on the stand in new york today? >> so i increasingly feel, and you'll have to let me know at 7:00. i don't have the training to analyze donald trump anymore. i need a psychologist or a psychiatrist. i don't know how much of this was as some of the journalists suggested was performative deflection, and i don't know how much of this is actual holy you know what, they took my toys, right. i think that he cherishes his company more than democracy. i accept the journalism that supports this trial means more to him than some of the federal ones that are to come. i don't have a good enough answer for you about whether it is performance art or an actual meltdown. >> quickly, i have to ask, we've got the political lens, and then we've got the actual legal lens. i'm not going to ask about the legal lens. there's tons to talk about that i'll be going over in the next hour. politically, do you think this was a successful strategy for the former president today? >> i think those are, you know, he's up in all the polls, i guess so. he's always going to be up in the polls. i think my old party has become post truth. they probably don't have a lot of segments planned tonight on what happened in the courtroom about whether the predicate for the first run for office, the success that he had as a businessman was fraudulent all along. i don't know how much they're consuming the legal facts of this case. i think, and again, that's where your legal conversation or legal experts will tell you, i think most legal experts think he didn't really advance his own legal case today, but i think politically it's pretty clear not much matters. >> i've taken enough of your time, and we are going to get started, nicolle, thank you for your coverage. have a great night. >> have a great show. i'm charles coleman jr. in for ari melber on "the beat." donald trump taking the stand. the former president called to testify in the new york civil fraud trial, testifying under oath for five hours. nbc news reporting his rage came out on the stand today, and that he seemed restless while also losing his composure as he lashed out at the judge. trump saying the judge, quote, called me a fraud, and he didn't know anything about me. well, to be clear, he did not call him a fraud, but that did not stop donald trump from being donald trump. he also said to the judge, quote, you believe this political hack back there. general letitia james, and that's unfortunate. nbc news detailing he was, quote, losing it on the witness stand. and when he finished his outburst, the ag's lawyer asked him, quote, done? to which trump replied. done. the only thing that i wish in that moment that the attorney general's attorney would have asked him, are you finished or are you done. that would have really made my night. but he didn't. despite trump's antics he made major admissions about the fraud allegations on the stand. when he was asked by the lawyer's from the ag's office if he ever thought, quote, the values were off in your statement of financial condition, trump replied, quote, yes. on occasion, both high and low. now, at one point, donald trump even agreed that the financial statements that were used to induce banks to lend money. see, and this is a point that's really important because it's key to the attorney general's case against the former president and his organization. and earlier in the day, donald trump slamming the trial as he walked into court. let's take a listen. >> it's a very unfair situation. this is really election interference, that's all it is. this trial is ridiculous, it's very unfair, but in the meantime, they effectively understand it, they see it, and they don't like it. they don't like it. it's political warfare, as you would call it. >> now, when reporters asked how the trial was going, trump made a motion that was essentially zipping his laps. the attorney general responded basically saying the following. >> mr. trump obviously can engage in all of these distractions, and that is exactly what he did, what he committed on the stand today. i will not be bullied. i will not be harassed. this case will go on. >> trump's defense team chose not to cross examine him after the attorney general's office was done. joining me to discuss all of this is neal katyal, former acting solicitor general, and christie greenberg, formatter prosecutor for the southern district of new york. i want to get right into this, neal, i'm going to ask you, was this the donald trump you expected to hear take the stand today? >> so, first of all, i just want to say, charles, it's a delight to see you in the chair. great to see you there, my friend. i was not surprised because, you know, trump did what he always did. he does cover a lot of ground. he attacked the lawyers. he attacked the new york attorney general. he attacked the judge. for all of his attacks, there was one key thing missing from trump's testimony, which is any semblance of a colorable defense, and that is donald trump through and through. it's distraction and the like, and that's why you say this kind of crazy, the antics and behavior. he was not acting like any litigant i have ever seen in any courtroom, let alone someone who's a former high ranking government official. he was rude, he was obnoxious, he was trying to provoke the judge. look, as you know, i have represented murderers and white collar criminals. i have never seen anyone behave like this, they respect the court and the process. one last thing i would say about