(light pondering intro music) - You don't need a poll to tell you, Americans have never been more divided.

The rancor and mistrust are palpable, and living in America can feel like being trapped in a nightmare edition of "Can this Marriage be Saved?"

Joining us today is a bipartisan panel to help us understand how we got here and how we can bridge the chasm that undermines our unity and threatens our democracy.

Professor Michael Eric Dyson, author of the new best seller "Unequal: A story of America".

Congressman Adam Kinzinger, Republican from Illinois.

Congressman Jamie Raskin, Democrat from Maryland.

Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Communications Director in the Trump administration.

And Professor Barbara Walter author of the bestseller, "How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them".

Jamie, I'm going to turn to you.

I call everybody by their first names, and we want to start by defining the scope of this issue.

With the exception of a surge of unity to support the people in Ukraine there isn't that sense of collective we're all in this together that our parents enjoyed after World War II.

My question to you is, how would you assess America's own civil war at this point?

Do you think it's getting worse?

Do you think it's getting better?

Where do you think we are?

- Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

Look, I think that there are specific groups and people who are profiting from all the division and all the polarization, and it's been very much a strategy going back to 2016.

I just happen to think that we need a lot more honesty about the role of partisanship in our society, because a lot of politicians going back to the original generation of politicians live kind of schizophrenic lives with respect to partisanship.

Because on the one hand like Madison in the Federalist Paper No.

10, we denounce partisanship, we deplore faction and so on.

On the other hand, by day as politicians, we go to our caucuses and we lead very partisan lives.

And I think we just need more intellectual honesty about it.

The fact is that partisanship and political parties are an expression of freedom under the first amendment, where the parties help to articulate different agendas, educate the voters, mobilize plans.

But I do think once we're elected and we swear an oath of office, we've got to remember where the word party comes from.

It comes from the French word (speaking in foreign language), which means a part.

Our party is just part of the whole and those of us who aspire and attain a public office have to remember that we should aspire to speak for the whole and not just our party.

- This is not about, we disagree about healthcare policy or we disagree about immigration, this is about the fact that according to pure research, the other side, you know, each side thinks the other side is an actual danger in this country.

This is dug in stuff.

And so we're past the point of just being, you know, disagreeing about things- - Well, I agree with that.

I mean, violence is a danger and I think that there are people who are now transforming their differences into violent actions.

I mean, we've seen that, of course, in the horrific episode in Buffalo, we saw it on January 6th, where 150 of our officers suffered broken jaws, broken ribs, broken arms, brain concussions, traumatic brain injuries, and so on.

You know, civility means trying to deal with your differences through language and through communication.

And at the point at which people are so loaded up on hate that they get an assault weapon and go and shoot up a Walmart or a church or a grocery store, that is outside of the bounds of democracy.

- But in talking about some of the factors that are dividing us, Michael, I want to ask you because your six-year-old grandson, Maxim, was called the N word by a white student in his school who threatened to go home and get a gun.

Fast forward to what Jamie just mentioned, which is this horrific situation in Buffalo, where an 18-year-old white teenager walks into a supermarket and shoots down people, including 10 African Americans, because he's inspired by something called replacement theory, which he believes that white people are being pushed out by people of color.

When you write these things about, we have to have forgiveness and grace, and that's part of the reason that we're so harshly divided.

How do you have forgiveness and grace when you're talking about the situation with your grandson and this situation in Buffalo?

- Well, first of all, thanks for having us, and thanks for as always inspiring a very vigorous conversation and dialogue.

It is difficult to be certain.

And as Dr. King often said, we're not talking about the namby-pamby, no disrespect to Mr. Jackson, we are the world kind of love.

We're talking about transformative love.

We're talking about redemptive love.

We're talking about the passion that drove the founding fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters.

We're speaking about those enslaved people who despite their condition rose up.

So there is a sense of love, forgiveness and redemption, but in order to have that, we got to deal with the problem to begin with.

And as brother Jamie just said, if we're not going to tell the truth and we're not going to be honest, then we can't grapple with it.

And so when I look at the horizon, yes, my grandson was a victim of that kind of nefarious belief of a young child.

You'll wonder where did he get those ideas?

His parents says, "We didn't teach him.

"We don't know where the heck he got 'em from."

All right, and I'll take their word, but the larger society is deeply entrenched in these kind of divisive beliefs that tear at the fabric of American democracy.

So redemption is critical, but so is facing the condition that we're confronting.

And a lot of us are not willing to tell the truth about it.

And I'll say this, the greatest predictor of fascism, neofascism, totalitarian belief in our country has been the issue of racial oppression.

So that even good-minded, good-intended people, good intentioned folk have often ignored the fact that if it happened over here to a bunch of folk, it doesn't have anything to do with me, when indeed, ultimately, that stuff metastasizes and attacks the entire body politic.

That's what we're confronting today.

- Adam I turn to you because as many people know, I guess the way to put it is, you've been at war with your own party in some ways.

Maybe that's an understatement.

You're smiling.

Did you actively think about the fact that you were going to stand up to your own party?

Or was this something that you just had to do?

