to yourself -- >> you are a piece of garbage. we should kick you out of the party. >> trump's republican enablers go after anyone who dares to challenge their maga leader. they are getting a helping hand from a media company that's serving up biden disinformation along with traffic and weather together. tonight, at the supreme court, they get ready to deliver major rulings. senate republicans block an effort to establish a binding code of conduct for justices following a series of scandals involving samuel alito and clarence thomas. we begin tonight with the power of choice. as all you have faithful readers tuning in have made a choice to watch this program. you know what you want. we are thankful you decided to tune in. on the other hand there are people who choose to watch fox, which they are entitled to do. those viewers are doing so knowing that they're going to get a heaping dose of right wing talking points and trump cheerleading. they are choosing that, because that's what they want. when your grandma tunes in to her local news station for traffic, weather and sports, maybe it's an nbc affiliate or abc or cbs, she's probably not looking for a very specific right wing narrative from the media who just so happens to own that station. in fact, she probably doesn't know what's happening. but it is at scores of local stations owned by the sinclaire broadcast group, which owns 185 local television stations across the country. new reports of public notice how they injected biden's age into local broadcasts. they teed up a segment on a dubious "wall street journal" report about the president's acuity with a virtually identical script. >> a report questioning the mental fitness of president joe biden. this issue could be an election decider."the wall street journa calling into fitness -- into question the fitness of joe biden. >> "the wall street journal" published a story that calls into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. >> it could be an election decider. >> it's not the first time sinclair has engaged in propaganda. this latest local news narrative is based on an article that was highly problematic. "the wall street journal," owned by rupert murdoch, who owns fox, and its article on president biden, regurgitated by dozens of stations relied on a single source, kevin mccarthy, who told the journal, quote, i used to meet with him when he was vice president. i would go to his house. he is not the same person. that's the same kevin mccarthy who politico reported mocked biden's age and mental acuity in public while telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations. the evidence of how much this narrative is skewed to help trump and hurt biden couldn't be more clear when you watch one of the two presidential candidates behaving like thchlt. >> i don't care about you. i just want your vote. i think it would be suicide before biden. right? my relationship to m.i.t., very smart. a lot of shark attacks lately. did you notice that? there was a shark -- you get electrocuted. i will take electrocution every single time. >> that doesn't include the part where the unhinged grandpa convicted of 36 felonydicted on calls those who attacks the capitol warriors. it is irresponsible tore abscess over president biden's tendencies to mangle a couple of words in a speech, while donald trump is sounding detached from reality. if you tune in to a sinclair station or fox, you are not going to hear reality about the presumptive republican nominee. what you are getting from a supposed by straight news outlet with your traffic and weather is propaganda to make you think one is mentally infirm. it's not the sharks or electrocution guy. >> matthew dowd, msnb senior political analyst, brian stelter. brian, you are our media guy. this is how broad -- i want to put up this map. this is how much coverage sinclair has. you can see that all over the country. the thing that's important to note is that 51 are fox affiliates. they are not necessarily exactly like fox. 51 are fox. abc is 39. cbs 30. nbc 25. they are pretending as a normal news station. >> yes. a thumb on this scale. the actual reach of sinclair means they put a hand on the scale. they are having a profound influence and a disprportionate influence. my wife is a local tv anchor. hers do outstanding work. unlike the other owners, sinclair does try to put a spin on the news. a lot of the journalists don't want anything to do with it. they don't like reading the talking points. that "wall street journal" story had flaws. sinclair didn't do original reporting. they didn't do any of the their work at all. they ate it up and regurgitated what "the wall street journal" said. that's the worst form of so-called journalism out there. it's not news. >> they have done this before. this isn't the first time. let me play where they got caught. this was reading the same script on all the stations. they got busted. [ many speaking at once [ . >> this was a must run editorial. it echoed donald trump's attacks on the media. >> what we see is this conservative echo chamber, how they find a story and you see it. there are dubious news sources. "new york post" often goes to "the wall street journal." it goes to fox. then it trickles down. sinclair, it's not surprising they do this. the fact that they are using local news to get this propaganda into the minds of people who are just trying to figure out the