your question, in a way trump was successful today by his metric. because we're talking more about his behavior and his temper tantrums than we are about the fact that the guy committed serious fraud. it's a distraction technique, and in some ways it's working. it obviously won't work in the court of law, though. >> i'm going to borrow a phrase from the former president in terms of your answer, and it's, i've never seen anything like it. practicing as a trial attorney, i have never seen anything like this in terms of a witness on the stand in court. i want to pick up where neal left off. essentially, do you think he did more damage to his case with respect to his testimony or is there some silver lining that we're all missing that may mean that he did something positive or that he can turn into a win for himself? >> you know, it should have been a lot more damaging for him than it was. like you said, i've never seen anything like this before. it seemed like a scene out of my cousin vinny, there's the point in my cousin vinny where, you know, the judge says to vinny, you're giving me an attitude, and he said, what else is new. what happens after that, the judge holds him in contempt and holds him in jail for the night. that's what would happen for any other defendant who acted this way, who was calling the judge extremely hostile, who was, you know, rolling his eyes and making snide remarks the whole time, attacking the judge, attacking the ag. i mean, it was really outrageous behavior. it would be a comedy if it wasn't so tragic that he's able to get away with that when no other defendant, no other witness in any other trial would be able to. >> neal, i want to point out, this is a civil trial, a bench trial. there is no jury, no cameras in the courtroom. his freedom is not at stake in terms of whether he will go to jail. the judge has ruled on summary judgment. you have all of these things i want to remind the audience of. this is different than anything he's currently facing. for anyone watching who says maybe this is a preview for what we can expect to see for donald trump, whether it's fani willis or jack smith, what do you say to that? >> yeah, i mean, first of all, i think your point about this being a bench trial is really important because trump's techniques today might have worked if there was a distraction of a jury involved that doesn't know exactly what kind of testimony is relevant or something like that. but this is a bench trial overseen by a highly trained judge who knows what to listen for, and trump did himself no favors today. the one way it might bear on jack smith and the other things to the extent that trump took the stand, which i don't think he ever would in a criminal case, but, you know, trump is so egotistical, and i think that's where james' attorneys today really had some perchance. trump himself wanted to brag that he was in the room, that he actually had a lot to do with the valuations, even though, you know, the prior defense strategy was all of this real estate stuff was done by other people, not by trump. trump started bragging about his role, and was forced to acknowledge he had overvalued some properties. his ego did him in today. to the extent we could get him to testify in a criminal trial, i think the same thing would happen, but i doubt that that would happen. i don't think any lawyer would let donald trump testify in a criminal matter. >> i have been putting my smart money on the idea that he will not be taking the stand in any of his criminal trials, and i am pretty confident is standing by that, along with most lawyers that i know. let's talk nuts and bolts. so the prosecutor was able to elicit some admissions from donald trump about the fact that, number one, he was aware that there were some valuations that were inaccurate. he claimed to be both low and high. what do you make of that, how helpful or harmful do you think that will be to his individual defense? >> well, some of those he had to acknowledge, like trump tower, for example, you know, the evaluation there dealt with a size that was three times larger than what it was. and, you know, just think of anybody who's apply to go a bank for a loan, and says, here's my asset or my house or my apartment, and it's three times bigger than what it is, and the valuation is 400% larger than what it actually is. that's not accounting principles. that's not complicated accounting dealings. that's just plain fraud, and it was very clear that he had to acknowledge that was fraud. and so he says, it's a mistake, that's how he gets away with it. it was just a mistake. i don't know what happens there. it's like, that's not a mistake. that's a huge, huge difference. that's egregious is what it is. >> neal, i have to ask you, to the extent that there have been other witnesses, whether currently or in the past, you have weisselberg who is taken a plea, and in this trial, another witness who's basically sort of said they are also partly responsible for some of these missed evaluations as part of these documents. to what extent do you think that also may provide cover for donald trump and the rest of the trump organization, namely his children? >> it might have provided some cover. that was the defense they were trying to go with. trump was out of the loop on this stuff. today his ego got the best of him, and he admitted to being involved in all of this stuff, and signing all of these certifications, and effectively lying on all of these