BROOKLYN—The line wraps around the block outside the Howard Gilman Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. We're here for the afternoon session of "MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024." Everyone looks and talks like the sort of person who would pay hundreds of dollars to wait in line on a college football Saturday to watch Joy Reid and Alex Wagner giggle about potato chips. A gentleman in his 50s, which puts him well below the median age for this crowd, has traveled all the way from San Francisco. "I wake up every morning at 3 a.m. to watch Morning Joe," he tells his new like-minded friends. "I think Steve Kornacki is the cutest little thing."
MSNBC Live is the new event series announced in late 2023 to accommodate Luke Russert's triumphant return to the liberal network. The 39-year-old nepo wunderkind famously quit his job in 2016 to embark on a "quest for enlightenment," which he documented in his accidentally self-deprecating memoir, Look For Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself. Having found himself while drinking and philandering and Instagram posting his way around the world, Russert landed a gig as host and creative director of MSNBC Live. "Democracy 2024" is the first of its kind. Russert walks on stage (about 30 minutes late) to a raucous ovation. He delivers a brief schtick, which he'll repeat almost verbatim for the evening session crowd, and gives a special shout out to Ron, who is here celebrating his 75th birthday.
Ron and roughly 4,000 others have flocked here to be entertained. It wasn't cheap. A couple who bought the least expensive tickets to all four offerings—two panel sessions, a movie screening, and the "This Is Who We Are" dinner party—would end up shelling out more than $2,100 for the privilege. NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of the corporate behemoth responsible for your monthly Comcast bills, did not respond to requests for comment on how much money the event earned and what percentage, if any, would be donated to charitable organizations or other groups working to advance "democracy."
They have also come to be reassured—that they're on the side of truth and justice, that their side is winning. Kornacki is a bona fide rock star, but his opening act on the state of the election fails to deliver the goods. Kamala Harris might be slightly ahead in the polls, he says, but the race is "exceedingly close." MSNBC host Katy Tur prods him to say there's a chance that Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) might lose in November, but Kornacki has too much self-respect. Anything could happen, he suggests, but that's not what the faithful came to hear.
The next panel fares a little better. Longtime anchor Andrea Mitchell, 77, is joined by Claire McCaskill, the former Democratic senator, and Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary who left that role for a functionally identical one hosting a show on MSNBC. "We can't hear you!" an old white lady shouts from the back as Mitchell starts to speak. They boost her mic volume, but that does little to quell the intermittent shushing from seasoned library scolds that persists throughout the segment.
What happens next is difficult to explain to anyone who was alive and paying attention at any point between 2002 and 2016. McCaskill praises Dick Cheney, the former vice president sometimes referred to as "Satan" on MSNBC, for his recent endorsement of Harris. The crowd in this Brooklyn opera house, which offers free tampons in the men's bathroom, squeals with delight and erupts in deafening applause. Most of these people are probably still getting fundraising emails from MoveOn.Org. Alas, they are less enthusiastic when Mitchell describes Hamas as an evil terrorist organization. Doing what comes naturally, Psaki quickly changed the subject. The war in Gaza was never mentioned again.
Joy Reid and Alex Wagner are up next. Adweek accurately reports that Reid received a "Luke Skywalker-style hero’s welcome" in her hometown, with "multiple audience members leaping up from their seats and shouting her name." These people are not well, but Wagner knows exactly what to say to get them nodding along and feeling better about themselves. "Harris's candidacy represents an affirmation that the path Obama opened for the country might actually be its destiny," she gushes. "It's not just a Democrat [who] might save the country from Donald Trump. It's a Democrat who could meaningfully move the ball forward and finally shatter that last glass ceiling."
There aren't many words to describe how the crowd reacts. "Orgasmically" is one. But that is also how they react every time they hear a word, name, or prediction that affirms their righteous conviction that Trump and his supporters are bad. This building has become a revivalist church for godless libs or, if you prefer, childless cat ladies and their clinically depressed husbands.
During the evening session, when The Weekend co-host Alicia Menendez frames the election as "a choice between democracy and autocracy," another old white lady belts out, "Amen!" The MSNBC celebs who appear on stage are clearly a bit flustered by the constant interruption; they can barely finish a sentence. But that doesn't stop them from playing the hits.
