With each new election cycle, Republicans accept Russian help with greater ease
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Thanks to you for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. There's a lot going on. Fiona Hill is going to be joining us here live tonight. Fiona Hill, of course, was senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council during the Trump presidency, which means she had a somewhat terrifying front row seat to some of the weirdest things any U.S. president has ever tried to get away with. Fiona Hill is here tonight as there have been some dramatic developments today in the

about the informant who provided the central allegations at the heart of congressional Republicans' efforts to impeach President Biden this year. This informant today was sent to jail indefinitely by a federal judge in California. He is in jail awaiting trial. Prosecutors arrested and indicted him a week and a half ago, alleging that his statements to law enforcement about President Biden and his family

not only were lies, but this man had been fed lies and disinformation about President Biden by Russian intelligence. Despite those ties to Russian intelligence, a magistrate last week somewhat inexplicably allowed the man to be released awaiting trial with an ankle monitor

But this federal judge in California reversed that decision today, ordered the man jailed after prosecutors said they found, among other things, nine guns in his apartment. And the judge said that he believed the man was trying to abscond from the United States. Well, he will not be absconding from anywhere. He is in jail awaiting trial.

in this remarkable turn in that story. Fiona Hill is here to talk about that tonight, about what is apparently now the third straight election in which Russian intelligence appears to be engaged in efforts to help Donald Trump and Republicans and to hurt the Democratic candidate who is running against Trump. Only this time, of course, there's a big new assist from one American citizen who now runs Twitter,

where he has ordered a stop to any efforts to even try to block Russian disinformation operations targeting the U.S. public and specifically promoting a new U.S. civil war, which seems like the thing they're most onto in this election cycle. His platform is Hosting.com.

And he personally is promoting not only fawning long online interviews with Vladimir Putin, but also outright propaganda praising life in Russia, waxing poetic about how much better Russia is than the United States.

He personally, Mr. Musk, has been lobbying that the United States should stop supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia, telling people to lobby their U.S. senators to not give Ukraine any more support, to effectively just let Russia win. All the while, he has admitted personally intervening in the operation of his Starlink satellite system to stop Ukraine from being able to target the Russian Navy.

So Russia's doing what it's going to do, right? Three elections in a row now where Russian intelligence is trying to help Trump and Republicans against the Democrats.

But it's happening now in the context of this war. And it's happening now in the context of this one particular American trying to play a very different role than what the U.S. is doing as its foreign policy. Right? The United States is supposed to have one foreign policy. Individual Americans are not allowed to have their own foreign policy in contradiction to the United States' foreign policy. I mean, you can have your own opinions, but you're not supposed to be directing what the U.S. government does.

The United States is also supposed to have robust means to make sure we protect ourselves in terms of our national defense. The reality this year, in 2024, is that the U.S. is being targeted in a third straight election by Russian intelligence, trying to mess with our politics and install their preferred candidates in power here. And while we are trying to defend ourselves from that, we're also trying to help one of our allies fight off the Russian military in the largest European land war since World War II.

So that's the stance of the United States: defend ourselves against Russian interference in our election again and help our ally defend itself against the Russian military. That's our stance as a country. The stance of two of our eccentric, erratic, increasingly extremist American billionaires is apparently the opposite stance. And the stance of the Republican Party as a whole on that score is still maybe up for grabs?

So we'll speak with Fiona Hill about that tonight. We'll also speak with her about these startling new reports today that when Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed earlier this month, he was reportedly about to be part of a prisoner swap where he would have been released to the United States. So, like I said, there's lots to get to tonight. But we're going to start tonight with a name that longtime Rachel Maddow Show viewers might remember.

His name is George Rekers. Remember that name?

He was famous for being one of the founders of the Family Research Council, one of the original super anti-gay conservative culture war groups that became very influential in Republican politics. In the 1980s, George Reekers was a founder of the Family Research Council. He specifically worked in the part of anti-gay politics that says that people can be cured of the gay. It can be reversed with just the right therapy.

Well, by 2010, there was George Rekers being photographed at the airport in Miami in the company of a handsome young man named Lucien, who Mr. Rekers had apparently met on rentboy.com. Mr. Rekers first tried to explain that he had taken this handsome young man on an all-expenses-paid 10-day trip to Europe because he needed help with his luggage.

