Rachel Maddow lays out why you should care about JD Vance's real agenda
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Thanks to at home for joining us this hour. This is one of those news days where everything is busting out all over. There's a lot going on and a lot of the big news in the country and in the world right now is still developing tonight. So I have to tell you, tonight we are keeping our eyes trained on the Middle East, a potentially significant escalation and expansion in

in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah, of course, is the Iran-backed militia group that's based in Lebanon. They are a key ally of Hamas. Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire for months across the border of those two countries since the Hamas attack in Israel last October.

You will also recall that earlier this month, Israel sort of opened a new foray there. They launched attacks in Lebanon that killed dozens of Hezbollah members, injured thousands of other people, including civilians. Israel then ramped up airstrikes across Lebanon, which killed hundreds of people and displaced hundreds of thousands. They then killed the leader of Hezbollah.

Well, earlier today, Israeli troops were seen massing on the ground near the Lebanese border. And now Israel has reportedly launched a ground incursion over the border inside Lebanon. This is a big deal. Two U.S. officials telling NBC News that an Israeli ground operation has, in fact, begun tonight inside Lebanon.

U.S. officials have been blunt about the fact that they fear that operations like this could sink the whole region into further and more widespread fighting and chaos. But again, the news tonight, a developing story. We are keeping our eyes on it. Israeli troops on the ground inside Lebanon tonight. We'll keep you posted as we learn more.

Here at home tonight, news of every imaginable shape and size. Tomorrow, of course, is the vice presidential debate, which is always an interesting point, always kind of an unpredictable wild card in any presidential election. Because of these two particular VP candidates this year, I feel like this time, at least today,

I submit for your consideration this time that it may be worth thinking a little bit harder than usual about this particular debate in advance before it happens. So, as I mentioned to Jen at the top of the hour, I've got a lot more coming up on that later on in the show this hour. In particular, something that you might not know, something you might have heard about, but you might not really know about.

about J.D. Vance in particular. So we've been working on that story for a long time. I have to tell you, I've debated with myself a long time about whether or not to do this story, but it's the eve of the debate. It's time to do it. We are going to do it. That's still ahead later on in the show tonight.

We also got major news today from the FBI, which just released its report on violent crime in America for the first half of this year. According to that new FBI report, violent crime is significantly down in the country for the first half of this year, down by more than 10 percent. In fact, it's down by every metric in the report. Aggravated assault down 8 percent, robbery down 13 percent, rape down 17 percent, murder down more than 22 percent.

So as Donald Trump and J.D. Vance campaign for president and vice president by saying that America is a crime infested hellscape because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, this new report from the FBI may play a role in the debate tomorrow. It may play a role in the campaign in general. But regardless of the politics, it is just good news for the country. Full stop.

We're also watching the ports right now on the East Coast and on the Gulf Coast, where the Longshoremen's Union has a contract that expires tonight at midnight. And that is really important for the whole country.

There's about 47,000 longshoremen in that union. And in a lot of ways, they are a linchpin in the American economy at large. The ports along the East Coast and the Gulf Coast that bring goods into this country, those ports literally can't operate without the longshoremen. And it has been decades since this union has gone on strike. If this strike happens, if it is prolonged, it has real potential to cause

serious chaos and disruption in the American economy, potentially leading to very visible consequences for Americans doing their everyday shopping, shortages in the stores, price increases. And that, of course, would all be happening just a few weeks before the presidential election. If this strike happens, it's estimated that it will cost the U.S. economy about $4 billion every day that it goes on.

Again, unless there is a last minute agreement at the bargaining table, that potentially very consequential strike is expected to begin tonight at midnight. Like I said, news of every shape and size right now, including a lot that's going to be developing over the course of this evening. We've also still got eyes on Georgia, specifically on a giant toxic gas plume.

In Rockdale County, Georgia, east of Atlanta, you probably saw the news earlier yesterday morning. There was a fire that erupted at a chemical plant in Conyers, Georgia. That fire at the chemical plant produced this giant poisonous chlorine cloud.

