 MSNBC political analyst Elise Jordan spoke with 10 Trump supporters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, and she's trying to gauge where they're at with regard to their belief in the big lie. I mean, a lot of time has passed since Trump told his big lie in 2020, since the January 6th insurrection, and we have a lot of new information, more details. So how far have they come? How far have they progressed? Was their opinion changed at all? And the answer, as you're going to see, is deeply, deeply disturbing and depressing, quite frankly. Doug Mascheriano was at the insurrection, and he was photographed breaching one of the restricted areas. Is that okay? Which area? Because I saw a video where Capitol officers were taking away barriers and unlocking doors. So it shouldn't be disqualifying for an elected official if they participated in January 6th? He didn't strike anybody? He didn't hurt anybody? And the only one that died was a protester there, not a Capitol police officer. An unarmed female veteran. That's the only one that died. That's the only one who died. A police officer did die. No. It was a stroke. That's not on-site. That's not on-site. That's because he shouldn't have been a police officer. So what do you make, though, overall of January 6th? I mean, it was watching that footage. It was pretty disturbing. I mean, there were people throwing excrement at the walls, and it was, you know, it's the Capitol. It looked a lot like Antifa's actions. Except on a much smaller scale, it looked the same as the Black Lives Matter rights. That's what I saw the similarities to be. Many anapolis burns Kenosha. But so it's okay just because one side that you disagree with? No. I'm saying Antifa infiltrated. It's good for one. Anybody who arms anybody, anybody who caused property destruction, that needs to be dealt with. But if you're there making your voice heard at the People's House, no less, that's, again, it's a fundamental constitutional right of an American citizen, and people should not be being held political prisoner because of it. For misdemeanors. That's East Germany. That's East Germany. Tactics. Yeah, that's what's scary. It was an actual fiery, but mostly peaceful protest. And the other ones that were the... Was the protest legitimate in your eyes because... Our administration, I feel like, is using it as their Reichstag fire. That's exactly what they're using it as. Do you think that President Trump could have quelled the violence that day? Not him. I don't think so. No. No. It started while he was still speaking. I was actually there. I was there to see what I thought was going to be the last time I ever saw Trump, a little of that. So did he tell everybody to go and start riding? No. I didn't think so. No. And actually, I stayed for the whole speech, like a ton of people did. And then we all headed to the Capitol because he said, let's go to the Capitol and peacefully let our voices be heard. And we get to the Capitol and we're like, what the hell's going on? Because it had already happened. I'm pretty sure I saw Democratic operatives instigating people to cross barriers. You were there that day. What do you think? No. I mean, why would he tell people to do that? Why did the people who did that not wait around for him to tell them to do that? He said that around the end of his speech, if I remember correctly. It happened before he even said that, I believe. I mean, I think the timeline, didn't he speak? Because he was back at the White House and then he tweeted. So he tweeted. Yeah, but after people were still there. And stuff, yeah. But it started while he was still speaking. And they talk about the fact that, oh, he didn't do anything for this amount of time. It's like, well, he was giving his speech and he didn't even know about it. I didn't know about it. Nancy Pelosi denied his request of several thousand National Guard troops. Well, it actually isn't in Pelosi's power to deploy National Guard. She's speaker of the House. She's no authority over that whatsoever. And frankly, I think that's a good thing. Well then, but even so. Isn't she in charge of security? If there was a capital risk that she was offered them, why didn't she preemptively beef up capital police? What she does have this the authority to do. Capital police are there. But apparently they were taken off guard. Yeah, that was so incredibly demoralizing to watch because the health and well-being of our democracy hinges on people like that. Whether or not we can go forward as a democracy in this country, that is going to hinge on whether or not people like that wake up and they don't seem intelligent enough to be introspective at all or actually accept facts. They're just brainwashed. It's a cult and they refuse to believe anything that we've all learned. Like if you go back to the videos that I did in January of 2021 where we looked at what Trump voters were saying about the insurrection and the big lie, you can compare that to right now and it's virtually indistinguishable. They're saying the same things. The talking points haven't changed at all. They're still saying it's antifa. They're still saying that Democratic Party operatives instigated the January 6th insurrection. Nothing has changed in their mind. They haven't adapted with new information. They've tuned it all out. And do you understand