Ian, you're the head of a nonprofit organization called Protect Democracy.

So has your group failed?

You know, in a lot of ways, yes.

And in another fundo went away, absolutely not.

We just had an election that was free and fair and the American people made a choice and that

is democracy. And in that sense, democracy has been protected. But the people have elected a

regime that has shown every indication that it may not be willing to allow democracy to endure

past this election. In that case, I think we have potentially failed. That is Ian Basson, co-founder of Protect Democracy.

He's also a lawyer who served in the Obama administration

and a writer who has sounded alarms about the rise of authoritarianism.

And I'm Brian Seltter.

Let me welcome you to Inside the Hive from Vanity Fair,

where this week we're going inside that scandalous morning Joe meeting at Mar-a-Lago and then zooming way out to understand

what media outlets and other institutions are facing as Trump prepares a retake office.

I'm also joined by Hive editor Michael Coutarone. Hey, Michael. Hey, how's it gone?

It's going well as it can. Why do you think Joe Scarborough and Mika Bresenski traveling down to

Marlago for that face-to-face has struck such a nerve this week? Yeah, I mean, it was quite a way to

start a week with Joe and Mika revealing first thing Monday morning that they were recently down in Mara Lago to meet with Donald Trump.

And this comes after years of not just being critical of Donald Trump, but framing Trump and his rhetoric as authoritarian.

And so I think the timing of it made this particularly concerning to a lot of people, that all of a sudden Donald Trump is returning to power and people who were critical of him in the media are trekking down to Mar-a-Lago to curry favor with him.

Now, I understand the argument Joe and Mika would put out that he is the president of elect.

They should be communicating with the incoming administration.

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