The young man himself, seen here not helping with the luggage, eventually explained exactly what he was paid for on that European trip, and George Rekers ultimately resigned from his job at the anti-gay organization.

In 2004, when Republican President George W. Bush was up for reelection, the Republican Party and the Bush campaign enthusiastically promoted bans on same-sex marriage in multiple states. They expected that anti-gay campaigning in as many states as possible would goose Republican turnout and help Bush's chances of being reelected. You demonize gay people, scare people about gay rights, you get conservative voters to turn out, and they'll vote Republican while they're there.

Bush was re-elected in 2004. Those anti-gay state ballot initiatives very well may have helped with that. But then two years after Bush left the White House,

The man who had been chairman of the Bush campaign at that time came out himself as gay. And to his credit, he then set about trying to right the wrong he had been part of by persuading leading Republicans to change their mind on marriage equality and to persuade the Supreme Court to support marriage equality, which they have done at least for a while.

But honestly, it's like you can't swing a cat without hitting one of these guys. I mean, those anti-gay ballot initiatives that were supposed to help George W. Bush get reelected in 2004, they got a big boost in 2004 when a group called the National Association of Evangelicals, huge influential religious group,

decided in 2004 that they would emphatically restate their opposition to homosexuality in all its forms, which effectively endorsed all the anti-gay measures that the Republicans were promoting all over the country in advance of the election that year. The National Association of Evangelicals at that time was led by this man, Ted Haggard.

who soon treated the country to not-at-all-uncomfortable headlines like this one: "Evangelist! I bought meth from gay escort!"

Again, I mean, follow the bouncing ball. He found himself a very handsome man, and it was never totally clear if he paid the handsome man for sex using the drugs as the method of payment, or maybe if he paid the man for the sex and the drugs together, kind of like a meal deal or something, but...

But yeah, president of the National Association of Evangelicals. I got a million of these guys. Trump's Oklahoma state campaign chairman from 2016 was a Republican state senator who voted as an Oklahoma state senator that businesses should be able to put up signs that said, we don't serve gays here. Trump's campaign chairman in Oklahoma in 2016 busted in 2017 for soliciting sex from exactly who you think he'd be doing that.

The Republican mayor of Spokane, Washington, supported banning gay people from working in schools. Later revealed to be meeting new friends, new, new friends all the time at gay.com. His handle was Cobra82. Because of course it was Cobra82. Sure, I could go on. Really, I got a million of them. How much time do you have?

This weekend was the Conservative Political Action Conference. It's an annual right-wing conference thing. Among the things you can reliably get at CPAC every year is anti-trans rhetoric by the dump truck full and anti-gay sermonizing as well. This year was no exception. It's like that every year. CPAC is run by a man named Matt Schlapp. It has been for years.

And in 2022, ahead of the congressional midterms, Mr. Schlapp was in Georgia. He was campaigning for the Republican nominee for Senate, Herschel Walker. Remember Herschel Walker's Senate campaign?

The Walker campaign sent one of their mid-level staffers, a male staffer, to drive Matt Schlapp around while in the car. Matt Schlapp allegedly put his hand on the young man's leg and then, quote, moved his hand and began aggressively fondling the staffer's genital area in a sustained fashion without the staffer's consent. Staffer claims that Mr. Schlapp then invited the staffer to his hotel room. He declined.

Early last year, that young man sued Matt Schlapp for sexual battery.

And as that lawsuit has dragged on, more allegations of sexual misconduct against Matt Schlapp have come to light. As part of discovery in that sexual battery lawsuit, lawyers for the Republican campaign staffer discovered that in 2017, at a CPAC party, Schlapp allegedly attempted to kiss a male employee against his wishes. They also discovered that at a fundraising event in 2022, Mr. Schlapp was accused of stripping down to his underwear —

And forgive me, rubbing against another person without his consent.

