judge and a combative eric trump and a prosecutor, will it be a preview of next week and the former president's testimony after his son calls the trial itself an absolute joke. the current president, sending his secretary of state on a very high stakes mission to israel, making a personal plea to stop the fighting if only for a few hours. the desperate push to get more people out of harm's way even as israeli forces encircle the largest city in the gaza strip with thousands trapped inside. a former u.s. ambassador to israel will join me to explain where things go from here. and the alarming surge of anti-semitic threats on college campuses now leading one university to pull the plug on classes today citing stress on the students. with no end to the war in sight, will the threats and the fallout get worse before they get better? but we start in new york where tensions exploded in a testy 25-minute long back and forth between donald trump's legal team and the judge at his civil fraud trial. trump attorney chris kise essentially accusing judge arthur engoron to his face of bias against his clients, in particular what he sees as the judge' riance on his law clerk for advice. according to an nbc news producer in the room, kise said, quote, as a judge you are entitled to receive advice, but if you are receivingdvice in a way that is indicative of bias, we have to make a record of it. the rulings are frequently, if not inordinately against us on every major issue. well, the judge insists he's been down the middle and that his clerk, quote, doesn't tell me how to rule. all this setting the stage for eric trump's return to the stand for a second day today. people inside the courtroom describe him as nervous looking as prosecutors work to poke holes in his claims that he had zero involvement in preparing the trump organization's financial records. after court adjourned, eric trump spoke to reporters. >> the last couple of days have gone great. you know why they've gone grate graet? because we haven't done a damn thing wrong. they dragged don and i into it as collateral damage. she can sit in court an extra couple days and send fund-raising emails every single day saying i'm going after trump. focus on the real problems as opposed to the people who invest heavily in this state as our family has done for the last 30 years. >> we've got a lot to dig into. i want to bring in nbc's lindsey reiser, who is outside the courthouse in new york city. harry litman is former deputy assistant attorney general and a professor of constitutional law at ucla, matthew dowd which is a senior msnbc analyst, welcome all. what can you tell us about what happened in that courtroom today ask more about this back and forth between trump's attorney and the judge. >> it has taken a lot of time in court going over this, that is why the a.g.'s office is calling this a distraction saying this is to waste time and defrakt testimony here. you outline what trump's attorney chris kise is saying accusing the judge and his clerk of bias saying there's some error of impropriety with the passing of notes. the judge yesterday getting very impassioned pounding the desk saying he has unfettered access to his clerk, reiterating that message today. you heard -- you had mentioned chris kise saying he wants to create a record here, so the judge says today they'll issue an order on how they can do that. let's get to the substance of the testimony. the a.g.'s office is trying to get eric to admit, that with the seven springs westchester property that he oversaw, he knew the value was less than what was listed on that financial statement that he certified contained accurate information and was shown to banks, and also as part of the testimony, he sounded a lot like don jr. yesterday saying he relied on accountants, relied on lawyers, and also the a.g.'s office establishing into the record that he oversaw the severance of former cfo allen weiss weisselberg, there's a stipulation he can't say anything disparaging about the trumps or the organization, and also can't essentially cooperate with anyone who has an adverse claim, with the a.g.'s office saying that would, eric trump saying i think the whole world knows you are adverse to us. you mentioned at times he appeared nervous, looking around the courtroom, oftentimes looking to the defense table seemingly for some kind of recognition. that's according to our producer in the room. you heard from eric there who addressed cameras on his way out, saying they never missed a loan, the banks made their money accusing the attorney general of playing politics saying the last few days have gone great. chris, what's next, court is adjourned until monday, we can expect to see the former president on monday, ivanka lost out on her appeal. we will hear from her on wednesday, chris. >> thank you so much for that. harry, give us whatever insight you can into what kise is complaining about whether it has any merit. i mean, at the end of the day, this is the judge who's going to decide this case. i mean, what has he gained from getting into this back and forth? >> not a lot. i mean, judges and certainly any appellate judge will know this, rely on their law clerks and they're allowed to. i think it shows it was a bruising week for the trumps. it's gone quite badly, and i think they're anticipating getting clobbered by engoron, and they're trying to create an appellate record wherever they can. so they'll try to say on appeal, oh, look, he relied on her, and she was biased against me, but the short answer to that is so what? judges rely on law clerks however they like, and i think it's a show that kise really has very little to go on that he's trying to make hay with this pretty weak claim. >> i want to dig a little deeper, harry, into what eric trump has been saying, our legal analyst lisa rubin who has been in the courthouse throughout, analysis of his first day on the stand, quote, without calling him a liar or asking expressly if he wanted toorrect his testimy, prosecutor andrew amer got eric to concede that in essence, his unambiguous confident declarations of zero knowledge of orvement in the stas were, at best, based on a very faulty memory and at worst, constituted deliberate falsehoods. so what are the implications of that? >> so it goes to the core of it, look, an important thing to know here is the judge is the jury also, and will make