It was a force within you that you had to, you're speaking truth to power of the Republican Party.

- Look, it's a great question.

I think it just kind of happened.

It was when I ran for Congress in 2010, I remember thinking I had just gotten out of Iraq, and I remember thinking, "If we're asking young people to die for this country, "we should be willing to give our career "for the exact same cause."

And when I started to see my party go down the rabbit hole of authoritarianism, lies, conspiracy.

Now we're seeing this whole idea of, you know, white replacement theory, I have no choice but to call it out.

And so that was an easy decision for me, consequences are consequences.

I mean, I can go find a different job, but I'm going to keep speaking out.

And this is, I think, the issue.

We can point figures at the other side, I can find things my Democratic friends do that I don't like, they can find things I don't like.

We've got to quit.

Instead of saying like, "Hey, this is what you need to get right Democrats or Republicans."

We got to call it out in our own party.

We got to call out the garbage in our own party, that's where that first fight has to happen.

And the American people have to call it out in their neighborhoods and home.

And by the way, quit voting for these crazy people, quit voting for these liars.

And if you live in a district that, you know, if you live in a district that only has a Republican or a Democratic representative vote in that primary, because when you don't, you're letting the craziest in each party decide who represents them.

- But I have to ask you, because again, according to polls, more than half, you can use your own number, but a lot of Republicans think the election was rigged, the 2020 election was stolen and yet many of them, and I've heard them interviewed talk about the fact they believe that there was election fraud.

They believe that they are restoring democracy.

They think they're fighting for the soul of this country.

You have folks in your district in Illinois, I know you do, who feel that way.

And what do you say to them when they start talking that way?

- Well, I mean, all you can do is tell 'em they're wrong.

All you can do is point out facts.

I'm not one of these that believe we have to sit back and say, "Your feelings are valid, and you may have a point, "but let me," like, "No, the election, "it's a conspiracy to say it was stolen.

"It's damaging to democracy."

The basic thing we have to do for a democracy to survive is to admit that your vote counts, to admit that we'll count your vote.

That's the only thing we have to agree on for democracy to survive.

And so, you know, how did we get to this point in the Republican Party?

It's real easy.

The leaders that the Republicans trust have lied to them, and they're not telling them the truth.

Liz Cheney and I cannot overcome, you know, somebody hearing something from Elise Stefanik, or, Kevin McCarthy or their local representative, their leaders have failed them.

That's why 60 to 70% of Republicans believe the election was stolen because it's easy to demonize me than it is to actually go tell the truth.

- Anthony, for 11 bright and shining days.

(audience laughing) - Thank you for getting the number right.

- Some people 10- - Did I get the number, right?

- We do our research.

- You did yeah.

- Some people say 10 and it hurts my feelings.

- I'm sorry.

No, you were there 11.

Thankfully got that right.

You were there to be serious about this.

You believed in Donald Trump, you believed in his populist message, you were loyal to Donald Trump.

Until one day when he attacked four congresswomen of color known as The Squad and told them to go back to the countries where they came from, even though they're all Americans, and you snapped.

Why did you snap then?

What was it about that you felt you had to speak up?

- Well, it was probably a little more gradual than that.

It was really related to the free press as well, I wrote an op ed, it was, I think, in "The Hill" about the free press, said the press is not the enemy of the people.

And I said, Mr. President, I think I have standing on that, I've been excoriated in the press and I don't care, it's their right to do that.

And remember the thing about the press is that it not only helps us keep our political leaders in check, but it's this wonderful thing for our youth.

If you can teach young people that they can speak and think freely in their country, they go on and create great innovations in a society.

When you're holding people back like they do in China, they end up stealing our intellectual property, right.

If you teach a second grader, they can speak freely, they go on and create Facebook and Apple, et cetera, so he got very mad about that.

He called me on Easter Sunday, that was the last time I spoke to him in 2019 to tell me that the press was the enemy of the people and if I'm on his team, I have to stop writing things like that.

So it really started then.

but I was on the "Bill Maher Show" and commenting that what he was saying was racist.

What he was saying was nativist, and he's the sitting president, he shouldn't talk like that.

But what he was really doing was disloyal to America.

And so ultimately that's the standard, and that's why I praise Congressman Kinzinger and Congressman Cheney, because they recognize it's more important to be concerned about America not the party.

But when he attacked me, you know, I came off the set, Bill Maher turned to me and he said, "Well, Trump's going to light you up tomorrow on Twitter."

And I looked at Bill and I said, "There's no way he's going to do that.

"I've given him money.

"I've been loyal.

"I was seven for eight for him tonight on everything."

He said, "Ah, you got to go 13 for 10 for Donald Trump" "which is mathematically impossible, he's a demagogue, "and you went seven for eight.

"Tomorrow he's going to light you up on Twitter."

I bet Bill dinner, that he wouldn't light me up on Twitter.

And then, of course, the very next day, he's lighting me up on Twitter.

Well, guys, I'm a New Yorker.

Do I look like Ted Cruz to anybody?

I mean, I'm a New York Italian from Long Island.

I mean, come on.