Now, Mr. Schlapp, for his part, has denied all allegations of wrongdoing. The lawsuit says that the American Conservative Union, the parent company to CPAC, which employs Matt Schlapp, knew about at least two of the allegations against Schlapp before they become public. But the lawsuit claims that the American Conservative Union has not only failed to remove Mr. Schlapp from his leadership position, they also failed to pursue any kind of investigation into the claims of sexual misconduct.

And so, given that failure to do anything about the allegations, the American Conservative Union has now been added as a defendant in the Matt Schlapp sexual battery lawsuit. The organization has thus far spent upwards of a million dollars on Matt Schlapp's legal fees to defend himself in the sexual battery case. But they have meanwhile kept him in place to run the big annual anti-gay conference.

Because sure, that's fine. Who will notice? Here was the same Matt Schlapp, the head of CPAC, speaking this weekend about how conservatives, in his mind, need to approach the election this year. Here at CPAC, we have different groups that are signed up to do different things. And my call to the activist is get in those rooms. Things have gotten so crooked. You've got to be in the room when they're doing the count. Most of these elections are being determined by temps.

in our largest city. So why don't we get those jobs? The other thing we have to do is we have to intimidate in the nicest of ways all these elected officials that continue to flout the law. I don't care what jurisdiction you're in. Go to the meetings, make appointments, make it very clear, become conversant with the law. If the citizens don't stand up, nobody in a white building in Washington, D.C. is going to make any changes.

We have to intimidate all these elected officials. I don't care what jurisdiction you're in. Go to the meetings. Make it very clear. Make appointments. We have to intimidate these elected officials, says the head of CPAC, the big, not-at-all-hypocritical, anti-gay, right-wing confab that just happened under his leadership this weekend.

That was clipped by the group Media Matters. Here's the same man. Here's Matt Schlapp with Trump adviser Steve Bannon talking about what he thinks is the sort of takeaway message from CPAC this year.

Everyone says, oh, this is the most important election of our lifetime. I don't even know if you call this an election. This is like the 2.0 of the American Revolution. We're going to have all new heroes come the end of this year. We're going to remember their names forever. But stop talking and start doing. That was the theme coming out of this conference. No more complaining. No more talking. It's not an election this year. It's a revolution. It's the second American Revolution. So no more talking.

For his part, here was Steve Bannon's big charm offensive at CPAC this weekend, trying to persuade his fellow Americans to win people over to his, you know, his way of thinking. They stole the 2020 election. Media, I want you to suck on this. I want the White House to suck on this. You lost in 2020. Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States. Yeah!

Trump won! Trump won! Trump won! Trump won! Trump won! Trump won! His fate and destiny is to have the greatest political comeback in American history. And on November 5th, to drive the vermin out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Biden, you and your crime family are nothing but trash, okay?

And on the 20th of January of 2025, we're going to take out the trash. Behold, democracy and the greatest nation on Earth. I don't know how the election is going to go this year. That's what one side is offering. And maybe that is what the good and great people of the United States of America truly want. But it's not just...

CPAC and their illustrious leadership, that's kind of just the tenor of what is on offer here. I mean, even in print. These were adjacent headlines in the Washington Post last week. Biden administration cancels $1.2 billion in student loans with new repayment plan. Right next to Trump and allies planning militarized mass deportations, detention camps.

That's the choice, right? Relief from high student loans or using the military to lock up millions of people in huge new camps. Adjacent headlines in the Washington Post on the same day. Both parties at the same point in general election campaigning, thinking about what they want to be doing to present to the American people about what their idea is of governing.

And I don't know which of those two sides the American people is more in the mood for, but it seems pretty clear to me, at least, that the best contrast for the Democrats to draw for voters this year is maybe just the simplest one, right? Normal, popular, practical accomplishments from President Biden and the Democrats versus burn-it-all-down radicalism being screamed at the top of their lungs by Republicans under Donald Trump. And you can't even understand what they're talking about half the time because they speak in their own code.

Barbara McQuaid, who you know and love from her time here as a legal analyst and explainer on MSNBC, she has a new book that comes out tomorrow. It's called Attack From Within, How Disinformation is Sabotaging America. And in her new book, among other things, Barb explains what she sees as the connection between disinformation, which is the fundamental basis for the book, and

And authoritarianism. Why you need to disconnect people from facts about the world, from the knowable truth in all its complexity, in order to get people to endorse extremism, to endorse extreme, new, radical changes, to reimagine their lives and to reimagine their country in a way they've never thought of it before.

