>> Same as George Recurs. Remember that name? He was famous for being one of
the founders of the Family Research Council, one of the
original super anti-gay conservative culture war groups
that became very influential in Republican politics. In the
1980's, Jorge Rickards was a founder of the Family Research
Council. He specifically worked in the in the part of anti-gay
politics that that says that people can be cured of the gay.
It can. It can be reversed with just the right therapy. Well, by 2010, there was George
Recurs being photographed at the airport in Miami and the company of a handsome
young man's name. Lucien Mister Ricker said apparently met on
rent boy dot com mystery cars for the first
tried to explain that. He had taken this handsome young man
on and all expenses paid 10 day trip to Europe because he needed help with his
luggage. The young man himself seen here
not helping with the luggage, eventually explained exactly
what he was paid for on that European trip. And George Recurs ultimately
resigned from his job at the anti-gay organization in 2004, when Republican
President George W Bush was up for reelection, the Republican
Party and the Bush campaign enthusiastically promoted bans
on same sex marriage and multiple states. They expected
that anti-gay campaigning in as many states as possible would
boost Republican turnout and help Bush's chances of being
re-elected. You demonize gay people, scare people about gay
rights. You get conservative voters to turn out and they'll
vote Republican while they're there. Bush was reelected in 2004.
Those antique a state ballot initiatives very well may have
helped with that. But then 2 years after Bush
left the White House, the man who had been chairman
of the Bush campaign at that time came out himself as gay and to his credit, he
then set about trying to right the wrong. He had been part of
it by persuading leading
Republicans to change their mind on marriage equality and
and to persuade the Supreme Court to support marriage
equality, which they have done at least for a while. But honestly, it's like you
can't swing a cat without hitting one of these guys mean
those those anti-gay ballot initiatives that were supposed
to help George W Bush get reelected. In 2004, they got a
big boost in 2004 when a group called the National Association
of Evangelicals, huge influential religious group decided in 2004 that they
would, in fact, Lee restate their opposition to
homosexuality in all its forms, which effectively endorsed all
the anti-gay measures that the Republicans were promoting all
over the country in advance of the election that year. The National Association of
Evangelicals at that time was led by this man, Ted Haggard, who said and treated the
country to not at all uncomfortable headlines like
this one. Quote, Evangelist, I bought milk from gay scores again. I mean, follow the
bouncing ball. He found himself a very handsome man. And it was totally clear if he
paid the handsome man for sex using the drugs as the method
of payment or maybe if he paid them and for the sex and the
drugs together, kind of like a meal deal or something. But but
yeah, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, I
got a million of these guys. Trump's Oklahoma State campaign
chairman from 2016 was a it was a Republican state senator who
voted as the Oklahoma State senator that businesses should
be able to put up signs that said We don't serve gays here. Trump's campaign chairman,
Oklahoma 2016 busted in 2017 for soliciting
sex from exactly. Do you think he'd be
doing that? The Republican mayor of
Spokane, Washington supported banning gay people from working
in schools later revealed to be meeting
new friends, new friends all the time at gay dot com.
His handle was Cobra 82 because of course it was Cobra
82. I could go out really. I got a
million of them. How much time do f this weekend was the
Conservative Political Action Conference? It's an annual
right-wing conference thing. Among the things you can
reliably get at CPAC every year is anti-trans rhetoric by the
dump truck fall. I'm an anti-gay sermon. Icing as well.
This year was no exception. It's like that every year.
CPAC is run by a man named Matt Schlapp. It has been for years
and in 2022 head of the congressional midterms, Mister
Schlapp was in Georgia. He was campaigning for the Republican
nominee for Senate Herschel Walker member Herschel Walker
Senate campaign. The Walker campaign sent one of
their mid-level staffers, a male staffer to drive Matt
Schlapp around while in the car. Matt Schlapp allegedly put
his hand on the young man's leg and then quote, moved his hand
and began aggressively funneling the money and that
stuff or stuff, the staffers, genital area and in a sustained
fashion without the staffers consent. Stouffer claims that Mister
Slatt then invited the staffer to his hotel room. He declined early last year. That young man
sued Matt Schlapp for sexual battery. And as that lawsuit has dragged
on, more allegations of sexual misconduct against Matt Schlapp
have come to light as part of discovery and that sexual
battery lawsuit. Lawyers for the Republican campaign
staffer, they discovered that in 2017 at a CPAC party slap
allegedly attempted to kiss a male employee against his
wishes. They also discovered that any fundraising event in
2022. Mister Schlapp is accused of stripping down to his
underwear and forgive me rubbing against
another person without his consent. Now, Mister slot for his part
has denied all allegations of wrongdoing. The lawsuit says
that the American conservative Union, the parent company to
CPAC, which employs match lot new about at least 2 of the
allegations against lot before they become public. But the
lawsuit claims that the American conservative Union has
not only failed to remove Mister Slatt from his
leadership position. They also failed to pursue any kind of
investigation into the claims of sexual misconduct. And so given that failure to do
anything about the allegations, the American conservative Union
has now been added as a defendant in the match lap
sexual battery lawsuit. The organization has thus far
spent upwards of a million dollars on match laps legal
fees to defend himself in the sexual battery case. But they have, meanwhile, kept
him in place to run the big annual anti-gay conference because sure that's fine.
