Top story tonight.
With just
20 days until the election, Republicans are offering a slate of candidates
with only enough brain cells needed to salute an authoritarian
strongman.
And according to polls, voters are kind of digging it. One of those Republicans
virtually tied with his opponent is Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker,
who receives a daily briefing on who he is and what he's doing here.
He is currently defending, brandishing a police badge at a debate,
an effort to steal valor from America's most noble profession.
That's a badge that I was given by a police officer.
And I do have the badge. You have it?
I carry it with me all the time.
It is a real badge, it's not a fake badge.
It is a real badge.
This badge gives me the right. Wait... let me finish.
If anything happened in this town, I have the right to work with the police
getting things done.
If you didn't already know Herschel Walker was a cop,
you could have deduced it from his history of domestic violence allegations.
Walker is just one of the self-appointed administrators of state aggression
among the majority of Republican nominees 291 at all, who've denied
or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election.
I assume.,
question In the same way, cheetahs are simply questioning a gazelle.
And yet, despite these candidates un-American tendencies, Americans
tend to love them, according to CBS News polling, showing them inching ahead.
The good news is, if these people are in Congress,
they're not ruining their daughter's wedding
by announcing Joe Biden is the anti-Christ.
Joining me now to crack a news egg in the fact flour, form some truth dough,
and enjoy a plate of fresh headline-illini,
is Democratic strategist who has talked about Bill
and Hillary's marriage and therapy more than our own, Lydia Parker.
Good evening.
Chief Washington bureau chief,
who's every member of his paternal line died driving a Saab into a creek, Jonathan Keane.
Hello.
Chief field correspondent,
still working on telling the difference between helicopters and big bugs,
James Smartwood, Jr.
Hey dad.
Hey Junior
Plus New York Times columnist, who sends his friends 1200 word essays on why they should have a great birthday,
Charles Blow. Thank you for joining us, Charles.
Nice to be here.
Charles, what is your take on this
shockingly even battle for Congress? Keeping in mind this recording will
someday be used against us in a very brief trial in a stadium.
Well.
I see it this way that people cannot maintain
anger and rage, and that's not political.
That's just a human psychological issue.
And we realized that we had reached our max in the Trump
years, and we are seeing it play out again in the midterms.
It's not that people don't care about democracy, is that they cannot
maintain the rage necessary to champion that cause
above all else, with other things feel more immediate and more urgent,
like paying the bills, paying the rent,
buying a new house, affording the mortgage.
I'm just so confused
as to how the richest country in the world with the most powerful army in history
could fall prey to a governing philosophy, blending capitalism and state violence.
I don't like Republicans sudden overt push towards fascism.
I prefer the more subtle creep of the past several decades.
Now I know what's going on here.
Every Democrat is locked
in some kind of hell wherein they must perpetually debate chaos
Monster Phantasm who they're trailing by one point.
Sure.
Let's talk about what a Republican Congress would look like.
Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took a break from mailing
pipe bombs to The New York Times to do a glossy interview with The New York Times.
She wasted no time and plunged into offering thinly veiled political threats.
Charles, if Marjorie Taylor Greene's wing of the Republican
caucus controls the House, what can we expect besides weekly
mandatory national viewings of the original Little Mermaid?
I think Marjorie Taylor Greene understands
what Kevin McCarthy will have to do as much as Kevin McCarthy does.
He has if he wants to be the speaker, he has to reflect the base of the party.
And the base of the party wants vengeance.
And so that is what they are going to do.
They are going to launch as many investigations as they can.
They're going to make them as public as they can.
They're going to try to make the last two years of the Biden
administration as embarrassing for him as they can and use that
as a way to try to win their way back into the White House.
The only way to stop Marjorie Taylor GREENE is to lay a pull up bar
in her path and hope she exercises herself stupid.
You know, I look forward to Joe Biden holograming himself
into multiple concurrent impeachment hearings.
That's going to be fun, for sure.
Hold on. Sorry, gang.
Sorry, Charles.
I just remembered.
That there's something I got to take care of here.
Oh, what is it?
What's going on?
I just.
I got my.
Laptop stolen out of my car last night.
I got to call the police.
Just hold on one second here.
Sure, sure.
Hello.
Mr. Walker.
Hey, this is James Smartwood from Big News.
Do you have a second to chat?
What paper you with now?
It's, uh, it's Big News.
Basically, what I wanted to do was I wanted to report a crime.
I left my window down on my car last night.
Someone stole my laptop out of the passenger seat.
And so I'm just trying to figure out if there's any way in your you know,
as someone who's a law enforcement person,
if there's any way you could take a look at it.
Uh, to what does
so reports the thing is and out and all that stuff. Mhm.
I think that'd be great.
But what we'll do is you've got a number I can call.
Yeah sure. One second, it's...
Let me get this.
Sure.
Now I mean,
if it is something you could take care of,
is itsomething where you could go down there,
kind of get some fingerprints, check out the the security cameras and all that?
Mm hmm.
Okay.
But the...you know,
I'm just trying to the main thing, though, is I want to get to this laptop.
Is there any chance you can hop in the squad car,
you know, flick on the siren, come down here,
maybe, like go undercover or something?
Uh...what can you do?
Can you do anything?
No. I mean, I'm not I'm not, actually.
And, you know, I think that's I don't know the authority.
Let me let me go through this. Normally.
That sounds great.
All right.
Thank you, sir.
I gave the wrong number.
I don't want. I'm having my number.
Oh, absolutely not.