credibility findings, and a court of appeals normally won't disturb that. as a financial case, they're sort of boring, 90 minutes and then, boom, these explosive moments like this one, where it's clear he's attesting to something that's so phony baloney, for example, how big is a particular apartment. and i think we can expect engoron, he's given him the basis to say you know what, as he said about trump last week, i don't believe this. i'm making findings that it's not credible when he says i knew nothing, and that's the sort of basis that a court of appeals would be very limited in trying to reverse because the judge is there on the scene, gets to look at the witnesses, et cetera. so the only sort of sliver of a fight now is whether or not the trump brothers and presumably the president ivanka will be able to say we just didn't know anything. but the judge is in a position to say i don't believe you just as he said when trump was briefly on the stand last week. >> all right, matthew, i want to go on to the election interference case which is happening in washington, d.c. the former president now trying to get a federal appeals court to lift the gag order that judge chutkan put in place because they say -- this is a quote -- it is muzzling president trump's core political speech during an historic presidential cam pane. have you seen him being muzzled at any point? >> has donald trump ever been muzzled in his entirety of his life? i mean, he actually would benefit from muzzlement in reality, he would be better off politically -- and harry could speak this -- probably legally if he was muzzled. that's the interesting thing about this. i have no idea of how they can connect the dots saying he's being muzzled on his political speech while he's running for president and that is aimed at what he says about the judge or what he says about certain characters that are in the trial, witnesses or whatever. all of those things that he's saying about those people have nothing to do with how he's doing in iowa or how he's doing in new hampshire, or how he's doing in south carolina in the course of this. to me the constant thing about the donald trump legal strategy, which is why they've failed so badly in all the election fraud trials and in all the trials that have led up to know is they seem to forget that they're in a courtroom and they're not out at a rally. and the lawyers and donald trump constantly behave as if they're at a rally and not inside a courtroom, and that's why i think they're going to continue to see failure in the courtroom. they just don't get it's a different environment. >> quell well, yeah, so i've been thinking a lot about this, i have to say, matthew, is it that they just don't get it? because time and time and time again they've lost cases, right? 2020 trying to fight the results of that election were an unmitigated disaster for them. is it that, or are they frankly at this point they don't have anything else that they can say or do. they just -- they're lashing out, i don't know. do you think it's just they haven't learned the lesson? >> well, maybe, but i think most of it has to do with the driver of the bus donald trump has one gear. he has no neutral, he has no reverse. and he doesn't even have first or second. he goes straight to third gear on everything he possibly does, and so i think he sets a pattern, and we've seen this through the entirety of his life and his campaigns and all of these legal issues, is everybody that you thought had a rational bone in them, other people and other former lawyers and politicians, you thought, oh, that's a rational person. when donald trump controls the bus, they all seem to jump on board for that ride that he's on, and if donald trump was a more reasonable, logical person and wanted to understand the nuances of these things, i think the people behind him in the passenger seats would behave in a different manner. he is the driver. they all get on board, and none of them seem to want to take the steering wheel out of his hands. let's take it back to the courtroom and look ahead to next week. you have donald trump and his daughter ivanka who wanted nothing to do with this case. she didn't want to testify. she tried hard not to. what will you be watching for and maybe more importantly listening for? >> well, look, you know, eric was really rattled and got angry. it will be interesting to see if the same thing is done by trump. will the a.g. be able to get under his skin? i think that's pretty big. my best guess is ivanka is not a very consequential witness next to the three trump men, but we will see. very quickly to matthew's point, it's just so spot on on this law clerk, it's a terrible issue, but i think the one reason kise is doing it is because it placates trump himself who's all, you know, frothy and hot and bothered about that, so it's sort of client control issues, even though they're bad for the law. but it's going to be a showdown moment, and it will only take as it did here a few instances of his saying, you know, i don't know an incredible situation to let engoron write an opinion in about three or four weeks that really says he showed he's unafraid to say, i don't believe the former president. and if he does it here, that's a basis for liability that will be hard, very hard for a court of appeals it reverse. >> harry litman, thank you as always. matthew dowd, you're going to stick around the appreciate that. in the meantime, secretary of state antony blinken's critical trip to israel as the administration pushes for a humanitarian pause, that in 60 seconds. se, that in 60 seconds. ce sounds] [car screech] [car door slam] [camera shutter sfx] introducing ned's plaque psoriasis. 