Barb, in her book, talks about the need to hit people emotionally rather than logically. She talks about the sort of the utility of

of the would-be authoritarian leader or the authoritarian movement focusing rhetorically on declinism, convincing people that the country is falling apart. The country used to be great, but it's no longer great. It's falling apart. It's a disaster. If you can convince people of that, they will have an emotional reaction about being afraid at the state of the country now. They will have an emotional reaction about wanting to rescue the country. If they can be convinced that things are so far gone, they will then feel the need for extreme measures, for a strongman to come in

And, you know, maybe you've got to wreck the place. Maybe you've got to break the rules. But it's a kind of rescue mission for a country that is otherwise lost. And what that means in practical terms, in terms of actually running a political campaign that in a matter of months will supposedly pick a new president, what that means is every day making sure that your message undermines the idea of democracy and the idea of the rule of law. So,

I mean, this is a this isn't theory. This is an academic. This is our lives now. Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who you just saw there yelling about vermin and trash at CPAC. He spent last week telling his podcast listeners that the Tom Suozzi election in Long Island was stolen.

What? Yes. In Steve Bannon world, this was the story of last week. This is the special election to replace George Santos. There's no suggestion there was anything wrong with the count or anything wrong with the conduct of that election at all. But it doesn't matter. A Democrat won. And so therefore, Steve Bannon tells his acolytes and his followers that that election must have been stolen because a Democrat won and they should not respect the results of it.

Even when it doesn't matter, when it's one special election for one congressional seat and there's no real controversy about it still, you have to say elections don't count. Elections aren't real.

Now, on top of that, we've got the Republican National Committee losing its chair, Ronna Romney McDaniel. She's being replaced summarily by a North Carolina Republican who is reportedly considered by Trump to be more solid specifically on the issue of throwing out election results. Ms. McDaniel was no slouch on this issue herself, but apparently Trump wants somebody even stronger specifically on that point. He's a stop-the-steal guy. And so now he will be now running the RNC if Trump gets his way.

And, you know, the politics of running against democracy, the politics of getting Americans to distrust elections and ultimately not want them anymore, that is inextricably intertwined with getting Americans to distrust the legal system, to not trust the courts and not trust the justice system anymore, to not take it seriously, to not obey its dictates, to not respect any of its rules.

And Barb's book, more than anything, helped me see the connection between those two points, between getting rid of elections and getting rid of the rule of law. You have to get rid of the rule of law, right? You have to undermine and problematize it so that you can get away with what you are trying to do to elections.

And this is all over the news right now. Just on Friday, the Wisconsin Ethics Commission referred a Trump PAC and multiple Republican officials for felony prosecution for their role in a Wisconsin scheme to punish a Republican leader in the Wisconsin state legislature who Trump thought didn't fight hard enough to throw out the election results in that state. We want you to throw out those election results. You don't do a good enough job. We're now going to, allegedly, commit crimes in order to turf you out of your position.

recommended for prosecution as of Friday. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to throw out the sanctions, the sanctions, the professional sanctions against Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Lynn Wood for their efforts to overthrow the election results.

Mike Lindell, Mike Pillow. Last week, he was ordered by a judge to pay up in a contest he held where he promised $5 million cash to anybody who could disprove his claims that a foreign government helped steal the election for Biden. Somebody did disprove those claims, and now a court says Mr. Pillow has to pay. He, of course, does not want to pay, but a court says he must.

In Georgia, the right-wing group True the Vote that apparently ginned up all the false claims about supposed problems in the Georgia elections in 2020. They made hay with those claims for not just weeks around the election, but months and ultimately years. But

When it got put through the legal system, they had to admit to a judge that no, they don't actually have any evidence to back up their claims that there was fraud in Georgia. Trump and multiple Georgia co-defendants are now going to go on trial for trying to overthrow the election result in Georgia, which they did by citing this fake evidence from this group, True the Vote. What will happen in that case? Will that case come to trial?

