me when we are willing to show up someplace when we were actually willing to bodily be there it's transformative not only potentially for the world but for us and so I just it means a lot for me to see you guys right now and I would just say to do your own inventory in terms of what matters to you and what you can maximize in your life in terms of what you're doing to bring that about what an awesome love to end on a chill that Oh [Applause] I'm sorry about your dating thing it was a good news a good sign [Applause] you

Channel: Chicago Humanities Festival

Views: 318,811

Rating: 4.7778106 out of 5

Keywords: chicago humanities festival, chf, humanities, chicago, festival, rachel maddow, rachel maddow show, msnbc, emmy award, russian interference, 2016 election, oil, gas

Id: NNUcO1XbAss

Length: 81min 17sec (4877 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019