And this isn't out in the middle of nowhere. This is in very well populated Georgia. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, Interstate 20 had to be shut down in both directions. I-20 has since reopened.

But more than 24 hours after the initial fire, there are still more than 90,000 people who are still under stay at home orders. As of today, people who are being advised to not open their windows, not open their doors, not turn on their air conditioning, nothing, all to prevent exposure to these poisonous chlorine fumes.

That said, that order has just been lifted, but it was in effect for most of the day today. A very consequential, again, chemical plant fire and toxic gas plume. And then, of course, on top of all of that, we have just been consumed with what has happened in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

which has killed at least 121 people across six different states. It has left extensive damage in its wake, particularly in beautiful western North Carolina, the region that has endured what one local official described as, quote, biblical devastation. More than 300,000 people are without power in North Carolina tonight.

The epicenter of the damage in North Carolina appears to be Buncombe County, and particularly the lovely and historic city of Asheville. At least 40 people have died in Buncombe County alone. More than 600 missing persons reports were filed as of last night.

Roads and bridges, homes and businesses have just been washed away. The city of Asheville's water system has taken extreme damage. Officials said today that full restoration of Asheville's water could take weeks. And as you know, a place without water is pretty much uninhabitable. The mayor of Asheville has described power lines in the city as looking like spaghetti.

Power down and all the other damage has knocked out cell service. That in particular has hampered recovery efforts. North Carolina's Governor Roy Cooper was on the ground in Asheville today, surveying the damage, meeting with first responders. His assessment coming out of there was grim. He said, quote, the devastation was beyond belief. And even when you prepare for something like this, this is just something that has never happened before in western North Carolina.

Joining us now live, I'm honored to say, is the governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper. Governor Cooper, I know you are really in the middle of it. Thank you for taking time to be here with us tonight to help us understand what's going on. Sure, Rachel. Glad to be here. We've all covered a lot of storms, a lot of hurricanes, a lot of devastating inland flooding. Even still, it feels like the scale of this is something just qualitatively different. Can you tell us a little bit about how

I guess the scale of it and how this compares to other things that you've had to contend with in your time in leadership. I've seen a lot of storms and aftermath of storms. I've never seen anything like this. This is an unprecedented disaster, but we are meeting it with an unprecedented response. We have 92 search and rescue teams out now rescuing people as we speak.

We're working closely with FEMA. They've been on the ground with me all day today. They delivered a million liters of water, 600,000 meals. Hundreds and hundreds of pallets are being airlifted to communities that are completely cut off from the ground because they are surrounded by water.

We know that there are a lot of people hurting when you don't have power, when you don't have cell phone service, when you don't have water. This is a catastrophic situation for you. And we are coordinating federal, state, local nonprofits into helping the western part of North Carolina. You know, this is rugged terrain on beautiful blue sky days.

But after these landslides and raging rivers like we have never seen before, some of our communities are completely wiped out. And it's really emotional, particularly to people in North Carolina and people from all over the country who go frequently just

Just seeing the devastation here. But I've talked to people today. There is a real strength there. Nurses sleeping in hospitals, restaurants serving free meals, hotels offering their rooms to first responders, people working in the parking lot, passing out water at churches, etc.

People are pulling together. We're going to get through this, but we have a lot of work to do in the short term and a lot of recovery in the long term.

Rescue comes before recovery, as you said, 92 search and rescue teams out tonight as we speak. Is there any place that search and rescue teams are still having trouble getting to? Are there places that they can't get to? Are there resources that could help, again, the rescue teams that you don't have, that you need?

Well, we have rescue teams from all over the country right now, from over 20 states, federal rescue teams. Our National Guard is fully, we have over 700 activated. We're taking phone calls from people who haven't heard from their friends or relatives and doing well checks on them to make sure they are okay.

And if you can't get to them by land, then we're using aircraft to get in there. There have been a number of air rescues, actually hundreds of air rescues, because areas have been cut off.

We're going to keep pouring in the resources. This is going to have to be a sustained response. Talking with the president a couple of times today, talking with the vice president, the FEMA director is on the ground. She's going to stay in North Carolina. She and I will be in the western part of the state tomorrow. We know that this is going to require action.