Who will notice for months and months,
Republican lawmakers and conservative media have been
trumpeting these bribery allegations made by spring off
against President Biden and his family. The Washington Post
today estimates that FOX News alone mention it more than
2,600 times over the past single year. Republicans in Congress push
the allegation endlessly, even though the FBI explicitly
warned them that the claim was uncorroborated and unreliable. And now the man who's the
source of the allegation, the guy who said it, he's in
jail, indicted for lying to federal investigators about
this very matter and accused by prosecutors of
feeding the FBI dis-information from Russian intelligence, which would be shocking.
Had we not lived through the last few years because this, of course, is now the 3rd
straight presidential election cycle in which Russian
intelligence has done some version of this in 2016, as you may have heard Russian intelligence hacked the
Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton
campaign and then they weaponize the material they
stalled by releasing hacked emails through WikILeaks and
tall time done strategically released a half maximum
negative effect for Clinton and the Democrats and maximum
positive effect for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
And it was well known at the time of this whole thing was
likely a Russian intelligence operation. But Trump and
Republicans and conservative media and the mainstream media,
frankly mostly ate it up and pounced on every single email
dump. >> As if they had just come
down on Mount Sinai on tablets rather than being shelled by
Russian intelligence into the garbage chute. Remember Trump talking at
rallies about how much she loved WikILeaks. He was welcoming. It was asking
for more Russian government and Russian
intelligence sources made multiple contacts with the
Trump campaign. Russia ran a big weird social media campaign
to try to influence American public debate and public
opinion in Trump's Trump's favor. The Trump campaign, gays
nonpublic polling information to a Russian intelligence
agent. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the Russians have this
hack and leak campaign of the Democratic emails that were
very busy in 2016 trying to help Trump. Then 4 years later
Twenty-twenty another try. This time. Trump's lawyer Rudy
Giuliani was peddling stories about Joe Biden suppose and
corruption that he said he had dug up from his sources in
Ukraine. Once again, it turned out that Giuliani's main source was Russian intelligence.
A report from the U.S. Office of the Director of National
Intelligence later determined that Giuliani source was part
of the U.S. election interference operation likely
directed by Putin himself with the goal of helping Trump
win a second term in 2020. And once again, Republicans had
been warned by American intelligence officials that the
stuff that Giuliani was shoveling was likely part of a
Russian up. They apparently just did not care. And again, this is not some
obscure thing. And people got sanctioned by the U.S.
government for this. People got indicted by the U.S. Justice
Department for this. So theres it might have helped
Trump. So we went along with it as far as we could. And now 4 years later, here we
are again, they they keep doing this every election cycle.
They keep doing some version of the same thing. The Russians
keep doing the same thing. What seems to be changing a
little bit is that the Republicans appear to have
fewer and fewer qualms each year about welcoming and even
participating in these Russian campaigns. For me once, shame on you, fool
me twice. Shame on me for me. 3 times. I clearly want to be
fooled or maybe we should stop calling this bullish. This is
something else. We did this in 2016. We did
this in 2020 now in 2024, Republicans appear to be more
enthusiastic about participating in it than they
ever have been before. But of course, now this Russian
disinformation campaign trying to paint Biden us has mired in
some kind of bribery scandal. It's happening with American
aid to Ukraine hanging in the balance with this life or death
question looming of whether Ukraine will be able to hold
off a 3rd year of the Russian invasion. Russia is doing everything it
can to undermine American support for Ukraine and in the midst of a 3rd
straight effort by Russia to influence our election, 2
Republicans benefit. Republicans, frankly seem quite
receptive both to that election interference and to what Russia
wants them to do in cutting off Ukraine. These were adjacent headlines
in The Washington Post last week. The Biden administration
cancels 1.2 billion dollars in student loans with new
repayment plan right next to Trump and allies planning
militarized mass deportations com, a detention camps. All right. That's the choice,
right? Right relief from high student loans or using the
military to lock up millions of people in huge new camps. Jason headlines in The
Washington Post on the same day, both parties at the same point
in general election campaigning, thinking about
what they want to be doing to present to the American people
about what their idea is of governing. And I don't know which of those
2 sides, the American people is more in the mood for. But it
seems pretty clear to me, at least that the best contrast
for the Democrats to draw for voters this year is maybe just
the simplest one, right, normal popular practical
accomplishments from President Biden and the Democrats versus Boerne all down
radicalism being screamed at the top of their lungs by
Republicans under Donald Trump. And you can't even understand
what they're talking about half the time because they speak in
their own code. Barbara McQuade, you know, and
love from her time here as a legal analyst and explainer on
MSNBC. She has a new book that comes out tomorrow. It's called
attack from within how Dis-information is sabotaging
America and in her new book. Among other things, Bard
explains what she sees as the connection between
Dis-information which is that the fundamental basis for the
buck and authoritarianism. Why you
need to disconnect people from facts about the world, from the
noble truth in all its complexity in order to get
people to endorse extremism, to endorse extreme new radical
change is to re imagine their lives and to re imagine their
country in a way they've never thought of it before. Barb in her book talks about
the need to hit people emotionally rather than
logically. She talks about the the the that's sort of the
utility of the would-be authoritarian
leader or the authoritarian movement focusing rhetorically
on decline is convincing people that the country is falling
apart. The country used to be great, but it's no longer
great. It's falling apart. It's a disaster. If you can
convince people of that, they will have an emotional
reaction about being afraid at the state of the country.
