Fear Factor: The Chilling Effect of Trump's Threats

The Briefing with Jen Psaki

NBC News

News, Politics

4.5 • 664 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jen Psaki examines the culture of fear Trump is trying to create in advance of his second presidential term. She is joined by Senator Chris Murphy to talk about the threat to lawmakers and media outlets, as well as to a society that could become too afraid to speak out. Next, Congressman Eric Swalwell and Former DOJ Advisor Anthony Coley talk to Jen about the ruling by a New York judge rejecting Trump's bid to throw out his criminal conviction. Jen also delves into reports of mysterious drones hovering in the skies above New Jersey this and is joined by White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby to discuss the ongoing investigation. Jen reacts to Trump’s nominee for HHS Secretary RFK Jr.’s plans to end vaccine programs and how it's affecting the public’s growing distrust of vaccines. Jon Favreau of Pod Saves America stands by with his thoughts on the path forward for Democrats and the conversations the party needs to have in order to win again.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay. There is a lot going on tonight. I mean, just in the last hour, we learned that
0:13.9	Judge Juan Mershahn has denied Donald Trump's bid to throw out his conviction in New York
0:18.4	because of the Supreme Court's immunity ruling.
0:21.6	As the New York Times writes tonight, the judge's ruling preserves, at least for now,
0:26.0	the stain of Mr. Trump's criminal conviction. We're going to talk about that in just a few minutes,
0:30.7	and I'm also going to talk to White House spokesperson John Kirby about those mysterious drone
0:35.4	sightings. I know you have questions. We're going to try and get you some answers. So stay tuned for that too. I do want to start tonight with one quote that's been kind of ringing around in my head all weekend. It's from the very first pages of a book Bob Woodward and Robert Costa wrote about Donald Trump. And it comes from back in March of 2016, when Trump was still
0:56.0	a candidate for president that time around. Here it is. Real power is, and I don't even want to
1:02.9	use the word fear. Now, a few weeks ago, Bob Woodward was sitting at this very table with me,
1:09.2	and he talked about that quote.
1:19.7	My first book on Trump was, of course, called Fear, because that's exactly what he does.
1:27.0	He knows that's what the real power is to scare people, to frighten people. And that's exactly what we see playing out today.
1:30.8	Having written three books on Trump, spent hours with him,
1:35.5	the goal is to give him all the say, all the power.
1:43.5	Real power is fear. Real power is fear. Now that is how Donald Trump
1:52.1	has always kind of seen the world. And that is such an important part of understanding the
1:56.8	moment that we find ourselves in. In fact, I mean, it may be the most important part of
2:01.1	understanding the moment we find ourselves in. See, we spend a lot of time on this show talking about
2:06.3	what Donald Trump might actually do with the power of the presidency. We talk about all the ways
2:11.2	in which the threats might turn into action and what that action would mean for the country.
2:16.9	And we should talk about it, and we'll continue to.
2:19.3	But we also need to talk about the impact that fear is having right now.
	...

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