Everything we have to get these roads open as quickly as we can, to get cell phone service up, to get power on to people, to make sure that people have food and water. People are working around the clock. Real heroes who have power.

damaged to their own homes are out there working, giving medical assistance to people, working in first response. It is amazing, heartbreaking, and encouraging at the same time to see everybody working together so well right now.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, we know that your state is really an extremist right now. Thank you for taking time to help us understand. Good luck. Stay in touch with us if there's things we need to get can help you get the word out about or things to ask for that you need. Let us know. Thank you so much, Rachel. We do have word from the White House that President Biden, you just heard Roy Cooper there, the governor, say that he's going to be back in western North Carolina tomorrow. President Biden is scheduled also to visit the state the day after tomorrow on Wednesday.

All right. Up next, something that I have been debating for a few weeks now, whether or not to do on the show. But I feel like, well, if not me, who? It's not coming up in other places. I sort of feel like we all need to know it.

So now's the time. On the eve of the vice presidential debate tomorrow, I feel like now is the time. So we're going to do it. Settle in right on the other side of this break. I have a story to tell you. It is one, I will confess right now, it is a story that gives me the uggs big time. But we got to do it. Got to know. That story's next.

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Okay, this is one of those stories. You ready for it? Here we go. His name was Charles R. Walgreen. He lived in Illinois. As a young man, he worked at a shoe factory. But in an accident at the factory, he got injured. He lost a finger, which was a terrible thing. Because of that, he had to give up the shoe factory job. So he started working instead as an assistant pharmacist at a drugstore in his hometown.

He had to go off and fight in the Spanish-American War in Cuba. While he was in Cuba, he got both malaria and yellow fever, neither of which is any fun. But he survived both of them. And he came back to the U.S. after the Spanish-American War, came back to the Chicago area, and he decided he would keep going with the pharmacy stuff. So he opened up his own drugstore.

But it wasn't just a drugstore. Charles Walgreen's big retail innovation was that, yes, he operated a pharmacy, but his pharmacy would also sell stuff other than drugs. They'd be a place where you could also get a sandwich or a milkshake or buy other stuff you might need for your house. And with that model, Mr. Walgreen was wildly successful.

By the 1920s, he had over 100 Walgreens drugstores. By the 1930s, he had hundreds more Walgreens drugstores. And by the 1930s, he was also very deeply freaked out about his niece, specifically about his niece Lucille being exposed to free love and communism. Charles Walgreen's niece Lucille had gone off to the University of Chicago, great school,

But when she came home from school, she and her rich uncle Walgreen apparently started having what he called frequent arguments. Here's the New York Times, April 12th, 1935. You see the headlines. C.R. Walgreen takes niece from college.

Charles R. Walgreen, head of a national chain of drugstores, has caused his niece to withdraw as a student at the University of Chicago and has written a letter criticizing the institution for its communistic influence. His letter was sent to President Hutchins at the university. Copies were mailed to the university's trustees.

This actually turned into kind of a big famous thing at the time. There's a whole bunch of newspaper coverage of it at the time. You can see some of the headlines here. Walgreen answers University of Chicago, asking facts, promises proofs of communism. There's another. University of Chicago head demands data on charge of radical teachings. Attack is called vague. Legislative inquiry sought.

There's another legislators hear Walgreen charge. He asserts University of Chicago taught communism. Free love is also alleged. Oh no, not free love. They actually did hold a hearing in the state legislature in Illinois on this scandal of the Walgreens guy taking his niece out of college. The drugstore guy's niece was exposed to free love and communism. So the state legislature had to convene a hearing.

The hearing was dominated by Walgreen's expert witness, who he had called to testify on his behalf. Her name was Elizabeth Dilling. And she really took over the hearing and turned it into a big spectacle.

