Hegseth Impeachment Push, Trump Oversight, and 2026 Fallout

Tonight on All Leth, Impeaching Peter Bryan Hegseth, Secretary of Defense for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. The impeachment of Pete Hegseth has begun. I hope he addresses the eight articles and doesn't get up and misquote the Bible and Quentin Tarantino fashion and do some pull-ups and you know, call everybody fat and gay. Tonight one of Hegseth's targets, Senator Markelli, on the Republican push to remove Trump's defense secretary. He runs around on a stage like he's a 12-year-old playing army. Then, new MSNOW reporting on the Democratic Plan of Attack on Trump Corruption. My network did not go up by $3 billion. Well, you should have had stock. I lost Sarah Longwell on the reality sinking in for Maga Die Hard. But right now, I don't think people should not be complaining about a stolen election. And the incredible scene on the Hill today for a freshman orientation unlike any other. The question is not this person, yes or no. The question needs to be, who do you actually want for this leadership? Who is right? It all ends, starts right now. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Aze. Happy Monday. Welcome back. Congress is back in session for the first time since before Democrats delivered that crushing historic, epic midterm-defeated Republicans. And yes, to be clear here, it's the lame duck session. It's the last part of the old Congress. Democrats won't have their majority in place until January with the new Congress and yet you can already feel the beginnings of the accountable ability era on Capitol Hill. Because as this lame duck Congress walked into work today, they were followed by all the winners of last week's election. As the incoming freshman class came to the Capitol for orientation, it's the largest Democratic contingent in decades. In fact, there were so many new dems elected that tables had to be added in the whole base to accommodate all of them because the room designed for the orientation wouldn't fit them all. And look at this U.S. Senate class alone, it includes the first Democratic Center elected from Texas in four decades, James Taleriko. There he is flanked by the new Democratic Senators elect from South Carolina. And Maine, there's also the first Democratic Center from Kansas since 1932. You can see him walking there with the first Muslim Senator elect in U.S. history. Just ahead of them, that's Chris Papas, a New Hampshire who will become the first openly gay male Senator ever, and Peggy Flanagan will be the first Indigenous woman ever in the U.S. Senate. I mean, everywhere you look, there are tons of reminders of the incoming Democratic Congress will be one of the most diverse and representative in the history of the Great Nation. We're going to have much more on those first and the potential first that have yet to be called and those numbers are coming in. So we're going to have that later in the show. If you want to know just how much this election has, let's say, shifted the vibes towards accountability for the Trump administration. Just look at the first big order of business in the still Republican led, lame.congress. Impeaching Peter Brian Hegseth, Secretary of Defense for High Crimes and Misdemeanors resolved that Peter Brian Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, also referred to as Secretary of War by the administration, is impeached for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Yes, that is outgoing Republican Congressman Thomas Massey, the one who held Trump's feet to the fire of the Epstein files and got a primary challenging return, introducing eight articles of impeachment against Peter Hegseth, the wildly unpopular, obviously incompetent and increasingly unhinged Fox Weekend host, turned Secretary of Defense, who has taken his belligerent posturing to an entirely new level. Now, the refrain to impeach Hegseth is not new, in fact, you might remember this episode because back in September, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson sent the entire house home early ahead of the elections without approving a final budget, possibly aiming to avoid a Hegseth impeachment vote. At least that was the suspicion at the time. We reported those suspicions on the program. Well, today, podcaster and senator Ted Cruz came out and basically confirmed that. This and one of the reasons the House has been out of session for a couple of months, and reason they've been out of session is because they didn't have the votes to stop a Hegseth impeachment back in September. Oh, well, look at that. Well, that vote might be coming as soon as this week. Massey's articles of impeachment accuse Hegseth of violating the War Powers Act in around three different ways. They also accuse him of ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties in that worse sighting, specific strikes like the one that killed at least 120 Iranian girls in their elementary school in the first 24 hours of the war. Hegseth is also cited in the articles for his campaign of extraditional murders of mergers on the high seas, and for suppressing free speech when he retaliated against Senator Mark Kelly, one of the so-called seditious six congressional Democrats who cut a video reminding service members they have no duty to obey illegal orders. Hegseth is