Trump and his co-defendants' best hope is not their defense, but their unrelated personal counteroffensive to try to discredit and disqualify the prosecutor to get her thrown off the case. The rule of law is protecting democracy. We've got to get rid of the rule of law. As Barb says in her new book, Attack From Within, even as authoritarians claim the mantle of law and order, they work to ensure it never applies to them.

Politicians who, when targeted, are deceptive about the motives of investigators and prosecutors. They undermine public confidence in law enforcement officers. In recent years, Trump and his loyalists have used disinformation to attack agencies charged with enforcing the law, like the Department of Justice and the IRS, in addition to prosecutors like the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

When Trump was under investigation for links between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign, he repeatedly called the probe a hoax and a witch hunt.

He tarred the agencies conducting the investigation as a disgrace. When an FBI agent knocks on a door to seek information about crimes, witnesses are less likely to cooperate with officers they believe are a disgrace. Jurors may not believe agents who testify in court after the president has accused their agency of planting evidence. As a result, our ability to enforce the rule of law erodes.

Attacks on the fairness and independence of the judiciary undermine the credibility of the courts and judges in the eyes of the public, leading to erosion of respect for the rule of law. They also create a danger that someone will turn criticism into action and physically attack judges or even jurors, a very, very real threat. Hypocrisy is like a cold, windy day in the winter. You don't love it, but it's not like you don't expect it.

But what Barb McQuaid is writing about in her new book and what we are seeing from the campaign this year is something that is not inevitable, but something planned, something systematic, and something very, very, very radical.

The Democrats are campaigning against it by saying, we're doing normal politics, delivering normal practical results for real world problems. The Republicans are promising to burn it all down. They have to undermine the idea of democracy and the rule of law in order to get to their endgame. The question, including the question for Barb, is whether studying it and naming it and explaining how it works helps us fight it.

Joining us now is Barbara McQuaid, former U.S. attorney in Michigan, stalwart analyst and explainer of all things legal here on MSNBC, and now the author of the new book, Attack From Within, How Disinformation is Sabotaging America. Barbara, congratulations on this book. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for being here to talk with me about it as it's coming out. I'm really grateful. Thank you, Rachel. I'm honored to be here with you tonight.

Let me ask you the big picture first. The sort of, I think, meta project in your book is explaining how disinformation works, why people use it, what it looks like when they do use it, sort of how to recognize it in the wild. Do you have faith that us learning this stuff, studying it, being able to recognize it, know how it works, is the first step to us no longer being so susceptible to it?

So that's the goal, Rachel. I really want to have a national conversation about truth and our commitment to it. My book is actually very patriotic. I'm appealing to people and our commitment to truth because I think we have seen so much in recent years, this not only con where people are falling for disinformation, but I think we're also seeing people willingly going along with the con. They are choosing tribe over truth. They care more about the ends justifying the means. And so I hope

that by dissecting it, explaining it, and educating the public, we can all see disinformation for what it is so that we can begin to push back against it. Barb, you write about the United States, um,

extensively and with a lot of detail, but you also draw in some comparisons from other countries. You talk about other strongmen leaders, other countries that have transitioned from a mostly democratic form of government to a less democratic form. Do you believe the U.S. is particularly vulnerable to disinformation, or do you believe that we're kind of unexceptional and it's the same—we're as susceptible to it as every other country?

Actually, Rachel, I think we're more susceptible to it than other countries. And that's because some of our greatest strengths can also be our Achilles heel. So, for example, our deep commitment to free speech in our First Amendment. It is a cherished right. It is an important right in democracy. And nobody wants to get rid of it. But it makes us vulnerable to claims that anything we try to do to regulate speech is censorship.

Of course, the Supreme Court has held that all fundamental rights, even the right to free speech, can be limited as long as there is a compelling governmental interest and the restriction is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. But I think anytime someone tries to do anything that might limit free speech,

People claim censorship. I mean, just look at the case the Supreme Court heard today about efforts by the states of Florida and Texas to prevent social media companies from moderating content online. And they call it censorship, that they are trying to silence conservative voices.