She demanded that no one be allowed to silence her. She said she would continue her testimony on the radio if they told her her time was up in the legislative hearing. She said she knew, she knew she had lists of all the communists at the University of Chicago. She also mentioned that she had lists of U.S. senators who she knew were communists as well. She said the president of the board of trustees,

at the University of Chicago, who was like a millionaire meatpacking guy. She said he was not only a communist, but she said he was a communist, quote, of the cream puff type. A meatpacking millionaire cream puff communist. Yeah.

That was Elizabeth Dilling. The hearing that she testified at was sort of wild. The AP described it as fist swinging, hooting, cheering and heckling. Elizabeth Dilling's husband was there. He actually punched out a guy from the Anti-Defamation League in the middle of the hearing. It was crazy. The whole thing just like went from zero to 100. Charles Walgreen arguing with his niece,

It goes from that to a full-blown state legislative hearing on whether the University of Chicago should be shut down by the state as a subversive organization.

And even though that crusade by Uncle Walgreen did not work to shut down the University of Chicago, the crusade sort of caught on. After the Walgreen's University of Chicago thing, the same expert witness, Elizabeth Dilling, got a call from Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company. He paid Elizabeth Dilling $5,000 to come to Michigan to expose all the evil communists at the University of Michigan and try to get the University of Michigan shut down as well.

Then it was California. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce paid Elizabeth Dilling to come to Southern California, where she assured everyone that she had confirmed that UCLA was a hotbed of communism, presumably also free love. She did the same thing at Cornell. She did the same thing at Northwestern, trying to get all of these universities shut down. They wanted all of these universities shut down as evil, subversive communist institutions. They did not get the universities shut down.

But a lot of very rich, very influential people were working on this as what they thought was like a mainstream political project. As weird as it sounds, this is the thing they really put at the center of their agenda. And the expert who they had work on all these campaigns, Elizabeth Dilling, she was a piece of work on her own.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but she was a huge fan of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Before we got into World War II, the Nazis in Germany actually paid her expenses for her to repeatedly visit Germany and then go back to the U.S. and praise the Nazi Party and Hitler's leadership. The German press had a nickname for Elizabeth Dilling. They called her the female Fuhrer.

She wrote a whole series of wildly anti-Semitic books about how Jews were secretly plotting to destroy the world and everybody needed to rise up against the Jews.

Elizabeth Dilling was really something. She was put on trial for sedition in 1944. When the trial dragged on for months, the judge actually allowed her to take breaks from attending the trial every day so she could go back to her day job and pay her bills. Her day job was helping organize political rallies for the America First Party, where her specific job was leading the crowd in anti-Semitic songs, which she wrote herself. Elizabeth Dilling was bananas.

But this crusade to shut down the universities, to expose universities of subversive institutions that have to be shut down if we're going to save America. This has been sort of a recurring thing on the far right for a long time. I mean, that all happened in the 30s. But when Barry Goldwater was the Republican nominee for president in 1964, one of the minor scandals in his campaign, which had a lot of scandals,

is that his campaign employed a full-time campaign worker whose organization had been shut down by the U.S. government during World War II because it was an American fascist organization. The guy, his name was Alan Zoll. He then reorganized himself into something called the National Council for American Education, which investigated American universities for subversion.

and tried to shut them down for being communist or whatever. He put out pamphlets with titles like, "They Want Your Child." Alan Zoll also somewhat famously testified in Congress that Felix Frankfurter shouldn't be approved as a Supreme Court Justice, specifically because he was Jewish. He said that was the grounds on which he thought that he shouldn't be confirmed. The shut down the universities thing

has been an obsession on the far right on and off for a very long while. And its most famous proponents have just not been the best people, right? Just objectively, they have mostly been associated with not just the far right, but literally with fascism. Alan Zoll's organization was banned by the U.S. government as a fascist group. Elizabeth Dilling was a fascist Nazi and Hitler enthusiast who spent her life crusading against Jewish people and who was put on trial for sedition, right?

The shut down the universities thing does not have a good pedigree on the American far right, but it comes up in a recurring way. And we do have some new proponents of it now, which I think we should all be aware of, particularly ahead of tomorrow's vice presidential candidates debate.

