Trump’s ‘deal’ with Iran was smoke and mirrors, says Velshi

Instagram teen accounts default teens into automatic protections for who can contact them and the content they can see. Explore teen accounts and all of our ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you proved it to you, would that frighten you? While now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Good evening from New York. I'm Ali Valshian for Chris Hayes. Donald Trump always promises the best deals, but a day after he backed down from his threat to kill, quote, a whole civilization, end quote, his words, everyone's waking up to the fact that his ceasefire with Iran was smoke and mirrors. that the president of the United States crossed a dark line that cannot be uncrossed, all for a shaky promise of a temporary peace that began falling apart less than 24 hours later at a humiliating list of concessions that Iran says Trump promised them. It's starting to look like Trump was desperate for a way out of a war that he launched almost six weeks ago without good reason. A way to wrap it up, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and declare mission accomplished. That's what the White House tried to do this afternoon. Thanks to the unmatched excellence of our warriors at the direction of the commander-in-chief, the world has just witnessed a historically swift and successful military triumph. President Trump started Operation Epic Fury with strategic military objectives and the United States has clearly achieved them. It was a very, very strong threat from the President of the United States that led the Iranian regime to cave to their knees and ask for a ceasefire and agree to reopening the street of Hermuz. But by that time, Trump's alleged deal with Iran, which ostensibly is a two-week ceasefire to negotiate peace, was already falling apart. Now, according to the Pakistani officials who brokered the ceasefire agreement between Trump and Iran, the deal covers Lebanon too, which has been under constant bombardment by Israel. Multiple Iranian officials said the same thing, and they publicly warned that they would respond if Israel didn't stop the bombing in Lebanon. But today, Israel didn't just continue bombing Lebanon. It launched the deadliest attacks there since the war began, 100 air strikes in 10 minutes. According to the New York Times, at least 182 people were killed and hundreds were wounded today alone, according to the AP. Today, the White House saw that fire raging and poured gasoline on it. Would President Trump like to see Lebanon included in this peace deal? As you know, there's been increased Israeli strikes on Lebanon today with dozens of casualties there. Sure. Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire. That has been relayed to all parties involved in the ceasefire.

So after the U.S. said that their idea of a peace deal doesn't extend to stopping Israel's bombs that are going into Lebanon, Iranian state media reported that the government there had resumed blocking traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, once again, cutting off 20% of the world's oil and gas supply. As a reminder, that's something they were not doing before Donald Trump started the war. The Strait of Hormuz was open and operating properly six weeks ago. Something Trump said had to stop before he would end the war. But once again, once again, the White House was caught flat-footed. Well, with respect to the first reporting out of Iranian state media, the president was made aware of those reports before I came to the podium. That is completely unacceptable. And again, this is a case of what they're saying publicly is different privately. We have seen an uptick of traffic in the strait today. Ah, we've seen an uptick in traffic in the Strait of Hormuz today. Let's talk about that for a second. Before Iran closed the Strait again today. Three ships were observed leaving the region on Wednesday, according to ship tracking data that's compiled by Bloomberg. That is three ships out of an estimated 800 tanker ships awaiting safe passage. And by the time the White House spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, left that podium, Iranian officials said the U.S. had violated the ceasefire agreement and that peace negotiations would not continue. For its part, the White House says peace talks are ongoing, and JD Vance is slated to join negotiations in Pakistan this weekend. This is where Donald Trump's threat of genocidal violence has led us. He discussed destroying an entire population, an entire civilization, as he called it yesterday, on behalf of the American people using American taxpayer dollars. In doing that, he crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed. Whether or not that was a negotiating tactic, it didn't work anyway. This wasn't just talk about defeating an opposing military or changing a regime. Trump went 19 steps further. He went to a place where dictators go, a place beyond saneness and humanity. It's a stuff of horrible, megalomaniacal authoritarian behavior throughout history. The Geneva Conventions and the U.S. military's own law of war spell out how the president of the United States was talking about committing war crimes in public. In fact, they spell out that merely making the threat itself is a war crime. But Trump is flouting those laws like he flouts all other laws, making a mockery of American ideals and values and laws, creating a permission structure for unbridled brutality. If you thought January 6th was a real problem, if you thought the deadly capital insurrection was a serious attack on American values and on who we are as a people, Donald Trump's threat to kill a whole civilization is just as dangerous if not worse.

