democracy is a check against tyranny. It's a check against the unrestrained power of

people who have more money than most, more power than most, and it is rare in the history

of humankind. And we are naive if we think that we don't have to fight for it every single

day.

Hello, welcome to Wise is happening with me, your host Chris Hayes.

If you're hearing the sound of my voice and you probably have heard the news that Donald

Trump was indicted by the special counsel Jack Smith and the US government for his attempts

to subvert and overturn the 2020 election. Now, one of the most interesting parts of the

indictment is count four, which is conspiracy to deprive rights. And it comes from a part

of the US criminal code that is the product of legislation passed in 1870 if not mistaken

during reconstruction and attempt by the federal government to crack down on and criminalize

the persistent efforts by white southerners to deprive the rights of the newly freed black

citizens of the south. And there's something kind of haunting and apt about this charge

showing up in the year 2023 for efforts taken in 2020 by Donald Trump, who, you know, quite

famously whipped up a frenzied mob directed at two black women who are election workers

or reframing shay Moss in Fulton County, Atlanta, who talked about the suspicious votes in places

like Philadelphia, where nothing good happens and Milwaukee and Detroit, who almost explicitly,

I mean, just on the border of explicitly, the plot was to find a way to throw out the votes

of urban centers and black voters in those urban centers in swing states, so as to produce

statewide outcomes in which you want that was the plan. And failing that to just simply overturn

the election by fiat through a scheme of fake electors and Mike Pence and ultimately House

representatives or state legislators, all of which to say the assault on democracy in the year

...