also cited for kidnapping Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and waging an illegal war in Yemen. Now, to be clear, there could have been more articles of course. Today, one example, a senior official exclusively told MSNOW how decorated military officers with decades of experience were withheld from promotion. After Pentagon staff at Hegseth's direction printed out internet searches showing they had attended official events like one promoting COVID-19 vaccinations or another marking International Women's Day. Basically, they googled people to see if they ever did anything like participating in International Women Day Forum, and then they kept, get this, right for this detail, they kept paper-only files on their work, which you totally do when you know you're doing the right thing. The reason why there are so many other articles of impeachment that could have been added is because, as Congressman Massey himself noted today, Hegseth has been pretty effective and relentless at violating the law. The reality is, we're not inditing him for being bad at his job. In fact, he was very effective at killing school children in Iran. He was very effective at extrajudicial killing, so there's no argument in these impeachment articles that he's ineffective. The argument here is that he's broken laws, and he's violated the Constitution. The Hegseth suggested he'd respond to the articles of impeachment or press conference tomorrow. That would be, get this, his first and over half a year. And Thomas Massey basically told him, "Good luck with that." I hope he addresses the eight articles. It doesn't get up and misquote the Bible in Quentin Tarantino fashion, and do some pull-ups, and, you know, call everybody fat and gay, like, for being for this impeachment. Like, I may have just given you half his speech. I don't know. Now, keep in mind that until the new Congress is seated in January, right now, Republicans have their very slim house majority. It's 218 to 214, along with one independent and two vacancies. Massey is obviously already a vote for impeachment, which means that lame duck speaker Mike Johnson needs to keep all of his Republican members present, voting no to stop it. Unless he takes the incredibly unpopular option of tabling Massey's motion, which is what's called a privileged motion, it gets a vote unless he does something. Either way, Mike Johnson doesn't sound terribly confident these days. Impeaching a cabinet secretary right now, especially the Department of War, in the middle of hostility, is broad, would be a terrible, terrible look. A terrible thing for our allies and our enemies to see that, and we don't impeach cabinet secretaries for political gain or for cheap tricks. And I think that's what this is, and I think everybody knows what we're doing. >> Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Pete Hegseth tried and failed to have in face military punishment, as the only member of the so-called Siddish's six earning a Navy retirement, and he joins me now. Senator, it's good to have you first. I just want to ask if you've got a chance to look over these articles in impeachment, and your general feeling, obviously, about this given that, should it pass the house? It will come to you in the United States Senate. >> Yeah, Chris, it's kind of wild, right? I, you know, find myself in the middle of this thing. We made a very straightforward and basic video last year, just telling members of the military that they don't have to follow illegal orders. Then Donald Trump said we should be hanged, executed, prosecuted. They tried to indict us for seditious conspiracy. And then, when they couldn't, when all that didn't work, right? Then he tries to reduce me in rank and take away my pension after 25 years of service. So, yeah, I've been, obviously, I've been following this thing. I took a look at the articles of impeachment when Massey did this the first time, and Mike Johnson sent people home. I think the simplest solution to all of this is that Donald Trump should fire the most unqualified Secretary of Defense. Country has ever seen a guy who has screwed up at every turn right from the very beginning when he got this job. Until, I mean, recently, like with the public exit. execution thing, he should have been gone a long time ago. I want to just read from one of the articles of impeachment that does concern you specifically. And I thought it was interesting. I have to say, I didn't know, obviously, Massey has a different ideological profile than say I do or I think you do and I didn't know what the kind of breadth of what he would include was. But there's actually quite a bit, but this is the one that concerns you, it says, Secretary Hegg Seth weaponized the Department of Defense to retaliate against and intimidate Sarah Mark Kelly for such a statement, these are the statements you recorded. And in doing so, Secretary Hegg Seth weaponized the Department of Defense to chill a core function in the legislative branch and through the precedent sought to establish that he sought to establish, placed the first amendment of rights of millions of United States veterans at risk of irreparable harm. You basically agree that's what happened. Yeah, and here's the thing, and I think Tom Massey points us out, this wasn't really about me, and it wasn't about the other