certifications, and there's a reason why we ask people to put their name on things. they have to stand by what they signed, and trump's defense today was, well, the bank still got a good deal, i paid them back for their loans. but the point of what the new york attorney general said is, no, the banks got a raw deal. if you lie about your assets and say you have a lot more, you're going to get a lower interest rate. the banks would have charged him a much higher interest rate if he told the truth, and sure, he eventually paid the loans back, but he never paid the higher interest rate back. that's the claim that the new york attorney general is making. i heard zero answer for that today, and what today confirmed is that trump was involved in this scheme. >> neal katyal, super lawyer and msnbc legal analyst, thank you for helping get us s on a very big legal day, and if you want to see more from my friend and colleague, neal, visit msnbc/openingarguments, and with that, coming up, an expert is going to break down trump's wild claims about his business and how much he's actually worth. plus, why trump's defense team may not be happy about his testimony today. later on in the program, new reporting on how trump will now try to misuse the military and the law if he's successful in winning the election. i'm charles coleman jr. in for ari on "the beat," and we'll be back in just 60 seconds. in jus. headache? better now. new mucinex kickstart gives all-in-one and done relief with a morning jolt of instant cooling sensation. it's comeback season. after advil. feeling better? on top of the worlddddd!!! before advil. advil targets pain at the source of inflammation. when pain comes for you, come back fast with advil liqui-gels. welcome back to "the beat" on msnbc. i'm charles coleman jr. in for ari tonight. somehow amid donald trump's bloefuating, puffery, and dodging, prosecutors managed to pin him down on a few things today. including an admission he made about trump tower. one of the properties that's at the center of the trial. in 2015, donald trump valued his penthouse at $327 million. this was the highest valuation of any apartment in the history of new york city. but today, in court and under oath, donald trump admitted that figure was, quote, too high. but don't think he took accountability for the misstep. he blamed a broker for the over valuation. trump also acknowledging under oath his role in putting the documents showing the value of his properties. trump saying, quote, i would look at them, meaning the documents, quote, i would see them, and i would make on occasion have some suggestions, end quote. and with trump being trump, he littered his testimony with exaggeration, and outbursts, at one point claim my network is financially more than what were on the financial statements. therefore you have no case, end quote. now, of course the judge has already ruled trump's financial disclosure forms were fraudulent. that happened already on summary judgment. the only thing we're talking about here and the remainder of this trial is what the punishment will be. joining me talk about that a little bit more, david fahrenthold, reporter with the "new york times." he has wrote extensively about trump's businesses, and won a pulitzer, and back with me is christie greenberg in studio. today you heard a lot from donald trump, a lot about what he's worth, what he's not. what struck you as someone who's followed him the most out of his testimony. >> well, it's rare you get trump in this situation, on the stand, it's where to see him questioned like that. for so long, there was nobody that would pin him down about his finances. i was surprised in a couple of ways. i was surprised that he did admit, as you said earlier to having some role in putting these financial statements together when the beginning of his defense was all about how he had no role and handed this over to other people. that never held water to me. and from what we heard, he had an active role in the inputs he gave to accountants. he was the one that told them what his properties were worth and how he got to that value. it was always going to be obvious he was the person behind it. he admitted it. i was not surprised that he filibustered and meandered. it's what he has always done when put in this situation. >> donald trump, he made a reference to, you know, this so-called disclaimer clause in his financial documents, and the disclaimer claude says, quote, or he said, quote, we have a disclaimer clause that says you don't have to get sued by the attorney general of new york. i am a lawyer. you are a lawyer. there are a lot of people out there who are not -- we all would like to know what in the world does that actually mean. >> yeah, so that disclaimer clause is not at all what donald trump says it is, right. so all the disclaimer clause is saying the accountants haven't had all the information to do a full vetting of what's in there. and what the disclaimer clause says is bad, because the accountants have had all of the access to the information, it's on the trump organization and donald trump and everybody else in the executive staff there, it is their responsibility to ensure that the information on those financial statements is accurate. so it does the opposite of what donald trump is saying that it does. it actually puts the responsibility squarely on his shoulders. >> the other thing, kristy, i keep thinking about, when you're talking about these experts and filed papers, at