>> she should be locked up. tell you right now. >> she should be locked up. she should. >> that's right, lock them up. you should lock them up. lock up the bidens. lock up hillary. >> hillary clinton, i didn't say lock her up, but the people don't say lock her up, okay. >> donald trump's getting a bit desperate ahead of his sentencing making the ludicrous claim that he never said hillary clinton should be locked up. it's on tape, donald. plus, michael cohen's reaction to trump's guilty verdict and the potential of prison time. and the far right continues to embrace authoritarianism with politicians and commentators flocking to el salvador to attend the inauguration of the man who calls himself the world's coolest dictator. it's a big warning sign for the type of government they want to run if trump becomes president again. but we begin tonight with the real meaning of law and order. as the reality has set in that their soon to be official nominee is a convicted felon, republicans have reacted in the calmest and most rational possible way. no, i'm messing with you. they wigged completely out. >> i disagree with the jury's verdict here. a jury can only act within the constraints a judge puts on it. in this case, it was rigged from the very beginning. >> i think what happened in new york if you applied it across all 50 states would be the definition of fascism. >> how do we work together to protect ourselves from the illegal prosecutions and from persecutions, and then what do we do to fight back? how do we make them suffer if they're going to illegally prosecute us? >> you tyrants are about to awaken a machine you don't want. you are pushing people to the edge. the same party that is offended by the wrong pronouns is pushing the party that owns 90% of the guns. you people in your cities with your white shoe consultants, country clubs who thought prosecuting trump was a good idea, you have never met america. >> yeah. that's not unhinged at all. could somebody please check on mr. higbee. i'm not sure he's okay. what has emerged is one of those clarifying moments when you realize what the real game is. to explain, listen to how republicans and their media outlets were talking about the issue of crime right up to the very moment trump became a convict. >> this is going on all across the country. crime everywhere. >> now they say there's no crime wave. do you feel safe? >> if we're not going to be a nation of laws in this country, we don't have anything. >> i'm so fed up with the crime going on in this country that would so easily be resolved if we went back to good old fashioned consequences and law and order. >> turns out, what republicans really mean when they fearmonger about crime is that they want police and prosecutors to be tough on crimes committed pie people they look down on. black people, undocumented migrants, women who want abortions. black voters in texas and florida who haven't had their rights restored under the old jim crow laws in those states and of course, their political opponents who they have deemed their enemies. through the history of this country, law and order was directed primarily at people in those demographics. run away slaves and blacks targeted by jim crow and indigenous people who wouldn't willingly give up land and mexicans in texas who wouldn't give up theirs to alabama slave holders. remember the alamo and poor people and union workers, black and white, because capitalism. in the early 20th century before women won the right to vote, they were routinely arrested and jailed for trying to vote. as were untold numbers of black people denied the right to vote, and many were lynched for trying to exercise that right. the lynchers faced literally no consequences. as all white male juries regularly acquitted them in just minutes, if they were charged at all. men like donald trump and his klan rally attending father fred could do almost anything, not pay taxes, refuse to rent to black people. men of the trump's demographic and wealth routinely did things like burn entire black towns to the ground with impunity which they did literally dozens of times. commit marital rape, which trump's first wife ivana once accused him of doing. this is the kind of freedom and privilege men like trump got used to, and they're outraged, outraged, he's now being subjected to the same criminal justice system that locked up more than any people on earth, disproportionately people of color. a system where when people are killed in streets in routine encounters or in their own homes, more than in any other developed country on earth, how dare that system be used against a rich, privileged white man like donald trump. if they can do it to him, any rich white powerful man might have to pay for their crimes. the horror. the criminal justice system is supposed to be directed at people like you, not him. even worse, the system now includes something it never did before. brown immigrant judges and black district attorneys and attorneys general. how dare they be deigned to hold donald trump to any legal standard, much less the same standard as michael cohen, after all, michael cohen is not a multimillionaire former president. who is he to be treated the same as trump? how dare this system treat trump the way it treated the since exonerated central park five or how trump bragged he would treat a woman. not grabbing a woman by the you know what. i'm talking about hillary clinton, remember, lock her up? i do. although now, apparently, trump remembers it differently. >> hillary clinton, i didn't say lock her up, but the people don't say lock her up, okay, then we won. and i said, pretty openly, i say all right, just relax. >> but we're not misremembering it, don. your whole campaign was about locking hillary clinton up. now, trump's supporters also really want to lock up the president's son, hunter biden, who coincidently went on trial today on gun and tax charges brought against him by holdovers from the trump administration at the justice department. you know, the same doj that literally locked up michael cohen for his part in the scheme that trump was just convicted on last week. well, according to donald trump and republicans, weirdly enough, it seems joe biden has now weaponized the justice system against his own son. make it make sense. but back to my revelation. it seems clear that what republicans want is for the law to go back to the way it was historically when men like donald trump and men like them could literally get away with murder. they want that world pack. donald trump's own sense of personal impunity is so strong, he's even