Of course, social media companies are private actors who are not bound by the First Amendment. And so we need to have a conversation and common sense solutions to these things. Instead, we throw out terms like censorship. We call each other names. We use labels and we all retreat to our opposite sides. We need to be pragmatic and come up with real solutions. But it is, I think, one of the things that makes America particularly vulnerable to disinformation.

Well, the book ends with a fulsome, detailed, well-argued set of concrete recommendations for what we can do as citizens and the kinds of reforms in our government and our democracy that might make a difference. And as such, it is a real public service and a pleasure. The book is called Attack.

from within how disinformation is sabotaging America. It is brand new and just out as of right now from Barb McQuaid, former U.S. attorney in Michigan and our dear friend here at MSNBC. Barb, again, congratulations and thank you. Go get them. Thank you so much, Rachel. All right. Much more to come here tonight. Stay with us.

And.

And now, all MSNBC original podcasts are available ad-free and with bonus content, including How to Win 2024, Prosecuting Donald Trump, Why Is This Happening, and more. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.

So he was arrested and then released and then rearrested in the space of a few days. The informant who provided the central allegations behind congressional Republicans' efforts to impeach President Biden appeared in federal court today to face charges that he made it all up, that the stories he told the FBI about the supposed corruption of President Biden and his family, those stories were lies, lies fed to him by his own admission by Russian intelligence.

His name is Alexander Smirnoff. He pleaded not guilty today, but the judge hearing his case ordered him to remain in jail indefinitely awaiting trial, apparently convinced by prosecutors' arguments that Mr. Smirnoff might flee the country before his trial.

It's really impossible to overstate the degree to which this gentleman has been the centerpiece of the Republicans' impeachment push against President Biden. For months and months, Republican lawmakers and conservative media have been trumpeting these bribery allegations made by Smirnoff against President Biden and his family. The Washington Post today estimates that Fox News alone mentioned it more than 2,600 times over the past single year.

Republicans in Congress pushed the allegation endlessly, even though the FBI explicitly warned them that the claim was uncorroborated and unreliable. And now the man who's the source of the allegation, the guy who said it, he's in jail, indicted for lying to federal investigators about this very matter and accused by prosecutors of feeding the FBI disinformation from Russian intelligence. Which would be shocking.

had we not lived through the last few years. Because this, of course, is now the third straight presidential election cycle in which Russian intelligence has done some version of this.

In 2016, as you may have heard, Russian intelligence hacked the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. And then they weaponized the material they stole by releasing hacked emails through WikiLeaks, all timed and strategically released to have maximum negative effect for Clinton and the Democrats and maximum positive effect for Donald Trump and the Republicans.

And it was well known at the time that this whole thing was likely a Russian intelligence operation, but Trump and Republicans and conservative media and the mainstream media, frankly, mostly ate it up and pounced on every single email dump as if they had just come down on Mount Sinai on tablets rather than being shoveled by Russian intelligence into the garbage chute. Remember Trump talking at rallies about how much he loved WikiLeaks? He was welcoming it. He was asking for more.

Russian government and Russian intelligence sources made multiple contacts with the Trump campaign. Russia ran a big, weird social media campaign to try to influence American public debate and public opinion in Trump's favor. The Trump campaign gave non-public polling information to a Russian intelligence agent, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Russians had this hack-and-leak campaign with the Democratic emails. They were very busy in 2016 trying to help Trump.

Then four years later, 2020, another try. This time, Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was peddling stories about Joe Biden's supposed corruption that he said he had dug up from his sources in Ukraine. Once again, it turned out that Giuliani's main source...

was Russian intelligence. A report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence later determined that Giuliani's source was part of a US election interference operation, likely directed by Putin himself, with the goal of helping Trump win a second term in 2020. And once again, Republicans had been warned by American intelligence officials that the stuff that Giuliani was shoveling was likely part of a Russian op. They apparently just did not care.

And again, this is not some obscure thing. People got sanctioned by the U.S. government for this. People got indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for this. But who cares? It might have helped Trump. So we went along with it as far as we could.

And now, four years later, here we are again. They keep doing this every election cycle. They keep doing some version of the same thing. The Russians keep doing the same thing. What seems to be changing a little bit is that the Republicans appear to have fewer and fewer qualms each year about welcoming and even participating in these Russian campaigns. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, I clearly want to be fooled, or maybe we should stop calling this foolish. This is something else.