some point, on some level, the information has to come from is somewhere, right? they didn't just pull these numbers out of thin air. is that fair in terms of just understanding what the problem with some of the arguments that are being made by donald trump and his children are? >> it's so funny you say that because there was one point at the trial where they're asking him about what was your methodology, i think it was for wall street, what was your methodology for that valuation. he said, i can look at a property, and i can determine the value of that property. just by looking at it. it reminded me almost like the defense in the classified documents case. >> that's exactly what i was thinking. i can think about something and declassify it. >> right. and that's obviously absurd. the accountants, the people he was relying on. he constantly was looking to deflect to weisselberg, all of the people that he's looking at, he had to -- somebody had to provide them with the numbers and the information so that they could then calculate it. and, again, that comes from the top, and that's been clear in some of the other testimony in this trial. >> david, we know that a large part of what has made donald trump donald trump is this notion of "the brand. s and he's now claiming that a lot of his net worth is simply the brand itself quote, the brand value is a very big part of the value of the company. i could have added brand value and increased the value, and my financial statement would be very substantial. . i'm not the numbers guy. i'm a lawyer. i think that's a creative argument. i don't know how interesting it is, but i want to ask you as someone who sort of understands the dollars and cents of valuations much better than i do, is this a valid argument? >> well, no, for a couple of reasons. one, he actually put his brand value in some of these financial statements of financial condition. he would throw in an extra $4 billion for his brand value, based on whatever his own estimation was. the real reason it's a problem, when he said my property at 7 springs in new york is worth this, and my properties in manhattan are worth this. he didn't say they're worth this because i have a great brand. i have this many apartments that are not rent controlled. i have this many lots that are cleared for sale in development. you know, i have -- this is the size of my penthouse. those individual statements of fact, totally separate from the brand were wrong, and the valuation got built on those wrong facts. if you're going to tell a lie about the number of apartments, lots you have to sell, it doesn't matter what your brand s you've told a lie about something material. >> david fahrenthold, kristy greenberg, thank you very much. still ahead, cool lawyer, john eastman, remember that guy. he was pressed about election lies in a new interview as he faces criminal charges in georgia. we'll see what happened there. also, stunningly new reporting on trump's wild, unconstitutional plans for revenge if he is able to secure a second term in office. all that, plus, what trump's outburst on the stand means for his trials. we'll get into it all on the other side of this break. i'm charles coleman jr. and you're watching "the beat" on msnbc. g "the beat" on msnbc the right medicare plan for you. humana can help. with original medicare you're covered for hospital stays and doctor office visits, but you'll have to pay a deductible for each. a medicare supplement plan pays for some or all of your original medicare deductibles, but they may have higher monthly premiums and no prescription drug coverage. humana medicare advantage prescription drug plans include medical coverage, plus prescription drug coverage. and coverage for dental, vision, and hearing, all wrapped up into one convenient plan. plus, there's a cap on your out-of-pocket costs! humana has large networks of doctors, hospitals and specialists across 49 states. so, call or go online today and get your free decision guide. humana - a more human way to healthcare. ♪ ♪ ♪ we're building a better postal service. for more on-time deliveries. and easier, affordable ways to ship. so you can deliver even more holiday joy. the united states postal service. delivering for america. moderate to severe eczema still disrupts my skin. despite treatment it disrupts my skin with itch. it disrupts my skin with rash. but now, i can disrupt eczema with rinvoq. rinvoq is not a steroid, topical, or injection. it's one pill, once a day. many taking rinvoq saw clear or almost-clear skin while some saw up to 100% clear skin. and, they felt dramatic and fast itch relief some as early as 2 days. that's rinvoq relief. rinvoq can lower your ability to fight infections, including tb. serious infections and blood clots, some fatal, cancers including lymphoma and skin cancer, death, heart attack, stroke, and tears in the stomach or intestines occurred. people 50 and older with at least one heart disease risk factor have higher risks. don't take if allergic to rinvoq, as serious reactions can occur. tell your doctor if you are or may become pregnant. disrupt the itch and rash of eczema. talk to your doctor about rinvoq. learn how abbvie can help you save. j.p. morgan wealth management knows it's easy to get lost in investment research. get help with j.p morgan personal advisors. hey, david! ready to get started? work with advisors who create a plan with you, and help you find the right investments. so great getting to know you, let's take a look at your new investment plan. ok, great! this should have you moving in the right direction. thanks jen. get ongoing advice; and manage your investments in the chase mobile app. is it possible my network could take my business and manage your investments to the next level? it is with comcast business. powering all your devices with gig-speed wifi. and you get fast downloads and uploads. pick it up! pick it up! oh we got this! because it's powered by the next generation 10g network. more speed for your business? it's not just possible. it's happening. get started for $59.99 a month for 12 months. plus, ask how to get an $800 prepaid card with a qualifying internet bundle. comcast business, powering possibilities. welcome back to "the beat" on msnbc. i'm charles coleman jr. in for ari tonight. today in new york, donald trump repeatedly clashed with civil prosecutors while he was on the stand testifying. he lost his composure on multiple occasions. during his testimony, he said, quote, it just quickly fell off the rails as he attacked the attorney general's office, side stepped questions, and repeatedly went off on tangents, quote. he raised his voice. he slammed the judge for calling him a fraud, something that i said earlier the judge actually didn't do, and he said, quote, the fraud is on the court, quote, calling attorney general letitia james a hack multiple times. this trial, he said, was a quote, disgrace a3g policy, cry, i have never seen anything like it. i have to ask you, as one of the other lawyers, have you ever seen a defendant act like donald trump did today on the stand? >> i haven't. i'm, you know, shocked but not surprised, so i think we sort of all saw this coming. trump's going to be trump, whether it's outside the courtroom or on the stand. i did think from a defense attorney perspective he took a real hard turn from eric trump and don jr.'s, the theory they had was a tacit acknowledgment is if these valuations were wrong, then they had nothing to do with it. trump, his hubris wouldn't allow him to do that. he did make admissions that he was involved in the valuations, i like to call it the perfect call defense. he had the audacity to basically argue that the valuations were actually under valued and that he's the only person in the world basically that understands how to, you know, do these valuations. my favorite was on the square footage of his penthouse apartment, he said that perhaps that square footage, which was inflated three times what it actually was, perhaps that included the rooftop space. so he is, you know, making bold assertions, i don't think it helped him, but again, i don't think, you know, there were any real bomb shells today. we all sort of saw this coming. >> joyce, you know, i always love taking off the glasses and talking straight to the lawyers, and that's why i'm glad you and caroline are here. i got to ask you a two-part question, essentially, you know, there's this notion of the negative inferences that the judge said that he would begin to draw if donald trump kept his behavior up. can you just explain for everyone what that means and how significant it is, but then as a former prosecutor, how much would you be excited by that if you're the prosecutor on this case, hearing that from the judge, knowing you're going to start to get potentially inference after inference drawn your way? >> yeah, so i'll start with the second part, charles. because you know that's the fun part of this question. if you're one of the civil prosecutors working for the state of new york trying this case, you're overjoyed by donald trump's performance today. he is a terrible witness, and if, and i assume that they are fani willis, and jack smith are watching, they, too, are happy to see that the former president has all the self-control of a toddler when he takes the witness stand. this is a civil case. it's a bench trial. that means the judge is standing in for the jury. he's deciding disputed issues of fact. he gets to resolve whose testimony he believes and whose he doesn't. when donald trump engages in a series of answers like he did today that aren't responsive to the question, the judge can draw a negative inference, and he can determine much like a jury would that if trump won't answer legitimate questions that are posed to him, it's because the answers would be bad for his case. and the judge is entitled to do that, question upon question, it builds, and then trump makes the startling acknowledgment that his signature is on documents that go to banks that are intended to get those banks to loan him money, and those statements contain false information. it is essentially an admission to fraud, and of course the judge has already determined in advance of trial that the attorney general was due to have a judgment that fraud did exist, that the trump organization, the individual defendants engaged in fraud. the whole ball game for trump was trying to preserve that issue on appeal and asking an appellate court to rule that the judge's finding about fraud was wrong. today, he in essence confessed to that fraud, and he has done nothing but harm his own appellate prospects. >> you brought the word appeal up, and i want to shift gears and focus right on that. caroline, you know, i've said that donald trump, just like any other witness is under no obligation to make the prosecutor's job easier. in fact, he's under no obligation to make the judge's job easier or to be cooperative in that respect. he is going to try to apply pressure to all of them. i have also thought that it's possible that donald trump might be pushing the boundaries in order to create an issue for appeal, perhaps, if the judge says something out of anger or he can get the prosecutor to say something that might cause a problem later on. is there any validity or worry or concern that what he's doing could set up potentially an appealable issue? >> yeah, charles, i've heard that theory being floated today. i think because just how unhinged he has been on the stand, people say, okay, this must be sort of a hail mary move. i will note towards the end of the day today, chris kise got up and said he was going to file a motion with respect to the gag order. at one point, engoron said i'm not going to allow you to file that motion. he walked that back later. that raised my eyebrows, obviously they have a right to file that motion, but i think that in terms of appealable issues, as joyce noted, this negative inference, this assessment of credibility as the witness as we know, it's engoron stands in for the jury, as we know as lawyers, are ones that trial courts don't question at the trial court level, and engoron has said straight out open court when he put donald trump on the stand askin him about the gag order, about talking about his clerk, he said, i don't believe you. i find your testimony not credible. so if he did it then, i think it's more than likely that he will do it when the testimony matters more on the stand now with respect to the actual substance of these issues. >> tons of legal talk, which means that i get to talk to all my lawyer friends. joyce vance and caroline polisi, thank you so much for joining me. still ahead, one of the key architects of the january 6th coup is speaking up and out in a defiant new interview. but first, brand new revelations about trump's plan to seek revenge if he makes it back into the oval office. i'm charles coleman jr., and you're watching "the beat." stay right there. and you're watching "the beat. stay right there it's a very detailed thing and the pressure's all on me. i noticed i really wasn't quite as sharp as i was. my boss told me about prevagen and i started taking it. i feel sharper. my memory's a lot better. it just works. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. 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>> yes. >> so congratulations on 20 years. one of my favorite social followers. so let's just talk about this whole idea that donald trump is going to go from sort of the oppressed if you're letting him tell the story to the oppressor in terms of weaponizing the doj. how big of an issue is this? >> it's really scary, and i think it really shows how little attention donald trump has been getting while this news cycle is going, and it's funny, when you look at these polling tag lines, when you look at the cross tabs, you see that people think -- voters think that biden is too old to be president but they don't think that donald trump who is three years younger is. and i think you really see the conservative media has again and again really won this news cycle, and even the mainstream media covered the age thing so much, even though biden is just very, you know, three years older than trump, and i think it's really become very self-fulfilling, and you see it's very much the kind of thing that i did not think -- i didn't understand just how the conservative media really did win this news cycle so far. >> it's an interesting question from a strategic standpoint, and with that, i want to turn to you, basil. from a strategy standpoint, help me understand, okay, you have donald trump who is complaining that essentially he's being victimized by the weaponization of the left and joe biden's doj, and they're now persecuting him, not prosecuting him, but then he's also at a rally in new hampshire last month saying, if they can do it, then i can do it too. if you're a democratic strategist, how do you plan in terms of dealing with that level of hypocrisy when it doesn't seem to matter for any of his core supporters? >> let me tell you partly why it doesn't matter. number one, he uses the retribution and reclamation messaging because that really works with his supporters. that's why he'll go to a courtroom and perform, because it's performative. he's not doing that for the sake of the law. he's doing that for the sake of the campaign. he'll go out to his voters and say i fought against the department, against weaponization, what he's really saying is i fought for you, and he'll probably end up using that language. this is the contrast with the democrats are important. why aren't voters supporting and appreciating joe biden because of his policies and part of the reason for that is that what is intellectually persuasive is not always emotionally compelling and what the republicans do very well is stoke emotion, and that's something that the democrats really need to be able to do right here, right now, although historically, they're not always as good as that. there's one secret weapon, not so secret that they have at their disposal, that's kamala harris. on all of these issues, reproductive rights, affirmative action, voter suppression, just democracy broadly, for all of the reasons that you talked about at the top in terms of desegregation and the challenges to that, here's an individual with the kind of intersectionality that is the future of the american voter and the democratic party, not the