January 6th: Did It Even Happen?! (Spoiler: Yes) feat. Chris Hayes & Jordan Klepper

could be next for our democracy. Heavy listen, Hey, welcome to Beyond the Scenes. This is the podcast that goes above and beyond the topics that you see every night on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central. Now, this week marks the one year anniversary. I don't even like the word anniversary because I don't want to keep remembering thing. But the January six uprising that went down

at the Capitol, the insurrection. A bunch of Trump supporters went there and lost their damn minds and violently tried to stop the certification of electoral votes by storming the Capitol. Even to say it aloud, it's surreal. So we have two people with us on the program today to help us break this down. The first gentleman is h he's an Emmy nominated daily show contributor and uh, he was there at the Capitol and he's always there all the time,

mixing it up with the Trump supporters. And if it's anyone that is not a fan of his activities, it is his wife and child. He is Jordan Klepper. Yes, I was there with Miami nomination where I thank you Roy Well. Jordan, our next guest is an Emmy winner. Alright, alright, and that's why you put it in there. That's why you put it in there. I was about to hop in when you said Emmy nominated and be like wait a second, like, oh, that's Jordan's Jordan, Okay, go ahead.

He's the host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes and the podcast is why is this happening? Amy Winner winner Chris Hayes, How you doing good? I just I'm conjuring a very funny notion in my head of like Jordan's in the midst of the insurrection and people like starting to get a little like chesty with him being like I'm I'm Emmy nominated. I just I want you to know maybe you should back off a little bit

because I've got an Emmy nomination. Chris, I'd like to start with you because you get to exist in a place that you don't have the burden of having to find a punch line in between vomits of information to your viewers. The revision just vomit straight, unleavened by punch lines. Yeah, that's what we're going for. Yeah, the revisionist history that

has happened around why the insurrection happened. Whether or not we can vilify the insurrection, it is because we're still at a point right now where they're still identifying people from the footage. Some have gone to jail, some have been convicted, but they're still stitching some of this stuff together. I want to I want to play a clip real

quick of just Republicans flip flopping their positions. Let's just start with our elected officials and their opinions of the uprising on The President bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob brider, and we have were so successful under President Trump. The last thing we want to do is be fighting among ourselves. We've had a hell of a journey. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. It's impossible for this party to move

forward without President Trump being its leader. Do you think it was an impeachable effect? Oh? Sure? How do you agrade Trump as president? Oh? Listen, overall I give the president today and you lost Lindsey Graham. When you lose all these people, when Tom Cotton says it's time for you to concede, I think that you've got over the top. He couldn't even use his own Twitter account because he's

been justifiably suspended for the last twenty four hours. And it was nothing about that speech that was inside phone. The president also using the term peacefully go down there. He didn't just say go down there and take the capital over. Chris. Yeah, you hear all of that flip flopping, and you see it every day on a regular basis, and as you prep for your Emmy winning program, Chris, are we crazy? Just just just are we crazy for just trying to make sure people understand just how heinous

this was that it's been. It's been a huge focus of the show for the past year, precisely because of the revisionist history. I mean, I think there's to me,

there's there's a few layers to it, right. One is it like, particularly in the context of the American criminal justice system, the way in which policing operates, particularly on people of color, what we've seen with George Floyd, Like the idea that people are going to turn around and excuse like mob violence after all this whipping up of this frenzy about it, you know, in the same moment, in the same program, they'll be like, hey, check out

this smash and grab operation that happened, that took a bunch of purses. Oh, and also like it wasn't that big a deal when they like, you know, dragged a cop down the stairs and and and and threatened his life.

So there's that aspect of it, which is like the idea that there's no actual standard for behavior, that like, if you're on our side, it's fine, and if you're on the other side, it's not, which I think is like an incredibly Trumpian notion um And I think it's a conservative notion before that, and I think you know, liberals can fall prey to it too, But it's on such display potently here. So there's the sort of excuses

of minimization. Then there's the just like crazy disinformation of like it was the FEDS was Antifa, like trying to come up with these increasingly ludicrous and far fetched notions to essentially be exculpatory for what people actually did. And then the third aspect of it, I think that's really important is people want to say, oh, well that you know, there's some people will say, well, what they did. You know, obviously violence is wrong. What they did the capital is wrong.

