That is tonights last word from the courtroom. The 11th hour with Stephanie Ruhle starts now. Tonight, Michael Cohen back on the stand, the former president s defense team grills him on a 2016 phone call and paints him as a liar. How todays heated testimony could impact the jury plus a new trump entourage outside the courtroom. How republican antics in new york are risking gop control in washington then new reporting on why some wall street donors may be warming to trump is the 11th hour gets underway on this thursday night. That evening. Once again, i am Stephanie Ruhle. We are now 173 days away from the election and today, outside a manhattan courthouse, people were lined up in the rain hoping to witness the latest developments in Donald Trumps new york criminal trial. Inside the courtroom there is another day of tough Cross Examination for Michael Cohen. Defense attorney todd blanche leaned hard into credibility issues, pressing cohen on his history of lying and his criminal record while accusing him of being out for revenge. Blanche also challenged cohens claim of a crucial phone call with donald trump. Reporter tonight, star prosecution witness Michael Cohen facing a scathing second day of crossexamination as former President Trumps defense team tries to paint him as a spurned former employee desperate for payback. The jury, hearing cohen on his podcast appearing in search of vengeance. Revenge is a dish best served cold and you Better Believe i want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to me and my family. Reporter tension in the room building to a dramatic moment, trump attorney Todd Blanche Accusing Trump of lying cohen of lying about his testimony, saying mr. Trumps bodyguard passed the phone to mr. Trump on october 24th, 2016 at 8 0 2 pm. Cohen said he informed trump at the time the deal the path Stormy Daniels would be done, blanche today raising his voice, saying that was a lie, showing the jury never before seen Text Messages suggesting the call was for another purpose entirely. Cohen had earlier reached out to schiller for help dealing with a 14yearold print color and schiller texted back telling cohen to call him. Logs show a Call On October 24th that lance did lasted 94 seconds. The clear implication, the phone was never passed to trump, appearing blindsided, blanche grilling him. That was a lie. You did not talk to trump. You talk to keith schiller. You can admit it. Cohen responding no, i dont know that is accurate, cohen adding i believe i also spoke to mr. Trump about the Stormy Daniels matter, Blanche Shooting back we are not asking what you believe. This jury does not want to hear what you think happened. Cohens credibility, key to the states case is he is the only one who is testified the former president had advanced knowledge of the plan to pay off daniels to protect his campaign and then signed off on a scheme to pay cohen back, allegedly falsifying Business Records to disguise his reimbursements. Trump has pleaded not guilty as his Defense Attorneys have argued nothing was falsified, and once again challenging the prosecutors theory today that the former president only cared about shielding his campaign from daniels damaging story, blanche pushing cohen about trumps reaction the first time the former president learned of daniels shopping her story, asking the first thing that trump said to you is that his family would like that very much, cohen saying that is true. The selfdescribed former truck fixer turned foe maintaining his composure on the stand when pressed at length about his criminal history, cohen has been convicted of lying under oath and disbarred, the defense arguing he has a motivation to lie now, and a history of doing so. Quote, you lied under oath, correct . Yes, sir, cohen says, the defense today saying cohen is also not telling the full story about his desire for a white house job, which mr. Trump never offered him. You were disappointed that after all the work you have done for President Trump, nine and half years, nobody offers you a position in the white house. Thats not accurate, cohen said. Today was an interesting day, a fascinating day and it shows what a scam this whole thing is. Cohen is expected to return to the stand when the trial resumes on monday. With that, lets get smarter with the help of our Leadoff Panel tonight. John allen joins us, tim obrien is here, Bloomberg OpinionSenior Executive editor in Trump Biographer and msnbc legal analyst krista greenberg, a former federal prosecutor. Tim and kristi were both in court today. Based on what it appears you are wearing, i believe you are a ranger super fan. Yes, go, ranges. Okay, you are legal counsel, so you get to go first. What stood out to you in todays faceoff . Well, as laura said in your leader, Michael Cohen is a necessary witness here. He is the only witness thus far who was able to tell us about direct conversations with donald trump where donald trump was not only aware of the Hush Money Payment to Stormy Daniels but he approved it and reimbursed Michael Cohen and knew what he was reimbursing them for so those conversations are really important and one of the things todd blanche did successfully was cast doubt on at least one of those conversations. It was just a misstep from the prosecution, maybe, to not show him these messages to orient him to the specific date of time that happened in 2016. How many people could go through their logs and know exactly a precise date and time of when a call happened . That is really hard to do so im surprised he didnt maybe testify a little more broadly about the date and time within this october timeframe, because once you pin it down like that, its really hard if they have other messages that suggest it may have been about Something Else. You would expect them to have looked at that and made sure if they were going to pin it down that they knew exactly what they were talking about, and had the full context for it. So, it was a misstep but i will say this is not a hat trick. He clinched the game. The game is still very much in play. I expect prosecutors will come back on monday and clean some of this up and redirect. Okay. Even if the context of conversation is off to him, they have the documentation. Right . Ess. I would preface all of this saying no one can predict what the jury is going to do, and you know, we cant get inside the jurors minds, but it is sitting there today what they said. I think todd blanche is not a great defense attorney. He came into the trump world through Boris Epshteyn who came into the trump world through eric trump and you have this series of c players who get donald trump here and he gives him a lot of responsibility they maybe would not have otherwise earned and i think there were other people sitting at trumps Defense Table who were much more capable than todd blanche and i think he had a horrible first day of cross. I think he recovered today, but what he went through today was an assault on Michael Cohens credibility and i think he established that Michael Cohen is a serial liar, just like Donald Trumps. Okay, but that is the thing. Michael cohen was a liar for 10 years at the direction, at the behest of donald trump. Like if they wrote a job description, be my thug, mahesh money, my liar, my fixer. That was the job. Lied to the media if there is a bad story in the works. If ive got Business People or business competitors in my way, help me undermine them. If i funded a political foot race and theyre coming out saying i slept with women, please put that story in a different place. That was his job and i dont think i do think he is an important witness. I think the prosecution has done a good job of establishing the facts that transcend Michael Cohen and i dont think the jury has to rely entirely on Michael Cohen any longer to believe that a crime was committed here. You have Allen WeisselbergSigning Invoices with all of the information in his own handwriting, outlining exactly the fraud that took place, and Allen Weisselberg is not somebody who is ever going to turn on donald trump. He was doing what he was told every day of his life by donald trump, so i think the todd blanche did not tell a narrative to the jurors. He was not thematically coherent in a way that a good defense attorney or prosecutor is capable of doing, standing up in front and just thematically walking them through a story that makes sense to them and undermines, in this instance, the prosecutions case. John, Michael Cohens credibility issues are all well established, as are Donald Trumps. Youve covered trump for years now. How do you view what we all just saw in court . Thats a great question, stephanie. This is the pitfall of resting a lot of your case or having a star witness be Michael Cohen, who is perhaps best known at this point for the lies that he told, as you pointed out, many on behalf of donald trump at the problem before the jury, and of course, we dont know how theyre going to assess this information, and there is a lot of other information the jury has been given, corroborating material and evidence from david pecker and others as well as the documentation but this is the pitfall of Michael Cohen, you know. This was a good day for the defense in a bad day for the prosecution and i think that is the first time you can say that in 18 days of this trial. The jury is going to have a lot to assess. The prosecutor will have a chance to redirect with Michael Cohen, but you know, todd blanche slipped one past the goalie, to continue the hockey metaphor, and the question is, are the prosecutors going to be able to score a few more . I want to go back to the last point you were making, christy. Monday, redirect time, is this where the prosecution cleans up that sloppiness from today . What do you expect from them . I do think they really need to go back to that day, in particular, that October 24th Day for that phone call happens, look at all the messages and look at any other messages that day and see if there is any greater context put forth to put some other evidence there for Michael Cohen and see if he can explain it. What he said on the record was you know, this is my belief about what happened and todd blanche rightly said well, the jury doesnt want to know what you think happened. They want to know what you know happened and that is where you really get into danger trying to get things pinpointed from a decade ago with call logs. It is a dangerous thing to do but i think they just need to go back through the evidence and see what they have. The other thing i thought was really damaging, and i am not sure how you recover from this on redirect, is he said, sitting here today in testimony that he Still Believes that it was a corrupt prosecution that was brought against him federally, not having anything to do necessarily with the campaignfinance obligations but with contact conduct that was separate and apart from donald trump, mainly tax fraud and he said look, the prosecutor