people in the video, it was about silencing millions of Americans who have served this country and trying to get them to shut up, this administration doesn't want any kind of accountability, they don't want people speaking out, but they're not going to shut me up, they're not going to silence me, and I'm going to keep fighting back because I'm the person out there looking out for the first amendment rights of millions of people. There's reporting we have an MS now about the promotion system that Pete Hegg Seth has set up, and this has been the source of a lot of controversy. It has looked from outside to a lot of people, and I've seen people say this, including Adam Sirworth, the Atlantic, who says, he basically thinks Pete Hegg said this is attempting to re-segregate the upper ranks of the U.S. armed forces, and we have our own reporting from a great reporter, Priya Sergei Dar, I'll read you a little bit, and I mentioned in the intro, that Pentagon officials have revealed his criteria for senior promotions. The way that his office may have also broken the law, said three senior officials, Cody Harnish, the military defense attorney, and former Army Judge Advocate General, said the way the officers were pulled from promotion list after being selected is illegal, this is just flatly illegal, what do you think? I mean, I'm not. Of course Pete Hegg Seth is doing things that are illegal. He fired the chairman of the joint chiefs and gave no reason. He fired other black service members and women without cause. Of course, that's against the law, so what we learned today, I mean, it was interesting, you know, we knew he must have been out there, you know, searching the internet for things about COVID and, you know, women's day and other things that, for some reason, this guy who served in the military thinks those are egregious things that people should lose their jobs for. I don't know how he became this person he is, but his expiration date in this job has expired a long time ago, should have never had it, Trump should have fired him, you know, when he was one month into the job, and he's still here. If the president doesn't fire him and he doesn't seem, I mean, anything can change and honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if, you know, when we got news in the hour that he was out. So I have no idea. He doesn't appear to be, that doesn't appear to be imminent. There is a question of this vote, have you had conversations on the Senate democratic side about how you would handle it? My understanding is that this would be passed along from this house to the next Congress of the Senate. Here's what Thomas Massey had to say about that today, take a listen. The articles in impeachment, once they leave the house, they, they survive that into the next Senate, like every HR bill in here will die and you'll have to reintroduce it, but not these articles of impeachment. If the Senate doesn't deal with this, the end, you know, before the end of this Senate, they're turning it over to a Democrat Senate who can then have the trials and deal with it. Now, obviously that's a Republican leadership choice to make in the lame duck, but could be a choice for Democrats, what, what do you think about it? Well, I think that's a possibility, you know, I don't know what John Thune, the current majority leader in the Senate thinks about, you know, all this. He said, you know, very little about it. And we know what Mike Johnson thinks is he doesn't want to deal with it. So I think there's a good chance he could hold it. Hey, we're going to deal with it when it comes over. Things like they're going to have the vote this week, you know, when they're the, whether they send it over, you know, in the next couple of weeks or next year with the new Senate, I think there is a difference because of who's in the majority, whether or not there's a trial. He should be, he should be removed from the job. I mean, that's, that's clear. And whether it's through impeachment or being fired or he could quit and, and just kind of move on with his life, I think, you know, one of those three things will possibly happen and he'll leave or maybe not, maybe Donald Trump, you know, wants to keep this guy around to the end of his administration. But here's the problem with that. He's going to continue to make more really bad decisions that have really bad consequences. You just mentioned the new Democratic majority, which will be somewhere between 54 and 56 seats in that next U.S. Congress. The new members, a bunch of them were in the Senate today for their orientation. I don't know how this works. If you guys do like a mixer or they, like, sequestered so you don't meet them, did you get the meet them? Have you met any of your new colleagues? Well, I've met all of them because I traveled all across the country. I was, I've been in 20 states in the last four months. I've campaigned with every single one of them in many, many times more than one. I first learned of Annie Andrews, this is kind of interesting, about a year and a half ago. My daughter, Claudia who lives in Tucson, who's a mom, asked me if I knew Annie Andrews a year and a half ago and I said, I have no idea who you're talking about. And she said, Dad, she's running for a Senate in South Carolina and you got to help her. So I was connected with her pretty