But like the one and fifty whatever fifty members of Congress to Republicans, the eight or nine members of the Senate that voted against seating the electoral votes, like, the entire project was insidious. The entire project was authoritarian, the entire project. Whether they were like at the Ellipse and they were doing it peacefully, it was just Josh Hally like, yeah, exactly, like the like that is the culmination and that itself

is in a sort of special place. But the whole project was to overturn democratic election and install an authoritarian leader over the will of the people by whatever means, whether that means was Mike Pence ruling in a certain way, whether the means was you know, using loopholes in the Electoral count Act to get state delegations together to deliver the vote. Like whatever it was, the whole project was rotten to the core. And you can't just say, well, yes,

what they did at the capitol was wrong. The whole project was wrong. But let things though a weird way, clipper like I understand politicians flip flopping because they have a check behind the things that they say, They have a real motivation. The voters, on the other hand, who decided to go and be a part of this in spite of all of them, because people love to say, they love to say, well, I'm doing my research, what have you done? A little bit more research or stupid

as wouldn't be out here. The voters don't have a check uh, and they're probably not gonna get one, But they do have an identity. And I think that's the thing that I see people clinging to. The thing that surprised me most when I went to Trump event in Iowa a few months back and we brought up January six, like there isn't There was no coherent um narrative as to what had happened on January uh, And some people, yes, what happened was wrong, and it was wrong because Antifa

were instigators. It was wrong because FBI, ci A, NASA and any organization you want to throw out there. So people said it wasn't wrong like that, Uh, Ashley Babbitt was as as a hero and there should have been more Ashley's out there. Some people declare it was nothing happened on the sixth and and and to me again that that that all has to do with more often than not when I would go out in the field and talk to folks, you don't need a coherent philosophy

behind what happened, or even a coherent narrative. You just need a foothold to get you to the next, the next thing. And at that point it was like, oh, you know, so much misinformation and bs has been spewed since that that like, yeah, you can you can read something about the FBI, Antifa. You can believe it didn't happen, or you can believe it did happen, it should have happened. It doesn't matter, it doesn't all have to fit. It

just has to get you onto the next thing. And I I for one, that was surprised how quickly that information and that those disjunctive narratives came about thanks to online bullshit. They have a very interesting take on who was behind the January six insurrection. Oh, antifa um like the corrupts fbi um basically rhinolds, cru politicians, the deep state, all of that. And I don't believe it was people like me and people like you see over there in

that crowd that did it. Who who was? But the I, C, I A and TIFA were used, other other groups like that. It seemed like a lot of them were going into the Capitol to attack Nancy Pelosi and perhaps hang But which one the one with the bull horns? He's not a Trump supporter. I don't care what his resumes is. He's not a Trump supporter. In fact, do you remember the picture of the plane in Afghani Staid with all the people running next to it. That was a balloon plane.

If you look at the pictures of the real plane, and there's pieces that are missing from the real plane to that place. So you're saying there's a conspiracy around the Afghanistan withdrawal. No, I'm saying that there was one guy there who ran. It's the only guy who turned to the camera and waved his hands. Do y'all remember that? Everybody? Remember that he's the guy with the horn to one his head. He was in Afghanistan. Go look at the pictures. I think he's in jail right now. Did you go

for the JFK JR. Dead Body Return from the Death Point? Are you kidding? I got trust me my frequent flyer miles and that one. That one's on the list. I get more, I get more tweets about that of like are you coming to this? Are you coming? It's almost like a relative now. People are like, you gotta go down to Dallas. You know your your your homies are hanging out down by Done on the grass. No, are you gonna go see them? They're they're waiting for you.