weather and the traffic seems particularly nefarious. >> absolutely. from a campaign perspective, it's a powerful ally to have. this isn't people who are self- -- they are choosing to go to fox. they are sitting back listening to news and sports. they are getting a propaganda narrative. they are being fed the idea that trump is brilliant. fox isn't even playing him live anymore. he has become more and more did i -- demented. >> yeah, i'm glad we're having this conversation. i have come to the conclusion that what sinclair is doing is more dangerous than fox. we all know it's the same lens. they will be right wing. we filter it through that or many people filter it through that. they accept it whether you are part of that cult or not. the problem with sinclair is, people don't have that filter when they watch the traffic, they watch the weather, they watch local sports and all of that. when you welcome at the level of trust for news organizations, local news is trusted more than other news. in 2004, what i would say is show me what's getting reported on the local news and show me what's in the local paper in phoenix or detroit or grand rapids or whatever. that to me is what's most important. that was before the sinclair. now we have this. that's far more pernicious than fox news. >> what made donald trump unre-electable was not so much what necessarily we were saying here. his voters wouldn't have watched it. it was all the stories of people dying that people were seeing on local news. i remember saying that on this show. donald trump, what he cannot overcome is that people dying in your community ends up on your local station. those deaths are in the top of the broadcast. it's a local tragedy. he can't get around that. thanks to sinclair, he can. >> that is true to some degree. it's not true as overall. even some fox affiliates are not the same as fox news. there's a lot of great work out there. i'm going to pay attention as this election goes on to how much sinclair puts the fist on the scale, how much local anchors are forced to read national scripts. as that anchor kept saying -- they said the same thing. they said, this could be an election decider, joe biden's age. that's true if the media obsessed over it and ignored trump's faults. that will be true if the media puts its fists on the scale. >> the media did one scorery, the emails for hillary, and there was no other story. the media does have the power to make people do -- shape people's opinions. >> they tried to impeach joe biden. they couldn't find anything. their main witness ended up in jail. this is all they have is that joe biden is three years older than donald trump. it's not like he is 20 years or 10 years. he is three yeas older. >> we are being honest. he gives -- we have this -- we do have this debate on our show -- all of the shows on this network, have the debate of whether to play him. part of me says, you should. i don't think people understand how much he has declined. joe biden is old. let's be clear. he looks old. he sounds old. he walks old. you see he is a senior citizen. he still sounds like he is in touch with reality. donald trump does not. the question becomes, do we show more of him being himself? that's the only way people can necessarily -- people say, show it to focus groups. americans have forgotten how he sounds. >> i'm for one for being as transparent as possible about who is running and showing who they are. show them. lay it out and say, this is the -- these are the people. this is joe biden. this is donald trump. here is him in his own words. the funny -- interesting thing about donald trump is that he is a unique combination of both mentally unstable and incredibly corrupt. he is both. he is a combination of both of those things. he is nefarious in how he operates in all those things. but he is also -- in my view, mentally unstable. people have a hard time putting those things together. some can be corrupt and do all sorts of nasty things while simultaneously being mentally unstable. but that's donald trump. >> what we need to -- why are so many voters accepting that? why are so many trump voters holding trump to a low standard? most biden standards hold biden to a higher standard? why do they accept what comes out of his mouth? that's the harder question to answer. i don't claim to have the answer. that's why focus groups help us get to the answer. >> molly, this is the challenge. democratic voters are harder on democratic presidents, democratic candidates, members of congress. they want things. the thing that's disconnected in our politics is that republicans don't want anything. they don't want bridges or jobs in their community. they just want theater. because they are having a low standard, they say, entertain me. we don't care if you don't deliver. that's the problem. >> republicans don't really want democracy. >> they want tax cuts. >> right. very rich republicans want tax cuts. a lot of these people authoritarianism. if you ask -- what i think is as it naturing about republicans right now is they are not really for anything besides tax cuts. you try to list the policies that they are for, i mean, it was infrastructure a lot of times, but there was never any infrastructure. that kind of thing is -- they want to give trump more power. but to do what? >> that's the other piece. this is a media challenge. i don't think we are communicating to the