early and I've been a fan and a supporter. I, you know, right from the beginning, I thought she has a real shot of winning the Senate race. You know, often when nobody did, we had a great election night, we elected great candidates, we had much better candidates than they had on their side, the combination of that. And this president who has completely checked out from even trying to help the American people and the corruption and the chaos, we had a great night. All right, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona is going to have a, this is going to be a busy lame duck, busy lame duck, and then a very, very busy new Congress. Thank you, Senator. Right. Thank you. Coming up as Democrats sweep into Congress, new reporting on their plans to investigate an astounding list. I mean, really, just too much Trump corruption scandals. That's next. Well, the message is pretty loud and clear. Some people do not like government corruption, particularly this government's corruption. It was the number one concern voters listed as crucial to their house vote amid last week's Democratic Rebuke of MAGA politics. But someone may have forgotten to tell the president he was pressed about perceived corruption in his administration during a 60 minutes interview this last Sunday. There's a Forbes story that said that your net worth, maybe it's changed for the stock market recently, but your net worth went up by $3 billion. Well, since you've, since you've returned to, okay, you ready? So, everyone's, my net worth did not go up by $3 billion. I, I should have, I should have had stock. I should have had stock. Excuse me. So, how did, how did, how did it go up? Well, let me explain. I do almost no time to my net worth. I don't care. I make, I have a lot of money and far more than I have a thought I'd have. As Democrats are prepared to take their gavel, set an agenda, new reporting from MSNOW indicates their oversight plan includes subpoenas that go beyond those inside the administration reaching into the conflict of interest nexus among CEOs, corporations, contractors, and cronies in Donald Trump's government. And as they look into this wide array of subpoenas, many of those folks are going to have a hard time claiming exemptions like, for instance, executive privilege. Joining me now, Ken Delaney and Justice and intelligence reporter MSNOW, who did that reporting on the plan, subpoenas, can give us a sort of overview of how the Congressional committee chairs are thinking about their oversight approach here, because it's, it's really so much to get your arms around. It is so much, Chris, good evening, and they have an embarrassment of riches here. It's all about prioritization and about a narrative that they want to present to the American people. And as you said, you know, they have, they will have subpoena power next year. And ordinarily that would mean they could demand documents and testimony from senior Trump administration officials and senior White House officials. But in this case, they don't expect the Trump administration to comply with subpoenas. And the reality is, they don't have a lot of leverage. If they hold a member of the administration in contempt, it's the justice department that would have to enforce that kind of criminal contempt citation. If they use civil contempt to try to impose fines through a judge, the federal government could pay those fines indefinitely. And so what they've decided is that they're going to focus on trying to gather evidence from private parties, from corporations, from law firms, people that holding evidence that are communicating with the government in many cases and they are not in a position to defy a congressional subpoena. So when you're talking about Donald Trump and the $3 billion you're talking about the crypto deals that he made, the truth social and the public offering in that company and all the money he made through that. There's a lot of information in the private sector that Congress can access. They're also very interested in looking at pay-to-play in terms of pardons or contracts or regulatory action. There's a lot of lawyers and lobbyists who have made big money, even generational wealth in some cases reportedly from their interactions with senior Trump officials and those people can be called the test. Find it's very hard for them to resist. And then of course you've got many many other priorities whether it's the Epstein files or ICE and DHS violence and detention. There's a whole host of oversight parties of the Iran War and Pete Hegseth, of course, but I focus primarily on the FBI and the Justice Department and I've been in touch with the Judiciary Committee folks and they are laser focused on, for example, politicization of the FBI and the Justice Department, Trump corruption and pay-to-play with pardons and contracts. Chris. Yeah, it's sort of useful to think about this, right? Because there's certain things if you sort of go try to go right at Trump and they don't give over the documents, it sort of stymies you. But there's people you can go and talk to who are like former FBI folks, right? People who've moved on, who might be useful sources to go operate with. And then that private sector, you know, you talk about in the piece, alleged corruption, self-dealing by Trump family and close associates, alleged pay-to-play