calling on his favorite justices on the supreme court to intervene before he's sentenced in july four days before the republican convention. the supreme court has no case meddling in a state prosecution, but the reality is given what we haveen from the conservative men on the court, the idea they would do it anyway doesn't feel much like a fiction. what makes it even more insulting is trump and republicans have recruited some dignitly free black men besides claire whoons are willing to pretend his impunity would ever apply to them. these people think so little of black americans that they believe trump's criminal record is the thing that will endear him to black men, who when they get convicted, do not have a cult army to demand that they not be locked up. they simply lose access to everything. from jobs to the ability to rent an apartment or travel, or in red states, the ability to vote. something donald trump has been assured by the james crow governor of florida that he will not lose either. i'm joined now by joyce vance, former u.s. attorney, professor at the university of alabama school of law, cohost of the sisters in law podcast, and an msnbc legal analyst, and charles blow, "new york times" columnist and msnbc political analyst. thank you both for being here. joyce, you're the daughter-in-law of a judge, a former prosecution. how do you feel when you hear people who have been banging on about crime and how about how we have to stop this crime wave in america suddenly think that crime is a-okay when it is donald trump who is convicted of one or 37 counts of one? >> yeah, i don't think we have to be very sophisticated in our analysis to appreciate that this is no longer the party of law and order. if in fact it ever was. i think you make a powerful argument here, joy, that it was less about law and order, more about controlling people, and part of the work that was done during the obama administration that i really appreciated the opportunity to be a part of was this work to make our criminal justice system more fair and more consistent with our values. it's always been an aspirational flawed system, but progress was being made. and there was bipartisan appetite for that work. and then along came donald trump, and i just don't think that we have to do anything other than call it what it is, an effort to be results oriented and to put one man above the law without any concern about the consequences for the larger america and the progress we still need to make. >> yeah, you know, charles, it was rich to see ken paxton, who was also indicted by the federal government for crimes say, well, we have to stop this out of control system. you have to stop it for you because you're afraid of getting indicted. they're clearly saying it's not that we like crime, it's just that -- it's not that we're not against crime. we're just against crimes that black and brown people and women who want abortions, we want those people prosecuted. trump has to be free so people like us can be free. that's what it sounds like to me. >> it sounds like that because that's exactly what it is. and it really calls back into question all of the things that people used to say. blue lives matter is a response to black lives matter. no it wasn't. you never cared about the police. you cared about preserving the rights and opportunities for police to be brutal to black people and control them, and killing them came in the course of doing that, then so be it. that was what that was all about. you never really cared about spiking crime waves. you cared about what looked to you or what you thought was more black or brown people committing crimes. more protesters committing crimes. these are people who you disagree with or people who are other than you. these people view the policing system and the criminal justice system writ large as an instrument to control people who are other than them. and in the country where half the country views the policing system and the justice system in that way, then that system is by result inherently unjust on some level. and that is what black people have been saying forever. that is what gay and lesbian people who have gotten beat up have been saying forever. this system doesn't work for me. these people are cruel to me. these people are harsh with me. and you say that that is what justice looks like. it is not what justice looks like. this is what is shining a bright lite on the hypocrisy of that. >> yeah, i mean, i can't stop thinking, joyce, about the fact that in red states, republicans are coming up with new and sort of luxurious ways to punish women. charge them with the death penalty if they try to get an abortion. making 10-year-olds criminals if they try to get an abortion or if somebody tries to help a 10-year-old rape victim get out of state, they want to make that criminal. they want to make it illegal to stand near the police. they keep finding new ways to do law and order, but the law and order always seems to be directed at either bleej bleej people, black people, brown people, or especially women. for them, you get law and order, but it's odd they think this one guy must get away with a crime that literally his justice department locked up michael cohen for, and then locked him up again when he wouldn't stop talking about it. make it make sense. >> well, i mean, i think you just did, joy. i think you called it out for exactly what it is. we're looking at the politicization of the criminal justice system. all too often, republicans have used the label that applies best to their behavior for other people. tomorrow, attorney general merrick garland will be on the hill for an oversight hearing in front of the house. and the house's web page labels that as an inquiry into the politicization of the criminal justice system. you may love merrick garland or you may hate him but he has certainly done his level best to try to restore this notion that the criminal justice system works equally for everyone. and that there are norms and rules that we respect. the problem that we're seeing increasingly is efforts on the conservative side of the aisle to achieve political goals through the criminal justice system. that's just the opposite of american values. something that we pride ourselves on, something that keeps us in our status as a democratic republic, is that criminal prosecution can't be used as a tool by whoever is in political power in the moment. that's what we're at risk of losing if we give donald trump of all people a pass from accountability. >> at the same time, i hear what joyce is saying, charles, but merrick garland