Ben Rhodes served as a Deputy National Security Advisor for President Obama. He now hosts the Crooked Media's Pod Save the World. He joins me now. Ben, this is, I think it's hard to impress on people that ceasefire or no ceasefire, and we can discuss whether or not this is real. What Donald Trump did yesterday is unheard of in the annals of American history. No, I mean, there's nothing in modern American history anywhere near this. He threatened to commit genocide. He threatened to wipe out a thousands-year-old civilization. He threatened to bomb civilian targets that have nothing to do with any military objectives. He threatened mass murder on an epic scale. And whether he ends up doing it or not. He's already committed a war crime. And this will color the opinion in the United States for generation around the world. There is no moral high ground anymore. He effectively cast the United States as acting like a rogue nation led by an autocrat who doesn't value any human life whatsoever. And those are pretty serious words, but that's what he said. I can't believe you're saying these words. It wasn't the first time. Yeah. I mean, you've been, we've all been critical of presidents and different leaders. This is different. This is not critical of. This is completely in a different space. Whether or not you believe that the United States should be the world's policemen or be at the forefront of these discussions is entirely different from what we have now become. In fact, let me just play you what Pete Hegseth said about the situation that we're in. Let's listen. You see, had Iran refused our terms, the next targets would have been their power plants, their bridges, And oil and energy infrastructure targets, they could not defend and could not realistically rebuild. It would have taken them decades. And we were locked and loaded. So forgetting that last part about we are locked and loaded because he constantly talks like he's playing a video game. There was no walking back of. the horribleness of what Donald Trump was suggesting to do. There are all sorts of people in the world who would support and have been supporting the U.S. attempts to get rid of the Iranian regime and replace it with something else, even though there's no particular roadmap for doing that. There's nobody who thinks what Donald Trump said, no thinking people who think what Donald Trump said about eliminating a civilization is anywhere close to where we should be. People watching us need to think about the fact that power plants are connected to power grids in hospitals. And the first people to die would be children in the NICU, old people and ventilators. The most vulnerable civilians would die immediately if you bomb power plants. And we have a Secretary of Defense or what everyone wants to call it bragging about killing old people and children, bragging about the, you know, that were locked and loaded on that. I think the enormity of this, it's hard for it to sink into people, but this is what's happening. And it's not a drill or a video game. We've already bombed, hopefully, inadvertently, a girl's school and kill. I have two daughters, nine and 11. We've killed kids that age and not expressed any remorse for it. And then talked about bombing power plants and bridges. How many people who are watching right now drive across bridges to get to work?