that you were just mentioning. You've got today a kind of crazy, crazy sort of perfect storm that has dumped itself into the laps of Congressional oversight, which is the reporting on Jensen Wong as a CEO of NVIDIA, which is the number one sort of AI chip manufacturer. And there's sort of two aspects to this. One is Marco Rubio writing a classified memo circulated to the president himself suggesting that he was having a romantic relationship with a woman who is a Chinese intelligence asset and them doing nothing and also opening export controls. And then a commerce department inquiry into NVIDIA that was halted after the general counsel from NVIDIA kind of sort of said, "I know your boss," according to New York Disapporting. This seems like a pretty ripe area. Am I crazy? No, Chris, in any other administration, this would be an epic scandal on the order of Iran Contra or Watergate. It's incredible on many levels. And what's interesting here is the one area that oversight hasn't completely broken down is the intelligence community, the intelligence committees, which operate mainly in secret, as I understand it, are still getting access to some information. Even the Democrats are still able to have meetings with people. So I fully expect that they will get at least some of the information about, for example, this classified memo that Marco Rubio allegedly circulated, essentially broadcasting the warning about this apparent Chinese spying operation involving this major American company in CEO that was not acted on by the Trump administration. Will they be able to call senior Trump officials to account in Congress? Maybe they won't, but they'll get a lot of information about this. And they may well be able to call the NVIDIA CEO himself to testify unless he takes the Fifth Amendment. So yeah, this is absolutely a ripe area of oversight. Chris, yeah, we should say, you know, this is New York Times reporting. China has called it a smear. I don't want to sort of definitively announce that the woman in question is an intelligence asset. That's what, you know, the Times reporting suggests about that memo. I mean, this does, like to your point, like there are so many threads to pull here right at the center of policy too, because the Trump administration has been much more open in sort of moving chips to perhaps cutouts and to the Chinese than the Biden administration have been. Here's what Trump had to say today when he was asked about a sort of classic inimitable Trump response. Take a listen. When you went to China earlier this year in May, did you know about these alleged ties to Chinese by then or? No, I didn't hear about it then. But a lot of people have heard about it. And Jensen totally denies that. He had, I asked him today, because I didn't speak to him today, just to see if he's feeling all right. How you doing? And I asked him about that. And he said, he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy. Okay, this has to be one of the greatest quotes we've ever seen out of the White House. He had absolutely no idea the person question was by. Well, yeah, that's the point, buddy. Like, it's not a defense. But according to the Times reporting, the US intelligence community has known this for months, and they've been surveilling this operation. So have they not briefed Donald Trump? There's so many questions here. And what's so interesting to me is that the one signature foreign policy initiative of Donald Trump's first term was getting tough on China. And he really changed the conversation. And he maintained some policies. He initiated President Biden maintained, actually. But that has completely reversed in the second Trump administration. It's all about deals. It's all about economic benefits that Trump is seeking from the Chinese regime. And it's just a stark compass. And this is the latest example allegedly of inaction in the face of a major espionage operation as reported by the New York Times. Yeah, well, thanks. I mean, I just when I read your article earlier today, when it published, and then this, you know, this exploded. It's like a perfect example where you've got this third party in the private sector that you can talk to and investigate, you know, that are the sort of conduit or nexus for a corruption scandal. It's sort of exactly what you were talking about in that great piece of reporting. Kendalini, thanks so much. Thanks for this. Still ahead. As a president, please, FTSE halfheartedly, I got to say, with another big lie, Sarah Longwell, on what caused his own base to vote for Democrats next. So tomorrow, Mark, one week since election day, but it's not over yet. We are still waiting the results of, among others, the Senate races in Mississippi and Alaska. And just minutes ago, Alaska updated its vote count. A batch of about 5,000 votes, which includes some mail-in ballots. And with that update, Democrat Mary Peltola now has a lead of 2,507 votes. She won the overwhelming majority of that latest batch. So far, 76% of total votes have been counted. We're still awaiting more updates, but you can see she is now up by a full percentage point. As I said, it's been less than a week since Republicans lost both the House and the Senate of Democrats. And already, Trump is back with his half-ass attempt to spin the big lie yet again. Today, Trump asked on social