Back and you can always check in with me. The last word is next. , Donald Trumps red necktie friends, who alex was just talking about, came to the courthouse this week to praise one of the criminal defendants in the building and to attack District Attorney often bragged , who donald trump falsely accuses of spending all his time and resources on the prosecution of donald trump. The people Versus Harvey wind team, we are moving forward in that manner. We intend to retry it, and the court sets a window for trial. We are already moving forward with that matter, having conversations with survivors, censoring their wellbeing and pursuing justice. We are here, now, because the work of the office goes on in so many ways, as those of you have covered the office know the breadth of our work and that work continues. We have the expertise and resources to take on tough cases while dropping down crime alongside law enforced. That includes dropping shootings down 40 in manhattan, murder is down 17 . Outpacing the citywide of. 6 . Thats a tiny sample of the work that District Attorney bragged attorney alban bragg is doing, with his prosecutors and the cases they handle, every year. Of those candidates for Vice President really support that, they would have come to new york to congratulate alban bragg. Just when you thought a president ial debate that includes donald trump could not become more ridiculous, it has. President biden will be debating donald trump with one hand tied behind his back, legally. Donald trump will, in the debate studio, will be claiming that every criminal prosecution but donald trump faces is being run by joe biden. Donald trump says that every day. Everyone has heard that before. We will hear it again on the debate stage and moderators will do nothing to contradict that because in their traditional view, that would be joe bidens job did Debate Moderators will use the standard playbook of allowing the other candidate to answer accusations made by the opposing candidate. But, what will joe biden be able to say about the prosecution of donald trump . Maybe nothing. President s not named trump never comment on pending criminal cases. The most famous and possibly only instance we have of this is when Richard Nixon said in 1970 that Charles Manson was guilty of mass murder in the Hollywood Hills of sharon tate and seven others. I noted the coverage of the Charles Manson case when i was in los angeles, front page every day of the papers. A couple minutes of the evening news. Here is a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason. The problem was, Charles Manson was not guilty, yet. President nixon said that, in the middle of the Manson Family Trial and Defense Lawyers asked for a mistrial because of the president s undue influence on the jury. Nixon made the statement just before the morning Air Force One intended to fly back to washington and as soon as the plane landed, white house bath issued this Written Statement by the president of United States. To set the record straight, i do not know and did not intend to speculate as to whether the tate defendants are guilty, in fact, or not. All of the facts in the case have not yet been presented. The defendant should be presumed to be innocent at this stage of their trial. The next day, at the defense table, Defendant Manson held up , for the jury, a Los Angeles Times headline cyan manson guilty, nixon declares. The New York Times reported that the Supreme Court judge took immediate steps to forestall the mistrial by questioning the jurors individually about whether the incident had prejudiced to them. All but one of the 12 jurors and six alternates testified that they had witnessed mansons action, but they all said they could act impartially. One man said he hoped he could. Just before the session ended, the judge also sentenced the Defense Lawyer to county jail for three nights on Contempt Charges for putting newspapers on the Counsel Table where manson could get at them. The judge asked each juror to swear under oath that they would be able to reach a verdict based solely on the evidence presented in the courtroom. Joe biden remembers the two days in 1970 when the president of the United States almost derailed Charles Mansons murder trial. Everyone in high school in high school or older remembers. Joe biden is a more careful person anymore careful lawyer than Richard Nixon. Joe biden has not said anything about the overwhelming evidence against donald trump in the criminal charges that he faces for violations of the Espionage Act and the illegal possession of classified material. Joe biden has said nothing about the overwhelming evidence in the indictment of donald trump in washington, d. C. For conspiracy against the United States of america, Conspiracy To Defraud the United States of america by illegally changing the results of the president ial election. Joe biden has said nothing about the criminal charges donald trump is facing in georgia, where donald trump was recorded on the phone demanding the charges change the vote count. Any other Candidate Running for president against donald trump could attack donald trump in the president ial debate on every one of those cases, as long as that Candidate Running against donald trump or not the president