You know, I mean, this is not a military target. And by the way, we're not achieving any military objectives. He says they don't agree to our terms. There are no terms other than open the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war. Yes. There's no other terms that we've heard about. They're not accomplishing a thing, Allie. So they're with our taxpayer dollars, bringing death and destruction across the Middle East, alongside Israel, and we're getting nothing. There's nothing to benefit the American people about this. that they destroyed some ballistic missile factories, that the Iranians will just rebuild as soon as the war's over, with the extra money they're getting from treating the Strait of Hormuz like a toll road. I mean, this is a mixture of incompetence and malevolence that is unprecedented in American history. But there's also a... You have to call it out. There's a lie embedded in this whole thing. When a reporter asked Donald Trump about people being frustrated with the price of gas, which was only $4 a gallon a few days ago when Donald Trump was asked about it, he said, well, they'll be really happy because another country is not going to be throwing nuclear-armed missiles at us. There's no nuclear weapon in Iran, and there is no... ballistic missile in Iran capable of getting anywhere close to the United States. Not to say that they don't have work toward a nuclear weapon, nor that they have a lot of ballistic missiles, but Donald Trump invented a threat to America that didn't exist. No, they have no ballistic missile anywhere near capable of hitting the United States. And the most aggressive projections, if they tried to develop that technology, you know, talks about maybe in 10 years. They don't have a nuclear weapon. They don't even have a weaponization program around their nuclear material. And look, the reality of this thing is, if the terms that we see in this deal, if the Iranians are able to tax the Strait of Hormuz in control. 20% of the world's fossil fuel energy as a source of revenue and profit and get sanctions relief because Donald Trump launched this war, they will have a lot more revenue than they had before the war. The regime did not fall, as he seemed to think it would, within a matter of days. In fact, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the most hardcore element in the regime, they are the ones that have closed the strait. They are the ones that are taxing these vessels. So we've made the same regime more aggressive. more extreme, have access to more sources of revenue for no purpose whatsoever. We've not eliminated their nuclear program. Even if you shipped out the highly enriched uranium, which by the way was shipped out under the Iran nuclear deal and under President Obama, even if you ship that out, they'd still have a nuclear program. So we haven't eliminated a nuclear program. They're going to rebuild their ballistic missiles. They still have ballistic missiles. They were firing them in Israel last night. This is all a bunch of lies. And again, like, people need to call this out. Yeah, and by the way, it's lie upon lie upon lie, because there was a lie last June when Israel and the United States attacked Iran and Donald Trump bragged and then continued to brag about the fact that the nuclear program was obliterated. Tulsi Gabbard went before Congress and said that no rebuilding of what was destroyed had taken place. So again, what's this war for?

I honestly, at this point, Ali can't tell you because we are, again, the regime's in place, the nuclear program's in place, they have a ballistic missile capability. They've increased in some ways their power because they've demonstrated their capacity to close the straightforward moves and control essentially the functioning of the global economy because 20% of the world's fossil fuel energy goes through that straight. What have we achieved? And meanwhile, thousands of innocent people have been killed in Iran and Lebanon. U.S. troops have been killed and injured. U.S. bases in diplomatic facilities, including embassies, have been damaged and some cases rendered unusable across the Middle East. That's the record of what has happened. Those are facts. That's an opinion. Those are the facts. And they can't even really spin it. They talk about, we destroy the Iranian Navy. If we destroyed the Iranian Navy, how come they can shut down a waterway, the Strait of Formoos? Meanwhile, what does it benefit the American people to destroy some naval vessels of the Iranians? Look, I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu Naniao wanted to do this. Donald Trump is ultimately responsible. He decided to do it too. But all that has happened is death, destruction, and in some ways the empowerment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. I wonder if somebody could have just taken their phone and given Google Maps to the president. See this little choke point here. This might be a bad idea. This didn't need high-level intelligence to figure out that this was going to unfold exactly the way it is unfolded. Ben, thanks as always for being with us. Thanks. Ben Rhodes. All right. Coming up, as JD Vance stumps for an authoritarian ruler in Hungary, experts warn that Trump is trying to recreate that same playbook here at home. Plus, some major red flags for swing state Republicans ahead of the midterms of the first. Senator Chris Van Hollen on efforts to rein in a lawless president threatening genocide. That's next. Watch Disclosure Day at Home now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? While now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening, the explosive and unsettling rise of prediction markets? I think legally the Supreme Court is going to ultimately decide how these things should be regulated. If there's a Democratic administration after Trump, I do think they're going to crack down. But you can see Kalshi already trying to get ahead of that by staffing up with former Biden people, with former Democratic senators, as a way of sort of signaling to the world. We're not just the Trump thing. The Trump family loves us. But look at all of our Democratic lobbyists. So they are. definitely staffing up and readying for that fight. That's this week on why is this happening. Search for why is this happening wherever listening right now and follow.