I do think there's a little bit of a distinct because like that that is like the hardest of the hardcore, Like that is like that is genuine mass delusion in a in a really acute sense. I think that what's on display more broadly among the sort of grassroots right is also a form of mass illusion, but a little more ground a little more complex, and a little more like grounded and familiar things like it's funny what you're just saying, Jordan, there because I've had this experience too.

It's the mode of operating that you operate in if you're in the heat of like a bad fight with a person that you love, or like a or or an argument with someone like whether it's a you know, a sibling or a friend or a spouse, where like you're just churning through justification, like you're just trying, like you're not You're just like, I won't concede. I'm not going to give in to you in this moment. It's like it's all will You're not like you're not conversing,

You're not like examining the avide. I mean, I'm saying this is when like you're in a bad, bad mode of sort of it's all it's all the toilet seat has been left up, Like okay, but is that is that? Is that all you have right now? You're like in this relationship. I'm sorry, No, I just think I just think there's like a there's a collective defensiveness, which is like you've put me on the spot, and I'm not going to concede to you putting me on the spot.

And whatever it takes to to to diffuse that actually bad here, like whatever I have to say to when you're talking about like getting to that next foothold, it's like it's exactly, It's like I don't want to concede because then I'm I'm I'm giving away some power to you and I feel already oppressed by you. And that, I think is is the kind of operational mode of a lot of people in the kind of like Maga

core where it really isn't coherent. Like I mean, one of my favorite stories is like and I'm sure maybe you guys have seen this, but it was it was like a few days after the the insurrection where there was like a guy who was in it who had to go on his Facebook page to be like, I see all these people blaming Antifa it. I'm telling you I was there, don't. It wasn't Antifa. We did it,

the patriots. Like he's piste off that Antifa is getting the credit for what he did and has to go into these like crazy disinformation networks that he is embedded in to be like, y'all, hey, I was there, we did it. Stop giving them credit for what these patriots did. And it was just a perfect to me encapsulation of like they're really your point to get back to your point, Jordan's there is no actual coherent story about January six.

On the right, there's a bunch of different stories that are thrown out to move on to the next topic, distract or mass exculpate the folks involved so that you can get back to the real thing, which is that the libs are oppressing you in whatever way. And that's what I want to get to after the break, because I'm just I'm curious about the MSNBC Chris Hayes news curation process because we're always stuck at the Daily Show with do we follow the crazy thing that just happened

that's being reconstituted is something different? Or do we follow the new crazy thing that is happening or is it about to happen? And I'm very curious how you decide which ones to bring to light on your show. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back and in doing that, is that how you achieve an Emmy? I guess that's the other question. Well, that's yeah, that's well, that's you have to sign up for the master class for that. That's like everybody's masterclass Now, how are we

doing this, Jordan Clipper, Chris Hayes. Are we saying heavy jan six? Are we saying Jasons? Do we say never forget? Do we say always forget? Yeah? I think it's just important to keep saying the date because I think five years from now there's a legitimate chance we go from January five to January seven on the Gregorian calendar. And so whatever you do, just make sure you repeat the date so people understand that it is a moment in time. Like we just agree a moment in time, that day

never existed. It just didn't happen. We can you believe it? We remember the Alamo? Do you know what happened at the Alamo? It was a terrible loss which poorly placed Davy Crockett went down, The guy who created the bowie knife went down. Like that's a that's a terrible story. We should forget that story. Poor planning on America's part. Yet we remember that January six. We could take a lot of lessons from that, and we are, we are,

We're trashing it as quick as we can. I'll be honest, as a black person, I am closely monitoring January six to make sure that it doesn't bleed over into Martin Luther King Weekend. A little close dangerous could turn it to a week long celebration. Once it's a week long, then it's a whole month, and then you got mL K in the middle of resurrection this month or whatever the hill. Patrem So, Chris, on your program on MSNBC, we just spoke about the misinformation and what motivates it?

How and what do you decide to report on on your show number one just on some just straight up mental health ship. How do you stay calm just in the morning when you're just reading the headlines? How do you remain calm and measured as you deliver news that people are going to Dallas to see the dead body come out of the ground. Is it impossible? Goal? And stay calm, Chris, because we know you're gonna go all in like you have to. That's just that's the brand.