I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country. Ladies and gentlemen, the universities do not pursue knowledge and truth. They pursue deceit and lies. And it's time to be honest about that fact.

Of course, I imagine that I don't have to convince any more of any of you that this is preposterous, that the universities in our country are fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies. Our universities are so committed to some of the most preposterous dishonesties in the world. J.D. Vance is now the Republican nominee for vice president of the United States. This is a speech he gave not that long ago where the title of the speech was The Universities Are the Enemy.

He gave this speech less than three years ago in Florida. But the theme of this speech, this is sort of a recurring thing for him.

You come to America, you learn that America is an evil place. You go to Harvard, you put your preferred pronouns in your biography, and you learn to hate the people who live in the American heartland, right? Harvard University Endowment, $41 billion of money. A lot of that is going to aggressively promote left-wing radicalism. Harvard University Endowment funds some of the most radical anti-American stuff that's out there. Harvard University Endowment pays a 0% tax rate. Maybe it's time to tax that endowment.

seize the endowment, actually penalize these endowments for being on the wrong side of some of these cultural issues. Conservatives have got to wake up to this reality. So yes, I think there are ways for us to seize the endowments. We just have to be willing to actually do it. Right. I like that answer. I like that answer. This is a podcast interview that J.D. Vance did, again, not that long ago.

Elizabeth Dilling didn't succeed in shutting down the University of Chicago or the University of Michigan or UCLA. The fascist activist Alan Zoll didn't succeed in getting Harvard shut down when he tried it in 1949. But J.D. Vance has a plan to do it now, at least to seize Harvard's endowment and then see what happens. And he has a plan to do this as part of a larger plan to destroy all the things which conservatives don't have complete control over.

And it's not just the universities, which is, again, on and off for a century, been a topic of concern to the far right. But it also, for J.D. Vance, includes the private sector, businesses. Here he is in that same interview explaining that the right wing needs to start doing stuff that's really, really, really radical, including to businesses. And both J.D. Vance and his interviewer both clearly find this very exciting. Capital, money.

money itself is increasingly taking a side in the culture war. And I hate to say it's not our side. It's not the side that I want to win. Unless you're willing to make these people feel economic pain, there's no serious way to fight back against it. The only way to push back against this stuff in a real way is to make these companies feel economic pain. And so there are a lot of ideas out there for how to do it. If you're not recognizing in this moment...

how crazy things have gotten and how outside the box we need to think that I think you're ultimately not really serious about taking back the country. Yeah, look, I agree. We are in the late Republican period. If we're going to push back against it, we have to get pretty, pretty wild and pretty far out there and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.

Indeed, I got to say, among some of my circle, the phrase extra constitutional has come up quite a bit. We do need to take a much more aggressive stance, a much more muscular stance. We're going to have to, you know, become a little bit more robust in our behavior. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. And look, you know, I.

I think that what's so difficult about this moment for conservatives is that we love the country so much that we don't want to admit to ourselves how far gone things are. Right. And I hear this from a lot of conservatives. Look, it is still the best country in the world, but we are accelerating very, very quickly to a place that none of us want to go. And it's really time to wake up.

Keep talking about extra constitutional. Yeah, we're accelerating to a place we really don't want to go. We're in a late Republican period. He doesn't mean capital R Republican. He means we're at the end of us being a republic. J.D. Vance says not only do conservatives need to, in his words, wake up, but what they need to wake up to is the fact that most of American life and culture should be, in his words, ripped out like a tumor. Those are, again, his words, not mine. Watch.

Our leaders right now are so corrupt and so vile that if you assimilate into their culture, you're assimilating into like garbage liberal elite culture. You're not assimilating into traditional American culture. And so I, you know, this is a tough, tough pickle for me. I don't even know what the right answer is here.

because you can't just teach these things. You can't teach that we live in a great country if the leaders are actively aligned against it. So almost the thing that you need to do step one in the process is to totally replace, like rip out like a tumor, the current American leadership class, and then reinstall some sense of American, you know, political religion. We need to rip it out like a tumor. Yeah.

