This week, we’re revisiting an episode we recorded back in May with MSNOW’s own Chris Hayes. Please enjoy! We’ll be back with a new episode next week.

Chris Hayes’ antidote to anxiety is always curiosity. Whether on TV with "All In," on his podcast (aptly named “Why Is This Happening?”), or writing about our waning attention spans in his latest book, he looks to make sense of this era’s firehose of information by seeking out the reasons behind the very human decisions we make. This curiosity prompted a deep dive series on his podcast into artificial intelligence: "The AI End Game," tracing AI's evolution to how it will impact our democracy and what guardrails need to be applied. This week, Chris joins Nicolle to talk about how Democrats can rebuild faith in government in a “low trust” democracy, what we can learn from our political past “while not being obsessed with it and trapped in it” and what deeper questions we should be asking about AI. And in his search to understand this technology, he discovered an unintended source of inspiration because “it brings us back in some ways to what we find beautiful and thrilling about being human.”

Search "Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast" to listen to the full series, "The AI End Game."

A Note to Listeners: As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together.

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Tim Miller has some ideas about how Democrats can seize this moment as President Trump’s poll numbers continue to decline. A GOP strategist turned never-Trumper, the host of “The Bulwark Daily” podcast now commits himself to dispelling the MAGA myth full time. “Hopefully, that ripples out in a way that’s useful,” he says. He and Nicolle identify a shift in Trump’s more casual supporters, as the manosphere sours on the president and Tim hears MAGA focus group participants acknowledge that Trump “doesn't seem like he's focused on me at all." Miller also challenges center-left Democratic politicians to identify which faults of the party allowed Trump to win a second term (“What’s on your red hat?”). Looking to the midterms and the start of the presidential race next year, Miller says that the “scariest” half of the Trump presidency lies ahead — and we’ll need to stay sharp. “Take a vacation,” he tells Nicolle. “We’re gonna have so much work to do.”

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Tim Snyder sees through the myth of President Trump’s strength. “He’s not actually strong,” the “On Tyranny” author and historian tells Nicolle, likening the Commander in Chief to the smoke and mirrors that build up the image of the Wizard of Oz. “He’s not actually even that good at being corrupt.” As a scholar of autocracies and failed experiments in democracy, Snyder expresses his disappointment with the American disposition that freedom is guaranteed “because it’s America,” telling Nicolle that we make ourselves more vulnerable by assuming that this democracy will continue to thrive on its own. It must be protected and fought for, he argues — and Americans must take hold of the story, even if it’s uncomfortable. Stressing the importance of the midterms, his advice to voters is to act and engage: “[Trump] only wins if everybody thinks they can do nothing,” he says. “If everybody — or even most people — think that they can do a little bit, it's game over.” 

A Note to Listeners: As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together.

Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content and early access to new episodes of "The Best People."

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Marc Elias is adamant: what’s dangerous in this era is that many people think President Trump’s second term is just business as usual. As the administration works to undermine fair elections ahead of the midterms, the chair of Elias Law Group and founder of “Democracy Docket” joins Nicolle to analyze Trump’s tactics — and why the Democratic party needs to stop operating on the “presumption that there is good faith” on the opposing team. In Elias’ telling, “Democrats need to be the party that is fighting corruption, is fighting the restriction of the [voting] franchise, is fighting for people to be able to influence their government.”  And while he’s concerned over what a post-midterm Trump administration might unleash, Elias makes it clear that once Trump leaves office, he won’t let the president's allies forget their mistakes — and he believes the world won’t either.

A Note to Listeners: As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together. 

Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content and early access to new episodes of "The Best People."

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Brian Driscoll doesn’t have to be a “hopeful guy” — and yet, he is. A year ago, he was fired as acting director of the FBI after resisting demands to hand over the names of agents who worked on January 6 insurrection investigations. Now, the career special agent joins Nicolle to reflect on his decades-long tenure at the department and the state of the FBI under its current leadership. “The American people deserve better than any agenda can offer,” he says. “They deserve selfless service.” He talks candidly about the events leading up to his firing, the infamous clerical error that led to his promotion as acting head of the bureau and the “devastating” political retribution campaign carried out by the Trump administration against veterans of the agency. Still, Driscoll believes his former colleagues “will not fall into complacency” and stands firm on the fact that — once the fog created by the second Trump term has cleared — countless exiled public servants are standing by, ready to rebuild.

A Note to Listeners: As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together.

Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content and early access to new episodes of "The Best People."

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Sue Gordon is indefatigable. Nicolle calls her a “unicorn”: a rare case of somebody who served with honor and integrity as the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence — and who Donald Trump, at least for a while, kept around. “I am for America,” Gordon says, declaring that as her North Star. Throughout her decorated career in intelligence, Gordon has always understood that telling the truth is imperative in keeping the president informed and the nation safe. She talks bluntly about the administration putting innocent people in harm’s way in Iran, calls Jay Clayton’s refusal to state that Joe Biden won the 2020 election during his confirmation hearing “100% disqualifying” and points to Trump being “more cruel” in his second term. She does not believe, however, that the president cannot be reasoned with. Taking a beat, she says: “Maybe I need to call him.”

A Note to Listeners: As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together.

Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content and early access to new episodes of "The Best People."

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If historian Heather Cox Richardson ever had an agenda, it’d be protecting democracy. The history professor and author of the “Letters from an American” Substack joins Nicolle this week to consider the knock-on effects of economic pain at the grocery store and unpredictability at the podium on voter’s perception of Trumpism. She reflects on violence from ICE officers in her home state of Maine, the whiplash messaging in the war with Iran and concerns about the cyclosporiasis outbreak — which she sees as emblematic of places “where the federal government used to protect American families and are no longer.” Throughout, Richardson seamlessly adds historical context to our modern-day political struggles. And she makes it clear that we may already have what we need to recover: “What Americans are really doing in this moment is recovering their agency,” she says. “That’s a vibe shift.”

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Nicolle sits down with her dear friend and colleague Rachel Maddow for a revealing conversation about the state of the nation and Rachel's coverage of the Trump administration's cruel and violent immigration policies in the wake of two tragic shooting deaths by ICE agents in the span of a week. They also delve into how Trump's erratic behavior, which Rachel describes as his spiral into "emotional incontinence," has made him incapable of making strategic decisions. The duo talks about the dangers of his incoherence where the war with Iran is concerned, his fantastical claims of charging a toll on the Strait of Hormuz and how all of it is building up to a backlash against Trump and the Republican Party.

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Jim Acosta is pretty sure that when 60 Minutes is in trouble, we're all in trouble. A year and a half after stepping down from a storied career as a White House correspondent and anchor at CNN, the independent journalist begins by addressing his departure from the network: “There was intense pressure for me to be gone,” he tells Nicolle. But there is a freedom he now relishes to speak openly and directly about the dark corners the president has awoken in his second term. Calling the 2024 election “a terrible national mistake,” he tells Nicolle that “now we're on the dark side of the moon and the question becomes, can we get out of this on the other side?” They touch on Trump’s financial schemes, the public framing of Hunter Biden’s struggle with addiction and Acosta’s own experiences covering Trump across his two terms — noting that this is “not the same Donald Trump I covered” in 2016.  And as the nation eyes the coming midterms, he notes, "the American people still have the ability to surprise us."

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Senator and Pastor Raphael Warnock recognizes that “Democracy is the house we live in. It's the context in which we get to fight.” Coming off the release of his new book, “The Crooked Places Made Straight,” he joins Nicolle to talk about an increasingly activist court and a system he sees as “overrun with money and corruption.” They begin by addressing why decisions from the Supreme Court on redistricting (Louisiana v. Callais) and ending temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants (Mullin v. Doe) have made, in the Senator’s estimation, "the most activist court we have seen certainly in my lifetime.” He also grapples with the blatant grift happening in plain sight by President Trump and his family, and why Republicans only seem to show courage on their way out the door. But even as voting rights are threatened and wealth inequality continues to grow, Senator Warnock urges us to renew our faith — in our beliefs and in one another. And he holds a deep-rooted belief that while these rights are not inevitable, following the example of his mentor, the late John Lewis, “when you don't know what else to do, keep walking. Keep walking across that bridge.”

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Jack Smith is speaking out. In his first news interview since criminally charging Donald Trump and finding himself on the President’s enemies list, the former DOJ Special Counsel sits down with Nicolle Wallace. On “Deadline: White House,” he and Nicolle discuss all things Trump: the threats, the conspiracies, the attacks on the rule of law, and the existential threat he poses to our democracy. In fact, Jack Smith understands better than anybody the kind of crucial moment in which American politics is in. As he tells Nicolle, "we are facing an attack on the rule of law that is different in kind and scope to anything I've seen in my lifetime.”

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