Once he went after me, I think I called him the fattest sitting president since William Howard Taft or something like that, just 'cause I know he hates being fat.

And so that got him.

And then he started firing back at me.

And then the next thing you know, we're in a big fight.

And then Trump does what he does, you know.

Adam's experienced this, others, he starts attacking my wife.

I mean, who does that?

- Let's get back to this issue here which, (audience laughing) let me ask you because Donald Trump has no plumbers trap, right.

And when he was an office, he gave people, a lot of people permission to also ditch their plumbers trap.

And a lot of people track the bad behavior that we're seeing now, and this is really serious, people are knocking heads in school board meetings, they're knocking heads on air airplanes, you can get shot over a parking space, all kinds of bad behavior- - It's not just him though.

- I'm sorry.

- It's not just him.

That's the social media diatribe.

You know, you have all this anonymous trolling and cyberspace bullying.

I mean, he's contributing to it, he's part of it, but it's a bigger issue than just him.

- All right.

Well, at this point we've been talking about a lot of different variables and we're going to bring in Professor Barbara Walter, because you are one of the world's leading authorities on civil wars and domestic terrorism and political violence.

And basically you were looking at the United States of America in terms of the strength of our democracy.

And you were seeing certain things happening that did not bode well, but interestingly enough, it was your father who actually shook you out of your complacency and brought you to a conclusion on this, and explain what happened.

- So I'm the child of immigrants.

Actually, our whole family; my husband's an immigrant, his father's an immigrant.

My dad grew up, was born in 1932 in Bavaria, Germany, and so that meant he saw the rise of Hitler and he lived through World War II in Germany.

He moved to the U.S. in the 1950s and moved to New York City and started a small business.

And he had been a lifelong Republican.

We in their kitchen, in their house in Yonkers, my parents had a Reagan calendar every single year.

And starting in 20, early 2016, I would go home, and all my dad wanted to do was talk politics.

And all he kept asking me was, "Please tell me, "Donald Trump is not going to get elected.

"Please tell me."

And my first answer was, "No Dad, Donald Trump is not going to get elected."

And he said, "Don't be so sure, "I've seen this happen before.

"And I'm seeing many of the same patterns happening here."

And he said, "Americans think that they're exceptional "and they're different, and they are wonderful, "And they are different from Germans, "but they are capable of doing, "they are capable of also turning on each other."

And so he saw it much earlier than I did because he'd lived through a situation where a democracy, a nascent democracy had declined, had been unraveled by a strong man who was intent on capturing power.

And then, of course, you know, Hitler had even grander aims, he wanted to control all of Europe and Russia.

- But we have this notion in America, you mentioned the word exceptionalism, and there's this notion that we're the bright shining city on the hill, and it can't happen here.

And yet we're not technically at this point, even a democracy, I mean, is that correct?

Would you explain that.

- Yeah.

So I feel like my role in this discussion more generally is to put what's happening in context, because most people don't see the bigger picture.

And as you said, I've been studying civil wars for 30 years.

And in those 30 years, I've looked at over 200 wars.

Of course, none of them were in the United States, so they were in Latin America and Africa and the Middle East and Central Asia.

And then in 2017, I was invited to serve on a task force run through the CIA called the Political Instability Task Force.

And the task force exists in part to put together a predictive model that our government can use to help them predict where around the world countries are likely to experience severe instability and violence and civil war.

It turns out that two factors more than anything else help predict which countries would experience political violence and war.

And they were not the ones that the experts like me expected.

The first was something we called anocracy.

Anocracy is just a fancy term for partial democracy.

It's governments that are neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic, there's something in between.

The second factor is something we called factionalism, and factionalism is just a fancy term for racial politics.

The countries that experienced civil war were the ones whose political parties no longer were based on ideas, on ideology, but they were based almost exclusively on racial, ethnic, or religious identity.

And then those parties sought to gain power to rule, but also to actively exclude everybody else.

So of course, I'm sitting in D.C., the CIA is not allowed to talk about the United States, it's not allowed to study the United States, we never ever mentioned the United States.

But as a private citizen, I'm watching what's happening in my own country.

I'm seeing these two factors emerge here in this country that I deeply, deeply love.

And I knew that this information needed to get out there and the American public and our politicians needed to know that this was a very, very dangerous game that we were playing with potentially really bad repercussions.

- So at this point, we go to the contributing factors, which you're talking about, and Michael, this whole notion of equality, I mean, the animating spirit of America is equality.

And the factionalism that's erupted because of the wealth inequality at historic highs, I mean, all kinds of inequality in this culture.

- Absolutely.

The thing is that in America, the build up to the neofascist, totalitarian, authoritarianism has been a long time.

You know, in the Third Reich say in Germany for Jewish brothers and sisters who were there thinking, you know, a 10-year window, maybe if we do X, Y, and Z, we can escape the pogroms and the horrible purges and the antisemitism that just vanquished entire populations of Jews.

But in America, we've normalized the authoritarianism by looking at it through a racial lens, and black people over here, Latino people over here and so on.

And what happens is we normalize it.