"We have to resolve the big problem in front of us," says Michael Steele, the "good" kind of Republican who supports Democrats. "And that is a former president who is illiberal [yes], who is ill-fitted [mm-hmm] for the responsibilities and the duties of the office [that's right], and should be ... nowhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue [hysterical cheering]." They even agree when Symone Sanders-Townsend, another former Democratic spokeswoman, says that "housing is literally unobtainable" under the Biden-Harris administration.
Just when things are starting to quiet down, Ari Melber takes the stage. "If you believe in facts, make some noise!" he beckons. We oblige. "If you believe in justice ..." MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann, a quasi-religious figure due to his role as lead prosecutor of the Robert Mueller investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, brings the banter. He mentions the possibility of Melber doing a "mosh pit" (he means crowd surfing) and asks The Beat host how he became "so adept at quoting musical lyrics."
At some point during the segment—Melber is discussing (with a straight face) the problem of "polarization and people living in different pseudo-realities"—an old white lady begins to stack, unstack, then restack her three empty drink containers. It is obnoxiously loud. She is promptly shushed by the old white lady sitting next to her. This goes on for some time. Eventually the woman rolls out of her seat into the aisle. Is she OK? "No, I'm drunk," she says, wobbling toward the exit. "I gotta go." Your humble correspondent and several other attendees step in to prevent a disastrous fall until an usher arrives to escort her out the door.
The next act, Stephanie Ruhle, is a special kind of obnoxious. Best known for having an illicit relationship with Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, the former Wall Street executive epitomizes the sneering condescension of our liberal elites. She starts by scolding Americans for noticing inflation and blaming President Biden when they should be thanking him. "It has been a great recovery," she says. "The problem is when you're at ShopRite buying London Broil and it's $15, you don't think, 'it would be $22 if I was in Portugal.'"
Ruhle insists the media coverage of Kamala Harris has been extremely unfair, and delivers one of the biggest applause lines of the day. "[Harris's] plan is more pro-business, is more centrist than President Biden's, but what's truly twisted is that people aren't taking the time to see that," she says. "And when people say, 'Oh, she's super progressive,' what they're really saying is, 'she's a black woman.'" The liberal audience cheers again when Ruhle stresses the importance of corporate CEOs, the stock market, and deficit reduction. It's as if the 2012 election never happened.
We don't have time to stick around and watch headliners Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell delight the crowd with their quirky banter. (Delight is an understatement.) We are running late for the 7 p.m. showing of From Russia with Lev, a new Maddow-produced documentary about Lev Parnas, the obscure former Trump associate with 100 percent name recognition among MSNBC viewers and zero percent among normal people who don't light a Robert Mueller prayer candle every morning. This is Maddow's first major film project since signing a $30 million annual contract in 2021 to facilitate her transition from host to multimedia tycoon.
The film recounts how Parnas, a Ukrainian-born "hustler," got caught up in Rudy Giuliani's scheme to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden. He has since renounced Trump, and is trying to rehabilitate his (still obscure) image after serving 20 months in prison for campaign finance violations. Hence the documentary. If you live in a nursing home and can't turn off your television, or if you enjoy gratuitous close-ups of Giuliani's teeth, this film is for you. Nevertheless, we're glad we stuck it out because the final scene was a sight to behold.
Parnas is visibly nervous as he walks into an empty conference room. Hunter Biden is waiting for him. The two men embrace, and Parnas fights back tears as Hunter accepts his apology. "Awwwww," the viewers gasp, perhaps fighting back tears of their own. Hunter delivers some canned lines about how unfairly he's been treated. "Addiction is not an excuse, but it's an explanation," he says. "Truth and love will always prevail."
During the post-film panel discussion, director Billy Corben extols the "genuine" interaction. He half-jokingly suggests that Hunter and Lev could go on tour together, and it's certainly not the craziest idea we've heard. Two consummate hustlers (and seasoned strip club patrons) seeking redemption (and profit) after being "victimized" by Trump. MSNBC should make it happen. Democracy 2025, here we come.
