Okay, I've been looking forward to talking to my first guest tonight for a very long time.

When we first launched the show nine months ago earlier this year, we made a big list of people we wanted to talk to.

And Liz Cheney was always near the top of it.

Well, tonight, Liz Cheney is here, here with me in New York, and this would have been pretty surprising to me a few years ago.

I'm going to be honest. I did work on John Kerry's campaign in 2004, and I tried very hard to defeat George Bush and her father.

Four years later, I was a part of the transition

when President Bush and Vice President Cheney handed things over to Barack Obama and Joe Biden,

peacefully, by the way. Of course, Liz Cheney had a political career of her own, one that would come

to be defined by her work on the January 6th committee and her willingness to speak out against

Donald Trump when it wasn't

always easy.

And look, I know that when I sound the alarm about the former president, which I do frequently,

there are a lot of people who tune me out, who I'm not getting through to.

But when Liz Cheney sounds that alarm, as loudly as she's doing right now, that's another thing entirely. And it's a perfect

time to be talking with her because Donald Trump is talking a lot about his desire to be a dictator.

And that's because he wants to be a dictator. That part is pretty clear. The harder question to

answer is, how do we talk about that? Because the sad reality is there are people in this country who hear him say things like that

and they like it.

As Republican Senator Mitt Romney put it, Trump's base loves the authoritarian streak.

I think they love the idea that he may use the military in domestic matters and that he

will seek revenge and retribution. That's why he's

saying it and has the lock nearly on the Republican nomination. The senators write, in my view,

...