You gotta go all in. And so in the morning, are you're like, should I just go half of the way in and stay calm or no? This is what the people want? Like Melbourne but hate not. I am generally uh well, I don't think I'm calm, honestly, I mean I think that I what I try to do is I definitely think that I've spent a lot more time telling myself the Serenity Prayer about like things I can control and things I can't the wisdom and know the difference, um, which is a big part of it.

Like I think that there are times where, because I do have a platform that are very privileged to have, it feels like that I have more causal Like there were definitely times during COVID where I felt like it was my job to like save the country from the mass death of COVID. And I mean, but and but

I fail. I mean I didn't. I didn't work. I mean, I you know, we we I think, and and right now I think I feel that way about like American democracy the way that I felt I think last year around COVID, even though of course we're still in the pandemic um. But American democracy seems to me, like I feel in a similar way of just like ringing this alarm bell, and that's the thing I have. I have the bullhorn, I have the alarm bell, I have the platform.

We've been very focused on this story, generally, the story of American democracy in peril, in in apparel that it never has really faced in this particular way. It's faced peril in many different ways, and wasn't really actually a democracy for the you know, the vast, vast majority of the of the country's existence. So it's not like there's some like beautiful, healthy on days to look back on.

But what happened, I mean, this is the thing that we focus on, and we focus a lot on January six specifically, but but more broadly, like the fate of American democracy is that it's hard, I think in the same way that I think the first days, in the first weeks and months of the pandemic were hard. It is hard to get your heads head around the scope

and enormity of what you're dealing with. But like, if they had pulled it off, it really would have been the case that the fundamental precept that undergirds this whole thing, which is that the people choose their leaders, not the other way around, and that a majority of people is what stands in for the whole and you're dealing with democratic elections. To cast that out, um, you know, really would have been an enormous apocaly break with what we've

had before. And that's still that threat still looms over us. Can I ask a question, Chris, like you talk about the the the insurrection was something that had been happening the week beforehand, that it was happening behind closed doors. Are you at all afraid that in the discussion of this and how perhaps the media frames and also just the mindset of those who digest it, We're gonna go down this rabbit hole and it's all gonna be about whether or not Donald Trump gave the go ahead to

you go straight ahead. Yeah, that's a great point. It's something I'm really trying hard to avoid because I think we saw that in some ways with what happened with the Russia story, which was like, oh, we got him, We're gonna get it, and also right, and it's but it's also like, take a step back. It's like they the Russians wanted Donald Trump to be president and sought to aid his campaign. The campaign privately and publicly welcome their help, like, and then they committed a variety of

very serious crimes to sabotage his opponent. Those three things we knew from the jump, like so and then you know, and understandably got into the moment, and then it was like, well, they didn't find this smoking gun where he you know, called up Vladimir Putin and said hack Hillary. Whatever. It's like, well, he said it on he said it on camera. I mean he said, we're going to go down to the Capitol. Now,

he don't literally instructed the crowd. We're gonna walk down to the capital and we're gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we're probably not gonna be cheering so much for some of them, because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. It was like he'd grabbed up them and he bold them, you know, down Pennsylvania Avenue. So I agree that it's important to

keep what is publicly known. He's unbelievably damning would disqualify him from ever holding any position of public trust ever, and I think there's a plausible criminal case to be made against him under federal law. He certainly should have been impeached. He certainly should have been disqualified from ever

holding public office. No, if we learn nothing new starting now, and I think your your point is well taken and something that we really try on the show to avoid, which is we're constantly resetting what are the publicly known facts and what they say about the danger of this individual and the movement that he leads and the threat it poses to American democracy, whether or not we find out even more damning details, which I suspect we will,

Chris on your show, Trump loyalists and insurrectionists, You generally, for the most part, don't swim in those waters of talking to those types of people. Will is that in the effort to keep the misinformation to a minimum and not allow people to use your show as a vessel for misinformation, Like what walked me through the strategy in that Yeah, I mean we actually had two of them the other night, and it was sort of interesting. We had these two folks that were the people that planned

the Ellipse rally and are now cooperating the January six committee. Um, mostly because like they feel thrown under the bus by Trump, not I think for any noble reason above that. Um. But look, the problem is, and I learned this. I come back to this example all the time, and I think my staff is probably tired of hearing about it,

but it's very formative for me. Like if you were in the left in two thousand two or two thousand three, and you were in spaces you're going to anti war protests, or you're going to events, you're writing for lefty magazines. You were encountering eleven truth. There's a lot, a lot.