media, quote, does anybody really believe that this election was honest? How could the polls be so wrong? Some early voting dumps were so large, it was impossible to win. No matter how many people went to vote, it's all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter. Sounds a lot like 2020, doesn't it? Remember a lot of dump talk back then? This time, he was promptly smacked down by members of his own movement. Okay. Can we not. Can we just be really honest about what actually. What this is so pointless? Like, we're going to do that again. We don't trust the vote. We do. We do, no matter what. You know, as to steal a phrase, too big to rig, that's what just happened to your party. People should not be complaining about a stolen election. You got to deal with the facts of they're taking over the House, they're taking over the Senate, and this is going to be a massive, massive throwdown. Public Congresswoman and former Trump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene posted this quote, "For anyone who believes his BSK asks yourself, has he ever prosecuted anyone from the 2020 election?" No. As ego and pride are hurt, he knows the big Democrat victory is 100% on him, so this is another attempt to deflect any wrong going off of himself. Sarah Longwell's publisher and CEO of the bulwark posted the focus group podcast, author Howdy E. Nelliphant won voter time, and she joins me. Now, let's just start on that, Sarah. It's been interesting, you know, there's not the same. I've been looking at a little bit of the sort of Republican reckoning, right? Which is nowhere near as explosive as if this would happen on the Democratic side. I mean, it would be, all you would see would be Democrats tearing each other apart. It's been mostly muted. The first question is, do you think the big lie sort of thing is going to go anywhere? Is it going to just sputter the way we saw today? It's not going anywhere, not this time. And look, I think it's hard for people to confidently say that because we've seen Trump pull weird rabbits out of his hat on things like this, but I got to tell you, this is a guy with a 35% approval rating overall, and they're every piece of data, not just the vote count, not just the fact that they lost in Mrs. Siffy and Kansas and South Carolina, but also anybody who's doing focus groups, anybody who's doing polling, you can see the data everywhere about how upset voters are, about everything, the state of the economy, the war, the corruption, data centers, like it's just everything everywhere. And so, and he's so weak now too. Part of what you're seeing in the pushback is that Trump is now a weak, lame duck president. Nobody's trying to curry favor with him. Nobody's trying to relitigate this election. These Republicans now are going to use this as an opportunity, right? To say, Trump is done. We need to move forward with something else, and they're going to start pitching their ideas for what that is. No one's going to go along with this this time except some real, you know, brain dead sort of dead ender types. So you did some Remember to see. focused groups after this huge victory, including I think with folks who had were Trump 2024 voters and then 2026 voted for congressional Democrats with their Senator House. I'm curious what you heard. - Yeah, it was pretty straightforward. I mean, they wanted to check on Trump. They thought he was doing a terrible job and they wanted to put a stock to it. And I think, Chris, I'm sure I was on your show, is on a lot of shows doing analysis, leaving up to the election. And one of the things that I talked about a lot was how depressed Republican voters were and that I believed that depressed voters would lead to depressed turnout. I think what I hadn't quite anticipated and I think what the polls sort of couldn't capture is how many Republicans voted for Democrats. Like independence broke for Democrats decisively, but also there were just a lot of Republicans who said, I want something else. I don't like my candidates. I want an end to the war. I want to put a check on what's happening. And they saw it as an opportunity to send a message. And I think their message was heard loud and clear. - Yeah, I want to just play a little bit of that sound from that focus group, give you a sort of sense of some of the things people said, take a look. - I feel like someone needs to be like newer and likable and if they're Republican to come into the space after this show that's been happening. I think anybody tied to the Trump administration of this point is unelectable. - We have to try something different. And I think they ran war and gas prices and utilities. Just that was, that's what sealed the deal. We have to try something different. - You know what's striking about me there, to me, Sarah about that is also these are Republicans. I think people were usually probably pretty reliable Republican voters already thinking about like what's after Trump, what's next, detaching from him. Like the idea that there has to be a break, it seems like we're gonna see a lot more of them. - Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was really interesting in the groups that we've done subsequently of Republican voters is how much they believe that anybody tied to Trump is a non-starter now for 2028. Like they are already processing