And then install political religion. The man who is interviewing J.D. Vance here gets very excited about this idea. And it leads, this is important here, it leads J.D. Vance to explain sort of influences on his thoughts, where he gets his ideas on subjects like this. You said something that I would like to zero down on. How do we effectively, quote, rip out the disgusting leadership class? Yeah.

Oh, man. I mean, you know, because let me expand on that just a second. And I'm going to give you a little cover here because it's not just I mean, obviously elections. That's one thing. OK, but unfortunately, this evil leadership class has already taken over all of our institutions. Current pipeline is to turn them into those people that we just called evil and disgusting.

How do we, aside from elections, how do we rip out this leadership class? So these institutions are corrupted and rotted to the core. This elite ideology is everywhere and in all the things. What other options do we have besides voting them out, which we're seeing is ineffectual? Yeah. So again, this is like a tough question, but this is maybe the question that confronts us right now. You know, there's this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who's written about some of these things.

knowing chuckle there. There's this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who's written about some of these things. You're asking, hey, we don't want elections anymore. Voting is ineffectual. We want to destroy the whole thing. We want to destroy not only the system of government, but the whole American system, like we're ripping out a tumor. How do we do that specifically? Whereupon Vance says, gets palpably uncomfortable, buys himself a little time and then says, yeah, there's this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who writes about this stuff.

Knowing chuckle from the interviewer. This is Curtis Yarvin, who J.D. Vance is citing here as he is talking about the need to seize the universities, use the government to destroy businesses who aren't right wing, talking about needing to rip out the American system like a tumor. Here's the guy he is citing as his sort of the source of his thinking on these matters.

So I've introduced this very complicated problem to a simple four-letter acronym, which is RAGE. And RAGE stands for...

retire all government employees. Very, very, very simple. Now, the problem with this is, why have you never heard this before? Why has no one ever suggested, let's just get rid of this thing? You have a government in Washington. You were there for it or against it. What is a government? A government is just a corporation which owns the country.

Nothing more, nothing less. It so happens that our sovereign corporation is very poorly managed. And there's a very simple way to replace that, which is what we do in all power corporations that have failed. We simply delete them. We haven't been able to do that with our company for 200 years. So it's gotten a little bit stale. We should delete the U.S. government.

Because it's stale. It has been around for too long. We haven't been able to do that, meaning delete our government for 200 years. So it's gotten a bit stale. It's been around too long. So what would that entail, deleting the U.S. government?

The other thing about getting rid of your government is you can't just say, well, the limits of the government are the limits of the formal government. You have to say, well, what is this system actually? And it includes a lot of things that are called NGOs, things that are called universities, things that are funded by the state. It's a very, very large system, and it all needs to be destroyed. Fortunately.

There's a lot of talented Americans who actually know how to run things and make things work and are generalists. And you can just get these people, put them in a position of responsibility, and have them do their thing. And finally, you need a CEO. And a national CEO is what's called a dictator. It's the same thing. There's no difference between a CEO and a dictator. If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia.

If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia. So the vice presidential candidates debate is tomorrow. Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate, has been governor, is currently the governor of Minnesota.

He's been a long-term congressman, high school teacher, football coach, a soldier for decades. J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate, is a different kind of cat, forgive me. Aside from a brief stint in the Marine Corps, where he served with a public affairs unit, he has spent his entire adult life working for or being financially supported by eccentric right-wing tech billionaires, specifically ones who have devoted themselves to the political teachings of this guy. Finally,

You need a CEO. And a national CEO is what's called a dictator. It's the same thing. I have debated whether or not to talk about this on the show because I feel like it gives me the uggs. But I also feel like this is an important thing to know about the Republican's vice presidential nominee and what he has to offer and why he was brought onto the ticket despite his palpable lack of political skill or likability, his lack of any track record in politics whatsoever, his

And after he spent less than two years in the only public office he's ever held, which is a Senate seat that he only barely won thanks to one of those eccentric tech billionaires giving him the single largest Senate campaign donation in the history of this country. I mean, he comes wholly from this very, very obscure, eccentric right wing subculture of tech billionaires.