They were everywhere. They would get up and ask the first question at every event, and they and one of the things I quickly learned was like you couldn't get in to a debate or win a debate with them because like there was no like they were like, what about this angle of this shadow of this If you look at this lamp post by the Pentagon, it couldn't have been clipped by this wing and this engine. But and all of a sudden, you're just in this of steel that was made in that year, and you can't.

It's the same thing with like I think people that adhere to the big lie, you know, it's like you can't really engage on those terms and get anything useful. The other thing for me, and this is different than for Jordan, is like we have a live show and we have these time limits and so controlling and wrangling. You know, it makes a big difference. Like if I could go and talk to people and then take all that footage and figure out what we're gonna do with it.

But I'm there on live TV, and not only that, there's a responsibility of that, which is that everything they're saying is going out to million people and I'm in some ways responsible for that, right, So like so it's just a it's a it's it's it's a real heavy burden you carry when you put someone on the air about what is going to be communicated to your audience. So in Jordan's how do you how do you balance that because you you do basically yeah, yeah, let's talk.

Let's talk. I've got on my nice warm jacket. Let's stand out here outside forever and ever and talk to these people, like what what are you thinking when you go out? What is your objective? Because it clearly can't

be to change their minds. Well, I mean, I think Chris brings up a great point is that the difference between live TV and something you bring back and you edit because it is true we we there there is stuff that is in the head that is that is hateful or misinformation that we feel we don't add context to in our responses, and that is something we feel responsibility towards if we put that out, so there's there's control in an edit, and we we take that all

into account. I think, you know, we we go to these events because one we want to know what are people actually talking about on the ground, What is getting through specifically for Trump proleyes, what is getting through from uh them on stage and what we hear in New

York to the actual people out there? And what are we missing when we watch the news because you know, these these news hosts, they think they're so smart, they think they got their big Emmy Award winning shows, but until they get out there, they don't know what it's really like. That's right, But I mean our objective it we we go with questions what has seeped in? Where are people? What are they thinking? Uh? And we just

go and we start to respond to that. Can I ask you a question, Yeah, do do they recognize you? Do they know who you are? It varies. I think, Uh, it's growing, but there's there's still I will say, there's still a giant bubble. So more often than not, I

go to a rally and most people don't. They're immediately skeptical because there's a camera and so you're bad guy because you're a camera but also they're making you as a member of the media, and that is enough in some ways to put them in a sort of somewhat skeptical place, but not specifically like this is his stick. He does this, he you know he's going to try to trap exactly. They already have their opinion about the media. It's either something stay away, these are the bad guys,

or these are the bad guys. I'm going to win with them, And whether or not I'm on Trevor Show or not usually doesn't come into effect. Although then there is a person who's like, I've seen this guy's videos and we were at a we're at an event, a school board meeting, and a guy charged me because it was like, that's that guy. We have to have security come in and stop this guy, and there's an altercation there. So like I think also they don't like to be

made fun of. What I not January six, but two weeks four hands the million Maga March, which was a beautiful march their number. But but what people don't often understand there is there's probably thirty thousand people there. But these are also poorly run events. Go Figure, which means there's two stages that are essentially a mile apart with thirty thousand people in between, and the sound systems they paid for can only you can only about two people

can hear what's actually going on. So you have essentially twenty nine people who are million about and when you're interviewing people and and perhaps the people are getting upset or somebody's like, I think I know that guy. Well, then the two people who are watching become ten, become fifty, and it becomes dangerous there. So even if you're not immediately recognized, we have to be savvy because there is