But when white brothers and sisters are so surprised, Jiminy Cricket, I can't believe that this stuff will go down.

Where have you been?

Because we've been confronting this stuff from the get go.

And when you look at, when you ask, you know, people send, experts all around the country and through the world, "Let's figure out how we can figure out democracy."

Just ask some black people in your neighborhood, who've been telling you, we've had voter suppression.

Talk about depressed, we've had it; depress, oppress, suppress, right.

When you look at what's going on in America, the suppression of vote, the lack of equality, the denial of black people's opportunities in World War II when you had the great GI Bill that mostly overlooked African American people.

So the point is that the remnants, well, the rumblings of authoritarian behavior happen in racialized communities.

And I think that it's not just Trump, if it was just Trump, what they said in the narrative of 2016, poor white people, middle class white people vote.

No, a bunch of rich white people voted for him as well and saw him in office because the real religion, the real truth of democracy in America is not about equality and justice and fairness, it has been the blitzkrieg of whiteness that has really tempted so many otherwise, you know, like-minded and good-thinking people into the seduction of believing my group, my ethnic group, my racial group, my political group is all in all.

And we see it with women in terms of abortion.

We see it with black people in terms of suppression of vote and the like.

And until we get that stuff together, we're not going to have a true real democracy, and haven't had it from the beginning for certain populations in this country.

- Jamie, you have a reaction to what he's saying.

- I think that Professor Dyson, of course, is right, that, you know, we've had authoritarian and totalitarian institutions built into the fabric of our society from white supremacy and slavery from the very beginning, but it's been the struggles against them, the struggle to create a more perfect union that truly make America an exceptional country.

We are the world's greatest multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious constitutional democracy, and we've got to defend it with everything we've got against this extremist attack on all of our institutions today.

(audience clapping) - I want to go to Anthony about another group, because you grew up Anthony in a blue collar household, your father was a laborer, I believe- - And then a crane operator.

Yeah.

- And when you were out on the trail with Donald Trump, you got to see those folks and you, sort of, I think it resonated with you because you went on to live, as you said, the American dream, you went on to Tufts and Harvard and Goldman Sachs or wherever you were and you achieved it, right.

And you saw these folks out on the campaign trail who hadn't, and that's why that message resonated as far as you were concerned.

What about that whole segment of the population?

- It has to be addressed.

And remember, this is a segment of the population that was attracted to Bernie Sanders as well as Donald Trump.

And it is a segment of the population that's disaffecting and you know, again, I grew up in an aspirational working class family.

I would never tell you I grew up poor.

I would never dishonor my dad's work ethic by telling you we grew up poor.

Now we had a very good middle class upbringing, but he worked by the hour as a crane operator.

That very same job today, the real wages are down 25%.

And so after you inflation adjust for them in terms of cost of living, and so you turned a generation of people from aspirational working class people into economically desperational people.

And I saw that on the campaign.

I did 71 campaign stops with Donald Trump.

You can hate Donald Trump despise him, he saw something that many of us didn't see, and I will tell you guys, it doesn't reflect well on me, but I didn't see it.

And the reason I didn't see it is, I did go to Tufts and Harvard, although my mother thought it was Hartford, that's a joke in the family, but it doesn't matter.

The point being, I was in the salons of the very wealthy hanging out in Davos, going to hedge fund conferences, where the people I grew up with, they were struggling.

And when I got on that campaign, it was an epiphany for me, and I was like, "Okay, wow, "there's a lot going on here in the country."

And my last point, Jane, they're disaffecting, they're sticking their finger in the eye of the medical establishment, the political establishment, the business establishment, they see Donald Trump as their avatar for their anger.

And we have to fix that.

We have to figure out a way to come up with the right policies to fix that.

And if we do, it'll improve the democracy.

- Another factor Adam, I want to go to is that we live in a post-truth era.

You cannot have a conversation unless you have a collective set of facts upon which you can agree.

And that was the theme of a speech that you made, the night of January 6th on the floor of the House.

And we're going to take a look at that right now.

- People have been lied to by too many, for too long.

So here's the truth.

Joe Biden won this election.

The effort will fail and everybody knows it.

For some out there, this isn't about making a statement for the betterment of our country, it's about avoiding the pain of leveling with the people and telling them the truth: The emperor has no clothes.

I know many are disappointed in the result, but what legacy are we leaving?

Have our kids seen the day where Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill had a beer over their differences, or have they learned that to lead you must tweet and sometimes all in caps, because now this is Hollywood.

Fame is the ultimate goal.

But the first step that we can do to restore this is to reject the charade.

And what happens next is up to us.

We get threatened with primaries, we worry about the political implications, but our names will long be forgotten, the legacy of now will exist.

The bottom line, if we ask men and women to be willing to give their lives for this nation, and we talk about their service with tears in our eyes, shouldn't we be willing to give up our jobs to uphold that constitution?

With that, I yield my remaining time to Representative Herrera Beutler from Washington.

(audience clapping) - Adam.

I wanted to play that for its full length to the end, because when people ask, "How can members of a party supposed to lead in truth, "who took an oath, how can those members not be honest "with their constituents?"

