it was just announced there was no collusion with Russia the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard there was no collusion with Russia there was no obstruction and none whatsoever and it was a complete and total exoneration that was our president the day the Attorney General released that four page summary letter that's what led Muller to write about the public confusion that was being let loose effective that moment of course as we've been reporting the report did not declare total exoneration our next guest writes in his book on tyranny and we quote you submit to tyranny
when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case and so we welcome back to the broadcast Timothy Snyder Yale University professor professor Schneider was actually a Marshall scholar educated in the Ivy League and at Oxford specializing in Europe and the Holocaust he happens to be the author of two books of note in this area the first we just mentioned on tyranny 20 lessons from the 20th century the second the road to unfreedom Russia Europe America and professor from the distance of Austria you've been listening to our broadcast
tonight just the news we're covering tonight how do you believe it fits into the thesis well it unfortunately it fits extremely well the foundation of Russian foreign policy towards us and towards everyone is to try to get rid of factuality as such to turn everyone into people have opinions to turn politics into a matter of spectacle we are now in the middle of that we have a president and an attorney general who are lying about an underlying reality the underlying reality is that Russia in 2016 carried out a comprehensive campaign as shown in the Miller
report and elsewhere to get mr. Trump elected that is the underlying facts reality what we are seeing is an attempt to turn underlying facts not just into spin but into fiction this isn't just a problem because the facts are so important it's a problem because facts themselves are the basis for a rule of law state and so your your coverage tonight about a crisis in the Department of Justice is a crisis about a crisis in the rule of law it's about the kind of country that the United States will be I first saw you in
an interview with Bill Maher that stopped me in my tracks and that very night you talked about as one of your points the importance of listening for dangerous words with that in mind listen to this from our president will discuss on the other side they tried for a coup didn't work out so well they were really lose a coup that started long before Muller this was a coup this was an attempted overthrow of the United States government this was a coup this wasn't stealing information from an office in the Watergate apartments this was an attempted
coup professor no one needs remind you that that word while powerful is also a term of art in geopolitics how does that fit in your list of rules well by by saying by using that word coup by suggesting that the other side has already carried out a coup or tried to carry out a coup mr. Trump is doing is saying that I would be within my rights if I also did something extraordinary so he's trying to move politics from something normal into a place where states of exception coup d'etat and so on would be would
be thinkable and of course he's already blamed the other side although in fact what has happened is that he himself as the Miller report says has been the beneficiary of a very strange intervention in American politics by a foreign power normalization comes through repetition does it not and is that what we're seeing with no obstruction no collusion total vindication yeah I mean that's right out of the middle of the authoritarian playbook it's everything we know from George Orwell and all these smart commentators of 20th century totalitarianism you repeat something which you know is simple in
which you know is wrong over and over again in the hope that you know as if he had a machete you could clear out all of the underbrush of the facts the underbrush of the facts indicate that there was a campaign in 2016 to elect mr. Trump that it came from Russia that mr. Trump and his campaign knew about it that they supported it big that they expected it to help him those are the facts repeating these things over and over again as an attempt to make people feel comfortable in a reality which should make
us highly uncomfortable hey there I'm Chris Hayes from MSNBC thanks for watching MSNBC on YouTube if you want to keep up to date with the videos we're putting out you can click subscribe just below me or click over on this list to see lots of other great videos