In the run-up to Donald Trump's 8 p.m. deadline last night for wiping out an entire civilization, the Democratic Congressman John Larson of Connecticut filed 13 articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. Dozens of others called for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump. That group included people from across the country's political spectrum, people like the former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Alex Jay Jones. Tomorrow, House Democrats will try to force passage of a war powers resolution to rein in Trump and end his war on Iran for good. And next week, the Senate is planning its own war powers vote. None of these have much chance of success, but what they are all looking for are actual steps that can be taken right now to stop a president who threatens literally genocide and war crimes and puts the lives of American service members and other innocent people across the world at risk for nothing. And the question is, is there nothing anyone can do about it? The Senator, Chris Van Hollen, is a Democrat of Maryland. He's a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. He joins me now. Senator, good to see you. Thank you for being with us. I was just talking to Ben Rhodes about this. The White House made virtually no effort to sell this to war to the American people or Congress. And it turns out that most of what they said, starting from last year in June, were lies. At some point. Someone's got to be held responsible for lies that have cost Americans their lives that have cost Iranians and Israelis and Lebanese and people across the Middle East their lives. Well, Allie, you're right. We've got a president of the United States and, of course, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, lying repeatedly to the American people, including again today. And as a result of their lies, we've lost 13 American service members, hundreds wounded, thousands of innocent civilians killed in the region. And it's costing the American taxpayer $2 billion every day. And, of course, rising oil and gas prices and other prices. from the president who said he was going to keep us out of wars, where he also lied. So, yes, there has to be accountability. We need to press on every cylinder here. I support, you know, those who say that if we had a sane cabinet, they would invoke the 25th Amendment, of course. But there's virtually no chance of that happening, right? Right. Exactly, Allie. So ultimately, ultimately, this is going to require the American people continuing to speak out really loudly. And I mean everybody. We know that this war is unpopular. We know the American people. Republicans and Democrats don't like it. They know that we're less safe, not more safe. They know that we're worse off now than we were when we started this war. And the question is whether that's going to sink through any of the skulls of Republicans in the House or the Senate, because we are going to bring up. in the House and the Senate, these war powers resolutions again. Republicans have uniformly voted against those, except for one member of the Senate. And so we're going to keep pushing. Now, there's also the money. I mean, ultimately, Donald Trump wants to come back and get more money, and we've got to make sure we block that as well. So ultimately, accountability is essential.

But we are going to need Republicans to help us apply that accountability. And to do that, we're going to need the American people to keep weighing in. Okay, so let's work this out. The American people need to keep weighing in to put pressure. I don't know what needs to happen for a John Thune to stand up and say. starting on Sunday when Donald Trump put that profanity-laced truth, social out, but that was just in decorous. This is entirely different. What he suggested about an entire civilization will be destroyed. Again, there may be war crimes inherent in just having posted that, but he sort of meant it. And nobody. I mean, Alex Jay Jones did. Tucker Carlson did. Marjorie Taylor Greene did. But mainstream regular Republicans who would find this deeply offensive did not. Well, Allie, they didn't. And, you know, it says something about just how bankrupt the Republican Party has become under Donald Trump that none of them said a peep. And so the reality is the only thing and the only thing they care about is not the fact that the President of the United States threatened massive war crimes and genocide. The only thing they care about is their own elections. And that means that if they're looking at public sentiment and they're hearing that they're going to get crushed in the midterm elections and there are lots of signs pointing in that direction. But they have to understand and be more afraid of their constituents than they are of Donald Trump. This has been an issue all along. You would think, as you said, when it came to the president threatening to commit genocide, that they would wake up and at least say this is outrageous. But again, the only thing that drives these guys alley is. polls and American people's sentiment and whether they think they're going to win. So we've actually seen some of this, right? They're constituents. We've seen some of this. We've seen 30 legislative seats slip from Republicans to Democrats in some unusual places. Last night we watched Georgia 14. I mean, that was a thing that Donald Trump won by 37 points last time he was on the ballot. And the Republican endorsed by Donald Trump won it by 12 points last night. This is one of the Trumpiest districts in the entire country in which the Democrat didn't have much likelihood of winning in the first place. But the idea that that was narrowed down to a 12 point gap is these are all messages. Well, they are. I mean, it seems to be coming in loud and clear that the American people understand that this war is a huge mistake that we are worse off now than when Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu started it. But the question is whether all those signs will be enough. And...