a there is a mob mentality when you have a camera. Yeah, there's always something I find like a natural and end can sometimes be kind of foreboding about the role of camera plays in the crowd and what and what it does to help people behave around it independent of people's politics or you know, ideological commitments, just generally, I've I've had that experience. Well, and also it's they're dressing for it now, you know the We make a lot of

jokes about the the apparel at a MAGA rally. And what it's become so fascinating is people are going there to dress for being on camera, for being recognized by uh Donald Trump or other folks. It's, you know, so like they suddenly walk down an aisle which is essentially a dressing room and costume department. They pick out the most uh, the most extreme point to view that are

you could fit onto a T shirt? Uh they put them on, and what we started noticing too, and then they're starting then they have to answer questions about the view that they just put on their chest, which some of them have that view, some of them have just

adopted that view. And now this camera is starting to craft a narrative around that person who has this thing on their chest that they speak for that maybe they just wanted that attention, but they're already now creating this narrative which is which is only grown in the last two years. Chris, there is definitely a lot of disagreeing on whether or not facts or factual. Therefore, journalism, when you report the facts, which is your job as a journalist,

could be seen as an opinion. What say you to people who believe that people of your ilk and I'm talking just primetime news in general, are based in opinionated journalism and not factual journalism. Is there a way to unblur the lines where at least, even if we don't agree on the solution, can we at least agree on what the facts are? Or it's just if you're an opinionated journalist, and if that's what I am to you, that's just what it's got to be. Yeah, I mean,

it's that's a it's such a deep question. It's hard to talk through it because I spent probably twenty years thinking about various versions of this, all the way back to being a philosophy major in undergrad and thinking about epistemology and how people form true beliefs. I mean, the way that I think about what I do is that I have a point of view and a perspective and a set of values that I have that I'm pretty

transparent about. I really believe in democracy. I believe in equality, solidarity, rights and protections, the flourishing of people's lives um And I approached the news with those with those views. I'm on the left for sure. People know that, and that perspective colors what I talk about and what I you know, what I don't talk about, and you know what I choose to to spotlight we're really rigorous, so we put

things that are true on our show. But the thing is that, like truth is only I mean, there's there's a bunch of different categories, right, so like you can communicate untruthful stuff or false and malicious stuff without ever telling a single factual lie. You know, then there's people who just lie, right, So like oh, the the an Italian satellite hacked the voting machines to change votes. It's just like a lot, it's just like not a true statement,

and it's a preposterously not that. But then you know, there's a period where Tucker Carlson was going around doing this thing where he was taking this open source vaccine reporting system where people could anyone could report an adverse event after a vaccine and saying, look, people died after that they got their vaccine now or whatever the number was,

Now that's it was true. I mean, like you know, when you give two hundred million people shots, like some set of people are going to you know, get hit by a bus there, there, hit there, they have cancer and they came up like whatever it is. So you're not saying a lie, right, Like it is factually accurate that that a certain number of people died after they

got their vaccine shot. When you go on air and you say it in that terms, you are implying a causal link there that says these vaccines are scary, they're killing killing people and not telling you about it. And so like that line between like what's fact, what's opinion, what's perspective, it is actually pretty complicated, you know, because like you can say a lot of true things. It's

like here, here's here's my favorite example, like racist websites. Okay, like like really like that, Like if you go to the world of like Stormfront and and by the way, which is like very adjacent to like a lot of Donald Trump stuff, and there are periods during different campaigns

and Donald Trump would like tweet these out. Like you could run a website that only identifies examples of black men assaulting white people in a country of millions and just make that all you show, and it could be the case that, like it is factually true that in each of those instances they else what you're doing is running a white supremacist website, right, And you're running a white supremacist website without ever like telling a lie in some sort of like sense of like, these are facts.

I'm just showing you the facts of all the But that's that's like Nazi propaganda essentially, which by the way, they used to actually like run examples of Jews committing crimes. So it's like this question of what is what effective opinion.