And it comes down to losing their jobs.

That's what this is about?

- It's two things.

I think it's losing the job.

I think, you know, it's convincing yourself that I need to stick around so I can be present.

And so I have to be quiet or I have to just say this little white lie.

But I also think I've come to think even more lately.

I think there's one thing we fear more than death and that is being kicked out of our social groups.

It's like being isolated.

I mean, I've been through that.

I go through that.

I had a guy I fought in the war with, he was my co-pilot, send me a text like two months ago saying, "You should've just stuck with flying."

And that's like an everyday kind of thing.

I think that's one of the things we fear, is getting kicked out of our social circle.

So we all end up in this kind of vertical alignment of belief system because we can't stray from our tribe.

And by the way, Professor Walter, I read your book and one of the most frightening, and one of the best actual pieces of work about the reality of what's going on here, and that had made me pivot.

In fact, in my conversation from, "This is a country that will never have a civil war" to, "There is a real risk of civil war in this country, "and it's not north against south, it's violence."

We're close to it now, part of that is the death of truth, part of that is when we begin to identify as different subgroups.

So instead of actually trying to unite and understand people that feel left out, we continue to divide.

That's a problem that's kind of all over the political spectrum.

I'm really worried about the future of this country and with the death of truth, I mean, it's hard to see how that ends.

- Well, I'm going to go to Barbara Walter at this point, and then we're going to go, we're going to include some of the audience questions and comments.

Let's talk about something that could further exacerbate this divide, and that's the demise of a national collective set of laws where states' rights are on the rise, and you're about to probably see a seismic shift courtesy of the Supreme Court in privacy rights.

What is that going to do to the equation as it stands right now do you think?

- Well, let me quickly say something important before going to that question, 'cause I think it's probably the most important issue that needs to be get across.

Most Americans have a really tough time believing that a second civil war is possible here.

And that's because they're thinking about an 1860s version of a civil war, and that's not going to happen here again.

If a second civil war happens here, it's going to be the 21st century type of civil war that we've seen in other places; Northern Ireland would be a really good example.

What Israel has experienced with Hamas and the two intifadas.

The 21st century type of civil war, especially when it's being fought against a really powerful government with a really strong military is an insurgency it's fought by multiple different militias, they're not engaging soldiers, they're taking violence directly to civilians, they're using gorilla warfare, placing a bomb in a church or a bomb in a crowded shopping center or there's snipers taking out opposition leaders or assassinating judges, or it's terrorism.

That's the type of 21st century civil war that would likely emerge here if it did.

And then the other thing that's really important to emphasize is we actually know who tends to start civil wars and we know what triggers them.

And again, most people think that the groups that start civil wars are the poorest groups, the most discriminated groups, the groups with the deepest, deepest grievances, and that is not the case, they don't tend to start civil wars.

The groups that tend to start civil wars are the ones dominant, the groups that had been politically, socially and oftentimes economically dominant, but are losing that dominance.

- I do want to move into the audience, but I do want to ask just quickly, do you see that the states' rights issue, that the whole notion of the loss of privacy, women's reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, do you see that as being an accelerant in this picture going forward, Barbara Walter?

- Well, so it is really interesting, and people can keep asking what my next book is about.

And my next book is going to be about gender, you know, attacks on women, and if you look at, if you look who was protesting in Charlottesville, if you look who was involved in the January 6th attack, if you look at who the mass shooters are, who are attacking synagogues and who are attacking, you know, black churches and blacks in predominantly black neighborhoods, these are white men.

The story that isn't being told yet is, I think that their next victim, and you have seen some of this, you know, the attacks on women in California, for example, the next group that, I think, they will attack are women.

Women now represent over 60% of college graduates, they're over majority of med school graduates, law school graduates, business school graduates.

They now have the skills to compete more effectively in a service industry, which is where we're going, than men.

And I think, again, this is going to create deep resentment in a part of the population that was used to privilege that feels a sense of entitlement, that they should get the best jobs, that they should get the highest paying jobs.

And again, when they're faced with evidence that these jobs are going to somebody else, they're going to begin to target those individuals and that group.

- I'm sorry, the women in this audience are ready to take this on.

No?

Yes?

How many women in this audience in the last recent past have felt that they suddenly have been awakened to the fact that they have to become more proactive?

By applause, how many women?

(audience clapping) How many by applause don't think that would make a difference?

How many of you have been out there and you've tried and you've protested, and you've called, and you've lobbied, and it hasn't made a difference?

How many of you feel that you don't think you can do anything else, anybody?

You, you feel that way?

- Sorry, that's okay.

- Lean in.

- I'm really discouraged.

I just, when you see what's happening, things are going backwards and everyone says, "Call your congressman, call your senator."

Our senators are already voting the way I would like them to vote.

So what do I do about calling Marjorie Taylor Green?

Come on!

(audience laughing) - [Jane] She would love to hear from you.

Don't you think?

Okay.

In seriousness, do you really feel, I mean, you really just feel that's it for you, you're done?