And his relationship with this eccentric Silicon Valley pro-dictatorship philosophy has been pretty widely discussed in print. These are a whole bunch of articles that have discussed this at one level or another. It's been discussed in print, but I don't feel like it's widely understood by the country who is paying attention to this guy as a candidate.

But this is where J.D. Vance's big ideas come from about where the country is heading for. Quote, Vance is friends with Curtis Yarvin, whom he openly cites as a political influence. Yarvin, the main political influence on all of the people who have supported J.D. Vance throughout his career, including paying to install him in the U.S. Senate.

When J.D. Vance says stuff like we're in a late Republican period, which is something he says all the time, he doesn't mean anything about the Republican Party. He means we're at the time right before the Roman Republic collapsed. And what happened after the Roman Republic collapsed? Well, a dictator, Caesar, came in and wasn't that better. He talks about being in a late Republican period all the time. That's him channeling this guy, Yarvinn.

When Vance says universities are the enemy and they should be seized, he's not only channeling Elizabeth Dilling and Alan Zoll and all the weird far-right crusaders against the universities from the 30s and 40s. That would be troubling enough. He's also channeling this guy, Yarvin, who says that while we are firing all the government employees, we should do the same to the universities because they're all part of the bigger system that all needs to be destroyed. He says, quote, retire their employees and liquidate their assets.

Universities in particular have lovely campuses, many of which are centrally located and should be quite attractive to developers. Meaning let's put somebody in to be a, what does he call it? CEO, a national CEO, which he says is indistinguishable from a dictator. And then the dictator should take over all the universities and sell them off to developers.

This is literally a pro-dictatorship, pro-monarchy philosophy that is not just about ending the U.S. system of government, deleting the U.S. government, but then using the power of a dictator to dismantle universities, dismantle businesses, to dismantle all of civil society, to instead install a whole new system controlled by the state that serves just the desires of the dear leader. Tomorrow at the debate, it is going to come up.

that J.D. Vance wants a national abortion ban. It's going to come up that he has told and continues to tell horrible lies about immigrants. It is going to come up that he has said his running mate was America's Hitler, his race, and cultural heroine, and that Trump's presidency was a failure. It's going to come up. His involvement in Project 2025 is going to come up. His proposal that people without children

should be taxed more and should have their votes count less. It will all come up at tomorrow's debate. But what do you do with this stuff? The thing that you need to do, step one in the process, is to totally replace, like rip out like a tumor, the current American leadership class. Republicans, conservatives, we're still terrified of wielding power, of actually doing the job that the people sent us here to do. Finally, you need a CEO, and an actual CEO is what's called a dictator.

It's the same thing. We've got to get comfortable with wielding power. There's no difference between CEO and dictator. If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia. They're going to have to get over their dictator phobia. What do you do with this level of radicalism? Trying to take over in Washington right now and trying to convince the far right that they've got to stop being afraid of wielding this kind of power this way. What do you do with this? At the debate tomorrow, in the campaign in general.

I don't know, but we've got to do something with it. Watch this space.

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We all have plans in life, maybe to take a cross-country road trip or simply get through this workout without any back pain. Whether our plans are big, small, spontaneous, or years in the making, good health helps us accomplish them. At Banner Health, we're here to provide more than health care. Whatever you're planning, wherever you're going, we're here to help you get there. Banner Health. Exhale.

Happy Monday. Happy vice presidential debate eve. Here's a sleeper issue I'm going to be watching for in tomorrow's debate. And the reason I wanted to bring this up tonight is because this issue is the subject of what I think is probably the best ad yet from the whole Harris Walls campaign everywhere all year thus far. My husband and I are going through IVF treatments now. It could be our only chance to have a family.