of the United States. News coverage of donald trump has worn out the word unprecedented. But, here we are, tonight, at the end of a full day of News Coverage of what will be the biden trump debates, and news media still has not even realize how unprecedented those debates will be, this time, because of the criminal indictments facing donald trump. There will be a nominee in the debate, facing at least three indictments, who will already have been convicted or found not guilty in an earlier child happening now in new york city. If there is a hung jury in the manhattan trial, that they are going to pursue a retrial of donald trump, then joe biden wont be able to talk about that case, either. The socalled debate that was already going to be ridiculous is going to be even more preposterous. It will be the theater of the absurd. Joe biden will just have one hand tied behind his back and then will be put in the legal straitjacket. The unfair benefit to donald trump is enormous. Joe biden is a good lawyer. He could rip up donald trump in a debate, just talking about the criminal indictments against donald trump alone. Instead, we will see the latest version of the standard tv debate format, which is already problematic to the point of absurdity. I have seen every televised debate in president ial history. That is how few of them there have been. Most president s were elected without debating anyone. That is how unnecessary president ial debates are. I was a little kid sitting on the floor of the living room, watching the very first televised president ial debate between Vice PresidentRichard Nixon and that boston boy, senator john fitzgerald. I was in college, the next time they had a president ial debate, 16 years later, in 1976 between gerald ford and his opponent. Televised debates are not mandatory part of president ial campaigning. They are a show created by and for television. They did not exist before television. No one thought they were necessary. The historically famous Lincoln Douglas debates were not president ial debates. They were debates for an Illinois Senate campaign which Abraham Lincoln lost. The Television Version of debate does not actually test president ial skills. In the rooms were president s govern, they are never told they only have two minutes to respond to what someone just said in that room. President s never have to make decisions alone. President s always have Expert Advice available to them, as much advice as they want or need. No one has ever run into the oval office and said mr. President , you have 30 seconds to respond. Never. They never will. Nothing president ial is actually being tested in the phony debates that the Television Industry pretends are invaluable, because they are really good for the Television Industry. Candidates, standing there, alone on the debate stage, answering questions about how they will govern is an entirely Fictional Television will Television Construct of how president s do their work. You dont need to remember everything about the tax code or the throw weight of missiles, when you are president s. If the president struggles to remember a name or number, no one snapped at him or panics or thinks the president is losing it. Every professional working with a president , a serious president , knows that every president not named trump has the largest range of governing information and responsibility in his head of anyone in that room. Everything from Agricultural Policy to the latest terrorist threat. If the faa director comes to the oval office to talk about the stress of overburdened air traffic controllers, the faa expects to know, and should know , a lot of the president knows about that subject. That is why hes there, to help the president. If, say, when the faa director is walking into the oval office , he sees the cia director leaving, the faa director should assume that she is talking to a president who might be distracted by something much more serious and darker that he just heard from the cia director, then what the faa director is now there to discuss. I televised president ial debate turns on the childish function that the president is supposed to know everything all the time, about everything, and he is supposed to state the most important points about everything in two minutes to an audience that is a tiny fraction of understanding what is knowledgeable, serious president knows. What you want is a president who can think, and they almost never have to think in a debate. You want a president who can deliberate and ink carefully. They absolutely never have to think alone. What you want is a president who has demonstrated the ability to find the best choice in the agonizing president ial situations of having no good choice. None of the president ial Debate Moderators, all of whom are very good at their work, have ever seen a president ial decision made. They have never been in the room where that happens, when it happens. They have never seen the president ial decision, on its way to being made. They have no idea how many weeks or years of thinking, by the president and the people around him, shaped that president ial decision that is announced to them in a White House Press briefing. That is in no way a criticism of the moderators, announced today for