And he's done a fantastic job. I'm a big fan of Victor. I'm with him all the way. You have a man that kept your country strong, and he kept your country good, and you don't have problems with all of the problems that so many other countries have because they let their countries be invaded. And you don't have that problem because of Viktor Orban. Okay, that doesn't really need any interpretation. He said all the parts that you needed to hear. That was the President of the United States, saying that he's a big fan, his words, of Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban. This guy is on your screen right now. Okay, enlisting what he believes are Viktor Orban's accomplishments. Accomplishments like turning away refugees from places like Syria, because according to Viktor Orban, quote, we don't see these people as Muslim refugees. We see them as Muslim invaders. Interesting language. You've heard that play out in America. Other major successes like making Hungary an ethno-nationalist in liberal democracy, as he calls it, built on anti-immigration policies. Viktor Orban has said of his country, quote, we do not want to become peoples of mixed race because European countries with mixed race citizens are, quote, no longer nations. One of his advisors actually resigned over that statement, calling it a pure Nazi text. In furtherance of his ethno-nationalist goals, Viktor Orban has spent years pushing policy incentives for Hungarian women to have more children as his government tightens abortion restrictions. Sound familiar? Viktor Orban has repeatedly been accused of voter fraud and voter intimidation. In fact, he's managed to stay in power for 20 of the last 28 years by tilting the rules that govern Hungarian elections in his favor. Sound familiar? And today, the Washington Post reports that Viktor Orban's government offered to help Iran after the pager attack that Israel launched against Hezbollah in 2024. Yes, that Iran, the country that Trump just declared war against. Nevertheless, Trump says he's with Viktor Orban all the way, because Hungary's Viktor Orban might be the best example of the far-right project in America right now. On Sunday, he's facing an election. He's trailing in the polls. So the Trump administration is pretty desperate to bolster their MAGA ally. Ann Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic. She's a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. She recently wrote about the Hungarian election as the first post-reality political campaign. She joins me now. And it's great to see you. Thank you for being with us. I want to... read from your article in the Atlantic in which you say that on any list of strange elections, the 26 parliamentary election in Hungary will stand out. This may be the world's first post-reality campaign. What do you mean by that? I mean that Hungary is a country with an enormous amount of problems. The Viktor Orban, as you described him, has not only taken over the Hungarian state, the Hungarian judiciary, the Hungarian media, he's also made Hungary the most corrupt country in Europe, the least free country in Europe, and by some measures.

one of the poorest countries in the European Union from having been a relatively rich country in a relatively promising country a couple of decades ago. He did all of this, as you said, through using this far-right ideology, through creating enemies and fear and anger and sense of danger. This time around... He's run out of enemies. There actually aren't migrants in Hungary. In fact, there never were. That's another story. There were in some other countries. Instead, he's focused the campaign on Ukraine. So he's telling Hungarians that they're going to be invaded, attacked, sabotaged by the Ukrainians. And of course, as you know, the Ukrainians are fighting a much larger enemy in... Russia, they have no interest in invading Hungary, and yet he's created this mythical danger coming from Ukraine. And that's how he runs elections. He creates enemies and he seeks to unify the country against them. JD Vance being there is not just about protecting an ally. In fact, generally speaking, we try and stay out of the elections that allies have. This is more important than that. Viktor Orban is central to the American ethno-nationalist right-wing project. They look to him as a way that things could go in America, assuming they were going well. Yeah, I think that's right. They also see him as somebody who was a democratically elected leader, which he legitimately was in a democracy, but who took over the institutions of the state, who sought to mate Hungary into a one-party state. He made it very difficult, as you said in your introduction, for anybody else to win elections. The only reason he's behind now is that the scale of corruption is now so high. that all kinds of ordinary people can feel it. One of the things that happens when you take over the judiciary, when you corrupt the legal system, when you remove transparency, is that it becomes much easier for people to steal. And that's exactly what's happened in Hungary. You know, the ethno-nationalist state was the, that was the facade, but behind that, it's really a kleptocracy. So I was in Hungary the last time there was an election like this. And in Budapest, everybody who asks, says, Viktor Orban's going to lose and the opposition is sort of coalesced around one candidate and looked like that was going to happen. Of course, it didn't happen. Is this real that Viktor Orban's at risk? I mean, I can only judge by what opinion polls say. And of course, I don't know what's going to happen in the country. I don't know how the election is going to be run. I was in Budapest about three weeks ago, and there were all kinds of rumors about ways in which the voters might be brought in from outside the country and so on. It certainly looks like this is a different kind of campaign. The opposition, knowing it has no access to media, doesn't even have access to billboard space.