But Donald Trump's plan could ban IVF in some states. My husband is in the military. He volunteered to serve. We are patriots and we go where he is assigned. What if we end up in a state where IVF is no longer legal? What will we do then? I'm Kamala Harris and I approve this message. What will we do then? Despite Trump claims that the party is now totally cool with IVF and nobody has anything to worry about anymore,

Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint created by Trump allies for a second Trump administration, opens the door to banning fertility treatments. And of course, conservatives in Alabama already tried it in the wake of that debacle in Alabama, in Washington, D.C. Almost every single Republican in the U.S. Senate has now voted twice against halogenation.

having federal legal protections for IVF. Trump's running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, voted against it once. He voted against protections for IVF. The second time they voted on it, he didn't bother to show up for the bill. He called the bill, quote, ridiculous.

For his vice presidential opponent, Tim Walz, he's going to face J.D. Vance on the debate stage tomorrow. This IVF issue is personal. Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, had their children after years of fertility treatments. It's something that Governor Walz has talked about openly and emotionally on the campaign trail. J.D. Vance has accused Tim Walz of lying about how his children were conceived. Wow, stay classy, Senator.

But I just want to highlight this. I think the Harris-Walls campaign has already shown, even just with ads like this one, I think arguably their best ad of the whole election so far. They have already shown that fertility treatment is both deeply personal to so many American families and also incredibly potent as a political issue. So it's a sleeper, I think, but it is one to watch for at tomorrow's debate. All right, we'll be right back.

The biggest and most wonderful news in the state of Georgia right now is that Jimmy Carter, son of Georgia, former president of the United States, beloved American statesman and hero. Jimmy Carter turns 100 years young tomorrow. Happy birthday to President Carter and to the family who loves him so much. We are lucky to have him with us every day. But at 100 years old tomorrow, we are luckier than we ever dreamed we would be with him.

Also in Georgia, big news today from the courts in two ways, but actually from the same courtroom, from the same judge at the center of both of these stories. The first one is an important abortion ruling. Tonight, Georgia's abortion ban was struck down.

Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney struck down Georgia's six-week ban. After the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Georgia started enforcing a de facto total ban on all abortions in the state, a ban on all abortions after six weeks. But with this ruling today, abortion is now legal again in Georgia, up to 22 weeks of pregnancy. The ban is gone.

That Georgia ban was in place long enough to lead directly to the death of at least two young women living in Georgia, women who could not access the health care they needed to save their lives because of that abortion ban.

So this milestone ruling today, getting rid of Georgia's abortion ban, it is a really big deal on the facts and on the policy for the people of Georgia. It's also just the first thing in what is turning out to be a big milestone week for that specific judge, for Judge McBurney, because tomorrow at 9 a.m., he is going to oversee a bench trial, which will be live streamed.

A trial over new election rules that were recently passed by the MAGA pro-Trump majority on Georgia's state election board. One rule requires county officials to conduct a reasonable inquiry before they consent to certifying election results. It gives no explanation of what counts as a reasonable inquiry. The other one allows county officials to examine all election-related documentation before they certify a result.

Democrats behind this, the lawsuit that's going to be heard tomorrow say that these rules could be used to upend the statutorily required process for certifying election results in Georgia. But the Georgia certification issue has been just off the rails ever since the pro-MAGA majority took over of the state election board. That trial starts tomorrow at 9 a.m. It will be live streamed by way of FultonCourt.org.

So that's going to be a really interesting way to start the day. The question, so much national focus on what election is doing essentially to mess with its own election processes before this all important presidential election. We'll be able to see those changes, those late changes to their processes get tested in a bench trial tomorrow, live streamed from the Fulton County Court. We'll be watching that.

And then tomorrow night, we'll all be busy together. Tomorrow night, join my colleagues and me here at MSNBC for our special coverage of the vice presidential debate. It starts at 7 p.m. Eastern, our special coverage. The debate itself is hosted by CBS News, but you can watch it here on MSNBC with us. We will be showing the debate itself, and then we will have highlights and reaction and analysis right after. Our coverage, again, starts here at 7 p.m. Eastern. We'll all be here for the whole duration.

We all have plans in life, maybe to take a cross-country road trip or simply get through this workout without any back pain. Whether our plans are big, small, spontaneous, or years in the making, good health helps us accomplish them. At Banner Health, we're here to provide more than health care. Whatever you're planning, wherever you're going, we're here to help you get there. Banner Health. Exhale.