this idea that Trump is an albatross around Republicans next, which is why I think Trump is doing a bunch of, he's sending a lot of weird muddled messages, right? Like he understands that they overstepped on immigration and he said as much to rust out that in that 60 minutes interview so much so that his base is screaming, no, no, he's gonna do amnesty and he's gonna betray us. But then on the other hand, he's promoting Stephen Miller, now to his chief of staff who's obviously the person who is the architect of the hardline immigration policy that was so unpopular. And so I don't think Trump quite knows what to do because the more normish side of the party is out on him. The America first side of the party that's mad about the war is out on him and a whole bunch of these voters think anybody related to the Trump administration is now like we need to break from that completely as we go forward into 2028. - Yeah, and if you look at just some of these demographic swings, I mean among young men plus 38 for Democrats, young voters plus 32, this is the swing, this is the shift, this is not the absolute numbers. Hispanic plus 28, black men plus 16, white non-college plus 14, white women plus 11%. And then to your point about not knowing what to do, I thought you put together this weird sort of cringy, pointless spectacle with Dana White today of UFC, where he went out to the press briefing room, it just sort of felt like just trying to, you said pull rabbit out of a hat, like kind of bread and circuses. Like here's a crazy thing, you guys like this. Is this distracting along enough? - I mean, the level of repudiation of him is so thorough here, I think yeah, he's throwing stuff against the wall. He doesn't, look, it is, you talk about only being a week out, we're still processing it and we've been enormously, I've certainly been enormously happy over the results, but part of why I'm so elated is that a bunch of the conversations that we were having to have before is Donald Trump gonna try to invoke a constitutional crisis and not leave in 2028. Is he gonna try to keep his hands on the wheel in some way? All of that stuff is kind of gone now, like that level of repudiation puts him in a place where he can't be the kingmaker the way that he wants was. And in fact, you're now seeing the two parts of their coalition, the kind of the mega establishment in the America firsters, the mega establishment wants to move on from him 'cause he's toxic, and the America firsters are out there saying real America first has never been tried, and they're both directions, they're moving away from Trump. - Yeah, I made a joke after the midterms that the first order of business was for Democrats to pass a constitutional amendment allowing Trump to run for a third term. (laughs) I'm pretty well. Sarah Longwell, thanks so much. - Yeah, thanks for having me. - Still to come with two Senate races, still not yet called a look at how we got the already history-making freshman Senate class next. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - So today is freshman orientation for all the newly elected members of Congress and both parties in both houses they showed up today. And we showed the images of the top of the show, the newly elected Democratic senators, a freshman class with an incredible story of diversity and pluralism at first. This is the same gang and a selfie taken by Illinois Senator elect Julia, Julia Honestratten. She may need to retake the photo pretty soon because we still have two big outstanding races in Alaska where we might get a second indigenous woman Senator, second time in history and in the same class. Democrat Mary Peltola, as we mentioned earlier, her lead just jumped to over 2,500 votes just a minute. Minutes ago, and in Mississippi, where Democrats Scott Colombe keeps growing his lead as votes keep coming in day by day, putting him on the doorstep of becoming the first black Senator in that state since 1881. Patrick Gasparz, your director of the White House Office with little fairs on your President Barack Obama as executive director of the Democratic National Committee, Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress, and he was an advisor to the Colombe campaign who's been in touch with them a lot. Patrick, good to have you here. - Great to be here, Chris. - So let's just-- - On the verge of history. - Yes, well, so let's see where things are. We have Heinz County is gonna finish their counting on Monday and post on Wednesday. And then the deadline for these provisional ballots to validate them, I believe, is tomorrow, right? So what is here, I mean, do you, do you in the campaign? Do you guys feel like this is gonna be pretty close this week, probably? - This is Cook, Chris. Scott is up 2,574 votes, the outstanding ballots are all in overwhelmingly in Heinz County. That Scott has been carrying with over 70% of-- - That's where Jackson is, we should note, yeah. - Correct. And we don't expect much in the way of new cures of after David Ballet tomorrow. But by the time the data dump happens on Wednesday morning, you can expect that Scott Lee will have increased. I'm expecting it to go over 3,000, and it will be mathematically over. And hopefully, Senator Cindy Heismith will do the right thing. And with dignity and grace can see this race. - As I said, we call it