- No, I'm, you know, there's a part of me, that's like, okay, maybe I can go volunteer at a Planned Parented Clinic or something like that.

But then there's another part that's just deeply, deeply discouraged.

And feels like, you know, "Okay, that might help some people."

I actually, right now tutor immigrants coming into this country, I just had one of my students get her citizenship, hooray!

- [Jane] This woman a round of applause.

- So there are ways that I feel like, "Okay, I can do something worthwhile," but it's getting increasingly difficult.

- We're going to have Reverend Dyson give you a pep talk after the show.

I think that's what we're going to do.

(audience clapping) I want to turn to somebody in the audience at this point, though, who's with us, who is the mayor of a small New England town, my small New England town, I should say.

Stand up, if you would, Jim.

Jim, you are, I'm going to say you're a Republican.

- Yep.

- And yet, somehow you have drawn very high marks from people in the community of all different ideologies.

What's your secret, Jim?

- I don't judge.

When I meet an individual, I don't judge anyone by political stripe, race, gender, sexual orientation, it means nothing to me.

Who you are, is more important than what you are.

And every person I sit with and I meet, I treat with respect, and it starts with respect.

(audience clapping) - [Jane] Okay?

- I have the unique pleasure of serving with my colleagues on the board of selectmen are both Democrats, all three of us fight very hard, our job is to do what's best for everyone in the town of Washington, not the Republicans, not the Democrats, not the unaffiliated, everyone.

- So why is this so hard for other people to replicate, do you think?

Why is it so hard?

People make assumptions.

You know, people make assumptions, they hear you're this, and they think that.

People, the Republicans want to own the libs and the Democrats use words like deplorables and all kinds of counterproductive.

You have an answer, don't you?

- Well, assumptions.

I mean, and I've run into it myself.

I had a lady call me about a year after the election.

And she said, I have to tell you, I worked so hard for your opponent, and I was so disappointed when you won.

She couldn't have been kinder.

She didn't say it with anger.

She just said it with honesty.

And then she said, "But I think you're doing a great job."

So those assumptions we have to do away with.

I had another couple they've been together over 50 years when same-sex marriage became legal, they got married, one of the first in town.

And one of the ladies came to me and she said, "Tell me why I should vote for you?"

I said, "Charlotte, I've known you my whole life.

She says, at the end of the conversation, she says, "You've got my vote, but you'll never get Joan's."

And I said, "Why not?"

I said, "Can I talk to her?"

She said, "It's not you, she's never forgiven herself "for voting for Richard Nixon, that's all."

(audience laughing) - There's an insight that we don't often hear from somebody who's on the firing line like you, and we were really happy you could be with us today because I think it's a really valuable perspective that we're listening to.

And I could see Reverend Dyson nodding his head up there as you were talking.

I mean, this is the kind of mentality that we need to really have go viral.

- Sure.

I think that the good mayor being open to people regardless of race or sex or class, Representative Kinzinger, of course, being bold and courageous in defying the Republican groundswell that really exacerbates the tensions in our democracy already.

And as Congressman Raskin, I think, you know, personal courage, the fact that his child died by a suicide, I stand to be corrected the day before January 6th, is an unavoidable metaphor for not only his personal courage, but the ability to literally place the country above one's own self-interest and people could have understood that, right.

(audience clapping) And the masses of people are fundamentally decent and humane want the right thing.

But when approached by a demagogue, they can be quickly seduced into doing something against their own best interests.

People keep saying, "Why do black people keep voting Democrat?

"Why is it that the mass of white people voting for a party "that has never taken them seriously and continues "to marginalize them and then see them as disposable?"

When we come to that truth in reality then this country, I think, has a better footing in American democracy.

- Did you ever think of running for office?

- Oh, no ma'am I want to stay out of there.

(chuckles) - Just trying here.

Okay.

At this point, I want to turn a little bit to some of the things we think might make a difference in terms of the rancor and how we could maybe heal a little bit.

And part of that Adam has to do with how in primaries, primary elections, basically a very small number of people are deciding a lot of, most of the elections, I guess you could say.

And they basically take up, the extremism takes up all the oxygen in the room on the campaign trail basically.

You have started an organization called Country First to try and reset that equation.

What is that about?

- Yeah.

So it's Country First it's country1st.com, that actually got started after January 6, when I did my first kind of, like, everything's off the rails video, but, you know, through that, we now have 150,000 members, you know, chapters in every state and we made the decision, what are we going to do now?

I mean, it's great to have an organization.

What do you do with that?

And we came and realize the vast majority of people live in districts that are represented by one party.

The decision is made in the primary and it's made by like literally five to 10% of that district.

So if you're, by the way, an independent, let's take Marjorie Taylor Green's district, or let's take Madison Cawthorn's district.

If you are a Independent or a Democrat in that district, I know you you're going to vote against them in the general election, but I got to tell you whoever wins that primary is going to win.

So maybe you should actually, if we can get a few percent of the people to do that, you can pull a primary ballot even if you're not a Republican.

It may feel gross, pull a primary ballot and vote for a freedom-loving candidate, even if you don't like their policies.