shouldnt of come for me. He said he pled guilty in 2018 than a few months ago in a Civil Fraud Trial he said he didnt do it, never evaded his taxes then said he lied during the guilty plea. Now today it is, i never disputed the facts, which he clearly did under oath but they shouldnt have come after me. It was a 4 million tax fraud over five years. Why shouldnt they have prosecuted that case . I was in that office and supervised prosecuting cases in that realm with that direction and that kind of money. Those are serious criminal cases of calling the judge corrupt, which he did on the stand sitting here today not oh, i should not have said that. It was the federal judge was in on it and i believe he is corrupt and he also said you know, he was confronted with his statements about the prosecutors and the judge being fbeing animals and there was no legitimization for that. It was blamed the prosecutor and the judge in trump and when you set it out that way, as the defense did today, that is pretty damning because it makes it seem like hes got a problem with everybody and will never take the blame himself, and im not really sure how you recover for that on redirect because this is a man who doesnt seem to be able to accept responsibility for his own conduct. Thats a problematic thing to ask a jury to believe somebody who just again, cant really seem to get his story straight. We heard and not another new name today, robert costello, a former adviser to Michael Cohen. His name came up a few times in court then showed up on fox news tonight. Watch this. Doing this payment and taking care of this was his way of getting himself back into the good graces of donald trump because he could then go to trump afterwards and say boss, thats what he called them, you know, you could have had a big, embarrassing problem but i, Michael Cohen, took care of it. Remind us why this guy is important. I not costello was an ambassador for Rudy Giuliani when team trump was worried about Michael Cohen going rogue and they were worried about losing him. You said ambassador for Rudy Giuliani. Wow. They introduce in Court A Letter from costello in which he said, or an email, i guess, to Michael Cohen st. Michael, we love you. You have to understand we love you so do the right thing here and correctly in his testimony when they said what do you think his motive was, they said they wanted to make sure i didnt flip. And you know, at that point, Michael Cohen, who desperately didnt want to be loved by the trump family you know, he said earlier he really thought they considered him a member of the family. I guarantee you they never thought he was a member of the family and he had this longing to belong. Trump sold him that fantasy. Yes, he sold a lot of people that fantasy and so you know, they did not do the smart work of keeping Michael Cohen in the fence before it came to this and then once they let him out and he panicked about costellos the guy saying come back home so for him to appear on fox today saying he cant be trusted, his garbage, you know, hes carrying water for trump again. My gosh, john. With everything going on inside the courtroom, trump is still running for president , he is going outside the court room talking to cameras, he is even reading polls. Do you think anyone outside the maga world was already all in for trump, other americans out there going well, i heard what trump said today outside the courtroom. He made a good case. I think ill be voting for that guy. Are there independents and swing voters he is talking to when he is out there that he is winning over . Im not sure he is Winning People over necessarily with the commentary is making outside the courtroom. If Michael Cohen had been a member of the trump family, he wouldve had a job in the trump white house. He shouldve been able to know that he could not get a job by ivanka and jared that hes not a member of the family but as far as reaching the swing voters outside the courtroom, i dont think that is what hes doing. However i do believe if he is found not guilty or if there is a hung jury, that will weigh on some of the swing voters in terms of his argument that he has been gone after unfairly. I dont know about him getting a job. Eric and junior didnt get a job in the white house but trump is really running it so maybe if you are the favorite child, ivanka, yes, there is a job for you, the smart sonin law but dj, tj, he did not get a job. Eric, either. John, tim, kristy, congratulations to your rangers tonight. When we return, another parade of republicans skipped their day jobs. Taxpayer dollars to kiss the ring at trumps trial today. This is what is important, how their absence impacted work on the capital and later, after trumps first term, the biggest names on wall street ready to move on but now, some of them might be ready to come home to trump. The 11th hour just getting underway on a thursday night. Ng underway on a thursday night. Shell renewable race fuel. Reducing emissions by 60 . Were moving forward with indycar. Because were moving forward with everybody. Shell. Powering progress. And theyre all coming . Those who are still with us, yes. Grandpa whats this . Your wings. Light em up gentlemen, its a beautiful. Day to fly. Judge merchan is doing his best to keep the Trump Criminal Trial on track but as the trial continues, trumps political entourage has been lining up outside the courthouse to trash the trial. And remember they are members of congress, representatives Lauren B