It's like the world contains so many facts that in some ways what's more insidious than lies, and lies are insidious, we see with a big lie is which facts you choose to emphasize, which facts you choose to focus on, and so much destruction and so much um rune can happen based on which facts people choose to use their platforms. For Amy winner, I'm glad you have that that I could feel that Emy nomination just cracking inside of me. After a break, I want to I want to talk

to you all about where we're headed. I don't know if this is gonna be a new holiday. I don't know if our kids are gonna start getting jan six out of school for their own safety. I don't know. But I am curious about where we go from here and the role that the media plays, and this this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back, Chris. What would you say is the big was the biggest failure in reporting as it relates to January six, let's critique

our media co workers here. I would say that one thing that happened, and I think that I actually think it's been I think the reporting in the wake of it's been quite good. I think one misapprehension people had when watching it was that it was kind of goofy, and I think that was because of what the cameras

were showing as opposed to what they weren't showing. So because you have cameras in the galleries, you know, what you saw was like the shade of the que shaman comes in and he sits on the chair, and it all seems like stunty and weird. They're all like recording themselves.

And it's only later when you start to get the footage of like the cop who's being you know, pressed in the door, and and Michael Finnane being dragged through, and the body camp footage and the assaults and like um and then the you know, Ashley Babbitt attempting to vault through that broken window and the gunshot that that that killed her. So I think there was a little bit of a misapprehension the beginning. I think it's probably

stuck with some people. In fact, some people, I think Tucker Carlson's one example, have tried to like keep that going, like, Oh, isn't this a goofy funny, Like it's ridiculous to be scared of these people? What are you talking about? So I think that's a misapprehension that was pretty prominent in the beginning, but I think has been I think it's been turned around. I mean, I think most Americans think

what happened there was completely messed up. Like, I don't think it's a I don't think the problem with January six is that people don't get that it was bad um or you know. I just think that there's the bigger problem is this that fundamentally the Republican Party's an institution is radicalized against democracy, and that they have that that there has been a slow the institutions of the country have been slow to recognize that, and they have

faced no political price for it among voters. You've gone on record and saying that this should have been one of the craziest events in the last fifty years of history. The Clapper, why do we care more about Kim Kardassian dating Pete Davidson. What what I mean, what's the attraction? She she wore the easiest on the date. Come on, that's your husband, Jesus to go out. There's so many articles day in and day out of why why don't we see more outrage towards this thing or this thing.

I do think there's there's an overrepresentation as to how many people are actually actually give a ship about democracy, and not in the sense of like, oh, yeah, it's important, important, I'll say that to an interview or what have you, but like our interest in the political ramifications of what happens day in and day out. Most people I talked to there on Jane or A six. Again, it's are there for the show and are there for the identity.

And I don't think would even articulate seeing government as something that needs to play a role in helping them and or helping society. In fact, they've been outside of the whole political world for years and it wasn't until this new character came in who welcomed them in and

they felt they could be a part of it. Uh. But again it became about winning above uh, restoring democracy, creating a working government that could benefit people who are in need, protecting people, things of that nature like that actually was never an interest to a lot of the people we talked about. It really was just simply about the game of the gamification of the not only the election,

but then what happened after that. And so so you're like, why, why why are Americans more interested in this and not focused on how democracy is crumbling Because we were never interested in democracy as an idea. We were interested at democracy as a um, a bullet to put in a gun on that we could shoot to win the contest of my team beat your team, and and and and that's where I'm just like, oh, I don't think Americans

are that into politics. Uh. Politics is something to um uh uh to utilize government so that its role can can help you ultimately that they're into games or like civic work, you know. I mean I think that's that you know, it does um it is very identity based. And I also think, look, the attentional imperatives here, to your point, like, are hard in a million different directions. I mean, people getting people's attention about anything. It's hard.