Now, this takes me to a real quick point, which is like, we've got to get past this idea of, "Hey, we need to come together and save democracy.

"And I'm willing to work with you "if you acquiesce to everything I believe on every issue."

I mean, the number of people that have told me, like, "Boy, Adam, you know, I was paying attention to you "and all the great things you're doing "except you voted this way.

"You voted like a Republican."

Well, yeah, I mean, I am a Republican, but we've got to get to that point where we can accept people's differences.

'Cause trust me, I'm kind of in a party right now that only has one monolithic view.

You don't want that for a country.

You want a variety of views in a party in a country.

- All right.

You want to stand up?

Yeah, go ahead.

(audience clapping) - Hi.

I'm Sammy.

And I want to direct a question to Representative Kinzinger.

You say, you know, you're in this fight for our democracy.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

You know, in this fight for our democracy and you fighting against your own party.

Wouldn't you say that you've been losing that battle?

(audience laughing) - All right, Adam, you want to answer that, go ahead.

- We are losing the fight, there's no doubt about it.

I mean, I think to say otherwise is just political lies, right.

But the fact is I got to tell you all Republican Party's going to be around.

It's going to be around in the future, just like the Democratic Party's going to be around.

The question is, do you want people fighting for the future of the Republican Party, or do you want to just give up?

Now, I'm not saying I'm going to stay a Republican forever.

Like, I don't feel like a Republican, I feel very politically homeless right now.

I've got to believe that eventually, maybe it takes 10 years or 20 years, eventually it comes back.

But if it doesn't, there's a Bible verse that says, "If nobody praises God, the rocks will cry out."

And I believe if people feel so unrepresented for a long time, they'll cry out and demand different.

I'm not a Democrat, sorry, Democrats, but I am certainly not feeling at home in the party as it exists today.

- I can't believe that we're running out of time rapidly here.

So I want to go to Anthony because we have some footage of a state Senator from Michigan named Mallory McMorrow who recently was accused by her political opponent of grooming and sexualizing children.

And she channeled her inner Howard Beale, and let's take a look at Mallory McMorrow.

- I didn't expect to wake up yesterday to the news that the Senator from the 22nd District had overnight accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an email fundraising for herself.

So who am I?

I am a straight, white, Christian, married suburban mom, who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense.

I want every child in this state to feel seen, heard, and supported, not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight, white and Christian.

We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people's lives.

And I know that hate will only win if people like me stand by and let it happen.

(audience clapping) - So Anthony, speaking truth to power, like you just heard the state senator do, is that part of what has to happen?

Is it that people have become just concerned or they're afraid to talk out or speak out?

You certainly haven't been.

- I think what she's doing there in her expression and her anger is terrific because she's pushing back on what people do to each other.

It's an ad hominem attack.

She's obviously right on facts and she's probably right on policy, and so what her opponent's going to do is try to dehumanize her or disfigure her, you know.

And so that's what we're doing to each other.

And so, as I said earlier, it's not just a Trump issue, this is something that's now happening in the society.

It's almost like we opened a door through social media where we're allowed now to go after each other because it's through a screen or it's sometimes anonymous.

So just one last point.

You want to liquidate this stuff, we need to see if we can have mandatory voting like they do in Australia, you put mandatory voting in place, you fine people if they don't vote.

We have to improve the democracy by pushing people that are moderates in the middle to vote, you'll start to liquidate the extremes and the nonsense that this woman's being accused of.

- All right, we're going to go to final questions, and Barbara, I'm going to start with you.

But first I want to take this question in the audience.

We're happy to have with us, the Congresswoman from Connecticut who serves this district, Jahana Hayes.

(audience clapping) You have a question.

- I do.

I have so many questions.

One of the recurring themes I've heard today was just about being honest and having some honest conversations.

And what concerns me is that all of that is, I mean, our core principles are rooted in our constitution, but if we're being truthful, that document didn't include me.

We have a system that relies on us to police ourselves, and the Supreme Court to be their own ethical barometers, that is not working.

So at what point are we willing to revisit that system?

Because I cannot, from my perch say, "I can't look, everybody is exactly the same.

"I can't see these inequities," when I see them right in front of my face and we're not doing anything about them.

And that's not for my colleagues.

I'm not going to put them on the hot spot.

Maybe Dr. Walter.

- I'm going to give it to Dr. Walter.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for being here, Jahana.

All right, Barbara, you want to tackle that?

- So, you know, our democracy has weakened, and, in fact, by December of 2020, it was officially labeled an anocracy for the first time since 1800.

It's now out of the anocracy zone, but could easily go back there.

So one of the things we absolutely have to do is strengthen our democracy.

Our democracy has all these archaic, unique, undemocratic features, the filibuster, gerrymandering.

We actually know what those weak democratic features are, and if you know what they are, you can fix them.

The problem is that you can fix it from the top down, or you can fix it from pressure from the bottom up.

And we know that the Republican Party doesn't want to fix the system.

In fact, they want to pull it further down and put it back into the anocracy zone, and they want to do that because the system no longer works for them.

They can't win in this system.