too close to call here. And we're gonna, we're gonna obviously see this out as those ballots come in. How did this happen? I mean, even whatever the final result is, right? - Yeah. - It's shocking, either way. It's an increased one of the most incredible campaigns ever and given the history of Mississippi and going back to 1881. What's your understanding? - I'll tell you, Chris, that as an organizer, I've been obsessed with Mississippi forever in 2008, spending no money whatsoever. Barack Obama gets 43% of the vote. And we realize, wait, it's possible to do a thing there. I've organized there for a long time. Scott Cologne is an exceptional candidate. He is so talented, he's so gregarious, there's not a single voter that he will not like commit and dedicate all of his time to. And he has a phenomenal sense of humor. He's a so funny guy. Yes, the videos were great. It had almost a lot like very different cultural milieu and political and state milieu than Zora Mamdani. But there was a kind of like infectious joy at what he was doing that I was really taken with. - Yeah, and so we're hundreds of thousands of people in order. - It worked, yeah. - I think that Scott Cologne won that race. The day that he decided to go out to the Trump rally, how to encourage in the never reaches of Mississippi. And he engaged directly with one Trump voter after another as they waited online. I think they were surprised by how open he was and how they could make common calls with him on the economy, on data centers, on flock cameras, on their sense of having no control over their lives and the swore that we were in. So he engaged everywhere. He organized everyone in that state. And he did it with kind of a happy warrior sentiment. - You know, it's funny how he's talented. - Yeah, he's exceptionally talented. Clearly, and that is true, no matter where the vote total ends up in the end. Looking at that freshman class, it really was struck. I mean, you've got like, you've got the first, you've got a Methodist like mega church pastor. He's gonna be the first dam from Kansas in 100 years. You've got a Paralympian. So I know Biffida, who Tom Harkin was the guy that got the American Disabilities Act in part past, right? One of the main people. You have a black woman from Illinois to one indigenous woman possibly to, you've got a pediatrician who was the first democratic doctor in the Senate since 1969. It just like when you think about what the democratic party is, it sounds like America. - Well, I mean, when you think about what the democratic party is and what America is and the plural is, also, Troy Jackson, we see there, is gonna be the only member of the US Senate without a bachelor's degree. It's got an associate's degree. Mark Winn Mowen has that tube, but he left. It really does like kind of embody like the pluralism and diversity of the country. Yeah. This was not a micro targeted election. No. No. Every single one of these candidates broke the model. They had every level of engagement and organizing. And I think because of the crisis that we have in the economy, the kind of economic dislocation that folks are going through, there was a way to make common cause across differences in a way that was extraordinarily different than 2024, right? Yeah. Everyone went into their warring camps and took their offensive posture from there. Well, and they were mad at the party and power because inflation was, that's right. That's the argument. But this time folks were feeling all out of sorts across the board, across class, across race, across geography in ways that made it possible for these candidates to lift up their affirmative vision of where they wanted to go as a whole. It's exciting to see. Yeah. This chart really, this is the, this is state legislators. So we don't have final numbers there, projection of a huge net, and you see that last little dot that's the projection for Democrat. And one of the things you see there is that 2010 midterm was just brutal at the state level. And basically lasted for 15 years. Yeah. I mean, look at that number. It like reset lower. And one of the big results coming out of this is that at the state level, there's just hundreds and hundreds of new Democratic members of, of, of the houses. Yeah. So that's such an important chart there, Chris. And I want to remind all of our friends about how we talked about project 2025. Republicans were able to organize their project for governing because of models and examples that they got from states, from those state legislative houses, but they passed one regressive law after another. Now we have an opportunity to make it right. Washington DC is a copycat, space of governance. If we do the right thing on, uh, on the economy in Texas, in California, in South Carolina, in Ohio, it's going to be down to the benefit of House and Senate leadership in Washington, DC. So there's a great chance here. All right, Patrick Osberg. Great to have you here. We're going to keep our eyes. And like I said, on the Mississippi race, states, you and Rachel Maddo is coming up next and she's got the next governor of Georgia. He shall land spot on the show and her don't go away. That does it for all in. You can catch us every week night at eight o'clock on MS now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's Facebook dot com slash on with Chris.