audience always exactly what donald trump is going to do. project 2025 isn't what he is going to do while he is out there playing in traffic and talking about electrocution and sharks. the superrich are getting all of this. a good friend of this program and of this network and journalism passed away. howard fineman. let me play a bite of him from back in 2016 when we were in philadelphia. you will see i have a different hairstyle, like i always do. with hillary clinton, they are trying to relaunch a brand people feel they know. they did have what the republican convention didn't. they had people who could be validaters of hillary clinton. who are not -- >> let me make a point. when hillary clinton ran for senate and became a senator the first time, she couldn't make enough visits to fort drum and to the military -- that's a military installation in new york. she was going to show -- this may relate to being a woman in politics, joy. she was going to be tough, commander in chief material. now she's the nominee. that's not her problem. >> that was midnight hardball. i was a sidekick for. i cared about howard and his wife. >> he was an original blessing that msnbc was able to share his talent for so many years. howard, he was not afraid to speak truth to power and tell people who was happening. so often, especially in this year with this election, people are pulling back. they are trying to be careful. they don't want to offend anybody. howard was willing to speak truth to power. >> my favorite fun fact is he was literally from mr. rodgers neighborhood. >> that's right. >> god bless amy. we are sorry for your loss. we are mourning with you, my dear. he was 75 years owed, howard fineman. thank you. up next, as we await multiple court decisions, senate republicans show their true colors by blocking democrats from passing a supreme court ethics bill. stay with us. and doug. 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>> i think it's a simple reason. they don't like our decisions and they don't like how they anticipate we may decide some cases. that's the beginning of the end of it. and there are -- there are groups that are very well funded by ideological groups that have spearheaded these attacks. and that's what it is. >> like who? >> pro publica gets a lot of money. they have spent a fortune investigating -- everything he's ever done in his entire life. and they've done some of that to me too. but they look for any little thing they can find, and try to make something out of it. that's -- that's what it is. >> okay. let me pause for a second and just say that justice alito is a supposed constitutional scholar should understand that the first amendment protects the free exercise of speech in the prez. additionally, i will note, that those little things he's complaining about, amounted to roughly $2.5 million in expenses over the past 20 years that he and thomas sometimes, begrudgingly only reported after propublica exposed them. joining me now is melissa murray. your thoughts on alito's outrage about propublica. >> justy alito is famously defensive and goes to outlets like "the wall street journal" to talk about how he's being persecuted and criticized. this is life as a public figure. you're going to be criticized. he should know that. propublica to my knowledge is not overly well funded. a bunch of journalists. they went looking for any kind of discrepancy among any of the justices. they weren't targeting justice thomas, justice alito. they were generally looking. they received a bunch of redacted documents from the marshall service with different trips that the justices took and then they started piecing it together and turned out lo and behold that most of these trips on private jets were for only a handful of the justices. and that's what they reported. and it's hard to say that that's not fair game. and if you don't report this stuff, if you don't disclose it, you're kind of asking for it. >> and the thing is that i feel like everything about this court is unprecedented. we never had a leak of the supreme court ruling. it appears that maybe, you know, there's some theory that he might have leaked it or someone around him to make sure no one got off side. we've never had a story about people saying that they were able to be -- get an advance warning of a ruling as some activists said they knew they were going to get the ruling on hobby hobby. that seems to evolved around him as well. then there's this and what happened with clarence thomas. he is the middle of a lot of these scandals or tangentially related to them. so i don't know why he's surprised that he's getting more scrutiny. >> well, that's the puzzling thing. this is a court that has gone from being a bear 5-4 majority to 6-3 super majority and suddenly the decisions look really different, much more extreme, much more predictable. and people have questions. people have concerns. they see these justices paling around with billionaire donors, emotional support donors. they have questions. rightly so. that's the point of a free press to serve as a check on the excesses of government when the internal mechanisms of government fail to check themselves. >> the other pieces that were supposed to have a set of government where each body sort of guards itself own power against the others. and they aren't like -- they don't work in symbiosis. right? i want you to listen to the way republican