the cnn and abc debate, each of whom will definitely do a better job than i could ever do in that generation. But, there is nothing moderators can do to fix the conceptual flaws of the very notion of televised president ial debates, the flaw that was there at the birth, in 1960, when the Television Business decided to pretend that the president ial debate could actually be a window into how a potential president would actually do his work. Joe biden started off this morning, with this. Donald trump lost two debates to be in 2020 and since then he has not shown up for debate. Now he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. Ill even do it twice. Lets pick the dates, donald. I hear youre free on wednesdays. That was 8 00. Two hours later at 10 14, joe biden announced, ive received and accepted an invitation from cnn for debate on june 27th. Over to you, donald. As you said, anywhere, anytime, Anyplace Weird half an hour later, donald trump accepted the June 27th Cnn debate invitation and an hour later, donald trump posted his accepting a September 10th Invitation for an Abc Television debate. Then, joe biden accepted the September 10th abc debate. The Biden Campaign laid down a set of conditions for debate this morning. The debates should be oneonone , allowing voters to compare the only two candidates with any statistical chance of prevailing in the Electoral College and not squandering debate time on candidates with no prospect of becoming president. The moderators should be selected by the broadcast host from among the regular personnel so as to avoid a ringer or partisan. There should be firm time limits for answers, and alternate turns to speak, so that the time is evenly divided and we have an exchange of views, not a spectacle of mutual interruption. The Candidates Microphone should only be active when it is his turn to speak, to promote adherence to rules and orderly proceedings. Good luck with that. Leading off our discussion is andrew wiseman, former fbi councils, msnbc legal analyst and coauthor of the best selling book, the trump indictments. Thank you for joining us. As soon as i heard about the debates this morning, i began to wonder, i thought of Richard Nixon talking about Charles Manson, who he could not say was guilty, and i started to wonder, what, if anything, can the president of the United States, in these debates, say about his opponents indictments . Here is what i think is off limits and what is in limits. I leave to others the strategic call about whether to do it. Im looking at what you can do. First, cases that have been criminal cases and civil cases that have been concluded are clearly within the limits. Donald trump can be attacked or asks questions, and joe biden can talk about civil fraud, sexual assault, the Criminal Contempt, 10 counts of Criminal Contempt that were found by the Sitting Judge right now. All of that is concluded. That is all fair game. There is a norm that you referred to, which is for ongoing criminal cases. Theres a norm, not the law, but a norm that you should not talk about them, and ensure that joe biden is going to adhere to that because his whole point is the Department Of Justice should have its own separate being, should make its own separate decisions, and the president should not be directing who should be charged and who should not be and weighing in on this criminal cases. That, by the way, is by contrast to not just Richard Nixon. I want to remind you of something thats a little close to me, which is when the Palmetto Furred Jury was out, donald trump had no problem weighing in On Palmetto Furred and what a great guy he was. That was one of 10 enumerated ways in which we suggest did in the report that was listed as one of 10 ways in which you could find Obstruction Of Justice by the then sitting president. He does not adhere to that, but i think that joe biden will. One final point, i do think that the underlying facts of the case can be talked about, meaning that just because donald trump has been indicted in connection with the january 6 case does not mean you cannot ask him questions about it and joe biden cant say, do you agree that the election was not stolen. What were you doing on the january 6, and why you let it happen . Did you say it was okay for your Vice President to be hand, why are you insisting on freeing people convicted . Are you in favor of Law And Order . Youre in favor of releasing some people live been convicted of not just participation in the assault on the capital, but assault on police officers, and theres a huge litany of the underlying facts that are fair game to ask about, just because hes been indicted does not mean he doesnt have to answer in a political way, to questions about those facts. We will have more to say about this as debates approach, especially with what judge cannon might pounce on it joe biden says anything about that case in the debate. Thank you for joining us. We will see you tomorrow with trial coverage. Thank you. Stomach joining us now is simon rosenberg, longtime democratic strategist. Simon, here is the debate. Joe biden got out in front to be the one who started the whole thing and he issued the challenge, he issued the specific points on the calendar , where he wanted to do it, and he got