has also done very little to root out the trumpification of the doj. i mean, this is a doj that likely would never have prosecuted somebody who wasn't named hunter biden for the things he is on trial for right now. if you want to talk about politicization of the justice department. the leftovers from the trump doj prosecuted marilynmosby. the leftovers are still doing it, and democrats play nice, and say we don't want to move them out because it will look political. what happens is it's political. the two-tiered system is actually real. it's just that donald trump is trying to convince two rappers that it's really against him and that they should forget their own interests and only care about him, not even about their own lives, just him. >> right. and if you think that the justice department is politicized now, if donald trump ever gets back into the white house, hold on and strap in, because it is going to be a disaster. he is telegraphing in every way possible that he's going to use the justice department as his own kind of enforcement agency for all the things that he wants to do, including retribution. and that is what i think a lot of republicans are lusting for. his vengeance, his retribution, and that's why they're so upset, because the justice system is trying to hold someone accountable who they don't want to be held accountable, and they believe that they should be able to trump it. they should be able to say, well, in this case, we don't want it. we just want it for the other people. different people, people who are different from us, and that's how it should be applied. anything other than that means the system is broken because the system is inherently supposed to protect people like me. >> and i don't know if we time, let's play donald trump making his warning if he's sent to jail. >> i don't know that the public would stand it. you know, i'm not sure the public would stand for it. >> on house arrest? >> i think it would be tough for the public to take. at a certain point, there's a breaking point. >> joyce, that sounds like a threat, like a threat of another january 6th. >> it really does, and you know, for me as a former prosecutor, what that is, that's fodder for sentencing. that's evidence that you asked the judge to take into account when he decides whether or not this defendant needs to go into custody in order to be held accountable for what he did and hot he continues to do. >> let's see if judge merchan takes all of these statements into account as well he should. joyce and charles, thank you. up next on "the reidout," one individual's account of individual one, michael cohen joins me next as his former boss awaits sentencing. type 2 diabetes? discover the ozempic® tri-zone. ♪ ♪ i got the power of 3. i lowered my a1c, cv risk, and lost some weight. in studies, the majority of people reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. i'm under 7. ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as stroke, heart attack, or death in adults also with known heart disease. i'm lowering my risk. adults lost up to 14 pounds. i lost some weight. ozempic® isn't for people with type 1 diabetes. don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. don't take ozempic® if you or your family ever had medullary thyroid cancer, or have multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if allergic to it. stop ozempic® and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or an allergic reaction. serious side effects may include pancreatitis. gallbladder problems may occur. tell your provider about vision problems or changes. taking ozempic® with a sulfonylurea or insulin may increase low blood sugar risk. side effects like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may lead to dehydration, which may worsen kidney problems. living with type 2 diabetes? ask about the power of 3 with ozempic®. norman, bad news... i never graduated from med school. what? -but the good news is... xfinity mobile just got even better! now, you can automatically connect to wifi speeds up to a gig on the go. plus, buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. i gotta get this deal... i know... faster wifi and savings? ...i don't want to miss that. that's amazing doc. mobile savings are calling. visit xfinitymobile.com to learn more. doc? one of the lines donald trump and his maga amis love to feed their base is president joe biden's department of justice has been weaponized against trump. how else could you explain trump being charged with 88 criminal counts in both state and federal courts? 34 of which he was convicted of just last week? they cannot for a moment believe that the doj and local prosecutors are simply following through with their mission to uphold the rule of law. but just to remind you, it was trump's doj in 2018 that first prosecuted trump's former lawyer, michael cohen, trump's coconspirator in the hush money election interference scheme. remember, there were three people at that trump tower meeting in august 2015 who conspired together to influence the 2016 election through unlawful means. the former publisher of the "national enquirer," david pecker, cohen, and trump. pecker's company signed a nonprosecution agreement and he received immunity from federal prosecutors in exchange for cooperation on the investigation. cohen went to prison. and now, trump has been convicted and is awaiting sentencing for his crimes. i'm joined now by michael cohen, former personal attorney for then president donald trump and prior to that, principal of crisis x and a key witness in trump's trial. he is the host of the mea culpa podcast, cohost of the political beatdown podcast, and author of "revenge, how donald trump weaponized the u.s. department of justice against his criticri and disloyal, a memoir of the former personal attorney to donald j. trump. i want to start on a note that is not pleasant. it does appear the consequences for your cooperation in this election interference trial have been personal and you have thought about it and talked about it before. you were doxed, your family was doxed after the verdict. the phone numbers of yourself, your wife, your children were posted early monday morning on a site used to target other figures involved in trump's various legal issues, according to a nonprofit research group. we know they're trying to dox the jurors too. talk about that experience and do you feel safe and are you protected? >> well, look, i don't want to get into whether i have protection or not. obviously too, give some of these maniacs an opportunity within which to come at me, but yes, we ha