is running a really grassroots campaign. They have the opposition leader, Péter Magyar, is running, you know, six, seven public meetings every single day. He's going round and around the country. Other members of the party are doing the same. They're trying to win through real contacts with real people because that's, you know, that's the only thing left to them. And the fact that they are ahead, at least in the polls, shows you that at least in some way it's working. I want to ask you about something that Marco Rubio said when he was in Budapest on February 16th. I won't read out the whole thing because it's fairly long. But the implication was that the United States enjoys, or Viktor Orban enjoys a very strong relationship with the United States, hence I wouldn't want anything to happen to our country's relationship if you elected someone else. It was sort of that tacit threat that we'd rather you elect this guy than the other guy. Does that work? Apparently not. I was told by Hungarians that when I was in Budapest that most people are focused on the domestic issues that face the country. They have a failing health care system, if that sounds familiar too. They have a big problem with doctors leaving the country. Actually, they have a big problem with everybody leaving the country because of the low growth rates and the sense of stagnation. And Hungarians don't seem, at least according to pollsters, very affected by these. foreign, you know, foreign leaders who appear and who throw their arms around Viktor Orban. But as I said, what they're hearing from the ruling party is nothing about their country. They're hearing, as I said, about outside threats. And so you never know how that's going to affect people. Viktor Orban, collectively, with all the time he spent there, is the longest serving leader of a NATO country. This is the part that people have trouble with. We got a few countries in NATO, Turkey and Hungary, which don't sound like... The kind of people you'd have in NATO. Donald Trump has just met with the Secretary General of NATO and has issued this statement. Not all that different from all the things he said, but let's put it up there from Truth Social. He said, NATO wasn't there when we needed them, and they won't be there if we need them again. Remember Greenland, that big, poorly run piece of ice, President DJT. I have no idea what the Greenland reference is there, but the concept of NATO wasn't there when we need them. is as empirically wrong as a thing as you can say. There's only one time Article 5 has been invoked in the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and it's been to America's benefit. Yeah, no, the only time that NATO came to the collective defense of one of its members was when NATO countries came to the collective defense of the United States after 9-11. And NATO soldiers did die in Afghanistan. They did die later on in Iraq. They've worked consistently with the U.S. all around the world. I should say that during the Iran War, there are daily flights coming from European bases into the Middle East. The Iranian plane, the American plane that crashed over Iran had taken off from a UK base. Their German base is being used every day. I mean, this idea that NATO's not involved in the war is actually bizarre. I don't know who's telling Trump that or how he gets that idea. You know who is involved in the war, interestingly, is Russia.

You know, Russia is aiding Iran. Russia is providing weapons to Iran. The Chinese may be providing the Iranians with satellite information and other kinds of help. And yet, somehow, Trump doesn't get angry at them. Yep. Yeah, his ire is focused on NATO. And great talking to you, as always. Thank you for joining us and Applebaum. All right, coming up, a huge victory for the left in Wisconsin Supreme Court election, plus a massive warning sign for Republicans in Marjorie Taylor Greene's backyard. That's next. Hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening, the explosive and unsettling rise of prediction markets? I think legally the Supreme Court is going to ultimately decide how these things should be regulated. If there's a Democratic administration after Trump, I do think they're going to crack down, but you can see Kalshi already trying to get ahead of that by staffing up with former Biden people, with former Democratic senators, as a way of sort of signaling to the world, we're not just a Trump thing. The Trump family loves us, but look at all of our Democratic lobbyists. So they are. definitely staffing up and readying for that fight. That's this week on why is this happening. Search for why is this happening wherever you're listening right now and a follow.