why that's so troubling? In order for democracy to survive, we have to have people buy into the process. We have to have people accept that our elections are being conducted in a free and fair manner, but they don't believe that. And it's not like this is just a small handful of people who believe in this fringe conspiracy theory. This is a substantial portion of the GOP base. A Monmouth poll from late September found that 61% of Republicans don't think Biden won the election fair and square. Now Yahoo News and Yuga have conducted nine polls over the course of the January 6th hearings and they did find that the hearings put a dense in the amount of Republicans that they surveyed that believed in Trump's big lie. But the dent is very, very small. It went from 66% of Republicans believing in Trump's big lie down to 60%. A six-point drop. And that's it. We're not talking about a 30 to 40% drop. We're talking about a 6% drop. And other polls taken in summer show that public opinion, at least where it counts with Trump supporters like the ones we just watched, wasn't moved at all by the January 6th hearings. So the question is, and this is not a question that I'm asking in a rhetorical sense, I'm asking because I genuinely don't know the answer to it, how are we supposed to go forward as a country? How can democracy survive? We're not even to a point where we can debate these Republicans on their deranged ideas. We can't debate them about the dumb fuck trickle-down economic theories that they continuously support election after election that fuck over themselves. We can't even get to that point. They still don't even believe that the elections are safe. What are we supposed to do? Like, look at their answers here. So they didn't think that it was disqualifying because the president of the country, the president of the country, was at the Capitol on January 6th and he's a gubernatorial candidate blaming Antifa. They don't blame Trump for the insurrection, despite seeing his words. They think that Nancy Pelosi denied Trump's request to send in the National Guard and they thought that she was in charge of security at the House. They don't blame him for doing nothing because they believe that, I guess, the insurrection took place and him getting back to the Oval Office. Like, the timeline doesn't make sense. What they're saying doesn't make sense. All you have to do is think about it a little bit and their timelines don't really add up. Their numbers are off. But... nothing. They're brainwashed. This is a cult. So how are we supposed to go forward as a country when we have one of two major parties with 40 of their base being in a cult? Do these people seem intelligent enough to be introspective and change their opinions, admit that they're wrong about anything? No, these are dumb people. Sorry, it's crass, but it's true. These people are too far gone. They're stupid. So we are crossing our fingers and hoping that these very stupid people stop believing in stupid lies so that way we can at least have a democracy. Maybe our democracy doesn't function very well. Maybe we need to do things to consolidate democracy and make it better. Expand suffrage, right? But we can't do that unless these stupid people stop believing in stupid lies, but they're not going to do that because the main culprit, Donald Trump, is the leader to be their nominee again. So the question is, what do we do? There's no answer to that. But I can tell you, it doesn't look very good. It doesn't look good for American democracy. These lies are dangerous. Democracy cannot withstand these lies, these claims of fraud. Democracy's breakdown. Democracies die when the authoritarian politicians and leaders and demagogues start using these lies to consolidate power because they can't win legitimately. So watching this panel was deeply unsettling because nothing has changed. In the event since 2020 and 2022, we had a substantial number of Republicans, not all of them, but most of them go from believing in the big lie to rejecting it, or at least questioning it. I would feel a little bit more optimistic. But because so many Republicans haven't changed their mind at all, I feel deeply demoralized and I fear for the future of democracy in this country, and even if Republicans did not believe that the election was stolen, think of how easily it is to distract them. Right? You can get them to support politicians who want to cut taxes for the rich and cut social services, like Social Security and Medicaid, but voters get distracted by the dumbest things, like CRT or gender studies in elementary schools, which is not happening, but it takes just a little bit to distract them. They're like cats with a string, right? You just dangle it in front of them and everything else fades away into the background. They have tunnel vision. I don't know what to do. This is the result of the Republican Party since the 80s, with Ronald Reagan continuously pushing and pushing and pushing to the right, pandering to more extremists, and now we're to a point where extremists have taken over the Republican Party. The monkeys have taken over the zoo, and now democracy and all of us may suffer because of it, because of these stupid fucking people who refuse to wake up and see the light. And I did. And I did. Recovery mode, my brain, I did. Recovery mode, my brain, I did.