and run into malcolm kenyatta, who's a fellow pennsylvanian. and it was great to see him. and you know, the campaign has people like him talking about what people are actually feeling out there, i think that's going to be very, very helpful. you can give people statistics, you can give people all sorts of stuff, but we have to have real conversations about how are these things affecting you at home. so i thought, lot of surprises for me, lot of fun in one hallway running into two of my old friends. i'm going to see you in not too many hours. >> we're going to do this all over again. >> get some sleep, my friend. a surprise from the supreme court today a ruling in favor of common sense. all the justices except thomas joined in favor in the case of preventing domestic abusers from having guns. chief justice roberts in the majority opinion wrote, quote, the laws confirm what common sense suggests, when an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed, end quote. when an individual poses a clear threat, that threatening individual may be disarmed. it's a good concept. does it apply to this individual? >> those january 6th warrior, they were warrior, but they were really more than anything else, they're victims of what happened. all they were doing was protesting a rigged election. >> the supreme court again today said nothing about that individual. he's not trying to buy a gun. he's trying to get complete immunity for the effort to overthrow the election that culminated in the violent attack on the capitol on january the 6th. he's calling the convicted attackers his warriors. victims. those are the people who beat police officers, hunted members of congress, threatened to hang the vice president. he's repeating the lie that the election he lost was rigged. he has not been deterred in the least. he's doubling down. trump is saying he will pardon these criminal, offering them immunity and possibly the opportunity to do it again. and the court said nothing on that today. even though it's been six months since special prosecutor jack smith asked for expedited consideration of this matter. four months since a federal appeals court panel unanimously ruled that trump should be disarmed by simply making him subject to the law like everyone else in this country. in the meantime, donald trump has been convicted by a jury of 34 felonies related to his effort to influence the 2016 election and still the supreme court is effectively immunizing trump by helping him run out the clock on federal prosecution. trump today is worse than he was in 2016 or in 2020. and he and the country will be worse if he is returned to the presidency. to protect democracy, america must defeat trumpism. if trump is able to come back from inciting an insurrection, the message will be that lawlessness win, criminality win, fraud wins, sexual assault wins, overthrowing the will of the voters wins, threatening to assassinate the vice president for upholding the constitution wins, beating police officers wins, threatening judges and prosecutors and juries wins. if trumpism wins, the candidate who comes after trump will be worse. because they won't be pretenting like some republican senators who are cowards but know exactly who trump is. >> this is now multiple rallies where people are assaulted and beat up, where a guy gets sucker punched by one of the trump supporter, and then instead of condemning it, trump is silent. when the guy is released from jail he says next time maybe we should kill the protester. again, silence. then he goes on stage and just makes things up. he keeps telling this story about a general who dipped bullets into pig blood and shot a bunch of prisoner, muslim prisoner, not only is it outrageous, it's a lie. he has said to people why don't we basically beat up the protesters and the hecklers and i'll pay your legal bills. here's what people have to understand, maybe you think it's a joke, but there are people out there that are not balanced. there are people out there that are not completely in control of themselves, and they hear something like this from a leader, you don't know what they're going to do next. and when someone is seeking a position of leadership and is already in a position of influence, you speak responsibly. this notion that a president can just say anything they want or even a presidential candidate can say anything they want, whatever comes to mind, it's just not true, and it's reckless, and it's dangerous. >> pretty refreshing. you're not going to hear that anymore as marco rubio is on the short list to be a vice presidential candidate for donald trump. but that's exactly what happened, except instead of trump paying those protesters' legal bill, his supporters pay his legal bills now. trump's lies and attacks have led to death threats. today in florida the trump appointee, judge aileen cannon, is holding a hearing on a trump motion arguing that special prosecutor jack smith's appointment itself was unconstitutional. never mind that this is just a flimsy attempt that has failed before, in judge cannon's courtroom every trump objection is infinitely more important than voters learning through a criminal trial whether the former president stole classified document, left