We did this in 2016, we did this in 2020, now in 2024, Republicans appear to be more enthusiastic about participating in it than they ever have been before. But of course now, this Russian disinformation campaign trying to paint Biden as mired in some kind of bribery scandal, it's happening with American aid to Ukraine hanging in the balance. With this life or death question looming of whether Ukraine will be able to hold off a third year of the Russian invasion.

Russia is doing everything it can to undermine American support for Ukraine. And in the midst of a third straight effort by Russia to influence our election to Republicans' benefit, Republicans, frankly, seem quite receptive both to that election interference and to what Russia wants them to do in cutting off Ukraine. How does that turn around? Fiona Hill was the top Russia official on the National Security Council under President Trump. She has seen some things and she knows some things. And she joins us next.

Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.

When news breaks, go beyond the headlines with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live. Get analysis from live blogs to in-depth essays and the latest updates on the 2024 election. Go beyond the what to understand the why. Download the app now at msnbc.com slash app. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super PAC.

They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each other, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.

Fiona Hill testifying at President Trump's first impeachment, describing how our faith in our own democracy is the kind of center of the bullseye. It's what they're aiming at when they try to hurt us the worst.

Well, now in this election cycle, Republican members of Congress have been trumpeting claims that turn out to have come from Russian intelligence. The informant at the center of their impeachment push against President Biden today was ordered jailed as he awaits trial for lying to the FBI, feeding them what prosecutors say is disinformation targeting President Biden that he got from Russian intelligence.

Joining us now is Fiona Hill, former senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council. Dr. Hill, it's really nice of you to be with us tonight. Thanks very much for making the time. Thanks, Rachel. Both NBC News and The Washington Post today led with big stories about how this is the third straight election cycle where we've got pretty aggressive Russian efforts to mess with us in this election. Do you agree with that characterization?

I do. And look, I mean, you know, very sadly, the Russians have been at these kinds of operations for an extraordinary long time. You know, going back to the Cold War, there were lots of efforts as well. But unfortunately, we've made it easier for them than ever before to be able to penetrate our politics and to be able to influence, you know, because of basically the structure of our own

election campaigns. We've got, you know, basically our own political parties who are trying to destroy each other. And, you know, as you've been pointing out through the course of the programme, we've got actors in our own political system who are just as keen on using disinformation as foreign adversaries.

Because you look at it with that long sweep, I feel like that's one of the big reasons I wanted to talk to you, because I've been very focused on 2016, 2020, and 2024, when Russian disinformation, Russian targeting of us wasn't just about making us hate each other and making us weak and making us distrust our democracy. It really was dovetailing with and therefore boosting

Donald Trump and the Republican campaign and helping one side and hurting the other. And maybe that's not their long-term goal, but it's at least been their sort of short to medium goal. And that seems to be activating an instinct in the Republican Party, well, that, you know, if Putin likes us, maybe we should like him back. And I'm wondering if there is, if you see a way to interrupt that. Yeah.

I think it also requires responsible people within the Republican Party themselves to push back against this. You know, it's not every single person who's a member of that party. You know, we've got Nikki Haley out there who's running now what seems almost a futile campaign to compete with Donald Trump is obviously saying something quite different and calling out.

And, you know, on the disinformation, perhaps not in quite the same way that you are, but she's certainly trying to do that. And, you know, and I know and many other people know that behind the scenes there are members of the staff, senior staff on Capitol Hill, people in the Senate and, you know, surprisingly still members of Congress who behind the scenes are really deeply troubled by this and are trying to do something.

But in the heat of this campaign, as you're pointing out, they seem to be much more interested in taking potshots at President Biden or basically trying to bring down their opponent than thinking about national security. And I would have thought, however, that given everything that's happened worldwide,

with the war in Ukraine, the recent death of Alexei Navalny, and just this piling up of information. Just as you're saying now, this criminal campaign, rather, this prosecution of this FBI informant, that surely people would have woken up to this. I mean, this is an issue of our national security, not just something about whether your guy is going to win in the election.