Now they have an emotional reaction. I want to rescue the
country. If they can be convinced that things are so
far gone, they will then feel the need for extreme measures
for a strong man to come in. And, you know, maybe you got a
wrecked the place. Maybe you got to break the rules, but
it's a kind of rescue mission for a country that is otherwise
lost. And what that means in
practical terms in terms of actually running a political
campaign that in a matter of months will supposedly pick a
new president. What that means is every day making sure that
your message undermines the idea of democracy and the idea
of the rule of law. I mean, this isn't this isn't
the theory. This is an academic. This is our lives.
Now, Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who we just saw there
yelling about Berman and track Bash at CPAC. He spent last
week telling his podcast ulcers that the Tom Suozzi election in
Long Island was stolen in Steve Bannon world. This was
the story of last week. This is the special election to replace
George Santos. There's no suggestion there was anything
wrong with the counter. Anything went wrong with the
conduct of that election at all. But it doesn't matter.
A Democrat won. And so therefore, Steve Bannon tells his acolytes
and his followers that that election must have been stolen
because a Democrat won and they should not respect the result
of it, even when it doesn't matter
when it's one special election for one congressional seat.
And there's no real controversy about it. Still, you have to
say elections don't count. Elections aren't real. Now on top of that, we've got
the Republican National Committee losing its chair,
Ronna Romney McDaniel. She's being replaced summarily by a
North Carolina Republican who has reportedly considered by
Trump to be more solid specifically on the issue of
throwing out election results. This McDaniel was no slouch on
this mission herself. But apparently Trump want somebody
even stronger specifically on that point. He's a stop the
steal guy. And so he will be now running the RNC. If Trump gets his way and you know, the politics of
running against democracy, the politics of of getting
Americans to just trust elections and ultimately not
want them anymore. That is inextricably
intertwined with getting Americans to distrust the legal
system to to not trust the courts and
not trust the justice system anymore to not take it
seriously to not obey its dictates to not respect any of
its rules. And Barnes spoke more than
anything helped me see the connection of the connection
between those 2 points between getting rid of elections and
getting rid of the rule of law. You have to get rid of the rule
of law. Alright, you have to undermine him problem, ties it
so that you can get away with what you're trying to do.
2 elections. I did. This is all over the
news right now. Just on Friday, the Wisconsin Ethics Commission
referred to Trump Pack and multiple Republican officials
for felony prosecution for their role in a Wisconsin
scheme to punish a Republican leader in the Wisconsin state
Legislature. Trump thought didn't fight hard enough to
throw out the election results in that state. We want you to throw out those
election results. You don't do a good enough job. We're now
going to allegedly commit crimes in order to turf you out
of your position recommended for prosecution.
As of Friday. Last week the U.S. Supreme
Court refused to throw out the sanctions so that the
sanctions, the professional sanctions against Trump lawyer
Sidney Powell and Lin Wood for their efforts to overthrow the
election results. Mike Lindell, Mike. Hello.
Last week he was ordered by a judge to pay up in a contest he
held where he promised 5 million dollars cash to
anybody who could disprove his claims. But a foreign
government helped steal the election for Biden. Somebody
did disprove those claims. And now a court says Mister
Pillow has to pay. He, of course, does not want to pay.
But a court says he must. In Georgia, the right-wing
group true the vote that apparently jammed up all the
false claims about supposed problems in the Georgia
elections in 2020. They made hay with those claims from not
just weeks around the election but months and ultimately
years. But when it got put through the
legal system, they had to admit to a judge that no, they don't
actually have any evidence to back up their claims that there
was fraud in Georgia. Trump and multiple Georgia co-defendants
are now going to go on trial for trying to overthrow the
election result in Georgia, which they did by citing this
fake evidence from this group. Truth about what will happen in that case. Will that case
come to trial? Trump and his co-defendants
best hope is not their defense but they're unrelated personal
counter offensive to try to discredit and disqualify the
prosecutor to get her thrown off the case. The rule of laws protecting
democracy. We've got to get rid of the
rule of law. Hypocrisy is like a cold, windy day in
the winter. Haha, you know, love it. But it's not like you
don't expect it. But what Barb McQuade is
writing about in her new book and what we are seeing from
that campaign this year, it's something that is not
inevitable but something planned,
something systematic and something very, very, very
radical. The Democrats are campaigning against it by
saying we're doing normal politics, delivering normal
practical results for real world problems. The Republicans
are promising to burn it all down. They have to undermine
the idea of democracy and the rule of law and order to get to
their end game