And we now know that the Democrats can't reform the system because they don't have the votes.

So that places the onus for reform on Americans, American citizens.

And one of the things that we know is that protest works.

Another thing that we, peaceful protest works.

Another thing that we know is that America has unusually low turnout.

Even in 2020, when people were thrilled at how many people went out to vote, over 80 million Americans didn't vote.

And so I guess that would be what I'd like to leave people with is, if we could convince all the Americans who are standing on the sidelines and who are not participating in our democracy, if we could convince them to go out to vote, and I don't care if they're Republicans or Democrats or Independents, just vote, we would change the makeup of Congress.

And if we change the makeup of Congress, we can begin to push through reforms that will strengthen our democracy and allow us to avoid the instability and violence that otherwise, I think, we're heading towards.

- Let me at this point, then go to Anthony, 'cause you do have five children.

You have Amelia, you have Anthony, you have Alexander, you have James and you have Nicholas, right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

So what are the odds when they grow up that they're going to be living in a gentler, kinder kind of place than they are right now?

- I think they're very high because I think that that generation that you're talking about is getting tired of this rancor, the identity politics and tribalism.

And I think that a lot of their generation is being taught by the likes of Professor Dyson.

And I do think that just when you think it's the darkest before dawn something happens, there's a generation that rises up that sort of fixes things.

And listen, I'm at the tail end of the baby boomer generation.

I sort of think that we hurt the country in so many ways.

Our identity politics and tribalism hurt the country, but I think that generation, that my children's generation are going to do a better job.

I need to think that and I want to remain optimistic about it.

- Michael, a lot of people are feeling like that Dr. King's, you know, the "Arc of the universe," is not bending towards justice and they are discouraged.

And a lot of people, they're tired, they're just tired.

What do you say to those people?

- Well, there's another, a teacher of Dr. King, Howard Thurman, who said refused the temptation," and I'm going to paraphrase him, "to scale down your dreams "to what your immediate experience is."

He said, "Imagine our slave foreparents, "they had no possibility of imagining this world, "and yet they kept working for something "that they really couldn't see, "but they could at least imagine, "or some of their children could imagine."

So I say this, it is dark, it is difficult, but this ain't the worst we've ever confronted.

It's like that Saturday Night Live, you know, skit, when Trump was elected and Chris Rock and another comedian were hosting Dave Chappelle, and the white folk were going, "Oh my God, it's the worst thing ever."

And they looked at each other like, "Yo, I guess they missed like slavery and reconstruction."

And like at the end of the day, let's not reduce the vast possibility of transformative action and redemptive goodwill to the inability of a few polls to be able to do the best thing.

(audience clapping) - All right.

All right.

You really should run for office.

Just saying.

Jamie, we didn't talk about your late son, Tommy, Michael mentioned him and your fight for democracy, which has been so inspiring to people is an homage to your son in many ways, based on reading your book "Unthinkable" and hearing you talk.

You've been a source of incredible inspiration to so many people, and (sighs) you have two daughters, Hannah and Tabitha, is your sense that this country can be a place, a better place, the kind of place that your son who was an anti-war activist and an advocate for justice would've wanted?

- Well, I think it's got to be.

And certainly I'm devoting the rest of my career to that proposition.

Tommy was someone passionately devoted to human rights, also to animal rights and welfare, but he was, he felt the pain of people all over the world.

And, you know, just as Professor Dyson says, we can look to our history for democratic heroes who fought against slavery, and disenfranchisement, and discrimination and oppression.

We can also look around the world today to people in the same situation, because all of the autocrats, the tyrants, the dictators, the kleptocrats, the bullies have found each other from Moscow to Mar-a-Lago, Putin in Russia, and Orbán in Hungary, and Duterte in the Philippines and el-Sisi in Egypt, and Bolsonaro and Brazil, and right down the line.

And they're all rooting for the destruction of democracy in our country.

And why?

Because we started off, as Tom Paine put it, as an asylum to humanity, not an insane asylum, mind you, but a place of refuge for people fleeing from political, religious and economic oppression from all over the world.

And we would become, Paine predicted, also a model to humanity.

He said that the cause of America is the cause of mankind.

I think that really is our destiny as a country.

So when we look around and we see such tough times and we see the violence, we see the despair, we see a million people lost in COVID-19, and hundreds of thousands lost in the opioid crisis and so on.

I tell all of our kids what my father used to say to us, which is, "When everything looks hopeless, "you are the hope."

And I find a lot of hope in the conversation you're having in Congresswoman Jahana Hayes and Congressman Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, all of the constitutional patriots who are standing up for America and standing up for democracy all over the world today.

So not only can we do this, we must do this.

There's simply no choice.

(audience clapping) - And I didn't even have to ask for a silver lining.

You all have just been an amazing group of people here today.

We've been so fortunate to have you with us, and we want to thank everybody here in the studio audience for being with us.

And we want to thank you at home for being with us.

And until we see you back here next time for "Common Ground" I'm Jane Whitney.

Take care.

(audience clapping) (upbeat lively music) (vibrant music) (light digital outro music)