It's like, you know, we've never had more um there's never been more things tugging on our attention. There's never been things that we needed more focused attention on more UM. And here I'm thinking of the climate challenge, which is like, quite literally the the largest challenge that humans have faced since we started civilization. Mother Nature bought some Instagram ats

and was an influence exact but continues, Sorry didn't. Those attentional questions are really hard ones are ones I struggle with too, UM and I don't know the answer to them. But you know, there are a lot of people that are paying a lot of very close attention UM. There are a lot of people who understand what UM, how

serious things are UM. And I think, you know, in some ways, I think there's an argument made that you've never had more discussions about democracy itself as a sort of topic of conversation in my political life, you know, where the issue about like are we going to maintain democracy? Are we going to strengthen democracy? Is like an actual topic of conversation that it wasn't really the case. I think,

like ten or twelve or fifteen years ago. What could we expect when it comes to the future of democracy being a set Because the thing that I find that's interesting now is that a lot of the people that stir at the pot in have been deep platform So a lot of the ways these types of people can find each other and the hornets nest can be stirred up is not the same. Trump is not on television as much, a lot of his cronies are not on

television as much. So could they still mobilize like this? Again? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I don't know what the future holds. I know that Republicans have worked very hard to put people in positions to do and pull off what they were not able to do and pull off last time. You have the secretary of State being primary in Georgia. You've got the secretary of state election in Arizona with sort of like avowed adherence to the big Lie pro coup forces. You've got a pro coup

primary challenge the governor of Georgia. Right, all these people essentially, whether they're saying implicitly or in some cases explicitly saying like I will do what was not done before, which is deliver power into the hands of the candidate who lost because I don't recognize legitimacy of the majority. Because they're not my people, right, So I really worry about that.

And look, at one level, there's technical problems here about the way that the law works and who's administering elections, but there's sort of a deeper problem, Like I think about this old Yogi bear a line where he says, uh, you know, they should move first base closer to homes. There aren't so many close plays at first, which is like you can't like, there's no so like there's gonna be close places at first wherever you put the base right.

It's like if you have one of two major American coalitions mobilized against democracy with the belief that the other side is illegitimate by definition and cannot legitimately win. Whatever happens technically around election law like matters, but ultimately, like the threat is that that's the deep threat, and that threat is there and growing, and so I don't know what it looks like how it plays out, but look, elections end when the loser acknowledges their over like as

a function, as a as a functional matter. That's the definition of the end of an election. And that can't be if there's a side that will never acknowledge that, then that we're in totally different territory. So it sounds like we're fuck Jordan's I think that's cooler heads can prevail, then it's gonna be all right. And there's a lot of cooler heads out there. You know you talked to him all the time. Yeah, let me send you some links. It'll put a lot of faith in humanity and our democracy.

There are cooler heads out there. There are people who did the right thing last time. And I think there's a lot of people in America who have a deep, a deep patriotism and civic a sense of solemn civic duty who did the right thing the last time around. I hope they're there the next time. And I also hope that those people are having lots of sex and making more people just like them so that my child as a decent world. And that's how we're gonna end

this segment. You and most podcasts like that, I feel like I've I've heard you. You really go to that well a lot, right, Just ye, you're really wishing sex. I'm just wishing lessons upon people. So um with that. Jordan Klepper and Chris Hayes and MSNBC all in with Chris Hayes I mean, I don't in SNBC podcast is why is this happening? Chris Hayes. One is an Emmy winner, one is an EMBI nomine soon to be Inny Winner with all the hard work that he is doing out

there on the streets. I wish you all a happy Do you think we're gonna have retail sales around the Resurrection? Would take that? That would be fine? I would I would take just maybe. Uh. I wish you a happy Resurrection interaction Insurrection. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm thinking about Christmas. Oh, okay, I'm a Christian. Think I'm that enough. Thank you Jesse for going beyond the scenes. Hey, beyond the scenes listeners.

If you haven't rated and reviewed us yet on Apple Podcasts, I need you to stop right now and do that. Drop us a rating, let us know how you feel and write a review. Write a review too, because I read those to my child at the end of the night, because I'm I'm out of books. Gotta go buy new books. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at leven tenth Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast