very important, that's the winner of the week. brian tyler cohen, brittany packnett cunningham, thank you, that is tonight's reidout. all in with chris hayes starts now. ts now. >> tonight on all in. donald trump cannot make public comments about known or foreseeable witnesses in a case. the trump gag order is upheld in a major court decision, with big implications for the timing of the coup trial. >> it makes that march 4th trial date increasingly farm. as trump's codefendant in georgia helps make cases in four other states. >> the please lower your hand instead your true and correct the legal name. >> kenneth john chesebro. then the state of texas threatens to jail doctors for following court orders on a emergency abortion. >> this is the attorney general saying that she should be the one practicing medicine rather than the physicians in his state. >> and how in the world will be right wing spin machine handle another and unambiguously good jobs report? when >> i'm going to make the case that that decline in the unemployment rate is actually a negative, not a positive. >> when all in starts, right now. that evening from new york, i'm chris hayes, today, a washington d.c. court of appeals panel upheld a gag order against donald trump. inhe criminal case about his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. the prejudged panel narrowed the original order from district court judge tanya chutkan's some men that special counsel is now a fair game. but crucially the judges barred thex president from talking publicly about his staff court staff or her lawyers on the case he's also prohibit from making. and i quote here, public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this proceeding. as of this ruling, donald trump is legally restricted from attacking and of the potential witnesses against him in the coup trial. this is a big ruling with big implications. we're going to talk all about that shortly. but one of those witnesses could very well be this man, kenneth chesebro. unindicted coconspirator number five in jack smith's federal indictment of donald trump. of all the characters in the coup plot, we followed them all. chesebro maybe the most mysterious with the mo obscure motives. he also made provedto bone of the most important. kenneth chesebrohad unexpected path to plotting donald trump's coup. he's a graduate of harvard law, work as a researchsistant for the liberal constitutional loss carl or. he later helped tribe represent al refter the 2000 el. donated to democraticemocrat, candidates. but his political leading started to shift after he made a fortune investing in cryptocurrency. he joined the conservative legal movement, representing republican politicians. he got pulled into the trump election scheme by the lead attorney for trump in wisconsin, who chesebro had worked with in recent years. chesebro became one of the masterminds of the coup plot, working in the inner circle, with lawyers like john eastman, rudy giuliani, who are also indicted in georgia. he devised what became known as the fake electors plot. as the january 6th committee explained last summer. >> on november 18th, a lawyer working with the trump campaign named kenneth chesebro, wrote a memo arguing that the trump campaign should organize its own electors in a swing state, that president trump had lost. >> mister chesebro wrote to mayor giuliani, that the vice president is charged with, quote, making judgments about what to do if there are conflicting votes, close quote. mister chesebro wrote that when the joint section of congress got to arizona in the alphabetical list of states, the vice president should not count the biden votes, quote, because there are two slates of votes. >> that was a big innovation, right? in this desire and plot to overturn a free and fair election. you also note that kenneth chesebro is so obscure character at that point that no one knew how to pronounce his name properly. we went back and forth here for six months. we only learned it when he said it himself in front of a georgia judge in august. he was one of 19 codefendants indicted in the georgia election intece case. at first, he tried this gambit to jam up the prosecution, by demanding, as was his right under federal law, a speedy trial. like a real speedy trial, in a few months. then just days before that speedy trial was set to begin, chesebro accepted a plea deal. >> please lower your hand and state your true and correct legal name. >> kenneth john chesebro. >> do you understand this is a negotiated plea between your attorneys and the state have urged a negotiated recommendation to make to court? >> i do. >> chesebro, he all said in the newsroom, he pleaded guilty to one felony charge. he was sentenced to five years probation. he was also able, crucially, as a condition of this plea, to keep his law license, because of how that crime was categorized. now, when chesebro pleaded, he also agreed to testify against his codefendant. it was not clear if he had flipped in the way that we colloquially understand. was he now going to tell-all like michael cohen? or was this a begrudging move to avoid a worse legal faith? chesebro's lawyers indicated it was in fact the latter. that donald trump had nothing to fear from his client. >> i want to make something clear, he did not implicate anyone else. he implicated himself in that particular charge. someone asked me earlier if you were donald trump, would you be worried? i could personally, honestly, answer no. it's not that mr. chesebro is trying to protect donald trump or anyone else. he's not. he's ready to move on with his life. >> so that sort of seemed to close the book on chesebro. until late last month, when we started hearing about his possible cooperation in other inquiries. keep in mind, among chesebro and's 18 codefendants in georgia are some of the actual fake electors, the people who showed up to swear -- sign an affidavit saying i am the duly elted elector, despite the fact they were not. donald trump won the electoral college vote in their state. that's what they were claiming, right? several other states are prosecuting those grps of fake electors as well, in the individual states in which they met. the state of michigan charged 16 people in the fake electors scheme in july. accordingo a new report, chesebro is cooperating with investigators in michigan, his investigation may be broader than previously known. we just learned th chesebro's also cooperating in wiscons, indicating that the attorney general there also may be investigating their fake electors. this week, ten wisconsin ill -- who posed as fake electors settled a civil lawsuit, not -- to settle, they had to admit knowledge that joe biden did win their state. we've got criminal investigations also brewing in other states. both nevada and arizona, where kenneth chesebro has reportedly become a key cooperator. in fact, he testified before a grand jury in nevada, where six fake electors, including the state republican party chair, were invited to this week. the washington post reports that chesebro is scheduled to meet with investigators in arizona on monday. so, only's really makes you wonder whether chesebro actually has flipped in some meaningful sense. and what that could mean for donald trump, who remains in serious legal peril. kristy greenberg served as federal prosecutor in the southern district of new york where she was deputy chief of the criminal division. jeffrey toobin is an attorney and legal analyst who studied with chesebro in the 19 80s. i'll start with you jeffrey, because of all the characters, i feel like i've got beat on jim eastman, i know rudy giuliani's been in the public for a long time. chesebro remains the most mysterious. the only person i've ever seen write anything on what is the deal with kenneth chesebro is you. what's the deal with him? >> the correct pronunciation is that she's, because that's how he was known in law school. >> is that true? >> it. is he's from wisconsin, there's kind of a cheese thing going on there. it's a very weird story. can, who i did know, pretty well in law school, not had a lot of contact since then, i've known about him for airmail. he is a very low-key person. he is not someone who seeks a lot of attention. he has been an individual appellate lawyer, never with a full of law firm in all the years since we graduated from law school. but he did go through what seems to be a very consequential midlife crisis, a few years ago. he got divorced from his longtime wife. part of a midlife crisis. he started investing in crypto, made a fortune, tried to get larry tribe, his mentor, to invest in crypto as well. and, most significantly, as far as we are concerned here, went from being a pretty serious democrat, he worked with a lot of plaintiffs lawyers who tend to be democrats, to being a right-wing activist, big contributor to ron johnson, the senator from wisconsin, to president trump. and now, a major figure in this sham electors. it's bizarre. can i give you the inside story of why? i don't. >> but that's more than most people. and the classic divorce, to crypto, to coup, trajectory that you see so often. >> it happens. >> what do you think? i'm intrigued by the fact that he's apparently going all over the country cooperating in these very say -- he's kind of the mastermind behind us. he's a key witness in all of this. what do you make of the news that we've now got -- he testified in a grand jury in nevada, we've got indictments. he's going to arizona on monday, he's helping in michigan. >> i think you set it up perfectly when you said what do we mean by cooperation? as a prosecutor, what you think of his cooperation, somebody is truthful and credible, and they are cooperated in some way, whether it's by documents or other witnesses. it's unclear here, for kenneth chesebro, whether either of those things is really true. all we know, he when he pled, he didn't make a statement about exploiting what it is that he did that made him guilty. we have his lawyer statements that seemed to minimize his culpability, and then we have the leaks of what he said in the proper. which seem to suggest that he's covering for both trump and giuliani. he was saying giuliani wasn't the person i was repog he wasn't involved in this, when i think the documents show clearly that he was. chesebro's legal strategy over a course of memos evolves. in earlier memos, it's much more innocuous, there is this contingency plan. if trump wins the litigation, then at these electors -- fickle actors, can come into play. then, it shifts to something very different. when he talks about a meeting that he had with donald trump, he only talks about that first memo. the innocuous memo. >> right. >> the question is, how useful is he to these other states? on the big guys, maybe not so much. but could he cooperate down, which you usually don't do against some of the state electors, to say, no, whether or not they got some of these memos, which memos they got, which communications he had with them. potentially, he could be useful. >> here's a big problem with him chesebro as a witness, at least so far. you mentioned it in passing. when he pleaded guilty, the usual way one pleads guilty, especially in federal court, is the judge says, okay, you want to plead guilty. what did you do? >> -- >> i robbed a bank. he never has said that he did anything wrong. his lawyer, as you say, has minimized his conduct enormously. so the idea that he could implicate someone else in conduct that he said he didn't even do, is -- makes me somewhat suspicious. especially given his personality, that he is going to be a big successful important witness. >> it's interesting that we have all these state cases. i think the reason for that is we have a little bit of proof of concept. for that the thing is so faciay illegal. you signed a document. attesting to something very important, that you are the rightful electors. we've got your signature here. you were the rightful electors. i think the cut and dry nature of that has probably led to this, kind, of domino effect, with all the states doing it. i want to turn to this gag order. appellate judge, d.c. appellate judge basically uphold it, narrows, it says you can say what you want about jack smith. which is interesting. but here is the opinion by judge patricia -- mr. trump is a former president and current candidate for the president, there's a strong interest in what he wants to say. mr. trump is also an indicted criminal defendant and must stand trial in a courtroom under the same procedures that govern all the other criminal defendants. that is what the rule of law means. what's your take away? >> this is a hard issue. >> it is. >> donald trump is a public figure, and he is running for president. and he does have first amendment rights. judge chutkan also has the obligation to protect the integrity of her own trial, the way all judges do. this is not an obvious case. i think both judge chutkan and the appeals court, basically, got it right here. you can talk about anything, but don't intimidate the witnesses. in jack smith -- >> intimidate the staff. to me, that's been happening in new york, and it's so despicable and out of pocket, that it is happening. the you just can't do that. and at least, that here, shows up. >> and the threats on that law clerk in new york have been horrific. she is talking about getting 30 to 50 messages a day. >> to her cell phone, her personal cell phone. >> talking about her demise and her death. these are really serious. and so, for both of these appellate courts, both in new york, and in d.c., to say this is not okay. we are drawing some lines here. political speech, you want to attack doj, you want to attack the government, you want to attack jack smith, you want to attack laetitia james. all of that is fair game. but, when it comes to staff, when it comes to witnesses, that is more a part of the trial. and that is where we draw the line. and seems the appropriate lying to draw. >> there's another important part of this opinion, just in passing, where they talk about the time. exactly. >> that's what i was going to go to next. >> no mystery here about what donald trump is trying to do. donald trump is trying to do everything possible to delay this trial until after the election. and here, we have the d.c. circuit now, which is going to hear more about this. >> they'll be the front line before the supreme court. >> they are saying the public has an interest in a trump trial, that is a value that has to be considered at every stage in these proceedings. and that is a big deal. >> that jumped out to me as well in that decision. kristy greenberg, jeffrey toobin, we have nicely coordinated christmas and hanukkah thematic looks. >> happy second day, pal. >> happy second day. thank you for coming. coming up, the republican war on women's health reaches a new low. the latest threats against doctors on the texas attorney general. next. ral. next i always hear people say, you know, when you get older, you know, people lose memory. i didn't want to be that person. i decided to give prevagen a try. my memory became much sharper. i remembered more! i've been taking prevagen for four years now. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. ♪ ♪ ♪ 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. somedays, i cover up because of my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. now i feel free to bare my skin, thanks to skyrizi. ♪(uplifting music)♪ ♪nothing is everything♪ i'm celebrating my clearer skin... my way. with skyrizi, 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months. in another study, most people had 90% 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chase. make more of what's yours. first time i connected with kim, she told me that chase. her husband had passed. and that he took care of all of the internet connected devices in the home. i told her, “i'm here to take care of you.” connecting with kim... made me reconnect with my mom. it's very important to keep loved ones close. we know that creating memories with loved ones brings so much joy to your life. a family trip to the team usa training facility. i don't know how to thank you. >> at the highest levels of the i'm here to thank you. republican party, there's all this talk recently about how reasonable they are goingto be about abortion. from nikki haley talking about humanizing her position, to donald trump portraying himself as a moderate. ludicrous lee, and pointing to exceptions, as a way to sell republican abortion bans. a sentiment echoed by other politicians. >> i do believe that there should be exceptions that are made. >> about 15 weeks, with all the exceptions. >> of course you have to have some reasonable exceptions. >> that's the way they all talk now, republicans. exceptions, of course, there's exceptions. look at the exceptions, there you don't have to be harmed by abortion. that's one of the actually do though when they of the power? you can look. here's a test case in texas. a state with a near total ban on abortion controlled entirely by republicans, with criminal penalties for doctors up to life in prison. and kate cox lives in texas, with her husband, and two children, near dallas. she's 20 weeks pregnant. the doctors tragically just discovered the baby she's caroming has a rare genetic condition that will almost certainly result in a stillbirth or death soon after birth. kate cox asked the judge to make an exception to texas law to allow her to get an abortion, so she can protect her health and also her future fertility, which is threatened. yesterday, a judge, under extraordinary circumstances, agreed, issuing an order allowing her to attain that medical care. then, and mediately, the republican attorney general threatened to jail her doctor, and to the hospital or any hospital that performs it, if they provide this abortion care. he is now petitioning the texas supreme court to prevent kate cox from getting the reproductive care that her doctors say she needs, from getting an exception to the state abortion ban. eleanor klibanoff it's the women's health reporter from the texas tribune, where she's been closely following this story, she joins me now. eleanor, could you just tell me a little bit more about kate cox, and how this came about? >> sure, so, kit cox is 31 years old. she lives in dallas, she already has two kids. she and her husband really want to this pregnancy. they were excited when they thought that they were pregnant. and then they learned that they had received the diagnosis that no parent wants to receive. that this much wanted pregnancy would not result in a happy, healthy baby, in fact, probably, if she delivered a baby, it would survive just hours or days. she is asking, as you said, she asked the judge to give her an abortion. and allow her to have an abortion. and this is sort of the case that i think lawyers and advocates have been waiting for, in texas, to challenge these laws. and see what we do now that we've got this test case. >> yeah, one of the things that is so pernicious, i think, from my perspective about how these loss function, is that the criminal penalties are so severe, along with possible civil penalties, that there is this suffocating risk aversion, for anyone that might try to practice this reproductive care. people in the antiabortion movement have said they are being too cautious, and actually, these are ridiculous stories, they shouldn't happen. but then you've got paxton making it clear that he intends to use every available tool of law for retribution against the practitioner, the doctor who might actually provide kate cox the care she needs. >> right, the states argument is, you know, the problem is not the law. the problem is the doctors and how they are choosing to interpret the law. then we've got this case, and as you said, this doctor has -- was told by a judge, the doctor is named in the lawsuit, it said she will be protected if she performs this abortion. attorney general, ken paxton, as the center of reproductive rights has framed it, really trying to cow these hospitals and convince them to not take on the risk of performing this abortion. sort of closing all the doors available to this woman if she were to try to seek this abortion in texas. >> yeah, you could obviously -- he doesn't have to write a letter. he wrote yesterday, or filed a petition. th is the center for reproductive rights, which is representing miss cox, saying the state's position is stunning in its disregard for miss cox's life fertility and the rule of law we should also note that this is not only happening in texas or a texas reporter, we've seen similar stories in florida. we saw a story of a woman ina similar situation, who was ed to carry to term, -- a fetus that gasped for air and lived very briefly. that was the law. then in kentucky, you've got a class action suit that's ain a judge to block enforcement of kentucky's trigger law and six-week abortion ban. one of the plaintiffs, another pregnant woman, who wish to no longer be pregnant because she was suffering mental, constitutional, and irreparable harm because they are denied an abortion. we've seen a lot of legal challenges. where does this go next? does the sexist -- texas supreme court going to weigh on this? >> yes, we're essentially waiting for the texas supreme court to tell us what happens next here. everyone is on the edge of their seat. the texas supreme court is also considering this larger case that has 20 plaintiffs, that they've already heard arguments in that case. that proceeding on the normal timeline, it will be weeks or months before we get a ruling on that case. this case, for obvious reasons, moving a lot faster. we expect a ruling from the texas supreme court tonight, this weekend. we will see. >> obviously paxton is a special snowflake. he is notorious in texas politics. he just survived an impeachment. he's had an indictment for a very long period of time. he's an incredibly polarizing, and i would dare say, a reviled fielder by many even in republican politics in the state of texas. i have other state leaders, greg abbott, the senators in that state, coren, cruz, have other people chimed in to say what they think should happen to this woman who is fighting to obtain the reproductive care that she needs? >> we have not heard a widespread commentary on this case from elected leaders. i'll be honest, abortion, in some ways, has become a little bit of a radioactive topic, now that we are seeing how some of this plays out. early on, right after the dobbs decision, governor greg abbott said he'd like to see some clarity in the law, and in the exceptions. now that's playing out in front of the court, broadly hearing people say they just want to wait and see what the courts do. i'll say, we had a legislative session earlier this year, texas has spent most of this year in special sessions. there has not been any talk about adding to the exceptions, clarifying the exceptions, or really changing anything to do with the law. so the legislators seem to be pretty much content with the way things are or at least content to see what the texas supreme court does. >> this is the policy of the state of texas. its legislators, its governor, its attorney general, who have put this regime together that now has miss cox in the situation she's in now. frank eleanor klibanoff, you very much. >> thank you. >> still to come, another blow to the fox news agenda as the latest numbers show the biden economy is coming along. that's ahead. that's ahead what causes a curve down there? is it peyronie's disease? will it get worse? how common 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epidemic. obviously, no one denies shoplifting. it happens. but, perhaps the reality doesn't merit the breathless coverage receives on fox news. in fact, as the new york times report last month, quote, the various sources of crime data from government agenci a private groups tell a consistent story. retail theft has not spiked nationwide in the past several years. if anything, it appears less common in most of the country than it was before the pandemic. less common, year that? now, among the loudest voices in this propaganda campaign, were the retail companies themselves took every topple -- about the so-called shoplifting epidemic. if you lo a little deeper though, you'll find multiple, retailers have cited shoplifting as a mor reason for declining profits. only for the reality made mo complicated. like for instance when target an ounce it was closing a flagship location in manhattan due to shoplifting. only for the buildings landlord to reveal the company was actually moving to a smaller location nearby, adding, quote, retailer didn't raise theft as an issue leading up to the announcement. sometimes, a concession comes from the company itself, like when the cfo of walgreens told investors earlier this year, and i'm quoting here, maybe we cried too much about shoplifting in 2022. the silver bullet argument for proponents of the shoplifting epidemic is an analysis of the national retail federation released earlier this year, which said that organized theft accounted for nearly half of all retail losses in 2021. so not just petty thieves, but there was this new epidemic of organized crime rings storming stores and taking everything. that report was widely cited in the media. and fearmongering about organized retail crime is everywhere. but the facts were way wrong, and it's important to unpack just what happened, as i mentioned earlier, the national retail federation released a report saying that organized theft accounted for nearly half of all retail losses. now, they got that stat from the senate testimony of an anti shoplifting expert in 2021. >> i want to share firsthand today what i've experienced over 30 years of working on this problem. organized retail crime represents a massive and growing threat to the tune of 45 billion dollars a year. >> he seems credible, he's u there, he's at the microphone. a witness. sworn in. except, the facts may have been flubbed. as the new york times reports, now, that man was citing a, get this, 2016 survey, which was actually referring to the overall cost of shrinking in 2015, not the amount lost to organize regional crime. that's a huge distinction. the source for the widely shared claim that there was this new trend, this new phenomenon, organized retail theft, that accounted for half of all retail losses in 2021, coming out of the pandemic, in joe biden's chaotic america, was actually a statistic about all retail inventory loss, everything from lost merchandise to damaged product, from six years earlier. they had nothing to do with each other. the claim has been totally debunked. in fact, get this, the national retail federation was forced to retract it. but not before -- >> ♪ ♪ ♪ >> we are learning tonight that organized crime is behind the 70 billion-dollar retail theft crisis in this country. >> it's a perfect example, why you should be skeptical, the way some bad faith actors tried to frame news about particularly economy and crime. i'll have much more to say about some of the same characters trying to undermine some good news for bidenomics, next. ics, next e we can be proud of. from socal to our family in texas, to back home in jalisco. seeing all the places i come from, i know. if it's a serrano, it's something to be proud of. i take it all with me and i always will. give the gift of family heritage with ancestry. there are some things that go better... together. like your workplace benefits... and retirement savings. with voya, considering all your financial choices 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positive. >> better than expected jobs numbers, charles. your reaction? >> for the 11th month in a row, i think the fixes in. their >> unemployment tops to 3.4. >> that's the lowest since 1969. >> wow. meanwhile this story really pertains to our economy. this is fort motors mists tales expectations at the start of this year. >> the viewer this morning was no exception. when november shops numbers came in, even better than expected. >> so we got higher than expected numbers. we just get the. numbers hundred 9000 jobs versus an estimated 180,000. what do you think about these numbers? >> it's a resilient labor market. president biden is going to talk about this at some point today because these are good numbers for bidenomics. >> for christmas? people who are working two jobs? >> strangely enough, retail employment actually went down. >> they are seasonally adjusted. this is a professor of public publicity and economics at the university of michigan, go coast of things like an anonymous and economist podcast. you've been part of this discussion debate about this economy and the peoples perceptions and reality. put that aside. just describe as best you can this idea of the soft landing and why it is difficult to pull off the soft landing and where we are right now. what does it mean? we're talking about a soft landing, economists, all the time, and how improbable it is. >> let's get back to what people thought the problem was. a year or two ago, about a year and a half ago, in inflation was running at 9% in the unemployment rate was all the way down to a 50-year low of three and a half percent. the thinking at the time, for many economists, was that one cost the other, that low unemployment went too much of a good thing and that was causing inflation. so then the claim was, we should have a little less of a good thing, which is, let's try and stop the economy enough, slam on the brakes, so that we reduce inflation. but here's the funny thing. what actually happened is inflation plummeted from 9% down to 3%. but unemployment basically moved sideways. this is better than anyone dreamed about with a soft landing. with a soft landing they thought let's get unemployment back to what we think is more sustainable. they thought for an, half 5%, and things will fix themselves. we got in fact our whole unemployment cake and we get to eat it with lower inflation coming as well. >> you had posted this about economists consensus economists in polling, and they were asked to make a bat, and their perception of where we would be right now, i think it was a year ago, and the current situation with inflation where it is and unemployment, i think it was about 10%. was the probability -- the economists are telling, it's there's a one in ten chance we could end up in this really narrow sweet stop that's going to be very hard to hit with inflation coming down and the economy growing and unemployment still low. >> yes. so one thing i want to give you is that sometimes good news happens. we economists are not good at recognizing. it sometimes were not good at forecasting it. so this really is, you know, it's a better outcome than anyone saw coming, and you don't even need to compare to expectations. that sort of under does it. the reality is, you want to think about that unemployment is near a 50 year low, inflation is returning all the way back to normal, and we've got inequality declining at the same time. just on its face, on its merits, these are the sorts of economic numbers that not only would i dare not dream about, but many economists thought would be impossible. >> yeah. there's also a kind of little engine that could quality watching this whole thing unfold. there has been so many disruptions, so many exogenous shots. the war in ukraine being one, and covid supply shocks, and things like that. this constant preparation and anticipation for disaster. and this is true for every fed rate hike, which is meant to put on the brakes, put on the brakes, put on the brakes. they keep putting on the brakes. the trains gonna crash. and then every month, really, like defying expectations and remarkable. way every month, month after month after month, on that first friday getting numbers like this. >> the little engine that could, to chew, but when you put it another way, it might be even starker. imagine you have fallen asleep in december of 2019. of course before you follow sleepy be the latest economic forecasts. then three years later, prince charming comes along, cases, you and you wake up. you woke up this morning. well, the first thing you do is ask what's going on with the economy? someone will tell you how many jobs we have. you say wait a minute, that's 2 million more jobs than i thought the economy would grow to when i fell asleep in 2019. so you'd say when i fell asleep in 2019, between then and now, something good must have happened to the economy. >> right. >> in fact -- we have a global pandemic, the worst recession since the great depression, and we are above where 2019, you would've thought we were. it's a miracle. >> yes. it's a special kind of person that wakes up from being put to sleep by unknown forces and asks how we are doing on economic growth compared to 2019. before that person it would be a really remarkable thing to wake up to. justin wolfers, thank you so much for making time tonight. still ahead, democratic governors inquiry key swing states make a plan for new blue wall. and the popularity could boost joe biden, next. boost joe biden, next. joe biden, next. >> ♪to my astonishment.♪ ♪my doc gave me a script i got it done without a delay.♪ ♪i screened with cologuard and did it my way.♪ cologuard is a one-of-a-kind way to screen for colon cancer that's effective and non-invasive. it's for people 45 plus at average risk, not high risk. false positive and negative results may occur. ask your provider for cologuard. ♪i did it my way!♪ the ball is out and there's a pile-up. -let's go! 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have chase. alerts that help check. tools that help protect. one bank that puts you in control. chase. make more of what's yours. negative political movements in the country. sometime at the state level, doing quite a bit of success but politically and substantively. democratic incumbents in states with close partisan split, dave weigel writinfo his newsletter at semafor was recently at a meeting with the -- founder beat. look at the approval rating for michigan governor gretchen whitmer. 50 thread 53% approved, 37% disapprove. that's good for a politician. pennsylvania we asked to grade the job of governor josh shapiro. 49% said he's doing good or excellent job. the highest rating for pennsylvania governor at this point since tom ridge back in the mid 1990s. minnesota governor tim walz meanwhile enjoys a 52% approval rating while minnesota is stable for democrats. let's not forget donald trump only lost the state by a point a half in 2016. this underlying political mood in favor of democratic incumbents could also really make a difference for the political prospects in those states going into the presidential election. robert gibbs served as the white house press to hear from president obama in 2025 campaign. she served as a senior adviser in the biden campaign. they join me now. let me start with you. one of the things that struck me as important in that 2020 race was that unlike 2016 particularly in robert gibbs the state of wisconsin and michigan you had democratic governors. i wonder how much it matters to have, in these key states, democratic leadership at the state level. >> it's very important, especially because democratic leadership in the state level is already carrying out the democratic party platform when it comes to voting rights, abortion rights. the list goes on and on. voters can actually see what will happen when a democrat is at the leadership, at the helm. and you couple that in 2020, they had already lived for years under donald trump. in 2016 it was a hypothetical to many, not to some of. as we knew exactly what he would do as president. but for a lot of voters they saw the contrast between federal policy and state and local policy. so these were great surrogates and ambassadors for president biden as a candidate to go out and talk about, these are the ways in which we can work for you all. we can do even more at the federal level if you give us a president who is along the lines of the same issues that we care for and we stand for. >> i remember, robert, i was at the 2012 rnc, covering it. there was a succession of republican governors, because about gun elected in the 2010 midterm, who had come to the podium and they would do things like the following, in our state, in florida, we are doing amazing. we've got all the job growth. things are great. the country is going to challah because of barack obama. and you would see state after state everyone seems like they're doing pretty well on the rebound here so then i think it preece aged something about 2012, because of things are going pretty well, that's usually the incumbents regardless of the party. i want to what you think of these numbers in the states, what that modes. >> well, i would say with the numbers show is obviously not just popular governors and popular agendas, but i think what's in point about these numbers is we live in such a politically polarized time period that not many people enjoy these type of numbers. to see a 16 point spread for someone like gretchen rich whitmer in to see the level of popularity and how often or in fact and often it comes around for somebody in pennsylvania i think bodes really well. just a little too on the first question you asked. what you also get in the states, along with their agendas and the surrogate power of these governors's, their political infrastructure. the political infrastructure that in those three states that you just showed really demonstrated power in the 2022 elections. gretchen whitmer's race was a wall a blowout. josh shapiro's race was a blowout. that's important in the infrastructure that led to that really just has to get reawakened. it doesn't have to get rebuilt. >> that's a great point. and to the point that, i just want to compare in michigan, a great example. gretchen whitmer is one of the sort of successful democratic politicians in the country, in terms of what she's been able to get done and how she has bad gated politics. again, a very closely divided state. comparing her to the president, so you got gretchen whitmer, plus 16, joe biden minus 17. there's a few theories, alencia, you could say here, people specifically don't like joe biden and they're like gretchen winner or the polarization that robert gibbs is talking about is operating in more of a natural level than it necessarily is maybe at the state level and that as you get closer to a campaign there is a lot of ground possible to make up for the guy that's going to be at the head. >> i actually think it is that piece. the polarization is at the national level. if you look at 2023 when the kentucky governor won his reelection, a democratic governor on the popular agenda the democrats are running on, there is a way for us to look at these polling numbers and this aggregate this and state and local national politics. but i do think we are a year out as a veteran campaign staffer from several different presidential campaigns, these polls, not that they don't matter this early on, they do give us an indication of where some of the national campaign should lean into. that he is in the states where the agenda, for the agenda to be popular voters have to understand what they are voting for. gretchen whitmer and her team do that exceptionally well. wisconsin, we saw that in supreme court election. and so many other they know what is at stake and i think we're gonna continue to see the biden campaign get closer and close the gap. >> one of the other similarities, robert, between the obama administration in the biden administration, they both come in in a crisis. coming in after the great financial crisis, right in the midst of covid, as the vaccine is deploying. and both of those are global phenomena. in both cases you got countries around the world trying to deal with it. i thought this point about the approval ratings of leaders across the globe. everyone has had to lead to the deal with the aftermath of covid. trudu's at 36 in canada, elections in germany's 20, nine britain rishi sunak's 28, macron's 23, japan's leader, fumio kishida, a 23. actually when you look at the circumstances, people are not going to be super happy when they are coming out of a big trauma and a big crisis, and it might take a while for things to be normal again. >> yeah. i think we can all relate to that in our own lives. we have seen it now, we came out of the shock of covid, we had inflation that follows that, inflation has come down, america has done much better than the rest of the world has as it relates to that. that is truly important. look, it's a destructive time. it's not an easy time to be a leader, either of a state or nationally. as a country. as a leader around the world. so i think they've had to navigate different forces. look, we've got a long campaign. i think one of the things, also, that's important to understand about the three states that we have highlighted tonight, and something i bet you hear joe biden talk about on the stump when he is in these three states. these state legislatures also are helping that governor drive an agenda. that's why gretchen whitmer has been so good and joshua pirro and tim walt have been so good. then just campaign on it, they're driving that agenda. i think it's going to help top to bottom. >> that's a really good point. robert gibbs and alencia johnson, thank you both. that's all for this week. happy second night of