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[ting] ♪♪ live in the moment. ask your doctor about otezla. secretary of state antony blinken is back in israel today and on the ground intense diplomatic push for israel to take a humanitarian pause. time for hostages to get out and critical aid to get in to gaza. >> we believe that each of these efforts would be facilitated by humanitarian pauses. that was an important area of discussion today with israeli leaders. how, when and when these can be implemented. ultimately we believe this can be a critical mechanism for protecting civilians while enabling israel to achieve its objectives. >> palestinian health officials, an office run by hamas says the death toll in the gaza strip has now passed 9,200, many of them children. one palestinian tv anchor burst into tears on air while listening to her colleague covering the war. the correspondent who was live at a hospital said that their friend and colleague who was there just 30 minutes before had been killed in an air strike. the raw emotion captured in each word he shared with the viewers as tears ran down his face, quote, we can't take it anymore. we are exhausted. we are victims here. victims live on live on air. we lose lives one by one with no cost. we wait to die one by one. we await death one by one. nbc's josh lederman is on the ground in tel aviv. josh, the exhaustion, the emotion. this shows what a tight rope, right, that secretary blinken is walking as he makes this trip acknowledging israel's right to defend itself but pushing for this pause. what are you hearing about the chances that might happen? >> reporter: the chances seem very low at this point, chris. look, this is basically an open area of disagreement now between the israeli and american governments. we saw blinken coming into this trip hoping to get that pause that president biden has been speaking about, and then after he met with prime minister netanyahu, the israeli leader said israel rejects any temporary cease fires until hamas releases all the hostages, which is of course the opposite order from what the u.s. has been pushing. seized the hostilities and then hopefully get the hostages released by hamas. i want you to hear the way that secretary blinken is trying to walk this fine line. you described it as a tight rope. it is. he's not openly criticizing the israeli government. he is making very clear what he does want to see from israel. take a look. >> civilians should not suffer the consequences for its inhumanity and its brutality. we provided israel advice that only the best of friends can offer on how to minimize sil yan deaths while still achieving its objectives of finding hamas terrorists and their infrastructure of violence. >> reporter: now, when it comes to that u.s. request for a pause in the hostilities, chris, we heard secretary blinken say that he and the israeli leader agreed that their teams would continue to discuss this issue. that is basically diplomat speak for we didn't make any progress on this issue, but we also heard blinken talking about what comes after this war in gaza, trying to answer this key question of what this major conflict could eventually yield if and when israel achieves this goal of eliminating hamas and what that even means given that hamas is not only a specific group of people, but has really become a movement, an ideology. secretary blinken once again bringing up the two-state solution, something we've heard over and over from u.s. leaders in the last week or so, something we've heard nothing from israeli leaders about. blinken making the case that, look, if we want to defeat hamas, we have to offer the palestinians a better alternative. he said that better alternative is the possibility of independent statehood they have been promised for so long. blinken saying that is one way to try to create some type of positive momentum out of this ongoing israeli war, even as he is now urging israel to do everything possible to minimize the civilian casualties that are simply just mounting, chris. >> josh lederman, thank you. i want to bring in former u.s. ambassador to israel, edward ja ridgen, thank you so much for being with us. it isn't just the president and his secretary of state, now 13 democrats have said they want to see a humanitarian pause. what do you think the chances are that could happen? >> well, as your correspondent just noted, chris, there's a real difference between the israeli governments and netanyahu's approach and what the biden administration is urging on the israeli government on humanitarian pause. i think the secretary blinken has stated very clearly what the u.s. challenging priorities are. one, a humanitarian pause to do everything possible to get the hostages out, i believe there were about 240 of them including americans, but also to humanitarian pause to get more aid into gaza because of the mounting death and wounded tolls in the gaza strip. so it's a very delicate, but critical balancing act in terms of u.s. diplomacy, and current israeli policy to wipe out hamas and its military capabilities. so that's the conundrum, if you will. i'm also very pleased that the secretary mentioned the need for what i would call a political horizon at the end of the day, after all the slaughter finally comes to some end, god knows when in the near future, that without a political horizon for a final settlement between the israelis and the palestinians, what we're seeing as of october 7th in the region is just going to continue in the future. we're talking about 56 years of israeli occupation of the palestinian territories. the time has come to really tackle the key issue of creating a palestinian state living in peace and security next to israel, as much of an illusion as that may seem now, it's the only real way out if israel is going to remain a democratic jewish state, and if the palestinians gain self-determination. >> as you well know, mr. ambassador, that is 56 years without a solution. it's defied many efforts to 's defied many efforts to find a two-state solution. so what is on the other end of the horizon? have you heard anything from any israeli official that suggests to you that they have a plan here? >> i have not, and that's a very good question. but yes, it's been 56 years, but remember, we've had a lot of failures in terms of negotiating a settlement, but we've had successes, during the bush 41 administration with secretary baker present, bush 41 in which i was involved, we did construct the madrid peace conference, which was the first time in 40 years that we were able to get israel to sit down with its immediate arab neighbors, and more international organizations around the table to really launch peace negotiations based on the principle position of land for peace. that's very important. land for peace. this is what it's about. you have between the jordan river and the eastern mediterranean, you have approximately 7.2 million palestinians and almost an equal number of israeli jews. no one's going to go anywhere else. this is the key issue, and it has to be b