them fully accessible to bad actors at his golf club, and what lengths he went to stop the government from getting those documents back. you cannot have a successful democracy when the governing vision of one of the two parties is trumpism. >> a lot of republican politicians have surrendered to it. of course, many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace trump privately dread him. they know what a disaster he's been and will continue to be for our party. they're just too afraid to say it out loud. i feel no need to kiss the ring. i have no fear of trump's retribution. i'm not -- -- >> that was a great speech. she spoke truth to power. and you know what happened next? she said she's voting for trump. but did you hear those cheers? that was republican voters cheering the words i have no fear of trump. trump lost 16% of the vote in the republican primary in pennsylvania, 18% of the vote in the republican primary in arizona, 20% of the vote in the republican primary in wisconsin. all of those elections, all of those primaries were held after nikki haley dropped out. so even when there isn't somebody running against him, he's losing those numbers. those voters weren't voting for haley, they were voting for a better, saner party, republicanism without trumpism. voting for what i like to call mrns, make republicans normal again, mrna. i don't know if the republican party will become better if trump loses, but i know our democracy will be worse if he wins. people in a functioning, healthy democracy are not forced to wait on tender hooks wondering, today, will democracy hold? or will the courts give the guy who lost a free pass for his coup? there is no calvary coming. you are it. it's up to voters to show trump that democracy will ultimately win. and honestly, is it really so hard to stand up to this? >> so there's a shark ten yards away from the boat, ten yards or here, do i get electrocuted? if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, do i stay on the boat and get electrocuted? the late, great hanable lecter sr. a wonderful man. joe biden ease forming granting mass -- >> joining us now, tom nichols a former professor at the u.s. naval war college and staff writer at the atlantic, where he's author of the atlantic daily newsletter. jennifer ruben, an msnbc political analyst. where to start with donald trump? it does have to end. for people who are conservatives, and there are many in this country, they need a future. they need somebody to vote for, ideas to debate. none of this is going to happen until donald trump is out of the way. and not just donald trump but this whole concept that he has brought to life in america. >> well, there's really three groups when you talk about republicans. one is the donald trump base, the cult that is now the base of the republican party. then there are the republican electeds who are just at this point cowardly opportunists. people who have no reason not to speak out against trump still snow think they're going to be, you know, movers and shakers in some better world that's just around the corner. but then there's a third group of, you know, normal, patriotic american conservative, people who are right of center who disagree with people on the left, who really have nowhere to go. but they're a small group, and they're trapped in between a cult that couldn't care less about right or left or up or down and care only about this reality show that they're watching and they're trapped by republican electeds like nikki haley and marco rubio who talk about how no -- trump is completely unfit for office but is now, you know a guy they just have to vote for. so they have nowhere to go. i don't think that short of multiple electoral wipeouts that take not just trump but these spineless politicians out of office, i don't think there's much hope in the near term. >> it's a strange situation where we have 340 million plus people but the president is going to choose -- but the presidential candidate, donald trump, is going to choose a vice presidential candidate from a pool of people who have been harshly critical of him in the past, some in the near past, doug or j.d. or marco rubio as we're reporting today. what do you make of this? and what do you make of whether any of them are going to be useful to donald trump given circumstances we're talking about? >> well, these are the spineless of the spineless. they have clawed their way up to be the creme de la creme of sycophants. so that's why they're in the vp race, and the fact that in the past they may have said critical things, but they have capitulated in donald trump's twisted mind makes them even better, because they have bent to his will. and these people, i think, know better. i know that marco rubio knows better. marco rubio used to be in favor of immigration reform. he used to speak critically of trump. he used to be a hawk. he, apparently, is willing to shove all that aside just for the pleasure of being the next guy that trump would call the mob out to assassinate if it need be. so i think they are the perfect example whether you call them enablers or you call them sycophants, it's all the same. they make trump possible because they don't stand up to him and they don't offer