past. why not put her out there to be able to speak to both the policy and the emotional content and urgency of these issues. that's what the democrats need to do going forward. >> what's it going to take, in your opinion, for that theory to be tested for the democratic party to actually say, this is our person, this is who we want to put our effort and our muscle behind and try to move forward there? >> they've already done it in that joe biden announcement, the campaign announcement, she was featured a lot more heavily than one would think. so the idea behind that, in my view is that we're going to make her more of the face of the democratic party in this reelection. if you look at recent reporting in the swing states, what are black voters saying, we haven't seen enough of the party, enough of her. why not give them what they want, it's easy enough. they had some ads early on. they probably need to put a little more money behind it right now. beyond that, put her out there. >> molly, i mentioned at the top of the segment that right now, biden is trailing trump. in terms of whatever the polls are saying in 5 out of 6 swing states that are battleground states. do you think that this is a big concern for democrats at this point or should it be? >> well, again, polls and especially right now, we've seen democrats have tended to overperform in polls, you'll remember the red wave midterm that didn't ever materialize. we're a year out. there's plenty of time to get biden, and i agree with what basil was saying about the vice president, when she goes and talks to college, and she goes on a college tour, she's wildly popular. you see videos of people screaming for her. the voters who they need to win are young and black and hispanic, and those are the voters that she can reach. so i do think she's uniquely positioned here to really do good stuff. >> i think that one of the things that has to happen to take route is all of the leadership within the democratic party that has been asked about the vice president has been on board and make very very clear if that is the direction they want to go that they're clearly and concretely behind her. >> these polls were good for her, and she should come away from this with a win. >> molly jong-fast and basil smikle, thank you so much. we'll be right back with more news about donald trump's cool lawyer, john eastman. i'm charles coleman jr., and you're watching "the beat" on msnbc. msnbc. liberty mutual customized my car insurance and i saved hundreds. with the money i saved, i started a dog walking business. oh. 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(tony hawk) skating for over 45 years has taken a toll on my body. i take qunol turmeric because it helps with healthy joints and inflammation support. why qunol? it has superior absorption compared to regular turmeric. qunol. the brand i trust. kate is going big and going home for the holidays. that's the plan. at michaels she got everything to make cookies that were anything but cutter. turn ideas into i-did-its. ♪ (holiday music) ♪ . if i knew then what i know now, i would have declined to represent donald trump in these post election challenges. i look back on this whole experience with deep remorse. >> you know, the level of contrition that a felony indictment can help someone find is just miraculous. that was former trump lawyer and now convicted felon jenna ellis testifying last month saying she looks back on the 2020 election schemes with, quote, deep remorse. so what's her current stance, but then on the other hand, you have indicted cool lawyer john eastman who as of this week is still clinging to his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. he is saying that even as he's listed by the doj as a coconspirator alongside trump, and despite his indictment in georgia's election case, that nothing that he did was wrong. he had this to say in a new "60 minutes" interview this weekend. let's listen in. >> we did nothing wrong and it's important to counteract the false narratives on that. >> you said 2500 convicts, the investigation found 4. you said 10,000 dead voters, the investigation found 4. >> they were based on the expert analysis and it didn't say 2500 felons voted, it said as many as. >> if there's anything i can actually appreciate, it's consistency. just in case you have forgotten or were otherwise unfamiliar, for eastman, this is super on brand. remember, this is the guy who has a 20-plus year history in the way of wacky if not altogether illegal attempts to use the law to subvert the will of voters in free and fair elections. recall him trying to move a similar theory forward back in 2000 in front of the florida state legislature during bush v. gore. and now fast forward to the present and eastman's role in the trump coup. this plot has him now in some very significant professional jeopardy. he's facing disbardment proceedings in california and a judge found he breached legal ethics while trying to overturn the 2020 election. up next, what former president obama is saying about the crisis in the middle east. i'm charles coleman jr. and you're watching "the beat" on msnbc. i'm right here! i was busy cashbacking for the holidays with chase freedom unlimited. you know i can't believe you lost another kevin. it's a holiday tradition! earn big time with chase freedom unlimited. how do you cashback? 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"the reidout" with jason johnson is up next. right after this