On the national security point, I think of the United States as having a lot of tools to stand up for our national security, a lot of resources to bring to bear. But when it comes to defending ourselves against Russian election interference, when it comes to standing up for our ally in Ukraine and all the different ways that that means, when it comes to responding to the murder of Alexei Navalny in Russia—

Could the U.S. government be doing more? Anne Applebaum joined me last week here, and she said something that stuck with me all week. She said that if the United States government really wanted to get more serious, one of the things they could do was they could have thousands of people working on enforcing sanctions to make sure they bit harder and that they hurt the Russian government more and more effectively. I wanted to get your response to that, but also just to find out if you think there's more we could be doing.

There's certainly a lot more that we could be doing. As Anne, you know, points out, sanctions enforcement is part of the problem. I mean, we're actually seeing even some of our own allied countries that are basically buying more and more oil from Russia and enabling them to bring in more revenues, of course, to keep on prosecuting the war against Ukraine.

We've got NATO allies, European countries, as well as these larger global partners. We're going to have to figure out how we work with them directly. It's going to be a stepped-up diplomacy, which the administration is already talking about. But she also does have a point about putting more resources toward this now. We are, of course, also on the verge of a government shutdown.

We also have members of the Republican Party and others and Donald Trump talking about basically dismantling the state apparatus, which make it very difficult. But we can be much more creative. We can work very closely with other European allies who actually have really woken up

to the threats and to get them to also exert pressure and to push back. We've got the debate about what we can do about Russian frozen assets, for example, which is a major issue right now, which I know you've covered quite recently as well. And then

then when we get back to the topic they're talking about about disinformation some of the other cases that are running through even including in the Supreme Court right now about freedom of speech and the regulation of the social media platforms become relevant as well because you know basically air

as it used to be Twitter, in terms of stepping back from the regulation of some of the content on their platform, have opened it up even more to disinformation from Russia. And other companies like Meta, for example, and Microsoft, they've actually been trying to do more here, but we should also be encouraging the private sector to step up at this crucial time.

Indeed. Fiona Hill, former senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council. I really appreciate you being with us here tonight to talk about all these different matters. I really appreciate your time. Thanks, Rachel. Thank you. We'll be right back. Stay with us. So this is going to be fun this week. Maybe. I think probably it's going to be fun.

As you know, Michigan Republicans have been fighting for months now over who is in charge. In January, some Michigan Republicans voted out their state party chair. Then another group voted to keep her in. Then the first group filed a lawsuit to force her out. They picked a new chair.

The National Republican Party is siding with the new guy, saying he's the rightful head of the Michigan Republican Party. But the original chair calls the new guy's faction an imposter organization fraudulently claiming to be the Michigan Republican Party. She also posted a 10-minute video under this amazing caption, quote, Chairwoman Karamo provides valuable insights that will soon come to light.

See, she provides them and they're coming soon. It's like organizing your own surprise party. Here's what we know and what we think we know. There will be a Michigan Republican primary tomorrow. The primary will determine who gets some of Michigan's delegates. The rest of the delegates will be chosen on Saturday through a state party convention or maybe through a food fight.

Because Michigan Republicans can't figure this out, this Saturday there are not one but two competing Michigan Republican conventions. One in Grand Rapids, announced by the guy who says he's the chair. One in Detroit, announced by the lady who says she's the chair and he's an imposter. She, it should be noted, still controls the state party's website and its bank accounts. So she's got that.

When the stakes are this low, political chaos can be fun to watch. It is like a food fight. You know it's wasteful, but it's hard not to laugh at, like, flying oatmeal, right? Pity the Michigan Republican voter, though, who just wants to cast a ballot. I mean, do you decide based on how far Grand Rapids is from your house or Detroit? Do you decide based on whether you like Pete or Christina more as a name or as a person or who seems like the imposter?

Which Michigan Republican Party will end up being real? Will a judge get it sorted out in time for the convention on Saturday? Watch this space. MSNBC will have full coverage of the Michigan Republican primary, for what that's worth, and also the Michigan Democratic primary tomorrow night, tomorrow night beginning here.

at 8 p.m. Eastern right here on MSNBC. That's going to do it for me for now.

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