an alternative to voters. but i think tom just said something really important. it's not going to be enough for one election. >> right. >> because if and when, i pray, trump loses, republicans will say, well, that was just because trump was crazy. his ideas were good, we need to try them again. and those ideas, those frightful ideas which are embodied in the 2025 project, they will sell to the next guy who comes along and the next guy after that. so it's not until they get wiped out repeatedly and badly that there is any incentive for them to compete for the rest of the electorate. >> tom, this is an interesting situation, because it's not healthy for democracy, as much as some of our viewers may enjoy watching the demise of the republican party, we're not even sure it's a demise at the moment, because they may win elections to come, but it's not healthy for a functioning democracy to not have parties with different views on things. so for that small group, that third group of conservatives you're talking about, what has to happen? does this republican party have to burn down and fail? because that may not happen in large swaths of this country. how do you rebuild a conservative movement in this country? >> well, you have to start somewhere, and the first thing is i think that the republicans have to decide that those sensible republicans have to decide that they have to be wherever donald trump isn't. that they have to be part of a coalition that's in favor of constitution -- the constitution and the rule of law and democracy. and i think that that -- that's job one, because otherwise you're not going to get a healthy republican party, because that party is not going to go away. it's an institution. it has deep roots. it has money and offices and so on. and so, you know, the notion that somehow tomorrow the republican party goes away and there's a new conservative party, i don't think is realistic. and i think, ali, you're right, every democracy needs -- we need a sensible conservative and a sensible liberal party. i know jen's been making the same case for years as well. so anyone who thinks this is merely the end of all conservative politics is fooling themselves and it leaves a space for people like trump and the people who support him. and that's a bad idea. >> jennifer, you pointed out something to me. donald trump's going to be talking tomorrow. you often are with me on sunday mornings after he does these rallies. you never know what he's going to do. he's either going to dial up his authoritarian rhetoric to an 11, but increasingly these days he's just saying ridiculous things. the whole sharks and electrocution matter. i don't know what he was talking about with joe biden and fingers. he just says nonsensical things. the crowd goes along with it like they're in on the joke. i'm pretty clear nobody knew what he was talking about when he was talking about sharks and batteries and electrocution and choosing death by shark over electrocution. how are we supposed to have this conversation? people talk about joe biden and his age, what about donald trump and the weird stuff that he just comes up with? these non seq. or the, hannibal lecter, referring to him as though he's a real person. what do we do about this? >> he's nuts. whether clinically or medically nutss, i'm not prepared to say, but his brain does not function properly. he leaps from one topic to the other, has non seq. or thes, sometimes he can't get a word out. something is seriously wrong with him. what we have, of course, is the emperor has no clothes. those crowd cult members, of course, don't admit that he's a lunatic and that there's something bad with his brain. they simply stand there cheering along. and no one has the guts to say, gosh, he makes no sense. so it's going to be really interesting. i have encouraged the biden campaign and the president through my writing. i don't know whether he's going to take the advice to turn to donald trump when he does this at the debate and say i don't know what the hell you just said, you sound nuts. it's not until he's confronted, until people point out that he is incoherent, that he is in some sense not all there that i think you break down the illusion. and you know, he thrives because people pretend to fill in the blanks and treat him like he's a normal or even a super normal person. and he's not. he's wholly uninformed. he's dumbed. and he's dangerous. >> i know our viewers don't tend to like to watch these rallies or even clips of them. and i totally get it. life would be simpler without listening to donald trump. but i think sometimes people have to listen to these things so they can talk to their friends supporting donald trump and say, what is he talking about? thanks to both of you. a pleasure to have you on. thank you, friends, for being here tonight. coming up, monday's going to mark two years since the supreme court eliminated the constitutional right for women to have an abortion. it hasn't stopped there. women's bodily autonomy is under assault by republicans everywhere, even for women in blue states. we'll talk about that next. blue states. we'll talk about that next the age to scr een was now 45? 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