Okay, the last person who represented Georgia's 14th congressional district. It's the Trumpiest district in the states, the far northwest corner of the state, is a woman who is now calling for Donald Trump to be removed from office via the 25th Amendment. It was in that context that voters went to the polls for a special election last night, giving the Republican, Clay Fuller, a man endorsed by Donald Trump, a 12-point victory. in a district that less than a year and a half ago re-elected Marjorie Taylor Greene by nearly 30 points and Donald Trump by 37 points. But in this new atmosphere, Republicans have seen about 20 points shaved off their victory margin in the deepest of deep red districts. Voters also went to the polls in Wisconsin for a state Supreme Court seat. You may not have heard as much about that one because the two people who injected themselves and their energy into the last state Supreme Court election there. Elon Musk and Donald Trump sat this one out. Left to their own devices, Wisconsin chose the liberal candidate in a fourth straight election, giving liberals a five to two majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Margie Omero is a veteran Democratic pollster and strategist. Alentia Johnson served as a senior advisor to the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign and author of Flip the Tables, the Everyday Disruptors Guide to Finding Courage and Making Change. They joined me both now. Thank you for being with us. I appreciate it. Alencia, let's talk about the significance of closing the gap last night in Georgia's 14th. I was covering it last night, but there was so much else going on, and Sean Harris didn't win, and it wasn't likely that he was going to win. But he was the lead in the last election leading up to the runoff. He had 37% of the vote, and he came out with 44% of the vote yesterday, 12 points behind the winner. That's a remarkable closing of a gap in about a month. It's a remarkable closing gap, especially in a special election and a primary. And what I've heard from some Georgia operatives that they actually feel kind of good about the indications this is making for November when it comes to their governor's race and their Senate race. You know, it's interesting as I look out the turnout that happened in Georgia. We know the historic turnout that happened in Texas. I really feel like Democrats should actually use this as a moment to say, hey, what would happen if we consistently talk to voters who usually don't show up. Because we can explain something to them. We're running candidates that they are excited to show up for in these primary elections. And we could actually make a bigger blue wave in come November if we continue to start talking to black voters, Latino voters, young voters who are waiting to hear from Democrats on the policies to get us out of this mess that Trump has started. I think this is an interesting point, because if you look at people who've done better than expected, let's just take two examples. Take Sean Harris from last night, Margie, and take Zohran Mamdani and Zohran Mamdani. Probably don't share a whole lot of opinions on a whole lot of things, but they were people who spoke to the things that their constituents care about, right? In the case of its affordability, in the case of Georgia 14, Sean Harris is a cattle rancher, and he's a former brigadier general. These are like real people who are talking to real people and creating connections to them that don't sound sort of like old-style politics. Yeah, I mean, what's interesting is that

There are races all over the country, all kinds of candidates, all kinds of races, whether it's mayoral or gubernatorial, primaries, nonpartisan Supreme Court elections all across the board where you see candidates overperforming. It's a question of both turnout and persuasion. There's a lot of conversations with people who work on campaigns. You want to boost turnout, get your base motivated to go to the polls, as well as persuade people who maybe flip around a little bit to come over to your side. we're seeing in a lot of these elections is both. You see Democrats overperforming and progressives and liberals and moderate Democrats and folks across the board overperforming already the partisan composition of the electorate. So you have more Harris voters relative to Trump voters turning out in these elections than you did in November of 24. And then Democrats are overperforming that even further, suggesting that they're bringing voters over to their side who may not have voted Democratic 24. So it's just a sign that we need to have candidates running all around the country for all kinds of races to really raise her hand and say, this is the year. You know, I'm mad and I'm going to bring people with me. But Alencia, one of the things that people do seem to be choosing, however you want to describe it, I think it's more important than progressives versus moderates. It's fighters over folders. And this is putting increasing pressure on Democratic congressional leadership, who a lot of people in the base, wherever they are ideologically, feel that they're not doing as much as they can do and fighting as hard as they can be. Listen, I get it. And I hear from particularly young voters, particularly voters of color, particularly women voters who are concerned about agency over their body and decisions, they actually want to see people doing... every single thing that they can to draw attention to what is happening here in Washington, D.C. And so that's why you are seeing people from communities who don't have as much of a political background. May not have been in Washington, D.C., but a couple of years, if they are currently elected, but they're looking for fresh voices and people who aren't waiting for, quote, unquote, protocol to show up and stand up to this regime right now. I mean, look at what has been happening over the last couple of days when it comes to our security. What is happening with the president and Iran? People are concerned about not only safety, but they're concerned about their health care. They're concerned about the prices going up. All of these things are crises and they need Democrats to show some leadership. And we're going to continue to see voters moving towards new voices as long as they are showing that fight in them that folks have said, hey, that's what Kamala Harris ran on. Some people didn't give her a chance. But now we actually want to give a chance to those who are going to stand. up to what's happening. So Margie, what is this, what does the fight look like? Because we are in just the last, pick a number, the last 24 hours, the last 48 hours, Donald Trump swearing on, on his social media, Donald Trump threatening a genocide. There are a lot of people who are saying, what can I do now? My opinion is they've been showing up, right? They've been showing up for no kings rallies. They've been showing up for primaries. They're showing up in special elections and they're outperforming and they will show up in November. But to some people, there's a sense of severe urgency, severe urgency, that this is a

president that's off the rails and a defense secretary and a department of justice that's off the rails and a republican congress that just will not hold him to account or take their own responsibility there are people who are legitimately worried can we make it to november Yeah, look, there are a lot of things that people can do. People can volunteer. They can run for office. They can volunteer for candidates, not just battlegrounds statewide, but for a local office, for, you know, races that may not necessarily talk a lot about Donald Trump or what's going on in Iran, but are important to make sure we have that bench and to really, you know, reestablish, you know, the civility and, you know, collaboration that we need and, you know, really respecting our institutions that we've lost a little bit. under Trump. So I think that's something that everybody can do, and whether it's volunteer, whether it's pay attention to not take your eye off of what's happening in the news. Those are all things that people can do while we're waiting for the elections to happen. But also, there are primaries. There are lots of ways to get involved between now and November. And it's important that people stay mobilized because it's not just about what's happening in Washington. It's about what's happening in your state and your community. All of those things are important, too, to make sure that we're talking to each other. talk to your friends, talk to the people in your network, talk to people in your book club, your neighbors, your kids' school to make sure that everybody knows that this is, you know, all hands on deck at this moment. There was a local election somewhere where a bunch of these book banners got thrown off the local council last night. I mean, Alencia, these little things make a difference. Yeah, I was just going to say in, as I'm sitting here in Virginia, voters can show up early voting for the amendment to redistrict and actually send a message to Donald Trump. And so we're asking all Virginia voters to vote yes between now and April 21st. So that's something that voters can do. Love seeing you both. Thank you for being with us, Marjorie O'Me and Alencia Johnson. Thank you. All right. Coming up next hour, Jen Saki is going to speak with the legendary investigative journalist Bob Woodward. Do you don't want to miss that? We'll be right back.

Okay, that's it for this Wednesday night. I'll be back here tomorrow. Hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening, the explosive and unsettling rise of prediction markets? I think legally the Supreme Court is going to ultimately decide how these things should be regulated. If there's a Democratic administration after Trump, I do think they're going to crack down. But you can see Kalshi already trying to get ahead of that by staffing up with former Biden people, with former Democratic senators, as a way of sort of signaling to the world. We're not just a Trump thing. The Trump family loves us. But look at all of our Democratic lobbyists. are definitely staffing up and readying for that fight. That's this week on why is this happening. Search for why is this happening wherever we're listening right now and a follow.